My first glimpse of a bald eagle in Louisiana took place when I was just a kid and the one I saw was sitting on a nest made of a huge pile of sticks and branches high up in a big pine tree not far from my home in Goldonna. Someone had alerted my dad to the eagle nest and he took my brother, sister and me to the piney woods to see it. Unfortunately, too many other people knew about the nest and all the activity caused the birds to abandon the nest.

According to officials with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), the Goldonna eagle and just about all the others around the state disappeared. In the early 1970s, only seven nests were counted across the entire state. Not only had the birds disappeared in our state, the same thing was happening across the United States. The culprit responsible for the vanishing eagles was a pesticide we know as DDT.

The pesticide did a great job of controlling nuisance insects on crops. Many of the DDT-infested insects made their way into waterways where they were eaten by small fish, which were eaten by larger fish, which just happens to be a bald eagle’s main diet.

As eagles caught and ate fish, the DDT came with the eagle’s meal with the result being an increasing difficulty of the birds to absorb calcium, the absence of which made the eggs of nesting eagles thin. As a result, eggs were broken before they hatched.

Fortunately, the use of DDT was outlawed in the United States in 1972 and a slow but steady recovery began.

Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to spot eagles at inopportune times. I’m not looking for them but – BAM – there’s an eagle.

I was headed to my favorite fishing pond one morning several years ago. As I turned off the highway down the road to the pond, something caught my eye sitting in a tall pine. I saw the telltale white head of a bald eagle.

One of the most impressive sightings I ever had was one day a few years ago when James Ramsaur, director of Lincoln Parish Park, called me to bring my camera; he had something to show me. When I arrived at the park, I saw what looked like a feather pillow had exploded along the pond dam at the park. Sitting atop a tall tree nearby was a bald eagle. Ramsaur explained that an eagle had caught one of the white ducks making their home on the lake and enjoyed a meal on the pond dam.

More recently, I was driving home from town when I watched a bald eagle flying across a pasture toward a pond. The white head and tail feathers were dead giveaways.

While I have had the occasion to spot an eagle now and then, my wife has been denied that opportunity and I hoped she might be with me when I spotted one. Last week, I struck gold.

After a trip to town, I had noticed that the owner of a hay field across the road from my home had mowed hay that morning. Casting a glance onto the field of freshly cut hay, something caught my eye. There sitting in the field 100 yards from me was a bald eagle apparently enjoying a meal from a rat; snake; rabbit or something the mower had run over.

Since it was a few hundred yards from home, I hurried in, told my wife to jump in the car and come with me to see if it was still there. It was. We sat for several minutes observing the eagle which was being harassed by several crows. The eagle eventually flew to a branch on a tall tree across the field and having brought binoculars along with us, we enjoyed the scene for several minutes before the big bird grew tired of being harassed by crows and flew along the field giving us another spectacular view of the white head and tail as it flew.

If you really love your wife and she has never seen an eagle, be on the lookout for one to show her. I have a sneaking feeling I’ll be getting a chocolate pie out of the deal.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

I’m already looking forward to when the next full moon makes its appearance. Out where we live in the country, there is something mesmerizing to drive east down our road at dusk and see the full moon pulling itself up from the wood line. If it’s a high pressure, low humidity day, the moon is so big and bright it’s easy to see features on the moon’s surface.

The moon has made its way into popular movies. For example, the movie Picnic, starring the stunning actress Kim Novak, features the song Moonglow. Then there is Moonstruck starring Nicolas Cage and Cher where the eccentric old grandfather gazes to the night skies with the phrase “la bella luna.” In English, in case you don’t know, that’s “beautiful moon.”

Then there are popular songs that mention the moon. It’s Only a Paper Moon…Buttermilk Sky…Moon Over Memphis are some that come to mind but probably the most popular one in more recent times was Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival. This song contains a phrase that is often misunderstood and folks – including yours truly – scratch their heads trying to figure out how the heck it fits into the song. The mistaken phrase in the song is “there’s a bathroom on the right” when CCR was actually singing “there’s a bad moon on the rise.” Who knew?

