You are invited

South African Mixed Bag

Been meaning to post a few pics from my South African bird hunt. Don't have any great stories, nor the story telling abilities of CB. Al Stewart, Michigan's Upland Game Bird Biologist, and I hunted for 2 days in the Durbanville area of the Western Cape. All told we harvested 7 different species: Helmeted Guineafowl, Cape Francolin, Rock Dove, Cape Turtle-Dove, Egyptian Geese, Spur-wing Geese, and Hottentot Teal.

Will try and post some more information later this evening.

SJ

Gotland, Sweden: Towards Fishing for Aesthetics

Back in April I presented a paper at a conference in Stockholm and then took a few days to visit Gotland, a Swedish island out in the Baltic Sea (4 hours by ship). It was a beautiful place, and the sea-run brown trout were in the shoals and shallows. I tied into one, probably a 5 pounder or so, but lost it (most likely due to my inferior knot-tying) at the net. There were many rises, but as you can see from the footage and the stills, it was so calm that I fear my presentation spooked many more fish than enticed. Need some practice with the 8-wt. But damn, was it beautiful.

the new enhanced Katie video

At Vicar's suggestion. Make sure your sound is turned up.

re-runs and summer filler

I have had a couple of requests to post some things that I promised but never delivered on, for example, a snow goose hunt photo collection, a squirrel derby photo collection, and a link to a story I wrote for Sporting Tales a few years ago.

So, I will start with the easy one. Click on the Sporting Tales cover. More soon.

Get the lead out

Here's a piece of blog material from Path Walker, posted on his behalf.

PW's thoughts? "The thing that stands out to me on the lead bullet subject is shot placement -- i.e. head/neck is the way to go, and definitely avoid shoulder shots. "

Click on "Lead Fragments in Venison" for Jim Braaten's full blog entry. Enjoy.

Lead Fragments In Venison

by Jim Braaten

I spent all day yesterday at a conference convened in Bloomington, Minnesota, but attended by agencies from 7 different states, to discuss the current hot-topic concern of lead fragments being found in venison. States such as North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and Missouri all collaborated to share information and discuss the potential health hazards to the venison consuming public.

As you can imagine, during an all-day conference a lot of good information came out. Represented were officials from all the different state wildlife departments, as well as from agriculture and public health departments. Also rounding out the list of attendees were various special interest groups promoting hunting and professional meat packers. Suffice it to say the group was quite broad and the topic was truly examined from very diverse perspectives.

The perceived problem: Using lead bullets will often fragment upon impact and this metallic lead dispersal can be retained in the deer’s carcass and eventually make it to the hunter’s table where it can be ingested by the hunter’s family. To read more on events creating this controversial topic and the tons of hunter-donated venison subsequently pulled from food shelves back in March, click here.

Gotta take your excitement wherever it comes: redux

Here's Katie pointing the the last birds she'll likely ever point. Gotta take your excitement wherever it comes. Film at 11.

They ain't grouse, but they'll do . . .

film at 11

Katie's actually doing pretty well on her medicines--she is taking something called Piroxicam, which apparently has anti-tumor properties that may include slowing blood flow to the bone tumor. In a month's time she's done really well, far better than our boxer who died of bone cancer, and so now we're hoping / expecting Kate to make it into July at least.

I realized I had never taken any film footage of her. That was probably a mistake. Next dog we'll get on film.

Here it is.

Interest In My Tale Has Bottomed Out

Jeez.

I was flushed with excitement to share my golfing anecdote. I decided to take a chance, roll the creative dice, and not worry whether I might crap out.

Maybe the writing was a bit loose. Maybe my creativity, scant as it is, has just pooped out.

I’m not privy to the reasons for the group’s indifference. But the deafening silence has wiped the smile from my face. I am become the butt of your jokes.

Well, at least I tried. You won’t hear me grunting about it again.

---

In an unrelated matter, some of you may be members of the Ruffed Grouse Society. Bob West’s article in its Summer, 2008 magazine has a lot of local flavor, featuring a pup that is a granddaughter of Buster, a dog that has swum in the Tantillo pond and made a terrific wc retrieve for Keith. Read all about it here.

Beer Camp Bass!

No better place to fish...beer camp! Nice pond bass, caught on a floating Rapala at dusk. Thanks Ernie!

What's Behind The Story

I played 18 holes the other day at the local muni. Arriving as a single, I was paired with a man and his daughter. He was 74, I learned, while she seemed maybe light to mid 30's. Quite attractive she was, too, and a player on our regional women's hockey team that won the Nationals in California in 199-something. But that is not the story.

