Category → Fruit of Contemplation
A Murder of Crows
My two greatest thrills in the outdoors are native wildflowers, like the trilliums and pink ladyslippers, and native birds, like grouse, turkey, woodcock, wood ducks, and various migratory songbirds.
All of these flowers and birds are under pressure under the best of circumstances, and in many places they are succumbing to that pressure because of artificial factors.
Native wildflowers are naturally browsed by deer, and increasingly collected by people who sell rare plants (and animals). If deer herds are balanced with the carrying capacity of the landscape and surrounding habitat, then the plant colonies can sustain the browsing. The collecting is usually illegal, involving sneaky trespass on private property and violating state law and regulation when done on public land. It is totally unsustainable.
When it comes to my favorite birds, the usual pressures of predation or hunting are hardly a factor in their population success. What is a growing factor is the impact of ground mammals on ground nesting birds, including all of my favorites above and others like more common ducks.
Ground mammals like raccoons, possums, skunks, fox and coyote have a natural place in the natural world, but humans have so greatly altered that natural world that some of these animal populations are disproportionately growing and having disproportionate impacts on other wildlife.
Exhibit A is low density suburban sprawl type residential home development, relatively large home lots in the one to five -acre range.
Low-density suburban sprawl residential development is now the ground zero for artificially high numbers of skunks, possums, and raccoons. Sprawl development provides perfect backyard habitat for these predators to breed and den, but these back yards are too small to hunt or trap effectively or legally. So these burgeoning and unchecked predator populations keep pulsing out into surrounding farmland and forest. In those more stable habitats, these artificially high predator numbers wreak havoc on the other species who live there, notably my favorite birds, which happen to be ground nesters.
Ground nesting birds are highly susceptible to nest disturbance and egg loss when they are surrounded by artificially high populations of skunks, raccoons, and possums. In many areas ground nesting birds are experiencing dramatic population declines because they simply cannot nest long enough to hatch a brood of chicks, or the chicks cannot survive predation long enough to develop flight, so they can escape from otherwise slow moving predators like skunks and possums. Adding to the challenge for ground nesting birds is the dearth of brush and young forest which provide the best places to hide a nest on the ground. Most farms today are devoid of brush, and “select cut” high-grade logging has ruined most private forests, while anti-conservation activists decry aggressive forest management on public lands. Brush and young forests are nearly a rarity today, despite serving as nature’s best habitat.
Yesterday I got into one of those internet debates most normal people avoid. It centered on allegedly real photos of a flying mature eagle with a talon stuck in a foothold trap, posted on Lancaster Online. Lancaster Online is run by politically partisan legacy media staff, and it is a huge source of fake news and alternate facts. So when I saw there the photo of a completely closed foot hold trap, with not even a tiny jaw spread to accommodate the eagle’s foot, it looked like yet more fake news and I posted comments.
As you might imagine, a murder of crows of sorts descended upon the article, and upon me, and upon any other poster who either questioned the facts as presented in the article, or who promoted trapping.
Crows are natural enemies of eagles and other raptors. Crows are huge nest raiders, eating baby bird chicks whole right out of the nest. In the context of the Lancaster Online article, the crows took human form: Animal rights promoters, PETA advocates, anti-trapping and anti-conservation voices.
Like with a surrounding pack of crows (called a “murder”) wildly harassing a lone eagle in a tree, the loudly hysterical anti-trapping commenters immediately invoked emotional appeals, personal attacks, lies, advocacy for trespassing, leash-less dogs, and private property theft and destruction. None of them made any sense. None were based on fact, though it is true that occasionally an animal in a trap gets hurt (never mind that every single one of those hypocritical commenters has a direct hand in wildlife death and destruction).
I responded frequently there, and was answered by a surrounding murder of crows, loudly cawing, squawking, screaming, wildly flapping their wings and leaping from tree to tree. Pretty funny to watch, because not one commenter there debated wildlife biology, habitat, etc. Only emotional appeals mostly based on lies and fake news were presented. Lots of hysteria, not much reasoning.
