Outdoors – Page 190 – Syndication Server

Toddler snowboards for first time, and of course it’s adorable

A 1-year-old is gaining notoriety for her remarkable prowess on a snowboard, but mostly for her gleeful expressions while riding the slopes.

A 1-year-old from Park City, Utah, is gaining notoriety for her remarkable prowess on a snowboard, but also for her gleeful expressions while riding the slopes.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zgPFvAIlVQ]

The accompanying video shows Maeve Perry receiving her first lessons – and looking like a natural – from parents John and Melissa Perry.

“Just a little break from your day to see the cutest little one year old snowboarding at Woodward and Park City over the holidays,” John Perry wrote on Instagram.

Snug in her turquoise outfit, purple-patterned gloves and white helmet, Maeve executes a flawless first run into daddy’s arms. Later in the footage, as Maeve’s speed increases, her smile widens.

Quite possibly, however, eating fresh snow and soaring across the landscape in a chairlift with her parents and older brother, Johnny, were comparable highlights for the toddler.

John Perry told For The Win Outdoors that the footage was captured on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at Woodward Park City and Park City Mountain.

“We try and give our kids the option to do all the activities we love together as a family,” he said. “My son, Johnny, learned to snowboard when we was 14 months old, the same week he learned how to walk.

“We get them exposed to being in ski socks, heavy ski gear and helmets first and then take them to the mountain. This makes it really easy for them to transition.”

Perry said Johnny helped Maeve prepare for her first snowboarding trip by pulling her around in the house on a board, in full gear.

The YouTube video showing Maeve’s snowboarding adventure has garnered 25,000 views, and Perry’s Instagram clip also has been widely viewed. Several media outlets have picked up on the story, helping to spread the cuteness.

Said Perry: “A lot of people also ask if we want our kids to be Olympians or go to the X Games and the answer is no. We just want them to enjoy snowboarding, hopefully as much as we do.”

–Video and images are courtesy of John Perry

Shark knocks paddler into water, puts hole in craft

A 58-year-old man out for a morning paddle was suddenly knocked into the water when a great white shark bit into the back of his surf ski, leaving a gaping hole in the kayak-like craft. Roger Swinney was paddling from Nahoon Beach to East London …

A 58-year-old man out for a morning paddle was suddenly knocked into the water when a great white shark bit into the back of his surf ski, leaving a gaping hole in the kayak-like craft.

Roger Swinney was paddling from Nahoon Beach to East London Harbor in South Africa last Thursday morning when the incident occurred.

“I felt amazingly calm during the attack, it was only afterwards on the beach I felt overwhelmed by all that happened,” Swinney told USA Today/For The Win Outdoors on Monday. “I thought it was going to attack again so I did feel a sense of dread. I was just focused on staying in my flooded ski and getting away.”

Also on FTW Outdoors: Shark affects world-famous yacht race

A nearby paddler heard the shark’s initial impact. John de Smith told Surfski.info that it “sounded like a bang and then a splash; I assumed he had fallen out and banged his boat as he fell.”

Swinney told Surfski.info that he fell off the surf ski again and “as I remounted the second time, I saw the swirl and tips of the shark’s fins.”

The surf ski, a long and narrow craft similar to a kayak, began filling with water and was slowly sinking. A crescent hole in the surf ski outlined the jaws of the shark.

“I shouted, ‘Shark!’ to my son [Luke],” Swinney told Times Live of South Africa. “I paddled towards my son who was 50 meters behind me. My boat was sinking slowly, and I couldn’t paddle.”

Luke Swinney, 16, is a local lifeguard and was hailed a hero for rescuing his father, according to DispatchLive.

“Luke came along with his ski and told me to lie on the back and we paddled to the shore,” Roger Swinney told DispatchLive. “I am so proud of him. This was his first job and he made his first rescue.”

Two other paddlers retrieved Swinney’s abandoned surf ski and towed it to shore. Upon hearing what happened, some nearby surfers quickly got out of the water.

