As summer moves into autumn come out to Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve and enjoy the nice temperatures and sparse crowds in your national park. The Lava Flow Campground remains open and accessible until the road is covered with snow.

Daily, Visitor Center: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Sept. 23; 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. after that

View exhibits and audio-visual presentations to learn more about your national monument. There are also publications on sale in our bookstore about the cultural and natural history of the park and the region.

Daily, Ranger-guided Walks and Talks: Cave Walks at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. and Patio Talks at 1:30 and 3 p.m. through Sept. 23

Explore a lava tube cave with a ranger or join us for a short introductory presentation on the Visitor Center patio. Call or check out our interactive event schedule for details: www.nps.gov/crmo/planyourvisit/events.htm

Sept. 22, A Park Ranger’s Guide to Photography: 1 to 3 p.m.

Retired park ranger and nature photographer Douglass Owen will present tips, techniques and practices to improve your nature photography with whatever camera gear you have. Class is sponsored by the Craters of the Moon Natural History Association and will be held in the Craters of the Moon visitor center. Class is free, but a suggested donation of $10 to support school visits to the park is recommended. Reservations are required and the class is limited to 30 people. Contact the park at 208-527-1330 or crmo_information@nps.gov to make a reservation.

Sept. 22 and Nov. 11, Fee Free!

Craters of the Moon National Monument will join all national parks across the country in waiving entrance fees to celebrate National Public Lands Day (Sept. 22) and to honor our veterans (Nov. 11).

Sept. 23, Full Moon Hike: 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.

Explore this unearthly landscape under a full moon on a 1-mile evening hike. Wear sturdy shoes, and bring snacks, water and a jacket. Reservations are required by calling 208-527-1335 or emailing crmo_information@nps.gov. Meet at the Tree Molds Parking Lot.

I wanted this to be an article to get in the last-minute planning mode for the upcoming hunting season. But I’ve got to digress because I keep hearing everyone say that summer is over. OK, if you’re a school kid or school teacher your summer may be over, but mine’s not. Maybe I’m just touchy because my wife is a teacher and my daughter started college this week and all that I’m hearing is doom and gloom. But if you stick your head out the window you’ll notice that it is still plenty hot, dry and smoky outside. So summer is still here.

I begrudgingly admit that the end is close. August may be waning — but summer is not yet over. Period. I have to get in at least one more backpacking trip. I have seminars at the Sportsman’s Warehouse in Nampa on Friday so I won’t be able to backpack until at least the next weekend or maybe the next.

I went crappie fishing last weekend just to make sure it was over for the year. It was toast. I only caught 35. Time to move on to the next set of adventures, which is quickly approaching. Bow season is on the immediate horizon. I love bow hunting for elk and deer — but hold on. Don’t make the mistake that I have the last few years and skim over dove season. No sir, I’m going to try to hit them hard this year. I’ve seen a ton of them the last few weeks.

So with the above said, get out and do a little pre-season scouting. Doves provide for a low-key, fast-shooting event plus they make great poppers. Check some of my brother’s cooking videos on ronspomeroutdoors.com.

Depending on how far your shots will be, but I’ll use either an improved cylinder or modified choke. For shells, I’ll grab some Aquila low base 8s. Dove hunting does take some skill but you don’t need a Ph.D. Set up around water holes early and late and set along tree lines or grain fields during the day. If you’re not getting any shooting, move.

Another thing that will help you be successful is using decoys. I’d recommend the Mojo Voodoo decoys (they have rotating wings), Lucky Duck clip-on decoys (they are a plastic decoy that have a clip to clip onto tree branches and fences) and Mojo Dove A Flicker decoys. Decoys will draw in more birds by making them feel more comfortable to come in.

The last couple of years, I’ve pushed my bow hunting back into the second week of September or maybe even the third. Before then the weather is hot and they haven’t started bugling yet. The rut only exists in our memory and hasn’t actually yet started.

I talked briefly above about backpacking. I think the late summer/early fall is the premier time for fly fishing. Water flows have slowed down, making rivers easier to wade, and the fish are more congregated in holes because the rivers are shallower. The fishing is just flat out better.

So once again, we’re in the same dilemma that we’re always in this time of year. There’s just too much going on at once. Fly fishing, backpacking, huckleberry picking, dove hunting, bow hunting for elk and deer, antelope hunting and then that other big competitor: Your job. Everything is competing for our time. Right now it’s not raining so you can ignore the gaping hole in the roof and repair it later, but according to some, the yard must be mowed weekly. Luckily my youngest daughter has been hitting that task since I have been gone the last few weeks. That’s sweet of her. Or maybe she just couldn’t get out of the house

to find her car to go to work. Maybe she’s not being sweet, just had to do it to survive.

With all of these outdoor activities in full season or on the near horizon what’s an outdoorsman to do? There’s just too much fun stuff to do all at once. Oh crud, and then I almost forgot. I write a weekly article ammoland.com. Friends of mine, Fredy Reihl and Brian Johnson own it. We’re trying to throw together plans for a last minute 4-wheeling adventure sometime in September.

