I just read that Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm has declared this Saturday a meat-free day. I have three words for that: Ha. Ha. Ha.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s hard for anyone to argue she has done a superb job as Michigan’s executive officer, but I’m not in the army of Jenny-haters. In my view, one brand of politician isn’t noticably more reprehensible than the other.

But this is like vegetarianism in general: Dumb. My teen-aged children have known since they were small that our species developed opposable thumbs a few million years ago for the express purpose of grasping tools to stab animals that are made of meat. If we were meant to eat plants, we would have longer necks and extra stomachs. Instead we have larger brain cases, bipedal gait, eyes in the front and yes, opposable thumbs. In other words, we’re not here to graze.

So when this idiotic meat-out comes on Saturday, at least one bipedal hunter will open the freezer and grasp a piece of elk or deer meat, stand over it while it’s seasoned and grilled, tuck into it with tools and enjoy every savory bite.

Because he can.

So far, so good. Fisheries biologists from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources are several weeks into electrofishing surveys in the Chicago Area Waterways System, and according to department spokesman Chris McCloud they have not found any Asian carp.

That’s good news, but they aren’t finished. This week they surveyed the Calumet River, one of the areas of concern for folks who are worried that the ecosystem-devastating carp will eventually establish breeding populations in Lake Michigan and ultimately all the Great Lakes.

In an electrofishing survey, biologists and fish techies zap the water with a DC current that stuns all the fish below. The fish bob to the surface, where they’re counted, and within a few minutes most of them swim away unharmed. The technique is favored by biologists because if it’s in there, it’s coming up.

McCloud told me on Wednesday that the teams had found plenty of common carp but no bigheads or silvers. This week they surveyed two areas near the mouth of the Calumet River and a section of Lake Calumet.

The first Calumet River site, right near the mouth, produced a handful of panfish and several hundred juvenile yellow perch. At the second site, a but further upstream, they found banded killifish, yellow perch and one spottail shiner. The third site, in Lake Calumet, yielded 47 common carp, 18 bigmouth buffalo, a few panfish and some minnow types.

But no Asian carp.

OK, so you’re technically not giving a frog a hand, per se. It’s more about letting those folks who keep tabs on our wilder places what’s happening with the amphibians. They can’t be everywhere, so they need the help.

I’m talking about the Michigan Frog and Toad Survey. It’s a Department of Natural Resources and Environment program in which regular people help biologists figure out how the frogs and toads are doing. That’s important because those critters tell us how clean the air and water are by their very existence.

It’s pretty easy. You establish a route of 10 ponds or wetlands, and then three times during the spring you visit each of your spots and listen.

In early April you hear wood frogs and spring peepers. In May it’s tree-frog city. By June the green frogs rule. There are others of course, leopard frogs, chorus frogs, bull frogs and American toads. You keep track of how many your hear and return the survey to the DNRE. Participants receive a CD with the calls of all Michigan’s frog and toads so they know what they’re hearing.

Depending on your distances, each run takes around an hour, give or take. It’s an excellent reason to get outside, and it’s often remarkable just how loud those ponds get after dark. Kids love it, and it’s a great way to connect them to their world, the lack of which is a persistent problem in my opinion.

At the moment there are about 200 routes statewide, and they’re always looking for more. If you’re interested, call or e-mail Lori Sargent at (517) 373-9418 or SargentL@Michigan.gov.

OK, here’s a quick quiz. Which of the following would you consider the bigger slob?

a) Someone who shoots a deer just so it can be used as bait to attract eagles for viewing?

b) Someone who shoots a deer out of season for any reason?

c) Someone who uses more than 100 gallons of bait — that’s 50 times the legal amount in the Upper Peninsula — to attract deer?

d) Someone who shoots a deer, strips its backstraps out and leaves the rest.

It’s a tough call. Each of the above behaviors is reprehensible, disgusting and gives legitimate, law-abiding deer hunters a bad name. Well, here’s the good news: YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHOOSE! The very same morons did all those things!

OK, so no one has been convicted yet. But conservation officers from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment are pursuing charges. They say they received a citizen complaint about a large bait pile in a remote area of Delta County. When they checked out the offending deer camp, they found the massive bait pile, a blood trail and a freshly killed deer on the ice of a nearby lake.

