The topic of our impromptu confab outside Ellensburg’s Bi-Mart was “getting and keeping little kids hooked on outdoor stuff.” Homey, hand wrapped around a couple shiny new youth fishing rod/reel sets, had two questions.

“Yeah,” he said, “I really want to get my preschoolers hooked on fishing, but more than that, Jules and I are wondering about getting them outdoors in some sort of school or regular activity. Friends have mentioned KEEN, but where do we start?”

KEEN (the Kittitas Environmental Education Network), of course, is our very active Central Washington kids’ advocate, under its Outdoor Nature School banner. It offers a Pond to Pines summer camp, the summer-long Science in the Parks Program across Ellensburg, and that great little Friday pre-school class at Helen McCabe State Park. I figured they might yet get their little ones into the kind of program they wanted, and a moment on our cellular devices found KEEN’s site at www.ycic.org/outdoor-school.

As they look ahead to keeping their youngsters involved, I suggested they might find any number of kid initiatives by googling something like “kids in the woods initiatives.” A big one is the federal Every Kid in a Park initiative, which gives every fourth grader across America a free pass (family included) to federal parks, lands and waters for one year (everykidinapark.gov/). There is a terrific set of worldwide ideas and resources on the Richard Louv-inspired Children & Nature Network at www.childrenandnature.org. For good measure, I suggested they pick up two books: Louv’s Last Child in the Woods, Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder and How to Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature.

“Okay, cool,” Homey said. “Now, what about the fishing stuff? I love fishing, but it can be pretty boring for little guys who need action. How do we get that started?”

“Well,” I opined, “there are any number of kids-only fishing sites around Paradise. Check the new fishing pamphlet and try one of those. There are plenty of hungry fish of various types scattered about. The last of the Hucklings always loved Helen McCabe Pond – they caught everything from tiny sunfish to a five-plus-pound channel catfish there. And they liked the trout in the little youth-only streams around town. Find some spot with hungry little fish and enjoy their joy. Oh. And another book with some useful info is William G. Tapply’s Pocket Water – Confessions of a Restless Angler. The chapter you want is ‘Raising Fly Fishermen for Fun and Profit.’ Get your kids on the water. Treasure these years with them…”

That particular chapter in Tapply’s book is loaded with wisdom. His ideas are just as much about helping them master life itself as fishing. Following are excerpts I particularly enjoy.

“Kids—boys or girls, it doesn’t matter – are born with an innate love of fishing. The tug and throb at the end of the line triggers in every kid something atavistic that causes her to laugh and squeal ‘I got one!  I got one!’  Unless some adult comes along to spoil it, that kid is hooked. [I]f you resist the urge to tell her what she’s doing wrong, she will gradually get better at it.

“Kids are democratic. To them, a fish is a fish. Sunfish, horned pout, bass, trout:  the main difference to a kid is that sunfish are the prettiest. All shapes, sizes, and colors of fish merit equal fascination, and the more different species kids encounter, the better they like it. Catching many small fish is better than a few large ones, although they do like the scary hard pull of an occasional big one, and they should have that experience, too.

“Kids like to catch fish. Adults learn the aesthetic pleasures of fishing without catching anything, but it’s an acquired taste… Take your kid to a warmwater pond, slough, or lazy creek, where life fairly bubbles in abundance and variety, and where you’re never sure what might be tugging at the end of the line, but it’s a sure bet that something will be. Choose a warm, soft, sunny summer afternoon, even if you think the fish will bite better in the rain or toward dusk… Adults can fool themselves into enjoying discomfort, but kids are too smart for that.

“Even if you want to raise a trout-fishing partner, start her out on panfish. Kids are big on instant gratification. They want results and they want them now… They have short attention spans. Their minds wander… Their entire world is a wonder. Frogs, dragonflies, painted turtles, ducks, muskrats – all those denizens of warmwater places fascinate kids as much as fish do…

“Give them short, frequent doses of fishing. Anticipate when they’ll get bored and quit five minutes earlier. If they’re not catching anything, do something else. Try frog hunting or crayfish catching. Throw stones…capture rusty beer cans and bring them home with you…don’t make a lesson out of it… Kids are, in fact, suspicious of lessons… Stay out of their way…  They will become skilled and will ask when they’re ready.

“Kids want to know the names of things. Kids like it when you can tell them what things are… they also like it when you tell them you don’t know. This assures them that they can trust you.

