Outdoors

The Brookshire's Young Life Sporting Clays shoot is scheduled Aug. 16 at Prairie Creek Ranch near Gladewater.

The shoot benefits Young Life Tyler. The day begins with breakfast and registration at 7:30 a.m. and a shotgun start at 8. The shoot will end with a lunch beginning at 11:30.

Cost of the event is $100 per gun and shooters are required to bring their ammunition.

There are sponsor opportunities, ranging from $250 to $1,000.

Young Life is a Christian-based youth organization. Money from the shoot will support activities for the group.

For more information, contact Garrick Bailey at 903-526-0550 or e-mail garrick@tyler.younglife.org.

There are no plans in the works, but area Texas Parks and Wildlife Department fisheries officials fear that without increased fishing traffic, Cooper Lake could join a short list of lakes that through the years were removed from the annual hybrid striped bass stocking list.

Located about 75 miles north of Tyler, the lake has a burgeoning hybrid and white bass fishery that is being underutilized so much that on a common day the lake fishermen might see five other boats.

The lake suffers from several problems. One is location. Tyler fishermen would have to leave Lake Palestine to make the hourlong drive to Cooper. Along the way, and about 30 miles less driving distance, they would cross Lake Fork.

From Dallas, fishermen would have to drive past Lake Tawakoni, one of the state's premier hybrid, striper and white bass fisheries to get to Cooper. That may be hard to do with today's gasoline prices even though samples have shown Cooper to have better concentrations of both hybrids and white bass than Tawakoni.

While it is once again full, the lake in recent summers has been down as much as 18 feet, which sent anglers in search of other waters.

One of two state parks at the lake was also mothballed because of a lack of funding. That facility is open.

Because they typically don't reproduce in the wild, hybrid stripers are stocked annually on a put and take basis. It costs 10 to 12 cents to grow the fish to stocking size. Cooper was stocked this year with 192,500 hybrids at a cost of about $20,000.

Because of limited production ability and increasing costs, if the department doesn't see increased pressure, Cooper could join Lake O' the Pines, Pat Mayse, Sam Rayburn, Arlington and Wright Patman on the list of Texas lakes no longer stocked with hybrids. Other options could include bi-annual stockings or stocking on a longer rotational basis.

Here is an odd piece of information.

According to the Associated Press, millions of people visit national parks each year. Not all of them leave.

So far this year, at least 18 people have committed suicide in the 391 national parks. Park rangers believe there were at least 26 in 2007.

"Parks hold a special place in people's hearts," said Al Nash, a spokesman at Yellowstone, where five suicides have been recorded since 1997. "There are some individuals who feel it's important to have that kind of connection in those final moments."

According to the report, 10 people have killed themselves at the Grand Canyon since 2004, the most of any park in recent years, according to the Park Service.

The park service has trained rangers in suicide prevention and trained employees to look for signs of a potential suicide such as a note taped to the steering wheel of a vehicle.