Answering some emails about alligators, mountain lions and bears
A baby alligator being raised at the Durant Fish Hatchery. They will be released on the Red Slough, where they were found, with transmitters later this month. More will be released next year.
I received a couple of interesting emails this week. One wasn’t so flattering.
Heather Hoedebeck, one of the Southeastern Oklahoma State University students who helped care for some baby alligators found abandoned at the Red Slough, wanted a piece of my hide for the article I wrote in the Aug. 2 Sunday Oklahoman.
The article, according to Hoedebeck, was “lazily written” and did not do the gators justice or adequately represent the work put into the care and maintenance of them.
“The conservation side of the article is non-existent,” she wrote. “All you have done is alert to people that there are native alligators. No one is concerned with the safety of these animals now. People are more concerned that they are out there.
“You have promoted a redneck frenzy of alligator hunts rather than persuading the people of Oklahoma to be interested in conservation and importance of our native creatures.”
Wow. Blame me when the mob of alligator hunters show up at the Red Slough with their pitchforks and torches.
Heather really has more of an issue with what I didn’t report than what I did.
“As a conservation issue, it should be mentioned that they are a keystone species that influence the community of species and the habitat of the Red Slough area,” she wrote.
I agree. It wasn’t my intent to create a “redneck frenzy of alligator hunts” but rather to tell a neat wildlife conservation story about how abandoned baby alligators were saved at the Red Slough, cared for by Southeastern biology students and then will be returned to their native habitat with transmitters so biologists can learn more about them.
It’s really not a case of lazy reporting but newspaper space limitations that kept me from reporting more on the gators.
With that mind, I asked Heather to provide me with the key points that she thinks I missed in my column.
“Oklahoma alligators have a hibernation cycle unlike those in Florida and taking them out of the wild could mess up their “biological clock.” Heather wrote.
“Since taking them out was unavoidable due to the chances of survival without a mother, the study is being conducted to see if raising them in captivity for one year or two years is optimal.
“They are wanting to get as much size on the gators as possible without messing up their biological clocks. They also want to see if they will be able to go back into hibernation cycles at all. If they cannot hibernate they will freeze to death.
“These are the most extremely adaptive alligators and are at the furthest point of their natural range. That is why they believe the gators will be able to continue their hibernation cycles even after being kept in captivity.
“The alligators are important to our entire ecosystem and are more afraid of humans than most humans are of them.
“To take these animals out of their natural setting at the top of the food chain in Oklahoma will negatively influence everything around it.
“If they are removed from this position, it will allow something else to move into its place, which, could potentially endanger all the native species in that area.”
I agree, Heather, and I think the majority of Oklahomans will, too.
Bob Hixon, a landowner in Le Flore County, emailed me with concerns about black bear and mountain lion hunting.
Hixon might be in the minority, but he opposes bear and mountain lion hunting.
“Their numbers are still very low, no one even knows anything about the mountain lion population and range,” Bob wrote.
“The bears are tourist attractions for the Ouachita mountain area and bring-in tourism dollars to this area and the state.
“Also, a few mountain lions might help with the soaring feral hog problem that is a much greater concern for other game and habitat destruction.
“The black bear and mountain lion are/were native to this area … they are part of the ecosystem and deserve a place in Oklahoma … their numbers are still very low … has anybody actually presented a carcass of a domestic animal that has been killed by a lion?
“I believe in a balance; hunting is fine but let’s all do the science first.”
I don’t think you have anything to worry about as far as mountain lions, Bob. It’s been legal to shoot a mountain lion on sight if it’s deemed a threat or nuisance (when would it not be?) for more than two years now in Oklahoma. No one has checked a lion into the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation yet.
The Oklahoma Department of Food, Forestry and Agriculture has confirmed only one case in the state of a mountain lion killing domestic animals. That happened a couple of years ago in the Panhandle when a mountain lion was killing goats and sheep, said Jack Carson, spokesman for the agency.
The state Agriculture department gets many reports of mountain lion kills, but often the report can’t be confirmed because the agency received it weeks after it happened and it was to late to investigate, Carson said. Also, investigators sometimes can’t determine from the scene the identity of the predator, he said.
