Much to dad’s disgust, gray-squirrel shooting excited me more than deer hunting until my 14th birthday, and why not? As the gerunds suggest, “shooting” implies action, and “hunting” sounds a tad pedantic to a kid.

Hank Shaw’s “Duck, Duck, Goose” (Ten Speed Press, Berkeley) crossed my desk recently and contains everything a home chef needs to create dishes for family and friends. Shaw’s work wowed me within minutes, a superb cookbook with excellent recipes, ranging from simple home-style to gourmet to myriad choices between. It goes on sale Oct. 1.

Thickening clouds roil over the barren tablelands, blotting out the remaining blue skies and greatly reducing the possibility of views from the top of Katahdin. No matter; it’s always a thrill to be high on the mountain whatever the weather, which will do as it pleases in this harsh Alpine environment.

As my ocean kayaking season winds down with the shorter, cooler days and decreasing water temperatures, I recently embarked on what may have been my most enjoyable day of the entire summer in an area I’d thought about exploring for a long time but just never got around to it.

Bowhunting for deer has one mystique impossible to deny. Simplistically speaking, an archer needs one tree large enough for a stand in a 15-acre wood lot and patience to sit still for long vigils, until a whitetail wanders past in bow range. That’s it for diving into the sport.

Rainy, cold weather in June raised havoc with ruffed-grouse production in mid-coast and central Maine, so partridge hunting in these regions should prove fair to poor this fall, and I’m betting on the latter.

In my youth, old timers claimed that gardeners could expect frost in a specific area six weeks after goldenrods first blossomed there. For instance, an old friend swears that if goldenrods bloom in his fields on Aug. 17, frost will hit his garden by Sept. 28 exactly 42 days later.

As water temperatures drop below 70 degrees Fahrenheit this coming week, trout and landlock fishing picks up for fly rodders and spin casters. The closer the thermometer gets to 60 to 63 degrees, the faster the action gets, and often in central Maine, that golden time begins during the third week of September. And surely, waters have cooled up north.