Maggie's Farm

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?

We received a nice email from Olivier Martin at CaliEagle of Aigle Boots, regarding our piece on Wellies. We like their stuff, and own some. He said this:

Re-posted from March, 2006

April is the beginning of trout season around here,
but it is also turkey season.

Non-hunters may not know that April is Spring Turkey season in many states in the US. Last April, early morning, Gwynnie and I were warming up our fly casting on a pond when a proud  acquaintance stopped by with his heavy gobbler in one tired hand and his shotgun in the other. Surf 'n Turf?

If you have never eaten a wild turkey, you have never eaten turkey. The farm-raised birds are as bland as cardboard. Our past piece on the Wild Turkey here.

At Maggie's Farm, we are grateful for the work of organizations like the National Wild turkey Federation, plus all of the non-profit and governmental agencies which have restored the magnificent wild turkey around the US. We even saw some in Maine last fall.

Turkey hunting has more in common with deer-hunting than bird-hunting. In other words - boring... until the last moment - if the bird shows up. It's like they say about Obstetrics: 99% pure boredom, 1% terror. But in this case, 1% thrills.

Some folks get a kick out of turkey-calling, but I think it's for the birds. Decoys are fine.

Image from the NWTF website. Those are males, displaying for a hen's attention.

That's a Maggie's Farm pal fishing in Patagonia recently. (The Mrs. is quite handy with a camera.) With all of the snow we have up here in the northeast, and a driveway with two inches of ice, it's hard to imagine that our trout season opens soon. Over the next week or two, we will post some fishing items.

Timely indeed, BL: DC Circuit strikes down DC Gun laws. This will get interesting. Instap. has some updated links to other commentators.

A quote from the opinion:

To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment's civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.

Music to my ears. It is the music of the basic human right to self-defence being protected. I think I'll read it again, and then bring out the champagne.

12% of Americans hunted last year. Other hunting stats and data here. One quote from the article:

Show Cornell University researchers a young hunter, and they'll show you a future environmentalist. A 2006 study shows that children who hunt, fish or play in the wild before age 11 are more likely to grow up with deeper understanding and respect for nature.

I always knew eating game made a person feel good, but I always figured it was the wine. Or the memories. Or both.

Maybe not. Telegraph.

When I see pheasants hanging like this, I remember that the French way is to age them until the body falls from the head. That's when they're ready to clean and cook.

A reporter can create controversy, and thus a story, almost effortlessly. All you do is ask enough people a suggestive question until you find someone who disagrees with whatever it is. Then you have your story.

Whether they're a nut, or uninformed, matters not.

Apparently some people do not care for coyote hunt contests. We did a piece on the eastern Coyote last year. We would welcome such contests in New England.

We haven't shown a nice gun in a while. This is the ArmaLite AR-10 in .308 caliber - a good caliber. Mr. Free Market wants two - one for him and one for his lad. And I know Buddy would like one for popping the bunnies in his garden. Useful also for creating peace in the Middle East.

We never covered all of the sporting breeds we wanted to during the Chinese Year of the Dog, but we hit quite a few of our favorites. Not all of 'em, cuz we never met a dog we didn't like.

We have the same weakness for baby humans. (The adults are another matter.)

At the end of the year, I want to remind our readers that the Poodle is a huntin' dawg. We said it once before, and this is the last time we'll say it.

Just don't give them deep, ocean water to retrieve from, as you would with a rough and tough Chessie. Marsh, streams, and ponds are just fine. Many Poodles have a strong pointing instinct too - mine have had one.

Am I tired of people telling me "He might break a nail"? Indeed I am. The only problem with Poodles is that they have higher IQs than humans, and that they love to laugh - at your expense. Yes, they are bird dogs and they will find your bird. And they will drop it at your feet - if they feel like it. 

And if they have a field full of bird, they just might tell you to go to hell, and roust them all at once and leave you looking like an idiot. Unlike some breeds, they can run all day, working. They do not tire. But when they want to sleep, they want their head on your pillow.

Graham Owen can tie flies which can fool other bugs - and he can take stunning photos too. Thanks, Synthstuff, for the remarkable blog find - Flies with an Attitude. Sample: