Maggie's Farm

This is a re-post:

Here's the menu for the sort of 1890's-style dinner our Ducks Unlimited commitee serves annually. Our Chef for this special annual Game Dinner was making Rillete de Lapin since he was a kid in France. Yes, it is generally Black Tie out of respect for the chef and/or the host.

What's the deal? Our Ducks Unlimited Committee sells this dinner for twelve for significant bucks (usually $10-20,000 - and worth every penny) in our charity auction, provides the game, helps the Chef, and serves. When lucky, we're invited to join the dinner table. Otherwise, Chef and his sous chef feed us well in the kitchen, and we help consume the wines.

All the host has to do is to light the fire, and buy the wine and ceegars. With all of the loins and breasts, this is one sexy menu, and mighty filling:

Cocktail hour hors d'oevres:

Game terrine, grainy home-made mustard, gherkin slices, and toast

Rillette de lapin, capers, toast

Pate of Wild Duck Liver with cognac, toast

Dinner:

Roast Country Pigeon with green and white asparagus, mache salad, truffle vinaigrette

Woodcock ravioli with celeriac flan and wild mushroom sauce, with Black Truffle garni

Pheasant breast, braised red cabbage, lardons, with cognac jus

Satueed breast of Redhead or Canvasback with wild rice and roast figs, jus de gibier

Port and juniper berry sorbet with Rosemary garni

Roasted rabbit loin, homemade tagliatelle, basic cream sauce, and crispy shiitake mushrooms

Marinated loin of venison with roasted parsnip and salsify,  fondante potato and huckleberry jus

Dessert

Pear Trio: Pear Almond Tarte, Poached Pear, and Pear William Sorbet

Cheese

Imported cheese board, dried fruits, nuts, assorted homemade breads

The wines to accompany the courses:

De Meric Cuvee Catherine de Medicis Brut Champaigne 1996

Voignier La Place 2004

Chateau Margaux 1991

Barolo Bartolo Mascarello 1970

Chateau D'Yquem 1997

Port, Cognac, and cigars in the library for the gentlemen

There are two edible parts of a duck, whether wild or farm raised: the breast, and the leg and thigh.

Some people like to roast the whole bird, but I prefer just to remove the breast and the leg, and then use the carcass for gibier or duck stock.

Duck breasts, generally, are cooked by scoring then searing the skin side in a hot skillet for a few minutes, sizzling the meat side briefly, then roasting at 400 for 5-10 minutes. It should be rare-medium rare. (I once ate a whole raw, warmed Bluebill. Sushi. Wasn't too bad, but a bit fishy. I wanted to take "rare" to the limit.)

Then comes the sauce. Here are a few of my favorite ideas:

1. I like a cherry sauce, like this one (which was meant for venison), or this one. Here's a fancy Sweet Cherry Sauce.

2. This pomegranite sauce would be good for venison too.

3. Caramelized figs are a classic with duck breast.

4. Emeril does a simple pan roast. Trouble with that for me is the danger of overcooking.

5. I also like a sauce made with a gibier base, with some halved cherry tomatoes and chopped Italian olives and a little vinegar.

Duck legs are another matter, because they are tough and stringy like pheasant legs. Both do very well for confit, if you want to take the trouble. An alternative is to braise the legs. Some ideas:

Wine-braised duck legs

Braised Duck Legs for idiots

A reader sent me this pic. Trust me: these dogs are trained. Which reminds me - we need a series on dog training, hunting and regular obedience. It's an important topic, and only the rich farm it out to experts. I have trained my own. For regular obedience, they have been quite good but for hunting they have been a little "difficult." They like the birds too much and behave like children when there is too much game around. My fault.

If you feed a dog, he'll love you. Any dog will snuggle. The training is the deeper connection in which you learn to think like him, and hopefully mostly vice-versa. His work is to anticipate your wishes just as our work is to anticipate our bosses' wishes (but at Maggie's, we try to avoid having bosses other than God).

Any dog can be trained to the whistle and to hand signals. Any human can learn God's hand signals.

It's more shooting than hunting, but it looks like great fun. Friends who have done such shoots come home with sore shoulders but otherwise very happy and well-fed - with no time zone change. 

More cool if slightly pricey hunts at GSS. (No, this is not a paid advt. We do no paid ads here but we do plenty of freebies just for fun.)

