Patoka Sportsman 5-25-19
Patoka Sportsman 5-25 & 5-26-19
The Dubois County Sportsmen’s Club and Huntingburg Conservation Club are sponsoring the annual free fishing derby in memory of Paul Klem from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday, June 1, at the Jasper Outdoor Recreation. The rain date is June 8. Awards will be presented for the biggest fish and most fish caught. Drawings will be held for donated prizes. Attendees are to bring their fishing poles and bait. Ages 15 and younger are welcome to participate.Registration is from 8 to 8:30 a.m. Rules will be gone over between 8:30 and 9 a.m. Fishing will take place from 9 to 11 a.m. Lunch and awards will be from 11 a.m. to noon. For more information, call 812-309-0835 or 812-639-3300.
There will be a 3-D Broken Arrow Archery shoot Sunday June 9th at Beaver Lake CR 325 E Jasper IN. Sign-in will be from sunrise till noon. A practice range will be available, and concessions will also be sold. There are new lower prices for entry fees. The entry fee is $10 for all adults, $8 for children age 11-17, and free for the cub class (10 and younger) and active military members. From Jasper, take State Road 164 east to County Road 325 East, turn left and follow the road to the clubhouse on the right. For more information , call cliff fleck at (812)630-0454 or karla brames at 812-827-3756.
Join the naturalist for a tour on the lake Saturday, June 1 at 9:30a.m. at Little Patoka Boat Ramp. Meet the
naturalist at the Patoka Lake Office to car caravan to the ramp. The caravan will leave promptly at 8:30a.m. Enjoy a morning on the waters of Patoka as we check out a beautiful rock quarry and waterfall while looking for beaver, bald eagles, and other wildlife along the way. Bring PFD’s, preferred snacks, refreshments and sunscreen for this two- hour long journey. Non-motorized boat launch permits are required and will be sold at the event for $5. These annual non-motorized launch permits can also be purchased at the Patoka Lake Office between the hours of 8a.m. – 4p.m. For more information regarding this program, kayak rentals, or other interpretive events, please call the Nature Center at 812.685.2447.
The newly renovated Patoka Lake Nature Center has reopened and has several new features for families to learn about area wildlife. The new features include a new land-to-lake view of wildlife commonly seen at Patoka Lake. There’s also a terrarium and aquarium exhibit featuring box turtles, a tiger salamander, an albino alligator snapping turtle, and new interactive wildlife management displays. The center is open Tuesdays through Sundays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The entrance fee of $7 per vehicle for Indiana residents ($9 out of state) is required for the Newton Stewart State Recreation Area, Patoka Reservoir, located north of Wickliffe, Highway 164. For more information regarding this program other interpretive events, please call the Visitor Center at 812-685-2447.
A ceremony held May 16 on the south lawn of the Indiana Statehouse recognized the graduation of seven K-9 teams from the DNR Division of Law Enforcement’s K-9 Resource Protection Program after 9 weeks of training. The seven graduating teams represented the states of Kansas, Oregon, Utah and Virginia. The K-9 teams trained and honed their skills in Orange County.
The Indiana K-9 program started in 1997, with a pilot program of two teams. The program grew to a team of 12 K-9 units located throughout Indiana. There is at least one K-9 unit in all 10 Indiana DNR Law Enforcement districts. The Indiana K-9 program is not only well respected in the Hoosier state, but also recognized as one of the top programs in the nation. Indiana has helped start and train teams from seven sister natural resource agencies (Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Oregon, Utah and Virginia).
Indiana K-9 teams are trained in man-tracking, wildlife detection and article searches. All canines are trained to locate white-tailed deer, wild turkey, waterfowl and ginseng. They may also be trained to locate other species, depending on the geographic area of Indiana the handler is stationed. Indiana teams excel in man-tracking and locating firearms.
