The More Things Change...

 Move along folks, nothing to see here, just the continued death of the plains is all, and really, who gives a shit about that place? It's all flat, ugly and windy. Not one bit of charismatic photogenic megatopography (to bastardize a wildlife biology phrase) to be found anywhere. No pretty mountains to worry about, no babbling brooks or whispering vales of trees to pine over. Just a bunch of empty space, really, with no obvious intrinsic value at all, so fuck it. Plow it all, I say. Make it useful, profitable, industrial. Yeah, that's it. Just one monstrous, unbroken agricultural-industrial park stretching from Texas to North Dakota. If we're going to ruin an entire region, then by god, let's do it right. And it's nice to see we're off to a helluva good start...

From this press release (released last week and seen by pretty much no one) from Pheasants Forever



Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will accept 1.7 million acres offered under the 45th Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) general sign-up, lowering Conservation Reserve Program total acreage to 26.9 million acres. Now at a 26-year program low, Pheasants Forever calls this depletion a modern low point for conservation, one which will have serious ramifications not only for wildlife, but for the nation's soil and water quality as well.


"While we thank USDA for recognizing the need for holding this CRP sign-up and applaud the landowners who are participating in conservation, this news of CRP's historic low acre total makes it even more apparent there are grave concerns for the health of CRP, our nation's most successful conservation program responsible for countless benefits to water quality, soil resources and wildlife," says Dave Nomsen, Pheasants Forever & Quail Forever vice-president of governmental affairs.


"Since 2007, we have lost more than 14.7 million acres of CRP, accounting for 26 percent of the program and setting a 26-year low for total acres enrolled. CRP is significantly below the 30 million acre enrollment benchmark maintained for more than two decades.That 30 million-acre mark had been providing record benefits in terms of soil, water, and wildlife resources," continued Nomsen.


During this spring's 5-week signup, the Department received 28,000 offers on more than 1.9 million acres of land. USDA selected offers for enrollment based on an Environmental Benefits Index (EBI) comprised of five environmental factors plus cost. The five environmental factors are: (1) wildlife enhancement, (2) water quality, (3) soil erosion, (4) enduring benefits, and (5) air quality.


"These recent CRP losses combined with an agricultural climate rampant with conversion of native prairies and wetlands, bulldozing and burning of shelterbelts, woodlots, and dry wetlands - is having a catastrophic impact on our landscape," said Nomsen. "In the aftermath of this announcement, the American people need to recognize what is taking place on their countryside, especially across much of the northern Great Plains. This is not for just the health of pheasant, quail and other wildlife.At stake is a high quality of life in rural areas, loss of America's hunting tradition, and environmental benefits important to a sustainable agriculture system."


CRP is a voluntary program designed to help farmers, ranchers and other agricultural producers protect their environmentally sensitive land. Eligible landowners receive annual rental payments and cost-share assistance to establish long-term, resource conserving covers on eligible farmland throughout the duration of 10 to 15 year contracts.Under CRP, farmers and ranchers plant grasses and trees in crop fields and along streams or rivers. The plantings prevent soil and nutrients from washing into waterways, reduce soil erosion that may otherwise contribute to poor air and water quality, and provide valuable habitat for wildlife. Plant cover established on the acreage accepted into the CRP will reduce nutrient and sediment runoff in our nation's rivers and streams.



Of course, the news comes as no great shock to anyone following the issue. Too much money, too much greed, too much willingness to do something that is a demonstrably and historically bad idea. And not nearly enough advocates for a region that virtually no one, save a few prairie rats, gives much of a shit about. As but one recent example of the scope of what's happening,  I will (begrudgingly, since I'm no longer there) direct you to a F&S blog I wrote last year about the staggering loss of  prairie in this country since 2008...

Sky-high crop prices and unlimited government-subsidized crop insurance have triggered the conversion of a staggering 23 million acres of grassland into row crops since 2008, according to a new study that used satellite data to estimate the loss...According to the story, the report found that 11 states had experienced habitat losses of at least one million acres in the past three years, and that habitat losses were greatest in counties that received the largest amounts of federal crop insurance subsidies. According to the group, Farm Bill conservation programs must be fully funded and the federal crop insurance program must be reformed to avert long-term environmental disaster.

