Ducks Unlimited announced the results of the 2023 Waterfowl Population Survey on Friday, and the outlook was grimmer than scientists had hoped. The total count of 32.3 million ducks was down 7 percent from 2022, and 9 percent from the long-term average. While seven of the 10 species counted saw declines from 2022, six of the 10 species are still showing increases over their respective long-term averages, a sign that their numbers are still holding strong.Unfortunately, some of the species that are facing long-term declines are also some of the most beloved by waterfowl hunters—namely mallards and pintails.
The 2023 Waterfowl Breeding Population survey results. Ducks Unlimited
In 2022 pintail numbers hit a record low of fewer than 1.8 million birds. This year’s count was something to celebrate: an increase of 24 percent to 2.2 million birds. That’s encouraging, but this year’s pintail population still represents a 43 percent decline over the long-term average.
The mallard population is 6.1 million birds strong, cementing the species as the most abundant duck in North America. But the mallard’s recent downward population trend is also of great concern, seeing as how they suffered both a year-over-year decrease of 18 percent and a 23 percent decline from the long-term average.
Wigeon have also struggled, facing both a 14 percent drop from last year and a 28 percent decrease from their long-term average. These declines have researchers concerned about “the continuing loss and degradation of habitat in the prairies and long-term impacts on carrying capacity and productivity,” says DU chief scientist Dr. Steve Adair.
“Last year’s nesting season was delayed with April snowstorms and May rains which likely impacted overall production,” Adair said in a press release. “In the past, we have seen population growth lag [behind] moisture conditions as small, shallow wetlands recover from the lingering impacts of severe drought.”
Read Next: Pintails Hit Their Lowest Population in Decades. Some Researchers Think We Could be Miscounting Them
The annual Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey is conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Service. Breeding surveys began in 1947 and have since transitioned into the monumental effort that waterfowlers follow along with today. Air and ground crews from both agencies comb a 2-million-acre survey area from Alaska to Newfoundland to Nebraska and report their findings to help both agencies make decisions about hunting seasons, bag limits, conservation planning, and habitat management.
If you Google news search ‘Zombie Deer’ you’ll find stories from a variety of media outlets including the San-Antonio Express News, Newsweek, Outside, and the Associated Press, with headlines declaring that zombie deer are spreading across America. Or, that the “zombie deer disease” will soon be transmitted to humans. What these publications refer to as zombie deer disease is actually chronic wasting disease, a neurodegenerative prion disease that infects deer, elk, moose, and caribou.Chronic wasting disease (or CWD) is caused by a rogue protein that resides in the lymph and nervous tissues of infected cervids, as Andrew McKean wrote for OL in 2019. Those proteins, called prions, are passed on to other deer, and can remain in the soil of an infected site for years. Currently there is not evidence that CWD has ever been transmitted to humans, however the disease belongs to the family of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) that includes bovine spongiform encephalopathy (“mad cow disease”). Most experts as well as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that humans not eat venison from CWD-infected deer.
Wildlife managers say that chronic wasting disease is the most important and dangerous disease threatening North American cervids.
Chronic Wasting Disease Facts
These states and provinces have reported CWD infections. National Wildlife Health Center
Forget about zombies for a moment. Here are some facts that you need to know about chronic wasting disease.
Chronic wasting disease has been reported in at least 31 states and four Canadian provinces, according to the National Wildlife Health Center.
CWD was first identified at a Colorado research facility in the late 1960s. It was discovered in wild deer about 20 years later.
Chronic wasting disease symptoms include drastic weight loss, stumbling, lack of coordination, listlessness, drooling, excessive thirst or urination, drooping ears, and lack of fear of people.
The disease develops slowly (with an incubation period of 18 to 24 months) and few deer actually reach the stage of showing clear symptoms of CWD. “Instead, the slow but unseen damage to the nervous system makes infected deer more susceptible to other causes of death long before they look sick,” writes Lindsay Thomas Jr. “They are hit by cars. They die of other diseases like pneumonia that healthy deer are better able to fight off. They fall to predators more easily.”
There is no known cure for CWD.