Many times the reports of domestic animals being killed by mountain lions in Oklahoma are proven to be kills by bobcats instead, Carson said. Kills by wild dogs and coyotes are also commonly mistaken for mountain lion kills, he said.
As far as black bears, I was surprised there wasn’t more debate in the state Legislature about the bear hunting bill, but ODWC believes it has the science to support a bear hunt. State wildlife officials say there are at least 500 black bears in southeastern Oklahoma.
The total number of black bears that can be killed by hunters is 20, and the ODWC biologist who works closely with bears is on record that he doesn’t think 10 will be taken by hunters this season.
It’s expected they are going to be hard to hunt, especially with a bow. Only bowhunters and possibly muzzleloader hunters (if bow hunters don’t kill 20 by the time deer muzzleloader season begins) can legally hunt black bear in Oklahoma this fall.
Even more fishing songs
I still get emails about my list of Top 10 fishing songs that was published in The Oklahoman last summer.
My top 10 are these:
1. The Five Pound Bass by Robert Earl Keen
2. I’m Going to Miss Her by Brad Paisley
3. Fishing Blues by Taj Mahal
4. The Crawdad Song
5. The Fishing Hole: Theme to The Andy Griffith Show
6. Gone Fishing by Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong
7. Fisherman by Casey Ashley
8. Beer, Bait and Ammo by Kevin Fowler
9. Fishin’ In The Dark by the Nitty Gritty Dirty Band
10. Catfish Boogie by Tennessee Ernie Ford
Catfish Boogie is my new No. 10. I had Catfish John by Alison Kraus as No. 10 last year before a colleague of mine introduced me to Catfish Boogie, a song recorded by the ole’ Pea Picker in the 1950s.
I gave honorable mentions to Cletus Take the Reel and A Country Boy Can Survive by Hank Williams Jr.
In the past year, I’ve gotten a few emails from readers informing me of other fishing songs that I missed.
The most recent was from Randy Hancock, who said he just compiled a CD of fishing songs for a friend who is an avid angler. His suggestions for fishing music includes:
A Bad Day’s Fishing by Slim Dusty
Bad Fish by Jack Johnson
Betty’s Got A Bass Boat by Pam Tillis
Brother Bear Fishing Song by Phil Collins
Catch All The Fish by Brad Paisley
Cold Beer And A Fishing Pole by Trent Wilmon
Cottonwood Tree by Craig Morgan
Da Fishing Trip by Da Yoopers
Drive by Alan Jackson
Fish On The Sand by George Harrison
Fishin’ Hole by Dick Nolan/Roy Payne
Fishing Song by Elvin Bishop
Gone Fishin’ by Tom T. Hall
Hoyt Fishing Accident by John Boy/Billy
I Lobster But Never Flounder by Pinkard & Bowden
I Miss Mayberry by Rascal Flatts
If I Had A Boat by Lyle Lovett
Pray For The Fish by Randy Travis
Take Me To The River by Annie Lennox
The Fish And The Edsel by Jerry Clower
The Fishing Song by The Arrogant Worms
Three Little Fishes ( Children’s Song )
Too Drunk To Fish by Ray Stevens, and
The Great American Fisherman by Redneck Fred.
I found most of these on iTunes if you want to listen to some of them. And if anyone knows of any other good fishing music, please give me a shout.
Piedmont woman gets snookered
Cami Simunek of Piedmont with a 40-pound snook
I always love to hear a good fish story.
Cami Simunek of Piedmont passed along this tale about being in the right place at the right time. Or, maybe it was the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on the perspective.
While vacationing last week at her father’s home in Palm City, Fla.., on the St. Lucia River, Simunek was fishing with her daughters off a dock with the hopes they would catch some catfish or little fish.
“A huge tarpon kept swimming by so we put out the big rig with a mullet fish,” Simunek said. “My youngest snagged a small fish so I was asked to hold the rod with the mullet bait. I did not want to catch that tarpon. It was huge and ugly.”
Simunek said she sat there talking to the rod, telling it not to catch that fish. Didn’t work. The next thing you know a fish is on and on the run and so is Simunek.
She jumped from the dock to a boat, then back to the dock, then over to a small boat, and back to the dock again before walking the fish down to the shore.