Twenty three million acres of grass, gone. Twenty-three million acres of habitat, gone. In just the past five years. Obscene doesn't even begin to describe that kind of destruction, but just try to name me one other ecosystem, biome or region where that type of scorched earth activity would be allowed, tolerated, and even encouraged? Sonofabitch, what we need are some cute-n-cuddly prairie penguins or baby seals or landwhales or something, quick. Or giant trees. Yeah, trees. Somebody please get us some goddamned redwoods so we can name them Luna and then recruit hairy, idealistic college kids to fling themselves in front of the combines...

 And it's not just the northern plains. You see it everywhere you go from the Texas panhandle up into Oklahoma, Kansas, eastern Colorado, Nebraska, basically everywhere. When we drove to Colorado last week I saw more newly-installed center-pivots than I'd ever seen before, aquifer issues be damned. I saw corn growing where for years I'd seen only shortgrass or sand-sage prairie. Things are changing, and changing fast. Incidentally, that F&S blog post got five comments, one less than a "man bites cobra" blog post I wrote the same month. So it goes in 'Murka...

But what's that sound? Could that be the sound of a great, growing feedback loop of  greed and stupidity poised to come 'round again? From Donald Worster's excellent "Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s"...

"A widely respected authority on world food problems, George Borgstrom, has ranked the creation of the Dust Bowl as one of the three worst ecological blunders in history. The other two are the deforestation of the China's uplands about 3000 B.C, which produced centuries of silting and flooding, and the destruction of Mediterranean vegetation by livestock, which left once-fertile lands eroded and impoverished. Unlike either of these two events, however, the Dust Bowl took only fifty years to accomplish. It cannot be blamed on illiteracy or overpopulation or social disorder. It came about because the culture was operating in precisely the way it was supposed to. Americans blazed their way across a richly endowed continent with a ruthless, devastating efficiency unmatched by any people anywhere. When the white men came to the plains, they talked expansively of "busting' and "breaking" the land. And that is exactly what they did. Some environmental catastrophes are nature's work, others are the slowly accumulating effects of ignorance or poverty. The Dust Bowl, in contrast, was the inevitable outcome of a culture that deliberately, self-consciously, set itself that task of dominating and exploiting the land for all it was worth."

More to come on the plains in future blog posts, including a truly fascinating historical railroad document I picked up a couple weeks ago at a used bookshop in OKC that beautifully illustrates how the more things change, the more they stay the same...

Goodbye to a Legend...

 Just got back from vacation in Colorado, where - while enduring the tourist hell that is Estes Park - I experienced the following: lost $237 worth of flies, bumbled my way into my first-ever nude photo shoot while fishing Rocky Mountain National Park ( To clarify: I wasn't butt-nekkid, but the model sure was, at least until my deer hair ant whizzed by her face...), watched (or smelled, rather) the second-hand weed smoke wafting down upon us from the nice elderly hippie foursome renting the condo above us, managed to get, for the second year in a row, my trout slam (cutt, brown, brook and rainbow), watched as my oldest son caught his first trout on a fly rod, and lost - at the rod tip - the largest brown trout I've ever hooked.

So that's where I've been lately. Sadly, however, when I finally cracked open the computer to see what was shaking on the Interwebs, I discovered that John Graves had passed away.

From Henry Chappell's Home Range (via the Dallas News)

John Graves, considered by many to be Texas’ best and best-loved writer, died early Wednesday at his home near Glen Rose. He was 92 and had been in declining health for several years.

The Texas that Graves portrayed in Goodbye to a River and other works was the real place — plain, harsh, unforgiving and magnificent. His work was devoid of chauvinistic baloney, boosterism or cheap romance. “In a way,” he once said, “I was trying to explain Texas to myself.” He also defined Texas for thousands of readers.

Steve Bodio also has a great post about Graves that's well worth a read, along with a link to an excellent 2010 Texas Monthly feature on Graves. If you want to get some insight into a truly brilliant and original mind, go read it.

