It’s time to get outdoors, be it to paddle, fish, hike or whatever.
Bob Frye/Everybody Adventures
Get outdoors, get hiking, get fishing, get boating.
That’s been the message recently.
National Get Outdoors Day is being celebrated on June 10. You can check it out here.
If that doesn’t do it for you, how about National Fishing and Boating Week? It’s being celebrated through June 11.
Details on it — including special events at retailers, a fish personality quiz and other games and tips on how and where to fish and boat — are available by clicking here.
Finally, Pennsylvania just wrapped up its annual Hiking Week. Still, you can get suggestions on places to walk here.
So what might you do outside in the days and week ahead?
Here are a couple of suggestions.
First, from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on June 10, Forbes State Forest naturalist Rachael Mahony is leading an interpretive paddle on High Point Lake in Somerset County.
It will start will kayak and water safety instruction. Then, participants will paddle around the lake, checking out its fish, wildlife and scenery.
You can bring your own kayak or borrow one. It’s all free, but preregistration is required by calling 724-259-2201 or emailing rmahony@pa.gov. Participants must be at least 18 years old.
Second, if it’s fishing you enjoy, there’s a “Bass for Bashioum” benefit tournament being held on June 18 at Chartiers Park in Bridgeville Township.
The event – sponsored by S City Outdoors – benefits the Hope for Heroes Foundation and most especially the children of Scott Bashioum, a Canonsburg police officer who was killed in the line of duty last fall. He was shot when responding to a domestic violence call.
The three top finishers in the event will win prizes – all donated by local businesses — with the top one valued at more than $1,000.
Details on the event can be found at here.
Preregistration is not required but is encouraged.
Bad start
Pennsylvania’s spring turkey season didn’t start off particularly well from a safety standpoint.
According to Rich Palmer, the Game Commission’s deputy executive director for field operations, there were four accidents – called hunting-related shooting incidents – in the first day, two more on the first Monday and another on the first Wednesday.
Commission president Brian Hoover of Delaware County wondered if any of the accidents involved mentored hunters, be they youths or adults.
Mentored hunters need not take a hunter safety course before going afield. Hoover asked if that was causing problems.
“I would certainly want to know, if we’re putting people out in the woods without any training, is that a cause and effect of what’s going on. If we’ve created a problem we need to address it,” Hoover said.
Apparently, they haven’t.
Randy Shoup, chief of the commission’s bureau of wildlife protection, said one of the accidents involved was a 15-year-old who – against the rules – was out hunting alone.
But none of the accidents involved mentored hunters, he said.
Either way, the flurry of accidents was unusual, said commissioner Tim Layton of Somerset County.
“It just seemed extremely high this year,” he said.
Things got “back to normal” after those first few days, said Tom Grohol, commission deputy executive director for administration.
“I think it started off high on that first day and then tapered off,” Grohol said.
By season’s end, accident numbers seemed to be back “within range of expectations,” said executive director Bryan Burhans.
Two timer
How’s this for outdoing everyone, including yourself?
Here’s Roy Beasley with his Michigan state record bigmouth buffalo.
Photo: Michigan Department of Natural Resources
According to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, a bowfisherman named Roy Beasley arrowed a new state record bigmouth buffalo. The fish – which looks like a carp – was 35.25 inches long and weighed 27 pounds.
The previous record was a 34.5 inch fish that weighed 27 pounds. It had been shot in 2008 by … Beasley.
That’s right. He broke his own record nine years later.
He got his big fish in two different rivers.
Big bass
And now for another big fish.
In this case, never, perhaps, has the value menu produced in such a way.
According to a story by Wired 2 Fish, a Texas angler fishing with a chicken McNugget landed a 24.5-inch, 10.802-pound bass from Lake Bardwell.
Matthew J. McNellis had the nugget attached to a jug line. He was hoping to get a catfish.
Instead, he got a bass that’s been recognized as the record largemouth for that particular lake.
