Whats wild, p.1
What's Wild, page 1
Eric Orff, CWB
What’s
Wild
A Half Century of Wisdom From the Woods and Rivers of New England
Peter E. Randall Publisher
Portsmouth, NH /2024
© 2024 Eric Orff
All Rights Reserved.
ISBNs: 978-1-942155-76-8 soft cover
978-1-942155-82-9 ebook
LCCN: 2024911887
Published by
Peter E. Randall Publisher
5 Greenleaf Woods Drive, #102
Portsmouth, NH 03801
www.PERPublisher.com
Cover and book design: Mindy Basinger Hill
I am forever grateful for the help and support
of my family over the years, but especially Janice Orff,
who has been my life partner and my wife for over a half century.
She has supported my work over the years and urged me
to publish this book.
Thanks Jan.
Contents
Preface
Hi-Ho Whitetail … Away
I Stopped a Fish Kill Today!
New Hampshire SSSSnake SSSStories
The Tale of the Mysterious Duck Boxes
The Day the Suncook River Flowed Upstream During
the Great Mother’s Day Flood of 2006!
“Hello, There is a Moose in My Swimming Pool”
And Suddenly It’s May!
My Tree Stand, My Castle
The Slippery Slimy Scary American Eel!
Me and Three Bears Up a Tree
May I Have This Dance? A Waltz With Fire
Diving Into the World of the Dead
What is a Hunter?
Henry … Just Henry
With a Cluck-Cluck Here, and a Gobble-Gobble There
New Hampshire Conservation Legends
Catching the Spirit of the Native Brook Trout
The Long Journey to the Opening Day of Trout Season
Ivory Floats
Weird Woods Happenings
New Hampshire’s “Rodney Dangerfield” Animal:
The Fisher
How Much Wood Can a Wood Chuck Chuck???
New Hampshire’s Mid-Winter Coastal Waterfowl Survey
Takes Flight
I’ve Got Friends in Low Places
How Old Is Old in Animals?
Fish and Wildlife Restoration in New Hampshire:
A Century of Successes!
Sowing the Seeds of Conservation That Will Last
a Hundred Years
Fish Climbing New Hampshire’s Ladders of Success
Fishermen Catch Tons of Tasty Treats on New Hampshire’s
Tidal Waters
What’s Up with the Clams Down on New Hampshire’s
Seacoast?
Global Warming Threatens New Hampshire Hunting
and Fishing
If Only Moose Could Vote
Downwind and Dirty: Living in the Shadow of a Coal-fired
Power Plant Stack
Clean Water and Air is a Must for Our Fish and Wildlife
Do Bears Hoot? Bear Myths and Medicine
Go Take a Hike … at Night
New Hampshire Stripers Are for the Birds!
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
New Hampshire Wildlife Flourishing
22 Million Juvenile River Herring Seeking the Sea
New Hampshire’s Threatened and Endangered Wildlife Rebounding from the Mountains to the Sea
Heavenly Habitat
Silent Woods
Bear-Paw Greenways: Woodland Tracts for Tracks
It’s Duck Season in New Hampshire
We Have a Lot to Be Thankful For in New Hampshire
Endangered and Threatened Birds Making a Comeback
in New Hampshire!
The Eye in the Northern New Hampshire Sky
RX-deer: Taking the Pulse of New Hampshire’s Deer Herd
Wild Goose Tails
Just Ducky in New Hampshire
2022 Was a Banner Year for New Hampshire Hunters
About the Author
Preface
I have been a conservation communicator for my entire half-century career. Many of the articles in this book offer a historical perspective of my three decades as a wildlife biologist for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, as well as my fifteen years working for the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). The purpose of the NWF work was to educate and motivate others to act, as the impacts of climate change on New Hampshire’s fish and wildlife became more evident to me.
When I first began writing and sharing my observations as an NWF field biologist, my audience of hunters and fishermen were reluctant to hear the message, despite the credibility that I had earned after writing accurate information for decades. I knew it was important to be clear and share accurately what the science was telling me, and over the past twenty years, the acceptance gained traction.
I began working at the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department in 1976 as a fisheries technician, subsequently becoming a fisheries biologist before getting the position as the department’s first black bear biologist in October 1978, a position I held for over two decades. I became the department’s furbearer biologist in 1980, a position I held until retirement in 2007.
From 1983 to 2005 I owned and operated Bat and Wildlife Control Specialists, a nuisance wildlife control business. I specialized in nonlethal control of bats, but also worked with lots more wildlife at this part-time business. From mice to moose, I have handled them all.
Shortly after retirement from the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department I was recruited to work as a consultant for the NWF as a field biologist, a position I held for fifteen years.
I have been a member of the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation since 1964, starting at age fourteen, serving as a director for numerous decades. I received the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation’s Sportsman of the Year award in 1998.