A few months ago when I was still vainly trying to produce interesting, non-SEO optimized stuff for Field & Stream, I wrote a blog post about a quote from "Goodbye to a River." The blog post itself was forgettable, (it garnered one solitary comment) but Graves' passage is not, so I've pasted it here (first graf is mine, from the blog)...

On the very last page of "Goodbye To A River" after Graves has returned from his trip, he attends a party, where a woman asks him if he had been at all lonesome on his solitary voyage. This was his response:

"I liked her and had known her all my younger life, as I had most of the other people in town. But it was a good place to be, and the thermostat on the wall was set at seventy-five degrees, and outside the windows the cold sleet mixed with rain was driving down at a hard slant, and far far up above all of it in the unalive silent cold of space some new chunk of metal with a name, man-shaped, was spinning in symbolism, they said, of ultimate change. In that place the stark pleasures of aloneness and unchangingness and what a river meant did not somehow seem to be very explicable.
Somebody's wife was waiting for an answer. "Not exactly, I said. "I had a dog."

Damn, but John Graves was a helluva writer, the likes of which I doubt we'll be seeing much of any more.That hopelessly old-fashioned style of prose just isn't Tweetable enough to be relevant for today's single-serving readers.

You Are Here, and This is the Only Here You Will Ever Have

Earth (see arrow), as seen from the rings of Saturn. Taken last week by the Cassini spacecraft, from 900 million miles away. A bit humbling, no?

(stolen from I Fucking Love Science's Facebook feed...)

"Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. 

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."-

                                                                                Carl Sagan


There is no heaven. There is no hell. There is no Rapture coming to take you to a better place ruled by kindly, bearded Caucasian father figures or populated by horny virgins waiting to screw you silly. This little dot is currently, and for the foreseeable future, the only place you and I have. Screw it up, and we're screwed. Utterly screwed. Cosmically screwed, as it were. That doesn't seem to be stopping us, though, does it?

Drought, Rain, Birds, Story

The choking, wind-whipped dust gusted across the desiccated pasture at ground level. Impeded by nothing, it undulated in long, serpentine tendrils across a landscape devoid of vegetation or any discernable moisture or humidity. The earth had the texture of ancient porcelain, spiderwebbed with a lattice of interlocking cracks so wide and so deep that when the dogs  ran across the shattered clay hardpan they almost had to hop from one piece to the next like some crazy game of hopscotch. 

Last fall there had been a seasonal pond here, a playa, as they’re called on the southern plains, and I had shot ducks over it, watched as my old retriever swam across the same area where now my two setters sent up tiny plumes of talcum-fine silt with every tentative step. In a good year, when the rains came, the edges of the playa grew up in a thick, lush scrum of weedy forbs, and the dogs would slam into quivering, beautiful, motionlessness, the hot scent of quail filling their noses.

But there were no quail here now, nor ducks. Just the moaning of the wind under a white-hot orb of sky that burned from one horizon to the next, withering everything under its relentless, implacable gaze. I called up the dogs and we slowly trudged back to the truck, three tiny, defeated figures crawling across a vast whitewashed canvas shimmering with heat.

Drought had once again come to my part of the world. And once again, as we have always done, those of us locked in its grip could only look to the sky and wonder when - or if - the rains would return.

...From a feature story on drought I penned for the current issue of Living Ready. Please go buy it and tell them you want more from that Chad Love guy. I wrote that intro with the memory of the last two hellish years fresh on my mind. But although the worm hasn't exactly turned, it is wiggling just a little...

Actual rainfall in my part of the world, at a time of the year when we don't usually get much, and none at all the past few years. I'm becoming cautiously, yet slightly increasingly optimistic about quail season this fall. Rain in June and July means cover, bugs, and a respite from the August-September heat that's sure to come. We've had one or two weeks of extreme-ish (100-plus) heat already, but they've been interspersed with rain and cooler temperatures. Eighties in mid-July? I'll take 'em. All in all it hasn't been nearly as brutal a summer this year as it has the past two or three.

We still have the Sauron-like spectre of August ahead of us, and I doubt we'll get lucky and catch another of those weird, blue moonish east-to-west-moving lows that brought this last round of rain and cool, but at least the vegetation and birds aren't baking. And that's good news to me. It makes my hopes for fall seem a little less tenuous and a bit more attainable.

