Published: October 22, 2009 10:27 pm      

Bear season begins

Preparation for the Maryland bear season, which opens tomorrow, has been fun. Preparation, of course, is always one of the fun parts of any hunt.

Preparation for a hunt is like spring training for a major league baseball team. Nobody is out of it yet. In fact, the Pittsburgh Pirates are usually in it for two weeks or so once the real action start.

I hope I am more successful with the season that starts for me tomorrow than my beloved Bucs have been for the past 17 years.

Son Jake, as avid a Pirates fan as exists, believes the Steel City will once again have a winning baseball team sometime soon. Jake is smart about those kinds of things, so I have my fingers crossed.

One of my favorite Pirates highlights came from the early 1990s when son Seth and I composed a letter to our favorite team. We suggested that there needed to be a term for the act of hitting an inside-the-park home run.

Regular home runs are called all kinds of things, things like round-tripper, tater and big fly.

Inside-the-park home runs, though, are simply called inside-the-park home runs.

After much thought, Seth and I wrote a letter suggesting that our favorite slang for a round-tripper that stays in play was “yard dart.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t hear it either time, but Times-News sportswriter Mike Mathews, also an agonizing fan of the Bucs, told me he heard our letter read by Greg Brown and/or Bob Walk on a couple of occasions.

I am hoping for some kind of similar personal highlight during the bear season. I have been very fortunate in that three people have offered me places to hunt in good bear territory.

If you are going to hunt bears, it is better to do it in good bear territory.

I don’t believe much in jinxes, so I don’t think I am jinxing my hunt by writing this column. Should I be so fortunate as to get a bear, I have made contact with a professional who will skin it for me so I don’t mess it up.

My across-the-street neighbor, Natural Resources Police Officer Curt Dieterle, tells me that bear meat is delicious and described how he prepares it.

I had bear meat for dinner once, but it was a long time ago and 2,000 miles away in north Idaho and I can’t really remember the taste. I know I ate it so it must have been good. Anything was good in those days when washed down with Olympia beer.

Officer Dieterle, of course, is the handler of Blu, the black Labrador retriever who can sniff out a single piece of fly doo in a 2-pound can of pepper.

That’s his job, sniffing. And wagging, too, of course.

Anyway, Blu’s favorite things to sniff are deer and other wild game, though he can sniff the 30-30 cartridge that fell in the grass after you illegally shot a deer. One time he followed an air scent and led officers to a successful conclusion of a fish poaching incident.

Blue sniffs and then alerts and it is Curt’s job to determine if a violation has taken place.

I have always hung my deer from our rear deck (though that is about to change because we are getting a new one) and when Curt takes Blu on his daily walks Blu alerts in front of my house if there is a buck or doe suspended there.

“I always know when you have been successful,” Curt told me.

Post bear hunt, whether I kill a bear or not, I’ll let you know how it went. I’m hoping Blu has reason to alert in front of my house.

Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.