As a fisherman, I love to be out on the lake at night during a full moon, casting along the shoreline for bass. When the moon is bright, you don’t need any other light other than what the moon provides to see where to cast.

The role the moon plays in the activity of fish was recognized a long time ago when in 1926, John Alden Knight came up with something serious anglers utilize today, the Solunar Table.

The table identifies four lunar periods each day, two major periods and two minor periods. Major periods last about two hours and begin when the moon is directly overhead as well as when it’s directly below. Minor periods last about an hour while the moon rises and sets. Knight’s idea is that fish become more active at these four times daily.

Following the Solunar Table, there are four lunar phases – new moon, first quarter, full moon and last quarter. Many anglers swear that 90 percent of catches come on a full or new moon. Additionally, some say you should only fish a full moon at night for best results and a new moon during the day.

All this technical stuff aside, a big bright full moon has always been special to me. Back in the day when I was in high school, there was nothing more romantic than to be courting my girlfriend under a full moon. It wouldn’t have been nearly as romantic if the night had been totally dark.

We didn’t know anything about a Solunar Table back when my brother, two cousins and I spent the night on the creek bank setting out hooks for catfish. It was more fun and our catches were better when we fished and camped under the light of a full moon. 

When I was a kid, I was exposed to a totally different kind of “moon” one summer Sunday morning in church. I was sitting with my first cousin, Doug, and in the pew directly in front of us sat one of the old patriarchs of Goldonna Baptist Church, an elderly gentleman everyone knew as “Mister Bud.”

As the song leader announced the song and asked everybody to stand, Mister Bud stood, bent forward to reach for a hymnal and when he did, the threadbare seersucker pants he wore silently ripped from waist to crotch exposing a bare bottom; he didn’t believe in wearing underwear in summer.

Even before CCR came up with the song, Doug and I were witnesses to a “bad moon on the rise.” We giggled so hard we probably needed to go find a “bathroom on the right.”

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

She’s old, gotten fairly long in the tooth and like most of us, we tend to slow down once this happens to us. There is hope, however, for one of this area’s favorite lakes, Lake Claiborne.

I was fortunate to live in Homer when the lake was constructed and watched water begin trickling over the spillway half a century ago indicating that at long last the lake was finally what it was designed to be, a brand-new 6,400-acre body of water that would provide recreational opportunities not only for the folks living in Claiborne Parish but around north Louisiana as well.

I found a lot on the Beaver Creek branch of the lake, put my money down and purchased the lot so I could enjoy what this new lake had to offer, and boy, did it offer some good stuff.

After purchasing the lot, clearing it off, I did something then I couldn’t think of doing now. With the help of friends, I built a pier and boat house where I kept my ski boat and fishing boat and there weren’t many afternoons after work that I was not out there taking my kids skiing and searching for some of the best fishing holes.

One particular hot spot for bass was a row of green willows that grew in the middle of Beaver Creek just a long cast from my pier. This was one of the hottest spots on the lake to ease up early morning before the sun began to peak over the distant trees to the row of willows, then cast out a Tiny Torpedo next to the greenery. I’ve had successful fishing trips since but nothing to me was more fun than being close enough to be able to glance over my shoulder at my boat house, cast the lure and watch a bass explode on it. Man, that was some genuine fun.        

I eventually moved from Homer, sold my lot and my trips back to the lake became fewer and further between and it was just as well because the red-hot fishing Claiborne had offered was starting to wane. The lake began acting like most lakes with some age on them as vegetation died away and things just weren’t the same any longer.

Something has happened to this half-a-century-old lake over the past few years. First off, the Lake Commission arranged to purchase and release in the lake a species of bass that would hopefully add a shot in the arm to the lake, Tiger bass. Genetically, they’re a special combination of native largemouth and those of the Florida strain that, while not having the potential of growing as large as pure Florida’s, tend to be more aggressive and more likely to strike a lure.

I recently visited with Fisheries Manager for Northwest Louisiana for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Jeff Sibley, who is responsible for the management of Lake Claiborne.

