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February 23, 2010 by
For years, the Sioux Falls, SD professional baseball team and member of the American Association independent baseball league was known as the Canaries.
Uh, the what?
What's worse, the Sioux Falls Stadium where games were played was known to fans as The Birdcage, and the team mascot was a big yellow0-feathered creature wearing a baseball uniform, named "Cagey."
But no longer.
Insightful team ownership has decided to change the team name to something more regionally appropriate, while maintaining the existing avian theme.
In announcing the team would henceforth be known as the Sioux Falls Fighting Pheasants, CEO and Managing Partner Gary Weckwerth said last week, “We felt it is one of the great sports names that didn’t exist and something the people of Sioux Falls and the state of South Dakota can identify with…plus the pheasant is just a lot tougher and meaner bird!”
Here at the Newshound, we couldn’t agree more.
Before landing his current gig as Director of Marketing and Public Relations for Pheasants Forever in 2003, my good friend Bob St. Pierre spent seven seasons with the Saint Paul Saints Professional Baseball Club, working his way up to Assistant General Manager. During his years with the Saints, his team regularly met Sioux Falls Canaries.
So naturally, no one was more pleased than St. Pierre about the new moniker for the South Dakota team.
“The Canaries name never really made sense to me for a team in Sioux Falls,” St. Pierre said. “Of course I’m pretty jacked to hear of their new switch to a much more popular South Dakota bird and I can’t wait to get my hands on one of their new baseball lids. I hope to attend a game there this summer.”
St. Pierre, always thinking of PR and promotions, said he’s hoping they’ll have a “Take Your Bird Dog to The Ballpark Night.”
We wonder if the new uniforms will be blaze orange.
[ Read Full Post ] February 18, 2010 by
When U.S. Rep. Steve King found a raccoon trying to chew into his rural Western Iowa home during a snowstorm last week, he reacted like most folks who live out in the country and away from the city.
He grabbed the closest and most familiar firearm and preceded to dispatch the troublesome critter, which he thought might be rabid because of its bizarre behavior during the middle of the day.
Rep. King’s “most handy gun” turned out to be a .45 ACP Desert Eagle 1911 pistol, a popular firearm and caliber for personal and home protection.
Perhaps the congressman was a tad bit over-gunned for the pesky varmint, but it served the purpose, quickly and decisively.
Later, the 4-term Republican from Kiron, Iowa wrote about the incident on Twitter:
“Mid-day, mid-blizzard, 15 degrees, Crazy Raccoon chewing and clawing his way into my house. Desert Eagle 1, Crazy Raccoon zero.”
Once King’s “tweet” began circulating among his constituents, it wasn’t long before political bloggers began commenting. It was just a matter of time before raccoon-loving, publicity-seeking, animal-rights advocates started wailing and moaning about the congressman’s preferred method of pest control.
“It doesn’t give you comfort in your representatives when a member of Congress finds it amusing to boast of shooting a desperately cold animal who is 100 times smaller than he is and whose only misstep was trying to get into a large, warm house,” Jaime Zalac, a PETA spokeswoman, said a written statement provided to FoxNews.com.
Not surprisingly, Rep. King—who has received a consistent “A” Rating from the National Rifle Association throughout his congressional career—stood his ground.
“That crazy coon ran up against ‘a man’s home is his castle’ and this man’s castle won. But if it had been PETA volunteers outside in the middle of a blizzard, I’d like to think they would have rang the doorbell, instead of trying to claw into the house. And I would have given them shelter for the night and served them bacon and eggs the next morning,” King said in a statement.
[ Read Full Post ] February 10, 2010 by
For years, sportsmen in Virginia who regularly head to the woods in the late winter and early each spring to collect shed deer antlers were violating a state law.
And very few hunters—and not all game officers, for that matter—were aware of the obscure regulation. That’s because under a strict interpretation of the Virginia statute, possession of all wild animal parts (without a permit) was strictly forbidden.