And that right there is why I trap, dear reader.
There are too damned many cantankerous crows, skunks, possums and raccoons eating all of the really cool, cute, useful little birds I enjoy so much. I haven’t sold a pelt since I was a kid. Instead, today I trap to thin out the populations of the destructive ground predators so that the defenseless animals they eat have at least a sitting chance.
As for the eagle photographed flying around Lancaster County with its talon caught in the foothold trap, I have pledged fifty dollars toward its rehabilitation, if it is caught alive. And I want to personally inspect the trap rig, because what is seen in the photos makes no sense. One commenter, a trapper, noted it appeared to be an illegal trap specifically set to catch a raptor, like the eagle, in which case this subject isn’t about trapping, it is about illegal wildlife poaching.
But you’d never know that from the deafening screaming and cawing and flapping from the uncaring, unthinking, hostile, mob-like murder of crows.
UPDATE: 2/8/17 4:30 pm “Just received a call from PGC Director Matt Hough. Matt informed me that the eagle/trap incident was a true event. Fortunately, PA Game Commission officers were able to capture the eagle and remove the trap. There was no damage to the talon. The eagle was released and flew away with no impairment as a result of the incident. Matt did not have any information as to the individual responsible for the trap,” from an email sent to me this afternoon.
First Super Bowl I’ve Ever Missed
This will be the first Super Bowl I have not watched or participated in some way.
Every year we have a nice party at our home. Lots of food, friends, good cheer and great company. People come, they go, they return, the kids play downstairs where they have their own TV. It has always been a fun time.
However, because the NFL has decided to become involved in anti-America politics, I am giving the NFL a wide berth this year. I have not watched even one second of one game this season, and I will not be watching the Super Bowl, either.
Instead, this Sunday I will be at the PA Farm Show Building, volunteering to cover the PA Federation of Sportsman’s Clubs booth at the Great American Outdoor Show. At the GAOS, I will be greeting fellow outdoors folk, talking up hunting, trapping, and fishing, and reminding visitors of the need for solidarity among sportsmen.
Reminder: The PFSC started the outdoor show that is now the GAOS, back in 1954. And it was I who wrote the call to boycott former show promoter Reid Exhibitions, after they refused to allow modern sporting rifles in the show, and it was PFSC leaders who spread the boycott call far and wide and started it going and which drove off the British-owned Reid Exhibitions and paved the way for the NRA to take over the show. So the PFSC has been central to the GAOS and all the good stuff that goes with it for a very long time.
Here in Pennsylvania we have an unusual arrangement that no other state has. We have a league of exceptional people, dedicated to wildlife and habitat conservation, sound policy, and full-throated Second Amendment freedom. No other group in America, much less Pennsylvania, does what the PA Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs does at the state level. Everyone benefits from PFSC’s daily work at the Capitol: Birders, wildflower enthusiasts, hikers, and yes, hunters, trappers, and fishermen, too.
One way GAOS visitors can support the outdoor sports is by purchasing a PFSC $5 raffle ticket. Every year people win nice guns and lots of money. It is a good investment, because even if you don’t win (and I never win), you are supporting PFSC’s full-time lobbyist and part-time support staff, so that all outdoorsmen have a constant voice in politics. PFSC is the main reason Pennsylvania bears no resemblance to our surrounding states, with their crazy anti gun laws and emphasis on animal “rights.”
Sorry, NFL, aka Kaepernick and Roger Goodell, you have made yourself irrelevant to me, and by acting so aggressively against America, you have reminded me and many other Americans of what is most important. It’s not entertainment, it’s not beer commercials (Budweiser has a pro-open borders ad, so kiss that beer goodbye from our future family purchases), it’s not hotdogs or even the company of friends. What matters most is bolstering the people and the values that have always made America great. And here in Central Pennsylvania, that means keeping company with fellow outdoorsmen.
See you at the GAOS! And God bless America.
NPR’s alternative facts undermine media credibility
Seasoned NPR employee Mara Liasson asked a question at a White House press briefing the other day, and it has taken me days to accept the brazenness of her bald-faced lie.
