Field reports: Field reports: Spokane runner-up for city riverfront
RIVERS – Wilmington, North Carolina, generated enough votes to edge Spokane in a USA Today 10 Best Readers’ Choice contest for Best American Riverfront.
Wilmington “waged a tight but winning battle against Spokane for the top spot and landed the No. 1 slot after a frenzied weekend of voting,” the online pollsters reported.
Wilmington lies on the eastern shore of the Cape Fear River, which winds up into easternmost North Carolina from the Atlantic Ocean adjacent to Bald Head Island. Wilmington is associated with the many barrier island destinations for which it serves as a gateway, including Wrightsville Beach.
The rest of the Top 10 vote-getting cities for Best American Riverfront, in order, are Davenport, Iowa; Dubuque, Iowa; Pittsburgh; Louisville, Kentucky; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Savannah, Georgia; Detroit; Richmond, Virginia.
Hunter meat donations easier in Montana
HUNTING – A new law is making it easier for Montana hunters to donate big-game meat to food banks.
The 2013 Legislature passed a bill creating a way for hunters to donate $1 or more to Hunters Against Hunger when they buy big-game hunting licenses. The money is used to process donated wild-game meat for distribution to food banks.
In the past, hunters, local food banks or other donors had to pay for professional processing before game meat could be legally donated.
Jeff Gutierrez with the Montana Food Bank Network says hunters have donated about $70,000 toward processing fees.
The Food Bank Network had 15 processors working with Hunters Against Hunger.
Confidentiality asked for trappers’ identities
HUNTING – Montana wildlife officials are proposing to keep confidential the names of hunters and trappers who kill any wildlife in the state.
Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Ron Aasheim said Tuesday the proposal for the legislature is in response to complaints that information obtained under Montana’s right-to-know laws is being used to harass and threaten some hunters and trappers.
Some wolf hunters reported being trailed by pro-wolf activists this season.
An existing state law already bars FWP from disclosing identifying information about hunters who kill bears, mountain lions or wolves.
The proposal would expand that confidentiality to trappers and include all game animals or furbearing species.
Deer, elk diseases concern hunters
HUNTING – The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife says it’s OK for hunters to eat meat from black-tailed deer infected in a disease outbreak in the southwest corner of the state.
Rogue District biologist Mark Vargas in White City says the disease attacks deer digestive systems, but the venison is as fine as wild game can be.
The diseases known as AHD and EHD have killed hundreds of deer in Jackson, Josephine and Douglas counties. Similar disease outbreaks have hit deer in Eastern Washington and the Clearwater region of Idaho in recent years.
Both cause fevers that send deer into water where the carcasses are often found.