and a strong cup of coffee

I noticed the black against the white trees, "moose!" I called out to Lee .  Eating along the side of the logging road, she was spooked by our approaching truck and disappeared into thick sapplings before I could take a picture.  I took it as a good omen that today would be productive. Snow in May is not unheard of in Maine but the few inches that had fallen the night before, would not make shed hunting an easy task this morning.  I was still excited and the break from quarantine life was welcomed.  The fresh Maine air can reset anyone's state of mind. We walked down old skidder trails and split up to cover more ground.  Snow fell from the higher branches as the sun began to rise.  I had been walking for just a few minutes when Lee came to find me and had me backtrack on to the road that he had been on. "Walk right down this trail and look inside the tree line" Lee instructed me.  He had already found the first shed of the morning amid two inches...

No doubt that I have dropped the ball on posting my adventures here, but I have had a lot of fun happenings this year!  Here is my quick recap: * Beaver trapping - with my uncle and friend Staci . * Honored as Sportsman of the Year from the New England Outdoor Writers Association. * Turkey hunting. * The Maine Moose lottery held in my hometown and my friend Bryan performed. * Mushroom foraging with Staci. * Going to the ribbon cutting of the Ezra Smith Wildlife Conservation area to honor my friend George . * Bear hunting with Staci and then going out with Bill Dereszewski and having Robin comes with us. * Deer hunting with Dad and Hubs. * Taking O out for his first sit in the new deer stand. * Seeing lots and lots of wildlife including a fisher and bobcat, both of which I had never seen in the wild before. * Started writing for Drury Outdoors ' DeerCast app . * Joined the board of the New England Outdoor Writers Association. It has been busy but I am excited to fi...

For three days leading up to my turkey hunt, I woke up and looked at the clock to figure out how much earlier I would need to wake up to be at Staci's house on time.  Aside from ticks, the worst part of turkey hunting is the early start time.  The day of my hunt arrived and armed with my coffee, I drove to Staci's house to find some turkeys.  Her husband, John, agreed to be our designated turkey caller. Deer ran through the woods off to our right and a partridge drummed continuously as we walked to our first spot.  The world was waking up all around us but there were no turkeys to answer our calls, so we moved. I spotted the first birds of the morning, a tom fanned out with three hens (or two hens and a jake) so we parked the truck in the next field over and started making our way towards the birds.  Staci and I crawled on our stomachs to the edge of the hill and watched as the tom answered every time John called but it would not cross the field to come tow...

This is how I started my second week of deer hunting.  I have never been so quiet in the woods.  I was painstakingly slow and keeping my eyes peeled for deer.  The week before, I had jumped two deer under my stand and I was determined not to have that happen again. I walked out and around our normal route into my stand.  I was at a snail's pace. I would walk, stop and look.  I would look again and take a couple of steps before doing it all over again.  I watched for any movement near my stand. The leaves had fallen off the trees from the wind storm the weekend prior so I had a better view of the area.  I could not see any movement near my stand so I paused next to our trail camera to look around and relax a little bit.  The minute that I stopped, three loud blows jumped me off to my left.  I had made a huge error; I was so concerned about looking near my stand, that I never figured that the deer would be on the opposite side of the pat...

How do you create outdoor kids?  You have them grow up experiencing outdoor adventures like it is a normal part of life. Over the summer, as I was on maternity leave, I was determined not to let the nice weather slip away without getting some fun, outdoor adventures in.  Staci from MyMainelyGirlAdventures took me to one of her favorite fishing spots.  I loaded up the baby, my waders (which I fit back into!) and into the water we went. We didn't catch any fish, but we did have a few bites.  I had the most action on my fly line that I have ever had!  Could have been the flies we put on or, maybe, this baby will be my good luck charm! The weather was perfect and we got to enjoy a few hours in the water wetting our lines and catching up.  What better way to enjoy my maternity leave?

