Category → Fruit of Contemplation
Rush Limbaugh
The other day I was driving up I-95 though New Jersey, destination Manhattan, listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. The usual analysis of recent events – Nanshee Peloshee’s failed political attack on the American president, the Democrat Party’s disarray of socialist presidential candidates, each trying harder than the other to give away more American taxpayer money to buy votes than the other, the SuperBowl result.
And Rush’s voice was gravelly, something new. Over the past year he has been complaining about having a cold, or a hairball, or whatever stuck in his throat. And over the past year he has taken off more time than usual. Usually that kind of time away indicates a change, usually due to burnout. But Rush would return to the golden EIB microphone and pick right up where he left off, with great energy and clarity. So no, his absences were not attributable to doing the same damned job over three decades.
And then, nearly at the end of the three-hour show, matter-of-factly Rush simply stated that he has been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, which later on was disclosed to be stage four, which is highly advanced.
Now if there is one symbol of this iconic man’s persona, it is his cigar. Limbaugh enjoys a cigar, and has posed with cigars on the covers of magazines. Promoting, much less admitting to using tobacco these days is the ultimate rebellion, the strongest anti-political correctness statement one can make. Let’s just say, waving a lit cigar about in one’s hand these days gets a lot more attention and dis-approbation than a hairy man putting on scanty lady’s clothes and accoutrements and wobbling up and down a public street in high heels.
Limbaugh has used his cigars as the ultimate rejection of PC nanny state over-reach, to the point where he occasionally almost sounded flippant about the potential health risks.
And while tobacco can and should be enjoyed occasionally – a pipe with a bowlful of cherry Cavendish, a cigarillo, a Dutch Masters or Swisher Sweets mini-cigar, its constant use is anything but innocent. Because the constant use of tobacco products really does damage the human body. Nothing new here to science or human knowledge.
So while Limbaugh may have shared one thing in common with president Bill Clinton, the non-inhalation of lit smoking products, the fact is that cigars put off a huge amount of smoke that, unless one is outside or in a highly ventilated indoor space, is going to certainly invade one’s lungs. Apparently Rush’s lungs were invaded by copious amounts of heavy cigar smoke, despite his not inhaling.
Last night at the State of the Union speech by President Donald J. Trump, Rush Limbaugh received the Medal of Freedom from the hands of First Lady Melania Trump. Rush was obviously surprised that it occurred there and then, and his humility and emotion shone through like a giant airport beacon.
People who hold leftist views may disagree with or even hate Rush Limbaugh. But the level and pitch of their opposition to him is an equal representation of his effectiveness over the years. The first time I heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio was in my friend Kenny Gould’s car in Rockville, Maryland, in the spring of 1991.
“You gotta hear this guy, Josh. You gotta hear what he says. He’s amazing. He is so right. You should hear what he says about Bill Clinton; no one else in the media is saying it.”
And so Kenny turned on the AM radio to the Rush Limbaugh program, and I dutifully listened to what at first sounded like a chatterbox man talking and talking about political and cultural issues.
At the time I had started my first fully professional full time job as a policy staffer at the US EPA in Washington, DC. I disagreed with some of what Rush said that day, but I never forgot him. And years later, when I had discarded my anti-taxpayer job at the EPA like a piece of dog crap stuck to my shoe, because of my own observations and experiences, I had begun to understand just what this big voice on the radio was talking about.
And so tens of millions of other Americans have been educated and trained to think critically and analytically by Rush Limbaugh since that time, and as a result, he has had a tremendously out-size good effect on America.
First Lady Melania Trump placing the Presidential Medal of Freedom around Rush Limbaugh’s neck
More humility than some people might expect caused Rush to compose himself
Good luck to you, Mister Limbaugh. May you have a complete and easy recovery from your cancer. Please don’t be one of those guys puffing away through clouds of cigar smoke with the oxygen line stuck in your nostrils. That just will not do as a lasting image to your greatness. (…and to those who would never listen to Rush’s radio show, how can you say you disagree with him if you do not listen to what he says?…and to those who have openly rejoiced at Limbaugh’s health, you are exactly why he has needed a radio show in the first place, and why America listens to him)
Hunting season withdrawal, carpe diem reminder
Despite hunting a lot this past season, I am going through serious withdrawal symptoms. And mind you, hunting for small game is not done yet, and neither is trapping. And snow geese are in. So field opportunities do remain.
But with the bobcat and fisher trapping seasons now over, the justification for really heading deep into the silent woods has ended. Besides, a fisher just took up residence about 100 yards from the cabin. Only a few weeks after the season ended. It’s a “ha ha” finger in the eye reminder that some things are just not meant to be.
