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I think I've gotten nearly as many submissions of bear pictures this year than of deer pictures. Clearly, there are a bunch of these critters out there.

I don't know if this is a particularly large bear, but this is one of my favorite bear shots so far. Heck, it's one of my favorite shots, period. I just love the mood created by the misty morning.

A reader sent in this trailcam shot of a nice buck that's roaming around one of his hunting spots.

This is already a good buck, and would be a shooter for most Virginia hunters. But looking at the slim body, I think this is only a 2 1/2-year-old deer.  If that's the case, this thing could be on its way to being a serious bruiser should it make through the upcoming season.

Everyone agree that this is a 2 1/2-year-old? Or am I off ?

Just before I left on vacation I took the last couple trips for the Tucked-Away Treasures series photographer Sam Dean and I did this summer. Sam was out of town for the ninth trip, so I hauled my daughters along to Holliday Lake near Appomattox.

The lake, part of Holliday Lake State Park, is a pretty good haul -- about a 90-minute drive -- from Roanoke. But the place is beautiful and the fishing was pretty good, especially for Jerry Hughes, pictured here with his impressive fly rod catch of hand-sized sunfish.

Admittedly, I probably won't return to a few of the places we visited on our adventure. This isn't one of them. I'm really looking forward to getting back there next spring when the big bluegills are on their spawning beds.

A friend sent me this shot of a couple good bucks he caught on his trailcam. He didn't specifically say this was public land, but he does a lot of public land hunting (and scouting) so I suspect that's where this was taken. I really like this tall six.

I hoped to get back into this by posting a shot of me with a nice stringer of triggerfish I caught during our Outer Banks vacation, which just ended yesterday. However, that picture is on my little Canon PowerShot G9 camera, which I can't find.

I'm hoping the camera turns up but I have scoured my bags and my truck and I'm pretty doubtful. I guess it might have ended up on the floorboard in its little soft case and then kicked out at some point either Saturday or Sunday. Foolishly, I didn't have it labled, so if that happened it's gone forever. Fortunately, we didn't have too many shots on it because I mostly used another camera.

The fish picture wasn't special. Just me holding up a stringer with six 2-pound triggerfish on it.

A day earlier I had gone for a swim from the beach near the cottage north to the pier at the Army Corps of Engineers research facility at Duck. The pier isn't open to the public (except for guided tours) but you can walk under it on the beach, and fish and swim around the thing. Not many people do because there is no beach access for maybe 500 yards on either side of it so people just don't go there to set up there beach camps.

As I was getting out of the water I saw a guy in snorkle gear with a speargun. I started talking with him (Brett from New Jersey) and he said he was getting ready to go out after triggerfish and spadefish. I asked if I could tag along.

We swam maybe 100 yards out and set up his dive flag, then went toward their pier. Within a few seconds he had a 2-pound triggerfish on his spear.

He had a stringer on his dive float, but getting the fish on it wasn't simple. Triggerfish have just a tiny gill opening and there's no way to thread a stringer hook through it. So he had to cut a hole in the bottom on the jaw and pop the stringer hook through that. I was helping him when I got careless and got my thumb near the fish's mouth.

Has anyone seen the teeth on a triggerfish? Think horse teeth -- but sharp. The fish got me good. Had it been a little closer to the end of my thumb, it probably would have nipped the whole end off. As it was, it was a couple of deep gouges.

Brett ended up getting four triggerfish on that first run before he headed in to put them in a cooler. I headed back down the beach with grand ambitions to get an inexpensive pole spear at a local dive shop and come back the next day.

By the next morning I'd come to my senses (in part because the nearest dive shop was 20 miles south) and decided that it would probably be better for me to just fish there. So I rented an Ocean Kayak Scrambler, bought a container of shrimp for bait and got ready.

About 10 a.m. I paddled the mile north to the pier, put a shrimp on the hook and dropped it next to a piling about 150 yards off the beach. Instant hit. But no fish.

Triggerfish are also notorious bait stealers and hooking them can be tricky. Eventually I hooked one and it put up an awesome fight. They are platter shaped, like sunfish or spadefish, and they use it to their advantage. I've caught only a couple of spadefish, but I think triggers fight every bit as hard.

But the time I dealt with the fish (it's pretty interesting to have a snapping triggerfish in a kayak with you) I had drifted 100 yards farther north. I paddled back and repeated the process.

The short of it is I got a hit every time the bait went down. I caught probably 10 fish, and kept a half-dozen. I ran out of real shrimp pretty quickly but I found that Berkley Gulp shrimp was just as effective and much more durable.

While the action was fast at the pilings, huge pods of bait were all around me in the open water, and schools of bluefish were blitzing them from time to time. Eventually I tied on a spoon and fooled with them for a bit, but the blues were just little so I went back to the pilings.

I repeated the trip the next day with similar results. Paddling back south against a stiff breeze that afternoon was a real chore so I wasn't too eager to go again. As it turned out, with the swell from Hurricane Bill picking up daily, that was pretty much the end of the ocean fishing window anyway. 

Then it was time to catch some waves. But that's another story...

Here's a shot of Vinton angler Travis Patsell with a great sheepshead he caught during a recent trip to the Outer Banks. Travis is an absolute fishing nut, and he thinks the OBX are paradise for that. In many ways, they are.

We're headed that way in the morning.

About a month ago an opportunity to rent a house for a week for a really good rate fell in our lap and we jumped at it. We'll be in Duck, toward the northern end of the Outer Banks. We may take a trip one day down to a fishing hot spot such as Oregon Inlet (where I understand some of the beach driving restrictions have been eased). But it wouldn't surprise me if the extent of my fishing is just working the surf around Duck for spot, whiting, croaker, little bluefish and the sort.

I may take my laptop down there but I don't know how often I'll be able to access my e-mail or the Internet. In fact, I don't really want to. Isn't vacation supposed to be about getting away from that kind of stuff?

Anyway, this could be my last blog entry until Aug. 23 or 24. Until then, tight lines and keep shooting those bows.

The guy who sent me this shot of a nice black bear in Botetourt County asked me to guess the animal's weight.

Not knowing the size of the tree, it's hard to say. But I'd say that tree is at least 10 inches in diameter, so this bear seems pretty stout. Anyone want to guess?

A regular correspondent recently sent me this shot of three bears. He said he thinks there are more bears than deer in the woods at his Roanoke County location, and I think he was only half-joking.

With the strong bear population and the expanding hunting opportunities this fall, I would be shocked if the state's hunters don't set another bear kill record this upcoming season.

A reader sent in this shot of a great buck that's roaming around one of his hunting spots in the New River Valley. How about that triple brow tine?

For everybody who is pulling deer and other critters to cameras with corn and such, just remember that the deer feeding ban goes into effect in three weeks.

I've gotten a few more shots over the past couple of days and I'll get them up as soon as possible.

The other day I was in the photo department discussing the Tucked-Away Treasures series with photographer Sam Dean. Another shooter piped up, "I want to go on next summer's series."

I was holding a print of this photo at the time. I showed it to the photographer and said, "Yeah, doesn't this look like fun?"

This rainy day at Hungry Mother Lake was stop two on a 30-hour trip that included five hours of driving and a "break" spent trying to sleep for a few hours in a leaky tent. Plus, the fishing sucked.

Who wouldn't want to do that, huh?

As anyone who spends a lot of time outdoors -- being it hiking, fishing, hunting, biking, paddling, or whatever -- knows, it can get kind of miserable out there.

I'm not complaining. I love the outdoors, and being out there in difficult conditions is part of the deal. I'd go as far as saying it's part of the fun. I'd be out there anyway, so it's a nice bonus when it's actually part of the job.