At this point, Staci and I just say that we are doing shed hunting but in reality, we just walk through the woods and see what we can find.  Our latest trip was quite the adventure.  I took Staci to T3 and showed her where Dad had shot his doe.   The trick was getting there without getting hurt. There was enough crust on the snow to be able to walk on it in the morning.  We debated bringing our snowshoes, but ruled that we could handle the crust with the occasional inch break through.  The amount of deer tracks right from the start were nice to see.  They had been checking the old apple trees and following a lot of the same trails that they had been taking during hunting season.  We started off at the Sky Condo, then traveled through the woods to T3.  There were a handful of deer beds close, which is not typical for them at this point in the winter.  It looked like the herd was staying closer to the Sky Condo then they typically did....

I have no idea what Staci said after the words "water snake" came out of her mouth. I went into panic mode wondering if I was going to snag one with my fishing pole or if every bubble that came up from under the canoe was a snake below us. But, the plan was to catch bass and we climbed into the canoe and paddled off to do just that. We started off with frog lures and within the first two casts, I had a bump on my line but nothing hooked. After a few more casts, Staci was landing bass on a regular basis. One of about 15 bass that Staci caught She was out fishing me almost 10 to one and I knew that I needed to hook something.  I cast into the shallows under one of the fallen down trees and boom! had a bite.  The fish hit and dove.  I could see the bass' light colored belly as it turned and went under the canoe.  Then, all of the tension was gone and so was my lure.  The fish grabbed everything and completely straightened my swivel. I quickly got a ...

...Other outdoor women who support and push them. Plain and simple. Robin Follette, Taylor Follette and Me. These women make me want to be a better outdoors woman! In the month that I took off, there were blog posts flying around about who outdoor women are, what we like and don't and how, even into adult hood, those damn cliques from high school pop back up. Here are a couple of links to check out in case you missed them: Field & Stream's survey on "real women weighing in on hunting." I took the survey but anyone could have told you the results and at the end of the day, it has nothing to do with my hunting. Following Eva Shockey on social media does not make me a better hunter.  Feeding into stereotypes doesn't help my shot placement. The only great thing F&S did in that issue was put the rock-star hunter Mia Anstine on the cover and highlight her along with other women who are breaking stereotypes and changing the face of the outdoor indus...

One of the strangest things to get use to while fishing the Russian river was the fact that there are seagulls and eagles constantly watching you, flying overhead and swooping down into the water.  They sit in the trees and just watch.  I have never experienced anything like this in Maine.  It was a little unnerving to be surrounded by birds while you are trying to fish. At one point, I counted four mature eagles in one tree with this immature sitting nearby in the next tree.

My friend Staci and I went fishing recently.  The water was down, the air wasn't too hot and the fish were jumping! It was the third time we had attempted to fish this spot and we arrived early enough to be the first in. We had the luxury of being able to enjoy the nature around us and try out a few different flies to see what the fish were biting.  A pair of Mergansers flew overhead and then swam past us while we stood waist-deep in the current. We would cast, change flies and then change spots on the stream.  It was great.  Eventually, a man parked on the edge of the road and started walking down to the stream to fish as well.  I wasn't the least bit concerned because I had just had a great experience in GLS with Greg . I stopped watching him when Staci yelled to point to the fish jumping in front of her and then we watched as her fly rod created an arc back into the water and she started fighting the fish at the other end. I left my sp...

Staci and I found a great place to shed hunt.  We knew that there were deer all around and that we would be in the right spot to find something.  It had started to snow when we got there but the forecast called for heavier snow in the late afternoon.  As outdoors women, we figured that we would be fine. We just started following tracks to figure out where the deer were traveling from.  We headed through a field and towards the woods, looking for beds, feeding areas or yards where the antlers may have fallen off.  Our plan was to walk the perimeter of the property to see what we could find. It is always a good sign when you see a rub almost immediately.  We have seen the sheds that have been found nearby so we knew that there were decent sized bucks around and that the odds were in our favor. Highways of deer tracks ran through the woods and crossed a stream in two distinct spots.  Staci and I followed different trails looking for...

