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Decolonize Islamic Imperialism

All this mindless jibber jabber about “decolonization” in the Middle East. Please. Spare us. The biggest colonizers in the Middle East are the people implementing Islamic imperialism there. And there is no bigger symbol of Islamic imperialism than the golden dome in Jerusalem, built on top of the indigenous Jewish temple.

You want to end colonization, occupation, and imperialism? Send all of the so-called “Palestinians” back to Turkey, where they came from, and send all the Muslims back to the Arabian Peninsula, where they came from. These people are not indigenous to Israel, they are interlopers, thieves, colonizers, occupiers, imperialists.

For those hard of understanding how chronology works, the first things, the things and people and events and religions and nations that exist first, are those whose stuff appears first in the timeline. In Jerusalem, the capitol of the Jewish People for the past 3,500 years since King David selected the site, a certain golden dome is built on top of the indigenous Jewish temple. This much more recent addition to Jerusalem is the ultimate symbol of imperialism and colonization by people who do not belong there. But they have no problem claiming other people’s stuff as their own.

All the nudniks and uneducated fools blocking traffic and yelling bigoted slogans against Jews and America should take a few moments to ponder their irony. They are actually advocating for the very colonization and imperialism they say they are against. No wonder most Americans think you are idiots.

 

Some Middle East FAQs

Wow is the Internet burning up as a result of the “troubles” in Israel and Gaza. And not just the Internet, but the public streets across Europe, London, Washington, DC, and New York City. Marches full of people shouting about killing the Jews and destroying Israel, and carrying signs about destroying America, and battering the gates of the White House in Washington, DC, and tearing down flyers on lamp posts showing the faces and names of Hamas’ hostages – innocent people from 28 different countries and multiple religions and aged from 6-month-old babies to 80-year-old grandparents – show us that the so-called “occupation” thing is just another fake excuse for the same old bullsh*t religious hatred and violence.

So in response to what I see and read on the news and on the Internet, here are some absolute facts. You will not hear these mentioned by the mainstream media, which is an arm of Hamas (which explains why the mainstream media is constantly trying so hard to destroy Western Civilization), but these are true facts, and honest people want to know the truth, however uncomfortable it is.

  • Jews are the indigenous people of Israel/ Judea/ Samaria/ Judah. They have been living there in an unbroken chain for 4,000 years, albeit not always the masters of their own political fortunes. The region’s greatest history for 4,000 years is written the entire time in Jewish blood. This is their home and their land.
  • Arabs are from Arabia, AKA the Arabian Peninsula.
  • Muslims are from the Arabian Peninsula
  • Most of the so-called “Palestinians” are Turks who arrived in the area with the Ottoman Empire, which oversaw and administered the area they called the “Sanjak of Jerusalem” from around 1500 to 1920
  • Turks are from…Turkey, and its surrounding region. If you are a Turk living in Nablus or Jenin or Jabaliya or Gaza City, you are not indigenous to anywhere except Turkey, regardless of how you self-identify or what language you speak
  • The “Apartheid” that exists in the Middle East is the Muslim Arab countries’ unwillingness to allow Jews to live anywhere in the Middle East, despite Jews living there long before any Arabs showed up.
  • From 1946 to 1956, one million Jews were ethnically cleansed from across North Africa and Egypt and the West Bank and Jordan and Syria and Iraq and Iran, forced out of their homes by bloodthirsty mobs and greedy governments, and forced to take refuge hundreds of miles away in the new state of Israel. THAT is the true ethnic cleansing that has happened in the Middle East.
  • There is zero “occupation” of Gaza. None. There were Israelis in Gaza from 1967 until 2005, but then any semblance of an occupation ended. In 2005, Israel pulled its own people out of Gaza, left everything behind, and Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was killed by one of his own bodyguards over it and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was struck down by a “hand of God” stroke as a result. There is no justification for Hamas, except what their charter explicitly calls for: The murder of all Jews and Christians around the world.
  • Israel controls electricity and water to Gaza out of necessity, because Gaza diverts all of its money and resources into building terror tunnels and rockets out of public water pipes.
  • Gaza could easily have been transformed into its own beautiful oasis, similar to what the Israelis had done with their part of it. Gaza has everything it needs to succeed – beautiful beaches, the Mediterranean, adjoining the majestic Sinai and close to the beautiful Red Sea, and next to high tech powerhouse Israel. When Israel abandoned their Gaza settlement in 2005, they left behind incredible greenhouses and seawater desalination plants. Entire communities that ran on sustainable re-use of limited resources, something out of Dune. What did the Gazans do when the Jews left Gaza? They destroyed the desalination plants and the greenhouses, they scrapped everything made of metal, and ruined everything beautiful that was handed to them for free.
  • We must be honest. Gazans are a backwards people, educated to hate everyone and kill everyone, and live miserably amongst themselves. They are indeed a sad case, but they and their misery are of their own doing. Maybe they should go back to Turkey and start anew.

