15 minutes of fame?

Hate to blog right over such an...uhm...inspiring post, but here is a piece that my friend Pat Durkin just wrote for NRA's American Hunter magazine on Heberlein's deer / grouse camp 'Up North' in Wisconsin. Some of you have been there, others may be soon.

You'll notice the genesis of Conley's name. The story of me and the farm girl is true, but by today's standards would probably be rated PG-13.

Jim has assured me that pasting in a screen grab of the first page and then a link to the full article will work:

link to download full article.

If it doesn't...blame him. 'Course he's the one who's gotten me this far.

Excellence in nature reporting

hard to know whether this is for real. Enjoy.

Rain.

Ask me how my "2 dads, 4 kids, 2 wives" fathers day tent camping and trout fishing trip to Kettle Creek (Potter Co, PA) went this weekend. Nary a High Life man in sight, but I enjoyed frying bacon in ankle deep water.

Truck

in honor of Father's Day.



Some of these are just making me laugh out loud.

Fish sticks

Josh, those Miller High Life ads are fantastic. I've just spent the better part of (cough) an hour watching a ton of them. Here's one that I like:



say . . . didn't you just buy a hunting cabin with a cappuccino machine?

Ice Fishing

Wow, two posts in a day for me. A record.

Keith's earlier posting of another in this commercial series enticed me to revisit these classics:

For Your Bogsuckin', Mudbattin' Pleasure

American Woodcock Population Status Report - 2009
with love, from the good folks at USFWS (you know, people like PW).

Red Tide Hits Downeast Maine

Brody ("... from the muddy place") arrived in Bangor yesterday evening on a Northwest flight that originated in Missouri. Geographic location of breeder will weigh more heavily on pup choice next time around -- shipping a verb can be expensive! Things have changed since I paid $25 for Butch puppy's flight from Detroit (but he did share the crate with his sister).

So far, so good. Eight weeks old, first of his clan to hit the highway. Seems like a bright little devil. No accidents on the floor, didn't cry the whole night, pretty mellow (so far), and the bride and boys love him.

Pointing golden retriever? Well, officially he's a red setter (http://www.nrsftc.com/), owing to an injection of English into the Irish ancestry in the 1950s.
His dad's a field trial stud from Kansas (http://pinehollowkennel.nrsftc.com/), mom is a hunting dog from MO. He should be about 50-55 lbs (Spy's 53); he's got bits of white on the toes of his rear feet and specks of white on his armpits and chest. He'll be at rookie camp this fall. Hard to tell just yet if Spy's nose is out of joint.

Crashing the Hatch

Penns Creek, PA at Green Drake time. Hallowed ground. Maybe the Hendricksons on the Upper Delaware come close, but this really is the holy grail of eastern flyfishing. Approach on your knees with the proper reverence.

Serious guys taking themselves seriously, reminding me of the great line from Greg Brown..."looking like everything just kinda stuck to 'em the last time they walked through ol' LL Bean..." Hushed latin whisperings overheard..."ephemerella grandis...quid pro quo...sic semper tyrannis..."

And then there was us. Four or five dads, a mom or two, and five kids rampaging through the woods at the top of their lungs. Falling in, dropping cameras, throwing rocks, playing tag, occasionally making a cast or two. Random screamings. Real life. Bet the fancy guys hated it, but they probably needed it too. I know I did.

another new bird dog

all this talk of bird dog puppies has made me nostalgic . . . . Some of you grousers have been around long enough to know that the first bird dog I hunted over was our Boston terrier Lucy, and I killed one of my first-ever grouse at Connecticut Hill with Lucy's help sometime in the early 90s.

well boys and girls we're back in the Boston terrier business at Chez Tantarlow--meet Henry, named after another famous transcendentalist Bostonian who will remained unnamed.

Henry belongs to my daughter Sophia, who saved up her own money for quite some time to get him.

Don't know how he'll be on grouse, though.