They left after 9, so I played on as a two-ball with a fellow who had joined us three on the 6th tee. As play had slowed down after the temperature had spiked up, he begged off at the 13th tee, and I found myself suddenly alone. On an empty course, this can be fun; but when the track is jammed, playing alone destroys rhythm. For some time I’d been absently tracking two ladies, visibly more than a little older than I, laboring onward slowly two holes ahead. Well, soon they were hitting their "second" shots on #14 just beyond where my drive landed, center cut and 14 paces inside the 150 yard marker on this 390 yard hole. Incredibly, that is not the story, either.

I hailed the ladies and asked them politely if I could play in with them. Apparently approving of the young stud hottie, they said yes. And after a time, we putted out on the 18th and said farewell. Here is the story: I noticed one lady had a distracting bit of extraneous clothing waving about. I tried not to stare; and I certainly wasn't about to say anything. She was wearing white golf pants, which made a positive ID more difficult. But the disturbing image that lingers still is the TP flapping about 8" above, beyond and behind her elastic waist band.

Hunting poetry . . .

Been a while since we've had a decent setter blog posting, and inspired by Josh's recent post . . . .

Here's an excerpt from "Field Sports," a poem by William Somerville, an English poet who specialized in poems of the chase:

When autumn smiles, all beauteous in decay,
And paints each chequered grove with various hues,
My setter ranges in the new shorn fields,
His nose in air erect; from ridge to ridge,
Panting, he bounds, his quartered ground divides
In equal intervals, nor careless leaves
One inch untried. At length the tainted gale
His nostrils wide inhale, quick joy elates
His beating heart, which, awed by discipline
Severe, he dares not own, but cautious creeps
Low-cowering, step by step; at last attains
His proper distance, there he stops at once,
And points with his instructive nose upon
The trembling prey. On wings of wind and upborne
The floating net unfolded flies; then drops,
And the poor fluttering captives rise in vain.

Don't you just love that? ahhhh.

My setter ranges in the new shorn fields

Artemis has puppies!

2 males, 2 females-very cute and plump. Artemis is doing a great job, especially given this is her maiden attempt. Vet check went great and the pups are very healthy.

1 deposit on a female, 1 request on a (uncommitted)

2 puppies left!

Russian Wisdom

"...there is more love of humanity in electricity and steam than in vegetarianism."

-Chekov, 1894

Dispatches from the Arnot Ponds

...where the bluegills are as big as your head!

Happy Memorial Day, all...

Moose, ADKs, and Cornell alum scientists

Moose Gain Ground but Keep a Low Profile
By LISA W. FODERARO McKENZIE
MOUNTAIN WILDERNESS, N.Y.

From the New York Times

Here in the boreal forests of the Adirondack Mountains, moose are seemingly everywhere and nowhere.

In the sachet-scented gift shops of Lake Placid, where high heels outnumber hiking boots, there are moose-inspired cookie jars, moose-shaped soaps, moose-head lollipops, moose-emblazoned kitchen mitts and a $12.95 book titled “Uses for Mooses and Other (Silly) Observations.”

But while it may be the overworked mascot of the Adirondacks tourist trade, the moose, which has quietly returned to northern New York over the last quarter-century, remains a mystery. Many longtime residents have never glimpsed one. And wildlife biologists are unsure whether the small but secure population of some 400 moose is on the verge of an explosion — as happened in New Hampshire in recent decades — or headed for an eventual decline because of global warming.

“It’s the icon of the north woods,” said Heidi E. Kretser, a scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, the nonprofit organization that operates the Bronx Zoo and has an outpost in the Adirondacks. “They’re massive creatures. They’re just very appealing characters.”

To better understand their lifestyle and behavior, the Wildlife Conservation Society sent specially trained dogs into the piney woods here recently, not in search of actual moose, but their scat, or excrement. One morning this month, Camas, a German shepherd who had traveled from Montana for the mission, traversed the dense wilderness around Moose Pond. The forest floor was just springing to life, with wood sorrel and striped maple saplings pushing up through dead leaves and ferns unfurling.

But in a sign of moose elusiveness, Camas found the scat of black bear and ruffed grouse but nothing redolent of moose, even though there had been recent sightings in the area. (The day before, a colleague of Camas had more luck, sniffing out nine discrete examples of moose scat; the conservationists organized 20 such outings between May 12 and May 25, in a program financed in part by the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, popularly known as the Wild Center, in nearby Tupper Lake.)

By analyzing the scat, the society hopes to learn more about the habits, genetics and overall health of New York’s moose population.

But with only a few hundred moose scattered across the Adirondack state park, which comprises private and public lands in an area roughly the size of Vermont, locating moose scat is far easier than locating the actual mammals, despite their hulking size. (Bull moose can weigh up to 1,400 pounds and eat 40 to 60 pounds of vegetation a day.)