 

Please do not pet the landowner

A few weeks ago, my wife looked up, startled. Her eyes were fixated on something over my right shoulder, and then she said “There are some men on the porch. Were you expecting visitors today?”

Uh, no, I was not only not expecting any visitors that day, I was not expecting any visitors the entire weekend. Because I was alone with my wife and relishing our rare private time together in a quiet out of the way dead-end location.

Just as I stood up from the table and turned towards the front door, an older guy with a greying stubble knocked. Another guy in his fifties was standing near him, and both were dressed in casual-to-ratty-on-the-crick clothes. I did not recognize either of them, and reflexively felt for the grip of “Biden’s Lung Buster” at my side.

Opening the door and stepping outside, I buried my rumbling fury under a big steaming pile of humor: “Hi boys! You can put the free beer here on the porch and help yourselves to load of firewood on the way out.”

With big smile, of course.

The two men were nice enough, and laughed at my joke. They explained that they had been fishing down in the creek that morning and had heard a gobbler up above them on the mountain. And that had set them in motion trying to figure out a way to get to the gobbler, to hunt it, without trespassing on what they acknowledged is very clearly posted private land all around the gobbler.

After what they said was a lot of driving around and walking and consulting maps, they determined the best way to attain their goal was to drive up the posted and very long gravel driveway to the remote home nestled way the hell back in the woods, and then to knock on the door and ask permission to both hunt the gobbler at present time and in the future cross over our property to access state forest land farther up the mountain.

“You two bastards are lucky as hell I didn’t come busting out here buck naked with an AR to run you off, because the angry naked old man thing is about a hundred times worse than the gun,” I half joked.

The two interlopers chuckled at the joke, and started getting the hint. After all, the land AND the driveway are all posted for a reason. Privacy is a valuable and rare thing, and because many Americans today seem to have been raised without any manners or a sense of self-preservation, big yellow posted signs, buckets of purple paint, and gates are now a necessity to preserve what shreds of privacy people have remaining to them.

But these guys had purposefully ignored all of the legal and physical barriers designed to keep them out of my private life.

“Yeah, I have had that same bird in gun range twice this week, including earlier this morning, and I have decided to let him live, because he is a rare survivor up here,” I explained, truthfully.

Wild turkeys used to be plentiful in Northcentral PA, and for the past fifteen years they are now as rare as hen’s teeth, due to a combination of factors like mature forests and craploads of nest-raiding predators.

“Well, could we at least cross over your land to get to the state land?” the second guy asked, having taken a step backwards off the porch and onto the steps.

To which I replied with bare naked contempt: “Why would we let strangers walk through our best hunting ground so they can go hunt where they want? We leave that area as a sanctuary so we can hunt it carefully, and having people walk through it would just ruin it for our hunting, to say nothing of our privacy up here. And it is remote and quiet up here…right? Guys, there are over two million acres of public land within an hour’s drive of here, and you guys need to be here, right here, on us?”

The second guy looked chagrined, and I felt only the slightest twinge of regret for having spoken so plainly.

“Well, we thought it wouldn’t harm anything if we asked,” said the first guy, who was studying his feet.

And that’s the thing. The signs around the property and at the gate on the private driveway do not say “Hunting By Written Permission Only” or anything similar about asking for permission to hunt on the land.

Rather, the myriad signs and purple paint say keep out, stay out, do not enter, do not trespass, no access, no anything, private land don’t even ask. And frankly, every square inch of private land in the valley (which is about 93% public land) is heavily posted and jealously guarded, so physically asking anyone for permission to hunt is both a fool’s errand and a deliberate theft of someone’s valuable privacy. It is an invasion of someone’s sanctuary.

Folks, don’t try to pet the landowner. He is likely to bite, because he was sleeping comfortably in his quiet little corner when you came up to him, woke him up, and acted like petting him was the best thing he could have ever expected or wanted. When in fact all he wants is to be left alone in his quiet little corner. He never asked you to pet him and doesn’t want you to pet him. He doesn’t want to see or hear you, either.

For some odd reason, a lot of people across America believe that public land sucks to hunt on, and that private land is where all the wild game is holed up. Nothing is farther from the truth than this incorrect notion; almost all of the trophy deer and bears I have killed were on public land. If getting to a piece of public land is difficult, then you should do everything legal you can to get there, because in my extensive experience, hardly anyone else will be hunting that area. But one thing you cannot do is badger the adjoining private landowner. Sending a letter explaining yourself, or placing a friendly phone call, is the only correct way to ask permission.

 

 

 

 

Kathy Barnette, American icon

US Senate candidate Kathy Barnette is one of my fellow America First conservative activists who GOPe scum sneer at because we run impossible political campaigns at great personal expense, just to move the ball down the field a foot or two. And like a lot of other grass roots voters, among other reasons I like her for her risk taking and sacrifice on our behalf.

In 2009 I ran in a congressional primary in a four-pack of candidates. This was at the very beginning of the Tea Party movement. I was politely asked to not run by a Republican state senator who ended up running and barely winning the primary race himself (then he was crushed in November by the incumbent Democrat), as well as by a significant Pennsylvania GOPe donor and by the PAGOP chairman. I burned some bridges by staying in the race, and I did very OK in the end.

In 2012 I ran for PA state senate, and at the last minute the PAGOP gerrymandered me out of my own 15th state senate district. The then-Republican-led PA Supreme Court threw out the gerrymander plan, citing my situation (the justices called it an “iron cross designed to keep someone in particular from running for this senate seat”), and so I was back in the race with just days to get on the ballot. Then the PAGOP ran another candidate in addition to me and their chosen one, in order to dilute the vote. Their second candidate was a long-time sitting elected official. The PAGOP plan worked, and the “very moderate” chosen candidate won with 43% of the vote, while I had a very respectable second place. I think we spent about ten thousand dollars, while the GOPe candidate spent $300,000 and the GOPe candidate #2 spent $34,000.

The PAGOP “very moderate” candidate who won that Republican primary nomination went on to be utterly crushed by a liberal Democrat in a Republican +10% district. So much for the PAGOP and GOPe regular RINO program working out. This is why so many grass roots conservatives no longer trust the GOPe or PAGOP to find good candidates.

I ran for that state senate seat again in 2015, and again it was me versus the moderate PAGOP candidate. So a third candidate was selected to dilute the vote and help the moderate win. That race ended in November 2015 when I fell during a bear hunt high up on a northcentral Pennsylvania mountaintop and wrecked my knee, requiring two back-to-back surgeries so I could walk again. The moderate Republican won that primary and beat the liberal Democrat the following November, and has been a mostly do-nothing, know-nothing bench warmer ever since. It depresses me to think of what might have been, might have been achieved, had we gotten a conservative in this seat…

…anyhow, I can relate to Kathy Barnette, because I, too, have personally risked and sacrificed a great deal to do my own best to steer political outcomes in the right direction. She has my total respect and support.

Fast forward to today, and warrior princess Kathy Barnette is being criticized for having lost her congressional race in liberal Montgomery County several years ago. In a district that is Democrat +25%, conservative Barnette ran anyhow, just to stir things up. How many of the anti-Barnette sneering weenies in the PAGOP have ever risked anything, or sacrificed anything, like she did, for the good of the cause?

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Someone GOPe just did a laughably dishonest and fake video about Barnette that was shown on TV, where one-second snippets of her various speeches were sloppily combined to make her sound like she supports Black Lives Matter (she doesn’t), hates police (she doesn’t), and hates white people (she doesn’t).

In every case Barnette was actually saying exactly the opposite of what is claimed in the fake video: That she does not support BLM, which she called “parasitic,” and she does support the police and does not support defunding the police, and that she opposes anti-white racism. Etc.

A reporter named Jack Posobiec has posted a video on Rumble where he exposes each of these lies about Barnette. Posobiec also posted a video about how he has combed through over 1,300 of Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Oz’s TV appearances over decades, and has found ZERO pro-America or even conservative content of any sort, cultural or political.

Dr. Oz:

  • served in the Turkish armed forces, while Barnette served in the US Army Reserve
  • voted in Turkey in 2018, while Barnette votes in her home nation of America
  • holds dual citizenship with Turkey and America… a huge conflict of interest; Barnette is just a plain ol’ American citizen
  • is a long-time Hollywood liberal who suddenly discovered the GOP when he decided to buy a senate seat in a state he does not live in
  • lives in New Jersey, not PA, unlike Barnette, who actually lives in PA
  • supports hormone blockers for little boys and transexualism/ transgenderism for little children
  • supports anti-gun rights “red flag” laws, whereas Barnette is endorsed by Gun Owners of America
  • Barnette is endorsed by US Senator Joni Ernst, General Mike Flynn, Susan B. Anthony List, and a long laundry list of other conservative organizations and individuals

Two other criticisms of Barnette do have a smidgeon of relevance, but are easily dismissed.

One is that she is “anti gay,” which is a dishonest way to characterize Barnette’s support for a Christian baker who did not want the government to force him to bake a cake for a gay wedding. And Barnette correctly points out that what began as an understandable cry for fair treatment by the gay community has turned into a relentless demand for absolute endorsement of homosexual behavior, with heavy punishment for dissenters. Americans and humans everywhere have a right to their own beliefs, and a right to be left alone, and a right to say they are uncomfortable with other people’s sex lives. Barnette was correct in her position on this.

The other claim is that Barnette is “anti Islam,” which is yet again a dishonest way of reporting that Barnette wants the same kind of public debate about public policy issues surrounding Islam in America as Islamic groups demand about Christians, Jews, and pro-Israel groups in America. Barnette correctly points out that if it’s OK for Islam and Muslims to criticize people for their religious views, then it is fair for those same people to similarly criticize and question Islam and Muslims for their religious views. Fair is fair, equal is equal. This is not difficult to understand or to support. Every fair-minded person should support Barnette on these issues.

In short, Kathy Barnette is right over the target, she is poised to win and upset many years of RINO planning, and the bullcrap flak is coming in heavy, from the GOPe and the PAGOP and the RINOs. I have no way of knowing if Barnette will win next week, but if she does, it will probably be by a couple thousand votes. And if she loses, it will probably be by a few hundred votes.

Everyone who loves a free constitutional America must absolutely vote for Kathy Barnette, an American icon of bravery and selfless sacrifice.

p.s. Candidate Dave McCormick is a World Economic Forum member and a serial RINO from Connecticut. I keep getting emails from him claiming he is pro-2A, but then why did Barnette get endorsed by GOA? Turns out McCormick did not even bother to answer the GOA candidate survey… what an arrogant man.

Giving Thanks for Being an American

Thanksgiving Day may have originated three hundred years ago, when the first Pilgrims were starving to death in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and they were saved by local Indians who took pity on them, but it is still our big national holiday for the same sort of reasons today.

Native pumpkin squash, beans, wild turkey, and cranberry jelly that is native to the cranberry bogs of Massachusetts have ever since been the symbolic food at which we rejoice for our great good fortune for living in America, no matter where we live.

America is the freest country with the most opportunity available to the most people in the world. What an incredible place.

The symbolism of our unique national holiday food – turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin squash etc – is similar in meaning to the food of other nationalities and cultures. For example, the matza “bread of affliction” flatbread eaten every Passover by religiously observant Jews is a reminder of their own escape from hard slavery into newfound freedom. Many South American cultures form round breads from maize (corn, which is native to the Americas) and yams that are symbolic of how they eat together in a family circle. The French (and Italian) diet of bread, cheese, and wine may seem hedonistic on its face, but when one considers that even free French (and Italian) peasants had fertile land to farm and live on, their national food and drink make perfect sense. And so on for so many other cultures.