“In addition to the Tiger bass that have been released in the lake over the past five years or so, our department is also releasing pure Florida bass which may not be as easy to catch but have the potential of growing quite big,” Sibley said.

Another shot in the arm for Claiborne took place a few weeks ago when the Major League Fishing circuit was in Louisiana fishing on Caney Lake and Bussey Brake. This group has a habitat project they fund on lakes in the states where their tournaments are held.

“They choose a lake not on the tournament circuit and this year they chose Claiborne and contributed some $25,000 to improve the fishing habitat. Special fish attracting structures were put together and placed in the lake in several locations, mainly around the State Park with coordinates available so anglers could locate the structures that should attract fish,” Sibley said.

Time will tell if these “shots in the arm” will return Lake Claiborne to one that anglers will be hitting more frequently with the real possibility of bringing in bragging-sized fish.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

The month of May is here and I’m glad. It was with mixed feelings that I ripped April off my calendar and bid it good bye with good riddance mixed with a measure of thanks. Let me explain.

The month of April brought with it the bad temper Mother Nature can sometimes show. Some Aprils are sunny and warm; storm free and pleasant. Not this April, though. We had storms causing damage around the area. We had too much rain at times but the main thing that chapped my rear was the early-morning temperatures.

April is when I usually begin doing something I love to do and that’s take a basket of crickets, a comfortable chair and set up shop on the bank of a favorite pond. The bluegills are usually bedding by then and it takes a minimum of effort to fill a cooler with all the big fat bluegills and chinquapins I care to clean.

I keep a daily log of weather conditions and looking back over the log for April, I see 52, 48, 49, 51 et al as morning temperatures — and my favorite time to hit the pond is in the mornings. I’m not ready to have to have to wear a jacket to fish for bream so I’ll have to wait and see if May offers more comfortable conditions.

While April chilled us and didn’t let us take coffee cups comfortably to the porch to enjoy spring weather, something else took place that sort of made us forget about what a bad mood Mother Nature was in that month.

Every year around this time, song birds that have spent the winter in the tropics begin thinking about heading north where they’ll spend the summer and fall nesting and rearing offspring. During this time of time of year, they begin first gathering on the coast to restore their strength and energy from the exertion of winging their way across the Gulf. Birders from all over visit the coast to experience this spectacle, seeing birds they only see this time of year.

Once their stamina is replenished, the birds begin filtering north making their way through our part of the world, occasionally stopping by to sample our bird feeders that are usually visited by those native to north Louisiana – cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, titmice and such. Some that come through this time of year stay through the summer, rearing their young, while others bid us adieu after filling their stomachs before moving on.

Every year about this time, I start looking for one particular species of song bird, one that always stops by for a week or so before moving north. It’s the rose breasted grosbeak, a stunningly beautiful bird with eye-catching markings; a black back, white underside but what catches your attention is the crimson throat and upper breast the grosbeaks sport. The female has the appearance of a large brown sparrow. I’ll usually see a pair and sometimes two stop by to sample what’s on my feeder.

This year, something happened that made me forget that April robbed me of my chance to fish for bluegills. It was the sheer number of these beautiful birds that have converged on my feeder. I was thrilled when my first one showed up April 20. What I haven’t expected is the fact that the grosbeak flood gates opened and I’m filling my feeder several times a day because there have been so many.

One morning, I counted more than a dozen on the feeder, on the ground and on nearby branches. It’s not just me seeing them; reports have come in all around the area from folks seeing bunches of grosbeaks around their feeders. 

So April, I’m giving you a pass this year. Your weather stunk, but being inundated with so many rose breasted grosbeaks is a nice consolation prize.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

If I were to begin this column telling my readers how much I love to turkey hunt, you’d likely to be shaking your head and mumbling “there he goes again.” Okay, so turkey hunting is my absolutely favorite outdoor pursuit and forgive me if I mention my passion again.

Actually my purpose in writing this column focuses on someone else. The district attorney for Lincoln and Union Parishes, John Belton, is the focus, but first you’ll have to indulge me just a bit.

