We are in the process of overhauling Roanoke.com, and we’ve been reaching out to readers for feedback on what they’d like to see with the new site. We even have a blog, The Refresh RT blog, to keep readers in the loop.

So, let me pose that question to you all: How can we improve the Outdoors content on Roanoke.com? What are we doing well? What can we do better? What else would you like to see? Are there other outdoors sites we should look at for ideas?

Be blunt and honest. Your input will make a difference.

First, some basic background on what we have now.

–Outdoors stories and columns that appear in The Roanoke Times comprise part of our online Outdoors package. I write nearly all of these.  Read more »

Rumors started floating around a couple weeks ago that Sportsman’s Warehouse would be reopening its Roanoke location.

Those rumors were confirmed when the company recently added Roanoke to its map of store locations. Karen Seaman, the company’s chief marketing officer, left no doubt.

“We are returning to the area this spring and looking forward to reopening our store in Roanoke,” she wrote to me in an email earlier today.

According to the company’s website, the store, which is on Ferncliff Avenue near the Hersberger Road and I-581 interchange, will open on April 16, with a grand opening celebration on April 28.

I’m trying to connect with Seaman by phone for more details.

The Roanoke store was one of 23 the company closed in 2009 as part of  Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Fifteen stores were sold to a Canadian company. A cash investment from a venture capital company helped the company get back on its feet, and Sportsman’s Warehouse emerged from Chapter 11 in August of 2009.

Since word of the return of Sportman’s Warehouse has started getting around, I’ve heard from several people who were enthusiastic about the news. Even though the Roanoke store was open for less than two years, the store earned plenty of devoted fans.

A reader from the other side of the state was pleased to find this shot on one of his trailcams.

He reported that this shot was taken very near the stand where he killed a nice 11-pointer last year. I hope he sends me a shot of him and this buck before the season is over.

Here are two of a handful of a shots from a reader in Botetourt County.

He wanted me to guess the bear’s weight. I figured I’d let y’all do it, and I’m going to help you by including a deer picture to provide some frame of reference.

I want to finally take the plunge and get a trailcam. But I am overwhelmed by the choices.

Ideally, I’d like to keep this around $100, though I’ll go a bit higher. I want one with an IR flash to minimize potential disturbance of the game.

Most importantly, I want one with decent trigger time because I don’t plan to put this over bait or lures. My main goal for this is to put it along travel corridors where deer will be passing through.

I’ve done some research and it seems the Primos Truthcams have pretty high user ratings at Basspro.com, Cabelas.com and Amazon.com.

One thing that seems apparent is that even among the highest rated cameras there are some low ratings, so there are some lemons out there in every bunch, it seems.

Any suggestions on good cameras? Or models to avoid?

Thanks.

A reader sent in this shot of an all-black coyote, captured by a trailcam in the Catawba area.

This is a pretty neat-looking dog, for sure.

Roanoke Times staff shooter Sam Dean is hosting an outdoor photography workshop at the paper’s offices on Thursday, Oct. 21. The workshop, from 7:30-9 p.m., is free and open to the public. An RSVP is required and the deadline is today. You can RSVP by phone at 981-3393 or by e-mailing photo@roanoke.com.

Those of you who pay attention to photo credits probably know that Sam is by my side on a lot of outdoors adventures, such as for several of my Fun in the Sun series stories this summer. He is not my personal shooter, and all of our staff shooters do a good job with outdoors content. But it just kind of works out that Sam is out there a bunch. He loves the outdoors as much as I do, and is up for anything. We’ve had some fun days out and about. And we’ve also some pretty epic — i.e. challenging — days out there. He never complains. And he always gets good art.

Those of you have any interest in outdoor photography should try to get to this workshop. Again, it’s free. And I think they may even be serving refreshments.

A reader sent me this shot yesterday after I posted the bear picture.

I remember seeing this picture a couple of years ago, but not from the sender. A friend at work had it. As the guy who sent it wrote yesterday, “I know it made its way around pretty quickly. I was pretty proud of it.”

Who wouldn’t be? Of course the best element of this shot — BY FAR — is the deer. It’s just classic and makes this one of those shots that begs for humorous captions.

I got one other risque wildlife shot but the sow bear involved is balder than I am. But while I can pull off that look — haha — she really can’t. I feel so sorry for her I just don’t think I’m going to post it.

When I’m stuck posting stuff like this it should be clear the hunting is slow. I actually do have a couple of bowhunter hero shots I’ll get up soon.

Stacy Wiltshire sent in these shots from a recent trip to Colorado, where she was camping at Estes Park with her husband and son. Below are her descriptions of the shots.

“We were all very excited with all the wildlife encounters we experienced and I wanted to share our ‘trophy’ shots with your readers.  For anyone who’s never been to see the Rocky Mountains, I strongly recommend it. If you can camp there, even better.

The first picture is an elk sleeping in a creek that drained into the trout pond in our campground. I took this picture from the car with my husband’s Panasonic Lumix 12.1 megapixel digital camera.  The elk never moved from his nap until later in the evening.  This one was funny because there was a lady on the other side of campground entrance road fishing in the trout pond not even 200 feet away from this guy and she didn’t know he was there.

The next picture is of the “alarm clock” for the last morning there. Notice the guy coming out of his RV. The elk had been bumping his horns on the back of their RV five minutes earlier trying to get the grass from underneath.

The final shot is in Rocky Mountain National Park above the timberline. There was a huge herd of elk crossing the road as we were coming back down the eastern side of the mountains so we stopped at the overlook and started taking “digital shots” at them. The bottom two pictures were both taken with my Fuji Finepix E900 9.0 Megapixel digital camera.

Outside of the lens, we saw a coyote, a fox, three huge mountain owls, elk by the dozens, big horn sheep, a bear running through town, moose, and four cute little ground squirrels that my son had a wonderful time feeding sunflower seeds to.  We had a great time in Colorado and very much look forward to another camping trip out west.”