Turns out the big fish was an estimated 40-pound snook.
“Our friend who lives there is an avid fisherman was going crazy,” Simunek said. “My dad told him his hair was on fire. He told me that snook rarely are caught in the middle of the day and the size I caught is huge. People fish this area all day everyday for a fish like this to come along.”
Snook are very good to eat, but Simunek said the fishing regulations only allow them to be kept in season which is November through April.
So the fish was released to fight another day.
“It was a blast,” she said.
Has the obit been written on the Gar Rodeo?
A bow fisherman poses with an 8 pound, 14 ounce shortnose gar
What happened to the once-annual Gar Rodeo at Lake Wister?
If anyone knows, please tell me.
Apparently, there won’t be a gar fishing tournament at Lake Wister this year.
Normally, the Gar Rodeo would be Saturday but according to park officials it will not be held this year. And by park officials I mean the lady at Lake Wister State Park last week who answered my phone call.
She didn’t know why there won’t be a Gar Rodeo this year but said there wasn’t one last year either. I got transferred to another lady at the park who said the same thing.
It kind of sounds like the Gar Rodeo is history.
I asked to have the park manager call me for an explanation but I never got a return call to find out why the Gar Rodeo is no more.
There is no huge outcry about this, I’m sure. Not a lot of people care about gar fishing. The tournament drew only about 50 to 60 anglers, but I always liked writing stories on these odd and unique fishing events across Oklahoma.
The Gar Rodeo was the first story I ever did when I took over the Outdoor beat seven years ago. (I am sure that endeared me to a lot of bass fishermen.)
For that reason, I always was kind fond of the Gar Rodeo (even though I can live without gar) and was thinking about going back this year to write another piece of prose about gar fishing.
Oh, well. I can always call this carp fisherman I know instead.
More on alligators in Oklahoma
A baby alligator being raised at the Durant Fish Hatchery. It will be returned with a transmitter along with others to the Red Slough Wildlife Management Arear near Idabel
Last Sunday’s column about alligators in Oklahoma brought back some memories for Towana Spivey, who is director and curator of the Fort Sill National Historic Landmark Museum.
As a historian and archeologist with a biology minor, Spivey has been observing Oklahoma wildlife most of his life. He has encountered Oklahoma alligators in the past and sent me the following e-mail, that I am blogging with his permission.
“Growing up around Madill and Hugo, I have spent a lot of time in the wild areas searching for evidence of early historic or prehistoric people and have often encountered unique wildlife situations,” Spivey said.
“I observed one of the last ‘”red wolves”‘ in Oklahoma in the Enos area of Lake Texoma back in 1968 and even pursued a runaway elephant in the wilderness northeast of Hugo when it escaped into the wild from the nearby Cole Brothers Circus. I have twice been caught in life threatening quicksand on Red River and was uncertain if I would ever be found again.
“As a small boy living in Madill around 1954-55, some of my friends and I killed an alligator in Whiskey Creek south of town. It was approximately 4-5 feet in length although it looked much larger to us at the time. We took it home and posed with it for a photograph taken by the sister of one of the other boys. I remember the smallest of the gang was clowning around with the jaws of the alligator while posing for the photo and when he dropped the jaws, it almost snapped his ear off.
“About 11-12 years later, I was doing an archeological survey on the Washita River arm of Lake Texoma near what is called ‘”Hole 13″‘, a primitive but favorite fishing spot for many people. As I walked along the shoreline of the river intently studying the surface and water’s edge for artifacts, I was startled by a large alligator on the beach that suddenly straightened its legs, rising from the sandy surface and running quickly for the water. I was between it and the shoreline and it had to run past me. It disappeared into the murky waters of the Washita River and I did not see it re-appear. It was approximately 6-7 feet in length.
“In later years, I have seen smaller alligators in various waterways that may have been turned loose by pet owners. However, keeping alligators as pets was not the normal thing to do in southeast / southcentral Oklahoma during the 1950s-60s, with one possible exception. A man named Jimmy had a concrete pool at the east end of Madill’s main street in which he kept several alligators.