“Kids notice things adults take for granted or have stopped noticing – the ‘chirrup’ of red-winged blackbirds…a swallow’s wingtip on the surface of a glassy pond…the garish neon shades that dress damselflies and dragonflies…the purple of a bluegill’s throat…  When they point it out to you, you’ll marvel at it, too, the way you once did…

“Adults can learn a lot from kids…”

You no doubt heard this last week that the decades-long effort to revive the nearly extinct California condor has hit a milestone – the 1,000th condor chick hatched recently in Zion National Park, in southern Utah.

In 1982, 22 California condors existed in the wild. Captured and held in captivity for safe keeping, and a breeding program to reintroduce them, the first youngsters were released back to the wild in 1992 in California and 1996 in Arizona. There are now more than 500 condors. About half of them flying over parts of Arizona, Utah, California and northern Mexico.

This is a big deal. Female condors lay one egg per nesting attempt, and they don’t nest every year. Reaching adulthood is a challenge for condor chicks. Adult condors may restrain an overenthusiastic nestling by clamping it down with a foot on its neck (this is also a common way for an adult to get a youngster’s bill from its throat at the end of a feeding). Young depend on parents for a year or more, and reach maturity in eight years. They often take months to perfect flight and landings, with crash landings observed several months after a first flight. Of today’s 500 living birds, the oldest has reached 40 years, although they may live to 60 or more.

Worldwide, there are some 23 species of vultures. The New World vultures – scientific family Cathartidae – includes seven species of vultures and condors in the Americas. Three species are North American: California condor (Gymnogyps californianus Shaw), turkey vulture (Cathartes aura Linnaeus) and black vulture (Coragyps atratus Beckstein). Vultures are generally called birds of prey because of diet, but in fact they are most related to storks and herons.

Black vultures are only found in the southeastern U.S. states and Mexico. Today, California condors are found in the canyons and mountains of the states and regions mentioned above, although in Lewis and Clark days, 1805, they were observed in the Northwest. Turkey vultures are our common scavenging friends here in Paradise. Indeed, they are now expanding their range into Canada and across the U.S.

I’m often asked about sizes of these vultures. Clearly, the condor is the largest, weighing from 16 to 22 pounds, some four feet from nose to tail and about nine feet from wingtip to wingtip. The condor is the largest North American bird (there are larger condors on the planet). Our turkey vultures, a distant second, may weigh over five pounds, reach nearly three feet in length, and boast six foot wingspans. The black vulture of the Southeast will weigh up to four pounds, reach 2.5 feet in length and have wings that cover nearly five feet.

Vultures and condors are communal feeders, gathering on carcasses to feed. A soaring condor or turkey vulture may spot a carcass the size of a jackrabbit from four miles away, and see gatherings of its fellows from eight miles. (The turkey vulture is one of very few birds able to find food by scent.) At carcasses, the condor will dominate the feeding – observed yielding only to the sharp and powerful talons of the golden eagle. Featherless heads allow them to probe and dig through a carcass without becoming caked with gore, and their digestive systems have been shown to kill most any ingested virus or bacteria. These birds – Nature’s waste disposal technicians – perform a valuable service for which they are perfectly suited.

Low wing loading (bird weight to wing area ratio) and low aspect ratio (length to width of wings) enable them to soar easily, slowly, and steadily on relatively light thermal updrafts. Turbulence found with such wing characteristics is largely alleviated with the spreading of the stiff, tapered primary feathers at the wing tips. For all vultures, relatively weak pectoral muscles can limit takeoffs; after a big meal, a condor or vulture may puke up (regurgitate for you sophisticates) part of a big meal to be light enough to take off. These birds can go without eating for a couple weeks, and can actually store meat in a sort of crop when excess is available – and takeoff is manageable.

Both birds thermoregulate on hot days by dumping their own body waste over their legs. The evaporating liquid cools the blood flowing through the legs, thus cooling their body cores. They bathe regularly to prevent waste buildup on their legs.

California condors are year-round residents in their habitat. Our turkey vultures arrive in April to breed and rear young. By first snow, they will be cleaning up the dead in the Bahamas or Central or South America.

These are unique, fascinating, and misunderstood creatures – among my favorites to watch. While I studied them years ago in Colorado, I bow to Deborah Essman, the Bird Whisperer of Paradise, who has caught, handled, fed, dissected and been puked upon by vultures, yet retains a wild enthusiasm for them.

The Science Education Subcommittee of the Reecer Creek Rod, Gun, Working Dog & Outdoor Think Tank Benevolent Association suggests “condors” or “vultures” at www.allaboutbirds.org/ for far more info than I include here.