To be honest, I did not trap much this year, due to time limitations that kept me trapping right around where I have been working. And also to the fact that my outdoor work activities scared away the animals that will normally come in to explore the scents we use around our traps. And the freeze-thaw-rain-freeze-thaw-rain cycle of the past couple of years happened yet again during December, our best trapping time. Using footholds in those conditions is tough, because they can move around as the earth thaws during the day and re-freezes at night. When an animal steps on a trap that has moved in its bed, the trap moves under its paw, and then the animal digs up the trap. And If I put out winter-resistant cable restraints in that kind of weather, I can expect a very muddy animal waiting for me. And I am not in the business of shampooing coyotes and foxes. Too much time. So trapping season has pretty much passed me by, though I will try for a specific coyote, and maybe a few more possums in cage traps, just to save some springtime whippoorwill nests from being raided.
A few more squirrel hunts, a rabbit hunt or two with a 1920 Parker Brothers 20 gauge side-by-side, and some predator hunts will be had. Good times for sure, usually with good friends, but the few days of climbing high and sneaking through the quiet snowy mountains are gone. They ended almost before they began.
Hunting season is an annual reminder to grab all of life and squeeze and cajole every bit of living and enjoyment from it that we can, because before we know it, it all ends almost before it began.
At my grandfather’s 100th birthday (he lived almost exactly three more years after), he blew out the candles on his cake and sat back.
“I don’t know where my life went,” he said, staring into his chocolate cake. And he was a guy who had really lived.
Wildlife criminal or wildlife savior?
Unsurprisingly, British customs police noticed Jeffrey Lendrum’s strange looking gut the other day after he disembarked from an international flight. Upon further inspection, the naturally slender Lendrum was caught with a bunch of rare falcon eggs nested against his warm midriff in a fluffy swaddling. The eggs were kept warm and alive by Lendrum’s body heat and the lumpy material, like a mother bird would do while sitting on her nest.
Lendrum is no stranger to doing this, it turns out. For at least three decades, the guy has made some kind of living smuggling rare birds and, unbelievably, their fragile eggs, out of remote countries and from the really super remote, roadless places deep inside them. He has sold the wildlife and eggs to collectors and falconers around the world, but principally in the Muslim Arab countries, where (to their credit) falconry and horsemanship are both highly valued manly skills.
In a way Lendrum is a cross between Indiana Jones, the Pink Panther diamond thief, and James Bond 007, at one time rappelling from a hovering helicopter to steal rare eggs from a raptor’s nest high in a tree in the rain forest. As a result, he has had all kinds of legal run-ins and wild law enforcement encounters throughout his career and literally all around the world.
Brazil has demanded that Britain extradite Lendrum to answer for his latest alleged crime. In a typical British understatement, Lendrum’s lawyer has responded that Brazil’s notorious prisons are in fact violent drug gang headquarters, that the nation has no real rule of law, and that Lendrum’s life would be measured in the half-second were he to be returned there.
And oh, the irony of a nation that cannot stop people from daily executing each other in the streets, that is bargain selling its own rare natural resources and wild areas at break-neck speed to every international nuclear and hydroelectric dam concession, that cannot conserve a chicken let alone a falcon, now demanding some sort of home-grown justice for a white guy who actually values some birds that now live in a place that next year will be a coffee plantation with no bird habitat left.
I am a wilderness hunter and trapper, and I hate wildlife crime. But Lendrum is probably helping ensure the survival of some of these rare bird species who, otherwise left to their own devices in these shithole countries, will be eaten by naked savages for dinner.
Texas has become the home to a dozen rare and otherwise wild species from India and Africa that have been market hunted (not recreationally hunted) into extinction in their native habitat. This is not just because the Texas climate is suitable to these animals, but because hunters pay a boatload of money to hunt these naturally reproducing animals in Texas. A market incentive has kept these endangered species alive and well, if not in the actual ecosystem from whence they evolved.
I am unconvinced that Lendrum is a wildlife criminal. Like the role of zoos has changed from wild animal freak show full of gawkers to sole breeding repository of rare and endangered animals who could never survive in their own home countries, Lendrum is in actuality seeding dying species’ DNA around the planet in the expectation that placing high commercial value on it will lead to people paying to conserve it.
That is, by placing a value on the birds that is much higher than a dinner take-out by a jungle dwelling Indian, Lendum is creating a market-based incentive to keep these species alive and breeding.
Jeffrey Lendrum, wildlife conservationist.
Jeffrey Lendrum, mother hen
Now Greta Thunberg makes sense: Climate Fuhrer
Not until I had sat under a hemlock tree overlooking a quiet ravine with a flintlock rifle across my knees for two hours in the morning cold did it occur to me: In the context of angry liberals, abrasive hypocrite Greta Thunberg does make sense.
