My name is Jessica Trump. I’m 23 and I work for the Tourism staff in Oswego County, NY. When the idea of a blog about the outdoors in Oswego County first came to our staff, I thought, “What a perfect opportunity to embarrass myself”. Even though I grew up in Oswego County, which has ample opportunity for outdoor recreation, I spent more time having dance parties and flirting with boys than experiencing the great outdoors. Now that I’m older and slightly more mature (stressing the word slightly), I realize it’s time to get more in touch with this wonderful thing called Mother Nature. No more sitting at home watching endless hours of CSI marathons, I’m going to get out there and become a sportswoman!
But first, I must admit, I am about 25% English, 25% German, and 50% redneck. While memorizing Britney Spears dance moves was always my first priority, I still loved going outside and getting dirty! My favorite past-time in high school was taking my parent’s ATV and going as far as I could go until I got stuck in the mud or crashed it. I used to build endless forts in the woods behind my house (my dad, a carpenter, still doesn’t know what happened to all of his building materials), and camping was always fun until I forgot my bug spray (and by camping I’m talking about the campsites with running water and electricity). So as you can imagine, this blog might be leaning towards the entertaining side rather than the educational side.
The primary focus of my posts will be on fishing and hunting. I bet you’ll be surprised to hear that I’m actually good at fishing, I’m just really bad at catching. I’m also great at hunting, but really bad at killing. Let me give you some examples:
- I went trout fishing with my dad on opening day last year, only to catch a couple snags and a weed.
- When I was younger, we had a pond full of bullhead. They were so overpopulated that I would take a fishing net and scoop up about ten miniature sized bullhead in one try and call it a day.
- I successfully shot one duck out of 183,450,989 on opening day of duck-hunting season last year. The duck conveniently fell into the cattails, never to be seen again. Therefore I had no proof that I actually shot a duck.
- I shot a deer in the foot with an arrow. I would have to say it was more of a paper-cut than a wound. In my opinion, it’s much harder to hit a deer in the foot than the kill zone
So my goal with this blog is to walk you through my journey of finally becoming a fisherwoman who catches fish, a hunter who actually kills animals (with a weapon, not a moving vehicle) and someone who can drive an ATV without crashing into something.
I'll leave you with two more photos that were taken on my recent fishing/hunting endeavors in Oswego County:
To be a professional fisherman, I must learn to tell stories like one.
The one that got away!
I hope you enjoyed my photos. I promise, my next post will be about a real outdoor experience, but it will be just as entertaining.
