Year is ending, but tales of successes, failures offer perennial joy

With the dawn of 2012 comes the unknown of what a new year will bring. Some might find not knowing disconcerting, but for many of us, it is the unknown that adds the sense of adventure to life's pursuits. This is especially true for we sportsmen and sportswomen who revel in the outdoors.

Despite our best planning, there is no guarantee we will catch fish, bag a limit of quail, or that the weather will remain fair during our forays into the wild. That, as it has been said, is why they call it fishing and not catching, hunting and not killing. It's also the origin of the old saying, "If you don't like the weather in (fill in the blank with a western state), stick around five minutes and it'll change."

Sometimes everything falls into place and we bag the buck of a lifetime, whose antlers reach high and wide, or we catch a fish whose length and girth makes other anglers stare in disbelief -- but most of the time it doesn't happen that way. Something goes awry and we watch helplessly as the monster muley we had been carefully stalking bounds over the hill and out of our life forever. The knot breaks and the double-digit striper swims away with our favorite plug stuck in his lip and refuses to bring it back. Or the air in our float tube finds a previously unidentified pinhole just as we reach the farthest point from shore.

While these experiences can be disappointing, they also are the ones that grow into stories repeated around campfires for years and, sometimes, generations. Although in today's world, the campfire could be the flame on a propane stove or the glowing light of an LED lantern.

My friends already are testing several variations of the story detailing events surrounding my blown rifle shot on a large double drop-tine buck during the early hunt in Area 22 this fall. Few things can be as entertaining as a hunting story written by committee, but if you want to know what really happened that morning, you will have to ask me. I should have the truth worked out in another version or two.

On a much larger scale, two stories from 2011 that will be talked about in sportsmen's circles for some time to come involve black bears, gizzard shad and huge striped bass.

Nevada's first modern-day black bear hunt officially ends Saturday; it's a hunt that drew interest from hunters across the country. The State Wildlife Commission established a 20-bear harvest objective, of which no more than six can be females. According to the Black Bear Harvest Information Hotline, at least 18 hunters have been successful.

After first showing up in Lake Mead's upper reaches in 2007, gizzard shad have pushed aside threadfin shad as the reservoir's primary forage fish and are fast changing the recreational fishery's dynamics. Jon Sjoberg, the regional fisheries supervisor for the Nevada Department of Wildlife, said, "The average body condition of striped bass is probably the best we've ever seen. So the stripers are currently benefitting from the gizzard shad's presence."

Nick Olivas, a 20-year-old angler from Kingman, Ariz., probably won't argue that point. On a warm night in June, something smacked Olivas' 6-inch crankbait he was trolling during the Stripe-R-Rama XX fishing tournament near Temple Bar. What he thought to be a snag turned out to be a 52-pound, 15-ounce striper and, possibly, a new lake record. Unfortunately, Olivas was unable to get an official weight on his fish, so the old record still stands. However, thanks to the dynamics of storytelling, that fish is bound to get even bigger.

What tales await in 2012? We'll have to see.

Freelance writer Doug Nielsen is a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His "In the Outdoors" column, published Thursday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NDOW. Any opinions he states in his column are his own. He can be reached at intheoutdoorslv@gmail.com.