Thunberg is the carefully manufactured Hollywood and mainstream media creation from Norway, or Sweden, whichever it doesn’t matter, whose mental health her wealthy and abusive parents sacrificed on the altar of gaining political advantage and notoriety. She is a 17-year-old high school drop-out, with apparent learning disabilities that normal, loving parents would try to heal, not enhance. Her message continues to be that everyone else in Western Civilization must cease using fossil fuels and abandon capitalism while she flies in jets and other capitalist-created transportation all over the planet making sure that we all feel her rage and judgment, and do as she says. Like some sort of malevolent angel.
And though for the longest time I kept wondering how trying to shame people into submission was really going to work in this day and age, it’s her angry judgmentalism part that turned on the light bulb in my head this morning.
“Yes, we can ride together, but you must not mention The Name That Cannot be Said,” said a long-time dear friend of mine about an east coast fishing trip we were planning. His sore feelings about the 2016 election result were still evident, and the other old friend whom we were planning to see on a certain leftwing island enclave felt the same. Even though we had not discussed the election, no, we avoided it, when we did talk, the anger and judgmentalism were tangible.
No, I would not wear a MAGA hat, I said. No, I would not get drunk on the beach late at night and begin dancing around the campfire “Trump! Trump Trump! USA USA USA!”
“I could not vouch for your safety if you did that,” said the tender islander.
“But I would not do it in any case, knowing that it would bother you. I love you guys, and I do not live to bother my friends,” said I, allowing images of hungry bluefish and striped bass and screaming fishing reels to cloud my thoughts and thereby unwittingly admitting to my support for The Name That Must Not be Said, and then feeling his judgmental words cut deep into a relationship decades old and already tested by many trials together.
So it seems that while Thunberg is probably not necessarily designed to cast a wide net and gain new adherents to the climate religion and big centralized government control thingy she is so angry about, her role is probably more to rally the faithful. To give them a fresh new figurehead. Someone through which today’s young people – totally devoid of life experience – can channel their inner despot and ignorant judgmentalism.
These ever-angrier young people haven’t a clue about life, making a living, paying rent, making an economy run, science, climate, etc., but if there is one thing they will be good for, it’s shock troops. The western equivalent of the cruel and merciless children of the Chinese cultural revolution. Young people to defiantly harm their own parents and elders in the name of some greater good.
And so now Greta Thunberg makes sense to me. She is a deliberately unhappy cheerleader, not searching for solutions, but for sacrificial scapegoats upon whom her anger must justifiably be poured in a cleansing action that will bring holistic stability to all humankind.
She is the climate messiah, the climate Fuhrer, beginning a jihad, bringing unholy fire.
Climateland uber alles
Greta Thunberg holding a Jewish caricature in one hand and the usual puppet in the other. At the bottom of Leftist beliefs there is, ironically, always anti-Jewish hatred
The purposeful comparison is undeniable between ol’ Adolf and child actor Greta Thunberg. She means to emulate him
This day a year ago while trapping: Cat up a tree!
Cat Up a Tree!
Text and Photos by Josh First (copyrighted)
I dislike trapping in rainy conditions, because it is uncomfortable, messy, and technically difficult, due to trap sets needing constant fixing up; and I really dislike processing muddy critters. Mud-covered fur is time consuming, and usually it is not worth it in my tight schedule. So from 2018’s trapping season opening day in late October, I waited six weeks, until a brief rain lull in mid-December, to put out some carefully planned traps.
Though I was aiming mostly for canids like fox and coyote, both bobcat and fisher were a reasonable hope. I have caught bobcats in and out of season in the past, but never a fisher. These are two neat animals worth working hard for, and each of which will quite willingly enter baited cubbies where foot hold traps can get some shelter from rain and snow.
So on the Wednesday afternoon before that Saturday bobcat and fisher opener, a half-dozen footholds (cubbies and flat sets) and a few large cage traps were set in strategic places near where I had seen fisher tracks or bobcats across a 100-acre area of mixed farmland and woods in Dauphin County. Bait is used in the cage traps to pull in the inevitable and limitless possums, skunks, and raccoons, so that, hopefully, only the cool critters find the footholds. And both bobcats and fishers will enter cage traps, so they do serve double duty.
One pass-through pee post set was put in a location where I have previously caught coyotes, foxes, and raccoons. It is at a corner of a dirt farm road, a woods road, a hay field, and brushy-hedged crop field where heavy woods meets an active agricultural area. Just about every local furbearer walks the brushy area, this road, and the field edges leading to it.
Coyote pee and coyote gland lure were put on top of a two-inch-thick dry pine limb sticking up 14 inches, placed at the seam where the goldenrod meets the farm road. A few pieces of goldenrod stem on the other side created the pass-through effect, so the animal’s body would line up with the hidden trap just exactly so. About eight inches away from the post an offset MB 550 attached to an eight-foot heavy chain linked to a heavy two-prong coyote drag was bedded level atop soft goldenrod tops to protect the trap from freezing to the wet dirt underneath, then covered judiciously in waxed dirt, then finished with more soft goldenrod tops and weed tips blended on top. The trap was perfectly “blended in” and hidden from sight.