Asking Trump Admin spokesman Sean Spicer about allegations of voter fraud, Liasson asserted that Trump had claimed the number of fraudulent votes in the November 2016 election were between three and five million.
Unfortunately, Spicer is new and did not challenge Liasson’s lie. Trump never claimed that number. He did say he believed between one and two million of the votes for Hillary Clinton were fraudulent. How Liasson arrived at five million votes is something only she knows.
But we know why she did it: Mara Liasson is personally opposed to the Trump Administration.
Unfortunately, Mara Liasson is like the other NPR employees, she is a partisan political activist. Her personal politics shapes her professional behavior. Nothing that Mara Liasson does is news reporting, as in reporting of actual facts. Her brazen creation of alternative facts in this one instance resembles her many prior years of alternative facts creation and fake news aimed at her other political enemies.
In one public moment, Mara Liasson has re-opened the worm can of fake news and alternative facts, used to attack and undermine the mainstream media’s political enemies.
And NPR fans wonder why their credibility is so low, and why there are so many loud calls to defund NPR and strip it of the publicly owned intellectual property it manages, like its trademarks and logos.
UPDATE: Fifteen minutes after writing this, I read a New York Times article published today, written by Richard Fausset, another political activist who wears the credentials of a “news reporter.”
What catches my eye right away is the following statement by Activist Fausset:
“The scrambling of what’s real and what’s illusion began well before Mr. Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway offered the concept of “alternative facts” on Sunday when commenting on false statements by Mr. Trump and Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, and before Mr. Trump’s repeated false claims on Monday that millions of illegal voters cost him a popular vote majority.”
“Black Shoes. Basic Blues. No Names. All Game”…. gets me back in the game
Congratulations to the Penn State football team on its defeat of Wisconsin for the Big Ten conference title last night.
How strange that Ohio State is in the running for the national title, when they neither beat Penn State in the regular season (OSU lost to PSU), nor did they win their conference (PSU won it last night).
We are back in the familiar conundrum of old, where PSU got and still gets no respect. How many decades did PSU go winning, winning, and winning, but frequently blocked from playing for the national title?
It is time to stop this unfairness and give to PSU what is their due: A shot at the national title. This requires making the OSU guys feel bad, which is nearly always what happened to PSU in the past. Sorry OSU, enjoy a shot of your own medicine.
After coach Joe Paterno was railroaded and publicly humiliated at PSU by a weak board and a weaker CYA-run administration that made former assistant coach Mike McQueery a wealthy man, my interest in PSU everything pretty much dropped to zero. I stopped watching the games, stopped caring, stopped donating to the university, and basically dropped PSU from my life. The cataclysmic Paterno auto de fe signaled a break from the core values and principles I had grown up with and identified with. I was no longer Penn State Proud.
That said a lot, because I grew up in the State College area, graduated from PSU, my mother has her PhD from PSU, and I attended PSU home games from the time I was seven until I left for Vanderbilt to pursue my career as an academic. Plenty of our family have graduated from PSU, and watching Penn State football together during the holidays was a family tradition. I went to school with two of the Paterno kids and still maintain contact with one of them, the one I was closest to and spent the most time with. Time spent in the Paterno home listening to Coach Paterno recruit players shaped my own life. He was all about clean living.
Last night’s win over Wisconsin was meaningful to me not because PSU is back in the winning game, but because the fans, the alumni, the board (more on that pathetic, worthless PSU board of trust-less-ees in a moment) and the administration have given Coach Franklin the breathing room to resurrect the destroyed team from the ashes of annihilation at the hands of State Senator Jake Corman, disgraced pedophile Jerry Sandusky, the NCAA, former FBI head Louis Freeh (a great fiction writer), PSU administrators, and the worthless PSU board.
