 Get everybody's attention for a quick second. We have our local Game Warden Will here and Will's going to talk a little bit about ice safety and some other things pertaining to ice fishing. So if anyone would like to hear that, we're going to give a couple minutes for everybody to kind of gather over here and we're going to put Will on the spot. He's a great guy, but he's also prepared to talk to everybody. And after he's done, wait one second, after he's done talking, he'll be open to take questions too on whether it be game laws, fishing laws, or anything pertaining to the outdoors. He's really well versed on the lakes around here and most of the lakes in Maine. And feel free to come talk to him. He's no different than you or I. Yep. So you're on the spot, buddy. Thanks for, thanks for being here first off. I'll give him a round of applause and for everything that you do for to help us, you know, be safe and the conservation part of it. And so there's fish for people of this age and people of this age. I saw a four week old right over there. So there's fish for people of her age when she gets to be my age. So we really appreciate that. And the floor is yours. The ice floor is yours. Come on over, Gus. I don't have the loudest floor as well. I'll put it right on the spot. I'm no expert by any means. I don't know at all or anything like that. But I threw out a little outline this morning, just on some stuff that I've learned in the career I have as a game warden and some of the experience I got from hunting and fishing growing up as a kid, doing all this stuff like you guys are. So I just threw some stuff down just to kind of cover some important things I've learned. You can always go on our website. The internet is great. That's how you came here as you found out about this most likely through the internet. And you can learn a lot through YouTube and all these other websites and channels. On the IF&W website, there's an actual link on there that talks about ice safety tips. So you can go right on there and see most of the stuff I'm talking about. Great resource on there. Also with ice fishing, the department has transitioned for the most part from paper law books to online. This new generation is all digital it seems like. So they have tried to save paper. They printed millions of law books and we find that a lot of them just get thrown out. Every year they get thrown out because they're no good for the next year. So they've tried to change things around and make it so you want the laws. You can get rid on the computer and download it to your phone, whether it's a Samsung or iPhone. So we're trying to encourage that. And if you download them while you're in phone service, when you go up north with a limited phone service, they still work and are available. And they have a great search engine tool on there where you can just type a word suspiciously and it will bring up anywhere in the law book that speaks about that word. So it's really helpful so you don't have to keep scanning through and so on and so forth. There's also the main angling fishing tool that you can download to your phone as well. I don't have a lot of knowledge about that but it's a pretty neat tool. It's like a Google map type program and you can go around to the body of water. You want to fish, click on it and it'll tell you what the regulations are for it. So real improvement and handy. And a lot of people don't even realize or just don't think but we're a phone call away. I answer the phone all the time for questions or nuisance wildlife, so on and so forth. So what's the hurt? Call and ask a question. And our main dispatch is through basically the state police dispatch out of Augusta. If you're located in the Bangor area, then there's the Dispatch Center in Bangor, Ashland and Gray, which is combined with Augusta. So you can get a hold of us 24-7. I'd rather not have a call at two in the morning unless it's someone poaching. But feel free to call and just ask and try to do the best we can. I feel like to get you the answers because some of it is pretty complicated to a degree. But let me get my little outline just so I don't go all over the place. Winter safety is huge. There's no doubt about it. You can have a nice day like this and all of a sudden a cloud comes over and it's the worst day in the world because now you've gone through the ice and you're in the water panting trying to get out. That's how serious it can get. It can take your life. What I've learned and what I recommend is, oh back on the website thing online, when it comes to self-rescue, when you fall through the ice, there's several good videos on YouTube. You can just look up to yourself on how to self-rescue yourself and just watching one of those videos could save your life. Each circumstance is different. That's for sure with with the temperatures, with whether it's nighttime or daylight, if you're impaired or if you're sober, you know, anything can be a characteristic in it. Anything compared to like going up north for a fishing trip or going to Damascota Lake, we recommend you come up with a plan. You come up with a plan first. Yep, I'm gonna go up to Moosehead this weekend. I'm gonna go fishing. Make the plan. Check and double check the weather forecast. You know how that is. Either hit or miss. You know, if you're gonna get the blizzard, probably better not go or just plan for it. Make your plan and stick with it. Yes, sometimes things change and this is like I said, more toward up north where you could get stock or get into some serious trouble. How does a game ward know where to look for you if nobody knows you where you are? So that's my point on the whole plan emphasis. You know, it's great if you've got