Friday, November 20, 2009

quote

"Most modern hunters, good and bad, just want to hunt--not explore and debate why they do it and how they do it and what other think of them for it. Yet today, no thoughtful hunter can afford to just hunt. In order to defend what we do--to ourselves, our families, our friends, and, especially, to an increasingly urbanized, denatured, domesticated, and virtualized populace--in order to improve hunting ethices and invite and inspire tomorrow's hunters and assure that hunting has a tomorrow...for all of these reasons and more, hunters must ask themselves: Why?"

David Peterson "Heartsblood"

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

progressing




Last year, my sister's Micky was all feet and fuzz. This year, he just passed his NAVHDA Natural Ability Test (2nd Prize). Now his sights are set on the Utility Test.




I hear he'd also like to try on some wild birds. Hmmm, there's a dove split going to open before too long in Texas.

Monday, November 16, 2009

really vintage

Scotch buried in ice since 1909 to be retrieved. Bound to be well preserved. I'll bet Shackleton and his men were missing a stiff drink at many, many points on their journey home.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

eclipse plumage?



A is out of town on business and, my work being closed yesterday, Booker and I went out to chase ducks. We found a few, with a bunch of mallards and a bunch of wigeon each trying to land on us twenty minutes after legal shooting hours and just as the light got good enough for me to be comfortable shooting. We knocked down a bird out of each bunch and then proceeded to wait and watch as nearly everything quit flying. We passed a hen mallard that didn't try to come in and then were passed in turn by another half-dozen wigeon. After a couple of hours a bird came down river flying low and slipped right over the decoys. The bird backlit, I saw green on the head and decided "drake mallard" and shot, knocking it down. Booker began a less than spectacular retrieve.

Here he is barely keeping the bird in hand, as it were:



When he got it to me after a quick re-position I figured I had a hen mallard. On closer look, the bird had the yellow bill with black tip of a drake, a black tail with curly tailfeathers, and a streak of bright green on either side of the head, fading up toward the top. Apart from that, it sported the mottled feathering of a hen mallard along with the dark blue speculum that you'd expect. Perhaps a bird that had remained in eclipse plumage (though that shouldn't be, so far south and this time of year), or a hybrid, or a "manky mallard". The bird is still alive in the last photo and I was a bit uncertain about putting it up. If folks think it's inappropriate, I'll pull it. In any event, by the time Booker had gotten all the way in, the bird had expired. No surprise, given the obvious head wound.









No closeup photos for the 'net, they were all a bit too gory. Interesting bird, anyway. The green on the head was a lot more prominent in hand.

The only other adventure for the day came when a slipped in ankle deep water while moving a couple of decoys and managed to go down, losing the shotgun off my shoulder and dunking it completely underwater and into the mud. Curses ensued. With any decent luck at all, that's an entire season's worth of falling in water right there. Once again erect, I took off my right glove (full of water) and unloaded, pouring water out of the barrel, magazine tube, receiver and (hooray, plastic!) stock. Back on dry land I wiped off the mud, checked the barrel, then blasted it interior of the receiver with "One Shot" cleaner and dry lube. WD-40 would have been a better choice under the circumstances, in terms of hosing out bits of grit and removing water, but the Hornady stuff worked well enough to keep the gun functioning. I've used it before to keep a balky autoloader running more smoothly, but this was a significantly tougher test. Also, dry lube is a good choice in this country of blowing sand.

Once home, I had over an hour of breaking the gun all the way down, cleaning it very thoroughly, then lubing and reassembling. Probably could have used a good cleaning, anyway.

Monday, November 09, 2009

another quote

"I'd much rather my guns wore out in a dozen years than my dogs. There's something wrong with a world where even a good pair of boots lasts longer than a good gundog."

"The Big One One", Robert F. Jones, The Hunter in My Heart

Thursday, November 05, 2009

more blogroll additions

Alt-country music, food, & bird hunting with Eight More Miles.

Environmental recovery, hunting and tramping about in and around Butte Montana with Ecorover.

Outdoors, books, movie reviews, & much more at Macaroni. Check out the sea caves of Lake Superior.

Fishing, duck hunting- is that a Chesapeake? Wait, no, a chocolate lab. Huh, never seen one of those before.... Sorry, Chessie revenge for the approx. 300 times I've heard "is that a chocolate lab?" over the last two years. General wandering around in hills and hardwoods in NE Iowa with Wandering Owl at Wandering Owl Outside.