I started my turkey hunting career in 1992 when I downed my first wild turkey gobbler.

Something happened to me that day that totally redirected my interest in things to do outdoors. I fell for the sport of hunting wild turkeys like a bluegill for a cricket and for the next 25 years, I lived for spring and the opportunity to be in the woods somewhere to listen for the gobble of a wild turkey on the roost and take off through the woods to be setting up 100 yards from his roost tree before he flew down.

Facing reality, my birthdays seemed to occur more frequently than when I was younger and advancing age along with creaky joints have prevented me from taking off through the woods at daylight to be there when the gobbler flew down. I haven’t been able to hunt turkeys for the past few seasons but I have a storehouse of special exciting memories to polish off and recall special times and special gobblers I have run across over that quarter-century of chasing them.

Among my most favorite memories is one late afternoon among the tumbleweeds on a prairie in South Dakota when a long-bearded Merriam’s gobbler stopped just long enough, before flying up to roost, to allow me to draw a bead on his warty neck and squeeze the trigger. I ran out to claim a special bird. Why was this one such a prize? It was the fourth in the sub-species of wild turkeys I had taken to lay claim to a coveted feat. With him I had completed the wild turkey Grand Slam.

This brings me to my purpose in sharing today. I received a note from District Attorney John Belton last week sharing with me a photo of a magnificent Merriam’s gobbler he recently took, a bird that was the final step in his completing his wild turkey Grand Slam. I had to talk with him to hear his story, which was every bit as exciting to him as mine was to me.

“I started out with my first of four gobblers that I hoped would ultimately result in my completing a Grand Slam. I got a Rio Grande gobbler on a hunt in Texas,” Belton said.

“Then I had the chance to travel to south Florida where I was successful in downing a big Osceola. Next, I hunt property I own in Caldwell Parish and got my Eastern and this left just one more to go,” he said.

Last week, it all fell into place when Belton, sensing the completion of his mission was in sight, took advantage of traveling to Nebraska when a big Merriam’s gobbler fell to his gun.

Of these four gobblers Belton brought down, which one in his opinion gave him the most trouble?

“The toughest to hunt to me are those right here at home. Nothing is harder to fool than an Eastern gobbler, partly because the other three species usually hang out in more open country where you might see one 300 yards (away) while the Eastern makes its home in piney woods with thickets that are tough to see. Before I finally got my Eastern, I called a bird in within shotgun range but there was so much brush I couldn’t get a shot,” he said.

His job as district attorney is important and involves controlling every criminal prosecution in his district. Should there be a brief lull in the courtroom, I can imagine his mind for a brief moment drifting back to images of those four gobblers that occupy a special niche in his memory.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

I got a little excited this morning when I saw on Facebook that someone down around Alexandria had taken a photo of a special bird on his feeder. It’s a bird I start watching for about this time every spring.

Rose Breasted Grosbeak. I’ll start getting texts and calls from folks around this area who will send me a photo, asking what kind of bird this is. If you see one as they pass through and they stop for a bite on their way to their northern breeding grounds, I can guarantee it will get your attention because of the striking colors – black back, white under belly and a crimson patch on the upper chest.

As a novice birder, it all started for me as a youngster with my mom. She would hear an unfamiliar birdsong, pick up her tattered bird book as my brother, sister and I would follow her outside to find the bird she was interested in. This triggered something in me that has captivated my interest since those boyhood days.

I may be sitting on a deer stand and see a particular bird and for a moment would forget why I was on the deer hunt. I wanted to know what bird it was and I’d try to get a photo and dig out my bird book when I got home to try and identify it.

My wife and I keep our bird feeders filled with the anticipation that we just might see one that has alluded us for the past several years. In my opinion, the Painted Bunting is the most beautiful bird the Good Lord ever created. He must love birds a lot to have created one with red underparts, and a blue back with a bright chartreuse patch on the upper back. I can guarantee you, should you spot one, it’ll take your breath away.

Our introduction to Painted Buntings took place years ago when I spotted one on our feeder on a mid-April morning. Incredibly one would show up in our yard within a few days of the same time each spring, usually around April 15 for 10 years straight. For some reason, these handsome birds have shunned our feeder for the past several years but we have memories of those special times when they graced us with visits.