But in the meantime. I’m still not admitting that summer is over.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana.

He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.

Never content to just set new records in races he’s already participated in, endurance cyclist Jay Petervary left the country last week to take part in a new and ambitious race in Kyrgyzstan.

The Silk Road Mountain Race is an unsupported 1,000-mile race in the Tian Shan mountains near Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. This is the first year of the event. The route follows gravel, double and single track, and forgotten military roads through isolated high-elevation valleys surrounded by 16,000-foot peaks.

Petervary, of Victor, has decades of ultra-endurance cycling experience, having raced the Tour Divide, the Iditarod Trail Invitational, the Ride Across America, the Italy Divide and other long-distance events many times, but he said he has some nerves approaching this race.

On July 30, the New York Times reported that two American cyclists and two European cyclists were killed while touring through Tajikistan, which borders Kyrgyzstan. ISIS members intentionally hit the cyclists with a truck. Petervary said he is aware of that incident but doesn’t want fear to mar his race.

“I’ve ridden through downtown LA and that’s dangerous. I’ve ridden through grizzly country outside of Island Park and that’s dangerous,” he said.

Another challenge is that there aren’t a lot of information sources online to help Petervary predict how the race will go, so he has cobbled together as much knowledge as possible and is prepared to complete the whole event without getting food or water from villages. He doesn’t think that will be necessary; he has heard that the people of that region are extremely welcoming. But that hospitality can pose its own issues. When Petervary is in race mode, he doesn’t have time to accept extended meals or tea, but he doesn’t want to offend his hosts either.

“I’m very well prepared for this event but what happens out there is in a lot of ways outside of my control,” he said.

Inevitably, there is also the question of the language barrier, as well as the stress of traveling to Central Asia for the first time. The race also passes three military checkpoints on the China-Kyrgyzstan border, which Petervary has prepared for with passport copies and possible bribe money stashes.

Petervary’s wife, Tracey, herself an accomplished racer, will also be participating in the Silk Road Mountain Race. She has a teammate, Mark Seaburg, with whom she has raced the Cape Epic in South Africa. Petervary is happy that she will also get to experience the spectacular landscape and foreign culture while not being forced to race at his pace (which is unsustainable by most people’s definition).

The race started Aug. 18 and wraps up Sept. 1. Find more information at silkroadmountainrace.cc.

JACKSON, Wyoming — Eyewitnesses say that an undetermined disease is likely what killed four wolf pups found dead recently on and near trails in the Horse Creek area south of Jackson.

Coby Wheeldon, a horse guide for the Mill Iron Ranch, encountered two of the puppies atop a trail while leading a private ride, and immediately reported them to authorities.

“They were in pretty ugly-looking shape,” Wheeldon said. “The first one had very severe mange on its rear end.”

The second pup, also located directly on the trail, similarly appeared to be in sorry condition.

At the time he found the pups, they were intact and did not yet smell — suggesting the deaths were relatively recent.

Wyoming Game and Fish Department personnel who Wheeldon phoned arrived and found a third dead young wolf nearby, and also a fourth pup that was barely hanging on.

“One of them was still alive at the time, and one of our employees euthanized that animal,” Game and Fish spokesman Mark Gocke said. “He walked right up to it, and it was clear that it was going to die, so he put it down.”

Game and Fish officials said they could not release much information — including the suspected cause of death — because of a Wyoming statute that’s intended to protect the identity of people who legally kill wolves.

Speculation ran rampant about how the wolf pups died after the Jackson Hole Daily’s initial report, and state wildlife officials then secured permission from top brass in Cheyenne to unveil more details.

“Based on the information that we have, we would expect that these animals died due to natural causes,” Gocke said. “Of course we won’t know for sure until we get the necropsies back from the lab.”

Wheeldon’s recollection was that the warden and biologist who responded to the scene suspected that the wolf pups had succumbed either to distemper or parvovirus, the latter of which is a highly contagious and sometimes-lethal disease.

A Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory in Laramie, which received the carcasses to conduct necropsies, will determine the exact cause of death. Results should come back within a couple of weeks, Gocke said.

Wheeldon estimated the pups at 25 pounds to 30 pounds apiece. Having been born this spring, they would have been approximately 4 to 5 months olds.

The drainage where the Mill Iron Ranch employee discovered the sickened young canines has a wolf pack in its name — the Horse Creek Pack. While tagging along with a Game and Fish wolf biologist last winter, the News&Guide learned that some of the Horse Creek wolves have faced disease issues in the past. One of the wolves that biologist Ken Mills handled for research after a capture operation, a skinny young black male, had funky teeth.

“When he was pup, he had distemper, and it causes the enamel to malform,” Mills said at the time. “I’ve never seen it in our wolves before.”

Death from natural causes, like disease, is rare relative to human-caused sources of mortality, at least in Wyoming’s wolves.

