Tagged: Fish and Game

A fishing license in New Hampshire goes for $35. That money helps fund the State’s six fish hatcheries, where the vast majority of trout that anglers reel in are raised. 

In a surprising – and to some puzzling - move late last month the New Hampshire House narrowly passed a bill a House committee recommended be killed.

Fish and Game officials say the legislation would make it far more difficult for them to enforce state laws designed to protect wildlife.

The bill’s supporters say it protects individual rights by requiring Fish and Game to meet the same standards as other law-enforcement agencies when it comes to searches.

But a law professor says Fish and Game already has to meet those standards. 

A Fish and Game official says four ill-equipped hikers from Massachusetts probably would have died Sunday on the Franconia Ridge had two Connecticut men not happened along.  NHPR’s Chris Jensen has the story.

Brian Croce and a companion were working their way along the Franconia Ridge in blustery, frigid conditions Sunday afternoon.

Then they saw four people - three men and a woman - huddled together behind a rock.

“The guy told us that they desperately needed help and to call 911 for them.”

A snow-machine crash has claimed the life of a Sunapee man. NHPR’s Chris Jensen reports.

A 36-year-old Sunapee man died Saturday morning in a snow machine crash near Stewartstown.

Fish and Game said the victim was Jason Montambeault who had been riding about 1:30 in the morning with two friends near Piper Hill.

The friends last saw him crossing a field near his camp.

When he didn’t arrive a few hours later they thought he had gone to visit friends.

But shortly after dawn they were worried and a search began.

Typically winter hikers try to balance what they need with not turning themselves into recreational beasts of burden. But when searchers from New Hampshire Fish and Game head into the mountains they don’t have the luxury of light weight.

They have to be ready for almost any contingency including uncooperative if not perverse weather.  And, that translates into pounds.

“I’d say my ruck weighs approximately fifty-five pounds,” says Conservation Officer Brad Morse, who often heads into The White Mountains looking for a lost or injured hiker.

While he was hunkered down in his sleeping bag waiting to be rescued from just below the Franconia Ridge a man from Maine says he was no longer worried about himself, but about the Fish and Game officers headed his way in the dark, poor visibility and high winds.

“You feel kind of horrible putting other people in that situation,” said Evan Embrey, 24, of Buxton, Maine.

Embrey told NHPR he was hiking on the ridge between Mt. Lafayette and Little Haystack Mountain when winds picked up,

“It was pushing me over, so it had to be gusts of 50 or 60 mile per hour,” he said.