“The pool was on the south side of the street in a vacant lot near an old stone building. There was only a low fence surrounding the pool and there were no other special safeguards or procedures for observing the alligators. They were just wild alligators that he kept penned up. I do not know where they originally came from but I do remember shooting sparrows with my BB gun and taking the dead birds to feed the alligators on Saturday afternoons.”
“I heard later that in 1957 during a period of heavy rainfall, many of the alligators escaped by floating over the low fence. It was a time of flooding in the Lake Texoma region and many standard drainage patterns of the creeks and rivers were subverted. What affect this had on the alligator population in that area, I cannot say.”
Now this is a real Boss Hog!
A 558-pound feral hog killed in southern Oklahoma
How would you like to run into this animal in the Oklahoma woods?
This is why hog hunting in Oklahoma is becoming so popular. The size of the beasts that are roaming around Oklahoma.
Landon Wood, a firefighter in Sulphur, killed this free-ranging pig last month at Mill Creek on an 8,500 acre ranch called the Pennington Creek Hunting Club.
The pig, shot at dusk, weighed 558 pounds and had 2½-inch cutters and measured almost 17 inches across the shoulders.
A .308 rifle cartridge only penetrated the pig halfway at a shot from 80 yards, said Brad Clay, a youth minister at the First Baptist Church in Sulphur, who was filming the hunt for an upcoming DVD.
Clay, Wood and Clayton Edgar, the childrens’ minister at the church, formed a Christian-based ministry called Final Descent Outdoors. They speak at wild game feasts held at churches and organize mens’ spiritual retreats.
They are combining their two passions, hunting and their faith, into one. Clay said the hunting DVD they are making will be very gospel-based.
“We feel like lot of (hunters) are good ole’ boys but don’t know the Lord and we are trying to reach out to them and make a connection,” he said.
For more information about Pennington Creek Hunting Club, check out their Web site at www.penningtoncreekhuntingclub.com.
To contact Final Descent Outdoors, email finaldescentoutdoors@yahoo.com or call (580) 421-3214.
You could catch the next lake record
Ethan Williams and Cody Winn with a 50-pound flathead noodled from Canton Lake
Oklahomans continue to catch lake records across the state.
The latest in the Oklahoma City area is a 50-pound flathead caught Saturday on the north end of Canton Lake by Ethan Williams of Canton, who was noodling.
It will be a lake record pending certification by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.
The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation has posted approximately 125 lake records since the program began in February of 2008.
Occasionally, I get questions about fish listed in the newspaper as lake records. Just yesterday, a relative of mine was wondering how a recently caught 15-pound channel cat at Lake Murray could possibly be the lake record.
I explained the lake records program started from scratch.
I’m sure there have been bigger channel cats caught at Lake Murray in the past, but when the state Wildlife Department started the lake records program, the decision was made not to certify any past catches unless they were state records.
On state records, state wildlife officials have some assurances the big fish story is true. State record fish must be weighed on certified scales and witnessed by a state wildlife official.
So all of the state record fish also became official lake records on those particular lakes. But other big fish stories, such as photos of past catches on bait shop walls around the state, do not count.
Greg Summers of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation said the agency has been asked to certify past catches based on such photos.
But there is no way to know if the weight listed on the photos are accurate, he said.
“Who knows where the weight came from?,” he said. “A lot of those places (bait shops) don’t even have scales.”
The lake records program started on just 12 pilot lakes last year. Then Allen Gifford of Davis caught a near state record largemouth bass from Arbuckle Lake and the pilot project became 13 lakes.
The lake records program has proven to be so popular that it was expanded to almost every big lake in the state this year.
“I think we’ve got just about every major lake over 10,000 acres in the program now,” Summers said. “We are signing up new record keepers all the time.”
Bait shops, marinas, grocery stores and other businesses around state lakes have volunteered to administer the lake record program. Summers said the state Wildlife Department can use any business willing to be an official lake record keeper.
“It’s kind of like a deer check station, if you want to do it, we will let you do it,” Summers said.
A list of places where anglers can take a fish to have certified as a possible lake record is on the lake records page of www.wildlifedepartment.com.
All of the lake records are kept electronically on the agency’s Web site.
The state Wildlife Department started the lake records program for one main reason: to promote fishing.
It seems to have accomplished that goal.