A year ago, a state wolf population estimated at 347 animals sustained an estimated 168 mortalities, according to Game and Fish’s annual monitoring report. Of those deaths, just a dozen were attributed to natural causes.

The other day I was looking at posts on face book when one caught my eye. A woman who owns a restaurant in a Northwestern state put up a sign in her business window with a picture of an AR-15 explaining that anyone who owned one of these rifles was not…

PRESTON — A federal trapper is hunting the animals that have now killed four sheep in a Preston neighborhood.

The losses began on July 4, when Virgil and Harriet Bostwick, who live at 515 E. Oneida St., discovered the carcass of one of their lambs in their field.

It had been disemboweled, the organs eaten and the bones chewed upon. Because an occasional neighborhood dog can do such a thing, the Bostwicks didn’t do anything about it. But when it happened to another of their lambs on Aug. 4, they reported the incident to police, who called local Idaho Department of Fish and Game officer Nathan Stohosky.

“They thought at first that it was a coyote, but then thought it was a dog,” Harriet Bostwick said.

Stohosky then called the trapper.

Meanwhile, another flock fell victim to a similar incident. Kevin Seamons, who lives at 514 E. First S. in Preston, found the carcass of one of his lambs consumed and disemboweled on July 31.

He found another on Aug. 9. This one had been attacked during the day.

Both he and the Bostwicks have increased their lookout for anything out of the ordinary, but have yet to find the culprit. The trapper spent three hours watching Seamons’ flock Saturday night, but saw nothing, he said. But he was quite sure it was coyotes, Seamons said.

A few days ago, the Bostwicks’ ducks sent up an alarm in the middle of the night and ended up in the window well of their home.

“We think something scared them. They have never done that before,” she said.

If you’re new to Idaho and don’t know how to fly fish, or maybe you’ve lived here for all of your life and just never learned how yet, it’s time to learn. I’ve always said that bowhunting is cool. But it can be tough. But fly fishing is cool, and it really works. You can catch a ton of trout with a fly rod.

Periodically I do a 101 article but this one is really going to be a 101 article. There is just so much to learn about fly fishing I could write a book on it. I learn something every trip. I fly fish a lot. I teach fly fishing seminars and yet I don’t really consider myself a very good fly fisherman. I think fly fishing is a lifelong quest.

The best way to get started is to have your dad, uncle or a buddy teach you. If you don’t have someone like that to help you, then go to some seminars and take a class. It will take a while to get proficient, so don’t get frustrated and give up.

I love fly fishing in the backcountry, but if you’re a newbie it can be frustrating on tight brushy little rivers. So start off learning on open rivers or maybe practice on an open lake.

Let’s start off with a few basics. Use the Dr Pepper cast. Remember the old Dr Pepper advertisements? Drink a DP at 10 and 2? What that means is don’t lower your arm below the 2 o’clock position when casting forward or below the 10 o’clock position on your back cast.

If you’re going farther than these two positions, then you’re bending your wrist. You want to keep your wrist straight. The reason it is important to use these two points is that otherwise you’ll be beating the water to a froth and spooking the fish as well as drowning your fly.

I always teach people to not look at the water where you’re casting but to imagine that you’re throwing your fly at the top of an imaginary 6-foot tall pine tree. That way you won’t hit the water. And when you cast the last time, still focus on that spot. And on your last cast, ever so slightly start to bring your rod tip back so the line doesn’t pile up in a heap in one spot. You want it to lay out straight.

As you cast, be watching behind you so you don’t hang up behind you. This is an issue on brushy rivers or if the bank rises sharply behind you. Which brings up the question: What if there is brush 10 feet behind you and you want to cast out 20 feet? All you have to do is get 10 feet of line out and then when you make your final cast, shoot out another 10 feet of line. You can also have line lying at your feet on the water and do a roll cast.

You need to learn to mend your line and use the current to pull your fly where you want it to be. Here’s what I mean by all of this. Let’s say my fly is drifting downstream and I want it to go another 1 ½-feet to the left. All I have to do is flip my rod tip and throw the floating line over to the left. It will then float up close to the edge of the bank and make the fly drift over with it. Make sense?

Dry flies are ones that float on the surface and wet flies are below the surface. Everyone loves fishing with dry flies. You get a visual rush when a trout slams your fly but I was taught that 80 percent of the aquatic life is under the surface so you have to learn how to use wet flies.

I’ve always jokingly said that if I have someone to tell me which fly to use and how to use it then I’m a pretty good fly fisherman. But that’s 90 percent of fly fishing. You need to learn the life cycles of flies. Nymphs are on the bottom, emergers have just hatched and are floating up through the water column to the surface and dries float on the surface drying off their wings and are about to take off. If you want to know more about entomology you may want to check out these guys: www.thecatchandthehatch.com.

You can tell what stage the flies are in by how the fish are feeding. Until you learn the stages, go to your local fly shop and ask them which flies to use for where you’ll be fishing (and it varies throughout the day). Well, we’re out of space and have barely gotten started.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.