Pointe MouilleeYouth Duck Hunt

Bring your young hunter to one of Michigan’s Managed Waterfowl Hunt Areas (MWHAs) in November for a memorable hunting experience. Parties with at least one youth will be given priority in the draw.

• Nov. 10 – Pointe Mouillee State Game Area (a.m. hunt) in Rockwood

Pointe Mouillee will host their youth hunts in the morning only. Drawings for morning hunts will occur at 5:30 a.m. Youth priority drawings are available for hunting parties with at least one youth and up to two adults (maximum party size is four). All youth participating in these priority hunts must be properly licensed to hunt. Youth hunters 9 years old and younger must be accompanied by a qualified Mentored Youth Hunting Program mentor. 

This is always a big affair at Pointe Mouillee. State wildlife biologist supervisor for the DNR Joe Robison makes it a special day for the youth hunters. His passion is known far and wide and earned him a spot on the Michigan Out of Doors show a while back showing want is done for the youth hunters. Every effort is made to make this a most enjoyable experience for the youths. 

Here's a short video of the duck hunting opportunities at the refuge.



Get Outdoors Downriver.

Google Camping

In these times of short money going on vacation or just a quick getaway can mean going the camping route. Which park to use, private or public. Well now the state of Michigans will provide camp views much like Googles street scenes. No more excuses to yurt it up.

http://www.midnr.com/Publications/pdfs/communications/glenbrook_yurt_360/glenbrook_yurt_360/interior.htm

Beginning Nov. 3, state park campers who make reservations on the new, improved central reservation system (CRS) website, administered by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR), can view one or more photos of each campsite prior to making their reservations.

"With the existing reservation system website, customers read descriptive text about the campsite to determine if it's sunny, shady, flat or elevated," said Christa Sturtevant-Good, DNR central reservation system liaison. "While text descriptions will remain, altered slightly to an easier-to-read format, campers can also look at between one to three photos of every site, and then visually decide if that campsite has all the features they're looking for."

The photos will be shown as smaller thumbnail images which, when clicked on, open to a larger size in a new window.

"In this way, viewers can see the site up close," said Anna Sylvester, DNR Parks and Recreation field operations chief for northern Michigan. "Often campers wonder where the fire pit or electrical box is located on the site, but they can't tell this just by reading text. These features are shown in most photos, allowing campers to determine if the location of campsite elements will meet their camping needs."

The addition of campsite and lodging photos is a customer-driven enhancement made available through the new CRS provider, Camis USA, Inc., which has a call center in Ann Arbor, Mich., and servers in Southfield, Mich. The new reservation system becomes active in early November, with important transitions taking place as the activation approaches.

During the transition phase to the new CRS, customers can continue to make reservations through Oct. 30 using the call center. The phone number, 1-800-44-PARKS, will remain unchanged. Reservations through the website, www.midnrreservations.com, will be possible until Oct. 22 at 8 p.m., when the website will taken down to begin the transition process to the new website. The address will not change.

Important transition dates include:

• Oct. 22-31: Website reservations cannot be made. The call center will remain active through Oct. 30, taking reservations for dates through Oct. 31, 2013.
  
• Oct. 25: The new reservation website goes live. Although reservations cannot yet be made on the website, customer profiles can be created and viewers can navigate the site to create familiarity.
  
• Oct. 31: Reservations cannot be made. State parks can register walk-ins on a first-come, first-served basis.
  
• Nov. 1: The new CRS system, both the website and the call center, opens to state park lodging, which typically has a one-year reservation window (camper cabins, mini-cabins, rustic cabins, yurts and modern lodges). Reservations for these facilities can now be made for dates after Oct. 31, 2013. From Nov. 1-2, campsites and slips are not reservable. During this time, campsites and slips are available at the facility on a first-come, first-served basis.
  
• Nov. 3: The system opens to facilities with a six-month reservation window. These include campsites at state parks and select state forest campgrounds and harbor slips.

Harvest or Hunter's Moon

After last weeks spectacular showing of the International Space Station, 3 views in 3 days and each lasting over a minute, tonight's moon should be equally impressive. The main reason these viewings are so rare is that the view times coincided with clear skys, something that normally doesn't happen especially 3 nights in a row for the ISS.

The forcast for tonight is clear sky so the view of the moon should be impressive. I'm going to try my hand at digiscoping the event to see if I can get a decent pic of the moon. The you can use it to see the man in the moon.

Right in the middle of the moon are the eyes, nose and mouth.The dark spots on the upper right give the illusion of curly hair. If you're out at dusk give the moon a look and maybe you'll see him in the Harvest/Hunter's moon. It just depends on if your crops are dry enough or your quarrie is plentiful.

Get Outdoors Downriver.

A Meal Fit for the King

If you find yourself hungry without money or are just tired or the same old noodleroni head for a swamp for a fine meal. That's what Chase told the Explorers Club recently before taking the group to the nearest water. Earlier in spring the cattail pollen was collected and acts like a flour to cook with, if you can collect enough. There's also wild rice in the area but the stands are few and far between now so we got a sample of wild rice from Minnesota which still has Native Americans that collect and sell it. Chase then displayed a main entree of the meal, crawfish.

While the water was warming the group tried hatchet tossing. It's not as easy as it looks at least for the girls. There was also a primitive hut to explore.

 Chase brought in some cattail stalks and peeled the root ends for a veggie side dish and combined with the crawdads, lemon and butter it was a meal fit for a king.

 Get Outdoors Downriver.