This is an annual re-post. We'll post more game recipes over the next few weeks to help our hunters with their bursting freezers -

With hunting season over, it's time to get cooking what we have in the freezer. It all begins with the sauce:

Uncle Bill's Jus de Gibier (mixed game) sauce, aka Brown Game Stock, aka Clean out the Freezer Sauce

This will be the tastiest sauce base, or sauce, you have ever had in your life, for chicken, game birds, turkey, venison, pork, veal, pasta, ravioli, etc. It's an ideal base for pheasant, chicken, venison or goose bourguignon. It has an earthy richness to it which is remarkable. We like to make a woodcock ravioli with black truffle, and this sauce is essential for that.

Gibier refers to mixed game, but we do it with mixed meat too, but not beef, which would overpower the subtler flavors. It is the best use of freezer-burned game and other stuff in the freezer. It's fun to make (but it takes a while), and you can clean out the freezer and the fridge at the same time. I freeze the used carcasses of Thanksgiving turkey, ducks, goose, random deer bones, etc. to use when I make this, once or twice a year, along with freezer-burned chicken, pheasant, etc. You could do this with entirely store-bought stuff if you lack a hunter in the family. The more stuff, the better.

You need a 10-12 (or larger) quart pot to make this, if you have a lot of stuff to use, but it freezes fine when made. It's good for a few months, at least.

Bake in oven until browned (not necessarily cooked-though) your saved carcasses and freezer-burned game meat and meat, especially pork and pork bones are good, and veal bones, (even if they have already been cooked). Yes, you bake the bones too. Do not burn them in the oven. I tend to use freezer-burned venison, pork chops, all my game bird carcasses, venison bones (cracked with a mallet), a bunch of veal bones and veal scraps if I can get them nowadays (it doesn't hurt to hit up the butcher for some stuff for this), turkey carcass, woodcock carcasses, and a pile of chicken wings. Chop this stuff roughly with a cleaver into 3-6" chunks and toss in the pot. Try to crack the bones.

From our archives:

Cassoulet

As you may know, cassoulet is basically French baked beans with meat. It is country home cookin, but it can be great stuff. Dutch oven cooking.

It's a good way to cook some wild game meat, especially the less-desirable parts.

Any meat, but not beef - strong red meat is too strong for cassoulet. We have, over time, used mixes of duck, snow goose, chukar, venison, chicken, pork, wild boar, and pheasant. Mix the meats - it adds to the flavor. There should be some source of pig fat in it. Always some venison sausage, or any sausage, because it is a necessary traditional ingredient. The meat-to-bean ratio is supposed to be fairly high - 30% - but I like beans and prefer a much lower ratio. I think every village in southern France has its own recipe and method. I figure roughly one hunk of sausage and one or two hunks of meat per person.

A few tips about Cassoulet:

1. Make it the day before. Like beef stew, it improves overnight.
2. Serve with salad, toasted garlic bread with a pile of stinky and gooey cheeses on the side, and then fruit for dessert. And always a Cote Rotie or Cotes du Rhone.
3. You need to use large white beans, ideally French haricot beans. They should be intact when served - not mushy.
4. Make sure you push the bread crumbs down into the surface of the mixture when baking.
5. Sprinkle chopped fresh parsley on top when done - it looks better that way.

It's worth reading a few approaches to get the general idea. Here's an easy American version. Here's one French version. Here's another.

A seasonal re-post -

Interesting bird, the Snow Goose. For one thing, it comes in a blue
and white form, and all sorts of intermediate forms, so was long thought to be two species. For another, its population has boomed in recent years such that it is destroying its tundra nesting areas, and so the wildlife managers are essentially begging people to shoot them. They were scarce in the 1970s.

There is almost no real limit on these birds, and it is now legal to use electronic calls to try to bring them into your field decoy spread during the spring Snow Goose season in the midwest. However, as it turns out, hunting makes no dent in their numbers.

When a flock of 100 or 1000 of them descend over your blind into your field decoys on a frigid dawn, it's one hell of an adrenaline rush and one hell of a shooting experience. A literal "blast," and you cannot reload your auto fast enough to keep up with the action of these determined birds who can, at times, seem quite undeterred by the sound of shotgun fire. They go down very easily, compared to Canadas which can sometimes coast or flap for a quarter mile with a fatal wound, which gives a retriever - or a fellow - a good work out.

 We say "They go down like a prom dress."

Our Brit cousins would love this shooting - they have, alas, nothing comparable for fun. Neither prom dresses nor Snow Geese. Our good pal Mr. Free Market would have the time of his life.