** The following article was written for The Liberty Project and posted on their website on October 30, 2015.  You can see it here .  I was never paid for this article so The Liberty Project never bought the copyright. Women’s interest in hunting is growing fast, despite online harassment I never questioned the size of my gun.  If Dad could shoot it, why couldn’t I? My mom said that the kick alone would send me backwards out of the treestand.  I shot the 30-06 twice to get comfortable and on the third shot three weeks later, I killed a small buck that filled the freezer. I never questioned my abilities again until I started writing about and posting photos of my hunting adventures.  I was then forced to prove my credibility and knowledge of hunting in a way that men are not.  You will not see a suggestion in writing saying that to start a guy out hunting, you should give him a small gun with little kick.  There is nothing stating that a blue...

With the Maine legislature beginning and as always there will be hunting and fishing issues that come up, I wrote this article for The Liberty Project about a bill in Wisconsin that would prevent anti-hunters from documenting hunters when they are in the woods.  The article was originally posted on October 28, 2015 here . Why Wisconsin's right to hunt bill is necessary I can count on one hand the number of photos of my son on social media. You will never read the full name of the friends that I hunt with and I am more likely to take a photo of the trees than photos of an outing with my Dad. I am overly cautious for my safety and theirs. Last year, I volunteered with Maine’s fight against an out-of-state anti-hunting group as we fought to protect our bear hunting management practices. It was messy. It was personal. It included death threats against some of Maine’s best biologist and wildlife management leaders. Death threats from people who would rather have a fellow huma...

Everything was going just fine until I realized that I had the wrong gun. I had packed everything that I would need and was getting comfortable with the idea of sitting by myself in the tree blind. It was 90 degrees.  The odds of a bear coming in were really not good. Plus, when Steve dropped me off and checked the cameras, there were no pictures and the bait had not been touched.  I was a little more relaxed about it but I was still weirded out about having the wrong gun. Me, my awesome Kryptek Helios top and the wrong 30-06 I'm couldn't believe that it happened. I had assumed that my gun was in my gun bag and switched it with the gun sitting right next to it. The different strap never registered when I grabbed the guns. I didn't think anything of it again until I took the gun out of the case and noticed that the shock pad was sticker than normal.  I assumed that it was due to the heat.  When I reached up to automatically slide the safety back, t...

My friend Staci is a fisherwoman.  She had the gear, knows her stuff and has years of experience.  Somehow, someway, I convinced her to take me fishing. We were watching the water height and strength online and it looked promising so that is where we headed.  An hour later we arrived to this:  the water had been released from the dam above and was raging.  I snapped a couple of pictures and we headed to a different spot to try out luck. Staci said this was a little high compared to what it was a few days before when she was there with her husband but it seemed doable and we wanted to be able to cast a few times just to say that we did it.  I had received two pairs of waders from a retiring coworker so I was eager to try them out and hoped that they would hold up. The bridge swung a little as we drove over it We geared up, Staci put some ties on both of our fly rods (I watched her and tried to adjust the waders).  And we headed into ...

If you were out in the woods and saw this, would you be able to know it was chaga right away?  I was lucky that I had Robin with me and she was able to point it out with 100% certainty of what it was. She was also on top of things and brought a saw to get it off the tree. It was a beautiful, somewhat windy day and we got out in snowshoes before it got too sloppy and slushy.  It was almost hot when the wind died down.  Chaga We took two pieces off of the tree and went in search of more, which we did not find.  I am hoping to keep working on my ability to identify this in the woods when I am out now but it may take a time or two before I am totally confident in my finds.

As I was looking through photos of 2014 and printing some out, I couldnt help  but get nostalgic.  I had no intention of bear hunting a year ago.  I had actually told my Dad (a few times) that I had no desire to shoot a bear, didn't think I could like the meat and that it was just not in my wheel house.  Skip ahead a few months and with the invitation of Steve and Lorri, I learned how to prepare and set bait and went hunting.  Then, given the opportunity to hunt with hounds, I took a chance to learn more about it and came home with an incredible story and some delicious meat. I may look calm but I was freaking out Grateful Look at those scars! I told the taxidermist that I want each one of them to be seen when I get the hide back Such a great hunt So big that it took 6 men or a tractor to move him