Noted bear-hunting guide Wayne Bosowicz of Sebec will be on hand for the grand opening of the Cabela's store in Scarborough this weekend.

Bosowicz, who has been guiding at Foggy Mountain Guide Serivce for more than 30 years, will be on hand from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday for people interested in meeting him and talking about bear hunting.

Bosowicz is part of a number of nationally-recognized outdoorsmen who will be at the new Cabela's all weekend long.

Staff photo by Andy Molloy

A ruffed grouse challenges a visitor Friday in Augusta. The most common upland game bird in Maine, the ruffed grouse - or partridge - is encountered in woodlots across southern Maine.

With spring breeding season under way, male grouse are often heard drumming their wings to solicit the companionship of hens.

The partridge courtship only lasts a few days.

Females go it alone, seeking nests at the base of trees, under piles of slash and along overgrown stone walls. When encountered while roosting on eggs, the female may display a “broken wing” to draw predators away from nests.

Had a great phone conversation yesterday with John Chapman in Athens.

Chapman's been feeding deer throughout winters harsh and mild for the last two decades. A member of a national group known as the Quality Deer Management Association, Chapman wants to educate people about feeding deer. Earlier this winter, I wrote a column about the deadly diseases threatening the state's deer herd when humans intervened.

I'll admit, when John told me he wanted to talk about feeding deer, I thought for sure he was going to spend the next several minutes lecturing me. He talked about things like salt licks, bi-carbonate feed and deer yards.

Turns out, he's just as worried about people feeding deer as you and I are.

"If you're going to feed them anywhere near a road, you might as well just throw the bag of feed right out into the middle of the Interstate," Chapman said. "They're going to end up walking across there anyway to get to it."

The Quality Deer Management Association aims to protect existing deer yards, especially ones north of the "snow line" in Maine's northern reaches. Instead of allowing development to simply squash the yards that we do have -- further threatening deer habitat -- QDM wants to Maine's lawmakers to help protect the areas by installing measures that keep deer yards safe.

QDM also wants to educate people about the right ways to feed deer, Chapman said. Not only do people need to be aware of what foods could be lethal in a deer's winter diet, but he also wants people to understand the peril of over-feeding, domestication and mismanagement of deer yards.

"It’s a way of giving back to nature," Chapman said of his feeding, which he says he does only enough to help the population survive and not to fatten them up for hunting season in the fall. "I think (the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife) should organize it. It's a great resource we have, why not protect it?"

It's probably a discussion worth having.

-- TB

Maybe it's the nurturer in all of us. We see something that's cold, weak and hungry, and our instinct is to help.

By throwing food its way.

But when it comes to deer, the decision to feed them during a harsh winter can be a lethal one.

I've fielded more than a few calls and e-mails in recent weeks from people eager to show off photos of their backyards — backyards teeming with deer, deer that they've been feeding. Wondering whether or not we should be encouraging such behavior in the pages of our newspaper (and blogosphere), I called up local wildlife biologist Keel Kemper.

"We should absolutely discourage it," Kemper told me.

From the risk of life-threatening disease to the risky act of domestication, we should remember that deer — no matter how serene they appear — are still wild animals, after all. And, as you can read more about in Wednesday's "Outdoors Journal," wild animals should stay wild.

It's like being at the zoo: Don't feed the animals.

Photo by Jim Evans
Nate and Ben Libby make the most of a frozen brook behind their home Waterville in 2004. Their father, Steve, said that during his youth large sections of the brook were frozen which made for excellent skating when early freezes hit without snowfall.

"I had been keeping an eye on a spot near where I live where some Waterville kids skated. There was a big snowfall and I noticed they were down there skating, and it made a very picturesque scene.

Kids skating on a frozen brook spoke to some of the Maine experience. Especially because their father had skated in that same gully."

To order reprints of photos, click here.

Staff photo by David Leaming
A giant jigsaw puzzle of ice is broken up and moved along below the Fairfield-Benton bridges on the Kennebec River in March of 2003.

Mike McRae of the Maine Department of Transportation said the support piers of the old and new bridge contributed to inhibiting the ice downstream. Work was being done to remove the old piers.

Ice jams and flooding are again a worry this spring due to the heavy snowfalls.

To order reprints of photos, click here.

From Kennebec Journal staff photographer Andy Molloy. "Everybody was seeing the same thing at the same time. I thought it was really cool that we were sharing the same thing." Andy used 500mm and 600mm lenses, shooting at f/4, and shutter speeds ranging from 1/500th to 1/15 of a second. He also changed the ISO rating from 200 to 2000 to accommodate the moon's decreasing brightness. As the the lunar eclipse progressed, the moon got so dark that a higher ISO was needed to use a shutter speed fast enough to freeze the moving moon's image.

Ironically, Andy had to get down on his hands and knees to shoot the moon. It was so high in the sky that his three-foot-long tripod-mounted lens and camera was just waist-high at the viewfinder.

From Morning Sentinel staff photographer Jeff Pouland. "I felt compelled to photograph the lunar eclipse because the weather cooperated. Wednesday night the sky was incredibly clear and the scene was too beautiful to pass up. I started taking photos around 9:20 p.m. and finished taking shots around 10:15 p.m.

"Because the angle of the moon was so high, I was unable to use a tripod. Instead, I bundled up and laid down on my front porch. I used a 500mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter. I turned in four photos to show the progression of the earth's shadow moving across the moon. My first exposure was ISO 1600 1/400 sec at f/5.6. Photo number two was ISO 1600 at 1/13 sec. at f/5.6. Photo number three was ISO 1600 at 1/5 sec. at f/5.6 and my final exposure was ISO 1600 at 1/5 sec. at f/5.6. Since I was using a big lens and slow shutter speeds, I used my motor drive to capture some photos without motion blur. I also used BRAS from my days as a boy scout to hold the camera as still as possible. That's: Breath, Relax, Aim and Shoot."

From Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel chief photographer Jim Evans: "I was trying to show the eclipse happening in our area. Colby College's well-known weather vane would work well, I hoped. Luckily you can park nearly anywhere you want at Colby that time of night (as long as you don't leave your car there too long), so I drove right up to Miller Library. My fingers were numb by the time I got my metal tripod set up and camera mounted, but the passing students who were watching the sky and commenting on the experience made up for the hassle.

"The moon moves slowly across the sky and the weather vane spins with a slight breeze so making a night photo is a bit tricky. Boosting the ISO to 800 allowed me to shoot at f/22 at 1/20th of a second while using a 400mm lens and a tripod. Although I was hoping for more detail in the moon, I liked the slight blurring I got because of the feeling of this fleeting event. That's the sort of happy accident I hope for."