When 5000 of them decide to chose the seemingly identical barley field adjacent to the one you happen to be in for brainless goose reasons, it is a deeply frustrating experience and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

A northern Canadian nester, this medium-sized honker is highly migratory across the US, especially in the Central Flyway. It is not unusual, these days, to see them flying over Vermont ski slopes in winter, or on Long Island potato fields.

The causes of the potentially self-destructive population boom are unclear, but may have to do with changes in the agricultural lands on which they winter. I wish I had a decent digital image of the size of the flocks of these birds, capable of truly blocking out the sun, but my best shots are from my pre-digital era, a few years ago. Beautiful, and awe-inspiring but, according to the biologists, a big problem too. They could be wrong; it might just be a natural boom and bust cycle like the housing market.

Being game birds, a word is always in order on cooking, since you must eat what you kill. These geese do not hold a candle to the delectable Canada Goose. The tough breast is best stewed, or crock-potted, and can be quite fine in a cassoulet.  But anything is good in a cassoulet on a cold snowy, blowy winter evening, with crunchy garlic toast and a few bottles of Cote Roti and a mountain of powerful stinky French cheeses on the side.

More about Snow Goose at CLO, whence the photo, here.

Our old post on Cassoulet is lost for the moment. Good hearty peasant food, best made with game sausage and game meat of any sort. We once made one with venison sausage, wild boar, and Snow Goose breast.

My pup is uncomfortable with all of this global warming snow and cold. He lifts his leg, for instance, but cannot get it above the snow - much less get his peeing organ above the snow. He's not a small dog, medium-sized, big enough to grab cheese off the kitchen counter. Our snow is powdery, not crusty, and around 2' deep these days and 5' in the drifts.

As for poops, he seems uncomfortable because he feels he is just pooping against himself, without the satisfying drop of proper elimination.

We wonder what small dogs do, especially little ankle-biters when the snow is over their heads.

Do they tunnel like the famous Snow Mole of the Arctic? Or do they sneak into the basement like I just discovered, to my dismay, that our pup has been doing since all of the big snows?

You know what I uttered when I saw it all.

That's a Savage Model 99 chambered for .308. There is always a good selection of Savage 99s at reasonable prices at Gun Broker.com. It's good to be able to purchase firearms through them: it's an online gun show.

A 100 year-old lever action hammerless design, still going strong although the manufacturing of this rifle ended in the 1990s. Jon Wolfe says:

For hunting North American game, the Savage 99 is still one of the finest hunting rifles of all time. In fact, it was a solid performer well into the later part of the last century, nearly one hundred years after its creation. It was manufactured for nearly a century with over a million rifles produced before the Savage 99 was discontinued due to decrepit machinery and increased cost.

Here's the Savage 99 website

The Wiki entry has lots of info.

Here's a useful short article: GOOD FIRST BIG GAME RIFLES

Here's Hawks on A Dozen Top Deer Rifles (he does not include the Model 99 on his list)

Had a fine New England hunt today with Gwynnie, another pal, and the new pup. We did manage to bag a few birds. This enthusiastic young Lab (only his third real hunt) puts on a good point. I think it would be a shame to train the point out of him, but some folks like a Lab to flush the bird right away.

More photos on continuation page below:

I meant to re-post this in December. Is it too late?

Red-neck Yankees wear lined overshirts (like the one in the photo, from Moose Creek) much of the year. Few things are more comfortable, and you don't care what happens to them. They keep you cozy at 50 degrees and at 20 degrees - and lower if you are working hard and moving around.

These things are made for outdoor work. You often need to buy them one size up for layering underneath, depending on your personal size range. They look better and feel softer with some dirt and grease on them, and a small tear or two.

If you want to go a bit upscale from that sort of thing, these are always acceptable (even though they are from LL Bean). They are also made with quilted linings like this for colder weather.

Variants on the theme of overshirts and "shirt-jacs" is this Woolrich wool classic:

Filson's Wool Cape Coat:

A zippered, Windstopper-lined LL Bean Maine Guide wool jacket:

Carhartt's basic canvas, flannel-lined work shirt:

Lined flannel from Woolrich:

Lastly, Caribou Creek quilt-lined, at Cabelas:

Disclosure: Four dump trucks of wool and cotton overshirts were dumped in our Maggie's Farm driveway, blocking all tractor traffic and causing all sorts of problems with the hogs, in exchange for the above post. Please, everybody - Stop giving us free stuff and money! We don't want it! We have enough money and stuff, and it costs money, time, and effort to get rid of excess stuff. Ever try to take a Filson wool cape shirt off a dirty ole 800 lb. hawg who wants to put on airs? Dang.