“This is the first time a shark has hit me,” Swinney told DispatchLive. “I am thankful to the Lord. I woke up and prayed this morning, and I am happy God saved me.”

Swinney is aware that there had been shark attacks at the same beach before and some surfers died, but he said he isn’t deterred from paddling.

“But I might paddle on the river for a bit,” he told SurfSki.info.

Photos of Swinney and the surf ski courtesy of Caron Williams. Photo of Roger and Luke Swinney courtesy of the Swinney family.

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Shark affects world-famous yacht race

Shark affects world-famous Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race.

The SHK Scallywag, a yacht from Hong Kong, was running in second place in the world-famous Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race when a fateful collision with a shark Friday night prevented a podium finish for skipper David Witt.

For much of the day Friday, Scallywag led the 630-nautical-mile race from New South Wales to Tasmania before Comanche overtook it late in the day and crossed the finish line early Saturday morning to win the 75th edition of the race, which began Thursday.

Scallywag eventually wound up taking fourth because of the accident, finishing an hour behind second-place InfoTrack and 38 seconds behind third-place Wild Oats XI, a nine-time winner of the race. The top three are all from New South Wales.

“We hit a shark and it wrapped around the rudder,” Witt explained to the Australian Associated Press. “We had to drop all the sails and back the boat up to get the dead shark off the rudder. We lost about four miles. It basically cost us running second.

“We’re really, really disappointed because it’s probably the best the team has ever sailed.

“I’ve never been so upset with a result in my life because I know we didn’t do anything wrong.”

Also on FTW Outdoors: Spearfisherman dragged out to sea by great white shark

Witt was visibly upset about the incident and his fourth-place finish in the race, considered to be one of the most difficult yacht races in the world.

“It was my 24th [Hobart] race with still no win,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s breaking my heart. These were some of the best conditions we’ve had, but we still didn’t win. I’m gutted we didn’t place in the top three.”

The collision with the shark occurred off the coast of Tasmania, crewman Larry Jamison told The Sydney Morning Herald.

“We were running downwind when we heard a bang,” he said. “We couldn’t steer the boat so I thought we had broken the rudder.

“There was a 2½-meter shark [8.2 feet] wrapped around the rudder, so we had a bit of drama getting the sails down and clearing the shark. He flipped away, but it cost us.”

Last year wasn’t any better for Scallywag, as a broken bowsprit forced its withdrawal from the race.

“We’ll be back,” Witt told AAP. “The boss is pretty determined. We’ve got 12 months to get over it I suppose.”

Photos by Glenn Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images.

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Hunter acts fast when charged by mountain lion

A pheasant hunter in North Dakota relied on his law enforcement instincts when a mountain lion emerged from the tall grass and charged him. The frightening incident occurred Thursday afternoon in the Custer Mine hunting area near Garrison while Gary …

A pheasant hunter in North Dakota relied on his law enforcement instincts when a mountain lion emerged from the tall grass and charged him.

The frightening incident occurred Thursday afternoon in the Custer Mine hunting area near Garrison while Gary Gorney of Minot was on his cellphone, according to the Minot Daily News.

When his dog suddenly went on point, Gorney quickly put his cellphone in his pocket, expecting a pheasant to take flight. Instead, a mountain lion appeared and charged him.

“I dropped my dad’s 100-year-old double-barrel [shotgun], I don’t even remember doing that, and went for the sidearm that I carry with me underneath my jacket,” Gorney told the Minot Daily News. “My instincts as a military law enforcement officer took over. There was no thought process. It was self-defense.”

Also on FTW Outdoors: Spearfisherman dragged out to sea by great white shark

The attacking mountain lion was 10 feet away when Gorney shot the animal with a 9-millimeter handgun. Gorney’s dogs then went after the mountain lion. He said he wanted to pull the dogs off, “but I wasn’t going anywhere near that lion.”

