We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Today, I am doing layered winter clothing, which is only of interest if one is spending more than just a few hours out in the weather.
Dressing for spending hours out in cold weather is a tricky business, because it depends so much on what you are doing and how active you are. If you dress too warmly for a day of aggressive skiing in 10 degree (F) weather, you can easily get soaked with uncomfortable and chilling sweat. On the other hand, underdressing for a 6-hour stint sitting in a Maine duck blind can ruin the entire experience. When it's cold out, you want to be cool enough to enjoy the weather - and maybe just a little bit cold. It's all about layers.
I have spent many hours cold, wet, and happy in Yankee winters, but I have become more of a pussy as I get a bit older. It's impossible to get it right, because if you are hiking uphill at 15 degrees, you get too hot, and when you are sitting, you get too cold. But that's why you aren't being a sloth, sitting by the fire.
Storm stuff: Yesterday, we all gave my Dad a good birthday party, had good fun tossing a football around, took a long autumn walk with my sibs, spouses, kids and the dogs, and then packed Mom and Dad off to one of my sisters' houses over in northern Connecticut so they will have some help when the power inevitably does down. I am parking my car up the road in a spot with no trees to fall on it, and so I don't get blocked in by big fallen trees. Got gas and oil for the chain saw, though. I love harvesting free firewood. Also, tipped over everything outdoors that could be damaged by wind. Daughter and Yorkie got out of NYC because her building on the Hudson River was evacuated. Last but not least, switched my office phone to link over to my iPhone. Hope it's not a big dud.
Obama’s strategy, says Heileman, is built around the idea that he can win with a coalition of the “demographically ascendent,” African Americans, Hispanics, women, and young people. To a degree, the bad economy has pushed Obama toward this approach. The obvious hope is that economic weakness can be countered by appeals to socially liberal women and young people on cultural issues. But don’t underestimate the extent to which this strategy is a deliberate decision that could have gone otherwise, as the behind-the-scenes opposition of some Democrats indicates. Obama is clearly willing to abandon centrist voters and place his own likeability at risk for the sake of creating a socially and economically liberal Democratic coalition that would allow him to govern securely from the left.
and
...if you’re feeling disappointed, insulted, or left out by Obama’s campaign of trivialities and low blows, it’s fair to say the effect was intentional — or at least that Obama was willing to risk offending you for the sake of something he wanted much more.
The president is going for broke. He wants to govern from the left and ignore the center. His top strategists promised a campaign that would permit this, and that’s the campaign Obama has delivered. Noticed that Obama has actually doubled down on this strategy when he still might have tried a last-minute pivot to the middle. That’s how badly Obama wants to abandon the center and take this country to the left.
Bow is the way to do it, the hard way. That's a lot of meat. A reader sent us a link to his pics. Here's one of them (I still think it's best game management to harvest the cows instead of the alpha males, but whatever).
I always wonder how one walks around the woods with a rack like that. I could not do it.
Back to the warm, cheery lodge's dock after a day of duck hunting in Canada. Fire roaring in the fireplace, the bar is open, hors d'oevres hot and waiting for us.
What's for supper? We hope for the beer-batter fried Walleye, fresh from the lake.
That means it's time to pick up the dekes and head the boat a mile or two down the lake back to ye olde lodge. Cocktail Hour. If the outboard won't start, we have oars. Done that, too, but it's only half-fun.
So much of political debates for the past 150 years have been about whether central control by supposed experts is preferable to private efforts to be good caretakers of their resources.
Regular readers know that we tend to have a deep distrust of government, central planning, and centralized power and believe that we are line with the Founders in that regard.
We have regularly posted about The Tragedy of the Commons here. The moral of the tragedy of the commons extends far beyond cow pastures, vast herds of bison, and marine resources. (In fact, it extends to government itself which tends to view the populace as an inexhaustable resource for its own purposes.)
A superior and useful breed. Tollers prance around in a way which seems to attract ("toll") ducks - at least the stupid ones. (As in "Ask not for whom the bell tolls,...")
Why? It's a mystery. Who can read a duck's mind? Except another duck. Why do we think we have to cover Labs with camo and make them lay still? Because we are stupider than ducks? The Tollers get all of the fun. Multi-purpose animals.
And if you shoot the duck, they are very fine retrievers.
Nice bouncy red dogs which look like mutts. Which is a compliment, on Maggie's Farm. Mutts Is Us. Love 'em. But Tollers are AKC.
Since lead shot was (rightly) outlawed for waterfowl hunting in North America in 1991, the varieties of alternatives have been growing.
Steel shot was the first to appear but steel has low density (hits softer, travels shorter, and thus requires larger shot size than lead). Many folks were reluctant to put magnum steel loads through older or valuable shotguns, it altered choke functioning, and many felt that steel produced too many crippled birds. (I thought so, but I am usually not a very good shot with waterfowl unless I am in the groove.)
Then came Bismuth, and Bismuth-Tungsten - all much more expensive than steel, but with densities closer to those of lead, and presumably gentler on the barrel than steel. Plus you use the same shot sizes as with lead, say, #4 for decoying ducks and BB for geese.
The non-toxic shot I've been hearing about lately i Hevi-Steel, an iron-tungsten shot which is as cheap as regular steel but with a density approaching that of lead. There's a good, detailed review of Hevi-steel here. Given the price, it sounds like an excellent choice for those giant flocks of Snow Geese.
I think Bismuth is my first choice for ducks, especially since I can do everything the same way I used to do with lead, but I wonder what our readers like to use for ducks and geese because I am no expert on this.
Here they are, homeless, without a shell to squat under, yet they hold their heads high.
Can your species say the same, when the going gets tough?
Persecuted? And how. Pop a shell on it and suddenly it's escargot at $69 a plate. Remove the shell and it's the garden version of vermin. Please execute every one you see on sight.
Many slug species play an important ecosystem role by eating dead leaves, fungus, and decaying vegetable material. - Wikipedia
Yeah, good idea, kill all the slugs, let the decaying matter build up. Smart move, humanity.
I fought them for years while living in the middle of a Redwood forest. Once a month, I'd grab a big bag of rock salt and lay a perimeter around the building. But I never had anything against them personally. They were just gettin' by.
So, hail to thee, noble slug. Long may thy sliminess reign. Hold your head high in the face of bias, prejudice and blatant slugophobia, and remember, you are not alone. Look at the ugly, squint-eyed opossum. .22-rifle bait for any kid within a mile. Put some fluffy fur on a rat's tail and suddenly it's a cute widdle squirrel. This blatant prejudice runs rampant throughout the animal kingdom, and you must bear your share, noble slug, guilty of nothing more than being homeless.
On the other hand, no matter what the lofty price, being eaten for dinner doesn't sound like much of a fate, so maybe you're better off without the shell.
(With Bird Dog on vacation, I'm going to try to fill his mighty shoes by doing a few nature posts.)
Our twig of the week, orviminehebdomadis, is a remarkable creature, inhabiting many of the woodland areas of our wondrous globe. Not just a mere leaf or branch, viminehebdomadis is a hybrid, displaying the very best of both worlds.
As such, many consider it to be the origin of Zen, where every twig, no matter how similar, still has an intrinsic value unto itself and the universe, and how we are much more than the mere sum of our parts; so much so that we become a whole new word in the process of evolving.
Made globally popular by supermodel Twiggy, the once-lowly twig has gained an admiration in humanity's eye that can only be envied by mere leaves and branches. You might see the occasional anti-twig screed on some radical blog site, but this twigophobia is the result of the powerful Leaf & Branch Union and is a story too sordid to be told here.
In short, be proud of the lowly twig, and be happy for the small but valuable niche in life it holds. It cries every night as it holds your heart in its precious little hands, wishing for you to have the most wonderful life possible, and its only hope is that you return a tiny bit of the sentiment.
These videos are from my hunting club in Manitoba. Location is secret. We know that little blind on the point well, but usually hunt from the boats, driving them into the reeds. Big water, big lake. Lots of naive first-year birds, Red Heads, Canvasbacks, Bluebills.
The best hunting is in the worst weather: snowy sleet, with wind.
Greetings from West Columbia, South Carolina from Captain Tom.
Lake Murray is a very interesting fishery. 50,000 acres of water and all kinds of micro-ecologies from amazing pan fish through it's premier striper fishery. 20/25 lb catfish are common and bream, shell cracker, crappie and your garden variety sunfish are in abundance in dinner plate sizes. The striper fishery is incredible - again, larger specimens of this fish are not uncommon in the 30 lb range with the average specimens running in the 15/20 lb class.
Lake Murray was built in the late '20s by impounding the Saluda River and its basin at Dreher Shoals a little Northwest of Columbia, SC. At one time, it was the largest earthen dam ever constructed. Water from the dam was used to power hydroelectric turbines for a large part of South Carolina and these turbines are still in use today.
