Maggie's Farm

Opie sent us this one:

A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it occurred to him that he was dead.

He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them. After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight.

When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold. He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.

When he was close enough, he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?"
"This is Heaven, sir," the man answered.
"Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked.
"Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up."

The man gestured, and the gate began to open.

"Can my friend," gesturing toward his dog, "come in, too?" the traveler asked.
"I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets."

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and
continued the way he had been going with his dog. After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence.

As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.

"Excuse me!" he called to the man. "Do you have any water?"
"Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in."
"How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to the dog.
"There should be a bowl by the pump."

They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it. The traveler filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog. When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree.

"What do you call this place?" the traveler asked.
"This is Heaven," he answered.
"Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "The man down the road said that was Heaven, too."
"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell."
"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"

"No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind."

Spent the afternoon fishing on Long Island Sound with Maggie's Farm contributor Gwynnie. We managed to boat (and release) just one schoolie Striper - but we were using lures, not bait. There were large schools of Snapper Blues flipping around, but we were looking for dinner. We much admired the master fisherman below (the story of the return of our New England Ospreys is close to a miracle), who was using a nesting platform as a dining room table for his or her sushi:

Some buddies were fishing in Ontario last week, mainly for Small-Mouth Bass, which I did not know was a Canadian fish.

They fished out of Lake Herridge Lodge, about 5 1/2 hours north of Toronto, which they liked very much. There is a chain of five large lakes, with portages or channels between. The largest is about 5 miles long and a mile wide. 

Texas guide for a dove shoot: "Hey fellas, let's shoot some of them crows for warm-up practice."

Sport: "Sure, why not?"

The guide calls the crows into range and the sports shoot some crows.

Guide: "OK, I'll just go pick up them crows to take home, and we'll go find them doves."

Sport: "Pick them up? What for?"

Guide: "To cook 'em."

Sport: "Eat a crow? What do they taste like?"

Guide: "Well... tastes kinda like owl."

I don't know whether The Barrister actually wants to carry, or to keep a gun in his glove compartment - or whether he simply wants the permit because it is his right to do so. I asked a friend for advice for The B.

Dear Barrister,

If you do intend to carry after you get your CCP, the most important issues are physical comfort, comfort with the use of the handgun, and stopping power. To carry a gun which is not second nature to use could get you into more trouble than you want.

There is no "right" pistol to carry. Try lots of them, over time, at the range, and find what suits you best - and what fits under your jackets without scaring the neighbors!

Here is a good introductory article on the subject. Pictured is the revolver I carry, when I do carry, which is not all of the time. Colt Python, now out of production. It's a .357 magnum, and I have the 4" barrel. Fortunately for the bad guys, I have never needed to fire it outside of the range, and I hope I never will.

Have fun.

JBH

One of our readers prefers the Springfield Armory's XD. I wonder what other handguns our readers like to carry.

h/t, Classical Values

Thanks for the photos, John - but this is not what I would call roughin' it.

 More photos of the vehicle on continuation page below -

New guidelines on increasing the survival rates of released fish.

I would think that the suggestions would apply to trout.

Played hookie from work today with a couple of Maggie's Farmers and friends. It's getting late in the spring season here for trout. This is our ultra-secret ultra private trout stream in CT.

The old story is you tell the wife that you're taking the day off to do some things with friends. She asks, slightly annoyed by the irresponsibility, what you're doing. You reply, "Well, we're going over to the Indian casino, and I hope you don't mind our acting foolish once in a while." She says "OK, I do not approve, but have fun and don't come home drunk." Then you sneak off and do what you really want - trout fishing.

Why are my photos today blue-tinged and out of focus? I need to get this camera fixed.

There is a new magazine out there, Garden and Gun. It sounds like an ideal sort of Maggie's Farm magazine (h/t, Dr. Helen).

With a photo of Pat Conroy on the cover, how bad could it be? I'll give it a try, if only to find out whether it's more interesting than our Maggie's Farm blog. I am certain that it is better-written.

Re gun mags, I used to subscribe to Shooting Sportsman, but it has become too snooty for my taste. Informative, though, if you own $60,000 shotguns instead of Mossbergs and Brownings like regular folks.

In the past year we have posted quite a bit on pigs. A reader was kind enough to send in his Show-and-Tell photo above of a recent Texas pig hunt. Is that a piglet his friend is holding in his mouth?

(By the way, which crude, culturally-insensitive reader suggested dropping these from 20,000 feet on Baghdad to clean out Sadr City?)

Our contributor Gwynnie sent this note on Friday:

This weekend, Gwynnie will join a group of ranchers using their depredation permit on a Northern California ranch to try to dent the population of European wild boars that have invaded the California Coast Range and beyond.  She will try to post pictures next week or so. She has done a little research on the issue and found an excellent article excerpted below:

This photo of a Maggie's Farm buddy with a big Texas pig, from a post last summer, elicited a comment from a reader saying that they had them in Wisconsin. Wisconsin? That was news to me. I thought "razorbacks" were more of a Southern and Western thing.

Happily, they have not invaded New England yet.

I knew about Texas, California, etc., and I checked his link. Yup. They are now found in 23 states. They are basically wild domestic pigs, but, depending on their location, the urban legend is that they may have some "Russian Boar" blood from game farms mixed in - but the domestic pig and the wild European boar are the same species: Sus scrofa. When breeding wild, feral pigs devolve into their natural form and habits. Unlike wild horses, they attract little sympathy, and they are not cute.

In many areas of Europe, boar is extinct or endangered. In the US, these adaptable invaders are spreading fast, which is bad for forests but fun for hunters.

Omnivorous, destructive of their habitat by aggressive rooting with their snouts, raising up to 4 litters per year, and ranging from 70-400 pounds in adulthood, these hardy, non-native critters are environmental destructos from hell. And their only real predator, to keep their numbers in any control, is man.

To make things more difficult, their shoulders, where you might wish to place a bullet, have very dense tissue which is difficult to penetrate. They are also potentially dangerous beasts who use their tusks as swords: they can easily kill a dog or seriously damage a human. On the plus side, they are highly edible.

Because most states have an open season on pig, hog hunting is increasingly popular - and environmentally necessary - whether with bow, shotgun, rifle (or even handgun, for the very brave or reckless).

Here's a piece on boar hunting in Ohio. Here's one from California.

One more photo of our friend fishing the Upper Malleo River in Patagonia this past January.

Superb piece by Munchkin Wrangler, found by Mr. Free Market. It begins thus:

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

Read the whole thing. BTW, can you name that handgun?