When the owner and his pack of imbeciles returned from snowmobiling, they admitted the whole thing. And they still had the backstraps.

Genius.

Here’s some good news for pheasant and quail hunters: U.S. Ag secretary Tom Vilsack announced over the weekend that a new CRP signup will open up later this year, and there also will be more acreage allotted for specific habitats. He made the announcements at Pheasants Forever’s National Pheasant Fest in Des Moines, Iowa.

CRP, of course, is the practice of paying farmers and landowners for keeping their land in a natural state to provide wildlife habitat. There are 4.4 million acres of CRP land expiring this year, which means it could revert to crop production. In the next three years another 14.2 million acres of CRP are scheduled to expire. The new signup will hopefuly offset those losses.

Vilsack has said he aims to keep CRP levels at or near the 32 million acres it’s authorized for. He also announced acreages changes for the following conservation practices:

– 100,000 additional acres for upland bird habitat buffers in the south and midwest.

– 50,000 additional acres for duck nesting habitat, monstly in the Dakotas.

– An additional 150,000 acres in the State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement Program, which is designed to protect environmentally sensitive land that provides habitat for pheasants, quail, grouse and a plethora of non-game species.

Vilsack also signed a memorandum of understanding with Pheasants Forever that will help PF work with states to teach landowners how to improve conservation.

It looks like no one is listening. That’s bad.

The subject is Asian carp. They’re the flying, ravenous ecosystem crushers that are knocking at the door of Lake Michigan.  They invaded the Mississippi River system back in the 1970s, and parts of that system, especially in Illinois, are virtually devoid of anything else. They’ve made their way into Chicago’s shipping canal and are just a fallible electric barrier away from Lake Michigan. If they make it through and establish themselves, they’ll take a serious bite out of Lake Michigan’s plankton, which are already in peril because of quagga mussels.

When the plankton become carp food, there’s no telling what will happen to Great Lakes fisheries. Lake Huron’s salmon population already collapsed because of a plankton shortage. Is Lake Michigan next? What about Lake Erie’s walleye? We’re talking big bucks from recreational and commercial fisheries from Minnesota to New York.

The good news is that there’s a pretty simple way to keep Asian carp out of Lake Michigan: Close the locks on the canal. The bad news is that the people who can do that — the Army Corps of Engineers and the Obama administration — don’t wanna. They say the loss of commerce would be too great a cost. That canal moves about two trainloads of stuff each day.

The administration is patting itself on the back for putting $78.5 million toward studying the problem, which sounds great. But most of that money was already earmarked for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and furthermore what good is a study that’s taking place as the problem steadily gets worse? By the time that study concludes anything those carp could be doing laps around Mackinac Island.

That canal should not even exist. It was put there in the 1920s when Chicago residents got tired of watching their turds bobbing in Lake Michigan and decided to reverse the flow of the Chicago River and send their crap down the Mississippi River. I am not making this up. Now those two massive systems — the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River — are swapping spit like lovestruck teenagers. Zebra mussels go one way, Asian carp go the other. Goodness knows what other ecological disasters lurk.

Yet the Army Corps and the Obama folks don’t want to heed the cries rising from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Ontario — all of which stand to lose their shirts if the carp get through. What are they afraid of? Fixing something?

Look, we get that it’s a bad economy and probably not the best time to change the way cargo moves through Chicago. But sorry. This is a much bigger, longer reaching problem than that. And pretty soon it’s going to be too late to fix.

And then we’ll spend the rest of our lives wishing we had. Close the locks already.

Luke Haynes, 13 (Detroit News photo by Dale Young)

If the future of hunting is in the hands of the Haynes family of Vicksburg, Mich., it’s all good.

They’re the ones who produced Luke Haynes, one of the three lucky winners of the first Pure Michigan Hunt. Luke is 13 years old, and winning means he’ll go to the front of the line for Michigan elk, bear, antlerless deer, turkey and waterfowl drawings this year. You can read more about Luke’s prize in today’s Detroit News.