Older bucks are more likely to carry chronic wasting disease than does, with adult bucks being about twice as likely to be infected, according to the National Deer Association.
Prevalence of CWD varies widely from region to region and from herd to herd. A 2021 report from Wyoming found a prevalence rate of over 50 percent in some herds, meaning more than half of the deer sampled from the herd had CWD.
No state has been able to cure its deer herds of CWD. However some states have effectively slowed its spread. Illinois removed 1,107 deer from 16 CWD-infected counties in 2020. “These small removals provided big dividends by removing a higher percentage of CWD-positive deer from the landscape,” according to the NDA. “Targeted removal programs are a great way to remove CWD-positive deer with the least amount of disturbance to hunters.”
READ NEXT: Here’s What Top Chronic Wasting Disease Researchers Can’t Say on the Record
Why the Term “Zombie Deer” Is Problematic
This inaccurate terminology is troubling for two reasons. First, it gives people a poor understanding of CWD. Second, the hyperbole helps spread CWD conspiracy sentiment.
It’s an Inaccurate Description of CWD
The main problem with the term “zombie deer” is that it creates the idea that CWD-infected deer are staggering about the woods looking to attack a hiker and eat their brains. Lindsay Thomas is the chief communications officer for the National Deer Association and the editor of their quarterly magazine which has covered CWD carefully and thoughtfully for years, and he had this to say about the term:
“I know the news media is just trying to get more clicks from a mainstream audience that may not otherwise care about wildlife diseases, but they are doing real damage both to the public’s understanding of this issue and to the hunting community’s efforts to unite against this threat.
Deer that are dying of CWD don’t have a single thing in common with the popularized image of zombies. In the late stages of the syndrome, you’re talking about an animal that can barely stand much less get aggressive. But deer in the wild, outside of captive laboratory observation, rarely reach that stage. Research shows CWD-infected deer start suffering higher mortality rates from predators, vehicles, and other diseases long before they start showing outward signs of CWD itself. So, even a hunting media outlet that shows a photo of a skin-and-bones deer as an example of a ‘CWD deer’ is misleading its readers.
Deer can be infected with and spread CWD to other deer for one to two years before they begin to show visible signs of infection. So, the vast majority of CWD-infected deer that the public and hunters encounter will look completely healthy and appear to behave normally.”
It Fuels CWD Conspiracy Talk
There is already so much misinformation and so many conspiracy theories about CWD circulating in the hunting community. The last thing we need is for major media outlets, which many folks already distrust, reaffirming CWD non-believers by running insane headlines that no one with knowledge of the subject will take seriously. This kind of hyperbole is dumbing down the entire conversation at the very moment we need to be having a real, national discussion about how to better manage captive deer and wild whitetails during the CWD age.
For example, the Daily Beast ran this headline in 2019: “Brain-Eating Zombie Deer Disease Will Likely Spread to Humans.” Any hunter from a CWD-infected area knows that this headline is total bullshit. And if that hunter already thought CWD might be a hoax, this kind of exaggerated news story only confirms their beliefs. If we never get past the point of arguing about how big of a threat CWD actually is to whitetail deer and deer hunting, we’ll never move on to discussing possible solutions—like which herd harvest strategies do and don’t work for limiting the spread or petitioning for federal funding to advance CWD testing.
Where Did Zombie Deer Come From?
Some states have attempted to cull deer herds in CWD management zones in order to stop the spread of the disease. John Hafner
It’s worth noting that the term “zombie deer” is almost always used in quotation marks in major media stories. However, I have not been able to find the original scientist or research paper that called a CWD-infected deer a “zombie deer.” So, who are these news outlets actually quoting? For example, The Independent wrote this as its lede in a 2019 story: “Scientists have warned that ‘zombie deer’ are spreading across America and there is nothing that can be done to stop them.”
I was not able to find a single credible scientist quoted saying that directly, and I bet that you won’t be able to either. So, who did start calling CWD-infected deer “zombie deer”? These days it seems like every news story about CWD references zombies. But going back, I found a surge of stories referencing “zombie deer” in early spring 2019 when Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, testified before state lawmakers about the possibility of the disease one day spreading to humans.