“I bow-hunt the Badlands and I’ve been hunting the Custer Mine for 31 years and I’ve never seen a cat,” Gorney told the Minot Daily News. “I felt like I was in Africa hunting. The grass perfectly matched it’s coat.”

Gorney reported the incident to the North Dakota Game and Fish Department. Officials determined it was a female mountain lion that weighed more than 100 pounds.

Photo courtesy of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department.

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Surfer bitten by shark off SoCal island airlifted to hospital

A 37-year-old surfer bitten by a shark northwest of Santa Rosa Island on Saturday was airlifted by the Coast Guard to the mainland and transported to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital where he was reported in stable condition. “This was the best …

“This was the best possible outcome to a truly terrifying situation,” Lt. Benjamin McIntyre-Coble, the Coast Guard Sector-Los Angeles/Long Beach command duty officer, said in a Coast Guard bulletin.

Coast Guard helicopter crew from Air Station San Francisco FOB Mugu medevacs shark bite victim to saftey and transports him to Santa Barbara Airport where EMTs awaited. pic.twitter.com/zyDewiQWpU

— USCG Los Angeles (@USCGLosAngeles) December 22, 2019

The incident occurred around 3 p.m. off the island that is located 26 miles from Santa Barbara, Calif., according to the Coast Guard report.

An unnamed friend told KEYT that the surfer believed it to be a great white shark, and the attack was so powerful it shattered his surfboard into pieces.

Also on FTW Outdoors: Spearfisherman dragged out to sea by great white shark

One twitter user claiming to be a boat partner of the victim said that his friend was paddling out to surf from the boat when the shark attacked from below and launched him into the air. He was said to have suffered four lacerations across his right thigh. He swam to the boat and the Coast Guard was called.

A tourniquet, as can be seen in the Coast Guard video, was applied to the right leg.

“This individual was fortunate to be with a buddy who was able to communicate their position to the Coast Guard,” McIntyre-Coble said. “We are all happy that he will be able to be with his family in time for the holidays.”

KEYT reported that the victim was set to be released Sunday night. KSBY said the surfer was expected to make a full recovery.

Photo courtesy of the Coast Guard.

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Hunter confesses in case of mistaken identify

A hunter in Wisconsin made a potential $6,000 mistake when she believed she was shooting at a deer and wound up killing two elk instead. Salina Ann Beltran of Mukwonago was hunting from a tree stand on private property in Rusk County last month as …

A hunter in Wisconsin made a potential $6,000 mistake when she believed she was shooting at a deer and wound up killing two elk instead.

Salina Ann Beltran of Mukwonago was hunting from a tree stand on private property in Rusk County last month as her fiancé hunted elsewhere on the property, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Ladysmith News reported Friday.

Beltran, 41, spotted what she thought was a buck deer walking towards her, telling wardens “I saw it was a fork antlered and its head was down.”

When the animal turned broadside, she fired a shot. The animal didn’t react, so she fired twice more, prompting the animal to turn back and disappear from sight. Moments later, she looked through her rifle scope and an animal came into view.

“All I saw was the body and it looked like the same animal,” Beltran said in the warden reports. She took four more shots.

Also on FTW Outdoors: Spearfisherman dragged out to sea by great white shark

After waiting 45 minutes, she began the process of tracking the animal and came upon a fork-horn bull elk and then noticed a spike elk laying about 40 yards away. She immediately recognized her errors and called in her fiancé Jeff Anderson, also of Mukwonago.

They went to the Department of Natural Resources service center in Ladysmith and filed a report about the mistakes.

Court records showed that Beltran was issued a $6,152.50 citation for hunting elk during closed season, a non-traffic ordinance violation, the Journal Sentinel reported. She is scheduled to appear in court Jan. 14.

The report stated that Beltran and Anderson were in tears upon leaving the DNR office.