As beautiful as the male is, the female Painted Bunting has the distinction of being the only song bird we have with the coloration of a brilliant yellow-green. To see a pair on the feeder was a treat indeed.

This time of year, the cousin of the Painted Bunting, the Indigo Bunting is a frequent visitor to our feeders. Coloration is described in my bird book as an iridescent blue.

Another that is likely to show up is the Blue Grosbeak, slightly larger than the Indigo, blue but with rusty-colored wing bars.

During winter, folks in our part of the world have visitors that usually run in packs and they love to feed on bags of thistle seed we hang. They’re rather drab in color and you wonder how they get the name Gold Finch. However, these birds undergo a transition as they head north and if we’re fortunate, we get glimpses of them as the drab gray transitions to a brilliant bright yellow. Some of the birds wintering south of us are passing through now and I have seen a couple on my feeders showing off their bright yellow coloration.

There are some who can legitimately be called “birders” who are much more adept at bird identification than I am, making annual birding trips and keeping life lists of birds they identify.  For novices like me, I just enjoy trying the best I can to identify those I happen to see.

My old tattered “Birds of North America” is a constant companion as I flip through dog-eared pages to see if I can correctly identify the latest little bundle of flit and feathers I see in my yard. 

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

There have been a few things that have dictated the direction my life would take. First off, that 10-inch bass I caught down on Molido behind my boyhood home signaled the start of my love for chunking and winding a rod and reel after bass.

When the first wood duck came barreling down through the flooded timber intent on landing on the water and my old 12-gauge double barrel dropped him at my feet, I fell in love with duck hunting.

There was that time before the duck and the bass conquests happened, when our up-the-road neighbor, Bud Pennington, pointed out a lump on a limb where his squirrel dog was barking and bawling at the base of the tree. He explained that that lump was no knot; it was a fox squirrel. My aim was true and as my first-ever squirrel hit the ground, my lifetime love of the sport of chasing October squirrels began.

Continuing on my trek through my bank of memories, the yapping and howling of a pack of beagles signaled that a deer was headed in my direction. I was on my first deer hunt in Claiborne Parish near Summerfield when a 10-point buck burst from cover to the pipeline I was watching. Slinging buckshot in his direction, I watched him tumble and once again, I had found yet another sport that had me in its grip.

Bass, ducks, squirrels and bucks were all put on the back burner when I stumbled on the sport that has captivated me like no other. The date was April 13, 1992 when I accepted an invitation to chase turkeys in Alabama. To be honest, I really didn’t care about leaving the bream beds until my outdoor writer friend, John Phillips, tossed out nuggets — like free air fare, a shotgun, a guide and an array of camo clothing — that I decided the bream could wait a week or so while I took advantage of the opportunity to do something I had never tried, and that was to give spring turkey hunting a try.

When my guide, Skinny Hallmark, called to a gobbler on the roost and I heard him gobble, spit and drum as he strutted toward where I sat, no bass, duck, squirrel or deer could make my heart thump like mine was doing as the big gobbler stepped in front of my gun and I got him.

I decided then and there that I may never kill another one but I was determined to learn all I could about wild turkeys, how to call them and how to be sure there would be turkeys around when I wanted to hunt.

This led me to become a member of the North Central Chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) and to become involved in promoting the annual banquet our chapter had each year. I was impressed with the fact that the funds generated at the annual banquet are one of the main reasons we have wild turkeys to hunt in Louisiana today.

Last year I attended the banquet but attendance and involvement had been severely curtailed by the Covid pandemic that was successful in shutting down a host of worthy activities. The banquet our chapter held a couple of weeks ago was like a breath of fresh air. Whereas fewer than 100 were at the banquet a year ago, I scanned the crowd of some 250-275 enthusiastic hunters who bid on auction items to the tune of raising in the neighborhood of $50,000, funds that will go to activities favoring wild turkeys.  