However, a few weeks before those stories broke, Livescience.com published a story titled “Could ‘Zombie Deer’ Disease Spread to Humans?” on January 23, 2018. That story links to a Livescience.com opinion piece from 2013 which reads “state wildlife managers are deeply concerned that these zombie deer will infect free-roaming deer…”
This op-ed was written by Wayne Pacelle, the former President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, one of the most powerful anti-hunting organizations in the country. Pacelle eventually resigned from the HSUS amid sexual harassment allegations, but when this opinion piece was published in 2013, he was still the face of the organization.
In 2012 there was a Science Daily report that referenced “zombie protein.” Beyond that, I can’t find an article earlier than this from a major news source that references “zombie deer.” Patrick Durkin, who has been diligently reporting on CWD for 20 years, doesn’t recall seeing the term being used in chronic wasting disease news stories before 2019. So, it’s at least possible that the term “zombie deer” was partly popularized by disgraced anti-hunting zealot Wayne Pacelle.
A family vacation to Spain turned into an international headline when 11-year-old Joshua Davenport caught a 152-pound wels catfish on the River Ebro during the last week of October. He and his parents, who are also avid anglers, were visiting from their home in East Grinstead, West Sussex, UK at the time, Angling Times reports.
“It was about 11:30 a.m. and Josh was with his cousin on the swim next to us,” Davenport’s mother Lorna told the Daily Mail. “You are given a whistle to blow when you catch a big fish and Pete and I heard it and rushed over to them. Josh had got the rod and he was fighting the catfish. The rod was bent over and it was obvious it was a big one.”
Davenport was fishing with halibut pellets when the catfish bit. It took Davenport 25 minutes and some help from the guides at Ebro Mad Cats to get the fish to the riverbank. He got some photos with the monster catfish, which was hoisted in a sling for a weight measurement before being released back into the river.
“It is his dream to catch one over 100 pounds so there was no way he was going to let go,” Lora said. “When he saw it he just couldn’t believe the size of it. It took three adults and Josh to lift it.”
The Daily Mail reports that Davenport’s catch broke a European record for the largest freshwater fish caught by a youth angler. Although it’s unclear what entity maintains a continent-wide fishing records book, the massive wels catfish is big enough to theoretically set a world record. The current all-tackle youth world record for the species weighed 131 pounds 6 ounces, according to the International Game Fish Association, and Davenport’s fish outweighs it by more than 20 pounds. That record fish was also caught from the River Ebro.
“Fishing is everything to Josh,” Lorna said. “He got his first rod when he was four and caught his first catfish aged six which weighed 22 [pounds]. It has gone from there. He has caught thousands of fish. He loves catfish because they are just so big. We were in Spain for a week and he caught the big catch was his last fish of the trip.”
Read Next: Italian Angler Catches Pending World-Record Wels Catfish Over 9 Feet Long
The River Ebro, which runs through the northeastern part of Spain, is world-famous for its gargantuan Wels catfish. Ditch Ballard, who runs Ebro Mad Cats, let a 222-pound wels catfish tow him in his 12-foot aluminum boat down the River Ebro in February. The Ebro record for wels catfish weighed 257 pounds and was caught in October, according to Angling Times.
Ebro Mad Cats posted a picture of Joshua with the big wels on Nov. 3, giving him props for the difficult catch.
“Young Josh has seriously impressed us all at Ebro Mad Cats this week, and today he has excelled himself once again with this [150-plus-pound] beast,” they wrote in a Facebook post. “Great angling young man, it’s been a pleasure having you here.”
An Oklahoma man was cited yesterday for shooting into a spread of sandhill crane decoys from the roadway. Luckily nobody was injured. Authorities with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation say the incident could have ended far worse, however, as a group of hunters was only 20 to 30 yards away from the decoys at the time. They were so close they could hear the bullet ricochet off the decoy.According to a recent Facebook post on the Oklahoma Game Wardens page, the hunters were waiting for cranes to come into their spread on Sunday when they saw a pickup truck stop suddenly on the roadway. The hunters watched as one of the truck’s windows rolled down and out came a rifle barrel. One of the two occupants then shot one of the decoys with the rifle.
