It’s almost cruel to call Lee Kantar on a Friday afternoon in mid March, when he has an incredible assortment of numbers to crunch. But at least it gives Maine’s chief deer biologist a chance to stop calculating, if only for a few minutes, just how tough this winter has been on Maine’s deer herd.

“We have some temperatures up in the north where the mean temperature was minus 3 degrees for the month of January. That’s severe,” Kantar said.

The problem with being an opossum, taxi driver Christopher Lee once told me, is that “one strongly resembles an enormous rat.”

Lee spotted his first Maine opossum in 1997, while driving on Portland's Capisic Street one July night. He recognized the cat-sized creature immediately — the hairless tail half as long as its body was a dead giveaway. But his passenger exclaimed, “Wow! What a big rat,” and urged him to run over it.

It’s a white, white world out there and the whine of the snowmobile can be heard across our land. If you care about the Maine economy, that sound should be music to your ears.

“Hey Gang, Can you Say “WHITE GOLD!!!” a snowmobiler from Benedicta posted Jan. 30 on the Maine Snowmobile Association website (www.mesnow.com).

In a normal year, plenty of snow and an army of hard-working volunteers to groom the trails would be all Maine needs for a great snowmobile season,

I’m really hoping the Maine Supreme Judicial Court finally answers a question that’s been plaguing the outdoors community for decades: Does the U.S. Constitution apply to the Maine Warden Service?

On January 14, the court heard oral arguments in the case of Brent McKeen of Mars Hill, a 51-year-old ATV rider who was stopped on an abandoned railroad track on Aug. 5, 2007. Warden Joshua Smith didn’t stop McKeen because he suspected – at least not as defined by law –

The temperature is in the single numbers and the wind is blowing like mad. It’s that special time of year in Maine when you can fish while you freeze.

Why venture out at this time year? Because nothing cures cabin fever faster than a day’s fishing. Of course, many of Maine’s roughly 60,000 ice anglers have taken precautions against cutting winds and low temperatures. Their ice shacks – some closer to ice palaces – are havens of warmth, good cheer and good food.

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I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the latest round of bad news about the state budget didn’t cause much of a stir last week. We’re all numb from the steady drumbeat of bad financial news, as every newscast announces billions in bailouts and tens of thousands of lost jobs. So Gov. Baldacci’s plan for getting through the next six months hardly registers on the Richter scale unless you’re one of those 40 unfortunates who actually lose their state jobs (the

George Smith’s deer hunting season ended on opening day – and now he’s glad it did.

“Guess I was lucky to get a deer,” said Smith, the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine. “Didn't realize it the first day of the season when I shot it, but it was a nice 162-pound buck so I figured I'd better fire away.”

To no one’s surprise, most of Maine’s 170,000 deer hunters weren’t so lucky. Last winter was the

“Most moose hunters successful” the Bangor Daily News headline said last week. Which got me thinking about just how flexible the word “most” can be.

In his Nov. 20 column, John Holyoke reported 2202 moose were registered in the two week season in September and October moose hunt. He called the estimated hunter success rate of 76 percent “impressive.”

Well, if that rate holds up – the new southern Maine moose hunt doesn’t end until Nov.

Just before dusk, Glen Preston was walking down a rarely used camp road when he heard a branch snap. He looked up and saw a deer’s front legs as it stepped into the road 75 yards away. Then he saw the deer’s face and antlers. He looked down to cock his gun and when he raised his eyes, he saw a flash of white. Thinking it was the deer’s tail, he fired.

“I heard this ungodly, terrible sound,” Preston told me. Then his voice broke and he took a ragged breath. “You’ll

“Do you believe in hunches?” Carrie Stevens asked more than 80 years ago. She believed, because her hunch made her a legend.

Stevens was 42 and the wife of a respected Maine guide in the Rangeley region when she had a hunch that July 1, 1924, would be a wonderful day for fly fishing. She’d just created a large fly of hackle feathers and bucktail hair, so she decided to try it out at Upper Dam pool, between Mooselookmeguntic and Upper Richardson lakes.

The new fly