In this week's episode of We Love Outdoors with Rich Davenport, your humble host talks the fickle spring weather, with one day bringing warm temps and the next a snow storm. However, this weekend the weather finally moderated for the youth spring turkey hunt, and hopefully those kids that got out had a successful hunt.

Well, last week we lost another icon in WNY Outdoors circles with the passing of Captain Mark "Sparky" McGranahan. The Lake Ontario waters will be emptier with his loss for certain. He was a friend, a mentor, and was one of the first onboard with WeLoveOutdoors when we first launched.

Trout are still running in the streams, but that won't last much longer, especially if temperatures remain in the 70's as they were this weekend. And the NYSDEC is launching a shoreline angler survey effort this year to gain better insight into this overlooked group of fishermen.

Sturgeon Point Marina will see a dredging after all, as the town awarded the bid to a local contractor during the April 20, 2022 town board meeting. The dredging will begin as soon as possible, with the marina set to open May 18, 2022 at the latest. Although still not in line with contract terms, which demand the marina be open starting ice out, this is the earliest the marina will open in the past several years.

And another freshwater fishing record has been broken, this time in Tennessee, with a 121 lb paddlefish being caught from Cherokee Lake. The trend keeps on trucking!

May 1 marks the spring turkey opener and the walleye opener, and many have taken to the outdoors, rediscovering nature after covid covid covid, and this year plenty will be hiking and camping and enjoying the myriad of trails in our parks and localities. The rails to trails program has been one that has shown to be fairly popular, converting old, abandoned railways into hiking, walking and biking trails. But these projects aren't suitable everywhere, providing much greater benefit to urban and suburban areas, but not so much in rural settings, where many parks and trails already exist. A project that has been dormant for the past 8 years has been resurrected, but the opposition remains. Nevertheless, these groups are pushing for this to happen, which could spell the demise of the West Falls Conservation Club. A deeper look into this project and the number of landowners and homeowners that would be affected truly makes this particular effort no good. Interested folks may contact the STB, or surface transportation board, 395 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20423, and ask them to kindly deny this project in its current form.

With spring turkey season about to commence, not to mention hiking and gardening season hitting its stride, people are advised to practice good tick exposure prevention, as a relatively new tick-borne illness is on the rise, an allergy to red meat called alpha-gal syndrome. Carried by the Lone Star tick, this life-altering illness happens with exposure to the common carbohydrate known as alpha-gal, and exposure, even once can cause an immune system response to this molecule. The result is allergic reactions to steak, pork, even venison and rabbit.

And with this week being the big one for climate alarmists, expect a heavy dose of alarmism and little connected with reality. But NOAA has released temperature data indicating the planet is actually cooling, and Scotland is rethinking its rush for offshore wind. NY wanted a behind closed doors intrusion into Lake Erie, but that was met with fierce resistance, and now all are silent, even the touted feasibility study, Part Deux is late in its release. No one wats to touch this in an election year, so we must get them on record before election day.