“When the driver noticed the birds did not disperse—he drove off, realizing what he had just done,” the post reads.
The shooter fired one shot, which ricocheted off one of the decoys. Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation / Facebook
The drive-by shooting took place west of Cherokee, and the hunters immediately called the authorities. ODWC’s District 8 Captain Ben Bickerstaff and Garfield County Game Warden Blake Cottrill investigated the incident.
When questioned by the game wardens, the occupants of the truck said they were just trying to “scare those cranes off the wheat.” However, as ODWC points out in the Facebook post, “it wasn’t even their crop of wheat to worry about” as they did not own the property where they fired the shots.
Bickerstaff seized their Ruger .204 rifle as evidence, and he cited the individual for shooting from a public right-of-way. The crime carries a fine of between $500 and $1,500 for a first conviction, and Bickerstaff says it could also carry a one- to 10-year revocation of hunting privileges. He says additional charges—including reckless discharge of a firearm—could be filed against the shooter at the discretion of the state’s assistant District Attorney, as a criminal case is now pending.
Read Next: World Champion Goose Caller Sent to Prison After This Video of Flock-Shooting Snow Geese from Truck
“The charging authority is ultimately going to be the assistant D.A., and if she decides more charges are warranted, we’ll do whatever is necessary to make that happen,” says Bickerstaff. He adds that he didn’t push for additional charges in the citation he filed on Sunday because the shooter expressed their remorse and seemed to grasp the gravity of their mistake.
“By the time we talked to [him], the reality of what they could have done had really set in on [him],” Bickerstaff says. “There’s a difference between getting a ticket from the game warden and spending the rest of your life in prison for killing somebody. I made sure to impress that upon them.”
Stay Safe When Field Hunting
It’s common for waterfowlers to set large spreads of ultra-realistic decoys in fields. On occasion would-be poachers mistake these spreads for the real thing and shoot into them from roadways, usually with rifles. This is extremely dangerous since hunters typically hide within the spread, using the decoys to help conceal their layout blinds.
When field hunting, it’s wise to park trucks where would-be poachers can see them, but birds can’t. It’s also wise to keep an eye on roads when field hunting and note any trucks that slow down to eye the spread. And always report people who illegally shoot at birds from the road. It could save someone’s life.
A federal grand jury issued an indictment on Dec. 7 in the U.S. District Court of Montana charging two men with multiple felonies related to illegally killing, selling, and shipping parts from some 3,600 birds, including federally protected bald and golden eagles.Assistant U.S. attorneys Ryan Weldon and Randy Tanner brought 15 charges against the two defendants, Simon Paul and Travis John Branson. Paul and Branson were each charged with one count of conspiracy and one count of violating the Lacey Act. Paul was charged with five counts of unlawful trafficking of bald and golden eagles, and Branson was charged with eight counts of the same offense.
An investigation into text messages and PayPal transactions from 2015 to 2021 revealed evidence that Paul and Branson ran a black market eagle feather ring out of the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana, specifically in the towns of Ronan and St. Ignatius. Paul was the alleged “shooter” and “shipper” for Branson, who lived in Washington at the time. Branson traveled to Montana to kill and ship birds elsewhere with Paul.
“During the investigation law enforcement uncovered messages from Branson and others describing the illegal taking of eagles by stating, ‘[O]ut [here] committing felonies,’ and telling buyers he was ‘on a killing spree’ to obtain eagle tail feathers for future sales,” the redacted indictment reads.
The federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940 prohibits any take of bald and golden eagles without a special permit from the Department of Interior.
According to the indictment, penalties for a first offense of trafficking bald and golden eagles can reach a $5,000 fine and a year in prison. Penalties are elevated for second and subsequent convictions to $10,000 in fines and two years in prison, plus a year of supervised release. Additionally, the penalty for conspiracy is up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine. And finally, the penalty for violating the Lacey Act could add on up to five years behind bars, three years of supervised release, and a $20,000 fine.
Read Next: Two Idaho Poachers Banned From Hunting and Possessing Firearms for Killing a Golden Eagle
While the indictment reported that Paul lived near Ronan on the Flathead Indian Reservation from January 2019 through March 2021, it is unclear if either Paul or Branson were enrolled members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.