Here. The Judge is a handy weapon, but the .410 in it might not kill anybody for keeps.

You do not want the bad guys alive to testify at your trial, because they will lie. 

Re gun safes, I just don't want my firearms stolen, but I have no idea what good a home protection firearm is when locked in a gun safe. All across this great land, people keep a loaded shotgun handy and hope they never need it for anything other than a rattlesnake.

Best home protection is a cheap pump action 12 ga. Only a semi-pro or pro could kill an intruder with a handgun in the dark, while feeling freaked-out and confused. A 12 ga might damage your possessions but at close range with the right cartouche (Buckshot) it can definitely mess up a bad guy so he will die in the hallway before the cops arrive.

These are not very Christmassy mental images, are they?

Readers know that we are fans of SureFire military and tactical flashlights. They are useful for blinding and illuminating a bad guy, or for illuminating a distant detail - or for finding a fox, beaver or owl at night.

The problem with them has been that the battery drain has been so fast that they were not useful for any regular flashlight use (for which they were not designed anyway - they were first designed to incapacitate and illuminate a human target).

They have now come out with a line of LED flashlights, some of which may not meet the same tactical specs but which have a longer battery life, and still should not be used in anybody's face unless you wish to disable them. A MagLite on steroids.

Also, Insty informs us that Amazon has deals on knives. Practical knives, not the fancy ones. Except when boarding a plane, a guy needs a knife in the pocket.

This gives a fairly good idea of what it's like, in Yankeeland. Lots of brush-busting, little shooting. Hunting isn't shopping - it's off-road hiking with dog. The shotgun is mostly a burden. You just hope to have a chance to use it - and not splatter your pal with birdshot. (We have all done that once or twice. It's important to apologize. Most guys don't care much, unless you hit their dog. It's best to let low birds go.)

Since you are so interested, here are the species we shot last week in Manitoba, and which now reside in the freezer: Shoveler ("Smilin' Mallard"), Bluebill, lots of Redheads, Canvasback, Mallard, Gadwall, Wigeon, Pintail, and Canada Goose.

The limit in Manitoba is 8/day, any species of duck.

We also had some luck with Ruffed and Sharptail Grouse. I do love huntin' the grousies because you get to walk all day in beautiful places.

Photo of a few handsome Redheads - they taste as good as Canvasback. Tip for fellow duck hunters: forget steel shot. It often cripples and does not kill cleanly. Use heavy-shot or bismuth or anything else -our wonderful ducks deserve the best, despite the expense. I am through with steel shot for ducks and goose forever, as of now.

I have a pal who is in the hospital, being treated for a serious case of Babesiosis. I visited him at the hospital yesterday, and determined that he would survive because I was able to elicit a few laughs - but it can be a very nasty and life-threatening disease (or a mild and insignificant one). He was on two or three IV antibiotics, and a morphine pump for the headache.

It's a bug like Malaria, and its vector is the tiny Deer Tick, same bugger as Lyme Disease. Dog ticks are annoying, but we woodsy and doggy people get those on us all the time. No big deal. Those Deer Ticks (actually, they are mouse ticks more than deer ticks) are the real problem for people who spend time outdoors.

Not to make light of a serious topic, but I can't resist re-posting "I'd Like to Check You For Ticks." It's a guy song, but the gals seem eager for Brad to check them. It must be lots of fun to be a country star:

Thanks again for the invite, dear friend. (If you wondered, it's gents only - and tobacco enjoyment is encouraged. Jacket and tie for dinner, of course. Traditional American, like Maggie's Farm.)

That's Harpoon UFO in the Growler. Their UFO is good stuff.

A fellow hunter at the lodge this weekend had his Spinone with him. (Pic of his pup below) This was a new breed to me. A pointer. They seem to run 70-80 lbs. His owner says that if you want one, make sure you buy it in Italy, not in the US. Relatively slow, methodical, and errorless hunters, it seems, with a style which sounds similar to that of the Munsterlanders: they do not run crazy, but search carefully and relentlessly, at a steady human pace.

It's all in the genes. (You would like this dog, Craig.)

His dog was very well-trained (in Italian commands, eg "Posto!"). He told me that they say in Italy that the face of a Spinone should look like an old philosopher. His dog had that look, and insisted on slobbering me with drooling kisses - perceiving, as any wise philosopher dog would, that Bird Dog is a dog guy.

The breed is said to be an ancestor of all of the pointers, with a pedigree dating to c. 500 AD. The fur is thick and wiry.

