Home owners, farmers, naturalists, conservationists, and others are now being bothered by pests who are taking what we’ve waited all season for.

Hornworms are eating tomato leaves, and fruit. Japanese beetles put irregular holes in bean plant leaves, which are essential for plants to fill the pods. Corn smut darkens some of the corn’s fruit kernels.

Ginseng plants are devoured by who knows what.

Something’s making some deer sick and trail cameras put out to size up the herd have been pilfered.

How outdoors enthusiasts go about gathering can provide a wealth of information when dealing with pests.

Tomato hornworms use camouflage to be able to do their dirty work and destruction. Turkey hunters know camouflage but now it’s predators using camouflage to avoid detection rather than the outdoors person.

Camouflage color and patterns can be outdone by looking for detail.

Morel gatherers rarely find a morel by scanning and glancing at something large, so look small.

There is a great deal to be learned, copied, and tried by watching how others gather. Hunters and bird watchers know camouflage; gardeners maybe not so much.

Want to find and control tomato hornworms who look like tomato leaves and stems? Ask an archer how camouflage can be beaten.

Want to get Japanese beetles on pole beans with mixture of soap, bleach and water? Ask someone who collects butterflies by sneaking up on an insect.

Beetles on beans will drop or can be coaxed into a can of death fluid by placing the can below the perched beetle as it makes its escape by pitching to the ground.

Red-headed woodpeckers collect these beetles by going to the ground and picking them up where they fall.

Potato beetles, too, can be hand-squeezed or pinched to death and then any future beetles can be dispatched by removing eggs from underside of leaves. No need for a pound of powder. Go basic organic.

Use your eyes better, too, those common to the outdoors emphasize.

“You have to believe there is something that can be seen and then keep looking,” Doug Williams of Portage, said. “Dress for the occasion and be at the right level, at the right time.  Maybe that’s on your tiptoes or on your knees. And there’s no harm in being prepared by using a book or a computer or simply asking someone for advice.”

Sometimes getting a more natural photograph of a ruby-throated hummingbird is a quest. Sit, watch, and listen all the while wearing a turkey hunting camouflage face mask. Put out a red decoy; it could be a red handkerchief beside a red flower. Get the timing right, too, for best light and most likely bird feeding times.

But birds sometimes change the rules. Focusing on a cardinal flower only to have the hen hummingbird choose a butterfly weed instead is frustrating, but natural. Deer, turkeys, grouse and squirrels often choose on oak over another.

Are poachers pilfering ginseng roots pestering you? Set up a trail camera, one that takes a picture and texts it immediately to a phone a mile or a thousand miles away. The trespasser may steal the camera, once, but there is already a photograph in a text file.

Those who gather game, fish, and photos can benefit from these outdoors specialists, and should enlist the help of others. Birders may benefit from a turkey hunter’s experience, and as likely, a turkey hunter may benefit from a birder’s knowledge.

Bobcats are uncommon animals in part, but may be detected, seen, and enjoyed by simple signs. Look for a sandy location on a gravel driveway where a bobcat may have covered its scat just as a housecat does. The mound and paw marks will be three times that of a common cat.

Turkey dusting bowls are another common site, even in flower beds and gardens where soil is bare. So are deer beds where vegetation is matted.

Bats are not everyone’s favorite mammal, particularly when they come inside. Don Martin, at Martin’s in Monroe, uses a badminton racket. “If I can get them between two rackets, I can get them outside without injuring them,” he said. “I have a grandson who can catch them with a baseball mitt and release them.” An old fish net may work, too.

July’s over, so is trout fishing about to get better with more trickery? “It’s not been horrible,” said Bret Schultz, of Black Earth.

“But the water is lower than I’ve ever seen it and it’s gin-clear.”

To beat those odds, and high water temps, Schultz started using small hopper patterns earlier this summer and then changing to crickets closer to dark. “With cooler temperatures, hopper bites should be fabulous. But I have not had to use a single application of mosquito repellent this year.”

Williams said the fish are back to feeding, catfish want worms and the river (Wisconsin) is a place to go for walleyes, bluegills and crappies.

An evening drive, starting at 5:30, past soybean fields, is a place to look to see some fine deer.

Lowland, or at least moist prairies, are coming alive with yellows (coneflowers, cup plants, compass plants and goldenrods), reds (cardinal flowers), purples (Joe-pye weed and asters) and blues (great blue lobelia, chickaree and soon the bottle gentian). Ginseng fruits are beginning to turn red.

The outdoors is beginning to dress up for autumn. Take it in.

— Jerry Davis is an Argyle native and a freelance writer who lives in Barneveld. He can be reached at sivadjam@mhtc.net or at 608-924-1112.