Coach Franklin needed the space and time to breathe new life into a program that always was and always should be top ten quality. He needed the kind of space and patience Paterno had received. Getting the damned names off the jerseys, and getting back to the no-frills basics of Black Shoes, Basic Blues, No Names, All Game. Getting this space marks somewhat of a return to normalcy, where professionals are allowed to be professionals. Professionalism was one of the former hallmarks of PSU football. Staid dedication and loyalty were once a hallmark of PSU administrative culture. The former players’ conservative, humble, and respectful approach to playing football always contrasted with the weak hotdogging that plagues the NFL and most college teams.
Shades of Coach Joe Paterno here. Might we be touching greatness again? I am looking.
So I am now finding myself maybe interested once again in PSU football. But not all football, because I am still boycotting the NFL – not one NFL game watched this season – due to the league’s support of anti-America player Colin Kaepernick. Thank you, PSU folks. This could be rewarding to me, as leaving PSU football was a sad time in my life.
Now, about the PSU Board of Trustees, that worthless aggregation of empty names that supposedly runs Penn State University.
Last week, Harrisburg businessman Alex Hartzler was appointed to the PSU board by Governor Wolf. Alex and I attended PSU together, and we were both active in politics there. We have stayed in touch for the past fifteen years. Alex’s entrance into the snake den is a bright spot, because simply put, Alex don’t give a sh*t about whatever crybaby weak stuff the other members are bringing in as fodder for their continued presence there.
Alex and I differ on almost every policy subject. He is one of the few Democrats I know to ever emerge from Lancaster County, and a farm boy at that. I am a Constitutional conservative who thinks the Republican Party is worthless, and also from Pennsylvania farm country. While Alex has maintained his partisan loyalty to one party, even as it was going over the cliff, he has always displayed a sharp and incisive intellect and tough attitude that brooks no bullcrap. I think Alex Hartzler is exactly the kind of person to help PSU get its act together. Yes, he will want policies on climate change junk science, same-sex bathrooms, and a bunch of other PC issues that I believe are unworthy of consideration let alone debate, but at the end of the day, I expect to see lightning bolts from the moribund board. Thank you, Alex.
Let’s get the PSU show back on the road.
Why we hunt
Deer rifle season starts Monday (tomorrow) morning, and for about three quarters of a million Pennsylvania hunters, this is an early Christmas. The excitement is palpable at every gas station, outdoor store, and hunting area.
I’m hoping my son will get a deer, either a doe or a buck, because last year he was twelve and slept through the taking of a buck we had planned would be his to harvest. Now that he’s thirteen and feeling more focused, we are both excited about his prospect of becoming a man. The hunting rite of passage is as old as humanity, and is more meaningful than just about all others I can find. This is a big step for my boy, and I’m operating as his guide, spotter, coach, and cheerleader. It’s tough to tell who is more excited, he or I.
I myself hunt because it makes me feel fully human. Asking some newer hunting buddies who hail from big metropolitan areas why they hunt yielded these responses:
“Hunting off the beaten path makes me feel more connected to the food we eat. I enjoy the strategy, teamwork, cooperation and effort that it takes to put together a successful hunt.” -Shai
“I hunt for the chase, the mystery, the outdoors and to outwit.” -Jon
“I hunt because it brings a tremendous sense of honesty to my life. Although I keep kosher and do not eat the animals I harvest, I donate the meat to friends and to the homeless through state programs. Participating in every step of the process, from field to table has given me an appreciation for and honest perspective of the meat I do eat. Furthermore, a hunt that ends without game is still a success because it gives me the opportunity to honestly reflect on everything else in my life.” – Adam
“I hunt to understand what it means to provide for oneself. While living in a major city, it is very easy to exist but no way to understand what it means to provide for oneself. Hunting is a way to force yourself to think about what’s really important and how to refocus our efforts to accomplish it. Plus it allows for a really really great stories knowing I have certain skills that will help me in certain circumstances is a necessary endeavor.” -Max
“I hunt because it’s real. Not some video game or some movie or tv show. Although the ultimate goal of hunting is to kill, hunting makes me appreciate life. It reminds me how rugged and yet precious life can be. It makes me feel alive. It makes friendships more meaningful, time more valuable. Hunting reminds me to live, not just exist.” – Irv
These are men fairly new to hunting, but their answers likely speak for the millions of other more experienced hunters in America.