Because at one point, those hopes were looking rather grim. I'll admit, when I stopped writing for F&S, about the only thing I truly mourned was that damn handy "it's for work" excuse for hitting the road to go hunt other states, either on pressers or for stories. Why? Well, besides the obvious reasons (Free gear! Free booze!), it was because the hunting close to home has sucked so badly. I wanted birds for the dogs. There were no birds here. Ergo, if I wanted birds for the dogs I must travel far, far away and expense as much of it as I possibly could, you know, for work...

Those "work" hunts, some good, some bad, allowed me to supplement - if not outright replace - the truly execrable bird hunting in my home state with a modest number of escapist trips elsewhere, trips I wouldn't have had the opportunity to take if not for the cachet of having "Field & Stream writer" before my name.

Now, however, I'm back to being just another mook with a shotgun. Which is cool, truly. The occasional piece of free swag aside,  I much prefer being truly independent in what I write and how I write it rather than having a bunch of career magazine industry dandies who know fuckall about what they're supposed to be experts at telling me how and what to write while prancing around Manhattan whoring for circle-jerk publishing industry awards and play-acting at being total outdoorsmen while being wet-nursed on their own press hunts, by golly.

Of course, that all sounds defiantly well and good and "live free or die" and all, but for three things: One, when done right, some of those press hunts were pretty damn good affairs; two, with those pressers and work trips gone, the vast majority of my bird hunting this fall will, by necessity, be close to home here in Oklahoma and southern Kansas, and three; it does no good to be able to write in some wild, primal, uncaged Voice if the birds are simply not there and all you're going to be writing is multiple variations on "The dogs and I went out. We walked for miles. We saw nothing. I felt pensive and introspective, yet satisfied. We came home. The end."

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure I'll be writing a shitload of "The dogs and I went out. We walked for miles. We saw nothing. I felt pensive and introspective, yet satisfied. We came home. The end." stories. 

But thanks to this rain, maybe, just maybe, I might also be able to write a few "The dogs and I went out. We walked for miles. They went on point. I shot at a bird. I missed. I cursed. I felt angry, yet satisfied. We came home. The end" stories. 

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but in the meantime, here's my new favorite song...

Just a warning....

 ...that you may not be hearing from me for quite some time. Why? Because I just scored, in one fell, fortuitous swoop, and after a maddening three-month wait for the library to get them in, volumes three, four and five of George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire."

That's right, close to three thousand pages of dense, violent, fantastical awesomeness just begging to be read in a single, hallucinatory, methamphetamine-and-coffee fueled sitting. OK, so I just made up that part. But I have shoved all my other reading to the side until I've finished them, and I'm not apologizing a bit for it, either. Sometimes you want to ruminate on Deep Thoughts, and sometimes you just want to gorge on popcorn. And these books are some damn fine popcorn.

Like most everyone else, I hadn't read the books until I got hooked earlier this year - quite by accident - on the HBO series "Game of Thrones" (which is based on the books) when we got one of those free, one-week premium channel previews on our television. I was bored one evening flipping channels, stumbled across an episode, started watching it, and freakin' loved it. I then promptly drove to the library, checked out the first two volumes of Martin's "Ice and Fire" saga, and finished them in a blur of several late-night readings.

I then went straightaway back to the library to check out the next three volumes, and was informed to my horror that some dirty, low-down, book-thieving, hyena-humping sonofabitch had stolen the last three volumes, and that I'd have to wait until the library could order replacements to finish my Ice and Fire infatuation.

Damn. Only my steely resolve (and insolvency) kept me from immediately going out and purchasing not only the entire (two more books are planned) five-book series, but the first two seasons of the show as well.

Now, I must admit that I'm not a serious fan of fantasy. In fact, I'm not even a semi-serious fan of fantasy. Casual, at best. I've read all of Tolkien, of course, and C.S. Lewis, and Lloyd Alexander's excellent "Chronicles of Prydain," and some other scattered classics and semi-classics of the genre, and I enjoy it to a point, but I don't wear a genuine reproduction One Ring, I've never used the word "verily" in conversation, I've never wielded a wooden sword to defended m'lady's honor at a Renaissance Fair, and I've never translated the collected writings of Uknor The Brave from the original High Elvish. Because all that shit is just a bit silly.