The chain was stretched out away, into the reverting goldenrod field, and well covered and camouflaged with weeds, and the rusty-brown colored steel drag itself unobtrusively hooked into the dirt. With four heavy swivels well spaced between the trap and the drag, I felt confident that whatever would step on the trap pan while passing between the weeds to smell the pee post would commit its full weight, and be safely held fast, no matter where it went afterwards. I expected the animal to head directly to the nearby brushy hedges, where the grapple and chain would immediately become entangled, thereby holding the animal for the next 24-hour trap check.
Usually predators take a couple days to fully investigate my traps, and when setting this on a late Wednesday, I anticipated catching something in one of the sets on Friday night/ early Saturday morning. Though aiming for a bobcat, fox, coyote, or fisher, the truth is I had put off trapping so long that season that I would have been happy to catch just about anything.
The next day, Thursday, I did a cursory trap circuit check in my truck, looking out the window while driving past set after set. “No…No…No…footprints all around but no step on the pan…no…no…nothing” as I went by each trap location.
Pulling up to the pee post set, my eye was immediately drawn to the pee post itself lying on the ground, though the trap bed itself did not appear disturbed. Usually the post is knocked over by the chain after an animal has stepped on the trap and fled. So I got out to check, and was not surprised to see the drag gone. Following an obvious path of bent weeds and scuffed dirt leading away towards the closest brushy forest edge, my eyes naturally looked along that edge for a hung-up drag and critter.
With my hands on my hips, I stood and kept scanning the brushy woods-field edge. I was unable to locate anything, and felt mystified about how the critter could have escaped beyond such a thick, natural entanglement area. Mystery remained until a hiss to my right reached my ear, steering my eyes in that direction.
“Why is that long-legged grey fox up in that honey locust like that?” was my first thought.
Then another thought followed the first: “Why does that grey fox look like a big cat?”
And then the bobcat came into focus. It was a nice sized young male, probably 25 pounds, about six feet up in a young honey locust, a tree that has plenty of sharp thorns and very hard wood. The drag was just touching the ground, and the chain was wound about the lowest branches.
OK, I thought, I’ll have this resolved in a few minutes. Seemed like no big deal to pull down the cat, use the catch pole to hold it steady while I released the trap from its foot and let it go unharmed.
Fast forward an hour, and each time I had tried different ways to bring it down out of the tree unharmed, the cat had moved farther up. With bobcat season two days away, by law the cat had to be released, but I was unsuccessful with each solution I tried.
Fretting and scratched by the locust thorns, I left, did some work, and returned a few hours later, hoping the cat had climbed down and was entangled in the ground brush nearby. On the ground it would be easy to release using a catch pole. Easier than up that tree!
But when I got back, the bobcat was still up the tree, and climbed yet higher as I approached it.
Time for Plan B, which is where I admit that I need help. Usually takes me a long, long time to implement Plan B, and so I called the Pennsylvania Game Commission southeastern regional office. At first the dispatcher congratulated me on catching the bobcat, but then moments later expressed his sympathy for me having to release such a fine trophy, as the season was yet to begin. He forwarded my message to a local Game Warden, who then fairly quickly met me right at the honey locust. In fact, he arrived so quickly that I could not help but wonder if he had been watching me the whole time, either chuckling at my clumsy efforts, or waiting to see what else I might do, or both.
“Thank you for coming. When my kids were little, their favorite book was Cat Up a Tree! And here it is in real life. Should we call the fire department?” I said to Game Warden Scott Frederick, half-jokingly. In that colorful book, the fire department saves the day by saving the cat stuck up in the tree, and we (and how I so liked the ‘we’ part) did indeed have a daggone cat way up in a tree. But unlike the book, we had no long ladders, or hero firemen, by the honey locust tree that day.
I asked my wife to film our escapade, but under questioning I revealed that pretty much anything could happen to anybody around this, so she said something like “No, I’m not recording two idiot men playing with matches.” I think her imagination had the warden and I emerging from the dense, high brush scratched head to toe, our clothes in ragged tatters, like some cartoon involving the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil. She wanted no part of it. This is why women live longer than men.
Warden Frederick tried to the untangle the chain and reach the animal, but with each new inch of loose chain, the bobcat sensed freedom and used the slack to climb ever higher. Upon reaching a tight chain again, he would stop his ascent, alternating between hissing at us and letting fly with whatever he could rustle up in his bowels. I came to learn that bobcats have an impressive amount and array of bad smells stored inside them. Neither Warden Frederick nor I smelled peachy at that point, but I gave in and laughed at him when he really got it good from the cat.
Eventually we had tried and tried every which way to get the cat down unharmed, the day waxed late, and so we decided that if the cat would not come down, then the tree had to come down.