another person with you. Some people go solo, some people have a group, but it gets more dangerous and serious when you're solo. So the plan would really come into key rescue if you get into a situation because now we've got a place to start. Moosehead's huge and even further than that. Year after year, we're always going on rescue missions because Johnny didn't show up from the snowmobile trip. We've got to have a place last thing or a place to start. And then when you come up with that plan, tell somebody that plan that's not going. So like I said, if you are overdue, that person say, huh, boy, there's so many hours later, there a day late, call us and then we can start. Even if there's no problem. Some people run into issues from now and then that delay in some hours or whatever that happens. That's life. But year after year, we do these searches to try to help people to make sure that they aren't stuck and nine times out of 10, they do get stuck. They go off the trail or whatever. And then you want to make sure you're prepared for your activity as best as you can. Make sure you get enough fuel with you more than enough fuel. I always have a five gallon jug with me even down here. I used to be up in the moose head area and I learned you want to have five gallons of gas extra with you because you always get to the edge and like, I can go, I can go next thing you know that five gallons might come in handy. Make sure your batteries are charged. You know, if you if you got your phone and so on and so forth, everybody's got a phone. It seems like one thing I learned you can take one of them hand warmers and put it in your pocket with your phone and that will save the battery dramatically. And I don't throw off a lot of heat. It seems like, especially all this, the bulletproof vest and all that, it kind of shields the heat from hitting my phone and it don't seem like much, but that phone could be the lifesaver to a degree if you get an emergency. I'm even putting it in a Ziploc bag so it's, you know, it's good and waterproof, but bring your extra batteries. Bring a light with you. You got to have some kind of light source because if you do run into trouble and now it's dark, it gets dark earlier these days, you know, you may expect to be home when the sun's still up, but you never know. Always have a lighter too. If you go to a spot that's got poor cell service, you go up to Chinsung Park or something like that, they have pretty good technology these days. The in-reach device is called and I'm not trying to promote anything, but they could be life-saving tools. The Northern Game Wardens, we have this this in-reach device where you can send text messages out in poor cell phone areas or zero cell phone areas. It works off satellite and so on and so forth and some of them have plans where you can pre-stage like five or ten messages and you pay so much a month or you can get the unlimited, but that's more pricey, but how much is your life worth? You know, you can research those on the web. It's called an in-reach and they have these other things out there. There are spot devices. They're pretty common when people go on trips, canoe trips and so on and so forth. Someone, if they have an emergency, they'll hit the SOS on it and then it will send a signal out and then it'll get to dispatch and then it'll get to us. Those ones, they don't send messages to my knowledge, so it makes it difficult. What's the emergency? We don't know and we had a guy one time, he hit one and he had cut his thumb bad but he weren't gonna die and he hit that so we had no idea what the what the emergency was and we had a long way to go to get to him. So anyway, just just be familiar with that. There are those devices out there, satellite phones, you know, you could get one of those. You want to make sure you have extra clothes. Even those buddy heaters, they have so many different propane buddy heaters out there. Your truck breaks down or you run out of gas or whatever. You got your buddy heater with you. You can use that or have some type of fire starter source with you. I might be talking down to some people and I might not do the others so I apologize if I talk down or to anyone or what but another good thing is that I carry with me a plastic winter shovel and a metal shovel. I get stuck and I got tools to get me out or someone else gets stuck that I run across that may be on a back road or something. You know, those can really get you out of a pickle. Another thing would be tire change, tow straps, winches and make sure you have your spare tire because you can get flats in the winter time. Here's a little fun fact if you want to call it. A lot of people don't know if you ever find yourself lost and you happen to have cell phone service, if you call 911 directly, it may not be the life or death emergency at the moment, but if you are truly lost, you can call 911 and the dispatch will have the coordinates to your location. Like I said, a lot of people didn't realize that. Don't call your buddy. Yeah, I mean if your buddy can help you get out, great. But if you're truly lost, you call 911 and if you're in a safe spot, not underneath a widowmaker or something like that, stay put once you call because we're going to be going to those coordinates. Okay, that's the other problem. People will move once they call and now they're a quarter mile away. We're like, all this stuff with a totality could save your life or save someone else's life. Actually going out on the ice, a lot of us know the ice conditions they can change hour by hour in some spots or day by day. I was just out here that was 10 inches and the snowmobile went through right over there, you know, 100 feet or 100 yards. Ice can vary. It's