Hunting season is just around the corner

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CAN I TOUCH IT? — Lookin' Down the Barrel columnist George Midgley's stepson, Cash Balentine, prepares to touch one of the antlers of an antelope during the family's visit to Arbuckle Wilderness, south of Davis, during last week's vacation. Photo by Paula Midgley

Hunters can log on to wildlifedepartment.com Website to view the newest version of the “Oklahoma Hunting Guide,” which provides regulations for the 2011-12 hunting seasons.
This year, the guide is a 62-page full-color magazine style book. It features a wide range of hunting-related articles and other helpful information, such as sunrise/sunset tables, game meat processors, game warden listings and detailed information on the state’s wildlife management areas.
The redesigned Hunting Guide is an important publication for hunters because it contains information on laws and regulations that hunters need to know for the upcoming seasons. The free guide will also be available in printed form beginning Monday anywhere hunting licenses are sold.
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We are back from vacation, and I have caught up on my sleep and got rested up finally. We stayed five nights at Lake Murray near Ardmore and a night in Oklahoma City.
Lake Murray is a deep, clear, spring-fed lake, and it is beautiful. During the springtime, you can catch 50 or more smallmouth in a day, but the fishing slows down in the hot months. There is also some very good largemouth fishing in the lake, but I did not try my hand at that this trip.
Another place we visited was Turner Falls, near Davis. This park features a 77-feet deep water fall that creates a couple of nice pools for swimming. There are also hiking trails that lead to caves along with a historic castle built on the side of a bluff.
Paula’s favorite part of the trip was when we went to the Arbuckle Wilderness, also near Davis and Turner Falls. This is a drive-through wild animal park. You can feed emus, ostriches, zebras, deer, antelope, llamas, giraffes and some more four-legged creatures that I am not sure of their exact names. We all had a lot of good laughs at the ostriches, those things are mean. I thought they were going to peck themselves to death trying to get us to open the window and feed them.
You should have heard Paula scream when her window was down and one of the ostriches came running and about got its head inside before she could get the glass rolled up between her and it. I thought Cash wasn’t ever going to quit laughing.
When we left there, we stopped at the Arbuckle Mountain Fried Pie Store. If you have never been there, you are missing out. Just ask sports editor David Seeley — he's been there a couple of times during his tenure at sports editor of The Daily Ardmoreite.
The store doesn’t look like much on the outside, but when you enter you will quickly figure out that this little place is a hot spot with a steady stream of customers filing in to haul out the many different pies they make — and I mean haul. They can’t hardly make the pies fast enough!
We bought breakfast pies, dinner pies, fruit pies and cream pies, and they were excellent. The store is located at Exit 51 on Interstate 35 at U.S. Highway 77 just south of Davis — and is well worth the stop.
Next up on the agenda was a weekend in Oklahoma City. The first day, we went to WhiteWater. I got sun burnt, and looked like a lobster. I did enjoy going down the big slide, and the boys and Paula got a good laugh at me.
The second day, we checked out Frontier City, and rode just about everything in the park. We even got Paula on a roller coaster, and it was my turn to laugh at her. She said that it was not any fun at all. The wildest ride the boys talked me into riding was called the Eruption. It is a huge slingshot that shoots you up high into the air and then falls back down close to the ground only to shoot you back up again. It was awesome.