Plans are in place for the News — and yours truly — to tag along on all of Luke’s Pure Michigan hunts beginning in April with the spring turkey season. We’ll chronicle Luke’s challenges and successes as he and his dad work their way through Michigan’s game species.

I met Luke on Thursday, along with parents Scott and Kelly and sisters Katelyn and Linsey, and it’s hard for me to imagine a better ambassador for hunting and outdoor sports. Luke is bright, friendly and funny, not at all averse to looking adults in the eye and answering their questions — even folks he’s just met. I have a 13-year-old of my own, and I can tell you many members of that species would rather stab themselves in the neck than carry on a conversation with an adult.

Above all Luke is passionate, and he comes by that honestly. Everyone in his family — mom, sisters, dad — hunts. Luke just turned 13 on January 6, and already he has killed a double-bearded gobbler and an 8-point buck. He hunts rabbits and squirrels behind his home in Kalamazoo County every chance he gets. He started tagging along with Scott on hunts as a toddler strapped in a backpack.

It may seem to Luke like he’s just going hunting. But in a lot of ways he’s sending a very important message to a society that is increasingly concentrated on pavement and learns about nature through electronic devices sealed inside the weatherproof boxes we call home.

There’s another generation coming up that knows how to do it the other way. And its face will look a lot like Luke Haynes.

You’ve gotta love the Internet.

You open up your e-mail, and there sits a picture, sent by a friend or a friend of a friend, of a giant fish, a monster buck or some mythical creature.

Then come the details. Where, when, how. And that, of course, is how you  can tell they’re bogus. I got this picture today, Feb. 2, 2010. Here’s what the body of the e-mail said:

“Big Fish !!

“This Sturgeon was caught on the Black River at South Haven Michigan last
week.

“It weighed out at over 1,000 lbs and measured out at 11′1′. It was 56′
around the girth,
“And took over 6 and a half hours and 4 dozen beers for the 4 guys taking
turns reeling.”

Now, I know some hardy souls, folks who pooh-pooh the very notion of winter. But I can assure you that not even they would jump into Lake Michigan in short sleeves in January to show off a fish.

Because they can’t. It’s frozen.

Now, let’s assume that I’m being a little too niggling. Maybe the fish was caught last summer, that the e-mail went out a week later and is only now getting to my inbox. OK, fair enough.

But the e-mail claims the fish weighed 1,000 pounds. Uh oh. Problem. The type of sturgeon that lives in Lake Michigan is, fittingly enough, the lake sturgeon. They get big. Really big. But a thousand pounds? Half a ton? Hardly. According to the International Game Fish Association, the all-tackle world record lake sturgeon was a 168-pounder caught by Edward Paczkowski on the Georgian Bay in northern Lake Huron in 1982.

That’s a mighty big fish. And now we’re to believe that one SIX TIMES that size was caught in Lake Michigan, but no one heard about it until an e-mail circulated? Remember that in the summer of 2009, a world-record brown trout was taken from the Manistee River and made news everywhere from Newaygo to New Zealand. The angler who caught it, Tom Healy, was swamped with phone calls and interview requests from around the world. Yet a sturgeon that would have beaten the world record by 800 pounds wasn’t worth mentioning? And it was caught by “four guys”?

Ahem. You see my point. Now, let’s assume that it wasn’t a lake sturgeon but a white sturgeon, the really big kind that inhabit the Pacific coast. The world-record white sturgeon was 468 pounds, still less than half the size of our supposed Lake Michigan fish.

And we’re to assume that a saltwater white sturgeon grew to twice the world record size in fresh water more than 2,000 miles from home?

Yeah. And I’ve got a bridge for sale.

My guess is that the guys pictured were showing off a big shark, and some clever soul inserted a sturgeon in the picture via Photoshop.

And then told a real whopper.

The famed Au Sable River may have lost a dear friend in Rusty Gates, but his conservationist creed will live on thanks to his dedication and diligence, friends said.

“Luckily he taught a lot of people how to move on without him in his final months,” said Josh Greenberg, who manages the fly shop at Gates Au Sable Lodge. “He took care of the future that he wasn’t able to be here for.”