Fortunately, the animals did not go to waste. One elk was donated to the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission for distribution to tribal members in northern Wisconsin. The other was butchered locally and distributed to food pantries.

While there has been other incidents where hunters have mistakenly shot elk in Wisconsin, this is the first time a hunter has mistakenly shot two elk.

DNR chief conservation warden Todd Schaller told the Journal Sentinel the incident highlights two points about hunting and safety.

“The first is to be sure of your target and what’s beyond,” he said. “The other is, if you make a mistake, be honest and contact the department.”

Photo of an elk courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

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Spearfisherman dragged out to sea by great white shark

An eyewitness believed a spearfisherman had been fatally attacked by a great white shark after noticing only a fishing floatation buoy bobbing in the waters 200 yards off South Africa with no sign of the diver. But when rescuers arrived on the …

But when rescuers arrived on the scene, they found spearfisherman Theodore Prinsloo safely on shore with an amazing story to share about a 16-foot shark dragging him out to sea, this according to the National Sea Rescue Institute Plettenberg Bay station commander Marc Rodgers.

Prinsloo was on vacation with his family in Nature’s Valley, a holiday resort on the Southern Cape coast, when the incident occurred Wednesday.

He noticed a shark swimming in the vicinity he was spearfishing and suspected it was the same shark that had been seen in the area the day before. Prinsloo had kept close to the rocks as the shark swam up close to him at one point.

Also on FTW Outdoors: Watch shark knock 7-year-old boy off surfboard

Twenty minutes after hooking a 20-pound musselcracker fish onto his fishing floatation buoy, the shark reappeared and grabbed the fish and began swimming out to sea, dragging Prinsloo with it. Rodgers said the shark took Prinsloo about 165 feet before the diver managed to unhook the floatation buoy from his spear gun and escape the shark.

He then quickly swam to shore.

The crew aboard the NSRI rescue craft did make one rescue on the day, but it was too late to save the musselcracker, as only its head remained.

“We recovered the buoy, line and the fish head onto our sea rescue craft and Theodore and his family came to fetch the buoy and line at our sea rescue base,” Rodgers said. “Theodore [said] that he needs the buoy to go spearfishing tomorrow and is grateful that NSRI recovered his buoy.”

Photo showing Prinsloo getting his floatation buoy back courtesy of the National Sea Rescue Institute.

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Yellowstone issues plea to tourists after wolf pups are killed

Yellowstone National Park confirmed Wednesday that two wolf pups found dead on a park road last month perished as a result of a car strike.

Yellowstone National Park confirmed Wednesday that two wolf pups found dead on a park road last month perished as a result of a vehicle strike.

The black male and female pups, which belonged to the Junction Butte Pack, were struck at sunset on the road between Tower Junction and the Northeast Entrance.

The park waited until a necropsy was complete before making the announcement. Yellowstone law enforcement officials continue to investigate the incident.

The Junction Butte Pack, whose territory spans from Tower Junction toward Lamar Valley, is frequently observed by tourists and its close proximity to people and roads makes the younger animals vulnerable.

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The park explained in a news release that, during the summer, the pack and its pups inhabited a den near a popular hiking trail. A large area surrounding the den was made off-limits, but occasional encounters with pups occurred on the trail.

Park guidelines state that tourists must remain at least 100 yards from all wolves, but some tourists ignored the rule to get closeup photos of the pups. Others illegally entered the closed area in an attempt to view the pack, according to the park.

Some of the pups apparently became accustomed to people and began to approach them on the road.

Wildlife experts hazed the pups repeatedly over the next several months in an attempt to make them afraid of people and paved roads, but such attempts are not always successful after wild animals become habituated to humans.

“Having studied these pups since birth, I believe their exposure to, and fearlessness of people and roads could have been a factor in their death,” said Doug Smith, Yellowstone’s senior wolf biologist. “Visitors must protect wolves from becoming habituated to people and roads.