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans. Enjoy this day together, unified as one people in union, heading on the same path of freedom together. We might be in tough times together right now, but we should take every opportunity to celebrate our shared identities. During the first (or second) American Civil War, soldiers on both the Union and Confederate lines would gather on Thanksgiving and Christmas nights to serenade each other with religious songs. In World War One, both German soldiers and Allied soldiers would sing Christmas songs back and forth to each other across the waste lands filled with destroyed men and war machines. My God, friends, if they could gather in peace one night a year, then how much more so can we Americans today gather together and wish each other

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, for we each have much to give thanks to God for!

Reflections on 2020 bear season

As if by magic or just the batting of an eyelid, the much anticipated 2020 bear season is now behind us, having concluded at dark yesterday. Sad to see our friends go; we had such a fun time! The last of our bear hunting guests have left, cleanup has commenced, preparations are under way for Thanksgiving, and there are some reflections to be had on bear season.

First, where the hell were the bears? Serious question here. We hunt in a mountainous Northcentral area that is Pennsylvania’s “Bear Central.” And despite us daily scouring a lot of remote, very rugged territory that is usually home to lots of bears, we saw neither bears nor bear poop. None. It could be the warm weather has bears hunkered down under cool overhangs in even more remote places. It could be the low acorn crop has bears going in to hibernation early, because there is no more food for them to eat to put on the extra fat they need to hibernate successfully. The truth is, no bear tracks or poops have been seen around here for months, which is remarkable. I cannot think of any year prior like this.

Second, where were all the hunters? We heard only a few shots between Saturday and Sunday, and either none or one on Monday, and for sure none on Tuesday; and very few hunting parties were on the radio on any day. This means that few large scale hunting drives were going on. Without hunters moving across the landscape, the bears don’t have to move out of their way. They can just sit still and not run the risk of exposing their rib cage to a hunter’s bullet. That means that the bears can loaf about in some remote corner, escaping the unseasonable warmth or just waiting for the wafting human scent to drift away before making their usual rounds again. Which means the few hunters who are out don’t see much action.

Third, where were all the other critters, like turkeys and deer? Like with bears, we saw very little deer or turkey poop in the woods. And although I myself saw two whopper bucks and a five-point up close, no one else saw any deer. Nor did any of us see any turkeys. Once again, the absence of these otherwise ubiquitous animals could be due to the relative absence of acorns. Which would push the wildlife far afield to find food sources.

Fourth, despite all of our hunting setbacks, did any of us care a bit? No! We missed all of our friends who could not be with us for various reasons, like fear of the CCP virus, or family emergencies requiring them to stay at home. But those of us who gathered had a lot of fun nonetheless. And with or without a bear on the game pole, we would not have missed this time together for any reason at all. We caught up on our families, our work, our homes, cars, friendships, wives, and politics (yeah, there was a lot of pro-Trump  politics). Some people drank way too much alcohol, and we got some great pictures of it all, like the one guy asleep on the cold ground outside. No, we don’t post those here. We ate like kings, that is for sure, and no one lacked for food or drink.

Finally, it is possible that the new early bears seasons (archery, muzzleloader, and special junior+ senior rifle) are removing so many bears from the woods that come rifle season, very few huntable bears remain to be had. According to real-time hunting harvest data posted at the PA Game Commission website, more bears were killed in the early seasons than in the official rifle season this year. This means there are fewer bears available for the rifle hunters. It is possible that many hunters expected this, based on last year’s harvest patterns, and they stayed home or hunted alone, instead of joining the big crew at camp, like usual. As of late today, just 3,138 bears had been killed total this year. That is about a thousand fewer than expected.

Based on this raw data alone, the early bear seasons are actually backfiring. They are not removing the high surplus number of bears that are beyond Pennsylvania’s social carrying capacity. Rather, the early bear seasons are removing the easiest bears and leaving few to be hunted in the later rifle season.

And this new dynamic could be the real story in PA’s bear season: There are so many early season bear hunting opportunities for individuals that they collectively take the wind out of the sails for the regular season hunters, thereby having a boomerang effect on the entire thing and limiting it.

