For a few weeks now, I’ve been receiving questions on the subject of ladybugs, also known as lady beetles. The little orange beetles with black spots have long been considered beneficial insects and one that gardeners like to have around. They do eat aphids, which no one wants in the garden or the crop field. During the growing season they are scattered around the landscape, eating other insects that are smaller than them.

The problem at this time of the year is that many people are getting too much of a good thing. During warm days following cooler weather in the fall, ladybugs tend to cluster in large numbers on the warmer, sunny sides of houses. They are looking for places where they can spend the winter and have  protection from the cold and the wintry conditions. Any crack or crevice will provide  shelter and the little buggers can find their way inside  houses like magicians. Besides residents not appreciating crawling bugs inside the house, they can further antagonize occupants by leaving stains on walls or carpets.

“For as long as I can recall, the outdoors has been an important part of my life,” he noted. “Serving in a position where I can help enhance the quality of forest, fish and wildlife resources and experiences for future generations is very satisfying and stimulating. It keeps my batteries charged.” His wife and two daughters joined him last Friday when Commission Chairman Chip McGeehan announced his appointment. It was fun to see Bob’s children in person, since I’ve seen them so many times before in the photos he has proudly shown of various outdoor adventures he’s had with them.

Bob has worked for the Conservation Department in all sorts of jobs: assistant natural history biologist, aquatic services biologist, policy specialist, government relations specialist, assistant director and more. So he has a broad view of the services we provide and the challenges we face.

In an earlier blog I mentioned the big changes coming up as many of the baby boomers retire. There is a greater urgency as we face long-term budget challenges. We’ll do so in part by reducing personnel costs relative to other expenses. Another 134 positions will be held vacant in addition to the 39 already on hold. (While that will give us a better fiscal balance in the long run, we still may need to look at more expense reductions this fiscal year if sales tax revenues continue to decline.)

More than 150 staff will be retiring in 2010. Some of those positions will be refilled and others won’t. One of three assistant directors, Dave Erickson, already retired November 1. Five of the ten division chiefs, including me, will retire by July 1, 2010. So there will be many changes over the next two years. Bob will have a great opportunity to form the next leadership team when he begins in January as the Conservation Department’s eighth Director.

Simply because Missouri’s forests turn green every spring, most people never realize that much of the state’s forestland is not very healthy. That is because our forests have been harvested multiple times since pioneer days. Those harvests seldom were done with long-term forest health in mind. As a result, much of our forestland today is not as productive as it could be.

The most common problem is overcrowding.  Trees growing too close together don’t get enough sunlight, water or nutrients. Eventually, this leads to straggly, bent, knotty trees that produce few acorns, nuts or other other natural fruits that deer, turkeys, squirrels, songbirds and other wildlife depend on for food. Judicious removal of excess trees relieves crowding, improves the health and productivity of remaining trees and makes forests more beneficial for wildlife.

What does “judicious” mean? For one thing, it means selectively removing the least healthy and least desirable trees. If you have a stunted old hackberry tree growing next to a straight young red oak, it usually makes sense to cut down the hackberry and use it for firewood.

You don’t want to remove all the unhealthy trees. Hollow trees and standing dead trees – known as snags – are extremely valuable as nesting, feeding and denning sites for wildlife from woodpeckers and raccoons to flying squirrels and tree frogs. You should leave one 18-inch or larger living, hollow tree per acre. You also want to keep at least two snags and two live, hollow trees 10 to 18 inches in diameter and one snag and one live cavity tree 6 to 10 inches in diameter on every acre. Oaks, hickories, black gum and sycamore trees generally are the best choices for hollow trees and snags.

How crowded is too crowded? Foresters have a rule of thumb for this. They start with a tree they want to keep and check its diameter in inches. Then they double that number and leave about that many feet between the chosen tree and the nearest trees of similar size. For example, after thinning, a 16-inch tree should be at least 32 feet from the next big tree.

