RV show opens Thursday
The 42nd annual RV Super Show and Outdoor Expo opens Thursday at State Fair Park in Oklahoma City.
On display will be the newest in motor homes, fifth wheels, travel trailers, sport utility RVs and pop-up campers.
The four-day show will be held in the Cox Pavilion and the Travel and Transportation Building.
The show opens at 10 a.m. each day. It closes at 8 p.m. each day except for Sunday when it ends at 6 p.m.
Admission is $8 on Saturday and Sunday but only $4 Thursday and Friday. Ages 12 and younger receive free admission.
For more information, visit www.rvshowokc.com.
Wildlife commissioners denounce HB 1249
State wildlife commissioners on Monday criticized a bill that passed the House of Representatives on Thursday which requires hunters to first get permission of a landowner before retrieving a lost hunting dog.
HB 1249 passed the state House of Representatives 80-11 on Thursday and now goes to the state Senate.
Commissioner Ed Abel of Oklahoma City, an avid coon hunter, said the bill threatens honest sportsmen with fines and possible jail sentences.
At the end of the monthly meeting of the Oklahoma Wildlife Commission, Abel asked his fellow commissioners to pass a resolution voicing their opposition to the bill and send it to each lawmaker in the state Legislature.
The commission chose not to vote on a resolution, fearing it might be a violation of the state’s open meeting laws since HB 1249 was not listed on the agenda for Monday’s meeting.
However, most commissioners agreed the bill is bad for Oklahoma sportsmen.
“If the real point (of the bill) is cattle rustling, there is no reason to include hunting dogs,” said Commissioner David Riggs of Sand Springs, who suggested an amendment to HB 1249 that would exclude hunting dogs from the legislation.
Authors of HB 1249 contend the measure is to crack down on cattle rustling, but Commissioner Harland Stonecipher of Centrahoma on Monday called that a lie.
“It’s really about hunting dogs,” said Stonecipher, a longtime houndsman.
Hunters presently have the right to retrieve their dogs when they have wandered on another person’s land. However, it would be considered trespassing under HB 1249.
Coon hunting is a deeply rooted tradition in Oklahoma. National competitions in coon hunting are often held in Oklahoma but that would end if HB 1249 becomes law, Abel said.
State wildlife commissioners discussed the possibility of calling a special meeting to address the legislation.
Chat with Ed Godfrey at 11:30 a.m. from H&H Gun Range
Sooner, Hefner lake records
Jason Blackburn of Oklahoma City tied his own channel catfish record for Hefner Lake
J.R. McIlwain of Moore with a lake record striper from Sooner
Sunday was a good day to be fishing.
Two Oklahoma City area anglers set records on different lakes.
First, J.R. McIlwain of Moore caught a striper from Sooner Lake that weighed 23.6 pounds, beating the old record of 21.1 pounds set last year by Enid’s Dean Nickel.
Predictably, both of those fish were caught in the warm water discharge area on the power plant lake.
Then later that day, Jason Blackburn of Oklahoma City tied his own lake record on Hefner when he caught an 18.4-pound channel catfish while night fishing at the dam.
Last year on March 21, Blackburn set the Hefner Lake record with an 18.4-pound channel cat.
Blackburn’s channel catfish has been taken to the Bass Pro Shops in Springfield, Mo, where it is quarantined and will be later returned to Bass Pro Shops in Bricktown for display in the store’s aquarium, according to the Lucky Lure Tackle Store in Oklahoma City, which serves as the lake record keeper for Hefner.
Pistol Pete No. 1 with a bullet
The March issue of Outdoor Life magazine rates the best “outdoor or shooting-related” mascots in the country.
Topping the list is Oklahoma State’s Pistol Pete because, according to the magazine, he totes a six-shooter and wears blaze orange. Coming in second is the Mountaineer of West Virginia.
The others in the top five are the Pace University Setters in New York (have to love a gun dog mascot); the Moody Bible Institute Archers (good mascot but the school doesn’t have an archery team);
Appalachian State (also the Mountaineers. You think the magazine could have found something different. How about the Razorbacks? Or Gamecocks?);
The Lake Tahoe Community Kokanee are sixth on the list (Go Fish! is the school’s rallying cry);
followed by The University of Maryland-Baltimore County Retrievers (Their mascot is a Chesapeake Bay retriever); and Texas Tech’s Red Raiders (The Masked Rider does carry a gun, but is it really deserving of the top 10?);
The Tennessee Volunteers and mascot Smokey the Coonhound is ninth on Outdoor Life’s list. (C’mon, a coon dog should be much higher, perhaps even No. 1);
And finally, the Claremont McKenna College Stags is tenth (with its nice rack of antlers, this is a mascot that outdoorsmen can root for, according to the magazine.)
Great list, but my favorite outdoors related mascot is the Carolina Mudcats, a minor league baseball team. Their mascot is Muddy the Mudcat.
And I still think the new Oklahoma City hockey team should have been called the Flatheads.