“This was a building year for us, and we couldn’t be more pleased with the turnout and interest shown this year,” said chapter president Mike Rainwater, “and we hope to be able to do even more in coming years.”

For the sake of these special birds, I sincerely hope so.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

I saw something earlier this week that caused my pulse to quicken just a bit. Driving along the interstate, what I saw harkened back to this time last year. I saw a bunch of something red growing along the highway.

Crimson clover. When it starts to bloom, I have learned over the years that the red blossoms have a special meaning. Simply stated, it means that temperatures are climbing which signals the bream to gather on the shallow spawning beds or at least be headed that way.

There is something special about the spring bream spawn. When things get right, it produces what I have come to appreciate, and that’s “lazy man fishing” because there’s nothing quite as easy as filling an ice chest with all the bream you care to clean.

Why is it so easy to catch bream once you have located a spawning bed? Whereas bass and crappie pick out special spots to individually deposit their eggs, bream seem to love the company of other bream. Catch one and you could possibly limit out by tossing a baited hook, popping bug or small spinner into the same spot over and over until you’re done.

In addition to watching for the crimson clover bloom, you can watch the thermometer and when it hits and consistently hangs around the 68-72 degree mark, be assured that bream are on the verge of doing their spring thing.

The most popular sunfish is the bluegill, probably because there are so many of them and they’re easy to catch. Running a close second for sunfish is the redear, or shell cracker or as most of us know them, chinquapins. They typically spawn in water a little deeper than bluegills. One reason they’re so much fun to catch is that pound for pound, nothing pulls harder than a big fat chinquapin and they tend to be heavier than their bluegill cousins.

The state record for bluegills sits at 1.83 pounds, a fish caught by Tim Delaney in Iatt Lake in 2016 while the record chinquapin was caught in Caney Lake in 1998, a 2.87 pounder landed by Jerry Smelly. Incidentally, eight of the top ten redears listed in the state records were caught on Caney Lake.

Once the bream are on the beds, here’s how I practice the art of “lazy man fishing.” I have access to a private pond where I have fished for probably 30 years and I don’t think I ever came home from a trip to this pond without having all the bream I wanted to clean.

First, I’ll bring along a comfortable lawn chair and set it up under a big shade tree on the pond bank. Sitting on the ground beside me is a bucket of crickets along with a tackle box with a selection of small spinners. I’ll have an ultra-light spinning rod and reel prepared with a stout bream hook, a small lead weight a couple of inches above the hook and depending on the depth I want to fish, a Styrofoam float two to three feet above the hook.

It’s a simple matter of skewering a cricket on the hook and lobbing it into the spawning beds I know are there because that’s where they have been for all the years I have fished this pond. If things are right, the cork will bobble and then slip beneath the surface and here we go again. Often before trying the live bait method, I’ll pick up my other ultra-light rod that already has a small spinner attached and give it a chance first.

Once I’m back home, I’ll filet the whole lot of them save for a couple I’ll scale and fry whole. The first bite will be the crispy tail, sort of like eating a potato chip. Next I’ll “unzip” it by removing the top fin exposing the backbone I’ll carefully lift out to reveal all the goodness of whole fried bream has to offer.

Is your mouth watering yet? Mine is and I haven’t even made my first trip to the pond this spring.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

Donnie Parkman is a serious turkey hunter and with good reason; he learned from one of the best. His dad, V.E. “Blue” Parkman, was a turkey-hunting legend long before turkey hunting was “cool” in north Louisiana.

Blue Parkman died in 1995 at the age of 73 but before he passed away, he quietly and without fanfare was part of a handful of turkey hunters who went out morning after morning with dreams of finding a single turkey track or maybe even getting to hear the ringing gobble of a longbeard on the roost.

Today, there are thousands of turkey hunters new to the sport in north Louisiana and chances are good that today’s hunters will find turkey tracks, hear gobblers and have a chance to bring a strutting tom to the gun. I count myself as one of these late bloomers, having stumbled upon the sport I’ve come to love in 1992.