This is only a rule of thumb, not a law. Be flexible in applying it. Let’s say you have two healthy 12-inch oaks growing only 12 feet apart. Around them are dozens of smaller, less desirable and less vigorous trees.  In this case, you should leave the two big oaks and cut down less desirable, similar-sized trees at more than the usual distance around them. This saves two high-value trees while giving each enough space to thrive.

Don’t cut down all the trees around those you choose to leave. Remember that when your chosen trees get old and either die or are harvested, you will need young trees to replace them. If you have a 30-inch giant, leave some young trees within the prescribed 60-foot radius, but keep them well spaced, according the rule of thumb outlined above.

Some people won’t consider cutting trees on their land. They think they are “saving” trees and keeping their forests pristine. That is an illusion. Forests are dynamic systems, changing over time even without human intervention.  Because our forests have been badly managed or even abused in the past, refusing to manage them with selective cutting usually only perpetuates bad situations.

Most forests need more trees removed than the average person can burn for firewood. Some people sell the excess firewood. I use medium-sized limbs to build brush piles, further enhancing the benefits that timber-stand improvement harvests provide for wildlife.

If you have cedar trees in your woods, consider some of the uses I listed in my Aug. 26 post, “Enduring Red Cedar.”

Don’t feel guilty about cutting firewood. It’s a renewable energy source,  part of our energy-indepencence solution, and it can provide multiple ecological benefits if you do it right.

Jim

 In the dormant season you can see what makes nature tick, what structures were used to pull off that phenomenal pulse of growth in spring and summer. The ribs on the back of each leaf, like a ship’s masts, that have held up the blade to the maximum exposure of sunlight since leaf-out last spring. That freshly-fallen acorn on a bed of red and yellow leaves just begs for closer examination. The row-upon-row of scales on its cup have been developing for its fall debut on the forest floor. It’s essentially an embryo with an attached packet of food to get it started on its way to becoming an oak tree – if the local squirrels, deer or turkeys don’t intervene.

 The burst milkweed pod surrounded by an explosion of seeds, with silky silvery down attached, is an ephemeral treat that won’t survive the coming snow, wind and ice. Its down may be captured to help warm a mouse’s protected nest this winter. Try to resist the temptation to hibernate in your own warm nest as our landscape cools down. There’s much to discover in  Missouri’s dormant season. It’s one of the great benefits of living in a temperate climate zone.

I tried to sneak out of the house a few times this month wearing camo and carrying a shotgun, but Lizzie always knows when I’m leaving to hunt. Once I took my shotgun to the truck the night before, so she wouldn’t see me carrying it early the next morning. That didn’t help. If I could wear camo to work, maybe I could confuse her. It’s not so hard on me to leave her behind but my family has to tolerate the barking and whining for thirty minutes after my early departure, at a time when they would prefer to be soundly sleeping.

Now that I’ve harvested a fall turkey and we are into the second half of October, I’m going to focus more on getting out with Lizzie so that she can get in shape for the quail and pheasant seasons  that open on November 1^st. Dove season is open through November 9^th and American woodcock  season opened on October 15^th and runs through November 28th. Lizzie likes to retrieve doves for me but woodcock hunting is her first real opportunity this season to put all of her talents to good use in locating, pointing and retrieving birds.

 If you have a bird dog at home, you have no excuse for not heading to the fields soon. This cool weather should energize both hunter and canine companion. There’s a lot of opportunity for Missouri’s upland hunters in late October and early November. Besides the game birds, there are all sorts of seasonal natural events that should be observed first hand. Maybe Lizzie and I will see you there!

Seaton, who was sort of the Jeff Corwin of his day, devoted one chapter to debunking nature myths. One really hit home for me. Where I grew up in Central Missouri, gray squirrels always outnumbered fox squirrels. Hunters, who generally favored the larger, meatier fox squirrels, had a gruesome explanation: Gray squirrels sneaked into fox squirrel nests when the adults were away and castrated young male fox squirrels. That, they said, was why fox squirrel numbers were dwindling.

