BCJ_SPRING18 Digital Edition

WHAT IS BHA?
BACKCOUNTRY HUNTERS & ANGLERS
is a North American conservation
nonprofit 501(c)(3) dedicated to the
conservation of backcountry fish and
wildlife habitat, sustaining and expanding
access to important lands and waters, and
upholding the principles of fair chase.
This is our quarterly magazine. We fight to
maintain and enhance the backcountry
values that define our passions: challenge,
solitude and beauty. Join us. Become
part of the sportsmen’s voice for our wild
public lands, waters and wildlife.
Sign up at www.backcountryhunters.org.
STATE CHAPTERS
BHA HAS MEMBERS across the
continent, with chapters representing 35
states, the District of Columbia and two
Canadian provinces. Grassroots public
lands sportsmen and women are the
driving force behind BHA. Learn more
about what BHA is doing in your state on
page 25. If you are looking for ways to get
involved, email your state chapter chair at
the following addresses:
• alaska@backcountryhunters.org
• alberta@backcountryhunters.org
• arizona@backcountryhunters.org
• britishcolumbia@backcountryhunters.org
• california@backcountryhunters.org
• capital@backcountryhunters.org
• colorado@backcountryhunters.org
• idaho@backcountryhunters.org
• michigan@backcountryhunters.org
• minnesota@backcountryhunters.org
• montana@backcountryhunters.org
• nevada@backcountryhunters.org
• newengland@backcountryhunters.org
• newmexico@backcountryhunters.org
• newyork@backcountryhunters.org
• oregon@backcountryhunters.org
• pennsylvania@backcountryhunters.org
• southeast@backcountryhunters.org
• southdakota@backcountryhunters.org
• texas@backcountryhunters.org
• utah@backcountryhunters.org
• washington@backcountryhunters.org
• wisconsin@backcountryhunters.org
• wyoming@backcountryhunters.org
4 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SPRING 2018
THE SPORTSMEN’S VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE
Ryan Busse (Montana) Chairman
Ben Bulis (Montana) Vice Chairman
J.R. Young (California) Treasurer
Michael Beagle (Oregon) President Emeritus
Ryan Callaghan (Idaho)
Hilary Hutcheson (Montana)
President and CEO
Land Tawney, tawney@backcountryhunters.org
Alberta Public Lands Coordinator
Aliah Adams Knopff, aliah.knopff@gmail.com
Donor and Corporate Relations Manager
Grant Alban, grant@backcountryhunters.org
State Policy Director
Tim Brass, tim@backcountryhunters.org
Campus Outreach Coordinator
Sawyer Connelly, sawyer@backcountryhunters.org
Collegiate Curriculum and Outreach Assistant
Trey Curtiss, trey@backcountryhunters.org
Southwest Chapter Coordinator
Katie DeLorenzo, katie@backcountryhunters.org
Montana Chapter Coordinator
Kevin Farron, kevin@backcountryhunters.org
Office Manager
Caitlin Frisbie, frisbie@backcountryhunters.org
Conservation Director
John Gale, gale@backcountryhunters.org
Northeast Public Lands Coordinator
Chris Hennessey, chris@backcountryhunters.org
Southeast Chapter Coordinator
Josh Kaywood, josh@backcountryhunters.org
Cover photo: Sam Lungren, Wisconsin Muskie
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
STAFF
JOURNAL CONTRIBUTORS
Michael Burelle, Sawyer Connelly, Jan Dizard, Hansi
Johnson, Jeffrey Jones, Kelsey Johnson, William Lakey,
Emily Madieros, Jess McGlothlin, Kris Millgate, Katie
McKalip, T. Edward Nickens, Brian Ohlen, Kasandra
Rodriguez, Tim Romano, Russ Schnitzer, Brandon Shuler,
John Squires, E. Donnall Thomas Jr., Maddie Vincent
Backcountry Journal is the quarterly membership
publication of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. All rights
reserved. Content may not be reproduced in any manner
without the consent of the publisher. For writing and
photography queries and submissions contact sam@
backcountryhunters.org. For advertising and partnership
opportunities contact grant@backcountryhunters.org
Published March 2018. Volume XIII, Issue II
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Heather Kelly (Alaska)
Tom McGraw (Michigan)
Ben O’Brien (Texas)
T. Edward Nickens (North Carolina)
Mike Schoby (Montana)
Idaho Chapter Coordinator
Josh Kuntz, josh@backcountryhunters.org
Backcountry Journal Editor
Sam Lungren, sam@backcountryhunters.org
Operations Director
Frankie McBurney Olson, frankie@backcountryhunters.org
Communications Director
Katie McKalip, mckalip@backcountryhunters.org
Midwest Chapter Coordinator
Jason Meekhof, meekhof@backcountryhunters.org
Public Waters Access Coordinator
Rob Parkins, rob@backcountryhunters.org
Northwest Outreach Coordinator
Jesse Salsberry, jesse@backcountryhunters.org
Membership Coordinator
Ryan Silcox, ryan@backcountryhunters.org
Merchandise Coordinator
Ty Smail, smail@backcountryhunters.org
Operations Specialist
Dylan Snyder, dylan@backcountryhunters.org
Chapter Coordinator
Ty Stubblefield, ty@backcountryhunters.org
Interns: L.J. Dawson, Maggie Hamilton, Kelsey Johnson,
Emily Madieros, Maddie Vincent, Dakota Wharry
BHA LEGACY PARTNERS
The following Legacy Partners have committed
$1000 or more to BHA for the next three years.