A honey locust is a hard, tough tree, a pioneer species with twisting grain and sharp hooked thorns. Oftimes while being sawed, they don’t fall the way you think they will. In addition to its loud scary noise, a chain saw would remove too much wood too quickly to allow us to fully control which way the tree would fall, and a hand saw was too slow. So we used an axe to drop the tree, one carefully placed chop at a time. This gave us the best control over the tree’s slow descent, but it was sweaty work, and directly beneath the bobcat. So I let Warden Frederick do it.
Meanwhile, the bobcat climbed to the very top of the tree, clinging like a lookout in a ship’s crow’s nest, and swayed to the rhythm of the chop-chop-chop below.
As the tree gave way to the axe and slowly sank to the ground, the bobcat sensed its getaway approaching. But Warden Frederick was waiting with a catch pole. While I wish I had some humorous Game News Field Note material here to describe what happened next, the truth is Warden Frederick properly and quickly looped the bobcat’s shoulder and neck, under the armpit, thereby safely pinning the animal to the ground without risk to its esophagus (cats have really weak throat areas and they must be handled carefully). I got some last quick photos, threw a blanket over the bobcat to calm him down (the bobcat, not Warden Frederick), and then easily pulled the trap off of its foot.
Both of us inspected its foot and leg for damage, and seeing none, I stepped back, pulled the blanket, and the catch pole loop came off the bobcat. As many other trappers have experienced when releasing a trapped bobcat, this one sat on its haunches and hissed at us. He thought he was still stuck. Eventually he turned and fast- walked into the brush.
“Well, that’s it, I’m now officially jinxed, or ‘lynxed’,” I said to Warden Frederick. “From here on out I will catch only possums and skunks for the rest of the season.”
And in fact, for the rest of that epic rainy trapping season, such as it was, I caught a grand total of just five possums, one skunk, and one raccoon. It was my worst trapping season, numbers-wise, in many years. But in hindsight, it was also pretty rewarding to watch the Game Warden work like that. Both hard and smart, I mean. Citizens don’t get to see our public servants perform these kinds of feats very often, and with a good nature to boot. So in that sense, I had a uniquely good season. Thank you, Warden Frederick. Now I can’t wait for mountain lions to move into Pennsylvania!
[Why do I trap? I trap to save ducklings, goslings, baby songbirds, nesting grouse, woodcock, and turkeys from an endless number of ground predators like skunks, possums, raccoons, foxes and coyotes, all of which continue to pulse out from suburban sprawl habitats in artificially high numbers. These artificially high numbers of predators do tremendous damage to ground nesting birds, and basically cars and trappers are their sole adversaries. So if you are against trapping, you must hate cute little ducklings. Foothold traps do not crush bones or kill animals, they simply hold them, and as we can and did here, animals can be released from footholds totally unhurt]
using the catch pole in the tree did not work
Look at that perfect high catch, his foot still on the pan. This is the correct way to use a foothold trap, as it results in no physical damage to the animal
If you ever want to feel like you are getting your tax money’s worth, look closely at this photo of PA Game Warden Frederick chopping at that honey locust. Except that the PA Game Commission operates on hunting license fees, timber sales, and natural gas leases! No tax money goes to the PGC, and yet they provide so many taxpayer services.
The four swivels and the long chain are visible here. The swivels prevent the chain from binding as the animal moves around, which gives the animal complete 360 degree movement. This is important so the animal does not torque its leg or hurt itself trying to get free. The long chain is needed to get hung up quickly in brush
The unharmed bobcat can be seen hissing at Scott, who has the catch pole loop around its upper body, pinning it to the ground. After taking this picture, I threw a blanket (Scott’s, not mine) over it to calm it down, inspected its leg for any damage, and when we each determined the animal was not hurt, Scott then released it. Using a catch pole on a bobcat requires getting the loop under its armpit and around the neck, so the esophagus is not damaged.
Some thoughts on PA deer season
We are already halfway through our two-week deer season in Pennsylvania, and already many hunters are discussing the merits of the first-ever Saturday opener. Pennsylvania has had a Monday opener for many decades, and where I grew up not only did the schools close on that Monday, there was a festive atmosphere that was palpable for the week leading up to it.
Gotta say, both Saturday and Monday were the quietest first days of deer season that I have ever heard. Very few shots heard either day, an observation made by a lot of other hunters.
One cannot help but wonder if the holiday atmosphere and the special quality of taking a work day off to gather together with family and friends to hunt has been lost with the Saturday opener. Yes, it would be ironic, because the change was done to expand hunting opportunities, given that most people do not work on Saturday like they do work on Mondays. But for many hunters it seems that having deer season now begin as just another weekend event of many other weekend events caused it to lose its specialness.
We shall see from the deer hunting results!
