Midsummer Musings

"Don't you dare write anything negative about our trip to Cape May this year, Rich," Donna, my wife, recently warned me. "You and some of your friends might think your complaints about Cape May and the Eastern Shore are funny, but our granddaughter and I don't."

With this in mind, I have been thinking about some other things to write about. One is something I have referred to in other years: the lack of groundhog hunters. Donna; Sage, her young dog; and I take rides nearly every evening. During our drives we have not seen even one groundhog hunter set up in Cove fields. I imagine area farmers would like to see a renewed interest in this once-popular outdoor sport.

Wildlife has been affected by the many deluges of rain we have gotten that began back in the spring. I have previously noted that area streams were high and discolored for many weeks because of these rainstorms. Though some area live-bait fishermen were able to take advantage of the high, muddy water, we fly-fishermen saw our time on the water dramatically curtailed by the rains. Even when we could get on the water, we had to fish heavily weighted nymphs to catch some trout. Conditions for dry-fly fishing were badly limited. Bass fishermen who like to travel to the big Juniata River below Huntingdon saw their fishing opportunities reduced as well.

Though ducks and geese appear to have been pretty much unaffected by the weather (they are water fowl, after all), some of us are concerned that the long periods of wet weather have negatively affected the recruitment of young turkeys. Pennsylvania turkey biologists have told us that cold, wet spring weather causes hypothermic-type stress on poults (young turkeys) and that many of them die as a result. The best outdoorsman I know believes the wet weather makes nesting hens easier for predators to smell and that raccoons, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and other predators kill these nesting hens, which results in a serious decline in the hatch of young birds. I have seen only a hen with two tiny poults, seven mature hens accompanied by one lonely poult, and another hen with six grouse-size poults as of mid-July.

Ticks: I have sprayed my clothing with permethrin during the summer and have not had a tick on me. However, I had trouble finding Sawyer's tick spray for a while. When I located some, I really stocked up. Other guys tell me that taking a 1000-mg garlic tablet each day is keeping the ticks off them.