Out & About
OUTBREAK
Words to live by
As more than one mother has told her child at the beginning of the ice fishing season, “You don’t need to be the first one out on the ice.”
OUTHUNT
Idaho buck has dark secret
In his first deer-hunting season, 12-year-old Brendan Pearson of Lewiston bagged a modest three-point whitetail that has been capturing widespread attention.
The buck is exceptionally dark, with a black tongue and underbelly. Even the tail, except for a white tip, is black.
None of the Idaho Fish and Game Department biologists in Lewiston had seen a black whitetail, said Pearson’s father, Jeff Van Tassel. But they confirmed the coloration comes from a rare genetic trait similar to one that produces white and albino animals, except that black deer produce excessive amounts of the pigment melanin.
John Baccus, Texas State University biology professor, has studied melanistic deer for about a decade in Texas, a hot spot where about five of every 350,000 deer harvested each year are black.
He has verified black deer being taken in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and South Carolina. The first recorded report of a black deer came from New York in 1929.
“Needless to say it wasn’t a tough decision to get it mounted,” Van Tassel said in a story by Eric Barker of the Lewiston Tribune.
OUTSKI
Backcountry digs
What: Free slide show on planning ski trips based out of remote backcountry huts in British Columbia.
Who: By Randy Labeff and Lisa Helmbrecht, for the Spokane Mountaineers.
When: Monday, 7 p.m.
Where: Corbin Senior Center, 827 W. Cleveland.
OUTLOOK
Best fishing times
Lunar tables from the U.S. Naval Observatory. Be fishing at least one hour before and one hour after peak times. Applies to all time zones.
(* indicates best days.)
Through Dec. 23
* Today
5:45 p.m., 6:05 a.m.
Monday
6:30 p.m., 6:50 a.m.
Tuesday
7:15 p.m., 7:45 a.m.
Wednesday
8:10 p.m., 8:40 p.m.
Thursday
9:05 p.m., 9:35 a.m.
Friday
10:05 p.m. –
Saturday
11:10 p.m., 11:40 a.m.
Next Sunday
– 12:30 p.m.
See the Hunting-Fishing Report every Friday in Sports