Bottom line: Hunting is a deep, often spiritual undertaking.
Recently I hosted a hunter from Scotland, where it is actually illegal to bow hunt. He came to America to hunt buck, turkey, and bear at our cabin in the Pennsylvania “Big Woods.”
After nine days he had passed on some nice bucks, because they were not what he wanted. After a lifetime of killing deer with silenced rifles in Scotland, this man came that far distance just to experience a more primitive, more challenging way of hunting.
Though he returned home with no heads or hides to show for his remarkable diligence, he tells me “I am haunted by whitetail deer, I even dream about them now” because they are so cagey, wary, beautiful, difficult to kill. His sensory experience alone in the woods with one of humanity’s oldest weapons, and his memories of that, were sufficient satisfaction for him.
Good luck tomorrow, hunters. Enjoy our sport, which is safer than cheerleading, basketball, football, soccer, and a host of other recreational pastimes Americans readily accept as part of our culture. Except hunting is not a pastime. It is us, it is human.
End University Tenure, Now
College professors enjoy employment-for-life called “tenure.”
Long ago tenure was created to attract the best and brightest educators, and to buffer them from the whimsy of changing administrations by ensuring they could remain in their ivory tower and continue to think Big Thoughts.
The tenure process is pretty much an in-house show, where the most senior fellow academicians in the particular department pass judgment upon an applicant’s teaching and publishing history, as well as her personality, professional demeanor, and other considerations that are utterly forbidden in the rest of the hiring process everywhere else in every other line of work.
Once tenured, a college professor is more or less untouchable. Even egregious violations of basic workplace conduct, such as sexual harassment of students and colleagues, are usually swept aside in the interest in of preserving face. Department standing usually trumps actual productivity and usefulness. Toxic cruelty, viciousness, and unprofessional “bomb throwing” by university staff are behaviors now not only expected but nearly de rigeur to establish street cred, irrespective of field.
Galileo comes to mind as someone who could have benefited from tenure. The great ground-breaking Italian philosopher and astronomer was constantly harassed, victimized, physically threatened, and nearly bankrupted by a religious-political establishment unhappy about Galileo’s deviation from the conventional narrative.
Other free thinkers like him in his day were publicly flogged into a screaming bloody pulp before then being burned alive atop a pile of fresh green boughs, which give a low, slow heat that hurts and does not char. Slow-roasting in the public square was a risk Galileo ran to improve science, a benefit we all today enjoy.
Today, many Galileo-type educators and researchers find themselves professionally stranded by a ring of fire commanded by a politically correct band of tenured faculty who behave much like Galileo’s tormentors back in the 1400s.
Real academics and researchers are now trying to understand “global climate change,” but they reach scientific conclusions contrary to the politically acceptable talking points propounded by tenured faculty who themselves are funded by extreme foundations far outside the mainstream. Free thinkers and real scientists today stand much less of a chance of getting their PhD, much less achieving the protection of tenure in which to pursue their scientific research. The careers of intellectuals who do not conform with the left’s narrative about human-caused global climate change find their careers abruptly terminated.
Political orthodoxy trumps actual scientific curiosity. Science has become heavily politicized. This condition marks the end of science. Galileo’s attackers could not have done any better, and in fact just today anti-Trump, anti-democracy agitators from within the Hillary Clinton campaign are publishing personal details and home addresses of professionals who do not toe the Left’s line on the outcome of the election. They have done the same with college professionals who dare to stand alone, to think differently.
This week my daughter received two wild anti-democracy, anti-Trump emails from two of her biology professors at a nationally prominent university. Fearful of being degraded, humiliated, harassed, or literally downgraded for disagreeing with them, she found herself browbeaten and feeling coerced into showing up at a political rally having nothing to do with the subject of microbiology, for which our family is paying a princely sum. She did not show up at the rally her two biology professors urged her to join, and she now anxiously awaits their judgment that she somehow “failed” because she did not join in something she finds detestable.
