Posts Tagged → snow
Flintlock season recap
- Gunmaker Mark Wheland with the gun of my dreams, a flintlock English Sporting Rifle made just for me
Writing a blog is a delicate walk, because as much as I want to write about the righteous boss daddy treatment President Trump gave to weasel rat dictator Zelensky the other day, I have to stay focused on what our audience of exactly One Person has requested. If I turn off my one reader, then I will literally be writing solely for the air and the stars.
For the record, just because you or I call Zelensky (Ukraine) the weasel rat dictator he is, does not mean that you or I automatically like or support dictator Putin (Russia). Both of these men are in power because they have subverted their nations’ elections, amassed wealth and power at the expense of their countrymen, etc. Yes, Putin is responsible for the war in Ukraine, and yes, Ukraine can and should negotiate a settlement that ends the bloodshed. And yes, Trump should demand and expect to receive rare earth metals in return for all of the taxpayer support Americans have given to Ukraine. This is all normal.
Wanting the war to go on and on with greater bloodshed and destruction on both sides and with more powerful rockets is not normal. That is warmongering.
Anyhow, the late hunting season here in Central Pennsylvania was exciting, but had no filled tags. I used to rabbit hunt a lot, but gave up when the rabbit populations showed signs of vaporizing due to abundant fishers and bobcats. For five or six years now I have hardly seen one rabbit in places where I have created the best habitat, and where rabbits should be swarming. So for many years I have just hunted the late flintlock season for deer, instead, just about daily.
And also trapped for predators, including fishers and bobcats. Not this season, however. On the December flight back from Florida, a man behind me kept coughing and sneezing. He never covered his mouth, and made no attempt to keep from infecting everyone around him. Sure enough, a week later I was showing signs of the same horrible illness half the country has now had, a persistent dry cough and a close brush with pneumonia. Lots of people are getting the pneumonia. So, I was sick as hell during the time I normally set traps, and my kit and steel just sat and sat.
Instead, just about every day after Christmas, I would go out for a couple hours and try to intercept a deer with the new flintlock, coughing quietly into my clothes to muffle the bark. I got off a lot of shots, collected blood and hair, but filled no tags. A new white checked Filson wool coat helped me blend in with the snowy woods.
Made for me by Mark Wheland, the new flintlock is a 62-caliber rifle based on the English Sporting Rifle design, which I have come to admire. It has a 28 inch decently swamped octagonal barrel by Getz from about 15 years ago, a beautiful patent breech made by Jason Schneider at Rice Barrels, a RE Davis late-flintlock era Manton-style waterproof lock, and a gorgeous stock of highly figured and irridescent English walnut. Wheland turned a perfect ebony ramrod, as well as its horn end and its threaded steel connector end.
The Manton-style lock has a roller frizzen, which is both very fast and also very touchy. Hunting in brush without bumping the heel of my hand up against the back of the frizzen would result in some blade of grass flicking it open and dumping the priming powder on the ground. So it requires some special handling, because it is so sensitive.
I also struggled with this gun’s sights all season long, probably also slowly acclimating to the short barrel. This barrel is ten inches shorter than that on my long-time go-to 54 caliber flintlock barrel, that is 38″ long, and my eyes have not yet made the transition. Moreover, the new gun has classic British rear sights, one standing and one folding leaf. The rear sites were conveyed to me with only the most rudimentary and shallow “V” filed in the standing sight, and the front sight was about a half inch high. It was up to me, in a short amount of time, to get this gun sighted in just days before bear season began, which is just days before deer season started.
So I just struggled to get the gun sighted in, and by the time actual flintlock season began, the day after Xmas, it was printing dead center and 2.5″ high at 50 yards. With 130 grains of FFG Swiss pushing the 335-grain lead round ball about 1500 feet per second, I reckoned it was probably dead-on at 100 yards. Or minute-of-deer chest within 100 yards.
I lost track of how many shots I took at deer. Mostly at does. One probably legal buck I let walk past me. Some deer I literally just walked right up to in the snow, and missed, maybe forty yards away. Others I ambushed from concealment on trail crossings, from fifty out to about 95 yards, while sitting. Each miss resulted in a little more blacking being put on the rear sight, a little more color added here or there, and by the end of the season the front sight was filed down to about 1/8″ high and painted bright neon orange. The rear sight has a bright neon yellow inverted V wedge under the V aperature, surrounded by black. I am thinking about scrapping the entire arrangement and going to front and rear fiber optic sights. Old eyes…
One doe was flattened by what seemed like a perfect broadside at 75 yards. I saw her go down through the cloud of smoke, and when I walked up I expected to find her stone cold dead. But while there was a perfect outline of her body in the snow, with plenty of blood, the actual deer was nowhere to be found. With dusk fast approaching, I used my headlamp to follow as far as I could in the snow and the thick brambles, and then went home. The next morning I returned and took up the trail, which resulted in three deer fleeing from fresh beds, one of which had some fresh drips of blood, but not much. Not even the coyotes would end up eating her.
My last shot of the season was taken like a mortar, at the biggest buck I have ever seen in the wild. He was just a bit over 200 yards away, and had been spooked out of his hidey nook by my prowling. When I snuck back towards the anticipated cut-off, he was indeed standing right there, looking all around, on high alert. While down wind, I was as close as I could get without being seen. So I took some pictures of him, which of course did not come out well, and then took careful aim with plenty of “Kentucky elevation” and let ‘er rip. At the shot he flew away with wings, and on my follow up I found where the big lead ball had hit the ground at plane, leaving a 20-foot-long long streak through the snow and dirt directly in line with the buck’s shoulder, but about 20 yards too short. His tracks were among the biggest I have ever seen. Guessing a 200″ buck.
The doe was flattened, and leaked some hydraulic fluid, but was gone and lived on
I have a lot more practice to do with this gun.
What looks like a shallow white “W” is just the higher visibility part of the huge buck’s enormous rack
Overnight beds, tiny amount of blood, a mere flesh wound and a long-lived lucky deer
The long path cut by the 335-grain round ball on its way towards the big buck
Nice view down into the woods, perfect for a flintlock. Yes, the barrel key is loose, which accounted for two missed shots
Hunting around an enormous buck capable of leaving big rubs like this one is excitement enough. Actually seeing him and getting a shot…even the miss is the highlight of the season
Have a wonderful Xmas+ season, friends
Whatever your nationality, nation of origin, religion of origin or religious practice or faith, if you live in America, it is Christmas time. For orthodox Christians this time of the year has a special meaning, and for everyone else it absolutely must be just barely a notch below how orthodox Christians feel.
No Grinches allowed, only happiness and goodwill towards our fellow human being. You do not have to be Christian to enjoy Christmas, to go with the cheerful, happy flow, to give your annoying neighbor or co-worker a bit of leeway, to give someone the go-ahead at the opposite stop sign. Do it, it will feel good.
Wish people “Merry Christmas!” and see how happy they are to hear the earnest expression of our national holiday, two words that were almost obliterated from the American lexicon for fear of “offending” someone.
Hey, if you are actually offended by hearing Merry Christmas here in America, for a grand total of two weeks, then America is probably not for you. Take your unhappiness and lack of appreciation for our solid, stable society to someplace else.
Having just returned from some much-needed beach time and saltwater fishing, I am having to move fast into the snow, ice, and wood fire mode. Trapping season is upon me (I always wait for rifle season to end, so there are fewer people in the woods, and I also wait for bobcat and fisher seasons to start, so I don’t have to release those two prize species before their seasons start), as well as the late flintlock season.
Some fruit trees need major pruning, and a couple need a copper sulfate spray before spring arrives.
Good luck to everyone who is headed to the outdoors for more, whether it is skiing, hunting, ice skating, snow shoeing. Eat it up, drink it up, relish it, because in a few weeks it will all be over, and we will then be looking at Freezing February and then the glimmers of Spring in March.
Until then, Merry Christmas, everyone!
and you don’t have to be Christian to like Christmas
As much as I favor wintertime over all other seasons, there is no substitute for having morning coffee on a patio under a tropical sky, while everything back home is frozen solid
Everglades City Museum Xmas tree made of crab traps and trap buoys. This is folk art!
A limit of sea trout fed us well for several days
Even manatees can get into the holiday spirit
Rum and Coke time is never as good as when one is watching a tropical sunset over an ocean somewhere
Ballistics Lesson #439
Today I learned a ballistics lesson that I have learned before, that everyone under the sun knows, but which I always seem to forget every few years. Maybe it is not forgetting, but curious wondering that gets the better of me. If you are interested in reading about an old man making a foolish mistake, read on.
