We Love Outdoors January 31, 2022 - Episode 5

In this week's episode of We Love Outdoors with Rich Davenport, your humble host extends a heart congratulations to the Buffalo Bills for a fine season, and to the Cincinnati Bengals who defeated the Chiefs in a bit of overtime karma. While winter is in full swing, its hard to think of our pollinator friends, but DEC has announced they will be adding regulatory oversight to Neonic pesticides to assure these are only used by trained commercial professionals.  These insecticides work via attacking the nervous systems, and have terrible consequences for pollinators, and even songbirds.  Rules won't take effect until January 1, 2023, to give retailers and makers time to adjust. And while winter activities like snowshoeing, snowmobiling, ice skating and skiing dominate - many small game seasons and opportunities remain available and open in NY through Feb 28, which is a great activity to take your youths and expose them to these other facets of hunting, which do not demand sitting still and making no sound, like big game hunting does.  You can even hunt coyote in NY through March 26, so don't just rely upon deer hunting, as small game is really the place where kids learn how to hunt.  However, speaking of deer, according to National Deer Association, 2020/ 2021 saw a record in both bucks and total deer harvested across the USA, disspelling the notion that hunting is a dying sport.   2022 has started off like 2021 left off, with yet another fishing record being broken, this time in New Hampshire with a 12 lb 8.53 oz cusk, which is related to the freshwater ling, or burbot, or eelpout.  Gilmanton resident Ryan Scott Ashley caught the fish from Lake Winnipesaukee just a couple weeks ago. DEC is reminding folks you still have time to comment on the fishing regulation proposed changes, as comment period runs until Feb 6, 2022. And in Ohio, fisheries personnel discovered the longhead darter, not seen in Ohio since 1939, have been confirmed present in the Ohio River! On the ice fishing front, you can still enter the Chautauqua Lake Ice Derby until Feb 12, 2022.  Most lakes and ponds are now covered with safe ice, but Lake Erie is freezing up fast, with now over 80% of the lake being ice covered as reported by NOAA.  With the frigid temps coming up, we may be fishing the Big E by next week.  Ice progress is well ahead of normal annual progression. Your humble host updates you to the many different upcoming events, including a golf outing planned by NYSCC and the Erie County Federation Awards banquet coming up on March 5, 2022.  Day old chick cooperators also have until March 25 to submit applications to become a cooperating pheasant rearer. Finally, on the renewable energy front, the suppression and deceptions of massive support for these schemes is falling like leaves in November, as more people are standing and objecting to these schemes that gobble large amounts of land, forests and farmlands, while delivering very little usable electricity.  Even thee deception games are being exposed for the manufactured deceptions that they have truly become. {ush back and stand for sound energy policy and principles, not death in the name of "saving the planet".