This is the decayed state of academia today, and this is why tenure must end. Tenure no longer serves its original purpose, and in fact the beneficiaries of tenure have themselves become the very thought police and public executioners they were supposed to be protected from.
Tenure is a liability, and it allows university educations to become an expensive farce. Tenure is a benefit no other employee enjoys in any other line of work, and instead of being the outlaw exception, academia should be exceptional, derived through competition and the rise of excellence.
It is time to put all university faculty on five-year contracts, and judge them objectively: How well their students enjoyed their classes, how useful their publications are to their field and to larger American society. Professors who believe it is their role and right to harass and coerce students into politically correct thinking can be let go to find better work, and actual productive professors can stay on another five years and continue to bring real value to society.
Let’s start with the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, and set a national trend. Pennsylvania taxpayers deserve their money’s worth, because God knows, I am not getting it at my daughter’s school.
Voting for Hillary?
Voters who select Hillary Clinton now forever disqualify themselves from criticizing any future candidate. There has never been nor is there likely again to be a candidate as unqualified and as corrupt as Clinton.
Knowingly choosing Clinton means a voter forfeits their ability to credibly attack future candidates. If Clinton is worth your vote, then anyone is worth voting for, because a candidate cannot be worse than Hillary Clinton.
Sure, you could disagree on policy with a future candidate, but you could not fairly accuse that person of being flawed. If Hillary isn’t too flawed for you now, then no one can ever be flawed again.
Hold Hillary to the same standard you have for other candidates, or forget being taken seriously.
Hypocrosy corrodes credibility. Don’t be a hypocrite. Vote for Trump and hope he’s happy to leave after one term.
End of Summer, Beginning of Cool Fall Begs Question: How Do People Live in Hot Climates Year-Round?
Temperate environments offer everyone something: Hot, cold, cool, warm, damp, dry, etc., at any given time of the year. It is true that at some points on the calendar, the heat or cold there may be intense. But those moments are but a temporary blip. A week or two this way or that way. Better weather always awaits, not too far around the corner. In temperate climates, Spring and Fall are typically the most enjoyable times of the year to be outside, with moderate temperatures lulling us to sleep under blankets at night, and refreshing us with gentle warmth during the day.
The margins around Summer and Winter always promise something better, and are full of natural hope. When Winter ends, the world here begins to grow. Life! Anew!
When someone cheerfully says “Yes, we are moving to Florida,” I wonder what the hell they are thinking. Not even the Seminole Indians truly appreciated or enjoyed the brutal heat and humidity there. Until they were driven into the Everglades at first, and then off the land entirely by Europeans, the Seminoles daily used the coastal waters to cool off during the Summer heat. Natural air conditioning worked for a semi-nomadic, highly mobile society like theirs. Today? Good God y’all, the place is a sweat factory from May through October, and only livable during the winter months. It is 100% artificial living.
Yes, I understand, many Americans are now so delicately sensitive to cold that they must be surrounded by expensive artificial air conditioning nine months of the year in order to remove themselves from three months of cold up north.
What is lost there is a natural, innate resilience our forefathers enjoyed. An ability to put up with brief extremes and discomforts. One must naturally wonder what sort of character traits are bred into or out of a people so devoid of natural discomforts that they shoehorn themselves into an unnatural environment.
That said, I am right now listening to a political rally going on at the otherwise sedate and beautifully historic Dixon University Center two blocks away from here. Tired old saws through a bullhorn like “What do we want? Justice. Now” are disturbing Harrisburg’s one remaining nice neighborhood. Delicate little snowflake people there are demanding some special treatment or other which they have neither earned nor deserve. Apparently the artificial environment created for them by taxpayers and hard working Americans is insufficiently comfortable, and they want MORE, NOW! [, Mom]
Please go to Florida, fake protest people. We deal in real here. It’s a temperate zone, dontcha know?
And boy, does Hurricane Matthew now entering south Florida add a whole new meaning to “hot area.”