Go look around canyons and cliffs in our valley or urban/rural areas most anywhere in the state. Watch for bare heads and wings in a shallow “V” shape (eagles soar with flat wings). Find a “kettle” of vultures – any number of them soaring on a thermal (aka, committee, wake, venue or volt of vultures). As they ride, they are said to be “kittling.” Go look. It can be almost breathtaking.

Frankly, with the cool – thus far – and cloudy summer in Central Washington, I have not seen my normal bounty of butterflies and moths. On the other hand, several homeys have reported seeing various “flowers of the air” in the Yakima River Canyon, up on and around Table Mountain, and among the wildflowers around Gingko State Park. The perennial discussion of ‘what is butterfly and what is moth” was in the midst of a couple of those reports.

Which of us has not been fascinated by a brilliant flash of color landing on a plant nearby? Thus, the Watchable Wildlife Subcommittee of the Reecer Creek Rod, Gun, Working Dog & Outdoor Think Tank Benevolent Association has revisited its list of suggested resources. Members continue to recommend certain books and field manuals, but have added a couple very rich and family-oriented web sites.

As we begin this discussion, let us first ponder the risky life of the butterfly or moth; if it does not drown, or break a wing in the wind or a rough landing, or get eaten by some bird or other predator, it may end up on the wrong end of some homeowner=s wish to get it off the screen door. Appreciation for the surviving “air flowers” begins with their striking patterns and colors, then morphs into identification.

Identification might start with adults, of course, and the time of activity. Most butterflies are diurnal (active during the day) and brightly colored. Butterfly bodies are generally slender and not especially pubescent (hairy). On the other hand, most adult moths are nocturnal or crepuscular (active at dawn/dusk). While some moths are brightly colored or have colorful wing “eyespots,” most have drab, bulky, quite pubescent bodies with cryptic wing patterns, helping them blend into surroundings.

The acid test for differentiation is the shape of the antennae. Except for one tropical group (not an issue here), all butterflies have simple antennae that end in a swelling or “club,” which may be very pronounced, or quite subtle. Moth antennae, on the other hand, will range in shape from simple points to a feather‑like appearance; none will have that clubbed tip.

Your personal study might start at www.butterfliesandmoths.org. This stunning site covers all of North America, including reports from in and around Paradise. The organization is aiming to collect, store, and share species information and occurrence data. (Your participation is requested – just take and submit photographs of butterflies, moths, and caterpillars.) This is a rich site, worth your exploration, with pictures, records of sightings, and natural histories.

While you’re online, check out the Washington butterfly Association – the WBA – at wabutterflyassoc.org for stunning videos and photos from across the planet and abundant info about these fascinating animals. Join the association, if you like, and get in on classes, the annual conference, and newsletter links to current butterfly news. Monthly meetings are held at the Center for Urban Horticulture in Seattle, at the Corbin Art Center in Spokane, and online through Zoom. Take yourself or your gang on one of the butterfly or moth events held around the state.

Once you’ve gone that far, you will likely be wanting a good guidebook. Start with the general “Audubon Field Guide to the Pacific Northwest.” Then get serious with one of Robert Michael Pyle’s books, such as his amazing “Butterflies of Cascadia.” If you are really lucky, you may find, online or in a local book shop, Michael’s early handbook, “Watching Washington Butterflies,” published through the Seattle Audubon Society in 1974. You will find others at your favorite bookstore or library.

As summer moves, you will find fewer and fewer butterflies and more caterpillars and pupae. Classifying caterpillars or pupae into their proper butterfly or moth categories is a great family challenge. In fact, there are few ways to tell them apart at the crawl-around stage. I have yet to find a really useful guide to pupae identification, although I still hear rumors of one coming. “Caterpillars of Pacific Northwest Forests and Woodlands” (Jeffrey C. Miller’s terrific work) comes close, with a broad range of butterfly and moth caterpillars. I would certainly recommend that you check out the larval photos in Jim Kaufman’s AButterflies of North America.@ The book “Moths of North America,” by Jerry A. Powell and Paul A. Opler will help you identify a particular specimen or its family. Online, the Bug Guide Group hosts meetings and field experiences across the country for most any bug or caterpillar imaginable. They have up-to-the-minute photos of butterflies and moths, along with info to help identify pupae and caterpillars of all sorts on their site at bugguide.net/node/view/151691.

You probably want to know that this coming week (7/20 through 7/28) is “National Moth Week 2019.” Moths are perhaps the most unheralded, yet highly effective, of our pollinators. There are several activities in Spokane and elsewhere around the Northwest. Find some amazing pictures and discussion at wabutterflyassoc.org/7-20-7-28-is-national-moth-week-2019/.