Scat analysis is less traumatic for moose than more traditional techniques. “It’s not a replacement for collaring, but it’s another tool for managers and researchers and it’s noninvasive,” Dr. Kretser said. “You eliminate the stress of darting the animal.”

Moose were hunted out of existence in the Adirondacks just before the Civil War, but began to tromp back into the state in the early 1980s, entering from Vermont and Canada. Wildlife experts expect their numbers to continue to climb, but they also speculate that the moose, which rely on birch twigs, maple bark and other vegetation found in northern hardwood forests, could eventually retreat. The animals could leave the Adirondacks for points farther north, after decades of global warming.

“We’ll see the population double in size,” said Chuck Dente, a big-game biologist for the State Department of Environmental Conservation, noting that Vermont and New Hampshire each have several thousand moose. “The more moose you have, the more they can reproduce very quickly and successfully.
Once they get established, the population can take off. But what happens after that, we don’t know. We have a group of scientists working on the ramifications of climate change.”

Recent moose necropsies — the equivalent of autopsies — have revealed that a parasite called brain worm is taking a toll on moose here. The worm gets into the brain cavity and the spinal column and ultimately kills the moose.

Mr. Dente said that rising temperatures in the coming decades could lead to more brain worm, which is part of a complex food chain involving snails, as well as other parasites. “As things warm up a little bit, that allows the snail to survive better,” he said.

Whereas black bears, which number about 5,000 in the Adirondacks, are considered a nuisance by some, foraging for garbage, moose pretty much keep to themselves. If their numbers grow, however, so will the possibility of moose-vehicle collisions, and state officials and wildlife advocates are girding for a backlash in public perception.

In New Hampshire, which is home to about 6,000 moose, there are 200 to 250 collisions involving moose each year. Human fatalities are rare, but there have been serious injuries.

By contrast, Adirondack Park, which contains virtually all the moose in New York State, has an average of four to six collisions a year, and none so far, environmental officials say, have been fatal to the drivers.
Several weeks ago in Saranac Lake, for instance, a moose was killed after being struck by three vehicles in a row.

“Hitting a moose is a nasty thing because you really don’t see them,” Mr.
Dente said. “They’re a solid color at night, and they’re so tall that you don’t get the reflections of their eyes from the headlights. You don’t see them until you’re right on top of them.”

For now, their presence in the Adirondacks is more a source of fascination than vexation. “The moose are kind of mysterious,” said Julie Outcalt, a sales clerk at the Adirondack Museum store on Main Street in downtown Lake Placid, where shoppers can choose among moose-head bookends ($130) and a birch-bark moose figure ($42). “I’ve been here 30 years, and I’ve never seen one.”

Moose are not listed as endangered or threatened in New York, but they are protected, which means they are off limits to hunting. Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire allow limited moose hunting. “If all of a sudden we got up to 800 or 1,000 moose, we would start to seriously look at hunting permits,” Mr. Dente said. “Or if we saw a lot of roadkill, we might make that the only area you could hunt in.”

That’s fine with many environmentalists, who point out that moose have no natural predators and that fees from hunting licenses help pay for wildlife conservation efforts. “You want the moose population to be at a level where there’s not a lot of negative interactions with people,” said Dr. Kretser of the conservation society.

Bushwacking her way through here, close on the heels of Camas, the German shepherd, Dr. Kretser said she hoped moose would remain a fixture of the Adirondack woods — and not merely raw material for trinkets.

“The Adirondacks is a boreal area, and many of the boreal species, including moose, loons, gray jays and rusty blackbirds, are at the southern extent of their range,” she said, climbing over a moss-covered log. “If climate change accelerates, as people are predicting, then moose will have a tough time.”

on the alleged market in mouse pelts . . .

Check out this super-cool web site at www.fecalface.com . "How to stuff a mouse" . . . and I don't mean stuffing it with ricotta.

Putting the "fun" back in mouse control

Keith's thumb puppet

on the alleged duty to save the pelt . . .

yo, Cabin Boy . . . I seem to remember a long-ago Maine grouse camp at Camp Haccamatack by the shores of Lake Spider-gitchee-gumee, where you entertained us (and kept us all awake half the night) attempting to do some kitchen animal control yourself.

I don't recall whether you saved the pelt that night? I do remember a whopping headache from having someone's hunting journal thrown at my noggin.

Ahhh, the memories.

Leave the drilling at home

Kate the Great

Some of you know this already, but I may as well say it here as well--my setter Katie has bone cancer. She's probably got until the first week or two of June, then that's gonna be it. But it probably explains a bit why I'm obsessing about the fox hunting--I need the distraction.

It's off to St. Louis this week for Ethics in Action and the Hunter Education conference. See you all when I get back.

Until these foxes are gone, I can't take a shower

Need I say more?