This always seemed a little far-fetched to me. For one thing, how would an animal with a brain the size of an acorn know how to perform surgery? Furthermore, why would a gray squirrel neuter his competitors when he could just as easily kill them–male and female?

An equally good question might be how such an improbable myth gained such wide acceptance.  Seaton had a more reasonable explanation. He grew up in Canada, where small, red squirrels outnumbered larger gray squirrels. Hunters there had the same incredible explanation for the imbalance–red squirrels were neutering the grays.

Seaton noted that a species of parasitic botfly preys on squirrels, laying eggs in their groin. When the eggs hatch, the grubs burrow into the skin and consume the host animals’ testes or ovaries. Seeing the damage from these parasites, the average hunter had no way of knowing what caused it. Since hunters already were scratching their heads over the imbalance of gray and fox squirrels, it was a short leap of imagination to solve both riddles in terms of inter-species competition.

Reading this reminded me of a hunt awhile back, when I shot a young gray squirrel. When I claimed my prize, I was grossed out to find its carcass inhabited by two botfly larvae. The squirrel fell out of a tree and into in a creek, and the larvae wasted little time crawling out of the cold, wet body. I choked back my lunch and snapped this photo.

I have my own theory about why gray squirrels outnumber fox squirrels in some areas. In my experience, fox squirrels are most common in isolated woodlots. Grays are much more prevalent in large tracts of unbroken forest. It also seems to me that fox squirrels are more common in northern Missouri than in the Ozarks. Closer to home, I seldom see fox squirrels in the middle of the woods around our house. They generally appear near the edges of surrounding pastures. My conclusion is that grays, for some reason, are better adapted to deep forest than fox squirrels.

Would anyone care to venture a guess about what makes grays better woods squirrels? Or maybe share a nature myth or mystery?

A few weeks ago, Bernadette Dryden, our publications supervisor, asked me if I wanted to go to the Missouri Mycological Society’s (MOMS) annual foray at Mingo National Wildlife Refuge. “Maxine says they’re good cooks and make brunch out of the edible mushrooms on Sunday.”

Maxine Stone is a former MOMS president. She’s been working with Bernadette on a new book about mushrooms in Missouri.  Bernadette is also writing a new Missouri game and wild edibles cookbook, and I’m working on a new online field guide with a mushrooms section. So we had lots of reasons to spend a weekend in the field with a bunch of people who like to hunt, identify, cook and eat mushrooms. “Sure,” I said, and I packed my chef’s knife and apron, just in case we’d be needed in the kitchen.

The Friday night potluck was lavish, with plates of wild-collected or homemade delicacies—ripe persimmons, pickled chanterelles, dips and breads made of wild mushrooms, “pond” paella made with frog legs, cakes rich with fruit and nuts, and several bottles of homemade wine and spirits infused with mushrooms. Clearly, these people knew how to throw a party.

We settled in for a great weekend among our new best friends. The foray was one long celebration of the wild mushroom: info sharing, mushroom gathering and identification—and our favorite—cooking and eating! Sunday turned out to be the most fun either of us has had in the kitchen in a long time. We teamed up to clean and slice the mushrooms and prep other ingredients. An hour and a half later, we set out a generous buffet, including baked polenta with chicken-of-woods and blue cheese ragout, oyster mushroom frittata, a salad of carrots and tooth mushrooms, and chicken-of-the-woods with cream sauce.

We enjoyed ourselves so much we hated to leave. On the way home we planned what to take to next year’s Mingo foray—the new mushroom book, of course, our favorite recipes and a few more sharp knives.

Fortunately, we don’t have to wait until next September to enjoy MOMS members’ company again. They’re having another event—“The Hawnting” at Hawn State Park this weekend (October 23-25), and their annual “Wild Times” dinner is November 1 at Babler State Park.

Organizing ingredients, checking recipes

My cooking partner Jim and I display our beautiful oyster mushroom frittata.