Separately, Pennsylvania now has a both a new trespass law and a new private land boundary marking law. Private land can now be marked “POSTED – NO TRESPASSING” by simply painting a vibrant purple paint stripe at least eight (8) inches long and one inch wide every 100 feet along the boundary of any private property. Seems that I am not alone in having my Posted signs ripped down by jealous jerks. Seems like I am not alone in working really really hard to create good whitetail deer habitat on my land, only to have some jealous people decide that it is so unfair that they can’t take advantage of all my hard work and also hunt there. So they rip down Posted signs and help themselves to my land and the land of many, many other private property owners.
Last Saturday we experienced a hunter trespassing on us, along with his young son. Why they would expect to be allowed to pass through the middle of our property, a place we hardly ever go because it is a deer sanctuary, is beyond imagination. They literally walked right through a long line of Posted signs, as if they did not exist. Their thinking seemed to be “So what if we ruin your hunting? We are simply trying to have a good hunting experience ourselves.”
But someone’s good hunting experience should never come at the expense of someone else’s hunt, especially if it results from trespassing on their property.
Think about it this way: A property owner spends all year toiling to make his property attractive to deer, and he creates sanctuaries around the property where not even he will go beginning in September, so the deer can relax there and not feel pressured. And then someone else who is not invited decides that they either want to hunt on that same property, or they want to pass through it to get to some other property, like public land. When they pass through, they disturb the deer and greatly reduce the quality of the hunting there.
Is this OK behavior?
As someone who works hard on his property to make it a quality hunting place, I can say that it is not OK behavior. It is a form of theft; trespassers are stealing from private property owners.
Dear trespassers – do you want people stealing from you? No? OK, so then you know how we feel when you steal from us. Don’t do it!
It will be interesting to see how the new trespass law and the new boundary marking law begin to change one of Pennsylvania’s least desirable cultures – the culture of defiant trespass. That just has to change.
Hope everyone has a productive, fun and safe rest of the season. When it is over, we begin our trapping season and small game hunting.
Cabela’s-Bass Pro merger = Lower Quality for Sportsmen
[UPDATED SEE BOTTOM for IMPORTANT DETAILS] Cabela’s hit its stride about ten years ago. A national, trend-setting family-owned outdoor business, the company took from the best and discarded the rest. Innovation there never stopped, as they improved on Zeiss-quality optics made for price-pinched Americans, and innovated rain-proof soft fleece parkas suitable for stalking deer with a recurve bow in wind, rain or snow, and all combinations thereof.
No one else made these products, and certainly not at their prices.
Some might say that Cabela’s took the best names and put their own name on it, and there may be some truth in terms of boots and optics. But when it came to outdoor clothing, the company did its own thing, making outdoor sports so much more fun. Every now and then they would do a run of virgin wool hunting shirts. Outside of Filson and Pendleton, it is tough to think of virgin wool shirts being offered anywhere else. While the Cabela’s shirts were not near the quality of the Filson or Pendelton, they were not anywhere near the price, either. These were true working wool shirts for a fair price that you would not regret tearing or getting soaked in bear blood.
Perhaps there are some industry insiders with a tale to tell here, and I would stand corrected if proven wrong.
Along came competitor Bass Pro a few years ago, and bought out the Cabela family. The merged Cabela’s-Bass Pro union made little sense for innovation, and those outdoorsmen who greatly benefited from Cabela’s unique service held their collective breath. Bass Pro has been known for marketing all the usual stuff, plus a lot of Chinese junk, and also their own RedHead label clothing and some equipment.
RedHead has been around for a long time. An LC Smith 20-gauge double barrel in my care came in its apparently original Red Head canvas case. Nicely made, quality product. From the 1940s, when just about everything was made with pride.
Fast forward to now and RedHead is not known for high quality, or for innovation. It is mostly slapped-together variants of better-made products by Cabela’s and others. I guess the wool socks are pretty good. But most of it is not high quality. At all.
So fast forward to me getting on-site freezing-rained out of a distant hunting trip I had planned all year. All of the usual high quality equipment that has worked for me all these many years would not have worked under the unusual wet and very cold conditions I found myself in; in fact, had I stayed out there in that freezing rain, I would have undoubtedly gotten hypothermic and probably died. My kit was not designed for that unforeseen situation, and so I hightailed it out of the back country and glumly slunk home. No deer is worth dying for.
But I feel determined to never have this happen again. We get so few of these opportunities as it is; once we are out there in the middle of nowhere, we must take advantage of all the hunting time there we can make.
Subsequently looking for new clothing and kit capable of both light weight and all the other properties has left me slack-jawed. The Cabelas-Bass Pro merger has resulted in a really narrowed field of high quality outdoor clothing and kit. Instead of maintaining Cabela’s high standing products and focus on continuous unique product development, Bass Pro has cut off the innovation pipeline, used inferior materials in successful old product lines, and substituted other more expensive makers like Sitka and ScentLok for the old standby Cabela’s brands.