“Stay at least 100 yards from wolves, never enter a closed area, and notify a park ranger of others who are in violation of these rules.”

A park spokeswoman told For The Win Outdoors on Wednesday that the Junction Butte pack currently has 18 members: 10 adults and eight pups.

The number was 21 in early summer, but a yearling male disappeared right around the time the two pups were struck and killed.

Famous gray whale ‘Scarback’ grabs spotlight off California

The sighting of a gray whale named “Scarback” has helped signal the beginning of the 2019-20 southbound migration off Southern California.

The sighting Tuesday of a gray whale famously known as “Scarback” has helped signal the beginning of the 2019-20 southbound migration off Southern California.

The adult female whale, believed to have been disfigured in the 1980s by a ship strike or an exploding harpoon, was spotted Tuesday morning off Manhattan Beach, traveling with a juvenile companion.

Both whales were later spotted by volunteers with the ACS-LA Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project, which operates from the Point Vicente Interpretive Center on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

“We watched two southbound GRAY WHALES today – including the very famous adult female “SCARBACK” from the Pacific Coast Feeding Group, who is seen every summer feeding off of Depoe Bay, Oregon!” Alisa Schulman-Janiger, the project’s director, exclaimed on Facebook. “We watched them as they hugged the kelp line for 45 minutes.”

The sighting increased to three the number of gray whales tallied this season by project volunteers, in what appears to be a late migration of gray whales from northern feeding waters to Mexican nursing and breeding areas.

Scarback is among an estimated 232 gray whales within the Pacific Coast Feeding Group, according to the Cascadia Research Collective. These whales forage during the summer between Northern California and British Columbia, while the vast majority of gray whales feed off Alaska.

Scarback was first documented in 1979, before sustaining her injury, and has had multiple calves. Her primary feeding area is off Depoe Bay, where most sightings have occurred. (The still-open wound, covered in orange whale lice, is most clearly visible from her right side.)

She has been observed several times off Southern California and last season she was spotted traveling southbound in December, and northbound in January, which is extremely early for whales to be migrating back to foraging areas.

However, last season was unusual in that more than 200 gray whales died and became stranded during the migration. Many were emaciated and did not appear to have enough fat reserves to make it back to feeding areas. (Gray whales, as a rule, do not feed during the migration period.)

NOAA declared the elevated number of strandings an “Unusual Morality Event” and is still studying precise causes of death. (The overall gray population was estimated to number just under 27,000 animals in 2016.)

It remains unclear whether the whales currently migrating south consumed enough prey to sustain their marathon round-trip journey, but Scarback and her young companion looked to be in good shape.

“Scarback was very large and robust,” Schulman-Janiger said. “She looked very healthy. So wonderful to see such a big, healthy-looking gray whale.”

–Top images showing Scarback off Southern California on Tuesday are courtesy of Alisa Schulman-Janiger. Bottom image, showing the whale’s still-open wound, is courtesy of Carrie Newall/Whale Research EcoExcursions

Man arrested for shooting at two duck hunters

A Georgia man faces charges after allegedly shooting at two duck hunters as they were preparing to hunt just before dawn Saturday.

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources said in a news release that a K9 officer named Rio helped uncover a rifle and other evidence leading to the suspect’s arrest.

The hunters called authorities after seeing muzzle flashes across the swamp in Bleckley County, and bullets striking the water in front of them.

Warden Jason Bennett searched the area and encountered an unarmed man emerging from the woods.

The man denied involvement but was detained while Bennett requested assistance. DNR Corporal Keith Page arrived with a K9 officer named Rio, who located a 30-30 caliber rifle in the bushes at a nearby pond.

Rio was then led on a track from the pond to the swamp and uncovered three spent shell casings from a 30-30 rifle.

The DNR did not identify the suspect or offer further details, citing an ongoing investigation, but said the suspect “will face a multitude of charges.”

–Image showing K9 Rio courtesy of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources