AN OUTDOORSMAN’S

BY MARK WALTERS

PROUDLY SPONSORED BY STANLEY TIRE

Green is the New Red

Hello friends,

I have a bit of a predicament and this is what it is. My golden retriever Ruby has a litter of pups and I am trying to figure out out which one to keep. The way I live my life includes a dog at my side for much of it and that includes both my home life as well as when I travel in the outdoors.

My goal is a physically strong, ambitious, loving and self motivated female that loves water.

This week I took Ruby and her four, six week old pups camping on the backwaters of the Wisconsin River near Portage where the main test was how either Red or Green “collar colors” reacted to both swimming and long periods of time in a canoe while I fished for bluegill and crappie.

Saturday, May 14th

High 82, low 57

So to be perfectly honest almost since birth Red was the chosen pup to be my future sidekick. My reasoning is because she was the biggest female and as these pups are loose much of the time, very adventuresome. Yesterday I got the pups their shots and took them to a lake where Green was the only one that voluntarily swam.

Let me tell you four pups in the back seat of the truck had me concerned but nothing went wrong yesterday or on the drive to Portage today. My campsite would be on the water and I could drive my truck right up to it.

The first thing that I did was wade in shallow water and none of the pups went any deeper than their knees.. Next I built camp and rigged my canoe for fishing. I brought an old swimming pool liner along and set it up to keep the pups in that would not be a part of the test.

Another goal that I had for this adventure was to hit the crappie spawn. I fished here last year and put a hurting on crappie in the 10-14 inch range and was very excited for that to repeat itself. So Red and Green are on their first canoe ride and they wrestle, observe and sleep. I either anchored or tied up to a deadfall and did not catch any crappie but had some luck on bluegill.

Here is what I came up with after four hours in the canoe, Green slept very little and seemed to be exploring the inside of the canoe or looking at the world outside of it. Red did the same but less of it but slept a lot and did some whining.

When we went back to camp with 8 gills in the basket the mosquitoes were plentiful and I started a campfire right away. It was very interesting to watch all four pups as each one had to take a real close look at the fire. At midnight I went to the tent and decided to let all four pups and their mother sleep with me. On film this would have been comical as I was sleeping on the ground in a very small tent and every time I would fall a sleep someone would bite me in the ear or neck.

At sunrise I got up and just like in the truck, not a pup had had an accident. I put Green and Red in the canoe and went exploring, no crappie and very few gills at first. Like yesterday I had a very cool experience with a large northern pike that had grabbed onto a bluegill I was landing.

I also had a very unique experience that lasted for at least ten minutes with the largest snapping turtle that I have ever seen swimming inches from my hand. One of the gators or the snapper could easily have eaten a pup had it gone over board.

I had two interesting observa- tions on this five hour excursion, the same type of behavior from both pups and I literally witnessed the bluegill spawn begin. The size average went from 6-inches to 8 and the action was fast and furious.

So here is probably my decision with what is now just days before all pups but one are out the door!

Green will have her name changed to Red and like her master will live a non stop, push yourself to the limit way of life!

Is there anything cooler than having a new pup?