So late this morning I set out to still hunt a large section of reverting, regenerating forest. It is brutal stuff – blackberry, briars, weeds of every sort, and jungle-thick growth of oak and popar saplings and whips, all anchored in downed tree tops and branches from a timber sale we did about twelve years ago. It is hell to hunt, and that is why this place is full of hiding deer. So, we go to where the deer are, and if we do it right, we can still-hunt our way into close range of a fat doe or a decent buck just rising out of his bed.
When I finally got there after a fifteen minute hike, the wind was howling, tree branches were falling, leaves were flying, and the couple inches of snow on the ground made it all perfect. And so I set out very slowly walking into the wind, taking a few steps, then stopping to look all around, watching not to step on any big sticks that would make a loud crack, and also moving quickly when the wind raged. My own movements and sounds were masked by the crazy roaring winds and falling tree debris from above.
After about ten minutes of slowly picking my way downhill and into the wind, I was looking at a nice juicy doe. Probably two years old and plump, she was just 25 yards away and looking around. She probably was getting brief whiffs of me, but in the blasting seesawing winds she was not able to get a read on where the scent was coming from. Too late for her, I raised the rifle and bang, watched her standing there, unfazed. A clear miss.
Levering another round into the chamber, I took more careful aim at her, now acutely aware of the chunky backpack strap on my shoulder that was making it difficult to correctly anchor the buttstock to my cheek. With her right shoulder clearly centered in the ghost ring, I pulled the trigger and again, watched as she just stood there, stock still and unable to detect where the strange sounds and smells were coming from.
As I jacked a third round in, she suddenly jumped up and took off running fast, downhill, her head pointed low and her tail tucked. She was obviously hit by the second shot, but usually the 325 grain 45-70 caliber bullets just absolutely smash critters at that close range. I know from my own experience. But this running after the smashing blow was a new one to me.
And so I took my time to catch up to her clear trail in the leaves and snow. I searched around on the ground and found the two spent brass shells ejected from the Marlin, shook off the snow, and put them in my left front pocket.
Initially, no blood was visible, but her feet were going in all directions as she staggered. She was hard hit and struggling. A hundred yards later, large smudges of blood and hair appeared on trees. Then blood on the snow. Another hundred yards and we were out of the more open forest regeneration and back into the thick jungle. Her clumsy hoof marks were easy to see, and here and there was blood. This animal was dying and did not know it. At every turn I expected to find her lying there, expired. So much indication of impending death, and yet so much resilience to live on.
The long and short of this tale is, I ended up tracking her for over an hour, which is an eternity. During this time I had bedded deer up and running in all directions, including a large buck. If you really want deer, the thick, nasty, gnarly places are where they are hiding. But I was after this one wounded doe, and I had no eyes for any others, including one that stood up almost in front of me. After quickly checking that she was not bleeding, I let her leave.
Doing a 360 degree circle around where her last blood sign was located, I determined that she was either dead or close to dying in a large tangle of old rotting tree tops covered in Japanese stiltgrass, burdock, mile-a-minute, bramble, and briar. Nasty, difficult, not a place for a man to easily or comfortably move in, I marked where she was and moved on to the afternoon sit a mile away. Tomorrow morning I will return and find her frozen body. Unless the coyotes get to her first, she will feed a hungry family here in Central PA.
After withstanding the afternoon’s buffeting winds and feeling colder than I have in years on the edge of the crop field, I finally gathered my kit, ducked out of my friend’s blind, and headed back to the truck. He later sent me a trail camera picture of the local deer herd walking out into the crop field literally one minute after I had exited the blind. They knew I was there and were just waiting for me to leave.
Back home I emptied my pockets onto the kitchen island, including the two empty 45-70 brass cases I had emptied at the doe. Picking them up to look at them, I noticed that one of them had the Hornady stamp, and the other bore the Star Line stamp. I use the factory 325 grain Hornady FTX bullets for bear and deer hunting (very successfully with both species), and I reload the Star Line with 325 grain brass solids, from Cutting Edge Bullets, for grizzly self defense in Alaska and for black bear hunting here in Pennsylvania. Especially on drives through the laurel. These brass solids will absolutely and unstoppably smash their way through a tough grizzly bear with its heavy bones and super tough muscles, but they will ziiiiip right through a whitetail deer.
And suddenly it dawned on me. I had first overshot and missed the doe with the Hornady FTX, and then literally drilled her body through-and-through with the brass solid second shot. I had jumbled up the two loads in my pockets, and when loading the rifle I had failed to put a second Hornady FTX round in the gun as the initial followup shot. Instead, I had a grizzly bear load as the followup shot, and as one might expect, the grizzly bear load did not kill the doe on the spot. Nope. That brass solid at 2100 feet per second just zipped cleanly through her entire body like a small laser beam. None of its energy was dumped into her by the bullet mushrooming, with massive terminal shock, as the FTX is designed to do.