This is the season, the temperature, and the time. Check out woodlands, meadows and muddy areas. Wander streams and the River, and south facing snow-free areas in the high country.  Robert Michael Pyle would remind you to observe these amazing creatures slowly and cautiously.

Review your books and the web. Take the family or a friend. Go look. Get photos. Make a forever summer memory.

This is the time of year that most of us start seriously planning our fall big game hunts. That planning and preparation generally starts with making sure our firearms are shooting as well as we intend. That “target practice” is also about reacquainting ourselves with the tools we will take afield; improving our firearm handling and, ultimately, making certain that we and those with whom we share time hunting and wandering the backcountry are as safe as possible. This target practice is a big deal, really.

For a very large number of us, our target shooting generally happens at one or another of the various sites along Durr Road – a large open area of public land, managed for us by DFW. Those “go to” target shooting sites have seen restricted use (early morning shooting only) during the dangerous fire seasons of the past several years. This year’s heightened wildfire concerns, however, have prompted DFW to close all its managed lands in eastern Washington to any firearms, use other than legal hunting, until further notice. So what are the safe options available locally as we sharpen up for our coming fall hunting adventures?

In fact, there are plenty of options. Plan ahead a bit, pay attention to the rules in place, and you should see little change in your normal run-up to fall.

There is actually plenty of safe room to target shoot on the public ground around Paradise. This is primarily going to be on regional ground managed by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and by the US Forest Service in our Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.

DNR rules for target shooting are pretty straightforward, actually. (Don’t forget your Discover Pass.) Shooting is allowed between a half hour before sunrise and a half hour after sunset. As of this moment, there are no restrictions beyond those that follow, but be aware that conditions can change quickly.

In my view, the Washington Administrative Code (WAC 332-52-145) which outlines the DNR rules for target shooting simply formalizes the instructions we received from those who got us started on our lifetimes of shooting pleasure, in the first place.

On our DNR ground, you are free to shoot in a developed location “designed for target shooting” and any area “with an unobstructed, earthen backstop capable of stopping all projectiles and debris in a safe manner.” Do not compromise the safety of “any person, pet, livestock, wildlife of property.” Do not “discharge tracer or incendiary” ammo. Don’t shoot “within, from, along, across, or down roads or trails,” and be more than 500 feet from non-shooting recreation facilities.

You may shoot at any target designed or manufactured for use as a target – homemade targets are fine – and remember that virtually everything else is an “unauthorized target.” Unauthorized targets include signs, vegetation, gates, vehicles, appliances, glass, and all those things you already know you don’t really want to shoot. You are responsible for removing and disposing of your “shell casings, targets, ammunition packaging, or target fragments.”

On our Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, Cle Elum Ranger District, the rules are pretty similar. Shoot toward a backstop “significant enough to stop all rounds.” Don’t shoot within 150 yards of buildings, campsites, developed recreation sites or occupied areas, nor across any road or adjacent water. Trees, rocks, vegetation and glass are never to be used as targets. And, of course, you are expected to clean up and remove all shooting debris (casings, targets, and so forth).

There are plenty of safe and welcome target shooting sites in the Forest. Do note the signs at entry points relating to local or temporary shooting restrictions. Note, also, that shooting is prohibited in certain areas of the Forest, such as: Road 49 in the Kachess developed area (1/2 mile buffer); Box Canyon Creek (1/2 mile buffer on Roads 4930 and 4930-120); Highway 903 (1/2 mile buffer to beyond Salmon la Sac); and a 1/2 mile buffer around Lake Cle Elum and Cle Elum River. You may pick up a copy of these rules at the Ranger District Office in Cle Elum.

Want something more formal? Your only option in the county is the Cascade Field & Stream Club’s very nice facility on Hayward Hill.

While this is a members-only range, the Club opens its gates to the public four times a month. Public shooting happens on the first and third Wednesday and Saturday of each month. There is a mandatory 8 a.m. orientation, followed by shooting on the range from 9 to 1. The Club charges no fee for this opportunity, but donations are accepted. You may join the Club (and its range) for just 80 bucks a year. You are welcome to just come shoot, or join.

The facilities are first-rate, with a couple just-recently-celebrated new buildings. Check it out at www.cascadefieldandstream.com or at www.facebook/CascadeFieldandStream.com.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has identified regional shooting ranges, also, at www.wheretoshoot.org. You may find a more distant location that works for you.

Fall is on its way. There are plenty of options for your safe, fun, local, and necessary, preparation.

It has long fascinated me. It’s that “synchronicity” thing, when suddenly from different directions come bits of information that respond to some question floating around in my mind.

