Winging along at an altitude somewhere between the Bluebird of Happiness and the Chicken of Depression... random esoterica from writer Chad Love celebrating the joys of fishing, hunting, books, guns, gundogs, music, literature, travel, lonely places, wildness, history, art, misanthropy, scotch and the never-ending absurdity of life.
Last night I had a dream (Really, no joke. I actually had this dream...) wherein Nick Offerman, in full-on "Parks & Rec" Ron Swanson mode, is showing me a sleek and gorgeous shotgun, a hammergun, of course, that he had made by hand. As he is pointing out all the details on the gun, Nick/Ron is beseeching me, in his deadpan Ron Swanson way, to either buy it, take it, or go find a hammergun of my own to hunt with (I can't quite remember which it was...) because real men of taste and dignity use such weapons.
It was, well, a little weird. Now I have this feeling that somehow, I must go find myself a nice, shootable hammergun, which is laughable, of course, because the only way I could afford an exposed-hammer double gun right now would be to buy two fifty-buck pawnshop H&R's and then weld them together.
Anyway, it was a strange dream, and to the best of my knowledge the first time I've ever dreamed of either exposed-hammer shotguns or Ron Swanson, even though I greatly admire both. Interpret it as you will. Interestingly enough, Nick Offerman, who is a screamingly funny guy, and also happens to be married to screamingly funny gal (and Oklahoman) Megan Mullally, is also a very talented woodworker, with his own LA woodshop.
Pretty cool stuff there, including a lot of projects involving beautiful slabbed timber, something I'd love to do myself if I could ever afford one of those small portable sawmills I've wanted for a while. So even though Nick Offerman probably couldn't build me a hammergun from scratch (Although I'm sure Ron Swanson could), I bet he could re-stock it.
Offerman also has a new book out entitled Paddle Your Own Canoe. Seems amusing. Haven't read it, but I'll keep my eyes open for it at the library. Can't buy it. I'm saving up for a hammergun...
Here's an interesting help wanted ad I saw this morning via the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Facebook page. If you've ever dreamed of escaping the pointless drudgery of your Office Space existence and going to work for a group of people so delightfully archaic and out of touch with modern times that they believe our public lands should best be protected, and experienced using quads not built by Yamaha or Kawasaki, then throw out those TPS reports, tell Lumbergh to go pound sand and brush up the 'ol resume, because here's your chance to throw off the yoke of corporate serfdom and Do Some Good...
We are seeking an individual with the talent, passion and desire to
promote and grow the Nation’s leading public lands focused sportsmen’s
conservation organization. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers is growing
with 13 state chapters, individual members in all 50 states, and a
$650,000 annual budget.
Job Description & Primary Responsibilities:
Serve as a liaison between BHA headquarters and the leadership of local state chapters.
Provide services and support to BHA chapters throughout the country.
A primary focus of the duties will include increasing membership, event
planning, fundraising, merchandise sales and working with state
chapters to advance state and national conservation programs.
Work with and maintain regular communications with chapter leaders
to keep our volunteers informed and motivated about the organization and
its mission, activities, goals and fund-raising efforts. Work with the
BHA team to build major gift, corporate, foundation, grant, and planned
giving relationships to escalate our mission-related efforts
Develop new chapters and strengthen existing chapters to encourage strong volunteer leaders.
Plan and conduct meetings with chapters.
Minimum Qualifications:
The team member we desire is innovative and a creative thinker with a proven success of following through with their ideas.
Demonstrated - results oriented organizational, leadership, and sales skills.
Bachelor’s degree in related field plus 2 years of practical experience.
Demonstrated ability to work with and interact with sportsmen and
sportswomen and a general knowledge of public land conservation issues.
Innovative and resourceful self-starter that is able to work with minimal supervision.
Excellent oral and written communication skills.
Starting Salary: Depending on experience. This is a full time position with health and retirement benefits.
Living in a state where the very notion of public land is viewed as a pseudo-Socialist plot designed to destroy the free market, BHA is one of those groups I greatly admire from afar, and really should join (and in fact, damn it, will join...). This sounds like a great job working for a group doing important, rewarding work, and were I either qualified and living in a western state with, you know, some public land to actually defend, orqualified and in a position to relocate to a western state with some public land to defend,I'd probably have my arms wrapped around the legs of their HR manager right now, crying like a wee girl and begging to be hired.