And only then, when back at home, did I understand why the doe had reacted that way, how she took a few seconds to realize that something bad had happened to her, but that while fatal, it was not something that was going to kill her dead right there. She was only mostly dead from the brass solid. By now, as I write this, she is most assuredly frozen solid in that tangled hell that I will go back to tomorrow morning. Hopefully the coyotes will not have found her.
Had I used the correct expanding bullet, I would have had nothing to write about tonight. It would have been just another successful slow stalk through the thick ‘n nasty, with the rifle butt up at my shoulder, the hammer back, and me ready to jump shoot a deer.
Instead, I had to re-learn a rudimentary ballistics lesson, which is if you want to kill thin skinned game, use expanding bullets that transfer all of their energy into the prey animal’s body. If you shoot a high velocity scalpel at the prey animal, it will cleanly and surgically cut it, even make neat clean holes through bones, but that wound might not bleed much and the animal might not know it is supposed to be dead until it has run a long distance away from the man with the gun, and into impossible cover.
Sign like this, blood smear and hair at deer chest height, says this is a dead deer running.
A 325 grain solid brass Cutting Edge Bullets 45-70 load I make for grizzly in Alaska is a terrible backup load for whitetail deer
Why do people trespass on private property?
During one of his many temporary incarcerations, infamous bank robber John Dillinger was asked by a news reporter why he robbed banks, and he famously quipped “Because that’s where the money is.” Funny enough, true enough, but Dillinger eventually ended up being shot to death by both civilians and a ragtag assortment of law enforcement agents who were fed up with his lawlessness.
I have been similarly wondering: Do people, particularly hunters, trespass on private property because that is where the wild game is? Or is there some other reason that turns otherwise normal people into lawless jerks who instigate their victims into acts of violent retaliatory fury?
My observation and experience is hunters, in particular, trespass on posted private land, and end up poaching wildlife there, because they are drawn to the mystery and promise of new territory. They think that a plot of private land that is carefully cultivated wildlife habitat must have some really nice, abundant, maybe even trophy wildlife on it. And sometimes these outlaws do, in fact, stumble into a kind of bank vault of wildlife, where they feel like they have hit the jackpot.
The problem with trespassing on posted private hunting land is that someone else, the landowner or a club that leases from the owner, has probably spent a lot of time and resources maintaining that land. Paying the real estate taxes on it, managing it, making it a sanctuary or haven for wildlife. All year long that landowner runs chainsaws, plants and prunes fruit trees, sprays herbicides, clears trails, plants various crops like clover that most wildlife find attractive.
These considerable efforts are done for the benefit of the landowner, his family, his friends, or for the club members who pay him for the opportunity to exclusively hunt there, in a very brief window of time. Hunting seasons are usually just a few weeks long. This investment of time and money is like any other investment, say, a savings account at your local bank. Or your retirement pension.
Trespassing and poaching are not victimless crimes. A landowner’s entire year’s work can go out the window from it.
Trespassers enter into the private property and, purposefully or by mistake, disturb the wildlife, maybe scare it away and off the property; poachers kill the wildlife. These disruptions come at a great cost to the landowner, who for 50 prior weeks has been working hard, husbanding the land’s natural resources, and suddenly finds himself at a disadvantage when he should be reaping his just reward.
Someone else has come along and taken advantage of all his hard work and investment, someone else has claimed his reward that he was looking forward to. Most often, the trespass intrusion and poaching so greatly disturb the property’s carefully arranged balance, that the landowner gets little to nothing of what he had worked so hard to attain. And hunting seasons are so brief that there is no time to wait out the disturbance.
This is exactly how both trespassing and poaching are forms of theft. Thievery. Scumbag-ness. Dirtball-ness. A-hole-ness. And when someone has stolen something from the landowner, the landowner can get angry about it. Sometimes really, really angry. Especially if the thief acts like the whole thing is no big deal. Because it is a really big deal to screw a landowner over and steal away from him his hard work and promise of success.