We won’t know what all this data really means for another few years, and by then either great or even fatal damage will have been done to Pennsylvania’s traditional bear camp culture, with its big gatherings and big drives and big camp camaraderie dying out, or we will simply all have to learn to adapt to new ways of hunting. I have to say, there is no substitute for men gathering at a camp to hunt together. The gathered hunting party is the most human of experiences; it is an institution as old as our species. Its purpose was not just making meat, but also social and sociological.

I sure hope these myriad new early bear seasons are not self-defeating, in that they do not kill that traditional bear camp culture by removing its whole purpose ahead of the game. Question for the PGC: What incentive is there to push your body hard through rugged and remote landscapes, destroying your boots, tearing your clothing, and often losing or breaking some of your gear, including damaging your gun, when the animal you are seeking has already been removed?

Below are some photos from one of our trail cameras two years ago. Just days after bear season ended, a bear was caught gloriously and most joyously rubbing its back against a young white pine tree. Almost like a pole dancer. Pretty hot hip shakes there. We haven’t seen a bear anywhere around here since May this year.

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When one of our guys is finally browbeaten into washing dishes after years, it is cause for “Notify the media” acts like taking his unhappy picture. This is back in 2015. He still has to be browbeaten into washing the damned dishes

Lycoming County is the boot-looking shape in the northcentral area. Its northwestern corner is where we hunt. The darkest township there demonstrates the importance of organized hunting drives. A bunch of large hunting clubs are located in this area, and their members put on highly coordinated, obviously successful drives.

Turkey season finally arrives

Spring turkey season has finally arrived. No, no, we are not talking about the season of the political turkeys, the various state governors around America who are artificially extending their unconstitutional stay-the-f*ck-at-home “lockdowns” into July without any merit or cause. What we are talking about is spring gobbler season.

No, no, no, not the Cookie Monster-type of gobbler, like California politician Nancy Pelosi eating her wall freezer full of gourmet ice cream while Americans can’t buy flour or toilet paper.

We are talking turkey here, a gobbler being a wild male turkey that gobbles to locate hens he can breed with. He gobbles as he walks through the woods and fields, and hunters call to him with hen calls, to lure him close enough to shoot with a shotgun. In the head. It is a huge challenge with a hunter success rate of about 5%-10%. Not a real high probability of success, but nonetheless by the end of May, when the season ends, hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania turkey hunters will be walking disasters. They will have gone out daily at 4AM, hunted until 7:30 or 8:30AM, whereupon they will have gone to work for the day, and done it all again day after day. Until they get a bird or they are haggard skeletons and cannot function any longer.

Spring turkey hunting is demanding and tough to do well, and even the best callers get skunked. It is nonetheless a challenge that so many hunters gleefully embrace, however, because the rewards of simply trying are so high. Nothing else is like it.

One of the challenges facing spring gobbler hunters especially is a fairly new one.

Pennsylvania’s turkey populations are way down from historic highs about 15 years ago. Some biologists attribute this measurable decline to a continuing maturation of Penn’s Woods. That is, the continued growth of Pennsylvania’s mature forests, which provide good food, like abundant acorns, but very poor cover habitat for wild turkeys. Heavily cut forests that result in areas of impenetrable thickets of brambles and small tree saplings provide the kind of safety and nesting cover that wild turkeys require. Unfortunately, most timber logging is done more for the appearance of good looks, like lots of low-value trees left behind, than for valuable timber regeneration or wildlife habitat.

A second factor that has caused turkey numbers to drop is the relatively new presence of the fisher. The fisher is either a huge weasel or a small wolverine, but it is fully representative of the ferocity and toughness of both its cousins. It is a native predator here in Pennsylvania, but it was wiped out by the late 1800s like so many other cool animals that competed with new farmsteads built to feed families. Capture-and-release programs in the 1990s and early 2000s resulted in wild fisher populations expanding their territories and populations across the east coast. And if there is one word to describe the fisher, it is voracious. These things eat and eat and eat! They are especially adept at hunting animals in trees, like roosting turkeys.

So over the past ten years or so, turkeys have become less vocal in order to avoid being detected and targeted by predators. For hunters, this means a tougher time locating turkeys and doing the classic back-and-forth call where the gobbler struts in to within range gobbling, strutting, and all fanned out. These days, hunters can easily call, hear nothing, and after ten minutes stand up because they think nothing is moving, only to see a gobbler rocketing its getaway through the woods.

Gobblers and hens alike are coming in silently to hunters’ calls more and more, which requires hunters to just sit patiently and wait, and wait some more. No movement at all. No sounds. Just wait. Patience will kill more turkeys than all the fancy calling can. Make a few clucks, a few purrs, and just sit back and wait.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission staff have studied the stomachs of fishers, and they have reported back finding very little evidence of turkeys in them. Well, why would anyone expect to see evidence of wild turkeys in the stomachs of fishers if there are so few turkeys left? A single fisher can and probably will, given the chance, kill and eat dozens of wild turkeys every year. It would not take many fishers to put a choke hold on wild turkey populations. How many of those successful fishers were studied?

In any event, turkey hunters noticed a dramatic decline in wild turkey numbers beginning precisely with the expansion of the newly released fishers. That is a strong statistical correlation that is simply impossible to discount, regardless of what a handful of fisher stomachs have yielded up.

Finally, pathogens like Lymphoproliferative Disease Virus (LPDV) and West Nile Virus are known to be affecting turkey and grouse populations in different areas, and Pennsylvania is in a region where both these diseases are represented. LPDV is hammering wild turkey populations in New York State, so it may well be hurting ours, too.

Good luck to all the turkey hunters out there. Hunt safely (with your back up against a tree, a root ball, a big rock), don’t stalk turkey sounds but rather call the turkey to you, and only pull the trigger when your eyes have confirmed absolutely that the shotgun barrel is pointing at a live red, white, or blue turkey head with a beard attached to it. Have fun, and if you are like me most years, and you have near-misses and run-ins with wily tom gobblers, enjoy the time afield for what it is at its simplest – a walk with God, enjoying His incredible beauty at the time of Earth’s re-birth.

Fisher or fisher cat, provided by concealednation.org

Wild male turkey, “gobbler,” photo courtesy of adirondackalmanack.com

 

 

 

about John Bolton’s departure from government

John Bolton has been a Washington, DC, fixture since I was in college, which is a long long time ago. He has held a number of high level government jobs in that long time, as well as the usual garden variety of middlin’ roles that regular revolving door people in DC have. Like mid-level government, academic, lobbying, and think tank jobs.

And all that time John Bolton has been a staunch, unabashed defender of America and American interests.

John Bolton was our hero when he worked for the last Bush administration and he took on the gun prohibitionists at the United Nations. That was a proud day for America, with Bolton at the podium, when American government told European tyrants that one of the great defining characteristics of America is the right and the ability of our people to make an effective armed revolt against our own government, and so No, we would not be signing their small arms treaty as a back door way to strip American citizens of their Constitutional rights.

Over the past year or two, US National Security Advisor John Bolton has been hugely criticized by conservatives for being a war hawk, someone too eager to use full American force at the drop of a hat. A warmonger some call him.

“We are so tired of wars. We are not the world’s police man,” goes one refrain, which on its face certainly makes sense, within certain basic parameters.

Another common refrain which does not make sense goes “Iran is not a threat to America, and we should do everything we can to avoid war with Iran.”

Thus, with that second refrain, anyone promoting a strong deterrent policy and posture with Iran, like John Bolton, is automatically risking another Mid East war, which we are told, we absolutely must avoid at all costs. Apparently even at the cost of letting Iran nuke a few of our major cities.

The left-right crossover by these so-called anti-war conservatives is fascinating to me, and Bolton became the friction plane for where their war-weary criticism met the Trump Administration’s foreign policy activities. As a Bush II legacy, Bolton reminded everyone too much of poorly implemented wars, in which the USA rules of engagement put our warriors’ lives and limbs at unnecessary risk, and where America foolishly sought to implement a second Marshall Plan, this time in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Like Bolton, I also say Give War a Chance, but let it always be total war, uninhibited war, completely and immediately successful war, not the war of namby pamby uniparty globalists worried about how America will be perceived poorly as some sort of meany arch defender of its own interests. Hell, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and China do not give a damn about how anyone else perceives their pursuit of their national interests. They do whatever they want, come hell or high water, with a lot of extra brutality thrown in, just so the defeated remember the high price of resisting.