My introduction to turkey hunting, however, began 15 years earlier on an April morning in 1977 when I was coaxed to come along on a turkey hunt to the Jackson-Bienville wildlife management area by Blue Parkman. I admit I was curious about what hunting spring gobblers was all about but not curious enough to put on camo, pick up my shotgun and leave the bluegill beds.

As I followed Parkman through the woods that morning, listening to him coax sweet music from his old Lynch box call, I recall thinking that this might be a sport I’d get interested in somewhere down the line. Even though a gobbler answered the call and indicated he wanted to play before a real hen took him across the Jackson Parish hills, my interest soon returned to what I usually did on spring mornings, and that was set up on a hot bream bed. My turkey hunting trip to Alabama in 1992 and my first face-off with a strutting tom, however, changed all that.

Today, I chase turkeys anywhere I have the chance to go, and that included a trip to south Texas where one of our hunting party from Ruston included Blue Parkman’s son, Donnie. During that trip, I was able to take a Rio Grande gobbler while Parkman, following in his dad’s footsteps, took two. I sat down with Parkman to reflect on his dad’s legacy as one of north Louisiana’s pioneer turkey hunters.

“Dad was one of only a few turkey hunters in the area. L.W. Hamner, James Brooks and Levi McCullen and dad and very few others were just about all there were back then,” Parkman told me.

“If you heard a gobbler, it was a successful day and if one did sound off, every hunter in the woods took off after him. They ran more off than they killed but they had a good time trying,” he added, chuckling.

“I was in high school when dad talked me into going turkey hunting with him. We hunted at a game preserve over near Bastrop; they had a few more turkeys there than we did here,” Parkman continued.

“Getting to the woods early and getting as close to the roost tree as possible without spooking the bird were some early lessons I learned from my dad. One of the main things he taught me was the need to develop patience. Sometimes we’d sit for hours waiting for a gobbler to show up when I’d want to take off and find another one. I learned from dad just how important being patient is to being a successful turkey hunter.”

Donnie Parkman is continuing the turkey hunting tradition handed down to him by his dad.

“The times I enjoy most today are those times when I take my son, Jason, with me to the turkey woods. Dad passed his passion for turkey hunting down to me,” said Parkman, “and I owe it to my son to keep the legacy alive.”

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

Remember ragondin? I didn’t think so.

Several years ago, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, in an effort to find a market for an exotic wildlife species threatening our coastal marsh, introduced a wild game food source that was readily available and virtually free for the taking. Add to that the fact that ragondin is delicious and nutritious and Louisiana residents should’ve jumped all over it and added it to their list of favorite wild game to eat.

It didn’t work; Louisiana folks, well-known for being willing to eat just about anything, turned their noses up at eating ragondin, which is actually a nice name for nutria, or nutria-rats. I have eaten nutria and to tell the truth, it’s good.

I admit, however, it wasn’t easy getting the image of those ugly creatures with big yellow buck teeth out of my mind. Thus, nutria continue to munch away at our coastline largely because Louisiana residents weren’t willing to munch on ragondin.

Today there is another creature threatening to do harm to Louisiana’s fisheries and the LDWF is once again attempting to get residents to give this new delicacy, “silver fin,” a try.

Silver fin, like ragondin, is the bow on the big. It’s a nice way of saying “carp” — not just any carp but two species of Asian carp, exotic species that are competing with our native fish.

These two, the bighead carp and the silver carp, are already in plentiful supply in the Mississippi River and all tributaries and distributaries of the river. Both species are filter feeders, competing with such species as paddlefish and shad and the young of all species of recreational and commercial fish.

The more popular of the two, the silver carp, is the fish you’ve seen on outdoor fishing shows jumping out of the water at the approach of an outboard engine and slamming into boats and boaters, sometimes inflicting injuries and damage to boat windshields and electronic equipment. They can weigh up to 60 pounds and a flying carp smashing into a boater going 50 mph can deliver a blow like a Mike Tyson haymaker.

On a writers’ trip to south Louisiana several years ago, I had a 30-pounder smash into the windshield of the boat I was riding in, just inches from my face. After recovering from the shock of nearly having to replace my dentures, I thanked the Lord for strong plexiglass.

