The Woods

I still feel so odd not heading out of town this holiday weekend 🇺🇸

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I still feel so odd not heading out of town this holiday weekend 🇺🇸

The thing is I have a feeling that I will have to work this weekend and since the pandemic, I don’t really like to mix camping with remote work. It was fun at the time, but camping and remote work is still work. You have to put in the hours, take the calls, do the research and send the emails and blasts. It just kind of breaks things up.

These days when I’m vacationing I really try to be fully off the grid, no cell service. I feel like otherwise I’ll be just playing with my phone, watching YouTube and social media, wasting time in my hammock, not reading, thinking and writing. Instead of fully relaxing I’m just doing what I ordinarily do at home. So it’s kind of pointless at one level.

Plus Memorial Day Weekend kind of sucks. It’s still cold and often rainy, the black flies are terrible. Campsites are often crowded, the best ones taken early. I got to keep the music down, be careful what I’m burning and be very careful if I’m doing target shooting. Things are often soggy and muddy.

And to boot, I think things will be a lot quieter at work in a few weeks and I can take off any weekend and create the long weekend of my choosing.

Winter ticks wiped out nearly 90% of the moose calves scientists tracked in part of Maine last year | Maine Public

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Winter ticks wiped out nearly 90% of the moose calves scientists tracked in part of Maine last year | Maine Public

Maine is home to the largest moose population in the lower 48 states. But in one of the moosiest corners of the state, nearly 90% of the calves tracked by biologists last winter didn’t survive their first year.

And the culprit? A tiny critter that is thriving in parts of Maine as the climate warms.

This story is part of our series "Climate Driven: A deep dive into Maine's response, one county at a time." Deep Dive Climate Driven

“You look at one data sheet after another of what we found in the woods on these moose and it’s the same profile every time: it is winter tick,” said Lee Kantar, the lead moose biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Winter ticks, which are sometimes called moose ticks, have been pestering Maine moose for about a century and likely longer. But their numbers have exploded in parts of Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota and southern Canada. It’s not uncommon for biologists or hunters to find moose infested with 40,000, 75,000 or even 90,000 ticks. Some infested moose rub themselves virtually bald trying to scrape off the irritating ticks, creating the phenomenon known as “ghost moose.”

Bird Flu Discovered in Wild Turkeys for First Time Ever | MeatEater Hunting

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Bird Flu Discovered in Wild Turkeys for First Time Ever | MeatEater Hunting

Wildlife managers across the country are wondering what’s next after a deadly strain of bird flu was discovered in wild turkey flocks for the first time ever.

“Highly pathogenic avian influenza” (HPAI), caused by a virus known as H5N1, has been sweeping the continent since it first hit Canadian shores back in December 2021. From there, the virus made its way into a large commercial turkey operation in southern Indiana.

Since arriving stateside, HPAI case numbers have continued to balloon, and now, the U.S. is in the midst of its biggest outbreak of avian influenza to date.

The last big outbreak spanned the winter of 2014 and persisted until June of 2015, when temperatures in more northerly parts of the country finally warmed enough to stop the cold-adapted virus. Like the outbreak of 2014 to 2015, the current bird flu strain came to North America from China via migratory bird movement.

While the latest strain of HPAI is killing domestic birds by the tens of millions, it’s the toll that the outbreak is taking on wild birds, and wild turkeys in particular, that’s turning heads in the hunting and conservation communities.