Very few of the high quality products that Cabela’s made, like lightweight, waterproof, silent parkas in different camouflage patterns, are available any longer.
So it seems that the merger has not benefited sportsmen, and that Bass Pro is just slowly squeezing whatever value it can get out of Cabela’s before it eventually shuts it down and forces sportsmen to consider the solely mediocre stuff that Bass Pro specializes in.
So for those of you who enjoy shopping for high quality outdoor gear, get ye to a local Cabela’s store soon. Look on the closeout racks for the stuff you used to take for granted; it won’t be coming back. Buy the old Cabela’s stuff before the company is openly yet one more victim of short-sighted corporate greed and sloth.
OK, so click on the old Cabela’s button for their amazing “Instinct” hunting clothing…
you clicked on the Instinct button and….and there is nothing there. Under Bass Pro ownership, Cabela’s is abandoning its long history of gear innovation and product design specifically done for serious hunters.
UPDATE 12/15/19: Turns out there was a much bigger reason for the downfall of Cabela’s. Here is the kind of in-depth reporting that Americans deserve: https://youtu.be/UatnTSwEUoc
It’s that time of year again, Pt. II
It is now “that time of year again,” but Part Two.
A month ago your firewood had better have been laid up and close to perfectly dry, or you were going to have an uncomfortably cold winter in rural America.
Now, a month later, a whole bunch of hunting seasons are upon us. Small game, trapping, deer archery, bear archery…and many people are afield a serious amount of time. Some people try to catch the deer rut in a couple different states with their bow. It can become a crazed time, where the humans are just as worn down and rutted up by the prospect of catching unawares a big old wary buck who, in his brief moment of annual craziness, lets down his guard.
Usually, I do not begin trapping in earnest until December, when all pelts are truly prime and when the bobcat and fisher seasons begin. Early on I set out cage traps to thin out the skunks and possums that will otherwise clog up my best sets later on. Never one to sell furs, trapping for me has always been about helping ground-nesting birds against an overabundance of nest-raiding mammals pulsing out from suburban sprawl habitats. With Russia and China in bad financial and economic situations the past five years, wild fur has not been in as big demand as the past. This lower demand has led many professional trappers to abandon their lines and wait for prices to come back up. In turn, that let-off in trapping pressure results in TONS of raccoons, possums, skunks etc running around. Over the past couple of weeks I have seen more road-kill raccoons than in many years past all together.
And this high population of raccoons means higher rates of rabies, trash-raiding, fights with pets, etc.
My favorite type of hunt is the solo wilderness excursion. Sleeping in a cold tent, bundled against the night time freeze, waking up to some snow on everything, enjoying a hot tea to start the day, and wandering into the wind, trying to find buck or bear tracks. Or in the case of a big male bear, making sure he isn’t on my track, like two years ago.
Is there danger in this? Sure. Then there is danger in being hit by a car, or falling and damaging a body part. There is danger in never experiencing life, and thinking that the modern risk-free cocoon most of us live in is either normal or healthy. It is neither.
And so it is that time of year again, when every fiber in my body says “Get outside, NOW!” It is a time of forgotten or deliberately misplaced professional obligations, phone calls returned on a Friday afternoon, instead of the prior Monday morning. I hope friends and colleagues will forgive me if I am a little late in getting back.
Nature is calling on the phone, it’s for me, and I gotta run.
I’ll be back. Promise.
YouTube II: What I like
For those who might have misunderstand the last post, I do like YouTube, and below are just a few examples of what I like about that site to prove it.
Why do I visit YouTube? For one, I like to learn new things, gain technical information, find ways to do things that I regularly do and yet struggle with, like professional-level chainsaw maintenance. Then there’s the endless entertainment – humor, music, and especially the unintentionally funny videos where people representing themselves as experts instead prove the complete opposite.
