Features from November 2018
Hayes Nance was scanning the area around his stand, looking for a deer or any sign of movement, when, without warning, the woods came alive, and a couple of yearlings burst out, followed close behind by their mothers.
Bridge pilings near Mississippi’s Gulf Coast will produce plenty of fish until it gets warm again next spring.
Think of all of your hunting and fishing pursuits and imagine your quarry in its preferred environment.
If you were to survey any given piece of hunting property, there are areas that cry out to be hunted. A majority of times, these areas are soon saddled with a permanent hunting stand, be it a ladder, box or other permanent fixture. A hunter may even take one or more deer from that stand the next season, or it may be one of those rare stands that produces every season. But the reason that site was chosen is because it looked good to the hunter, not because it was conducive to the deer.
Tactics to keep hunting clubs vibrant and alive include changes in management of leased land, beyond just economic or membership moves.
For every hunter, there is a shaft of light, an opening in the woods, or a corner of a green field where his or her buck of a lifetime stands in regal splendor albeit in a dream.
Columns - November 2018
- Buddy Callahan looks like anything but a Cajun with his curly blond hair, fair complexion, a stocky build and a grizzled Van Dyke beard.
- If you want to catch bass or redfish, you better get crackin’. Artificial lure manufacturer Zach Dubois, who specializes in soft plastics, has watched the fairly new Crackin’ Craw — a crawfish imitation — take the bass fishing world by storm. And to his pleasant surprise, it’s also become a go-to bait for redfish along the coast.
- On Maynor Creek, a 500-acre lake near Waynesboro, bass are generally holding shallow this month. The grass breaking up makes accessible sections of the lake that have been almost inaccessible to anglers earlier in the year; you can see baitfish concentrating in the grass and be able to catch the big bass that have been holding deep in the grass earlier in the year.
- It’s finally November, and we all know what that means. For fellow members of the deer-hunting community, the past nine months have been slowly and steadily building toward November.
- Catching your target fish is easy some days, hard or even seemingly impossible other days.
Outdoor Updates - November 2018
- A rule change proposed in September and given final approval in October by the Mississippi Commission on Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks removes the restriction that had prevented deer hunting within 100 yards of a feeder.
- After what was, at best, a decent teal season in the latter part of September, Mississippi duck hunters are hungry for more. No, make that starving.
- Doves, crows, rails, gallinules, moorhens and snipe are all legal at different times in November, and more Mississippians than ever are taking advantage of the opportunity. Well, at least some of those birds.
- The Mississippi Commission on Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks proposed in September to enact the state' first mandatory harvest-reporting system that will be in effect during the 2019 spring wild turkey season.
Field Notes - November 2018
- Topwater strikes make anglers’ knees go weak, but the thrill of victory can quickly turn to crushing defeat when monster bass pull off.
- Larry Reynolds criss-crosses the Louisiana coastline multiple times each fall — cruising at 100 knots with a bird’s-eye view from just 125 feet up, estimating the number of ducks that have arrived in the state’s ag fields and coastal marshes.
- Most Gulf Coast anglers have seen, either in person or in videos, redfish in water that's so clear, it looks like it should have been delivered by the Kentwood man.
- To some anglers, they’re “gut piles.” To others, they’re “dead soldiers.”
- Punch skirts are popular with many bass anglers because they turn normal creature baits into essentially jig presentations.