Recent rains have really been great for plumping up late-ripening blueberries, and while there are still a few wild raspberries, their season is mostly over now. The wild black raspberries or black-caps are burgeoning forth with robust building berries, and should also prove to be a great harvest in a few weeks.

We have now passed the peak of the insect season, but for sure, insect protection is still needed in bush settings and especially near water, both early and late in the day.

Right now is a good time to scout out the chokecherry crop that is now forming nicely thanks to the rain. Both berry pickers and bear hunters should know where the main patches are. They make good jam.

As the blueberries taper off mid-August, around the same time the fall bear season opens, they will be ripening nicely, and the bears go from feeding on blueberries to gorging themselves on the wild cherries, so do some trail cruising to find such patches, whether a berry picker or a bear hunter. Usually, youll find these small, shrub-like trees near relatively clear areas, not mature bush. If you are a bear hunter, especially an archery buff, this can prove a decent harvesting option. You may need to clear some shooting lanes and do consider several shooting lanes to allow for different wind directions bears have very keen olfactory abilities and you need this to give you advantage.

A major part of your bear planning must be getting your harvested animal cooling off and to a cold storage facility as soon as you can. Early season bears will be taken when the temperature is still warm and both blow flies and gut rot occur quickly.

Waterfowl permits become available at the first of August, and waterfowlers should be training and sharpening up your retriever if you use one. It is also a good idea to enhance your intended marsh right now, well in advance of opening day.

Puddle ducks, also called marsh ducks by seasoned duck shooters, like to land in fairly open stretches of water. This way, they can be sure the area they are landing in has no predators hiding, such as big pike or predacious snapping turtles. I use a scythe for such work, and like to clear an opening near an overhanging oak tree if there is one.

These trees drop acorns in the water later on and the ducks simply love them. If you prefer to shoot the divers such as scaup (bluebills), redheads, ring-necks and canvass-backs, often a larger body of water is what you need to find. I have had good shooting by building a small blind on a few rocks in the middle of large beaver ponds and small lakes for these birds

Of course, diver shooting comes much later than the marsh ducks, so in either case, do build your duck blind within good range of your enhancement in the duck marsh. In addition to the natural acorn forage already mentioned, mallards, teal and wood ducks also eat a lot of bulrushes, which abound around a healthy marsh setting, and if the periphery of the pond has cranberries, for sure youll attract ducks. If you are an ardent waterfowler do send me an email and let me know if there are enough interested, Ill do a feature on waterfowling and send it to you (for free) as a PDF file. If there isnt interest, I wont waste my time. I did the same for predator calling last early winter and had interest from right across Ontario apparently, there are more than Sudburians who read this column.

A couple more right-now projects are to get out your power ice auger and give it a run and rev it out for a short while to keep the gas in the carb fresh. By the way, its a good idea to use high-test gas in small gas engines such as ice augers, chainsaws and quads. Ditto for your snow machines, and charge up the ice fish finder battery. I will also take out all my firearms and give them a good slick-down of rust preventative. If you are a shotgunner, watch the store flyers for clay pigeons to be coming on special, as I expect they will soon.

What are you seeing on your outdoor expeditions? Do you need more info or discussion than found here? I love to chat with like-minded folk, so do email me.

John Vances column, Outdoor Trails, runs regularly in The Sudbury Star. Contact him at outdoors@execulink.com.

Originally posted here:

Outdoor Trails: Mid-Summer projects berries, bears and waterfowl - The Sudbury Star