River Otter Mauls Open-Water Swimmer on Lake Tahoe 🦦

ven•a•tic: fond of or living by hunting

NORTH AMERICA’S MOST-READ OUTDOOR NEWSLETTER

As we continue to slowly but surely inch back towards the weekend, let’s all take a minute to grab a coffee or whiskey (no judgement) and get into what this beautiful Tuesday has to offer.

Here's what's worth reading about so far this week:

SO MUCH FOR A PEACEFUL SWIM
RIVER OTTER MAULS OPEN-WATER SWIMMER ON LAKE TAHOE’S EAST SHORE

A Reno swim instructor was attacked by a river otter Sunday morning while swimming along Lake Tahoe’s Nevada shoreline, leaving her with dozens of stitches and a course of rabies treatment.

Taking in her usual Sunday swim, Lynnette Bellin was between Hidden Beach and Incline Village when something grabbed a hold of her leg and pulled her under. She first thought it was another person but then felt the sharp pain of attacking teeth and claws…

🐺 University of Minnesota Wolf Study Says Bear Hunting Hands Wolves Easy Calories. Minnesota’s black-bear season opens today, and researchers with the University of Minnesota’s Voyageurs Wolf Project say that is a windfall for wolves in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem. With forested areas now littered with bait piles of nuts, candy, doughnuts, and dried fruit, trail cameras show wolves using those piles right alongside bears — including one clip of a bear running a wolf off the bait, then both animals feeding there minutes later.

According to the research project, the bigger payday starts once rifles come out. In addition to enjoying the buffet left purposefully by hunters, wolves also welcome gut piles and unrecovered bear carcasses. According to the project, a 100- to 300-pound bear left in the woods is winning the lottery for a 60- to 70-pound wolf at the leanest time of year. Voyageurs researchers say September into October is almost the only window in which they have documented wolves actually killing black bears, usually by finishing animals hunters wounded and could not recover. And while some of their followers still objected to baiting, the wolves, the study team notes, do not.

🧑‍⚖️ Pa. Credit Union Official Accused of Spending Elderly Woman’s Cash on Kentucky Hunting Lodge. Federal prosecutors charged 62-year-old William D. Brenner of Dover, Pa., a former board member and secretary of Susquehanna Valley Federal Credit Union in Camp Hill, with wire fraud and unlawful monetary transactions. They say he talked a 90-year-old woman and her daughter into moving more than $1 million out of her retirement savings by pitching a two-year $1 million “investment” with fixed returns that was better than what she already had.

Instead, authorities allege, Brenner used the money for himself and his family which included the purchase of a nicely-outfitted commercial hunting-lodge property, a skid steer, a Dodge Ram, and other equipment. They also say he forged an agreement using real signatures taken from another document that made it look like the woman and her power of attorney had authorized the Kentucky hunt camp purchase. It took him about a month’s worth of time to buy the hunting property and completely empty his victim’s account. If convicted, Brenner faces up to 20 years in federal prison on the wire-fraud charge and up to 10 years on each unlawful-monetary-transaction count, plus forfeiture of the Kentucky hunting lodge.

🐢 $2K Reward After Turtle Found Caged and Tethered Underwater in Deer Park Lake. While investigating a run-of-the-mill e-bike complaint on a Sunday in late August, Town of Babylon park rangers were pointed to something a little more out of the ordinary. What they spotted was a cage that had been zip-tied shut and purposely sunk underwater. Inside the cage was a yellow-bellied slider turtle with a fish hook in its mouth that had been tethered to the cage and was unable to escape.

Suffolk County SPCA Chief Roy Gross said the slider is not native to Long Island and was likely a dumped pet. He believes whoever did it meant to kill it as a turtle that size can last only about 30 minutes underwater, noting that rangers arrived just in time. Gross said he had never seen a case like it and is now offering $2,000 for information that leads to an arrest and conviction.

🦅 I’m forever enamored by watching large birds of prey pluck food from the Earth using their feet. And these fellas just so happened to set up a little camera trap to get it all on film.

Awesome birds…

Oh, and one more thing…