Lake Murray also has an interesting military history. The Army Air Force during WWII used the lake's islands as bombing and strafing target practice. Five bombers were lost in the lake, four were recovered at the time for salvage, but the fifth, a somewhat rare B-25C, was lost until it was found in 2003. A salvage effort was launched in late 2004, the plane raised and it is now located at a restoration facility in Montgomery, Alabama.
Lake Murray is also famous for its Purple Martin Sanctuary located on Bomb Island (approximately in the middle of the lake). As odd as it may seem, this is a major tourist attraction for the area as thousands of Purple Martins leave in the morning and return in the evening to roost over night. A lot of boaters make an evening of picnics on the water watching the evening return of the Purple Martins to Bomb Island. If you Google up Purple Martins and Bomb Island, you will see some images and an incredible radar image taken of this daily routine. I don't have my pictures of this event - took the wrong laptop with me.
Ed. Note: You can read all about the remarkable anadromous and adaptable Striper here.
Pops and I went up to Oswego, NY this week to fish Lake Ontario for King Salmon and Brown Trout. Had an excellent trip. Fished with T-K Charters and stayed at K&G Lodge http://www.kandglodge.com/. I highly recommend both.
As the pictures will attest, we caught our limit of Kings (3/person), ranging in size from 9-13 pounds, couple of Brown Trout, a couple of Lake Trout and a Steelhead. Left the dock in Oswego a bit before 5am, ran 2 miles right off the Town and had our limit by 9am (would have been earlier buy Pops lost a couple. I, of course, landed every fish on my line . .), and back to the dock by 1030a.
Probably one of the easier fishing trips - Dunkin Donuts is open 24 hours, so we had hot coffee and donuts on the boat. Guy at the dock filleted the fish for $4/fish and included ice for the cooler and we were back home by 5pm.
That fishery is pretty consistent from year to year, not only with state stockings but a decent (not great) level of naturally reproducing fish. Fish are close to shore as the water warms earlier in the shallows (that is relative as we were fishing in 90 feet of water, temps in the low 50's). Trolled spoons and anyone who says a 12 pound salmon on 10 pound test is not a fight, knows not of what he speaks. Oh - and about 35 pounds of salmon fillets for the freezer.
Guy on the right in the pics is the mate. He works doing maintenance at nuke plants for 8 months of the year, and fishes the other 4. His father was the Captain and both know what they are great fisherman
BTW - Pops is 78 (79 this October) and cannot wait to go next year.
Factory fishing, aided by helos, has crushed the population of Bunker. An excellent and thorough review of the politics of the plankton-eating Menhaden which, like the Herring, is the preeminent fish of the lower end of the Atlantic food chain:
A Fish Story - How an angler and two government bureaucrats may have saved the Atlantic Ocean.
My post about Mahi and Captain Beardsley's catch the other day brings me around to fishing the fly. This time, we'll concentrate on salt water although some of the techniques and gear I'll mention can also be used for big fresh water game fish.
However, before I launch into a short treatise, I'd like to spend a paragraph or two on my personal fishing philosophy.
Izzak Walton said Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learned. He also said God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling. While certainly true in some ways, neither statement quite explains the whole attraction to the sport.
Fishing, both bait/reel and on the fly can be as complex or as simple as you wish. Basic arithmetic is simple, quantum physics is complex - both are mathematics. A bobber, cane pole with hook and worm are simple - big game reels with three stage gearing, auto-clutch drags and tension monitors on custom carbon fiber rods, ceramic roller guides and high strength butts are complex.
As if we conservatives don't have enough to worry about (Obama, Biden, Michael Moore, Pelosi and the list goes on), I have been prepping in case of a zombie attack. Now I know some may think it trite or not possible, but if the Dark Shadows movie with Johnny Depp coming out in May is successful, we may be in for a run of the un-dead, dead.
So, in an effort to be prepared (as we good conservatives try to be), I've put together my zombie protection rig. Most rigs are built around the AR 15 platform, a solid, wise and dependable choice. However, being a conservative, I am also a bit more "old school".
The M1 carbine was produced in 1944. It has seen some use, but is reliable and will hold a pretty good group of 3 inches or so at 100 yards, which is plenty good enough for zombie killing. That is a Colt Commando revolver, manufactured during WWII for use by defense plant guards, OSS, etc. The one in the picture was shipped in 1943 to a government warehouse in Reading, PA. Box of 38 Special loadings and an extra box of Vietnam War era production, .30 Caliber Carbine ammo and I am ready. In case they get too close, the carbine has a bayonet and if that fails, I have my pilot's knife. I think I am well-prepared.