But I have to say that I am infatuated with Martin's highly imagined, violent, disturbing and disturbed world. If I had to characterize it, I'd say (and I apologize if this analogy has already been made somewhere, but it immediately popped into my head) "Ice and Fire" is what you'd end up with if you took Quentin Tarantino and the ghost of Sam Pekinpah, locked them in a room together, handed them a copy of Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" and said "here, re-write this damn thing."

Good stuff. Each volume is as long as Joyce's "Ulysses" and only slightly less confusing. And like most things that are bad for you, also highly addictive. If you haven't read them, give them a try. If nothing else, your arms will get a good workout holding them up.

So for now, Good Ser Chad is checking out. I've got foes to slay and wenches to bed before I do the dishes and feed the dogs.  

A Two-Weight Conundrum

Ever since I got my little St. Croix Imperial/Sage 3200 three-weight outfit a few years back, I've been smitten with ultralight flyfishing on small waters. In fact, if the fishing gods decreed that I could no longer fish with anything larger than a three-weight, ever, I'd probably just shrug my shoulders and go on fishing. It's just so much fun, and so much more in line with my personal flyfishing ideal  (no offense to all you 12-weight-slinging saltwater guys and gals...).

Anyway, some time back, in pursuit of going ever lighter, I came into possession of a sweet little Redington Drift fly reel in size "Holy Shit That's One Tiny Sumbitch!" which, for non-Okies, roughly translates into a size 2/3. My idea was, and is, to pair it up with a short (seven-foot or under), cheap, moderate-action one or two-weight fly rod, and then give it a name like "The Bluegill Bomber" or maybe "The Panfish Prowler" or some other equally hoaky, alliteratively-strained nickname. Because I'm stupid that way.

The problem, however, is that I can't seem to find a rod for it. There are plenty of one and two-weights out there, but most of them are either too long (I really want one in the six-foot range), too expensive, (it's perch in a creek we're talking about here) or too long and expensive.

There are a number of very nice custom and semi-custom right-sized glass rods being made, but again, virtually all of them are beyond my means. Such is the life of the terminally broke.

Enter the Cabela's CGT fiberglass fly rods. Normally, at $150 they'd be out of my price range, too, but as it turns out they're on sale right now for $79. All of them. Even the 6'2", two-piece, two-weight model that would fill my bill perfectly.

But here's the catch: the CGT rods have gotten somewhat mixed reviews from the fiberglass fly rod crowd, with the main complaint being that, though nice, they fish a bit too much like a graphite rod. When Cabela's first introduced the original CGR fiberglass rods in 2011, they received almost universal praise, including a good review in Field & Stream from the late John Merwin. They were also only $99. I, of course, didn't buy one back then, and by the time Cabela's updated the line with the CGTs, the original rods were long-since sold out.

Also, I have to admit, I've never been a huge fan of house-brand rods and reels. Don't get me wrong: by and large I like Cabela's and own a lot of Cabela's-branded stuff. Much of it is great (for example, their waders) while some of it (for example, some of their bird-hunting gear) is sort of meh. Just like any other retailer. But when it comes to rods and reels I've always preferred companies that actually make rods and reels rather than retailers that re-brand or outsource their own lines. OK, I admit it, I'm a rod and reel snob.

But for 79 bucks, especially for a rod that will be plying the depths of the piscatorial low-rent district, perhaps I should tell my innate snobbishness to go get stuffed? On the other hand, I'll also be using the rod for fishing small trout waters (must keep up appearances, you know...), so maybe I should just keep using the three-weight for now, save up a few more pennies, and get a custom fiberglass rod built just for me?

Here's where my flyfishing noobishness comes in. Considering my casting skill (which I describe as "Flailing Stork") would I even be able to tell the difference between a $79 dollar Chinese-made rod and a (roughly) $300-400 custom job? Aesthetically, sure. Custom rods are prettier, and nicer. But what's also nice is actually being able to go fishing now rather than waiting while you sell 27 pints of plasma  to pay for a new custom or high-end rod.

