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Written by Dave Alsbrooks
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Friday, 05 March 2010 08:00 |
March — FINALLY! If you are reading this week’s column on Saturday morning, I am hopefully on the water somewhere in my fishin’ boat. There’s new equipment to try out and cobwebs to brush off. 
If the sun rises and the winds are calm, it’s time to cast until I drop. We have been without fresh filets at our home for a while now, and I feel the need to restock the freezer. I will provide a report in my next column.
Many of us feel the urgent need to get outdoors and enjoy the fresh air and open space. The long winter this year has caused extended symptoms of cabin fever for many.
As you slingshot yourself toward your private space this spring, remember the young ones. If you have a son who loves the outdoors as much as you do, he will never let you leave without him.
Those of you who have daughters, please remember to ask them along. A morning or all day out with dad in his open space can be a good activity for both. It’s always great if mom gets to go along also.
I was more of a fisherman when my daughter was born. I never missed an opportunity to take her to a pond or on the boat we eventually acquired. As I started hunting more and more, she would go with me when I was hunting Miami County in the ’80s.
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Written by Nancy Kalman
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Friday, 05 March 2010 08:00 |
The most important ticks to those of us in Miami County are hard ticks. They carry several serious diseases and transmit them to humans and pets.
Ticks go through a life cycle of egg, larva, nymph and adult. The most important are three-host ticks. The adult female tick gorges on blood, drops off its host and deposits thousands of eggs. The female then dies. Six-legged larvae develop and remain on the ground or within low vegetation until a host comes by. After feeding for a few days, a larva drops off, molts and becomes an eight-legged nymph.
Ticks in all of these stages are very small, but can become attached to people. The normal host for the nymph would be a small animal, such as an opossum, dog, rabbit, raccoon or skunk. After a week or so of feeding, the nymph falls off, molts and becomes an eight-legged adult. The adult mates and feeds on another host, a larger animal. An adult tick can crawl several feet onto tall grasses, weeds or low bushes. It does not jump or drop from trees.
The American dog tick feeds on cats, dogs, cattle, horses and other large animals, including humans. The female expands to about ¾ inch in size after gorging. In our region, these ticks are encountered from March to September in grasslands and at the edge of forests. They transmit Rocky Mountain spotted fever and cytauxzoonosis, a fatal blood parasite in cats, and they can cause paralysis if attached close to the spine.
The female Lone Star tick has a white “star” on its dorsal shield. The male has white-to-yellow lines on the edge of the shield. It is found in dense underbrush, where it waits for deer. All stages of these ticks can be found on deer. Those in immature stages are found on quail, foxes, rabbits, squirrels, dogs, coyotes and humans. The adult ticks are encountered from late February until early June and the larvae from late summer into fall. Thousands of larvae can be found on a single blade of grass or leaf. These ticks carry the organisms that cause the bacterial diseases ehrlichiosis and tularemia, as well as the bacterium Borrelia lonestari, which causes Lyme disease-like symptoms.
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Written by Brandon Steinert
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Friday, 05 March 2010 08:00 |
I had never baked a cookie before, much less anything else. But, on Feb. 25, I tried my hand at the typical chocolate-chip cookie.
This was no ordinary first-time experience. No, no, this mattered. It was a competition. 
While my wife, Leann, and I were picking out meals for the following week’s dinners, she suddenly craved cookies and found a recipe in a church cookbook.
Looking for something to do, I found one as well in my Taste of Home cookbook and challenged her to a bake-off.
We gathered everything we needed at the store, then went home and started throwing ingredients together.
I got a few funny looks from my beautiful bride as I added 4 cups of flour, a cup of sugar and a cup of brown sugar to a bowl.
Shaking her head, she went back to her batch. Clueless as to what was wrong, I returned my attention to my own.
“What’s next?” I thought, trailing my finger down the ingredient list. “One cup of pecans. Yummy.”
Leann had gathered most of the ingredients, which was my first mistake. I gave my opposition the chance to sabotage my recipe.
My 1 cup of pecans turned out to be a small package of walnuts.
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Written by Editorial Board
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Friday, 05 March 2010 08:00 |
A bill has been introduced in the Kansas Senate to allow liquor sales in grocery stores. This is a complex issue that, as state Sen. Pat Apple said, which will require long looks at both sides before a decision can be made.
The addition of liquor sales in grocery stores would devastate liquor stores. Even with the additions to the bill that would allow liquor stores to sell other goods, such as tobacco and snack food, liquor stores would have a hard time competing with grocery stores.
On one hand, liquor should have been allowed in grocery stores already. Outdated laws from the Prohibition era prevented that and led to the development of countless small-business liquor stores dotting the state.
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Written by Dave Alsbrooks
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Friday, 26 February 2010 08:00 |
This fisherman has got the wet winter blues.
I have walked less miles this February than any other that I can remember from the recent past. I have also fished less days this cold 2010.
We will extend the antler shed bragging rights through the end of March, the small set that I found in January is not worthy of a picture. I witnessed two bucks from my area last week still in full crown. Maybe some of the older bucks will start dropping sheds soon. If you have any game cam pictures of shedding bucks, please submit them for publication.
Although the wet and cold weather has been irritating at best, it is a great time to get out when possible. The farms and few miles that we have walked have been fruitful. The wet and snowy conditions have provided for some of the best whitetail scouting in many years.
The deer trails are mud paths with plenty of animal tracks to study. The creek crossings are highlighted with heavy herd traffic. The grain crop fields have obvious corridors in and out of them leading to the bedding areas. The tree scrapes are very easy to see, and the cedar belts are thick with bedding depressions.
I have discovered at least a dozen or more new locations where mature bucks can survive. When the next dry weather week arrives, I will move stands and start food plots with this new information in mind.
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