I could use a spare Spinone around the place (although they look like tick magnets). A good excuse for another trip to Italia.

Yesterday was a good day to pull some favorite field guns - bird and duck guns -�out of ye olde gunne closet for a little pre-season cleaning, check-up, and oiling. That .22? Haven't used it in years so I grabbed it too for a little maintenance. The old single-shot 12 ga. is for the little one to practice with. There was some new rust on the barrel of the beat-up Mossberg pump I use for sleet and mud and salt-water duck hunting, but a little surface rust doesn't bother me.

It's a good thing I checked things over, because I discovered that I have lost the choke tubes for my Beretta semi-auto and for my Browning o/u with the gold engraving that I use mostly for clays. The tubes are nowhere. I think I left them somewhere last year, probably on some hunting club's gun bench when I was changing chokes. This means a costly visit to Briley's website because these guns now all have skeet chokes in them, and I like a little more flexibility. For example, a light-modified choke for ducks (which shoots steel shot like modified - but I am giving up on steel, mostly, except maybe for large flocks of Snow Geese, which, as they say, "go down like a prom dress.").

Not that it really matters - I can't hardly hit anything anyway since I injured my shoulder a couple of years ago.

I store guns in these silicone-impregnated gun socks, always with the barrel down so any loose oil doesn't leak into the wood and weaken it.

Here is a re-posted sample of a few decent places to stay for your New England grouse hunting, ranging from the simple to the quite comfortable (some have fishing too):

Bosebuck Mountain Camps

Miramichi Inn

King and Bartlett

Partridge Cabins

Lopstick Cabins

and in the Adirondacks, The Hungry Trout

These are just some of the places we've been to or heard about first-hand. Here's a good source for Maine outfitters.

Photo: A cabin at Bosebuck, where the only heat is your wood stove and your dog, the bunks are lumpy, the Canada Jays steal the dog kibbles of a slow eater, and where the locals cruise the dirt roads and shoot the partidges along the road from their pick-ups, while the sports in their expensive attire bust the brush with their dogs. Grouse huntin' ain't shopping. It's a rare occasion when I've limited out at 4 birds in an 8-hour, leg-testing day in the woods and marsh edges (think 8 hours of singles tennis in mud, bogs, raspberry brambles and cage-like alder thickets). It's a work-out. At some point, you start wondering how long it is to cocktail hour. The Woodcock keep it interesting and varied. It's a 20 ga. sport, or even 28 ga.

Hunting grouse is wonderfully difficult, challenging, and frustrating - but you get to spend time in the wild woods with dogs and pals and guns, smoking at will and accumulating precious memories to re-live in your old age.

Pic via Synthstuff:

A re-post from many years ago -

The chirp of the crickets reminds us that hunting season is fast approaching. I have been too busy focusing on yard and farm work to pick up my 12 ga. Belgian boxlock s/s which I only use for pheasant, which has been at the gunsmith since January for a bad firing pin. Sad to say, I only have a paltry two non-local trips planned for the fall: Duck, goose and grouse in Manitoba, and grouse + woodcock (and maybe trout) in the Adirondacks. I made a mistake and scheduled my Adirondack trip to overlap with an annual group trip to New Brunswick for grouse, and puddle duck too.

But there are abundant local opportunities for winter duck, grouse, and "flying mattresses," (ie pen-raised pheasants which is to hunting as miniature golf is to golf but is highly gratifying to dogs who get a little bored or frustrated after two hours without putting up a grouse). The pup is definitely ready and I have gotten him off pointing turtles, mice, and grasshoppers. He still points snakes, and finds them interesting but fortunately will not pick them up. Yes, he likes birds. Why does the subject come up? It's time to get to the outdoor catalogs real quick.

I like The Ugly Dog and of course Filson's. Cabela's hardly needs my help. Sierra Trading Post often has very good deals on outdoor stuff, along with lots of other useful clothing.

I should put in a plug for Arrow Lake Lodge in Canada where a pal of mine likes to go - photo from their website.

What kit catalogs do our readers enjoy?

In the course of our basement water pipe flood this summer, I seem to have lost my couple of pairs of light shooting gloves. I like to shoot with gloves even when it isn't too cold. Most of the hunting I do tends to be in cold weather so I like to get used to the feel of gloves on a trigger.

And I have a mild case of Raynaud's.

Glovemakers vary in what they mean by L,M, S, etc. Here's a great way to determine your numerical glove size when ordering online. Leather, of course, tends to stretch a bit with use.