In a stunning bluewater angling achievement, a commercial fisherman from the Cook Islands caught a massive blue marlin that set a new island record for the species. Fishing from his 22-foot boat, the Haurau, Pauro Arnold hooked, fought, and landed the marlin entirely on his own, according to Cook Island News. Arnold’s fish weighed 1,128 pounds, which also makes it one of the heaviest marlin caught worldwide this year.“I was overwhelmed to be honest,” he told the local news outlet. “I’ve waited 14 years to do this.”
The Cook Islands are a scattered string of 15 islands located northeast of New Zealand, near French Polynesia. Arnold was trolling three miles off the island of Rarotonga, the largest of the 15 and home to the capital city of Avarura, when he hooked the marlin. During the 90-minute battle that ensued, Arnold kept the marlin close to his boat using a short line of about 50 yards. He said the massive fish jumped several dozen times during the battle and made numerous sizzling runs that Arnold estimated at over 35 miles per hour.
“I don’t like letting my marlin go, [so] I kept [the line] short,” said the veteran angler, who also caught a 600-pounder earlier this year.
After the epic battle, Arnold brought the fish back to Avana Harbour, where it was officially weighed and sold to local residents. This was a fact that another local commercial fisherman was proud to share as he defended Arnold’s decision to kill the fish.
“Before people complain, Pauro is a commercial fisherman. He trolls two lines, catching one fish at a time,” Cameron Thorp wrote in an Instagram post. “The more fish we can catch, the less we have to import from foreign commercial businesses.
“Every single part of that fish gets utilized,” Thorp continued. “All the meat gets sold locally, and bones/head get boiled up by local families. Sustainability at its finest.”
Arnold, meanwhile, told reporters that he was just happy to provide for his fellow islanders.
“A massive thank you to the ocean and Polynesian spirit,” Arnold said. “These fish demand so much respect. I’m proud to be a Cook Islander, and to bring in these fish in, in my own home.”
Read Next: South African Crew Catches Second Biggest Atlantic Blue Marlin Ever
Only a few “granders” (a nickname for marlin weighing more than 1,000 pounds) have been caught and recorded in the Cook Islands over the past few years. The previous island record was a 1,045-pound blue marlin caught by Paku Poila in November 2020.
An angler shot and killed a charging male grizzly bear near Yellowstone National Park while fishing with a friend on Aug. 30. Officials concluded that the bear was shot in self-defense, and it marked the second such shooting to take place in Montana in only four days. On Aug. 26 two hunters shot a charging female grizzly bear while scouting on public land near Whitefish.The pair of anglers were fishing on a privately owned stretch of Tom Miner Creek on Wednesday when the incident occurred, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks reports. The duo was hiking through dense brush when they suddenly saw the bear. The surprise nature of the encounter likely triggered the bear to charge the anglers. One angler shot and killed the bear; neither angler was injured in the encounter. Officials continue to investigate the incident.
Tom Miner Basin lies roughly 15 miles as the crow flies from the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park in Gardiner, Montana. It is well within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, one of six designated grizzly bear recovery areas. The GYE is home to over 1,000 bears.
The Aug. 26 incident occurred in northern Montana’s Whitefish Range in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, another one of the six designated recovery areas. The NCDE has the largest grizzly bear population of the six areas, projected at over 1,100 bears. Two men from Whitefish were scouting for the upcoming hunting season in Flathead National Forest when they encountered the tagged, 25-year-old female grizzly with her cub. They came within 15 feet of the bear, MFWP reports. The sow, who had no prior record of conflict, charged the men. They both fired shots that killed the bear. Amid the chaos, one of the men shot the other in the shoulder. He was taken to a nearby hospital and treated for the wound.
MFWP investigated the incident and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded it was a self-defense situation. The cub ran off in the encounter.
The spate of incidents have occurred as Montana outdoorsmen and women soak up the year’s waning warm days and prepare for upcoming hunting seasons. (Montana’s archery season opened on Sept. 2.) At the same time, the state’s grizzly bears are entering hyperphagia. This is when they eat as much as possible to put on weight for the winter. Hyperphagia kicks in as the days shorten and the climate cools throughout September.
