Squirrel season to open Sept. 1

Ohio’s squir­rel sea­son will open on Sept. 1 and pro­vide hunters with an oppor­tu­nity to take as many as six squir­rels each day, accord­ing to the ODNR Divi­sion of Wildlife.

Ohio’s squir­rel sea­son, a long-time tra­di­tion for many hunters, offers ample hunt­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for fox and gray squir­rels across the state. This is an excel­lent time to take a youth hunt­ing or scout for the upcom­ing deer and fall wild turkey hunt­ing sea­sons. Legal hunt­ing hours are one-half hour before sun­rise to sun­set daily.

Squir­rel sea­son will be closed dur­ing the one-week statewide deer gun sea­son, Nov. 26-Dec. 2.

The abun­dance of nut crops is a good indi­ca­tor of squir­rel num­bers the fol­low­ing year. Statewide nut pro­duc­tion rat­ings for fall 2011 were lower in com­par­i­son to those from 2010. How­ever, the pre­dicted squir­rel hunt­ing out­look for the 2012–13 sea­son is again above average.

Although oak pro­duc­tion was aver­age, sub­stan­tial increases in wal­nut pro­duc­tion occurred through­out the state dur­ing fall 2011. Increased food sup­ply in con­cert with an excep­tion­ally mild win­ter should lead to high squir­rel den­si­ties and increased hunt­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties this fall.

Pri­mary fox squir­rel range occurs pre­dom­i­nately in the agri­cul­tural land­scapes in the north­east­ern and west­ern regions of Ohio, whereas the pri­mary gray squir­rel range is in the exten­sively forested east-central, south­east­ern and south-central regions.

Gray squir­rels are more depen­dent on hard mast, and their abun­dance is closely tied to the mast crop the pre­vi­ous fall. Fox squir­rels are less depen­dent upon mast crop resources and likely use sup­ple­men­tal food in agri­cul­tural areas.

• More than 270 per­mits are offered to hunters wish­ing to con­struct a blind to hunt ducks and geese on select Ohio State Park lakes this water­fowl hunt­ing sea­son. A lot­tery draw­ing for the per­mits will be held at 16 state parks and two wildlife areas the morn­ing of Sat­ur­day, Aug. 18.

Inter­ested appli­cants must appear in per­son at a par­tic­i­pat­ing state park office with proof of a 2012 Ohio hunt­ing license, state wet­lands stamp endorse­ment in the applicant’s name and a signed 2012 or 2011 fed­eral duck stamp. Appli­cants under the age of 18 must have a par­ent or legal guardian present sign the per­mit con­tract, and they must pro­vide the required license and stamps.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing state parks include Portage Lakes and West Branch in north­east Ohio; East Har­bor, Indian Lake and Lake Loramie in north­west Ohio; Buck Creek, Cae­sar Creek, Cowan Lake, East Fork, Hue­ston Woods and Rocky Fork in south­west Ohio; and Alum Creek, A.W. Mar­ion, Buck­eye Lake, Deer Creek and Delaware in cen­tral Ohio.

Appli­ca­tions will be accepted begin­ning at 7:30 a.m. at most parks, with the lot­tery draw­ings at 8 a.m. at the park office, unless oth­er­wise noted in the list­ing below.

Each hunter can apply for only one duck blind per­mit, and no one may apply or draw for another per­son. There is a $50 non-refundable per­mit fee for the state park lot­tery win­ners. Most loca­tions accept cash, checks or credit cards for pay­ment, except for Portage Lakes where pay­ment is by cash (exact change) or check only. Lot­tery win­ners have 45 days to con­struct their blinds, and all blinds must be dis­man­tled by March 15, 2013.

Hunters wish­ing to par­tic­i­pate in the lot­ter­ies at Delaware or Indian Lake state parks are advised that the nearby Delaware marina, and the Indian Lake park office and com­mis­sary no longer sell hunt­ing licenses and duck stamps. Hunters should pur­chase their license and stamp from another ven­dor prior to the lotteries.

Water­fowl hunt­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties are also offered through lot­tery draw­ings for blinds at the Mer­cer Wildlife Area on Grand Lake St. Marys and the Mos­quito Creek Wildlife Area adja­cent to Mos­quito Lake State Park. The draw­ings will be held at the respec­tive wildlife area offices on Aug. 18.

There is no fee for use of the blinds at these areas. Lot­tery par­tic­i­pants must also have a cur­rent Har­vest Infor­ma­tion Pro­gram cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Infor­ma­tion on water­fowl hunt­ing sea­sons, loca­tions and restric­tions will be dis­cussed by park staff and wildlife offi­cers dur­ing the lotteries.

• After a week of inten­sive elec­trofish­ing and gill net­ting activ­i­ties in San­dusky Bay, Maumee Bay and their main trib­u­taries, offi­cials have found no big­head or sil­ver Asian carps in west­ern Lake Erie.

The Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources, Michi­gan Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice con­tinue to work together to assess the cur­rent sta­tus of big­head and sil­ver carp within west­ern Lake Erie bays and select tributaries.

Fish sam­pling activ­i­ties took place in response to the six water sam­ples taken from San­dusky and north Maumee bays in August 2011 that tested pos­i­tive for the pres­ence of Asian carp eDNA. Addi­tional eDNA sam­pling activ­i­ties occurred July 30-Aug. 4, and those find­ings will be announced in a few weeks.

• Wildlife biol­o­gists report 145 osprey chicks were pro­duced from 110 nests through­out the state this year. With the num­ber of breed­ing pairs steadily increas­ing over the past 15 years, the ODNR Divi­sion of Wildlife has removed the osprey from the state’s threat­ened species list.

The Divi­sion of Wildlife uses six cat­e­gories to list species: endan­gered, threat­ened, species of con­cern, spe­cial inter­est, extir­pated and extinct to fur­ther define the sta­tus of selected wildlife. Ospreys no longer meet the cri­te­ria for any of these categories.

The osprey’s breed­ing range has grown to include nests in 30 Ohio coun­ties, pro­duc­ing an aver­age of 1.8 chicks per nest. Ohio’s osprey rein­tro­duc­tion pro­gram was orig­i­nally started in 1996, and the goal of the pro­gram was to have 20 nest­ing pairs of ospreys by 2010. That goal was achieved in 2003, seven years ahead of sched­ule. Last year, 92 breed­ing pairs were reported.

No state tax dol­lars are used for this pro­gram. Efforts to mon­i­tor Ohio’s osprey have been sup­ported by the Wildlife Diver­sity and Endan­gered Species Fund, which receives dona­tions from Ohioans through the state income tax check-off pro­gram and by the pur­chase of car­di­nal license plates. Indi­vid­u­als who are inter­ested may donate online at wildohio.com.

The new Ohio Wildlife Legacy Stamp pro­vides an addi­tional fund­ing oppor­tu­nity to sup­port con­ser­va­tion, espe­cially among wildlife watch­ers, pho­tog­ra­phers, campers, hik­ers and oth­ers who sup­port wildlife causes. The $15 col­lectible Ohio Wildlife Legacy Stamp is avail­able annu­ally and high­lights a dif­fer­ent wildlife species each year cho­sen through a photo competition.

Until next time, Good Hunt­ing and Good Fishing!

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Aug 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.