Lou and Lila Bahin, Bendrix Bailey, Mike Beagle,
Kip Carpenter, Sean Carriere, Chris Cholette, Dave
Cline, Todd Debonis, Dan Edwards, Dan Ermatinger,
Blake Fischer, Sarah Foreman, Whit Fosburgh,
John Garofalo, Stephen Graf, Ryan Huckeby, Thom
Jorgensen, Richard Kacin, Ted Koch, Peter Lupsha,
Robert Magill, Chol McGlynn, Nick Miller, James
Montieth, Paul Moseley, Nick Nichols, Jared Oakleaf,
Doug Okland, John Pollard, Rick Potts, William Rahr,
Adam Ratner, Jesse Riggleman, Mike Schmitt, Jason
Stewart, Bob Tammen, David Tawney, Lynda Tucker,
Karl Van Calcar, Barry Whitehill, J.R. and Renee Young
BHA HEADQUARTERS
P.O. Box 9257, Missoula, MT 59807
www.backcountryhunters.org
admin@backcountryhunters.org
(406) 926-1908
COASTAL CAROLINA
BY T. EDWARD NICKENS
A DOZEN YARDS UP THE BEACH, my buddy Lee Davis had a
fish on the line, and he struggled to keep his footing while thighdeep
and waderless in the October surf. I’d just fired another
curly-tailed jig back into the breakers, and the school of redfish
flipped out every time the lure hit the water. They charged the
jigs, batting them clear of the surf. At times I could see a half-dozen
redfish fight for the prize until one of them shouldered its way
to the head of the table. Lee held up a beauty, sunlight turning its
copper flanks to fire. And then there was another double hookup,
another round of hoots, another moment of pure fishing chaos.
We were standing on wild, uninhabited North Carolina beach, a
few hundred yards from our pitched tents and stashed sea kayaks,
miles from the closest blacktop, while a school of redfish
turned the waves bronze as they fought for our plugs just inside
the breakers. It was precisely what we hoped for, planned for and
paddled for – and how often does that happen?
If you’re savvy enough, maybe more often than you’d think in
this stretch of the Southern part of heaven. Coastal North Carolina
is home to some of the wildest country along the southeastern
coast. Cape Lookout National Seashore, where Lee and I were
on a four-day paddling trip, is a 56-mile-long ribbon of sandy
barrier island that doesn’t have a snow cone shack, t-shirt shop,
asphalt road or condo from Portsmouth Island to Shackleford
Banks. And it’s not the only swath of wild country on the North
Carolina shore. In the Albemarle-Pamlico sounds alone, public
waters cover nearly 3,000 square miles. The Outer Banks are well
known, but the so-called “Inner Banks” – the western shores of
North Carolina’s massive estuaries – are a public lands trove. The
Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge is 152,000 acres of coastal
forest and a funky wetland called “pocosin,” loosely translated
from the Algonquin to mean “swamp on a hill.” The Croatan National
Forest sprawls across 160,000 acres of prime deer, bear and
duck-hunting grounds, with miles of waterfront. It’s all open to
hunting and fishing.
With a salt breeze in your lungs, “backcountry” might mean
poling a flyfishing skiff through vernal marsh that unfurls to the
horizon. Or paddling a canoe under 1,000-year-old cypress trees.
Or gunning ducks in the largest hardwood bottomland swamp in
the East. Or paddling like crazy men three miles across Core Sound
to drag sea kayaks across the dunes, and watching flames from a
Tim Romano photo
YOUR BACKCOUNTRY
driftwood fire blacken redfish fillets and fresh-dug clams.
This is country that has been – and continues to be – imperiled
by some of the most serious threats to public lands in the South.
A training field for military fighters would have placed jets in the
air near two national wildlife refuges that winter tens of thousands
of swans, geese and ducks. Proposed offshore drilling threatens
some of the longest stretches of wild, roadless, Atlantic shore left
along the East Coast. For decades, hunters and anglers have led
the fights to turn back the assaults, because they know the wild
coast of Carolina is the last of the East’s best untrammeled shore.
The next morning dawned with a stiffening wind blowing
against a hard outgoing tide. Lee and I stood on the edge of an
unnamed inlet, recently carved by one of the strong storms and
hurricanes that pummel these islands. We were awed by the maelstrom
between us and the far shore. Whitecaps and foam exploded
across 600 yards of open water, while rivers of wind-blown
sand snaked a quarter-mile down the beach. Given our unconventional
payload of fishing, crabbing and clamming gear, a crossing
was out of the question. The good news: waiting for low tide gave
us more time to dawdle and fish.
While I pounded the surf, Lee dragged his boat through the
marsh, using a clam rake as a trekking pole. An hour later he
returned with grin as wide as the sky, and I could see dark shapes
stowed in the crab pot. “It was like mining for gold,” he hollered
from the boat, jerking his thumb towards several dozen clams and
at least as many oysters, culled, cleaned and ready for a fire.
Later that night, we pitched our tents in the lee of a low dune
and went into full storm mode: We tied the tent’s guy lines to
stuff sacks filled with sand and dragged the boats far above the
high-tide line. Lee stirred up a clam and oyster dipping sauce of
Texas Pete and malt vinegar from take-out packets heisted from
a barbecue joint on the drive down. A chipotle-slathered slab of
red drum filets bubbled on the fire, its flames lighting up coquina
shells in constellations of glitter. They were the only lights for as
far as we could see down the beach.
National BHA board member T. Edward Nickens is one of BHA’s
voices in the Southern wilderness. An editor at large for Field &
Stream and contributing editor for Garden & Gun, he’s as likely to
be found in a salt marsh as a cypress swamp, flyrod or gun in hand,
a wet dog at his feet.
SPRING 2018 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 5