Thankfully, a bill passed last week by the Virginia House creates an exemption for the collection of whitetail deer headgear. Introduced by freshman Delegate James Edmunds, HB1283 was approved by a 95-1 margin.
The measure now heads to the Senate where its approval appears imminent.
As presently written, state law prohibits the ownership of “any wild bird or wild animal or the carcass or any part thereof, except as specifically permitted by law.”
According to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, the law was intended to guard against the illegal trade of wild animal parts and to allow only licensed hunters to possess their legally taken big game trophies.
Ironically, Edmunds, a Republican who represents Virginia’s 60th District, discovered he was technically breaking the law after a colleague noticed some sheds decorating his General Assembly building office in Richmond and told him about the statute.
The greenhorn representative was not cited for his unintentional infraction.
[ Read Full Post ]February 7, 2010 by
Like many other states currently dealing with sharp declines in historic bobwhite quail populations, Pennsylvania is looking at ways to help the species rebound to its former levels. And last week, the state Board of Game Commissioners took a rather drastic step toward that end, giving preliminary approval to a closure of the bobwhite quail season statewide beginning with the 2010-11 seasons.
Under the proposal, quail could be hunted only on regulated hunting grounds, and hunters would be allowed to release pen-raised quail for hunting on public and private lands by permit.
“We have significant evidence that bobwhite quail populations have declined dramatically in the state since 1966,” said Carl G. Roe, Game Commission executive director. “We also are concerned that the continued release of pen-reared bobwhite quail may have negative impacts on remaining isolated quail populations. The first step toward recovery of the Northern Bobwhite is to close the season statewide.”
Roe noted that Game Commission staff is currently working to complete a state bobwhite quail plan that carefully reviews the status and trend of Pennsylvania’s quail population, restoration potential, and management practices.
“Given the diminished status of wild quail populations, and our ongoing work to complete and implement a bobwhite quail management plan, we believe the timing is appropriate to close the quail season,” Roe said.
[ Read Full Post ] February 2, 2010 by
Sometimes here at the Outdoor Life Newshound, the blog just writes itself. And this week we have received an especially wonderful gift from a highly unlikely source—one of the country’s most radical environmental organizations, the Center for Biological Diversity.
Based in Tucson, Ariz., the Center for Biological Diversity has made a name for itself primarily as an environmental litigious entity. Over the years it has successfully blocked everything from public land timber sales to expansion of water projects in the West through creative use of lawsuits and the court system. Probably the single largest target of this sue-happy group is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which can hardly even utter the phrase “endangered species delisting,” without hearing from a bevy of briefcase-toting CBD lawyers.
On the hunting and shooting front, the CBD is a leader in the current effort to ban the use of lead ammunition by hunters in a growing number of Western states, based on its claims that lead fragments from bullets left behind in gutpiles threatened the California condor and other raptor species.
Ordinarily, we wouldn’t give this group the time of day, but this week it launched a new project that we just can’t ignore.
According to its own press material, the CBD is poised to launch the Endangered Species Condom Project later this month.
And no, we’re not making this up.
The promotion’s aim is to distribute free condoms wrapped in six different endangered-species-themed packages, with the goal of raising awareness about the alleged dire negative effects we humans have on the planet.
By the way, the condoms are made for use by humans—not by endangered species (just wanted to clarify that).
“The project will raise awareness about overpopulation’s serious impacts on our planet and spark, we hope, new conversations about the need to bring Homo sapiens back into balance with the rest of life on Earth,” CBD Executive Director Kieran Suckling wrote in a Jan. 27 email to supporters.
Needless to say, we think you’ll agree it’s a great idea to distribute items used for birth control to as many of these extreme activists and their supporters as possible. Fact is, while reducing the propagation rate among radical environmental elements, we should encourage our hunters, anglers and shooters to go forth and multiply!
So, we say to the Center for Biological Diversity—bravo! Pure genius!!
[ Read Full Post ]
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