K-9 teams provide the officers in their districts another tool to help stop poaching. In the past 22 years, K-9 teams across Indiana have been involved in more than six-thousand such cases. K-9 teams have been used to find hidden game and guns, as well as to find shell casings in road hunting and spotlighting cases. K-9 teams are used to find lost hunters as well as poachers who have tried to conceal themselves from officers. Because of their unique abilities, K-9 units are often requested by other state and local law enforcement agencies for help in locating evidence in their cases and in locating missing persons or fleeing felons.
Trail cameras are your most valuable resource for scouting and monitoring deer activity in your hunting area year-round. If you have not already placed your trail cameras in the woods for this year, you should consider mounting them sooner, rather than later, as you may be missing out on precious information that your cameras can yield. Here are five reasons for mounting your trail cameras in the Spring:
Deer face many threats to their survival over the course of the Winter, and not all deer make it through to the end. Sometimes a harsh Winter combined with a lack of viable food options can claim several deer from the herd. Winter predation may also reduce numbers. Mounting a trail camera during the Spring will show you if the number of deer you are capturing in photos is equal to, greater, or less than the number of deer you have seen in the past. If the number is significantly less, you may want to consider passing on this area for the next year and focusing on a different location where herd numbers are equal to or greater than what you have previously observed. You can also begin to identify the general ages of the deer you are seeing, to know if there are mature bucks or does in the area that may become your chosen quarry in the Fall. Pay attention to the physical appearance of the deer, as this will show you whether the herd appears to be generally healthy or not.
Place your cameras near well-worn trails to determine how much traffic each trail gets, whether does or bucks are utilizing the trail, and which trail on your property is the busiest. Since most trail cameras have a date/time stamp on each picture, you can also determine the specific times of day when certain trails are used the most, and the direction the deer move to and come from during those times. For example, one trail on your property may show heavy traffic in the morning, but only light or no traffic in the evening. After monitoring the area for a few weeks, you will have taken enough pictures to begin to see deer travel patterns emerge. Knowing which trails receive the most traffic and when these trails are most traveled will help you figure out where the best spot is to create a mineral lick or to place a feeder on your property during the Summer months.
By observing the does that you capture on camera in the Spring, you can determine how many are pregnant, and, over time, how many fawns are born and survive into the fall, which is an indicator of overall herd health and whether predation is heavy or light in your area. Bucks, on the other hand, will begin to show the initial growth of their antlers during this time. By identifying each buck’s unique characteristics, you can follow the rate of antler growth for each one. If you are supplying minerals or a supplemental food source that is meant to promote antler growth, you can monitor the effectiveness in almost real time.
Your trail cameras show you the deer in the area, but they also photograph the predators that may be frequenting these trails and pressuring the deer herd. Areas where predators focus their hunting efforts can change as the concentration of available prey changes. The more predator pressure that there is in an area, the less likely the deer will use travel routes that leave them visually exposed. You will find that deer have certain trails which are heavily traveled in the Winter and Spring when there is no foliage to provide camouflage, but this travel pattern will change throughout the Summer months as foliage grows and provides cover. If these trails have foliage, the deer will continue to use them, even into the early archery season. However, once Fall arrives and the foliage disappears, the deer will oftentimes return to using the same trails post-rut that you have already identified as heavily traveled. Knowing the routes that deer are likely to take for a given portion of the season will help you to know where to plan to hunt during that time frame.
After monitoring deer traffic patterns on your land in the Spring and Summer months, you should be able to identify the locations on your property which are the best for you to hunt in the early season. It is in these locations where you will want to place a stand or blind and focus your hunting efforts. One of the exciting parts of the beginning of archery season is the prospect that bucks are still in a daylight movement pattern and that they will continue to follow this pattern for a few weeks into the season, until their pre-rut instincts begin to develop. Your trail camera pictures now give you a photographic history which documents the time of day and location where bucks are frequenting. Go back and look at earlier sets of pictures taken a month or six weeks before your most recent pictures were taken. Are you beginning to see a pattern in the time of day and location of one buck or a set of bucks? If so, you have a more-than-likely chance that you will see this buck in the same area at the same time during the first few days of season and you should plan your opening day hunt based on this location and time of day.