  One of the things that people who have never hunted might not realize is the remarkable variety of things that hunters experience that are in no way hunting-related. A recent example was a discovery I made while hunting teal on the Missouri River. A friend and I had motored to an island where we camped so as to be at our hunting site at sunrise. Having pitched out tents and eaten supper, we found we had time for a stroll up the sandy beach. Passing a piece of driftwood, I noticed something emerging from a hole in the sand. It was a cicada-killer wasp. When we stopped to watch, we spied another of the big wasps emerging from a second burrow just inches from the first. I was not stung, but I certainly was stunned.

I have known about cicade killers since boyhood, when their enormous size and presumably equally impressive stingers fascinated me. I had seen them stinging dog-day cicadas just behind the head, and I knew that this was done so they could place the cicadas in a burrow, where the female wasps laid their eggs on the living food supply. However, I had never seen one cicada killer burying its prey, let alone two.

This is just one of a thousand things I have witnessed while hunting that I never would have seen otherwise. This illustrates one of the least-understood reasons why people hunt.  Hunting gives us a reason to engage with nature in ways and to a degree that no other pursuit does.

You might see cicada killers preparing their burrows while birdwatching or photographing riverscapes. But I don’t find those pursuits as engaging as the direct, personal, functional involvement in the circle of life that defines hunting. When I hunt, I observe, but I am not merely an observer. I am a participant, and that focuses my senses in ways no other activity can.

 October 24 – 25 Youth duck hunting (north zone)

October 31 – Nov. 01 Youth duck hunting (middle zone)

November 21 – 22 Youth duck hunting (south zone)

October 24 – 25 Youth pheasant hunting (north zone) and youth quail hunting

 October 31 – Nov. 1 Youth firearms deer hunting (early portion)

January 02 – Jan. 03, 2010 Youth firearms deer hunting (late portion)

 The youth days are always on a weekend and precede the opening day of the regular seasons. For young deer hunters, there is the additional weekend at the end of the firearms deer season.

 Of course, youth hunters can hunt during the regular hunting seasons too. The Youth Hunting Days give young hunters an opportunity to hunt earlier, with less competition. Mentors should have more time to devote to young hunters because the regular seasons are not yet open. To participate, youth hunters must be at least six years old and not yet 16 years old on the youth opening day. Youth who are not yet hunter-education certified must hunt with a properly licensed adult who is hunter-education certified or exempt by age. Youth who are hunter-education certified may hunt without an adult mentor.

 If you are an experienced hunter, I hope that you’ll take one of these opportunities to introduce a young person to the tradition that has been so important in your life. What may be a small thing to you can stimulate a lifetime of outdoor experiences for a young person.

Like many turkey hunters, I have taught myself to do a fairly credible imitation of a barred owl’s “Who, who, who cooks for you?” It comes in handy when trying to discover the location of roosted turkey gobblers. They are not fond of owls and often will gobble in reply to hooting owls to put their hereditary enemies on notice that 20-plus pounds of fury awaits nocturnal predators.

Anyway, I hooted back at the owl and got an immediate response. I shut up then. Owls are masters of fixing the exact source of sounds, since they hunt in the dark. He knew where I was if he wanted to come see me.

Come he did a few minutes later. He landed in a tree just a few yards behind me and hooted again, this time with extra gusto. So, naturally, I hooted back.

Now, I knew he could see my shoulder and orange vest around the trunk of the tree where I sat. I figured he would get nervous and leave. Wrong. He flew past about 20 feet to my right, then landed in a big black cherry tree about 50 feet in front of me. He immediately turned around and stared directly into my eyes.

He didn’t look happy.

Seeing that the jig was up, I went ahead and hooted at him one last time, trying to sound as ferocious as he had moments earlier. Once again, I figured the sight of a 200-pound mammal uttering owl sounds would unnerve my visitor.

If he was unnerved, he had a peculiar way of showing it. He launched himself at me and, after making a downward swoop to gain speed, zipped past me so near that I heard his right wingtip brush the tree trunk inches above my head.

He made his point. I decided not to hoot at him anymore.

I didn’t fire a shot during the four-day urban deer hunt, but the owl encounter was worth the 36 hours I spent in the woods.