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PGC’s strange hunter survey

Today a Pennsylvania Game Commission email arrived, asking if I would participate in a brief hunter survey. Being 100% opinionated about everything, naturally I acquiesced. “Shy” was maybe used to describe me when I was young, but not as an adult. Because I consider myself a careful thinker, committed only to First Principles from America’s founding and to The Bible, and being relatively uncommitted to mass movements or parties, I enjoy sharing my perspectives with people who are open minded and interested in understanding different points of view than the prevailing narratives hawked by the Mainstream Media Corporate Industrial Complex.

The PGC survey consisted of really just three questions, all of which were about hunting waterfowl such as ducks and geese.

First question was did I hunt ducks last season, to which I responded No, I Did Not Hunt Ducks Last Season. The reason being that although I live just two blocks from that once famous migration route on the mighty Susquehanna River, the current duck migration down the Susquehanna River is not even a shadow of its former self. Rather, the duck migration here does not exist and has not existed for twenty years. I see more ducks lounging about and crapping on people’s yards in Italian Lake City Park across the street from my front yard than I see out on the Susquehanna River sitting on a bucket with a shotgun in my hand.

So, unless I travel to the Chesapeake Bay to hunt ducks, it is rare for me to get out after them any longer. Without Sunday hunting like all the surrounding states have, my opportunities for waterfowl hunting in Pennsylvania are pretty limited to what I can access quickly and easily. Like the dead Susquehanna River within sight of my dining room window.

Second question asked which Goose Zone I hunted in. Easy enough to answer.

Third question, which was broken down into three different alternatives, pertained to which of three unbearable and useless goose hunting seasons I liked or did not like, and how much I liked them or disliked them. All three alternative seasons PGC presented were unnecessarily fragmented from late October into February, and included very little early season but lots of late and really super late season. The problem being that the southward goose migration is heaviest in the part of October when the PGC shuts down our goose hunting, and the goose migration is entirely over by the time the PGC season opens back up. Fat lot of help these potential seasons offer!

This is a curious situation, which I have never had satisfactorily answered. Some hunters I know say that the Susquehanna River Waterfowlers, to which the PGC looks for hunter guidance, is made up of anti-Sunday hunting fuddy duddys who would rather give up hunting entirely than see Pennsylvania hunters get our share of the goose migration and also have Sunday waterfowling. True or not, this is what I am told.

Other hunters I know say that the PGC is hopelessly tangled up with the US Fish & Wildlife Service on all kinds of policies, not the least of which is that PA has a boatload of passionate hunters who, given the least opportunity, will, it is said by wildlife management officialdom, destroy, decimate, eliminate, and exterminate every duck, goose, gander, coot, loon, pimpernel, plover, and shoveler that flies, walks, waddles, crawls, or ducks through the migration route between New York and Maryland. And so, according to this view, Pennsylvania waterfowl hunters must be artificially hamstrung and kept from going afield when the birds are flying the most. Again, I do not know how much truth there is to this, though I will testify to the fact that Pennsylvania does in fact field a lot of hunters. A lot.

And so we get to my response to the three ridiculous seasons proposed in the PGC survey: Not one of them makes any sense; all three are equally nonsensical alternatives.

What is the point of giving me various dates to hunt if the animal we are hunting is no longer in the venue in those dates, but has long since flown the coop and is doing leisurely backstrokes in Florida and Louisiana?

It appears that the PGC knows its three silly seasons are indeed silly, and yet the agency is overtly committed to them.

You can have a crap sandwich, a sh*t sandwich, or an imaginary sandwich,” is what PA waterfowl hunters are presented here.

This means Pennsylvania waterfowl hunters outside the Philly area southeast corner and outside a couple of interesting little “habitat and flyway bubbles” around Lake Erie and Shenango Lake in Western PA are officially SOL and just wasting their time sitting with a shotgun on a bucket and freezing solid past late December.

This current no-win situation begs for a bigger than life solution, but it also reminds me of the old Sunday hunting situation, where the PA Farm Bureau stole our private property rights for decades by artificially preventing any Sunday hunting. Only by marginally nibbling around the political edges did PA hunters finally get three weenie Sundays to hunt big game, and one suspects that such a small and unsatisfying “solution” is what is in store for PA waterfowlers, if a solution is to be had at all.

Maybe PGC will add more waterfowling days afield in March, when every single last duck and goose north of the Mason Dixon Line has landed in Costa Rica for the winter. Thanks but no thanks, PGC.

I for one, though I undoubtedly represent many others, would like to hunt ducks and geese in Pennsylvania at or closely around the same times/dates/days that hunters in New York are hunting them. But that would make sense, and if there is one thing I have learned as a PA waterfowl hunter, our seasons here are not intended to make sense.

 

How’d that go? PA begins online hunting license & tag sales

Today at 8:00 AM marked the first day of the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s true entry into the modern world of home computers and the Internet. This probably sounds like an unnecessarily harsh or even a commonly outlandish criticism of the venerable PGC, but it is a technological fact that today marks the very first step by the 1895-founded-and-minded wildlife agency into directly integrating with its customer base.

And it has not gone well, although it could have gone a lot worse. Monday end-of-business hours analysis shows the PGC website processing about 7,090 license purchases per hour. That is about 118 per minute, which is a lot faster than the roughly 1,900 licenses per hour purchased in the early time frame I operated in. Given all of the little moving parts involved, especially that carefully measured doe tag purchase, I guess I can see why this is taking longer than the two to three minutes total that each person expected to spend on it. It still frustrated me and others who are not at war with PGC.

The process has been marred by exceptionally long waits, both in-person at brick and mortar retailers and online, with lots of “system crashes” and people standing in line for hours, spawning humorous memes like the old and now former pink doe tag envelope saying “Miss Me Yet?” I like the meme of the skeleton passed out over the desktop computer “Waiting for my 21st century Internet purchase from the PA Game Commission.”