First, we begin with down home redneck humor and part 2
Next up: seems like every week there’s a new political analyst from South Succotash USA who is light years better than all the tarted up partisan political activists in mainstream media. Here is Matt Christensen analyzing people casually calling for government-led civilian gun confiscation , and here is Laurel commenting along with liberal professors discussing a possible civil war , and finally the brave and actual for real news reporter Laura Loomer
Probably the best outdoor channel, Leatherwood Outdoors; here John is hunting edible mushrooms
Incredible instinctive bow hunter and spearer of grizzly bears Tim Wells
Funny black guy Terrence Williams talking about how he is not moving to Africa and how American blacks hurt American blacks
Serious black guy Malcolm X, speaking about how white liberals destroy American blacks
Somehow YouTube presented this guy to me as suggested viewing, and my first impression of his “intense face” was that he was a maniac. Which of course I had to see for myself. Turns out he is one of the people who makes a living off of his YouTube videos, and he is in fact interesting and knowledegable. We present “Wranglerstar”
RCBS reloading because every patriot should know how to reload ammunition
Assorted music: la femme d’argent by Air Safari, and Itshak Perlman playing Mendelssohn
For those who remember what it was like once (before people showed up literally everywhere all the time on planet Earth) to drive on a country road and actually find a quiet spot where you could…without being interrupted, a song about the joys of that by Jason Aldean
And of course Blake Shelton’s Kiss my Country Ass, just because if they are at all curious, big government control folks like those listed above ought to know how a lot of us really feel about their anti freedom policies
Rimsky Korsakov Schehezerade, which can only ever be the 1969 recording by the official USSR symphony orchestra, whose world-class members played out of both genuine love and understanding of great music and out of great fear of official punishment for perceived failure.
And finally, My Pretty Pony just to throw that monkey wrench into your digital profile, especially if you watch country music and reloading videos and you want to at least appear eccentric to the digital watchers.
And no, this is not a complete list by a long shot, so don’t think you are profiling me at all by looking at this. Heck, it could all be fake just to make people think I think a certain way, when I don’t actually…
Everything I know I learned from YouTube
YouTube is way beyond me, but what little I do know about it has shaped my life.
Every day people are vying for upvotes and clicks on YouTube, posting everything from my favorite “Idiots with Chainsaws and More Epic Tree Fails” to biting the heads off of chickens and the ubiquitous smart pet tricks. Guys (it is always guys) post all kinds of wildly incorrect videos about reloading and shooting old guns, and of course they are disinterested in helpful (knowledgeable) comments aimed at keeping all their fingers and eyeballs. They are, after all, posting on YouTube; therefore, goes their thinking, they are automatically experts at what they are posting about.
YouTube sensations might be a flash in the pan, a momentary glamor shot, or they might become an overnight millionaire. While I still do not understand how that works, my children assure me it actually happens. And then, my kids gleefully tell me, the overnight millionaires become dogfood as some perceived slight they are said to have committed is mob-magnified into the worst thing since Hitler, and then back down they go into the seething pit of unknowns…
Me, I am just a super unsophisticated user of YouTube. Listening to Mozart and Beethoven on endless play loops is probably my biggest utilization of the site, followed by leaving “My Pretty Pony” series on auto-play for hours while I am working or doing chores, just to throw monkey wrenches into the digital portfolio being built around my online habits and preferences.
But then there is the creeping recognition that just about every chore I do these days is prefaced with a visit to YouTube, just to find out the best way to screw in a light bulb, or to rake Fall leaves, paint our basement walls, or to do some other small thing that in the dinosaur days we just figured out ourselves through small trials and error, or we called Dad and asked how he did it.
Now, because I have come to rely on it so much, I walk around daily with a head full of YouTube, even if I am not necessarily spending much time on the site itself. Could I even live without it?
This reliance on YouTube has spawned all kinds of urban myth jokes, usually self-directed by surgeons, dentists, and car mechanics, who all begin their work on your open heart surgery by saying “Don’t worry, I learned to do this by watching a video on YouTube,” and then their big toothy smile is the last thing you see as your brain succumbs to the anesthetic.
And your last thought is “I’ll bet she did use YouTube!” for the simple reason that all of us have become YouTube junkies for even the mundane things we do. To the point where just about everything that is in the front of my brain, that is, the frontburner of my life, has YouTube images floating all about them. It seems that everything I know I learned from YouTube.
And it does not help balance things out, you know, leaven out the evolutionary YouTube gene, that when the tractor tire went flat, I reflexively turned to YouTube for help on how to re-inflate it. Yes, videos show you how you can use an overabundance of lighter fluid to inflate the tire back onto the rim. Lots of videos about this, with varying levels of success, that usually being inversely proportional to the level of entertainment. Because, while trying that lighter fluid thing, you might also accidentally and very explosively send the steel rim flying across the barn and out through the wall into the woods, too. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, because even if you fail to inflate the tire onto the rim and send it sailing into the next county, if you are smart and you filmed the resulting fiery disaster, you still have a cool YouTube video that will get you lots of clicks. That’s your fallback plan with the lighter fluid.
About the tractor tire: I opted for the sedate old guy’s video that showed how to use trailer ratchet straps to squish the tire onto the rim. After applying a lot of used motor oil to the tire bead, which helped slide the tire up, I did what the guy did on his video with ratchet straps. And I’ll be damned, when I turned on the compressor and injected air into the tire, it fully inflated then and has stayed inflated for months.
No, I did not film my own attempts to re-inflate the tire using the ratchet straps, and that is because the truth is I just don’t really know much about YouTube. I am there for the music, which come to think about it actually sounds like a never-ending cacophony symphony.