Instead, I'm passing it along as a public service announcement to any of you miserable Miltons out there who may be reading this surreptitiously from your cubicle while dreaming of someday escaping the hive to find Meaning.
Monday afternoon I decided it would behoove me to grab the decoys, the waders and the old lady (canine version) and be set up on the water when that massive, nationwide cold front/storm system was scheduled to blow through late Monday afternoon. I had visions of undulating waves of high movers riding the wind right into my decoys. Ahh, the giddiness of pre-failure...
I also briefly considered hunting - for the first time - out of the kayak, but wisely decided that 45mph gusts, a notoriously windswept lake, plunging windchills, and a tiny, narrow boat loaded with gear, decoy bags, a somewhat fat man and a somewhat fat dog would more than likely result in Watery Death and six inches below the fold in our local paper.
So instead I decided to hunt a small slough below the dam of the reservoir. Not an ideal location, as it presented some logistical issues of its own (long hike in, extremely limited area in which to hunt, extremely limited open water in which to drop ducks so your dog doesn't have to search for them in the acres of dense, flooded reeds that ring the pond, even more extremely limited area in which to set decoys without falling into deep water/sucking muck and the corresponding Watery Gelatinous Death that goes along with said misstep, etc.). It's basically a spot that allows zero flexibility in setting up according to conditions and wind direction. Like castor oil, you just have to take what's given and like it.
But when everything aligns just right, it can be a great spot. So that's where the dog and I found ourselves Monday afternoon. We survived the extended sand plum thicket crawl, I survived the setting of the decoys, and all we needed now was cold weather and mallards.
So we waited for the gust front and the clouds of ducks that were surely just over the northern horizon. And waited, and waited, perspiring in my waders as I watched clouds of insects fornicate under a brilliant azure sky. Where the hell was the cold front? Where the hell were the ducks?
Eventually, I started getting a few ducks winging by in the sunshine, almost all of them wigeon, a species of duck for which I have a particular fondness. The obvious fakery of my decoy spread was eclipsed only by the obvious fakery of my calling, but I did manage to drop the first pair of weary, astigmatic and tone-deaf wigeon that committed to the decoys. I sent Tess after the first one and then remembered that I had a video camera I never, ever remember to actually use. So I grabbed it to record a few seconds of sloppy dog handling, lackadaisical dog work (she is ten, after all), and overall low-production value entertainment of interest to absolutely no one but myself. But since this is my blog, I don't care...
She's never been a ball of fire like my other two chessies, and she's never been as crisp, either, but she's always been consistent, if a little plodding. I duck hunt almost exclusively alone, so the past few years as she's slowed down and settled into her golden years, I've let Tess slide on a lot of little things for which real dog men would frown upon and chastise me. But again, she's ten years old. She doesn't give a shit what real dog men think of her, and neither do I.
So we waited, enjoyed the sunshine, shot a couple more wigeon, which appeared sporadically and in small groups, and waited some more. All in all not a bad way to spend a late afternoon, even if the expected clouds of ducks never showed up. Right before I decided to pack it in and head for home, a lone drake mallard flew in, and instead of dropping him in open water, which is what would have happened had I shot him correctly, I winged him and he tumbled exactly where I didn't want him to go; into the jungle of reeds and deep, sucking muck across the slough to my right.
Since both the dog and I were in a makeshift blind on the back side of the dam, covered with reeds, all either of us could see was the mallard angling into the general area of the reeds. Neither of us could actually mark it down.
Well, shit. I had a downed but live duck out there in that nightmare of water, mud and cover, no clear idea where it was, and absolutely no way to reach it short of sprouting gills or webbed feet. Well, that's why you have a dog, right? All I could do was line her in the general direction of where I thought the duck went down, give her a "back" and hope like hell the fat old girl could bust her way through those reeds and use her nose to find that mallard. There would be no handling beyond the initial line, but she knew the game.
So I sent her, watched her hit the reeds and disappear, and then of course suddenly remembered (again, a bit late) that I had a video camera. What follows is, literally, about eight minutes of me filming a silent row of reeds, so I chopped it down to about a minute-and-a-half of me filming reeds, followed by some silly, overly effusive praise that Tess earned every bit of.
A few short years ago Tess would have eaten up a retrieve like that, but at ten, although she's still fairly active, I was a bit worried she'd tire out looking for that mallard and get hung up in the reeds,which really must be seen in person to understand just how dense they are and how difficult it is for a dog to negotiate. If she had gotten hung up, my only option would have been to walk back to the north around the entire slough, cross a creek, walk back in from the west and start bushwacking into the water, hoping like hell I wouldn't step off into a hole or bury myself in silt.
But she made it: all slow, pudgy, arthritic, crotchety, gray-muzzled, slowly-going-blind sixty pounds of her. It wasn't an especially long retrieve, sixty yards, maybe seventy. But a tough one for a seasoned citizen. It was a helluva lot of fun to witness, a great way to start what may well be her last season, and a perfect example of why I will never understand the appeal of hunting ducks and birds without dogs. I know a lot of people do, and that's cool if they like it, but for me hunting without a dog is kinda like eating a chocolate chip cookie without the chocolate chips. Bleh.
Robert Malsam nearly went broke in the 1980s when corn was cheap. So
now that prices are high and he can finally make a profit, he’s not
about to apologize for ripping up prairieland to plant corn. Across the Dakotas and Nebraska, more than 1 million acres of the
Great Plains are giving way to corn fields as farmers transform the wild
expanse that once served as the backdrop for American pioneers. This expansion of the Corn Belt is fueled in part by America’s green energy policy, which requires oil companies to blend billions of gallons of corn ethanol into their gasoline.
In 2010, fuel became the No. 1 use for corn in America, a title it held
in 2011 and 2012 and narrowly lost this year. That helps keep prices
high. “It’s not hard to do the math there as to what’s profitable to have,”
Malsam said. “I think an ethanol plant is a farmer’s friend.”
A few nut grafs to chew on...
More than 1.2 million acres of grassland have been lost since the
federal government required that gasoline be blended with increasing
amounts of ethanol, an Associated Press analysis of satellite data
found. Plots that were wild grass or pastureland seven years ago are now
corn and soybean fields. That’s in addition to the 5 million acres of farmland that had been
aside for conservation — more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite
National Parks combined — that have vanished since Obama took office.
"...In South Dakota, more than 370,000 acres of grassland have been
uprooted and farmed from since 2006. In Edmunds County, a rural
community about two hours north of the capital, Pierre, at least 42,000
acres of grassland have become cropland — one of the largest turnovers
in the region." "Malsam runs a 13-square-mile family farm there. He grows corn,
soybeans and wheat, then rents out his grassland for grazing. Each year,
the family converts another 160 acres from grass to cropland. Chemicals kill the grass. Machines remove the rocks. Then tractors
plow it three times to break up the sod and prepare it for planting."
And Mr. Malsam can do that pretty much risk-free, thanks to our federal crop insurance program. Socialize the risk, privatize the profit. It's just that simple. Here's a little storythat gives a good synopsis of the problem. Well, it's a problem for taxpayers, hunters, anglers and pretty much everyone else besides farmers, ethanol producers and other members of the agro-industrial complex. For them it's the can't lose lottery...
Crop insurance, intended to protect growers from price and weather risk,
has become the most expensive U.S. farm-aid program, costing taxpayers
$14 billion in subsidies for farmers and payments to companies,
including ACE Ltd. (ACE) and a unit of Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), after last year’s drought pushed payouts to a record, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
...Under the insurance program, the government subsidizes the majority of
premiums paid by farmers, covers much of the administrative costs
tallied by insurers to run the program, and guarantees that all losses
are met. A series of stories by Bloomberg in September examined the debate over the program’s structure and costs. More than a half-decade into a price boom expected to push farm profits
to a record $120.6 billion this year, land in Midwest and Plains states
has shifted toward crops, according to the USDA. This year’s corn
acreage of 97.4 million acres was the highest since 1936. About 86
percent of U.S. acreage was covered by taxpayer-backed crop insurance
last year, the agency said.
It's not gonna stop, folks. It's just not. At least not voluntarily, out of some suddenly-realized collective epiphany that perhaps this isn't a good or even remotely sustainable idea. Hmmm, I wonder what would stop it...
Have you ever held finely-tilled prairie soil in your hands? No? Don't live on the plains, you say? No problem, just give it a few years. And start putting together that Woody Guthrie playlist now...
Moving on, here's another Debbie-Downer piece, this time on NPR, on a study to determine how climate change is effecting native cutthroat populations...
In the mountain streams of the American West, the trout rules. People
don't just catch this fish; they honor it. And spend lots of money
pursuing it. But some western trout may be in trouble. Rivers
and streams are getting warmer and there's often less water in them.
Scientists suspect a changing climate is threatening this iconic fish. I
joined two such scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey as they
drove up a mountain road in Montana, in the northern Rockies, a place
dense with stands of Douglas fir and aspen trees and braided with
mountain streams...They're
studying the trout's world, which is changing radically as the climate
warms. The region has seen record droughts and declining winter
snowpack, which means measly stream flow after the spring melt. The
water is also warmer these days in the streams.
"...Understanding how this will all work out will take time. But already,
changes have cropped up. For example, non-native fish that have been
introduced in the West — like rainbow trout — normally live farther
downstream where the water is warmer. Now they're moving up into higher
streams. When they get there, they breed with the native cutthroat. Clint
Muhlfeld says new research he's done suggests that making hybrids may
not be a good thing. "What we found is that as you allow hybridization
to progress in fish you actually see a rapid decrease in fitness," he
says. "That's not a good thing for trout." Also, bass are moving into
waters that were once too cold for them, the kind of water the trout
prefer. The bass prey on the young trout."
Well, sheeeit! Good news! Maybe now if I'm forced to move to Montana because of extreme drought and the disappearance of bobwhite quail on the southern plains, I won't have to trade in my bass tackle for fly gear, after all, because the bass will be fleeing there, too! Move over, you dry fly fairy wanders. Meet Mr. Jig 'n Pig!
The story continues...
There are many things
that disturb trout, which are picky about how and where they live. But
so far the state and the fishing community have been able to reconcile
cattle grazing, development and mining with the needs of trout. But
climate change raises a big new threat and it's hard to fathom how it
might affect trout. Thus the effort now to look for the first signs of
trouble, not only for the sake of the creature, but for all those people
who regard it as the iconic fish of the American West.
Really? Cattle grazing, development and mining have all been reconciled? Well, sheeeit! Pack it up, TU, who needs you? Everything's been reconciled except, apparently, climate change, which as we all know is a leftist hoax, anyway. So my takeway from this story is, screw the cutthroat. With grazing, development and mining having been reconciled, and with climate change a demonstrable falsehood, that stupid, gullible little fish is golden.*
Conversation among a group of scientists, wildlife managers, land
managers, public policy experts, journalists and hunters gathered in a
Texas town one evening this past week was animated and passionate and
tinged with frustration, desperation and urgency. The topic was how unprecedented, man-caused changes in the natural
landscape and a devil's brew of factors poised to accelerate those
changes threaten the future of the continent's waterfowl and other avian
wildlife that depend on healthy, abundant grassland/wetland habitats
for survival.
"Are ducks the next quail?" one of the discussion's participants, a
biologist with extensive experience in the field and knowledge of
challenges facing waterfowl and other avian wildlife, somberly wondered
aloud. Everyone understood the implications of his question.
Uh, yeah, I'd like to take a stab at answering that question, and the short answer would be, hell yes, they are. Anyone not a congenital half-wit or a TV personality can see that. Enjoy those record-setting fall flights, enjoy blasting those endless six-duck limits with all your shiny new branded gear, enjoy emulating a bunch of weird, hairy, proselytizing hillbillies from Louisiana. Because your new fad is over. It's dead. Still flying, but flying dead. Unless things change, and change damn quickly.
Ducks aren't magically produced somewhere off-camera. They're produced in the very same regions that are currently being greedscaped into oblivion. All you mud motor jockeys may not currently give two shits what happens to the quail, or what happens to the pheasants, or to prairie grouse or whatever else lives out there in the wastelands, but guess what? Those wastelands are to the ducks what your doublewide is to you!** That's where they all go to fornicate!
And when the skies are empty and you're forced to go back to something like the point system because of plummeting duck numbers, and you're rediscovering the joys of using your $1,500 plastic duck gun for some Xtreme rat shooting down at the town dump because "it's the dayumdest thing, there just 'aint no ducks no more!" then maybe you'll realize that instead of devoting all your time and energy to rockin' the beard, maybe you shoulda been paying a little more attention to Things That Really Matter.
But I digress, the story was actually about quail...
Bobwhite quail, arguably the most recognized and revered game bird in
the nation, has seen its wild population free-fall over the past
half-century or so. In some states within the birds' native range, which
covers most of the United States from the Atlantic seaboard to the
Great Plains, bobwhite numbers have declined by as much as 90 percent or
more. That includes states such as Georgia, Mississippi and South
Carolina, where wild quail were so abundant they were a part of the
region's cultural and social fabric.
In some states where the birds were
relatively abundant as recently as 30 years ago, bobwhites are
considered "recreationally extinct," their numbers so low that hunting
seasons have been either suspended or, if hunting is allowed, almost no
wingshooters pursue the iconic game bird. No region of the bobwhites' range has escaped the collapse, including
Texas. The statewide bobwhite quail population has, by some estimates,
declined 70 percent or more over the past 60 years. In parts of Texas,
the birds have all but vanished; East Texas and the Post Oak Savanna,
which held fairly healthy bobwhite populations into the 1960s, are
almost wholly devoid of wild quail, and the Blackland Prairies and
Edwards Plateau regions hold only scattered, isolated islands of quail.
The decline in Texas' bobwhite population has been mirrored by an
off-a-cliff tumble in the number of Texans hunting quail. As recently as
the early 1990s, as many as 225,000 Texans hunted quail each autumn and
winter. This past season, according to the Texas wildlife agency's
small game harvest survey, only about 20,800 people hunted quail in
Texas. And that number includes those who shot pen-raised/released quail
on shooting preserves.
Just plug in "Oklahoma" wherever the story says "Texas" and you'll get the idea. But as alluded to in the story, this is a national problem, and a woefully under-reported one, especially in any meaningful way in what passes for outdoor media these days. As an example, last year, in the wake of an excellent New York Times piece written by James Card, I pitched a quail conservation feature story to the editor of a magazine that shall remain unnamed. It was timely, it was urgent, and it important for a helluva lot of people, including, dare I say, a helluva lot of readers of this particular magazine. I had all the contacts, I had the background, having written about quail quite a bit, I had a good hook, I had the timing, and I truly thought it had a chance to get a greenlight.
The editor's response was that while it sounded like a good story, this magazine had already done a recent quail-related conservation piece, so they'd have to pass. So what did said quail-related conservation piece consist of? Well, it was (and I am not making this up) a five-minute feel-good video highlighting a local Boy Scout project to restore "quail habitat" on a local put-and-take poultry shoot WMA...in New Jersey. Yes, New Jersey.
Sigh. It's easy to get discouraged and glum about all sorts of things, especially if you read this blog. But believe it or not, I am not nearly so skeptical as I sometimes seem. I'm a hopeful pessimist. The alternative is to be a hopeless pessimist, and truly, what's the point of that? I think there's hope for our grasslands, I think there's hope for the cutthroat, and I think there's hope for the bobwhite. I'm not quite ready to abandon hope just yet. And Ye shouldn't, either. There are a lot of good people out there doing a lot of good work. These stories? They're just reminders, albeit stark ones, of why that work is so important.
* I kid, I kid the cutthroat. In truth, I'm fascinated with the little buggers and I've applied (keep your fingers crossed) for a journalism fellowship with the cutthroat trout as my research subject.
** Please, no angry comments about my disparaging of redneck duck hunters. I was born and raised in Oklahoma. I've actually lived in a doublewide trailer. I am a redneck duck hunter, and believe me, when I make fun of redneck duck hunters, I know from whence I speak...
A few observations from opening weekend of my personal obsession with a fast-fading tradition:
I think this is going to be Ozzy's breakout season where he starts putting things together. He's doing well, and I am pleased. Jenny, not so much thus far. She was a wild, poorly-behaved wench this weekend. My fault. We'll be working on that. She always seems to start out poorly and get better as the season goes along. I'm hoping that pattern holds.
Trying to keep up with dogs over rough terrain, not to mention mounting a gun, getting your head down on the stock and properly swinging through on a quail, all while suffering from an irritating and pernicious firewood cutting-related neck and hand injury (more on that in some future blog) that prevents you from doing pretty much all of those things, is an act of futility and pain. Think Frankenstein attempting to hunt quail, and that would be a good approximation of me this past weekend.
As suspected, we have more birds around than last year, which means that instead of walking twenty miles and seeing only heat shimmers, hallucinations and dust devils, this season you will walk twenty miles and not only see heat shimmers, hallucinations and dust devils, but your dogs may, just may, get a fleeting chance to catch a few tantalizing molecules of quail essence swirling in the eddies of the morning chill, and then remind you why you're so infatuated with them. The dogs and the quail.
But despite that, it's still bad, and nowhere near what it needs to be. Last year was apocalyptically grim. This year it's merely catastrophically grim. If we get one more summer like last, perhaps we can hope for an upgrade to disastrously grim next fall, and if we get really, really lucky and get two more normal summers, I believe the Oklahoma quail season of 2015-2016 will be merely grim.
At least that's what I and the 20,000-odd (down from well over 100,000 at one point) fools who still stubbornly chase these dreams into the wasteland each year are shooting for. The only question is, how many of them will still be around in a couple years to enjoy that wonderfully grim year of quail hunting?
It was not hard to find solitude this past Saturday on the public area I hunt every opening weekend. A few more than last year, including a couple out-of-state groups who chased their own dreams all the way from Georgia and Alabama. But even with the uptick in numbers, it was a shadow of what was, and most of those few remaining are old, wistful and pushing forward mostly on the pull of the past.
As I was sitting on my tailgate Saturday afternoon eating lunch, a truck with a dog trailer pulled up beside me. Two men inside. Old-time men. Dog men. Bird-hunting men, representatives of a sepia-tinged epoch now past, trying to find one last good and familiar thing in this one. We talked for over an hour. They were both in their late seventies, from back east, almost to Arkansas. Their dogs were old, their truck was old, their guns were old, and their tales were old. And fascinating. And terribly sad. And terribly familiar. Two aging men from a region once rife with quail and quail hunting tradition, now driving a bunch of aging dogs hundreds of miles, all for the chance to grasp memory. I suppose that's what we all do eventually.
We talked dogs and guns and quail and OU football and when it was time to leave I gave them my card, told them to call me next fall for a scouting report and wished them luck. Right before they drove off, one of them said "you know, you're the youngest quail hunter I've met in a while." It should be noted that I am 42, and while the concept of "young" changes
with age, by no stretch of the imagination am I a rosy-cheeked cherub. But he was right. In fact, I was the youngest quail hunter I had seen all weekend.
I thought of the legions of truly young kids, teenagers and twenty-somethings that I had run into (for better and worse. Usually worse) out duck hunting the past two seasons, all those "crews" with their wispy beards and their barrel stickers on their guns and their "Cut 'Em" stickers on their truck windows and their simple faith that the ducks will always be here because of course for them the ducks always have been here, just like the quail had always been here, and everyone, young and old, had always hunted them. Until, of course, they weren't.
As those two old men drove off in search of what pulled them here, I couldn't help but wonder if they'd be back next year, or maybe the year after, or if they'd just drive off into the past, never to return. It's a helluva thing to lose an entire tradition. And it's a helluva thing to be a young quail hunter at 42.
After almost a year of inaction, obsessive online research and comparison shopping, it's time for me to bite the bullet and buy a good, commercial-grade meat grinder. I've narrowed it down to the 1/2 (or thereabouts) horsepower, #8 neck, stainless grinders from either Cabela's or LEM. However, my innate cheap-ass has raised its head, as it so often does, whispering, "Damn it, it's just a meat grinder! Buy This $99 knock-off
from Northern Tool and stuff that extra $200 in your sock."
I've had people whose opinion I trust tell me the Cabela's grinders truly are worth the money, and the online praise for them is damn-near universal. They're on sale right now, the half-horse model for $329, which is steep, but apparently good grinders- especially grinders that will be doing a lot of venison - are one of those "you get what you pay for, cry now or cry later" kind of products. But the nearest Cabela's to me is in Wichita, Kansas, so shipping a big, heavy grinder will cost.
The LEM is equally praised, and Bass Pro Shops-branded version is (not un-coincidentally) also on sale for $329. And although I generally dislike Bass Pro shops and make it a point to never step foot in the place, we do have one semi-locally. However, I'm also pretty sure that Academy sells the same grinder, and if it's like most everything else, it'll be cheaper at Academy, with the added bonus that you won't have some jerk-off accosting you as you're walking out the door trying to sell you lakeside condo timeshares in Missouri like they do at Ass Pro.
There is also a third option: I could try to win Hank Shaw's Book Promotion Contest and win the sweet 1/2 horsepower Weston grinder he's giving away (According to online rumor, Weston may or may not be the actual manufacturer of the Cabela's grinders). The only problem is that A. the kind of picture I had in mind probably wouldn't be in the best of taste, and B. (and I'm quite embarrassed to admit this, especially since I'm trying to get Hank to come out next spring and go paddlefish snagging with me) I actually haven't bought a copy of Duck, Duck, Goose yet to be able to take a picture. In fact, I haven't even shot a Duck, Duck or Goose yet this season. Long story there. But I'm going to, Hank, honest. Shoot a duck this year, and buy your book...
So anyway, before pulling the trigger, I thought I'd ask for any last-minute suggestions, ideas or recommendations. Anybody have any personal experience with either the Cabela's or LEM grinders,or even that cheap Northern Tool meat grinder? Did I mention it's 99 bucks? It's also actually gotten not-bad reviews on a lot of the online forums. And it's 99 bucks. And there's a Northern Tool in OKC. And it's 99 bucks.
Or should I just lump it and buy quality the first time around? I've been butchering my own deer for years, and for years I've been messing around with a combination of junk grinders, other people's grinders, and other people's junk grinders. My brain says I should really be leaning toward quality...
But did I mention that Northern Tool grinder is only 99 bucks?
Truism: There is an inverse relationship between my age and the number of camouflage clothing items I own. As one keeps going inexorably up, the other keeps going steadily down.
Makes sense, I suppose. These days, I mostly bird and waterfowl hunt. Obviously I eschew any camo at all for my bird hunting, not only for the fact that it looks unbelievably silly, and tacky, but also because I have no desire to resemble a leafy, three-dimensional, color-changing, UV-blocking, ultra-wicking, holographic Ent as I chase the dogs across the landscape.
I do wear camo waders and a camo parka while duck hunting (the pattern escapes me, Dickweed Maxx 4-D, or something like that), along with a facemask (no effing affected facepaint for me) and a hat, so there is that. I can't completely chunk all this overpriced, overhyped crap, because, well, it does help some with the duckies. I also wear a few old, faded camo (lineage unknown) t-shirts and earth-toned shorts for early dove. In addition, I have a few old, worn and and thoroughly unstylish camo shirts and pants I wear for spring turkey, along with gloves, mask and hat.
But that's about it for my camo-wearing these days, which is a far, far cry from my camo-festooned youth, during which - growing up in a state college town - camouflage was not only potent tribal identity (Me Manly Hunter Man!), but fashion, philosophical, and political statement as well. You know, all those terribly important statements that seem to stop mattering so much as you grow older.
These days, I pretty much ignore the merchants of redneck cool and instead have taken to wearing mostly earth-toned surplus wool pants and shirts for what little bowhunting I still do, and have even begun committing the unpardonable sin of wearing a pair of old jeans and a brown or dark gray flannel shirt on warm days during deer gun season. And it's the damndest thing: as long as I pay attention to the wind, sit up against something (like a cedar tree) that breaks up my outline, and don't fidget around, the deer don't seem to mind they're being shot by a simple-minded nebbish who is neither Hard-Core nor Xtreme enough to wear such duds as what's now available.
I can live with that. Hell, eventually I'd even like to get rid of all my camo, every bit of it, and just go back to hunting like this guy.
I know you and Wiley Post (tragically born Texan but raised Okie) died together way back in 1935, but damn it, you left us way too soon. Hard to imagine that the state of Oklahoma once produced adventurers like Post and thinkers like you. In fact, you and Woody Guthrie were the best thinkers the state of Oklahoma ever grew. Honest. Since you two left, it's been mostly front-end-of-the-Bell-Curve territory for us, public-figure-wise. Which is why I'd be damn curious to know what you and Woody would think of your state and your country these days.
Now I know you once famously said you never met a man you didn't like, but
I must point out that, well, you did die rather young, and perhaps you
just never got the opportunity, so I have an idea: Please, for the love of all that's holy, and decent, and good, come back. Just come back. Yes, as a zombie. The undead are not only socially acceptable these days, they're actually celebrated (there's a societal metaphor in there somewhere). Truly, it's a damn interesting epoch we're in, and I'm confident that without much effort you'll finally find someone you not only dislike, but loathe. Trust me, there are legion from which to choose.
Come on, Will, re-animate. We miss you, we need you, and there's a helluva lot of us stuck here in the temporal world who would gladly take even a zombie Will Rogers over the entire current crop of bloviating fuckwits polluting the airwaves and the ether these days. I guess you could say that we're just all zombies looking for some brains down here, Will, and not finding them anywhere. Could you come back and give us yours, again?