Confession time: I have been a scary person when encountering trespassers and poachers (scary to them and often to me). Not long ago a warden asked me to consider becoming a deputy warden, and I responded that I could not do that, because I get so angry at trespassers and game thieves that it would be unbecoming to see someone in an official uniform lose their cool. Yes, I have had people charged in court, but often my hand tightly around someone’s shirt collar while they get roughly dragged off the property is enough to convince trespassers that other venues hold more promise and less danger. I don’t know if many other landowners operate this way, but I am super old school. A facility with firearms and knowledge of the law also helps build confidence when dealing with armed trespassers and poachers.
As one state trooper said to a trespasser I had roughly collared, “Yes, Josh is armed. But YOU are armed, too. Is he supposed to let you shoot him so you can make your getaway? Here is your citation, do not come back here.”
Some people trespass because they are looking for things to steal, including rare plants or animals, or to drive off wild game they don’t want the landowner to get. Others trespass so they can poach wildlife through illegal hunting. Others may simply get a jolt of excitment, or are simply curious.
Folks, trespassing and poaching are a really big deal. Some landowners make a significant income from leasing their hunting land, and poachers undermine that investment. Some landowners treasure their privacy, and seeing an armed thief skulking around their property makes them feel directly threatened. So don’t do it. Don’t think it is no big deal to slip past the No Trespassing purple paint or sign and “just take my gun for a walk” or take a Sunday drive up that posted driveway.
That walk that comes so casually to you, the trespasser, comes at someone else’s expense, even if you do not see it right then. And it could end up costing you everything. No wild game animal is worth getting in trouble over, and certainly not losing your life or mobility for.
The answer to the temptation to trespass on private land is to listen to that little voice in the back of your mind warning you not to take the chance. Go to public lands for your hunting and fishing adventures. Here in Pennsylvania, public lands are super abundant. If you don’t like sharing public lands with the general public, why then, go buy yourself a piece of land and make it your very own wildlife sanctuary.
Had the once popular John Dillinger stopped robbing banks when he made that cute quip of his, he could have easily slipped away into anonymity and comfortable living, or even into celebrity and wealthy living as a free man. But he pushed it too far, and paid the ultimate price. Like too many thieves pay every day….Guys, don’t trespass and don’t poach.
And yes, baiting is a form of poaching and wild game theft. Don’t do it.
********
UPDATE December 2, 2024: Today I was sitting on a remote hillside in Northcentral Pennsylvania, with a rifle across my knees, overlooking private land surrounded by about two million acres of public land, enjoying the snow-covered serenity. Suddenly, loud voices approaching from behind grabbed my attention. Through a normally silent piece of state forest emerged four young men, in hunter orange and preparing to drive off the piece of private land.
Looking at the leader, who was giving specific directions about how to spread out and push the deer off the private land, I turned to face all of them and asked “Did we grant you permission to hunt here?”
“I mean, we have a bunch of people down in there right now, deer hunting, and they don’t expect to have anyone walking through.”
The curse-word filled abuse heaped on me caught me off guard. Me, easily the age of the fathers of these four young men, very much their elder and merely a private landowner asking an elementary question that any landowner would ask of uninvited guests, was now the bad guy.
“Eff you” Eff this” “Eff him” “Eff that” were the nicer things said to me as the young men checked that the boundary was clearly marked and backed up and regrouped.
I do not know or understand who raises such poorly behaved and aggressive young men, but for those who are inclined to ascribe poor behavior only to people with dark skin, I am here to tell you these were four white guys. Out in the middle of the big nowhere, armed with rifles, and acting like a criminal gang. With all their anger, I wondered if one of them was going to shoot me in the back.
They had already loudly walked a half mile from their remote parking spot (that itself is a long and arduous drive to reach) through laurel-choked oak woods that normally is full of deer, as the abundant deer tracks in the deep snow attested to. What if these four “hunters” had done a silent deer drive from their vehicle out to the private land they intended to sneak on? They might have already bagged a deer. Instead, they talked so loudly, so boisterously, for so long, that I thought they much have been forest workers. Never in my life have I heard hunters this loud in the woods.
Their behavior makes no sense, unless their goal was simply to spoil the posted private land that they already know is off-limits and that they were jealous of and wanted to ruin for hunting by anyone else….
The deer that got away, but shouldn’t have
Below is the buck after the second bullet, at about 140 yards, the hole of which is visible behind his shoulder; a classic behind-the-shoulder double lung/ top of heart hit. Usually it’s immediately fatal. Usually the animal is knocked down by the impact. But not that day. He absorbed the second soft point without moving, just standing there broadside, as if I had completely missed him. Even after he dropped he had a lot of life and fight left, as can be seen in his death spiral in the snow.