unpredictable to a degree. Well, like I said, I don't know everything about ice by any means and sometimes you learn the hard way, but we want to try our best and tend to not learn the hard way and learn from others and so on and so forth. When you want to go out on a body of water, bring it up on the internet and look at it, the satellite view. Know where your inlets are and your outlets because that's where the ice can vary in depth with the current or even just springs in the water. That itself can erode the ice, springs and current and make it so you've got a foot here and then two inches there. When you get snow on it, how much ice is under us? There's no one to tell us unless they've rolled the hole right now which everybody has. How much ice is under our feet? On our website and many other websites, there's a chart on there for just a rough estimate on ice safety. The chart on our website is recommended for new ice, brand new ice that's clear. That's the strongest ice there is out there. As the ice ages and the different elements hit it, it's going to change its strength because you've got the brand new ice and then you've got snow ice and then you've got like the end of the season or the thaw, that style of ice. It's all different strength. They recommend under four inches to stay off because a lot of people that don't listen to that and they go out there on their hands and knees or bellies or walk right out there on two inches and you got to know your abilities and some of them people get wet and some of them have great luck catching fish and and it was well worth it to them. That's just the state standard under four inches. They recommend staying off. Four inches may allow for ice fishing or other recreational activities on foot and then five to seven inches often allows for snowmobiles and ATVs. Twelve is a good ice support for most cars or small pickups. Twelve to fifteen will likely hold medium sized trucks and like i said that's when you drill a hole you're like oh yeah there's three feet of ice well how much of that's good ice how much of that's ice snow ice and so on so forth. You want to be mindful of that just because you drill your hole when it's straight full of ice doesn't mean it's a good support and ice for you. Also when we start when we get snow on top of the ice the snow acts as an insulator so the ice will not thicken up as quick because that snow insulates also like around different islands or obstructions. If you take a large rock or a ledge the sun right now is going to be absorbed right into that and it's going to it can do some melting even on a freezing cold day that sun can still penetrate you look at your roofs in the winter time it's going to be dripping it's the same thing out here any of those obstructions can gather that sunlight and warm up around it and you'll see it different times when you're traveling on the lakes you'll say oh that's a bad spot because it's all wet looking and and it's dangerous looking another thing with ice is you'll find that there'll be pressure ridges on certain bodies of water you got the inverted ones and I can't get the other ones that puff up but there's different pressure ridges out there the ones that stick up you know you get a day like this you can see them probably pretty good but if you get a blizzard out there even just the wrong tone like a cloudy day those can blend into a degree and you're going along fine on your stone bale the next thing you know you run into a wall and it's a pressure ridge so it's fun I mean people love to rip it out here on the lake but you got to be mindful of those just a simple snow drift or a pressure ridge could upset that thing just like that and I've had some close calls before on I've tried to be like the safest person out there and I'm riding I don't care how safe you are you can hit one boulder on a fresh eight fresh snowmobile trail and that can send you into the trees or make you fall off I'm getting down to the end of my list yeah it's a short one but some safety some safety equipment we just had a guy go through on salt pond and I think he's trying to spread the word like crazy locally he was out on an ATV and it was glare ice there was no snow on the ice and he'd come along to a pressure ridge and that wasn't frozen and he said in his opinion it was like a hundred yards wide this pressure ridge was so he's going along on a four wheeler with no picks or chains and all of a sudden he sees that last minute and what are you doing you press the brakes with a four wheeler with no picks or change you start to slide and it's very hard to stop where you want to stop and he went nose dive right in the pressure ridge and this guy said he absolutely would not have made it out of that ice not that it was kept on breaking but he just couldn't get up on it and thankfully some ice skaters were out there and happened to see him go through they boogie to shore and got rope and a fish tote and carefully went out there and slung him the fish tote and even with even with people there trying to rescue him he's like I can't do this I'm going to give up and they had to keep telling him don't give up come on he was like a foot away from grabbing this fish tote you're psychologically you're going through a lot you're panicking if you don't know how to control your mind and your breathing something as simple as just getting up on the ice at times you could fail because your mind is not in it and anyway he was able to grab the tote and they got him pulled out but it was glare ice so this guy was a big dude when you're trying to get traction on glare ice it makes it difficult he had grabbed an ice creeper off his boot he was able to reach down and use that a little bit