So, in turn, I believe, America should be just as ruthless and just as bold as they, our main competitors, if we are to survive them. John Bolton was a proud promoter of this stance. He believes in America, a successful, strong, defiant America.

It is certain that Bolton was a nettlesome cowboy inside the Trump Administration. He was well suited to the first year or two of this administration, when America was being felt abroad for the first time in decades, but Bolton was not a good fit in the third or fourth years, where Trump is beginning to tame the bureaucracy and bring his own more nuanced policies to bear. Anyone with a huge manly mustache like Bolton has, in this day and age, is living in the 1950s past, where mustachioed gunslingers in chaps and dusty cowboy hats still represented the best that America had been and the best that she still could be.

It is no surprise that Bolton was taken down by Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, because no matter who runs the State Department, they all at that agency are always the weanies, the wimps, the “war-no-more” tip-toeing weasel fairies of our foreign touch. Everyone at the State Department believes fervently that all our conflicts can be resolved amicably, if America just gives in and gives away enough of its own interests.

On the other hand, every day he was on the job John Bolton was leading the US cavalry straight up San Juan Hill with the American flag in his left hand and a smoking Colt .45 revolver in his right. I will miss the guy.

John Bolton’s approach to American foreign policy: TR’s famous charge up San Juan Hill with the Rough Riders

 

The US State Department: Obsequious weasel with a toothy beaming sycophantic smile looking perky and wide eyed, always

Hunting…it ain’t about killing

How often do we hear the line “Hunting- it ain’t about killing”?
It’s common because it’s true.
Boy is it good my family isn’t depending upon me for food through hunting…
This spring gobbler season has been very slow up north. It’s as if the turkeys suffered a severe blow from the long winter.
So far I’ve had a pure white coyote run up to me, been stalked by a bobcat that wouldn’t take No for an answer, had a raccoon molest the decoy, nearly been overrun by a sluggish porcupine that wouldn’t take No for an answer, and I’ve been entertained by the antics of a mouse. Watching deer munch on trees I’ve nurtured, well, that’s a different feeling.
One thing about hunting is true: It’s about being out in Nature. Sometimes success there is measured in mouse antics, and not in trophy long beards.
I love it.

Small success stories come in big, snoring packages

Sitting at lunch today with someone in his late 60s, we reminisced about how sparse bears and turkeys were 40 years ago in central Pennsylvania.

We also recalled how pheasants were in our back yards every morning, forty years ago, and how sad it is that they are now gone, victims of abundant raptors, foxes, coyotes, skunks, possums, raccoons, and loss of traditional farmland edge habitat.

Doug remarked that pheasants are not a native species, and that as much as he enjoyed hunting these colorful, beautiful birds, if he had to make a trade-off, he is happy with the outcome of surplus bears and turkeys.

While I wish I could have it all ways – abundant wildlife of all types, I agree with Doug.

Just to drive home how successful Pennsylvania’s bear conservation program has been, a friend texted me yesterday to say that the bear I had found sleeping under a log on his farm on the southern Lower Paxton Township line three weeks ago is still snoring away there.  He has set up a couple trail cameras around it to monitor its movements.  Although we did not hear any squeals of little newborn bear cubs then or this week, and we do not know its sex, it may have since given birth.  That long stay in that one place could be pregnancy, and would account for how long the bear has remained in the scraped out den-nest it made for itself.

What is amazing is that this deeply snoring bear is literally on the edge of suburbia.  Well, it is actually deep into suburbia, in a relatively small island of open space.  Think about it this way:  Bears used to be a symbol of wild places.  Now, they are often suburban dumpster divers.  That speaks well to the large population of bears still inhabiting the truly wild areas away from suburbia.  That original population of deep forest and mountain dwellers is obviously in very good health.

And on that same farm there are now roving bands of wild turkeys, something not seen since the mid-1800s, when wild turkeys were literally all eaten up in this region.

Conservation success stories are abundant, and here we have two – bears and turkeys.  We cannot take these wins for granted, however; we must safeguard what has been accomplished.  I hope that the Wolf Administration soon appoints the new Sportsmen’s Advisor.  That is a unique leadership position Pennsylvania can not afford to leave vacant.