My challenge was that I did not see him fall, which happened while I was fumbling with my binoculars. Because I do not often use a rifle scope, I do not maintain a magnified field of view after my shot. Going back and forth between open sights and binoculars is my process.
As an aside, you may wonder why I use open sights, or you may be one of those people who deride open sights. Shooting instinctively with open sights is how I grew up and how I learned to hunt. Unlike a scope, open sights can take a lot more abuse in the field before they go out of whack. Unlike a scope, they cannot possibly lose their “zero” after spending eleven months in a closet. Open sights are absolutely reliable, and perfectly effective. Recall that American infantry are qualified on open sights out to 600 yards (or meters), so it is not like these things are relics from the past. Open sights are the best option, provided they are installed correctly and checked annually.
My preference for open sights is about more than performance, however. It has to do with how I like to hunt: On foot, getting close to the animal, within its sensory zone, and trying to kill it on its own terms, up close. This is a true contest of skill, not an assassination. And I hardly think an open-sighted center fire rifle is a disadvantage; it is a huge advantage over a spear or a bow. Scoped rifles are just that much more of an advantage.
So, I did not see the buck fall, and he fell into a small swale where I could not see him. Not wanting to stink up the woods and ruin further hunting, I sat on my butt and scoured the woods for signs of a deer. In fact, I saw a large buck a couple hundred yards away sneak into a thick tree top blowdown. It made me think the buck I had shot at was gut-shot and sneaking away to lie down, and so I did not push him. Only when the crows showed up over an hour later was it evident that the buck was in fact dead right where I had last seen him.
Deer season mostly in the rearview mirror
All year we hunters wait for deer rifle season like excited little kids holding our breath for some big, special treat. And then rifle season arrives, we run ourselves ragged, and suddenly…a switch is thrown…it is all over.
Where did all our fun times and friends and family go? Why, they were sitting with us having dinner and laughing just minutes ago, and adventuring around the beautiful woods together just hours ago…and now…now my life seems so very quiet, and humdrum.
Like the three days of bear season, the two weeks of deer season are so highly anticipated, and yet they are also then over so, so quickly. I guess this is the way of all fun times.
This year I can’t think of any woods I hunted in that had many or any acorns. This absence of food literally caused mountain deer to migrate. It was wild to see, or not see, as the word “see” can be taken to mean, because we hardly saw many deer in the mountains. Sure, we took some, and I have no complaints, as I know plenty of people who did not even get a shot at a deer, much less see any. I was able to pick and choose some shots, and one that I declined on a very nice buck I regretted soon after. That shot was not a “good” shot, but would have hit him right in the middle of the ribs. A liver shot, and almost immediately fatal. But a tracking job nonetheless, and not a shot I would have been proud of.
And so that buck lived to see another day, and because I had not filled my buck tag in 2019, I felt both very grown up for having made the correct decision and also very foolish for having not taken what was given to me.
But the mountain hunters did not have a lot of luck in rifle season, the best hunting having happened in October and early November during archery season. Plenty of browse and some few acorns were available for the deer then, and they were not feeling so pressured and anxious about food as they are now. No, the mountain hunters sat and waited, or did drives and yet still waited to see deer. But the deer, desiring not to starve to death, migrated on to whatever food sources they could find, and there they still sit.
Well, the fact is that the north country is seriously socked in with deep snow. Like a solid two to almost three feet in most places. The deer can hardly move through this, let alone paw or browse for food under it. Additionally, as soon as warm temperatures arrive, or a few hours of rain, that deep snow will have a thick, hard crust on top of it. And the deer will not be able to walk on it, stand on it, feed on it. Like we had in 2005, we will probably see a serious deer die-off across big parts of the Big Woods north country from this deep snow in the coming week. In 2005, after a similar deep snow with a heavy crust, I recall finding dozens of deer carcasses all over the mountains around us. In some instances the coyotes were able to close the distance and just pull them down, but in a lot of situations, the deer just laid down on that crusty snow, curled up, and starved to death.
Pretty sad, even for conservationists who know the mountain deer herds needed to be thinned out for the sake of forest health.
Down in the farmland, the deer seemed to be doing just dandy. In farm country, edge habitat browse and waste grain are so abundant that the plague of four-legged deer locusts have no trouble making a living, deep snow or not. Flintlock season cannot come too soon for the farm country, where our own tenant farmer informed me a few weeks ago that the deer have eaten all of our profit to the point where we can no longer afford to grow corn or soybeans. Going forward, we will only be growing hay.