Any suggestions or advice, oh flyfishing brethren?

Skinny Jeans, Chickens and Bloodsport

Alas, it looks as if the once red-hot backyard chicken fad is losing ground amongst the Michael Pollan-inspired urban pioneer set, because chickens are, well, a big pain in the ass.  And they don't accessorize well, either.

From this story on nbcnews.com 
 
Despite visions of quaint coops, happy birds and cheap eggs, the growing trend of raising backyard chickens in urban settings is backfiring, critics say, as disillusioned city dwellers dump unwanted fowl on animal shelters and sanctuaries. Hundreds of chickens, sometimes dozens at a time, are being abandoned each year at the nation’s shelters from California to New York as some hipster farmers discover that hens lay eggs for two years, but can live for a good decade longer, and that actually raising the birds can be noisy, messy, labor-intensive and expensive.

"...It’s the same scenario at the Chicken Run Rescue in Minneapolis, Minn., where owner Mary Britton Clouse has tracked a steady climb in surrendered birds from fewer than 50 in 2001 to nearly 500 in 2012. She traces that rise to the so-called “locavore” movement, which spiked in popularity in 2008 as advocates urged people to eat more food grown and processed close to home.

“It’s the stupid foodies,” said Britton Clouse, 60, who admits she speaks frankly. “We’re just sick to death of it.” People entranced by a “misplaced rural nostalgia” are buying chickens from the same hatcheries that supply the nation's largest poultry producers and rearing them without proper space, food or veterinary care, she said.

Because chickens are notoriously hard to sex, some backyard farmers wind up with roosters, which are often culled and killed because they can be noisy, aggressive and illegal, and, of course, they don’t lay eggs at all. In addition to the noise, many urban farmers are surprised that chickens attract pests like rats, and predators including foxes, raccoons, hawks, and even neighborhood dogs. When they get sick or hurt, they need care that can run into the hundreds of dollars, boosting the price of that home-grown egg far beyond even the most expensive grocery store brand.

Enthusiasts who start out with good intentions frequently wind up posting messages like this one delivered to Britton-Clouse last month: “One of our hens grew up into a rooster and our neighbors are starting to complain. Do you know someone who might take him?” “People don’t know what they’re doing,” Britton Clouse said. “And you’ve got this whole culture of people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing teaching every other idiot out there.”

But Ludlow, the backyard chicken enthusiast, said that “it’s very rare” that people make such mistakes or underestimate how difficult it is to raise chickens. “While we definitely want to see more education around the lifespan and laying lifespan of chickens, we find that most people become so attached to their hens as pets, that even though they planned to eat or cull their hens at the end of their laying life, they decide to keep their girls around even without laying eggs,” he said. Coston, the Farm Sanctuary shelter director, said she wished that were true. Most people don’t realize that chickens are funny, with quirky habits and affectionate personalities as distinct as any other pet’s. 

A few thoughts...

It may be easy for the more smug among us to scoff and sneer at those naive, sensitive fools who become attached to the livestock, as it were. I'm not one of them. You're currently reading a dude who has three pigeons in his coop right now, pigeons that were among a large lot purchased for the sole purpose of dog training, but for a variety of reasons (daddy, I like the white one!) have become de facto pets. They eat my feed, crap, mess their water, take up space and basically serve as living, breathing mockeries of why I built the damn coop in the first place, which was to serve as a holding pen for the feral barn pigeons I trap for training the dogs. Others have come and gone, but those three sit there like Macbeth's witches, cooing and laughing at me.

The truth is, it's natural to grow attached to the animals you raise. In fact, the only two animals I can recall feeling not the least bit of remorse for as they were led to the freezer was a pair of monstrous pigs that haunted my childhood like a pair of porcine Freddy Kruegers. I'm quite convinced those two were waiting for the right time to eat me as I fed them, and the day they were loaded up and sent to the butcher I made it a point to tell them I couldn't wait for them to get back home, all wrapped up nicely. Yeah, fuck you, Wilbur.