to try to get some traction with his hands but as soon as these as soon as these get cold enough they're going to be numb and you're not going to be able to have any dexterity with them you can be in a real real world of mess trying to manipulate zippers and so on so forth but the quicker you can get your mind under control the better off chance you're going to have to be able to save yourself they uh they have ice picks out there many different varieties you can string them through your sleeves so they're right here ready to go i put mine in the pocket and i just hope i can get my mind so i can get my zipper down if i ever have to um but these could be a lifesaver um the warden service has started to implement uh a yearly ice water training where they make us jump in a controlled environment somebody water they they cut a hole in the ice and they make you jump in and generally i this is my snowmobile coat but when i'm out on water when you don't know how the ice quite is i put the float coat on and there's many different varieties of float coats out there you look up any of the ice fishing equipment they got all these different ones out there they don't even look like float coats and something as simple as that could save your life or give you those extra less energy trying to tread water when i had to jump in the water i had a snowmobile humming on it was daylight it was winter but it was a fairly warm spring day um it was raining they made you jump in the water with your gear on and i thought there's going to be that immediate like it just grabs your breath and like oh i'm going to go under water i'm going to take that deep breath and i'm going to inhale water because that can be a killer too people have jumped in before and gone so deep and that water just shocks them and they they can't help but their body makes them breathe and then they inhale water and then they never come to the surface so i was like oh i hope this you know i hope this doesn't happen but i jumped in and uh i got out and that was barely even wet it was unreal my boots hadn't filled up or anything it it took so long for this water to penetrate your clothing it was unreal and i mean i'm talking there was good ice to be able to get up on it wasn't the ice that keeps breaking as you're trying to get up um and then they had to jump back in and be in there for two three minutes and that's where they wanted you to try to get your breathing down the path you know get your head together take those deep breaths hold them and then release them get your mind on the ball a lot of people think rip that helmet off and sling it well what we learned is helmet has flotation when we've gone on some of these recovery missions the helmets floating they have some kind of buoyancy with them with the padding that they have in them so you could always throw that under an arm or put it between your legs and it would provide just a little bit of buoyancy for you it's not like just as soon as you go through you're done unless you inhale that water and drown that way you have time the body is strong and it has time the mind is what's going to fill you and uh so if you can have some some uh ice packs or that looks like a float type coat suit um look how look how nice that is it's not big and puffy you don't like the Michelin man um something as simple like that if you actually have an incident it could save you um it wouldn't hurt to have a throw bag with you so i mean you may be safe as pie and the next thing you know a wheeler goes boom right you can go out there and try to help rescue have that throw rope ice creepers for that glare ice they'll keep you from breaking your neck but they give you traction too so just simple different tools like that can help you have a good experience and get you home at night whenever you're done recreating i guess that's my two cents i'm gonna run out of voice here all right guys uh let's thank will for coming they talk about ice safety are you gonna be around if anyone has any fishing questions or so on and so forth but i'm one phone call away from an accident or who knows what so if i disappear who knows if you're local maybe get his number but he's going to be available for some one-on-ones whether you're asking about game laws or safety or even if it's talking hunting laws or crapping laws he's going to be here for a little bit longer and please you utilize them or thank them for a service here right on our conservation right on our website too there's a search engine in there where you can type some questions and then someone from the department will get back to you there's that option or like i said calling dispatch hey i got law question or whatever people have called before hey where's the moose at i got a moose permit you know sometimes we help out if we can but that's the fun of it going out there and exploring and finding the moose yourself for finding the fish yourself but thank you for your attention thanks guys thanks again burgers and dogs should be up pretty soon i forgot a spatula so jesse ran back to get a spatula but the burgers and dogs will be right here donny's got some hot chocolate and soup going hot chocolate soup going over here i'd love for everyone to sign in and get entered for the drawing we're going to give away some stack traps and heritage traps we got a couple thousand dollars worth of stuff we're giving away and then i'd love for everybody to sign my tote sled here i got a marker this uh it's not like a paint marker i'd love for everybody to sign that too if they really are so inclined and if we run out of room we'll just flip it over and get it on the other side that way you guys come on a trip with me and you don't even have to be in the zone