For hunters having trouble understanding what this means, let me explain. If the farmer cannot make money from farming because the over-abundant deer eat up his profits, then the farmer cannot afford to pay the land owner a healthy per-acre rent that pays the land taxes and covers many annual maintenance costs. If farming won’t pay the costs of farm land, then maybe a few house lots here or there will pay…and thus is beautiful, sacred farmland slowly, inexorably, sadly converted to pavement. By deer no less.
And so in farm country, deer managers like me see deer more like rats than like deer. Rats are vermin, the overabundant deer become vermin, and deer hunting becomes less of an adventure, and more of a chore, or a jihad, to protect the beautiful landscape from becoming one more housing development.
These are some reflections on deer season. I have not killed a deer with a flintlock in many years, and hopefully this season I will. God knows, the farmland needs all the help it can get.
Has anyone considered unplugging Spring and plugging it back in to see if it will work right?
Not my creative headline, unfortunately, but a good one nonetheless, and well put in terms of how odd this Spring has been.
Except that this Spring has not been odd, if my memory serves me right. Not in the context of Spring happening over millennia and even over decades. Spring used to be a lot like the on-again-off-again odd weather we have experienced the past month.
When I was a kid, lo these many decades ago, Spring was a process. It was not a moment in time.
Spring took time to become Spring. It was the spaced-out staging of leaves and buds emerging, green poking up through the soil a bit at a time.
“April showers bring May flowers” went the old adage. Meaning that as a precursor to the warm weather with flowers was a sustained period of rain and cool or cold weather. That was Spring, spanning cold, rain, cold rain, and the gradual emergence of green things and then the crowning sign – flowers!
Showers, heck, I recall a snow blizzard in early April as I was casting a small dry fly on the lower reaches of Big Fishing Creek in Clinton County, near the Lamar trout hatchery. In my early twenties, in fact I might have been just twenty years old, I was stubbornly casting to “rising” trout despite a white-out snow storm blanketing the air and the stream’s surface with big white snowflakes. That a trout could tell the difference between a huge plump snowflake and a measly morsel of a vague-looking aquatic insect landing briefly on the surface was a leap of faith I was fully committed to taking, and making with every cast.
My youth’s crowning moment arrived when a much older man, probably someone my age now, stopped to watch me casting the dry fly amidst the snow storm.
“Pretty ambitious, dontcha think?,” he humorously called out from up above.
And right then a big fish whacked my drifting fly, and I hauled in one of the most colorful symbols of Spring, an iridescent rainbow trout. The guy looked at me slack-jawed, eyes wide in amazement, like I was some kind of fishing genius, and I looked up at the snowing heavens and mouthed a “Thank You.” One of the more memorable fish and fishing moments in a lifetime of fishing.
That day the air temperature was still spring-like, but the obvious above-ground temperatures were cold enough to generate snow. It was a classic symbol of the kind of gradual and slowly shifting, two steps forward one step back warming change that Spring used to be.
But that was thirty, forty years ago. A different world, a different climate.
Apparently the earth’s switching magnetic polarity is now playing a big role in the Winter-to-Summer “Spring” times we have experienced for a long time now. This switch happens naturally every 200,000 to 300,000 years.
Because the earth’s polarity is switching, which means the North Pole becoming the South Pole and vice-versa (but what we arbitrarily call North and South remain the same) the earth’s magnetic field-cum-shield is at its weakest. Earth’s magnetic shield is at its weakest because the poles are swapping positions and the magnetic field strung up between the two poles is stretched to its thinnest. The earth’s magnetic field-cum-shield is one of the reasons our planet has so much life on it; a great deal of harmful cosmic rays and powerful solar ultraviolet (UV) light are caught in the magnetic “net” and they are blocked from reaching the earth’s surface.
Therefore, a lot more solar radiation has penetrated to the earth’s surface over the past few decades, with the kinds of unusual heat, warming, and strong winds that we have witnessed. As well as a lot more quick sunburns under what appear to be pretty normal sunny conditions. The sun is not necessarily stronger, but a lot more of its energy is reaching us. For now.
And that takes me back to that unplugging Spring. For about 35 years Spring has been kind of unplugged, in a way, and it will remain so for about another decade, until the polar switch is complete. And then these gradual Springtimes, like the one we just had, will become normal again.