“Grizzly bears have the potential to be found anywhere in the western two-thirds of Montana (west of Billings), and their distribution is denser and more widespread than in previous years,” FWP warns. “Some areas with dense concentrations of grizzly bears are very accessible to hunters, especially during the archery season.”
Approximately 160 wildland firefighters had to evacuate their camp in southern British Columbia on Aug. 30 due to “persistent bear activity” in the area. Several grizzly bears wandered near and through the camp foraging on berries and other natural food sources, the B.C. Wildfire Service told Outdoor Life in an email. To avoid conflict and ensure the well-being of both the personnel and the bears, the crew relocated to the town of Lillooet, 40 miles to the southeast of Gold Bridge, where they spent the night in T’it’q’et First Nation and Lillooet facilities.
The firefighters living at the camp, many of whom are part of volunteer crews from nearby communities, were battling the Downton Lake wildfire, also known as K71649. As of Sept. 5, the fire has burned 36.26 square miles, or 23,211 acres, near the town of Gold Bridge. Downton, Gun, and Carpenter lakes are also in the area where the fire was first discovered on July 13. (Another major burn, the Casper Creek fire, has claimed 42.39 square miles of land roughly 26 miles to the southeast near Anderson Lake.)
“Fire camps are often located in remote areas to house personnel in proximity to wildfire activity, and an integral part of personnel training is learning how to keep safe during wildlife encounters, including but not limited to bears,” BCWS writes. “We always seek to minimize our impact to the natural environment, including wildlife.”
The crew returned to the area the next day to continue their work on the fire, BCWS says. They slept in the alternative accommodations until they were able to relocate the camp elsewhere.
“Consultation with local experts and conservation officers occurred to select a new location for camp with a view to minimize chances of human/wildlife interactions and keep people and animals safe,” BCWS writes. “The new camp was fully operational as of Sept. 2.”
“A huge [thank] you to the T’it’q’et First Nation, Lillooet municipality and the Lillooet Tribal Council for making us feel welcome,” one commenter who was involved in the evacuation writes. “You had coffee, food[,] showers and places for us to rest ready to go at the drop of a hat. You showed generosity and kindness that my crew and I will always remember. Thank you.”
The Downton Lake fire crews aren’t the only ones who have struggled with bear and scavenger activity while fighting the rural burns. Residents of the Shuswap region, east of Gold Bridge and Lillooet, left lots of food behind when they evacuated their homes. Power outages have allowed the food to rot, attracting bears, mountain lions, raccoons, and other wildlife, CTV News Vancouver reports. They add another risk to the already-long list that wildland firefighters deal with when manning remote fire suppression efforts.
Read Next: Trolling for Bears in British Columbia
“Downed power poles, damaged bridges, broken infrastructure, dangerous trees – wildlife is on that list as well,” Mike McCulley, a fire information officer, told CTV News. “This is one of the significant safety issues that is really challenging to deal with.”
Minnesota Capt. Kent Paulsen had a banner Labor Day on Lake Superior. By 7 a.m., David Cichosz and Chris Sky, the husband-and-wife duo he had on board, were well on their way to a double limit of lake trout during their first-ever outing on the lake. So, they shifted gears and started targeting coho salmon (also known as silver salmon). Within minutes, they had a pending state-record coho in the net.“We already had a bunch of lake trout in the boat, so I set up trolling for cohos with dodgers and flies,” Paulsen, 39, tells Outdoor Life. “I got the lures down about 50 feet, just above the thermocline in 80 feet of 50-degree water. At 7:30 a.m., a hot fish hit and pulled about 100 feet of line off the reel drag before my angler, David Cichosz, could get the rod and start fighting the fish.”
It took about five minutes for Cichosz, an ex-Marine from Wabasha, Minnesota, to bring the fish close to Paulsen’s 33-foot Chris-Craft boat, the True North II. Paulsen netted the fish and immediately knew it was a possible state record.
