Saying Goodbye to Turkey Season

This is a great week to raise a cold apple cider toast to this mid-November column, preceding Saturday’s opening of the N.Y. Southern Tier gunning season for whitetail deer. We are being blessed with good weather for the first few days of the deer season opening. Archery hunters still looking to fill their unused deer tags will be enjoying spending time out in the woods without freezing, along with anglers getting out on the water to enjoy the active fall bite of bass, trout, and panfish, all looking to fatten up for the coming winter.

Those looking to fill their wild turkey tags will enjoy this closing week of the season, too, hoping to put a turkey on a Thanksgiving dinner table. For Putnam’s sporting folks there’s something to whet everyone’s interest, especially with water levels and conditions good in all our lakes and reservoirs, and with the recent addition of thousands of acres of DEP land now open to hunting, most of it right here in Putnam County,

The Southern New York Fishing Derby report for October shows the quality and variety of fish that can be caught here in the cool waters of fall. Coy Lehr, from Mahopac, hooked the largest brown trout at Croton Falls Reservoir, a 5 lb, 14 ½ oz specimen that brought him a $50 dollar award. James Seaboldt, from Yorktown Heights, got his 50 bucks for a 6 lb, 14 oz lake trout out of Lake Gleneida, here in Carmel. No rainbow trout were weighed in for the month.

Fred Franczkiewicz got 25 bucks for his 1 lb, 11 ½ oz crappie out of Croton Falls Reservoir, and another 25 bucks for a 2 lb, 15 ½ oz white perch when he took his act to Cross River Reservoir, a few days later. Mike Mytych, from Brewster, got his 25 bucks for his 1 lb, 2 oz. yellow perch form Titicus Reservoir.

Joseph Dulzeminski, from Slate Hill, got 50 bucks for his 5 lb, 6 oz walleye taken from Greenwood Lake. Mike Mytych added another 25 bucks to his winnings with a 3 lb, 14 oz pickerel, hooked at Lake Gilead here in Carmel.

Mike Suozzo, from Danbury, came over the state line to Lake Gilead to take the $50 prize for largemouth bass with a 4 lb bucket mouth out of Lake Gilead. Alex Pidhorodecky, from Peekskill, got 50 bucks for his 4 lb, 6 oz smallmouth bass out of New Croton Reservoir. Eric Silidjian, from Carmel, got 25 bucks for his 10 lb, 12 oz carp out of Sodom Reservoir. Nick Chudkofsky, from Croton-on-Hudson, got 50 bucks for his 15 lb, 9 oz bluefish out of the Hudson River.

Mama an d I got a chance to use a new meat grinder purchased last fall on sale from a mail order sporting catalog, grinding 4 lbs. of pork with 6 lbs of North Carolina venison, a gift from my oldest friend, Mike Mc- Bride, from Lake Carmel. That gave us 20 ½ lb rolls of spiced breakfast sausage to enhance morning breakfasts in the coming winter months. The venison gift added a few roasts to the freezer too, and we had venison stew last night, with enough left to fill a wide-mouth thermos to fend off hunger and keep me warm while out on the deer stand this weekend.

With only one “Little Red Hen” left to give us one egg a day now, I have no eggs to give Mike to take up to Hancock, NY, for morning breakfasts, a first since I started writing this column. But I can give Mike a few rolls of sausage for morning breakfasts. Mike’s sons Kevin and John will be leaving Thursday, and hopefully stopping by here on their way home to show the results of the opening weekend deer hunt on their Hancock mountain property that spans 160 acres.

Hopefully I’ll have a deer or two hanging in the maple “Hanging Tree” out in the yard; I have the maple deer hanging bars to spread the hind legs, the pulley to raise them above reach of any predators, and a scale to weigh them and any incoming “Oasis Sportsmen’s Club” deer for the 2009 club contest.

The next few weeks should provide a lot of good photo opportunities for Mama and me to take pictures and provide some good whitetail deer hunting tales in future columns.

With a lot of roof work going on here today, a dumpster coming tomorrow, Son Carl, hired by Mama for the week, with a lot of projects to do and riding herd on me as I try to finish this column, I’m going to have to cut it short and hope for the best.