The truth is that this day had to come, sooner or later. The old double-stamped pink envelope US Mail process was increasingly marred by the US Postal Service’s incredibly ever worse performance, to the point where people were photographing piles of time-sensitive pink envelopes sitting in heaps in some post office rooms, waiting for who knows what or who knows who. No one likes to be treated differently than everyone else, and the pink envelope lottery was an idea from 1945 that worked when postal employees did their jobs. These days, the Postal Service is notoriously unreliable. We can’t have a doe tag distribution process that relies on unreliable people and institutions. Even when the applying hunter does everything correctly, his or her pink doe tag envelope might take a wrong turn at Albuquerque and arrive days or weeks after the last doe tag was distributed. Which greatly impacts the hunter’s plans and prospects for that upcoming hunting season.

My own experience today had me first sleeping fitfully all night like it was hunting season, and finally dragging myself out of bed and hunkering down by the laptop well before the 8:00 AM beginning of the online purchase process at www.huntfishpa.gov. Almost like opening day of deer season and sitting down at an ambush site. Except this process revealed itself as having actually started well before the appointed 8:00 AM hour, as I was number 7,023 in line when I signed into my PGC huntfishpa account. With barely any coffee in my veins to buffer this unhappy revelation, an ice cold shock ran through me as I realized I was both early and yet already very late to the process. Thousands of hunters were ahead of me in an online process that was unknown, untested, and sure to have its ups and downs and delays.

The big ticket item for most of us early applicants is getting the doe tag of our first choice Wildlife Management Unit. It is why we stayed in the game til the very end. And the numbers tell the tale: My own first choice, WMU 2G, sold 17,000 doe tags by 5:00 PM today, about twice as many doe tags as any other WMU. There is a strong fear in a lot of guys that if you don’t get in line early either online or at a store, you won’t get your coveted doe tag in your primary hunt region. Fact is, with the ever popular northern “Big Woods” WMU 2G, that fear is well founded. There are many more hunters wanting WMU 2G doe tags than there are WMU 2G doe tags to hand out. The early bird gets this worm, every year.

[UPDATE: At 9:42PM I looked at the doe tag numbers and 23,502 WMU 2G doe tags out of the 35,000 total allocation for that WMU have been sold so far. A sale rate far beyond any other WMU. This means that 2G will be sold out by Tuesday early morning hours. The hunter demand for Big Woods 2G tags has always been high, we knew it, and now we get to see how that demand plays out when the hunters themselves are put in direct control of their tag orders]

Four hours and ten minutes later, having obsessively hovered over my laptop screen the entire time while emailing and bitchfest-texting with  friends in both better and worse positions than I, I finally had ordered my general hunting license plus all of the additional license and permits I get, like furtaker (trapping), the annual elk application (I will take anything ya got anywhere ya got it), muzzleloader, archery, spear, atl-atl, sling, blowgun, black bear, fisher, bobcat, armadillo, hog, dog, rat, bat, and zinjanthropus tags. And yes, I got my WMU 2G doe tag, which enables me to hunt the way I enjoy most – solo pack and rifle and maybe an overnight and campfire somewhere way off the beaten path and far from roads and people, and the promise of a long and heavy pack-out of boned-out meat with a single doe’s ear and a completed tag attached. This kind of hunt is the most rewarding among big game hunters everywhere. Guys sitting in warmed box blinds overlooking fields and ravines have no idea.

So yeah, I waited and waited to ensure I got that 2G doe tag. A lot of my Big Woods hunting depends on it.

Anyone old enough to pick up on the Bugs Bunny theme above will understand where I am coming from; it was a loooong and kind of zany morning. In this day and age of Amazon and eBay and Gunbroker one-stop-shop badda bing badda bang badda boom go online and it’s yours two minutes later, Pennsylvania’s entry into the online hunting license world was practically Stone Age. New York has about as many hunters as Pennsylvania, and I have never encountered anything like this when I order my hunting license and tags from NY. It is usually immediate. Even Kentucky’s online hunting license and elk tag application process is faster than ours was today.

I am not picking on Kentucky….but come on, we all know it, Kentucky is not known for being especially technologically advanced. And yet….!

On the one hand, we must must give PGC credit for taking the long step out of 1895 and into the computer and internet age. This step the agency took this morning was one small step for PGC and one giant leap for hunterkind, or maybe the reverse, or whatever….. something like this. It is a big deal and I send you guys three cheers. Three grouchy cheers. Let’s not do this again, OK?

Yes, today’s license purchase has been marred by delays that seem unacceptable, but we all know that the PGC’s public employees have way too much pride to let this situation continue. It is a fact that a lot of employees and contractors will be working all night on this new system, and that by the time 8:00 AM breaks tomorrow, a lot of the glitches and delays we experienced today will be a bad memory for some, and a non-experience for a million others.

 

Men – you need The Clothier in Williamsport

I am not a fancy clothes guy. Most of my time is spent in work boots, hiking boots, cargo pants, and a short sleeved button down shirt. Yeah yeah, I have some dress up clothes that are high quality, but as I age, they become less and less important. They were probably very high quality twenty or thirty years ago, anyhow. They also don’t really fit well now. Somehow those nice clothes shrank. So, my go-to dress-up kit now is a pair of khakis and a navy blue blazer, nice button down shirt, no tie. This informal-formal outfit has enabled me to properly and respectfully mix and mingle with all kinds of wonderful people at big birthday parties, religious events, weddings, etc you name it.

However, the onset of a pending family wedding prompted me to take another look at my fading wardrobe. What I saw I did not like, and no matter how many ways I tried to mix and match this and that, nothing looked right. For example, skinny pants flood jeans look good on gay millennials and straight millennials trying to look gay, but they made me look like New Jersey governor Chris Christie, which is not a look I want, either in office or on my carcass. So, when you are like me and nothing you own and wear passes muster for a serious, dressy event, you must turn to “The Experts.”

And who, you ask, is an expert in the field of dressing guys, including fifty-something guys with a tub o’ lard around the midsection and the shade of the former tough guy athletic build they had twenty years ago? After contemplating this question, it dawned on me that the billboards around Williamsport, PA, probably meant what they said: Experts in men’s clothing reside at The Clothier. And so, following up on this weeks-long deductive reasoning episode, I looked up the number and called The Clothier.

In a nutshell, what I experienced from the first phone call to them to the moment I walked out their door laden down with all kinds of beautiful high quality clothing was like taking a time warp machine back to 1950s Italy or America or London. Matthew and his dad Francis at The Clothier are serious about Best Quality clothing, shoes, belts, you name it, and they want you to look your very best. If a guy wants the absolute best clothing, the most beautiful clothing, the nicest of everything, trust me on this recommendation, you need to pay a visit to The Clothier on 4th Street in Williamsport, PA. They have an astronomical amount of gorgeous clothing from around the world, including Trask shoes, which unbelievably are not made in my duck foot XXXL Man 13 EE size, dammit. They also have the experienced men to help you arrive at your very best public persona.

Now, a word to the wise. Do not enter into this beautiful den of manliness, filled with its rare and beautiful items, enjoy the luxury of being fitted to a tee with the best clothing you can afford to wear, and then expect to have an Amazon price at the end. No way. The Clothier is at the very other end of the quality spectrum from Amazon. When you go to Matthew and Francis to be outfitted for your own wedding, your kid’s wedding, your nonbinary dog’s third official Los Angeles tripartate polyamorous affair wedding, a big party, whatever, you are receiving the very best service, knowledgeable care, and detailed personal attention to your appearance that a man can receive on Planet Earth. They measure every limb and foot and hip and chest with a tape measure, they ask how you want to look, how you want the fabric to fit your body. Yes, you can get good quality, nice looking clothes for a good price at The Clothier, but do not cheap out or try to hondle these good people if you ask for the best they have. They will make your fat, ugly ass look unbelievable; at least they made mine look presentable. And they deserve everything they charge for that service.

Women have makeovers, and some years ago there was that funny “Queer Eye for The Straight Guy” TV show. Well, father and son Matthew and Francis are not gay, but they have all of the skills that an old world tailor and the talented gay guys had up until Western Civilization took a plunge into everyone either wearing nothing at all or crappy Chinese plastic clothes. They can and will get you looking amazing, if you give them a chance.

I was incredulous, like slack jawed, as I looked around their enormous store. “What on earth are you doing here in Williamsport, Francis?” I asked.

“I mean, you have enough beautiful clothing here to outfit each person in Williamsport daily for a month.”

To which the kindly elder tailor responded “You know what? Seventy percent of my business comes from out of state. Not just out of town, but out of state. Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, West Virginia. Men who want the very best look they can afford come here. And then they come back for the rest of their lives.

If you are a guy in search of Best Quality clothing, formal or informal, shoes, belt, hat, coat, suit, socks, boxers, and you want help assembling everything into an amazing presentation, then you are not helping yourself until you call The Clothier: (570) 322-5707.

They have parking in the rear of their store at 138 4th Street, Williamsport, PA. And yes, Williamsport has meter people running up and down the street issuing tickets for unpaid meters. The back door parking is a big plus, and believe me, you will need the extra time to really shop. There is almost nothing like this place left in America, anywhere. The visit alone is worth the drive.

 

Why Court Candidate Josh Prince Must Win

Josh Prince is a candidate for Commonwealth Court here in Pennsylvania, and his day of reckoning is coming up fast: May 16th is Primary Day, where registered Republicans vote for Republican Party candidates and registered Democrats vote for Democrat Party candidates. This form of selecting partisan candidates to then square off against each other in the Fall general election may be imperfect, but it is far superior to ranked voting. And Spring time primary elections are actually as important as Fall general elections.

Josh Prince has to win this election because, like much of America, Pennsylvania is turning into a lawless single-party uniparty state where political party does not matter, nor does the rule of law. We citizens need strong people of high character to resist this evil tide. Josh Prince’s legal mind and his ironclad principles are needed now more than they have been since the 1850s, and I hope you will vote for him. I have known Josh Prince for many years, and I respect him very highly. I am excited to be able to vote for him.

Both the Republican Party establishment and the Democrat Party establishment have much more in common with each other than they do with their respective voting bases, although it is crucial to point out that the Democrat Party is also completely responsive to and loyal to its voters, while the PAGOP doesn’t care much about its voters. The Pennsylvania Republican Party only cares about its voters a little bit, and briefly, when it needs them in the Fall election. And even then it is a dismissive kind of caring; they take Republican voters for granted…

…because the PAGOP business model and culture is to be perfectly happy with minority status, so long as the pre-selected and party boss-anointed Republican Party insiders are in the existing official slots and holding power, protecting their small inner circle’s narrow interests. As soon as someone from “the outside” (like Josh Prince) tries to take up one of those slots, the entire PAGOP goes into action, defending their castle from the marauding barbarian.

Prince is running against Megan Martin, who was endorsed by the PAGOP (this is hardly a vote of confidence for the average citizen!), and who has never stepped foot in a courtroom – not a trial court nor an appellate court. Rather, lawyer Megan Martin has spent around 30 years in the government as a functionary, a bureaucrat, a politician’s lawyer. Nothing necessarily wrong with this history, but is this what you want sitting in judgment of you?

Megan Martin has a legally unimpressive resume that she now wants to bring to the Commonwealth Court, where we citizens can rest assured she will look to what Republican Party bosses want most. As opposed to attorney Josh Prince, who has quintessential, unbending, uncorruptible, traditional American principles, as well as an incredible and fearless track record in court, including representing me and Firearms Owners Against Crime against brazenly illegal and unconstitutional anti-gun ordinances here in Harrisburg.

Josh Prince is not the political establishment’s pick because he will only uphold the law as it is written, and he will only uphold the US and PA constitutions as they were originally intended. Josh is not and will not be a judicial activist who uses the court as a private legislature. And of course, that’s not what the PAGOP wants…they want people like Megan Martin, who will be all bendy and malleable like Gumby and do the bidding of the party bosses, as they quietly horse trade for private financial benefit with America’s sworn enemies.

You and I need a judge like Josh Prince on the Commonwealth Court. You and I cannot afford another spineless jellyfish PAGOP RINO insider political hack who has been hand-picked and endorsed by political bosses.

Please vote for Josh Prince for Commonwealth Court on May 16th, and please pass this around, so that other loyal, patriotic, America-loving Pennsylvania voters know that they have a great candidate they can be happy voting for.

 

Turkeys and the critters who eat them

Wild turkeys are one of Pennsylvania’s great conservation success stories. When I was a kid, wild turkeys were like a fable, a mythical animal inhabiting far distant wild lands, that could be seen and maybe heard if you were one of the lucky few. They had been decimated by market hunting in the 1800s and early 1900s. When I took my hunter safety education course at the age of ten at the old Army Reserve building out in the farmland on the east side of State College, the Pennsylvania Game Commission staff proudly showed us films of their successful trap-and-transfer program, where wild turkeys were lured with bait into the range of nets, caught, and then driven to the far reaches of Pennsylvania’s rural areas. Usually State Game Lands with fields.

From the 1970s until the early 2000s, Pennsylvania’s wild turkey population grew and grew, until they seemed to be everywhere, including well south of I-81, the old imaginary dividing line between concrete civilization and wild man country. Apparently turkeys are adaptable to concrete wilderness, because they took up urban residence all over the east coast. Not content with being colorful freeloaders along with the ubiquitous and nasty pigeons and rats in these urban areas from Massachusetts to New Jersey, wild turkeys also provide much hilarity as they attack everything that moves in a display of misguided dominance, including mailmen, soccer moms and their kids, and dogs being walked. Look up the “incident reports” of wild turkey muggings of disbelieving urbanites; lots of funny videos to go along with them, too.

So when turkey populations began to decline in Pennsylvania and parts of New York starting ten years ago, people knew it was not due to the birds’ lack of tenacity. Something new and powerful in the old bird + habitat equation was having an effect.

And in fact in many places here in PA, formerly huge turkey populations are now really low or non-existent. I myself used to look out my windows and watch three separate flocks cycle through our clover-planted yards. When I hunted spring turkeys there (northcentral PA), I would start the day surrounded by gobbling toms, and usually had a couple different opportunities to harvest one within the first few days of the hunting season. It was exciting and fun and a great way to begin the work day, although I will say that by the end of May, I was a hollow shell of a human, having run myself ragged either chasing toms myself, or calling for friends who had not yet filled a tag.

Bottom line is, those old flocks of twenty to thirty birds no longer exist. We are fortunate to see one or two wild turkeys at all on our place. And we have excellent habitat with grouse.

What caused the loss of wild turkeys in PA has generated a discussion similar to the one surrounding the demise of the once amazing world famous smallmouth bass fishery in the lower Susquehanna River. It seems that almost everyone involved has a reasonable opinion about it, and the official experts are being second-guessed by people who have witnessed circumstances different than those described by said experts. The ubiquitous use of trail cameras since 2000 has accompanied this growth in sportsman observational opinion, and very often individual hunters will use their cameras’ footage to make very compelling arguments that contradict official wildlife managers’ narratives.

Something similar happens in the aquatic environment, when thousands of fishermen experience and see something different than what they are being told through official government channels.

So now PGC is toying with the idea of releasing martens into the wilds of Pennsylvania. Similar to the fisher that was released back in the 1990s, martens are a furry little weasel-type animal that, like all weasel type animals everywhere, has an insatiable appetite for everything they can catch and kill. Not necessarily kill and eat. All members of the weasel family (wolverines, fishers, martens, mink, otters, weasels) have periods where they become “surplus killers.” That is, they will kill many more animals than they can eat, just because they seem to enjoy the hunt and the kill. Question being now, What will the new marten do to our turkeys?

Will martens do more of what fishers have so clearly done to PA turkey populations, which is to climb up into trees and eat them while they are roosted and asleep? Will martens only eat turkey eggs? Who knows? And so it follows, why release martens into our forests and farms if we don’t know what impacts they will have?

The question I have, and which I know so many other sportsmen have, is: What kind of studies have been done to date that provide confidence that reintroducing marten will have a net-benefit result, and not a net-negative/cost result?

Most of us agree with government biologists that biodiversity in general is important, and we agree that increasing biodiversity is a worthy goal. But, what are the costs and benefits of doing so? What costs and benefits do marten bring to our forests? I can imagine quite a few costs, mostly impacts on ground nesting birds (like wild turkeys, grouse, pheasant, woodcock, and a zillion species of cute little migratory dickie birds) that are already under tremendous pressure from overpopulating (thanks to urban sprawl) raccoons, skunks, possums, feral cats etc., and I wonder if the benefit of a few hundred citizens annually catching a view of one of these cute and elusive furry weasel-like animals is worth the inevitable costs.

One of the things we must struggle with today is that, as much as we would like to return to the pristine conditions of three hundred or four hundred years ago, where humans had a measurable but relatively minor impact on the environment, the reality on the ground today is totally different. The social carrying capacity among different human groups is one consideration. The carrying capacity of other wildlife is another consideration. I imagine that before people go petitioning or pushing to have these newest predators released back into our forests, we should know what their likely impacts are going to be first. I am willing to sign a petition to have PGC thoroughly study this subject, but I would feel irresponsible to ask the agency to jump before knowing what lies ahead and below.

I will say that I like knowing fishers are in our forests, but I do not like the tremendous impacts they have had on squirrels, rabbits, and turkeys. Everywhere a fisher takes up residence, the small game and turkey populations drop dramatically. Personally, I would prefer to know that there were a few hundred fishers living across Pennsylvania, instead of the thousands we now have that are over-impacting a lot of other equally valuable wildlife (and I enjoy recreationally trapping for fisher every year).

I am not saying that adding martens to Pennsylvania will necessarily be pouring fuel on the fire burning up wild turkey populations, but we really should know. That is the responsible thing to do.

 

PA lost a 2A warrior

Kim Stolfer died two days ago, and if you love freedom and liberty, you will miss him, even if you did not know him.

If you ever participated in an annual Second Amendment rights rally at the state Capitol in Harrisburg, then you responded to Kim’s call.

Kim was an effective fighter in every way, most especially for our individual Second Amendment rights. Among a bunch of effective organizations, he also founded Firearm Owners Against Crime, of which I am a life member. FOAC became the de facto PA-oriented 2A group in Pennsylvania, despite the presence of the NRA, PFSC, and other organizations purporting to represent gun owner’s interests, simply because Kim and his passionate FOAC members just would not ever back down. They lobbied and litigated for freedom at the municipal and state level, most notoriously to obtain, and then to maintain, state pre-emption for all firearm laws.

Thanks to Kim and FOAC, Pennsylvania does not have a crazy quilt patchwork of gun regulations and laws that change dramatically from one municipality to the other. Imagine (for example) driving the short distance from Wayne County to Northampton County with a normal gun permitted in one place, but which is outlawed in the other. Merely having such an outlawed gun in the latter location could result in your arrest, detainment, and life-changing prosecution, for the simple “crime” of casually changing your nearby venue. No society can exist this way with any regulations or laws, and thanks to Kim, you Pennsylvanians are not living this way, either.

I personally knew Kim from both 2A activism and wildlife management policy. As FOAC’s city-dwelling litigant against Harrisburg City’s illegal and lawless anti-gun ordinances, I was his devoted servant on the former; and as a conservationist, I was his opponent on the other. Kim advocated for leaving many more deer than I believe the farming and natural landscapes can sustain. We maintained a warm friendship nonetheless for a long time.

Below is a photo I took of Kim at the 2021 2A rights rally in Harrisburg. Kim is unfurling the incredibly long list of existing gun regulations Pennsylvanians (and citizens in most other states) are already subject to, making the point that even more plus additional plus extra gun control measures are not needed, because they don’t do anything to stop crime. If politicians want crime reduced, all they have to do is apply any number of existing gun control laws.

But as we already know, people advocating for more gun control are not interested in controlling crime. Many gun control advocates are actually against applying the law and reducing crime. Rather, they are fiendishly focused on controlling YOU.

Rest in peace, great warrior Kim. We appreciate everything you did for all of us.

It is important to note that throughout Kim’s many legal battles to protect your 2A rights, he had right at his side a devoted and exceptional lawyer, Josh Prince. Josh is a refreshingly competent candidate for Commonwealth Court.

Every Second Amendment 2A Gun Rights lover in Pennsylvania must cast their/ your vote for Josh Prince on May 16th.

Kim Stolfer unfurling a loooong list of existing gun control laws. At the podium next to him is attorney Josh Prince, now a candidate for Commonwealth Court. Photo by Josh First

 

 

 

 

Kim’s official obituary:

Kim Stolfer, age 68, of South Fayette, Pennsylvania, passed away on Saturday, April 15, 2023 at home surrounded by his family after a hard-fought battle with cancer.

Born November 7, 1954 in Pittsburgh, Kim was raised by his late mother, Charlotte (Moser) Stolfer.  Kim was a 1972 graduate of Carlynton High School in Carnegie.

At the young age of 19 Kim became a Marine sending money home to his then juvenile sister Rose to help care for their then ailing mother. The Marine Corps vocational test scores showed his aptitude in verbal skills, organizational skills, and problem-solving, so they put him through aircraft and powerplant mechanic school and he was assigned as a crew chief on a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Like many veterans, war molded him from his late teen years into adulthood, and he saw and did more than he ever said.

Kim was crew chief of the last American helicopter to leave Vietnam.  Due to a communications error, military personnel and civilians were left behind at the American Embassy in Saigon after the “official” last helicopter departed with the Ambassador.  Kim’s CH-47 evacuated those left behind as Saigon fell in South Vietnam.

Following his military service Kim went on to work and serve his country as a body and fender repairman for the United States Postal Service. He retired in 2009 as shop keeper after 30 years of service.

Kim found a love for shooting sports through Greater Pittsburgh Trap & Skeet Club, where he participated in recreational and competition shooting including IPSC practical pistol, rifle and shotgun. He co-founded Shooters Active in Firearms Education (S.A.F.E.) and became active throughout the Pennsylvania region teaching NRA-certified firearms safety and concealed carry classes through various sportsman’s clubs and police departments.

Kim was a founding member of both the Greater Pittsburgh Trap & Skeet Club and the Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League (ACSL) club’s legislative affairs branch, which got him involved in leadership positions in the Allegheny County Sportsmen‘s League (ACSL) and the Pennsylvania Sportsmen’s Association (PSA). His efforts evolved into Firearms Owners Against Crime (FOAC-ILLEA).

Kim took his oath to defend the Constitution seriously and was an effective adversary of elected officials and government employees who violate their oaths. He was a well-spoken advocate for personal freedoms as well as for holding criminals accountable. Kim wrote and or co-authored, dozens of pieces of statewide legislation over the years, many of which are now current law, including the Castle Doctrine law and Preemption Enhancement law.

He is survived by his loving and devoted wife of 36 years, Michelle (Pozzi) Stolfer; his son, Jason Stolfer; his step-son, Michael (Emily) Pozzi; his granddaughters, Paige and Gabriella Pozzi; his beloved sister, Rose (Mike) Johnson; his niece and nephew, Samantha (John) Rothka and Paul (Jennifer) Milavec; and many loved great nieces and nephews.

The family will receive friends and patriots at Thomas-Little Funeral Home, 305 Main St., Imperial, PA on Wednesday, April 19th from 2-4 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. and on Thursday, April 20th from 12-2 p.m. A service to honor and remember Kim’s life will be held at 2 p.m. on Thursday at the funeral home.

The family would like to express their thanks for the wonderful help and care given by Gallagher Hospice.  He will be sorely missed by his family, friends, allies, and patriots. We are all diminished by his passing.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to FOAC-ILLEA  https://foac-illea.org/ in memory of Kim’s life and legacy.

Riverdance 25th Anniversary Show A+

Last night the Princess of Patience and I drove to Reading, PA, to watch the 25th anniversary show of the much celebrated Riverdance show that took western countries by storm 25 years ago. We enjoyed the show very much, especially the tap dancing part, which is the height of dancing talent.

The venue was the historic “Rajah” theater, now the Santander Performing Arts Center, in downtown Reading, Pennsylvania. The theater’s interior is nicely artistic and harkens to an earlier time in American history, when design and materials were stone, stained glass, crafted metalwork, and did not include ubiquitous bright neon and loads of plastic. Parking was abundant, whether on the street or in lots or in nearby parking garages.

Comfortably parking my fat butt in one of the old seats was another matter, and I tried to joke with the tall lady to my right whose elbow kept bumping into my arm. Or maybe my arm kept bumping into her elbow, with the result that each of us watched the show with one arm stretched across our chest to avoid discomfiting the other person. Point being that these are smaller seats and could use a few inches added to either side to comfortably accommodate larger, wider, broader bodied people. If you are pint-sized like the Princess of Patience, then you will be more than just fine. The venue was clean, tidy, well maintained, and had no weird old smells.*

Riverdance is fundamentally about Irish tapdance, or at least it was 25 years ago. Back then people commented that this kind of tap dancing was not really culturally Irish per se, but the fact is that it is its own thing and the people doing it and promoting it are mostly Irish dancing to lots of Irish music. So I call it Irish tap dance, and it is a lot of fun to watch. Beyond the outstanding tap dancing abilities of the individual performers, the audience is also entertained by the choreography and the perfectly executed timing of the performers as a troupe. Add in some Celtic-themed music, with Irish musical instruments like the Uillean pipes and drums, some traditional Irish style clothing, some songs sung in Gaelic, and you have the entire package. Excellent light show and dry ice fog for effect.

My favorite performance was the eight men executing some sort of intensely high energy quasi military exercise, with yelled commands from one to another. It was so perfectly timed and crisply done that the audience roared when they finished. Wow. Impressive!

My least favorite (as there is bound to be in almost every kind of theatrical performance) scenes are the singing. Because of the sound system, I can never tell if this is piped in and mouthed by the performers, or is, in fact, their own world class singing voices. I have my suspicions. The sole acoustical instrument scene was outstanding, but again, like the singing, sometimes it is hard to believe that the world-class fiddling is being done by the leaping nymph in front of me, and that it is not being piped in. No question that the percussion guy is incredibly talented. One request: Someone at some point in the show should wear some woad on his face, like Michael Flatley occasionally did. Show some true Celtic pride.

Probably the most entertaining dance routine was near the end of the show, when the backdrop (digital screen, as is standard now on stages almost everywhere) switched from the Emerald Isle countryside to a Downtown-to-Brooklyn B Train station and Manhattan cityscape, with a Hispanic guy and a black guy each doing their own ethnic styles of tap dance. Then the Irish guys enter in a mock-up of the old West Side Story confrontation, and the two groups have a series of dance-offs against each other using their different styles. And then of course they dance together. Lots of performer humor and mugging for the audience, as well as amazing dance, and the audience enjoyed it a lot.

I counted about thirty dancing performers and six musicians last night, and both the Princess of Patience and I felt like we had experienced a full evening of high talent entertainment. During intermission a bunch of little girls who had come to watch the show did their best Irish tap dance in one of the aisles, to lots of praise and cheering by the audience. And naturally, the entire audience was a sea of shades of green and various family green plaids and the famous Black Watch plaid, including tartan caps, shirts, coats, a kilt and sporran, and more than a few shilleileighs.

Riverdance 25th Anniversary Show is an A+ fun and impressive night out for anyone and any family. You will leave feeling energized and positive. When we first saw Riverdance decades ago, it was a kind of “If you weren’t Irish when you showed up, you will feel Irish when you leave at the end” experience. The updated version is truly a representation of America 2023, with plenty of Ireland’s best along with “culturally updated” themes that are fun.

*A note about the Santander Performing Arts Center: Like almost every other performing arts center I can think of, Santander Performing Arts Center does not allow its patrons to carry any defensive weapons on its premises. This means that patrons must disarm before entering the building, and then we exit into downtown Reading at night unarmed and vulnerable. Downtown Reading, PA, is not a safe place. The streets are dirty, trash is blowing around everywhere, and there are aimless or homeless people walking around, standing around, everywhere. When we entered this venue, we had to go through metal detectors carrying our keys and cell phones with our hands held high as if we were being detained by law enforcement. It is a humiliating experience. When I broached the idea to a security guard at the entrance of having lock boxes available inside the foyer to concealed carry people, he responded “That is an excellent suggestion, but it is never going to happen. With the current management never, it will never happen, I am sorry to say.” Which raises the questions of why these performing arts venues do this, and what responsibility do they have if you are mugged or beaten while approaching their building or after exiting it. Do they really have our safety at heart, if they disarm us and then turn us loose vulnerable on the city streets at night? I do not like being disarmed, especially when I do not see realistic alternatives being provided by the hosting venues.

Intermission time, showing some kids tap dancing in the aisle, and showing some of the theater’s old crafted ornamentation

Ceiling of the old “Rajah” now the Santander Performing Arts Center

When performers ask the audience not to record them, I do as they ask. So the best I can show is the empty stage with the show logo. Several extra rows of chairs up front were added to accommodate the audience.

PAGOP a gutless, soulless, heartless pile of

The Pennsylvania Republican State Committee met last week. Annual meetings can be useful, and they can be indicative. My impression is the meeting was more indicative than useful.

One of the indicators standing boldly and studiously ignored in every room like an elephant, or something, was the reality that the PA GOP is financially broke and filled up with “decision makers” incapable of breathing life back into the dying body. The PAGOP sold its downtown Harrisburg headquarters that was but a short walk to the PA Capitol and all the elected officials therein, and it now occupies rented space on the outskirts of town in the PA Dental Association building. Truly a downfall measured in miles.

The reason the PAGOP is in financial trouble is that it has lost its raison d’etre, its purpose for being, its reason for existence. Few people are left to support it. Like most Republican Party apparatuses across America, the Pennsylvania Republican Party exists for the sake of its own existence. That is, the group has no discernible set of principles or even values outside of electing people from deep within its own ranks. More or less a social club.

It is a group not only living in a van down by the river, not metaphorically speaking, because the Pennsylvania Dental Association is actually right next to the Susquehanna River, it is also a trademark in search of a product. What was accomplished at this gathering of PAGOP muckety mucks and who’s whos? Endorsement votes, that’s what! Yes, this group of three hundred-and-some people gathered together to vote repeatedly against the interests of their own voting base. With millionaire GOPe consultants taking notes on the rollcall votes.

See, the PAGOP specializes in endorsing establishment caricatures, I mean characters, who are people most closely aligned with the personal pocket books of the members of the PAGOP. These endorsed candidates need not necessarily stand for anything of substance. Rather, they must be socially acceptable to the gathering. That is to say, non-threatening, genial, kind of milquetoast, definitely not making any waves.

And it is this kind of political candidate whom the Republican voter despises most of all. Over and over, Republican voters say they want the Republican party to stay out of primary elections and just let the Republican voters sort it out. No unfair advantages to be given to any particular candidate, just because, say, they happen to be golfing buddies with some PAGOP muckety muck. Instead of genial personalities, the Republican voter base wants barroom brawlers, candidates who say unvarnished truths, people who are like the voters and who actually stand for something and who are willing to take risks and make sacrifices to see those beliefs through to the end.

Nope. The PAGOP held its annual ritual seance behind closed doors, to hell with the broken hearts and shattered dreams of the actual voters who get Republicans elected. To wit: Not one mention of election integrity at the gathering. Not one mention of the mechanics by which actual living citizens vote for the candidates they support. And this is important because ever since the election of 2020, all the basic rules of fair, transparent, accountable, and democratic voting have been thrown out the window in Pennsylvania. Our state has no voting laws. Instead, we have a gigantic vote stealing scheme vs. a bunch of milquetoast, genial, go-along-to-get-along weenies who are all too happy to say “Awww shucks” when they lose so they can get back to their expensive fundraiser or dinner out, tab paid by the lobbyist host.

Republican voters have been screaming about election integrity, and absolutely no one at the 2023 PAGOP state committee gathering said a damned thing about it. And until something is done about the lawlessness engulfing Pennsylvania elections, Republicans will continue to artificially lose election after election. And the PAGOP seems perfectly OK with this fact. Think on that….

One more example of the cost of this official spinelessness: Last year someone submitted a draft resolution to their X__ County Republican Committee, stating that the committee would stand in solidarity with the roughly one hundred January 6th political prisoners being held illegally in dangerous conditions, uncharged, beaten by the Washington, DC prison guards. Not a peep was heard in response, and so the resolution was submitted yet again to the committee leaders. Months went by, and nothing was heard.

If county Republican Committees cannot stand in solidarity with Republican political prisoners illegally held in dangerous and filthy jails, then the county Republican Committee stands for nothing. Zero. Contrast this weak stance to the way the Left bailed out even the most felonious of their arsonists and murderous looters in 2020, across America. No one was too violent or evil to be bailed out of jail by Kamala Harris and the Democrat Party.

If the PAGOP and its 67 county subsidiaries will not fight fire with fire, or at least try to put out the fire, or at least show some back bone and support for its base, then the PAGOP will cease to mean anything. And as we see, the PA GOP does nothing except police its own internals. So it really stands for nothing.

Heads up: Josh Prince is running for Commonwealth Court, and he deserves your vote. Josh has represented me in years-long litigation with Harrisburg City over its illegal anti-gun rights ordinances. So far, Josh has won every round with the city’s lawyers. See? Josh Prince embodies the fighting spirit that the Republican voters crave, and so Josh deserves your vote. Please vote for Josh Prince on Primary Election Day, which is May 16th, 2023.

 

 

 

18th Century Artisan’s Show a huge success

You know an event has to be good when someone who is not a part of the event’s culture enjoys it, and such was the revelation by the Princess of Patience as she walked out of the 18th Century Artisan’s Show after three hours. Our Brooklyn-bred, pavement loving, city-slicker Princess had mingled with the nicest, friendliest, kindest, salt of the earth people at the Carlisle Expo Center and come out smiling. As she always does.

This show, the 18th Century Artisan’s Show, is all about black powder firearms and related accoutrements, longrifles, 1700s period clothing and related materials, horn and tin mugs, bone handled forks, wood and leather items. All made by hand here in America, many in Pennsylvania.

For a guy like me, not of pavement or city, a show like this is an assumed success before I even set foot in it. This year was the best ever, however, and when I left on Friday afternoon it was absolutely thronged and jam packed with people. If I had another couple hours to spend there, it would have been time well used. After all, there was a new possibles bag to find, and none of what I had yet seen fit my need. The Leatherman is a good stand-by source for rugged and large possibles bags, and as I already use two made by Gary Fatheree, I was in the hunt for a bag with more flair, more color, more personality.

Problem is, all of the pizazz bags are the size of my shoe. Like, it doesn’t seem possible that anything more than a short starter and a ball bag will fit in there. And if there is one thing I want a possibles bag to do, it is to hold all of the possibles I might need, including the kitchen sink. (“possibles” include all of the stuff needed to load and clean a muzzleloading firearm)

This had to be the best 18th Century Artisan’s Show ever, because it was the most filled with cool stuff, the best laid out, and the best attended by artisans and the public alike of all prior shows. The old venue was the Country Cupboard in Lewisburg, PA, and it was kind of tight quarters, with too many passageways and steps, and a requirement that you walk outside to the next building to see more vendors. At the Carlisle site, it is just one gigantic room, with all of the vendors spread out and visible. Best possible situation.

The only “thing” missing at the show was “Yesteryer,” that big huddle of fabrics and mannequins, bonnets and shoes, leggings and pants, waistcoats and longcoats, all of weird hand-ground linens and free range flax and slow roasted tweed, and all of the related 18th century clothing accoutrements that seamstress extraordinaire Barb Shaputis could assemble on the fly as she outfitted entire regiments of reenactors across America. Barb made my own 18th century longcoat for me, absolutely perfectly, with the “RR” buttons for the Rogers Rangers outfit well represented in the Netflix show “Turn.” I wear it every flintlock season, but thankfully, without a tri-corner hat. I have not (yet) gone that far. Barb is no longer with us to sell or make me a tri-cornered hat, and so that part of my life will be left unfinished as a memorial to sweet Barb.

Below are some photos I took of this year’s show. Like a kid in a candy store, I could easily have spent both days there. But then again, the Great American Outdoors Show is in full swing now, here in Harrisburg. So many fun choices! Thank you to all of the fantastic vendors at the 18th Century Artisan’s Show, many of whom are by now my acquaintances or friends. They not only make beautiful things, they also gather up all of their stuff and make long drives to Lewisburg, now Carlisle, and other venues, to give us historically-afflicted people the opportunity to switch gears and live life a little slower and lot cooler than usual.

Gunmaker and president of the Kentucky Longrifle Association, Mark Wheland is a central Pennsylvania artist who has made a beautiful rifle for me. I grew up trapping muskrats on his dad’s farm.

Brad and Shane Emig of York County are known worldwide for their exacting historical work, including making long rifles from complete scratch.

From Rochester New York hails Irv Tschanz, his lovely wife, and Jim Dell, purveying all kinds of beautiful hand-made crafts from leather, wood, horn, and metal

Jymm Hoffman sold me my anvil from a special run he had poured at a Pittsburgh foundry about ten years ago.

Here artisan Jim Dell measures the first wallet he made for me in preparation for making a replacement. Jim has also made our family double thick belts, a belt axe and carrier, and other “Olde Tyme” things we enjoy so very much.

The Leatherman is a big fixture in the black powder world, with founder Gary Fatheree (left) offering all kinds of high quality possibles bags, gun sleeves, cow’s knees, and other items from rare leathers. Clayton Miller(right) is the new proprietor with big shoes to fill

R.E. Davis makes highest quality locks and triggers, like Jim Chambers, whose booth I did not see.

A beautiful rifle for sale with a price tag demonstrating that many firearms are a bridge between art and utility, uniquely blending form and function.

Blacksmith Simeon England makes beautiful tomahawks and knives.

Long Islander Mitch Yates has that whole corner of America to himself. Honestly, is there a gunbuilder artisan of Mitch’s caliber anywhere in New England or eastern New York? I don’t think so. Nice guy, too.

You can pick out a fancy gunstock and a nice straight ramrod from a myriad of choices. The problem is saying “I have enough already”

Historically accurate black powder tools and serving utensils for sale, probably made by Shane Emig of York County

 

Advice from a deer

As sure as the sun rises, there is sure to be complaining among hunters about the state, condition, blood pressure, and dental hygiene of Pennsylvania’s deer herd. In fact, you can’t escape the topic if you spend any time, like even a minute or two, in the company of devoted hunters. No matter who I am standing around, next to, or in line with, the complaints begin to flow about the Pennsylvania Game Commission and its deer management.

Despite being highly skeptical about government in general, and therefore despite keeping an open mind to complaints about government failings, I find myself repeatedly unpersuaded by these deer management complaints. While not quite ranking up there with UFO sightings or insistence that PGC has helicopter-imported mountain lions and coyotes to eat the deer, the fretting and nail biting and angry denunciations always seem to lack key aspects of any serious argument.

For example, for twenty years I have heard that Sproul State Forest harbors no deer. Then last year I easily killed a deer standing right at the edge of Sproul State Forest, and saw many others. This November, I hunted elk in Sproul State Forest and State Game Lands 100 in northern Centre County, and found myself endlessly surrounded by deer, from dawn until way past bed time while driving. Conventional views that these deer do not exist are easily reinforced around bar stools, but I have found them easily and quickly disproven in personal contact with the deer habitat itself.

One of the real challenges to Pennsylvania deer hunters is the change in deer herd size and behavior since 2001, as well as the maturing of our forests since the 1970s, when a lot of today’s older hunters were really getting into the lifestyle. A hunting culture based on sitting in one place and watching unsustainably sized deer herds migrate by resulted, and now that most rural deer herds have been lowered, just sitting and waiting is not enough. Especially when the mature forests we now experience are devoid of any acorns for the second year in a row.

In 2021 a late frost killed the oak flowers in northern PA, resulting in no acorns up north and spotty acorn crops in the south. In 2022, rampant gypsy moth infestations across the entire state denuded entire oak forests of every leaf and flower, which has again resulted in zero acorn production across a great deal of Pennsylvania’s forests. If you are inclined to blame people for things that are mostly out of people’s control, then I suppose we can point out that PA DCNR seemed to hold back on gypsy moth spraying in 2021 and 2022. Had DCNR sprayed more, then the state-wide acorn crop failure we now behold probably would not have been as bad.

The fact is that a great many of us started sitting or walking in beautiful mature forests this past Saturday or Sunday as PA’s deer rifle season opened up, and found ourselves marveling at the incredible silence greeting us. Hardly any bird activity. Maybe one squirrel seen all day, and certainly no bears and few if any deer. This is the result of there being nothing for anyone to eat in the woods.

So, unless your woods escaped gypsy moth damage and has acorns, get the heck out of the woods and go find brushy and grassy areas where deer can browse. Utility rights-of-way and clearcuts are the best places to find deer this season, and in fact the only person I know of who killed a deer anywhere near me yesterday (Sunday) was an older guy in a deer drive through a beautifully overgrown overhead powerline right of way. His hunting party also reported seeing eight does with the now deceased buck, none of which they shot.

Yesterday, while I was sitting miserably sick in my covered stand and waiting out the miserable cold rain and wind, a deer in a top hat and silk gloves happened by and gave me the following advice:

In general, access your hunting area well before sunrise and start every deer hunt with a quiet Sit from 6:30-9am, overlooking some promising travel corridor, funnel, or feeding area. Then slowly and quietly Still Hunt into the wind or quartering into the wind until lunch time. Then Sit down and eat lunch quietly, while overlooking some promising location through which wildlife regularly pass or eat. At 1pm pack up the lunch stuff and Still Hunt again slowly until 3:30pm, and then find a good spot with good views and shooting lanes and Sit quietly until 15 minutes before shooting light ends. Then slowly and quietly walk out, and maybe kill something on your way back to your vehicle or camp, only unloading your firearm when shooting hours have officially ended.

I myself am about to suit up for a long and slow stalk through some brushy utility rights of way. Yes, they are now wet, and always steep, and the going is tough. But that is where the deer are, because that is where they can eat and survive, and I am hunting deer so that I might actually kill one.

The deer and I must meet in person in order for this transaction to happen.

As much as a covered hunting blind may be a necessity when the hunter is sick or the rain is pouring down, the fact is this not really hunting. Slowly and quietly walking into the wind through good deer habitat with your firearm at the ready is real hunting. Do it.