Wildlife Director Judy Camuso gets caught in the Wildfire

33b02751-d8ae-4388-9a66-b74b50185e5aJudy Camuso is the only member of the staff at Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries that Commissioner Chandler Woodcock will allow to appear on our TV talk show Wildfire. Thankfully, Judy is an exceptional leader able to discuss any and all issues.

I think you’ll agree with me when you watch the next episode of Wildlife, featuring Judy Camuso. It begins airing tonight (July 19).

Each edition of Wildlife is aired on Time Warner cable station 9 on Tuesdays at 7 pm, Thursdays at 6:30 pm, and Sundays at 9:30 am. Each edition airs for two weeks. You can also access the show, including previous shows, online at www.vstv.me.

With cohost James Cote and me, Judy covered lots of topics, focusing on the new management plans that the agency is creating for all of Maine’s big game species. She also came prepared to tell us about the most recent moose research from the last winter and spring. I grabbed the written briefing paper Judy brought to the show and used it to write a previous outdoor news blog column. If you read that column, you know the news was not good.

At the end of the show, we give you a chance to weigh in on two controversial issues in the Sportsmen Say Survey section of my website, www.georgesmithmaine.com. The questions are: Should bear trapping be banned in Maine? Should the deer population be reduced in southern and central Maine to address the problem of deer ticks and Lyme disease?

While you are there, feel free to answer some of the other questions posed in the Sportsmen’s Say Survey. I’ll be reporting the results soon on the last 10 or 12 questions.

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.