Calvin Hugh “Rusty” Gates, the owner of the Gates Au Sable Lodge and longtime president of the conservation group Anglers of the Au Sable, died on December 19, 2009 after a lengthy battle with lung cancer. He was 54.

His final months were spent with his family along his beloved Au Sable River, Greenberg said.

Gates Lodge is a place where thousands of anglers gather annually during fly fishing season from April through autumn. Mr. Gates and his wife Julie could be found there at all hours, tending to the smallest details of fly tying and gourmet cooking. With classical music playing in the background, the fly shop buzzed with patrons’ latest stories from the nearby woods and waters.

Greenberg met Gates when he entered the fly shop as a 15-year-old looking for fly-tying supplies. When Gates asked him if he tied, Greenberg hesitantly replied that he yes, he tried.

“I didn’t know who he was at the time, but I noticed that his words carried a lot of weight,” Greenberg said. “That’s the way he was. When he spoke he immediately had your attention.”

Mr. Gates watched as Greenberg tied a fly, then immediately gave the youth an order to tie 20 mor. Greenberg has worked for Gates Lodge as a fly shop employee, fishing guide and fly shop manager. He will continue in that role, he said.

Mr. Gates developed a number of fly patterns that became standards, and introduced scores of people to the world of fly-fishing. But it was his tireless defense of his beloved Au Sable River that changed the way many Michiganians see their natural resources.

In a legal case that would define his commitment to the Au Sable River, in 2003 Gates, as President of the Anglers of the Au Sable, challenged a U.S. Forest Service lease that would allow exploratory drilling for gas below the famed Mason Tract section of the South Branch of the Au Sable. With the odds stacked against them, the Anglers prevailed in their case against the Forest Service, forever altering how the business of gas and oil exploration would be conducted in the fragile areas of Michigan.

“Rusty was a true treasure,” said Rebecca Humphries, Director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “He loved the Holy Waters of the Au Sable and shared that love with countless individuals. He taught us that it is our duty to respect the resource and to protect it. His love of the river lives on in all of us. I have been truly blessed to know Rusty.”

Mr. Gates’ father Cal Gates Sr. moved his family to Grayling in 1970 and along with his wife Mary purchased the lodge on the banks of the Au Sable River. Soon Rusty Gates’ passion for fly-fishing occupied most of his time. He began tying flies professionally at the age of 17, as well as guiding. At first Gates’ flies were sold in the corner of the restaurant at the lodge, but demand grew so much that the Gates family added a full-service fly-shop to the lodge. Eventually Rusty bought the lodge and operated it with Julie, who ran the restaurant.

In addition to Julie, Mr. Gates is survived by daughter Misty Wilson of Grayling, sons Paul Gates of East Lansing and Christopher (Stacie) Burden of Woodridge, Ill., mother Maricele Gates of Florida, brothers Jim and Tom Gates, sisters Gena Gates, Jody Hinkle and Janelle Gates; and five grandchildren.

Visitations will be held from 2-4 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 22 at the Sorenson-Lockwood Funeral Home, 1106 W. North Down River Road, Grayling, MI 49738, and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 23 at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 708 Peninsular Avenue, Grayling.

The funeral will be held at 1 p.m. Dec. 23 with a luncheon to follow.

Memorial contributions can be made to the Anglers of the Au Sable, 403 Black Bear Drive, Grayling, MI 49738, or to Heartland Hospice, 417 W. Houghton Street E, West Branch, MI 48661.

Carson Dunn has three older brothers, two of whom have killed Buckeye Big Bucks.

At the rate he’s going, it won’t be long before Carson joins them. On opening day of this year’s Ohio Youth Hunt, Nov. 21, the 12-year-old dropped this dandy 8-point at 7:30 a.m. — 30 minutes after he sat down.

Carson, of Ashland, was 20 feet up when the buck came in, and he knew exactly what to do. He sent a Winchester Partition Gold 260-grain slug from his 20-gauge into the deer’s “drop now” spot, according to his dad Jim.

Carson’s first buck will be No. 16 on the Dunn family’s trophy wall, and we’re betting that won’t be his last entry.

Nice going, Carson!