In an effort to slow the spread of these fish – they can’t be eradicated –  the LDWF called on renowned Chef Philippe Parola to find ways these fish can be prepared so our residents will fill their freezers and frying pans with “silver fin.” Hopefully this experiment will work better than trying to get nutria into our crock pots.

I haven’t had the opportunity to taste silver fin but from the video clip I saw, the flesh is white and tender and can be prepared into tasty looking dishes. The only problem is that both the bighead and silver carp have “floating” bones that are not easily separated from the flesh.

This calls to mind a fish I used to catch and try to eat, the chain pickerel or better known to north Louisiana anglers as the jackfish. Jacks are delicious but the flesh is filled with small bones which meant we usually released them rather than have to wrestle with all the bones.

I recall watching Ruston’s super-chef, the late Mrs. Ethel Stone, taking jackfish filets, bones intact, and using her pressure cooker to virtually dissolve the bones and making some croquettes or fish cakes, much like those made with salmon or crab meat. They were delicious.

Chef Parola uses two methods of dealing with silver fin bones. One method, steaming the filets, leaves the bones in the flesh but makes them easier to remove. The other method, deboning, is more complicated but can be done.          

So Louisiana, are you ready to do your part in creating a new market for a troublesome fish? If so, give silver fin, the ragondin of the river, a try.

You go first; I’ll wait.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com

Deer season 2022-23 is in the history books and here’s hoping that you have something to hang on the wall to show for your efforts. Don’t have anything? Maybe you’ve been doing it all wrong.

Daniel Colvin has access to 1,300 acres of family property in Union Parish, land not really known for being able to produce trophy bucks. Even so, he has mounts of 18 bucks hanging on his wall scoring between 150 and 170 inches, bucks he has taken from his Union Parish property.           

Is he the luckiest deer hunter around or is he on to something that allows the growth of bucks that size on property not known for the production of trophy bucks?

“I’m serious about getting the best from the deer in my area,” said Colvin. “I work at it all year long and there are several things I have discovered that have helped me and will help anyone who is interested in growing bigger deer no matter what kind of property they hunt.”

Colvin is offering what he has learned to any property owner serious about improving the lot of deer they hunt.

“I’ll contract with property owners to assess their land, see what I think is not helping and offer assistance in getting the right things done. If anyone is serious about wanting to grow bigger deer, the most important thing right off the bat is to control the trigger finger. You shoot a 120-inch buck and he’s never going to make it to 140,” Colvin said.

Controlling what grows on the land as well as supplementing food sources to give deer the best and most nutritional foods is important, he said. Control burning and timber thinning is an easy tool to trigger growing of forage plants that deer prefer. In addition, the use of minerals is of utmost importance, he noted. The principle need for foraging animals is salt because as soon as a deer gets a belly full of browse materials, he’ll head for a salt lick which aids in water retention.

“Minerals such as salt supplemented with calcium phosphorus is important because during the growing season, minerals are pulled from the bone structure to grow antlers and minerals provide those that are depleted,” said Colvin.

The establishing of food plots is another matter that is often not done in the best possible method as a property owner is more likely to take advantage of a logging set to plant a food plot.

“If you plant it and fertilize a small area such as this, deer will eat it up in a month. My food plots are usually three to five acres each and it will draw the deer that are in the area. I’ll often see 25-30 deer a day on my plots. These will draw in the does and when you attract them, especially during the rut, the bucks will follow,” he said.

Colvin keeps records of the deer on his property and he feels this is very important so that he can know what is there. The use of remote cameras is another tool he feels is quite valuable in keeping up with individual deer and seeing what they’re doing from one year to the next.

“I try to get my deer to imprint on a particular spot and my food plots help me accomplish that and cameras help validate it. Several of the deer I have hanging on my wall I have kept up with them for several years from what I see on cameras as well as shed antlers I find,” he said.

Anyone interested in visiting further with Colvin to contract with him on their personal hunting woods can contact him by telephone at 501-554-2824 or searching for him on Facebook.

Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com