David Chihosz holds up the 10.92-pound coho salmon soon after he caught it; Capt. Paulsen back at the marina. Courtesy Capt. Kent Paulsen
“We’ve been prepping for big salmon all year, and I expected a record to be caught, I knew this was the fish,” Paulsen says. “I weighed it on my boat scales, and it read 11 pounds. I told David and his wife Chris this is going to be a fish to remember. That’s when we brought in the downriggers and fishing lines and headed back to shore to have the fish officially weighed.”
It was a quick 3-mile run back to Lake Head Marina, where Paulsen’s FishNorth MN charter business is based. They immediately took the salmon to the Super One grocery store in nearby Duluth, where the fish weighed 10.92 pounds on a certified scale. It measured 29 inches long. If approved by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Cichosz’s salmon will replace the current state record of 10.38 pounds, which dates all the way back to 1970.
Read Next: Minnesota Considers Revamping Its Record Fish Program and Opening the Door to a New State-Record Walleye
Paulsen says it’s been an exceptional summer for coho salmon fishing on western Lake Superior. Unlike in some of the other Great Lakes, cohos have a self-sustaining population there that doesn’t require additional stocking by the DNR.
“The next day we took the coho to DNR headquarters at French River, where Nick Petersen is the local head of the fisheries crew,” Paulsen says. “He identified the fish as a coho, helped with the paperwork for records. We donated the fish to DNR so they can do research on it, learn about its age, health, what it had been eating, etc.”
On average years, Paulsen’s anglers catch mostly 3- to 6-pounders, but he says the salmon seem bigger and fatter this year due to abundant stocks of ciscoes and other baitfish in the lake. In fact, he believes the state coho record could get broken again before the season ends later this month.
In November 2021, Ontario hunter Dearl Hill killed what is likely to become the new No. 1 typical whitetail ever taken by a hunter in the province. The record has not yet been confirmed by the Foundation for the Recognition of Ontario’s Wildlife, according to Ontario Out of Doors. The group, which maintains the Big Game Records of Ontario book, will have the antlers panel-scored before it can become official.At this point, however, the panel-scoring is little more than a formality. Hill’s buck is already listed in the Boone & Crockett book as the top hunter-killed typical whitetail ever taken in Ontario, with a final score of 190 4/8 inches. (This score is only topped by a 194 2/8-inch whitetail that was picked up by an official with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources in 2009.) The B&C’s score chart for Hill’s buck shows a total of 14 points and a gross score of 204 4/8 inches.
Little is known about Hill’s hunt for the monster whitetail, and he did not respond to immediate requests for comment. But the 62-year-old hunter’s Facebook profile shows photos of him with the buck in a bean field on Nov. 7, 2021. Hill, who lives in Sarnia, noted in a comment that he killed the deer near Brigden, which lies roughly 10 miles east of the U.S. border and the town of St. Clair, Michigan.
Hill with the buck in his living room in Sarnia, Ontario. Courtesy Dearl Hill / via Facebook
“He was the king of the Oil Springs area,” one of Hill’s friends wrote in a follow-up comment. “You took his crown!”
Ontario Out of Doors reports that Hill kept the buck’s head in a freezer for the next six months until it could be checked out by a Boone & Crockett scorer sometime in April 2022. According to the publication, the scorer recorded a total of 194 3/8 inches of antler. This doesn’t match with the Club’s score sheet, which shows a final score of 190 4/8. However, even the lower number will be enough to edge out the current No. 1 whitetail in the Typical Firearms category of FROW’s big game records book: a 190 1/8 whitetail taken in 2009 by hunter Harry Brown.
Assistant Director of B&C Big Game Records Kyle Lehr confirmed the buck’s final score of 190 4/8 in an email to Outdoor Life. Lehr also cleared up some confusion about how the head was stored before it was scored by an official measurer, as B&C requires the head and/or antlers to be kept for 60 consecutive days at a habitable room temperature before measurement. It turns out that Hill had actually kept the buck’s cape, and not the head, in the freezer.
“After having reviewed the file again and speaking with our Official Measurer and the trophy owner,” Lehr explained, “the records department is satisfied that all requirements for entry have been met.”
Editor’s note: This article was updated on Sept. 7 to include input from the Boone & Crockett Club.