Readers know that, in Southern tradition, "birds" means Bob White quail. I am not talking about four-and-twenty blackbirds.
Even if you don't have any around, you can get semi-boned (Hey, Bird Dog -have you ever boned a quail?) quail through D'Artagnan. Semi-boned means they leave the bones in the legs and thighs. Great first course.
One of the best first course recipes in the world: Boned Quail Stuffed with Foie Gras. Instead of pate de foie gras, you can use seared chunks of foie gras.
You can do a similar recipe with pheasant, adding some bread crumbs, onion, and apple chunks to the stuffing along with the chunks of seared foie gras. A semi-boned pheasant is good, too.
Your dinner guests will return for dining like this, even if they don't like you.
When we were kids, we played Army Man. In the evenings, we watched Vic Morrow keep his head in Combat, and Christopher George go dunebuggying in Rat Patrol. Entertainment like that was everywhere, and every retaining wall in every driveway had imaginary Guns of Navarone atop it the day after we saw the movie. We'd gather up all our military-ish toy swag, pick sides, and wander the neighborhood sneaking up on each other and arguing over who shot whom. Nothing we had shot any sort of projectile, so there was nothing to do but argue; but we all wanted to die and fall to the ground in histrionic ways and writhe around a bit, so the arguments were mostly about who was "throwing" the war too easily to suit the other side. There was a dirty little secret of all such suburban war games of the sixties. We all wanted to be the Germans.
The Germans were cool. Exotic. The Americans were just our dads in olive drab. German uniforms were like a circus outfit compared to a reform school tie. Germans had those nifty beer bottle hand grenades, tanks named after panthers and tigers instead of anonymous generals, and those awesome grease guns that went BBBRRRRRPPPP when you let them off the chain. And besides, if you were the Germans, you were expected to lose and die and writhe on the ground in your death throes over and over and have all the fun.
The actual American military seems to have understood that the Germans had all the sexy stuff, and worked hard to remind the American troops that outre weapons, gaudy uniforms with lots of lightning bolts and skulls, and Roman salutes don't win wars. The American army was boring compared to the German army. Boring like Joe Louis fighting Joel Grey would be, that is. Workmanlike. Here's an interesting example of the mundane but necessary propaganda that reminded American GIs that the boring stuff works just fine.
Shooting a gun is like smoking a cigarette or drinking espresso in a café in Paris or having sex on a Caribbean beach: You’ve watched it so many times on-screen that you experience your own actions as an echo. It’s impossible not to feel like a cliché.
As a favor to one of the local guides, I took part of an over flow party out on Lake Murray recently for a quick fishing trip. One of the clients was commenting on how my digital sonar looked a lot different than his. A discussion began about sonar, how it works and why my depth finder/sonar looked different that his. Sonar seems to be misunderstood as a fish finding technique even among experienced sports fishing fans so it might be fun to clear a few things up.
Echo location is a fairly well understood technique – transmit a signal, it reflects back a certain amount of energy to a receiver (or receivers), a quick calculation is made (return time) and the results displayed. Bats, whales and dolphins, certain fish and as unusual as this may sound, a bird species called cave swiftlet all have a means of echo locating objects and prey.
Sonar (SOund Navigation And Ranging) uses the mechanical propagation of a sound signal to locate a target's position. There are two main sonar techniques – passive and active. A good example of passive sonar is a relatively simple technique used in the late 15th Century – a simple open at both ends tube stuck into the water with a listener on the dry end to detect approaching ships. Anybody who's ever spent some time underwater on a busy lake with lots of boaters can relate to “listening” to the props move the boats through the water – that buzzing sound you hear is a form of passive sonar. A sailboat would produce a “whooshing” sound as the hull creates the bow wave.
Today, I am doing layered winter clothing, which is only of interest if one is spending more than just a few hours out in the weather.
New Yorkers and New York lovers 
So much of political debates for the past 150 years have been about whether central control by supposed experts is preferable to private efforts to be good caretakers of their resources. 
Since lead shot was (rightly) outlawed for waterfowl hunting in North America in 1991, the varieties of alternatives have been growing. 
Consider the noble slug.
Our twig of the week, or
Readers know that, in Southern tradition, "birds" means Bob White quail. I am not talking about four-and-twenty blackbirds. 
After College, What?
From 
