Aquatic Big Buck Hunter

There are two things I like doing with wildlife: trying to catch them to pet them/play with them/ride them, and hunting them in video games with a shotgun at my waist, much like Doc Holliday. And running away from them if they're scary, like spiders or octopus or squid. Ok, three things. I haven't had much luck playing with any wild animals, and I've never brought my murderous spree to the real world, until...NOW!

When I was younger, I would often go fishing with my dad and sister at Kissena Pond, a small, man-made pond near Flushing, Queens. I was an excellent fisherman, and often caught double digit sunfish or crappies, using bread as bait. The fish were always returned to the water, and I'd go home content, knowing how good an outdoorsman I was, confident that the next time I'd outsmart the fish again. Unfortunately, this paradigm seemed to shift when pursuing actual fish you can eat, in real fishing places. I'm hoping it will shift back again, as I just applied for a one day fishing license in Colorado, and it was as rigorous as applying for a job.

First off, there are many, many, many hunting and fishing licenses you can apply for, some named after the animal (Wild Turkey, Mountain Lion), and some after the type, like furbearer (for small game). There's a chart on the site, showing how much a license costs per day, additional day, 5 days, week, month, or century, for residents and non residents. Once you finally get that all sorted, it's time to put in your information.

Colorado needs to know your name, date of birth, address...all the essential information you would imagine. Then they need your drivers license # and social security, which I was a bit leery of, especially after being asked if it was cool if they shared that info with their drinking and hunting buddies. Uhm. No. Not cool, actually. Finally, Colorado fishing license department whatever needed to know my height and weight (bit of a touchy subject right now), which I found quite odd. Odder still was the measurements, which started at 1 foot and went all the way up to 9. Sure, they don't want to discriminate. I was tempted to put in 9 foot, 4 inches, 400 pounds, but then thought if I caught a shark or something in the river and I wasn't allowed to, rather than send one ranger after me, they might send a battalion, and a tank. Which I'm just not physically prepared for.