I can’t wait for that to happen, because I enjoy a real Spring so very much, the change from one season to the next. Normally temperate climes like Pennsylvania appeal to me for that very reason.
Everything hinges on the nickel-iron core inside the earth. And we won’t be unplugging THAT any time soon.
Magic is in the air, and so is Spring
Today may be the first day of Spring, but you’d never know it, with all the snow that fell last night and today. Despite freezing temperatures all over the east, however, there is magic in the air. And it carries Spring on its wings. We can take heart. Nicer weather is indeed here.
Last night I stood way up north on a mountain side, surrounded by a silent, black, and deeply starry sky. Suddenly faint and quiet song and voices reached my ears. What started out as human sounds that put me on guard then became the distinctly identifiable gabble of migrating geese, high above, flying northward.
Magically migrating geese, ducks, raptors, and songbirds passing through our neighborhoods and yards tell us that Spring is here, even if our eyes and heating bills indicate otherwise. Migration is a mysterious thing. Some of it is now understood by scientists, and appreciated by novice naturalists, but much of it remains shrouded in utter mystery. How did these birds develop this pattern? Was it after the last Ice Age, ten thousand years ago, or was it after the previous Ice Age, 20,000 years ago? And if it was after the first one, how did they hold onto their knowledge of where and when to fly, when they spent so much time not flying at Spring time?
Migrating birds have a very thin margin for error. Go too far, too fast, and they run the risk of freezing to death, or starving, having burned too many precious calories to reach their Canadian and Arctic breeding grounds so far northward. If they are too slow, they will reach their destinations with too little time to raise their chicks to a size sufficient to survive the trek south again, when the winds get heavy on the border lands just a few months from now.
Yesterday, hundreds of geese and ducks shared the quieter eddies of the Susquehanna River in Liverpool.
Today, all around the borough of Dauphin, migrating black-headed vultures took up roosting positions like hunch-shouldered sentinels of death, harbingers of gloom and dead carrion, on trees, car tops, house roofs, power poles, and street lamps. This particular species of vulture is increasingly migrating into Pennsylvania in bigger numbers, and out-competing our more common (and “more” native) red-headed turkey vulture.
All of this magic is, to me, a sign of a the finger of God, with non-believers remaining perplexed, themselves, unable to draw upon human science alone to explain what is happening all around us. Surely my distant skin-clad ancestors stood upon a receding ice sheet somewhere, spear in hand, eyes skyward, hearts leaping for joy, as they, too, knew that this magic presaged abundant food, rebirth, new life, a new beginning for all.
Don’t take this magic for granted. Close your eyes at night and listen to the cries of the goose-honk music. Be part of this ancient cycle, if only by letting your heart be lifted with those of the excited geese, at the knowledge of the coming of Spring.
Warmer weather can’t come too soon
What began as a happy trip to the wood shed for a load of seasoned oak in the Fall is now a crabby trudge through deep snow and ice, a drudgery opposite the cheerfulness felt with the first flames to beat back Winter’s early chill.
Spring warmth cannot come too soon. Naturally, it will arrive, melt the Arctic snow cap occupying my lawn, and probably result in some Biblical flood carrying my home down river to the Chesapeake Bay.
Speaking of floods, and flood insurance, I am hopeful that the insane congresswoman Maxcine Waters will have her bizarre legislation permanently overturned, so that people can either afford to own their homes (something she is not familiar with or supportive of) or the Federal government will buy out the landowners so the societal costs and benefits are not concentrated on just the private property owners. Government cannot change the social contract in one week. Well, under liberals it can, of course. Let’s rephrase that: Government should not restructure the social contract in such a short time that private property owners see their investments destroyed overnight. That would be good government, something unknown to Maxcine Waters and her fellow liberals.
No snow plows: Harrisburg’s new policy
Former Harrisburg mayor Linda Thompson had issues, no question about it, and she’d probably be the first to admit it.
But at least she got the snowy streets plowed.
This is something the new “brilliant” administration is not doing. They’re a failure on this basic count.
I guess that if your election competition is artificially removed, so that “winning” is practically guaranteed, you might think that it’s easy, this governing stuff.
If our streets are not going to be plowed, then what is the role of government?
UPDATE: Fifteen minutes after this post went up, a snow plow cleared a lane here in Uptown Harrisburg. First time all winter. I cannot claim responsibility, but I will admit to being surprised. I had been under the impression that the city’s snow plows had all been sold off to pay for Andy Giorgione’s incinerator debt.