Having said that, however, if you're going to raise chickens (or anything) for food, you've got to be pragmatic about such things. Chickens only go so far as a cool example of your hip, idiosyncratic personality or as an environmental or socio-cultural statement. Beyond that, they become simply eggs and meat. And responsibility.  

And that's the basic problem I have with much of the locavore/slow food/urban self-reliance movement. Not the movement itself, which I admire and support, but rather many of the stupid fuckwits who comprise it. I'm all for knowing where your food comes from, and in playing a larger, better-informed individual part in obtaining said food. The less power and influence wielded by the Monsantos and Cargills and ADMs of the world the better. 

The problem, it seems, comes when people realize that actually doing so takes some effort, and forces you to make the kind of honest and sometimes painful decisions you never have to make in a supermarket, at least in regard to animals.

This applies, I believe, even more so to hunting, which has enjoyed something of a foodie-related rise in popularity these past few years. Which I think is great. I really do. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that, to me, anyway, more than a bit of the current urban hipster foodie interest in hunting/gathering (and much of what's been written on the subject) has the definite chicken-like whiff of faddishnes and zeitgeist-hopping swirling about it. 

Not for everyone, of course. I'm sure, and thankful for the fact that there are many out there for whom an introduction to hunting has been a fundamentally transformative experience, one they'll continue for the rest of their lives. And I for one would love to see more weird, eccentric, laid-back, gun-toting hippies in the woods to help balance out the inordinate number of rednecks (and I say that with one foot firmly planted in each camp...) tearing about on those goddamned four-wheelers, invoking Jesus and tossing beer cans.

But I simply don't buy into the argument, espoused (fervently) by many in the industry, that hunting's recent popularity is sustainable and/or permanent. Everything, but especially Groupthink, is cyclical, and fickle. This isn't a movement. Hunting is not the next big thing, it's simply a modestly popular now thing, and for many, many people currently intrigued by and/or flirting with bloodsport, it'll eventually be a discarded and forgotten thing. Like a bunch of unwanted chickens. 

And I'm cool with that, too. Doesn't bother me in the least. The (probably) relatively few people who are meant to find hunting will find it. The people who aren't will move on to the next Search For Deep Meaning and I'll start scoring some A. solitude in the woods (and hopefully water. Damn duck commanders...) and B. some sweet, barely-used gear in the thrift shops. And that is a win-win... 

 

Round Reel Fanboys Rejoice!

In August of 1979, a much younger, sweeter, slimmer and more optimistic version of the current me was driven (because I was too young to drive) to the TG&Y department store (now long-defunct) on Main Street in Norman, Oklahoma.

Mini-me walked up to the sporting goods counter, a fantastic, magical place that he spent hours haunting (back in those pre-Wal-Mart/Bass Pro/Cabela's big-box days small regional departments-store chains like TG&Y had wonderful hunting and fishing departments), took out his blue plastic Santa Fe railroad change purse and plopped down virtually every cent of his net worth.

This small fortune, almost sixty dollars amassed from a combination of means both legitimate (birthday money, Christmas money, chores) and not-so-legitimate (the ill-gotten lucre of sofa diving, action figure/Hot Wheels selling and the illegal schoolyard trafficking of reptiles and amphibians) was handed over to the clerk. In return, the clerk handed mini-me a box containing a shiny, brand-new midnight black Ambassadeur 5600C.

It was my very first "real" reel. In the years since that day I have fished with, bought, sold, traded, lost, broken, fixed, praised and/or cursed literally hundreds of baitcasting reels from pretty much every manufacturer out there. But I still have that one (yes, that's the actual receipt), and in fact I still have just about every old Ambassadeur I've ever owned. Some reels were sexier, some reels were smoother, or easier to cast and palm. But none of them, not even my beloved Shimano Bantams of that same vintage, were as rugged or reliable or simple to work on as my old round Ambassadeurs. Even a dunce like me could keep them going with a minimum of care and maintenance.

Every one I've ever bought, new or used, every one, is still working and catching fish. That's a claim I can't make with any other model of reel besides my Shimano Calcuttas, which are classics in their own right, but a much newer and more modern reel.

I do not claim that my old Abus can compare to modern reels, performance-wise, although with some fairly simple and easy super-tuning mods (upgraded bearings,drags and polishing) you can get damn close. Reel technology and refinement have come a very, very long way since then. Modern reels are wonders, they truly are. Hideously ugly, most of them, with their bulbous, misshapen sideplates covering those ridiculous over-sized gears (so you'll be prepared when a three-pound bass suddenly rips off sixty yards of line and strips your main gear, because that happens like, you know, never) but I cannot argue with their casting performance and their smoothness.

Despite that, I just can't seem to warm to them, which is why I own but a few modern low-profile reels that are relegated mostly to catfishing, back-up and loaner duty in favor of my Calcuttas and my Abus. Which guy catfishes with a $160 Daiwa baitcaster because he doesn't want to get his 35-year-old, $50 Ambassadeurs icky? Yeah, this guy.  I guess I'm just a round-reel guy in a low-profile world.

At any rate, this entire post is merely a roundabout (get it?) way of introducing a really cool-looking new documentary on the history of Abu Garcia that I read about over on the Fishing For History website last week. Now I don't know how, exactly, this documentary will present the latest chapter in Abu's long and storied history, specifically its ownership by Pure Fishing/Jarden, because an awful lot of die-hard Abu enthusiasts are not too keen on what they perceive as Jarden's unforgivable cheapening of the brand (Chinese-made Abus? The horror...).

I'm assuming, since the documentary was sanctioned by Jarden/Pure Fishing, that all will be ice cream and roses. Personally, I can't speak to the relative quality or lack thereof, of any of the new Abus because, well, hell, my old ones haven't broken yet...

Interestingly enough, however, I also happened to see this bit of news from the press release about the documentary...

In 2014, Abu Garcia will re-launch its iconic Swedish made round reels. Set to be unveiled at ICAST in Las Vegas, July 10, 2013, Abu Garcia will present the newly updated editions of its original Record, C4, C3, Pro Rocket and Morrum Swedish-made round reels. With upgraded performance and style, the new line of round reels embodies the trusted durability and engineering that generations of anglers have come to expect.

To mark this occasion a poignant and beautifully shot documentary has been produced that traces the history of one of the most revered fishing brands in the world. The trailer of "For Life, The Story of Abu Garcia" is currently viewable at www.abugarcia.com/forlife. The full length documentary premiers online via YouTube (http://bit.ly/YouTubeForLifeTrailer) and Vimeo (http://bit.ly/VimeoForLifeTrailer ) at 3pm ET on July 10th.

"Chronicling the history of one of the world's most legendary fishing brands was a huge task and we are very excited to give an insider's look at how this company started," said the film's Director, Dustin Hoye. "The stories were so genuine and provided many different points of view for a great perspective of the lives influenced by Abu Garcia."

Highlights in the film include Lennart Borgstrom, former Abu Garcia owner, and Henning Karlssom who began working in the factory in 1940. Henning was just 14 years old when he started with Abu Garcia and to this day, still volunteers as curator of the museum in Svangsta, Sweden. Everyday anglers provide their heartfelt stories which underscore the way fishing shapes some of the most memorable and defining moments in their lives.

Now that's some good news, indeed. I used to lust after those Morrums something fierce, but never could afford them. Still can't, come to think of it, unless I find one in a pawn shop.

Even more interestingly enough, the PR firm that put out that press release, and indeed handles all of Abu's/ Pure Fishing's press/marketing, is an outfit called Blue Heron Communications. Blue Heron is based in my hometown of Norman, Oklahoma. The guy who owns Blue Heron, a helluva good guy named Gary Guidice, was instrumental in getting my writing career started lo those many years ago. He even scored me my very first press junket to cover the Bassmasters Classic, back when said junket was an all-inclusive, expenses-paid week-long vacation. It was a helluva lot of fun.

The press were, of course, expected to fish with the pros during practice days, so what reels did I choose to fish the Bassmasters Classic? Yep, a couple Ambassadeurs; a 4500C and that old 5600C you see in the picture above.

Small world, 'aint it?