An old surveyor and longtime reader of this space stopped by Saturday afternoon to shoot the breeze. A bit of a character, he’s always welcome. He started right in on the Red Sox, especially Panda Bear, whom he calls “Fatso,” then said he’s more interested in the Patriots’ draft and even had the date memorized. […]

It’s spring, signs everywhere. Trout-stocking trucks from the Connecticut Valley and Western Wildlife districts are rolling through Recorder country, depositing fresh, lively, colorful brookies, browns and rainbows from Pioneer Valley hatcheries at Montague, Sunderland, Palmer and Belchertown. No word on this week’s schedule, but ponds like Cranberry in Sunderland and Puffers in North Amherst have […]

Think of them as tasty leftovers from a recent meandering phone conversation with state Deer Project Leader David Stainbrook about the 2015 preliminary deer harvest. Nothing big. Just a few interesting observations about deer behavior gleaned and stored for future reference after delving into a peripheral discussion about a Penn State deer-collaring research project Stainbrook […]

Time to clean out the desktop pile of gathered snail-mail and email printouts, all containing interesting comments from readers who reacted to topics covered here recently, particularly Quabbin rattlesnakes, which created quite a stir, plus analysis pertaining to the recent preliminary Massachusetts deer harvest. It gets better. We’ll also take a look at comments from […]

The preliminary 2015 Massachusetts deer harvest of 9,910, released late last week by MassWildlife, was mediocre compared to recent harvests but not surprising from a western Massachusetts perspective. Gone are the days when Franklin County woods most favorable to deer hunting were patrolled annually by eastern Massachusetts visitors hunting where their chance of success was […]

The deluge of timber rattlesnake comments continues following two weeks of discussion here about the state’s plan to establish a population of the venomous snakes on Mt. Zion, the large, isolated Quabbin Reservoir island and no-man’s land that’s off limits to humans. MassWildlife’s justification for the proposal is that no reptile is slipping faster toward […]