Sierra Trading Post almost always has nice shooting gloves at a meaningful discount. Those are for cool - not frigid - weather. Not just for shooting either - good cool-weather all-purpose gloves.

The right gloves for hunting grouse in the snow or ducks in the sleet at 10 degrees F is another topic. The perfect gloves for those things do not exist, as best I have been able to determine. Heavy waterproof gloves, obviously, do not fit rapidly and easily inside a trigger guard, and if you are using a double-triggered old s/s, it's really a problem.

Ideas are welcome. I wonder what the Army uses in Afghanistan in the winter. Maybe things like this.

I used to have a Browning 28 ga Featherweight. It was truly light. In fact, a little too light in weight for my accuracy or lack thereof. However, it was a pleasure to carry for 6 hours in the woods.

At some point, I turned it in to buy something else in s/s, but I wish I had that 28 now for grouse and especially Woodcock.

Many claim that a 28 patterns better than any other gauge. I wonder whether any of our readers ever hunt with a 28.

Should be, but are not. Long-time readers know that is part of a bay on Lake Winnipegosis, with the duck boats ready to go.

NYM posted this pic of Virginia's Thornton Hill Hounds, eager to get out of the trailer and to work. He notes that these are mostly Penn Marydels. Not house pets.

More cool stuff about dogs - How dogs became domesticated. h/t Classical Values. Dumb soundtrack and no real audio, from a Russian fox farm -

Watch the video

Bird Dog -

While certainly not as "dramatic" as your trip across the pond, we spent a week in the Maine woods, canoeing and fishing for Brook Trout and Smallmouth.  We stayed at a traditional Maine "camp"  http://www.bowlincamps.com/  Food was great (camp cooking and plenty of it).  Other than rain for 1/2 the day on Monday, the weather was superb - temps in the upper 70's during the day and 50-55 at night.  Camp is located 8 miles down a logging road (no cell phone or Blackberry - hooray!) and about an hour west of Patten, Maine.  They have had little rain this year, so the river and stream levels were down, impacting the fishing.  We caught some Brookies and one decent Smallmouth in five days of fishing.  The fish were there, we just had to work for them.  We canoed and fished the East Branch of the Penobscot River which is pretty daggone wild.  We saw no other canoes or campers on the river.  Saw a nice bear and wife almost got ran over by a moose while she was hiking.  Had a flat tire on the Suburban so had to go to Houlton for repair (living where I do, I forget how nice the folks outside of the urban areas are to strangers.  Guy at the tire shop just happened to have the exact size and make tire that matched the other three.  It was used, but had better tread than the ones on the Sub.  $50 on the vehicle.  In and out in 45 minutes.)
 
Bowlin Camps is just a stone's throw from the Appalachian Trail.  Guy came through for lunch - he was hiking from Gaspe Bay to Key West.  Left Gaspe Bay in mid-June.  No map, one pair of boots and I think, not a lot of money.  Gave him our breakfast bars and some trail mix, for which he was sincerely grateful.  Seemed like a nice guy, but maybe a bit too idealistic - hoped to make it to Key West by next summer.
 
Anyway, the camp was great, Pops, wife and the two dogs enjoyed themselves in the woods.  We had hot showers, generator between 0630 and 2100 hours and gas lamps otherwise.  Camp was getting ready for bear hunting season, which begins on August 30th.  We saw several trail cam pics of bears that were 5-6 feet tall, which is a great black bear for Maine.
 
Couple of pics attached.
 
Your humble scribe - J

An email from a buddy:

I came across a Japanese Type 14 Nambu pistol.  These were reasonably well made Japanese semi-autos, used from mid-1920's until end of WWII.  The ammo is available for around $25/box of 50.  I had planned on using it for a project that didn't work out
 
If interested, I can email photos.  I'd like just what I paid for it - $300.

I don't need one and do not want one, but it's an interesting firearm from an historical point of view.

Everything about the Type 14 here.

It's time to plan hunting trips. I know of two guide services that host Cape Cod duck hunting - mostly, but not only, sea ducks. November-January:

Cape Cod Sportsmen and East Coast Guide Service.

The latter even offers an Eider recipe: Eider Cape Cod. If you aren't planning to eat 'em, you shouldn't shoot 'em.

Here's one of Capt. Perez' Eider hunts in Cape Cod. These guys are good shots, and make it look far easier than it is even though Eiders decoy readily:

Five or six more months until duck season. A friend sent me these photos of a splendid, if surrealistically overblown, duck blind. It has to be in Arkansas.