During the last decade of my career with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, I wrote and voiced public service announcements about fish, wildlife, and environmental topics, producing three timely and pertinent topics per month in cooperation with WOKQ/WPKQ radio station. This resulted in in-kind donations of over one million dollars to the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. As a result, my voice is often recognized today, even at the grocery store!
I became a member of the New England Outdoor Writers Association, and then served on the board of directors from 1998 until 2018. I received their Dick Cronin award in 2004, among other writing awards and commendations.
Since my retirement I have expanded my educational outreach through my social media networks and as vice president and spokesperson for the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation (NHWF). My multiple weekly posts focus on my timely observations to inform my followers of the rhythm of nature in New Hampshire.
During the pandemic, I took it upon myself to develop the social media presence of the NHWF. The effort has been successful—particularly with Facebook. We have grown the number of followers from about one thousand in 2020 to over twelve thousand in 2024. The NHWF Facebook page is averaging over a hundred thousand views a month, with some months hitting over a million views.
I enjoy supporting various groups and I have held board member positions for over ten years each at both the Bear-Paw Regional Greenway and the Friends of the Suncook River. In my home community, I was a member of the Epsom Conservation Committee for over a decade.
I reach out to my followers nearly every day to provide information and observations, while striving to engage New Hampshire citizens to take action on climate change issues. I serve on the Concord Monitor newspaper’s reader advisory board to advocate for conservation education. I am currently on the New Hampshire Audubon policy committee. My goal is to also motivate our elected representatives to take action.
The information in these articles is accurate for the time they were written. I have provided some updates as comments to many of the articles to bring readers up to date as of the publication in 2024.
Hi-Ho Whitetail … Away
In my nearly thirty years as a wildlife biologist for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department I have had many wonderfully exciting experiences dealing with all sorts of wildlife. Since 1983, I have also owned and operated a part-time nuisance wildlife control business that provided another whole spectrum of problems. Certainly, a thousand or more of these have brought me up close and personal with bear, moose, deer, bats, snakes, bobcats, and more. I have literally had experiences with animals from mice to moose. Fortunately for all of that time I have kept a daily diary and have recorded much of those encounters in detail. Winter is a good time to turn back the pages of time to relive some of those moments.
Some experiences stand out far and above most others and for me a couple of cold November weeks in 1983 is one of those. You see, I was picked by my supervisor, Henry Laramie, to help him capture and remove live deer from Long Island in Lake Winnipesaukee. Long Island is about a half mile wide by one and a half miles long with a deer population that exceeded a hundred at that time.
To give you a little background, Long Island is an island that lies just offshore from Moultonborough Neck, connected to the mainland by a bridge. For many years it held the densest deer numbers in the state. In fact, surveys done at least twice had counted over one hundred deer. I had participated in a couple of “island counts” on the islands, where UNH students were bused up and formed lines to drive the deer past counters to tally them. I had participated in these counts as a UNH student on Long Island as well as on Big Diamond Island on the same lake in the early 1970s.
Plus, for years I had been told stories of the famous Long Island special “paraplegic hunts” by a friend and mentor, Bill Boucher, a disabled Korean War veteran from Londonderry, the town where I had grown up. Bill was in a wheelchair and had participated (to say the least) in these hunts through much of the 1960s. These hunts helped to keep the deer herd in check for a while but had stopped by 1970. Since the hunts had been stopped, the deer herd had increased to over a hundred and were stripping the island of its vegetation. In fact, I stayed in Bill’s camp on the island for a night in 1970 or 1971 and hunted the mainland nearby hoping that some of the island deer had wandered there.
However, even though a few deer did cross back and forth, most stayed on the island and their numbers had pretty much cleared the island of its understory vegetation. Deer were starving in late fall when they should have been plump for the upcoming winter. All I know is suddenly a political decision was made, not to hunt the deer but to have Fish and Game staff remove some. Lucky for me, Henry picked me to go, so I hurriedly got my stuff together and began collecting the equipment needed to tranquilize deer. I did have three or four years’ experience tranquilizing nuisance bears with Henry, so I had a leg up on most other biologists within the department.
Monday, November 7, 1983, clear nice day
My diary says:
“I finished collecting supplies at the Fish and Game headquarters in the morning and headed up to Long Island by 1:00 p.m. We set a corral trap made with a huge net borrowed from the Fisheries Division and also had 8 big box traps, called clover traps, made from tubing and netting that were specifically designed to catch deer. We baited the traps with apples and waited for darkness when the deer would be most active. That first day we missed several deer but did catch a spike buck, which died.”
These deer were actually in terrible physical condition from the starvation diet they were on because there were way too many deer for the habitat to support. That’s why we were there, to reduce the numbers by capturing the deer and relocating them. Even by giving them the best of care we had a number of deaths. They were simply too malnourished to be captured or tranquilized. At least a quarter of the twenty-seven deer we captured died before they could be released. The ones we caught in the nets we quickly put into a transportation crate without tranquilizing them to reduce stress. They were shipped south within hours. Even several of these deer died.
Tuesday, November 8, clear cold night
“I had come home after the captures Monday night but headed up mid-morning today with more warm clothes and items needed for a long stay. The deer started moving about 3:00 p.m. Henry caught a doe in a drop net and we missed one in the corral when it bolted just as the gate fell. Later we successfully captured another doe in the corral. The director Charlie Barry stopped by tonight and two conservation officers, trainee Tim Acerno and Lieutenant Dave Hewitt, stopped by to assist for a while.”
Over the next couple of days we managed to catch two or three deer in various traps each day. In fact, I had brought up some radio collars and telemetry with me and I rigged the collars to begin transmitting a signal if a trap was set off. That way we could run or drive quickly to the traps to prevent escapes.
We had brought an old Fish and Game camper trailer to sleep in. Henry got the bed and I got the floor in this peanut-sized rundown tin can. I was so excited trying to catch deer that I just couldn’t sleep anyway. A couple of times the receiver started pinging at 3 or 4 a.m. and I darted out of the trailer to find a raccoon in one particular clover trap.
Friday, November 11, is one of those days that stand out in my mind. Not for what we caught, but for what we didn’t. Henry had left for home to get more supplies around 1 p.m. Tim Acerno helped me move a couple of clover traps and he too left around 2 p.m.
“By now the deer seemed to have learned about our traps and were staying clear of them. I lay down early last night and was awakened about 9:00 p.m. by my radio system. It was the “raccoon trap” pinging. I headed out alone expecting to release yet another raccoon. Not!! A huge buck, ten points by my up-close count, was flailing in the trap. Boy was he unhappy to see me! He was lifting the trap into the air and I was worried he was going to run off with the trap. So, all alone in the dark I tried to hold it down as his antlers thrust in every direction, including mine. I tried to get a hand in my pocket to get out a syringe and drug. Things were not going well at all. By now all the tie downs had come off the trap and he was getting more rambunctious by the minute. He and I were in a standoff for a brief moment, then he simply put his head down, ripped the side off the trap, and disappeared into the bleakness of the night.”
I knew there were some big bucks around as I had used a Vietnam-era night scope to watch a ten-and twelve-pointer duke it out in a field not far from here. In fact, I had watched bucks fight several times while watching the clover traps to see if a deer went in one, before I came up with the radio collar idea.
Tuesday, November 15, rain to snow at night
The director had ordered us to begin shooting deer with the tranquilizer gun as they were now pretty much all trap-shy. This night had me trying to catch deer that we had hit with a dart but hadn’t gone down. I had started checking traps at 6 a.m. and ended up working practically all night as well. My diary says 22.5 hours straight. And I loved every minute of it!
Within a day or two of losing several darted deer, our order of “radio” darts arrived. These were simply miniature radios that we screwed into the base of our darts that sent out an electronic signal similar to the radio collars. Now we had the equipment we most needed. Since I had the experience tracking animals with radio telemetry, it was always my job to find and hog-tie the deer that were darted with the radio darts.
Let me tell you a little bit about the drug we were using to tranquilize these deer. It was and still is one of the best available, but under field conditions, lots of things can, and did, go wrong. First of all, even when tranquilized the deer were sensitive to light and were especially sensitive to any sharp noise. Consequently, when I headed after the deer, I would turn my flashlight off and not turn it on until I had the deer tied up. I could tell from the signal generally how close I was to the deer. When I got close, I would crawl on my hands and knees in the dark to feel for sticks so I wouldn’t make any sharp sounds. Time after time I put my hands on deer in total darkness. I learned rather quickly to first get a rope around the deer’s neck and tie it to a tree so it couldn’t escape.
I remember one night putting a rope around a deer’s neck, just then, and before I could tie it to a tree, it ran off trailing my rope. How I listened as the deer dashed off into the night. I spent the better part of the next hour in a cold cloudy moonless night quietly crawling and feeling the forest floor until I found the quarter-inch rope. Those were adrenaline-filled nights!
Thursday, November 17, cloudy but cleared by night
This was to be one of the longest and most memorable days and nights of my career. We had darted a doe on the evening of the 16th and lost it. Everyone else had gone home but I stayed alone and couldn’t sleep thinking about the lost deer. By 10 p.m. on the 16th I was back out searching for it. The deer was slowly staggering but managed to stay just ahead of me. I was tracking it with the radio but it wouldn’t lie down long enough for me to grab it. I remember following the deer just a few feet behind it as it crossed someone’s lawn. I had to bend over when I walked past a picture window within arm’s reach of the TV the folks inside were watching. Well, I finally did catch up with that deer around three in the morning. In the process of catching and hog-tying the deer, I managed to lose the new Fish and Game portable radio out of my pocket. When conservation officer Chuck Kenney arrived about seven the next morning to check on me, I told him, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. I caught the deer but lost the director’s new portable radio.” Boy, was he concerned about the lost radio. Somehow, I found the spot in the middle of the woods where I fought the deer the night before and found the radio buried in the leaves.