A week or so ago, after an extended closure, Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) reopened enrollment to the Master Hunter Permit Program. This program of “advanced hunter education” was established in the early 2000s to deal with wildlife issues around the state. This program goes beyond the Basic Hunter Education Course and Certification required of all hunters born after 1 Jan. 1972. About the same time, Diane handed me a clip from the September 26, 1912, issue of the Ellensburg Dawn. As with most newspapers of the time, there was a local-interest page, and on that page was a proposed “Examination for Hunters of Game,” suggested by an unnamed Homey – “the funny man on the exchange,” to be passed before receiving a hunting license. Hunter education and examination has come a long way in the last century.

I got pretty excited when I first heard about DFW’s Master Hunter Program. That probably arose from a cold wintry evening in 1985 when a bunch of us officers and committee chairs for the Denver Chapter of Safari Club International were huddled around a barrel stove in “Andy” Anderson’s shop in southeast Denver. Over a cool malt beverage, Tom was talking about his hunt in Germany’s Black Forest.

“So,” he said, “we had been out in the woods all afternoon and it was snowing and Fritz the hunt master just kept walking and walking. It was getting dark and I was sure we were getting farther and farther from our rig, but you just don’t really question these guys much – even if you ARE paying… Anyway, we came out of the woods at a little village and walked over to an inn. This big guy opened the door, squinted into the snow in his feeble porch light, and boomed a big welcome to us.

“He gave us towels to dry off our rifles and a big bowl of a stew and some bread. We sat by the fire and everybody in the dining room acted like we were special. Then the inn guy found someone to drive us back to our hunting car. All these guys acted like we were doing them a favor or something. When we got back to our lodge, my hunting partner and I asked Fritz what that was all about. He looked at us, and said, ‘Because we are HUNTERS.’ We finally realized that in Europe, it takes a lot to be a hunter and being a hunter is a pretty big deal. That night changed the way I look at hunting and my responsibilities and opportunities.”

It took me a couple years to get my Master Hunter Certification. I was so proud to be part of the program, even when it went through some growing pains and weeding out of those who were unable to live up to their roles and responsibilities. Today, there are 1,650 of us. By next year, there will be more of us, but it won’t be easy.

DFW is inviting “skilled volunteers who are willing to aid department efforts in support of the public and Washington wildlife…to promote safe, lawful, and ethical hunting, and to strengthen Washington’s hunting heritage and conservation ethic.” It’s a big deal, really. Master hunters work controlled hunts, hazing operations, conservation projects (some 15,000 annual hours), support landowner relations and assist with hunter education efforts.

Interested? To enroll, hunters must: pay a $50 application fee; pass a criminal background check; pass a 100-question written exam in 70 minutes (covering a large amount of legal and biological information); perform 20 hours of approved volunteer service; demonstrate a high level of shooting skill; and sign a pledge for ethical behavior. Details and full information will be found on DFW’s website at wdfw.wa.gov/hunting/requirements/master-hunter.

Basic Hunter Education Training was first created by the National Rifle Association in 1949, and is now required in virtually every state. Our local Kittitas County Field and Stream Club Team has been teaching hunter ed since 1958. These classes involve education and firearms handling training, with a field exam and written exam (75 questions). Today, as many girls/women take the training as boys/men. Youngest to be certified have been some determined seven-year-olds.

Oh, yes, the “funny man’s” 1912 examination questions. Cute, but they will give you an idea of the concerns about some hunters of that day. “Are you married, insane, or both? Can you tell which end of a gun is dangerous? While suffering from an attack of buck fever, do you think you could tell the difference between a red-jacketed hunter and a deer? Can you tell if a gun is loaded without looking into the muzzle or pointing it at a friend and snapping it? When were you last examined for insanity, and were you ever an inmate of a home of the feeble-minded? In going through a fence, would you crawl through and pull the gun after you? Both in range: which would you shoot first, a rabbit or a gray horse? Do you believe that the use of intoxicating liquors aids you in seeing more game? At what distance do you think you could kill another hunter? Do you shoot by the sound, or wait for the game? How long would it take to tell all you know about firearms? Would you rather miss killing a deer than risk making an angel out of a companion? Do you believe in shooting in haste and repenting at leisure? Can you tell the difference between a Winchester and a squirt gun?”

Hunter exams are a bit different today. All hunter education programs are designed to keep hunting safe, legal and ethical. Those who earn Master Hunter Permit Certification are expected to carry out conservation projects, and to uphold and demonstrate the very highest standards of safe, lawful, and ethical behavior. You might be the person we need. Check it out.