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July 2025 NEWFOUNDLAKELIFE.COM Page 15
Woods Waters and Wildlife: Fish Camp and Velvet
By Jeff Beach
We made it to fish camp for the 12th year now. As many of you may have experienced, as you get away for a long weekend or even a week, that feeling of leav- ing civilization behind arriving at camp and getting into your camp skin. We slough off the rigors and schedules of our daily life and start to settle into a zone of relax and just fish and camp. Or what- ever you get away to do. Tough to get into your camp skin over just a weekend. We fished up through rt 302 along the Ammonoosuk from Bretton Woods and over to the Connecticut river valley. We got out the Hibachi at the dam in West Stewartstown for a quick bite before fishing rainbow run below the dam. Now I might think that some of you that have fish- ing friends has a buddy that can catch fish anywhere all the time. Les has that fish magnet trait and can catch fish in bathtub. I can fish rainbow run changing flies a few times and get a strike but none to the net. Les follows the same water and sets hook on a more than a
few down through. He at least gives us notice there are actually fish in the river. Reaching camp after dark we get a fire going and enjoy a second supper of a couple of fish in the frying pan.
Next day is kayaks on a couple of ponds in the area. On Coon Brook Bog we have the enjoy- ment of watching the damsel fly bog dancing over the surface of the water. Noticing the trout are efficiently gulping the damsel as it hits the surface frequently, we, as a good fly fisher does, change over to a fly pattern that may somewhat resemble the damsel fly thereby catching a few of the bog trout. This year we chased a few blue lines that you find on the map. Streams and rivers that are tributaries to the Connecticut River. These beautiful back woods waterways don’t have the fishing traffic and pressure that the bigger water and roadside access sections get.
The next day we are up early and head over to Errol to fish the Androscoggin watershed. Fish some blue line streams then pro- ceed on our annual trek down to
Pontook dam to finish the day. We hit a couple of good hatches coming off the water to make it a worthwhile journey as it is an hour back to camp. Not 15 minutes up the road, along what is accurately called the 13 mile woods, we see a big majestic creature of the North woods. A young bull moose munching on the herbs and sedges along the edge of the road. His growing rack still in velvet as it is early in the antler development. At this dusky time of day not a good light for photos so we slow to a crawl and just admire his stature and majesty. It is a site that stirs the wild within us.
The velvet on the antlers of these massive animals and the deer are a special fleshy ‘fabric’ that cover the bone structure to support the growth of antlers with voluminous nutrient and blood flow. The deer and moose start growing antlers covered in velvet annually in the late Spring and then start to shed the velvet in September as their hormones prepare them for the rut, mating season. What exists now is a new creation the antlers of symmetri-
cal bone that has a new purpose for the deer to breed and continue the species fiercely defending his harem during mating season. They rub their antlers on small trees to scrap off the velvet and to disperse scents from glands at the base of the antlers. This peeling off of the layer of old skin elic- its a verse in the Bible from 2nd Corinthians that says if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation the old is gone and the new is here. In that, we shift our focus of life in our old ways from thinking and acting only for ourselves we now seek outwardly and love as God first loved us. We slough off the old self and take on our new skin a new creation with a purpose that
gives us meaning and direction and a sense of great comfort being in alignment with God. We start a new season under the design and nurture of God. As we look now for these animals in their habitat we can see the softness of the vel- vet antlers. In the fall a large deer with a symmetrical tall tine rack is a sight that exemplifies the majesty of creation and the wildness they represent. They are a majestic sight. The antler season ends as daylight dwindles to a depressingly dreary minimum, which is in late December, triggering the animals to shed their antlers sometime in January or February. So get away this summer if you can and get on your camp skin.
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