dinner blog

Things have been warm and muggy here in my slice of the Southwest. We've had (badly needed) rain somewhere around town nearly every day for the last week (check out what's been happening in Santa Fe). While that's good, the afternoon and evening thundershowers cut down on patio time and call for more simple meals.
So, dinner- I'd been given some nice fresh garden green beans:



The beans were steamed until just tender, then refreshed and allowed to drain. From the freezer (starting to get low- need to get an elk this year) came duck breast fillets, the carcass long ago used for stock:



Those were seasoned with a little salt and pepper and thrown into the skillet with a little butter:



allowed to rest a few minutes, then thinly sliced:




and then added to mixed greens and the green beans and dressed with a vinaigrette sweetened with a bit of pomegranate syrup:



Accompanied by the best baguette in the area and a nice light bottle of wine, it's done.

Hard to get more simple than that!

Living in a science fiction world

A lot of things may not have held up or happened like he speculated (massive mechanical roads?) but I dare say that Robert A. Heinlein would be smiling today if he were alive to see one of the necessary features to one of his best novels, The Moon is A Harsh Mistress, has proven out. They've discovered water on the moon! Via Instapundit.

What an interesting and encouraging development. It appears a lot of water might be up there, buried deep under the surface. If there ever are hardrock "water miners" on the moon, I hope at least one is named "Manny".

reference blog- food

Big old tip of the hat to Chas at Southern Rockies Nature Blog for his post on and link to an interview by Ron Dreher of Michael Pollan. Interesting interview about food, worldview, and politics, and well worth reading. Sometimes the standard political classifications don't work all that well. I recently heard from a friend about meeting a "gun carrying Buddhist Republican" who is working on a local campaign. Gee, who speaks for that demographic?

p.s. They caught the article over at Odious and Peculiar, too.

RMNP

I hope everyone had a good Independence Day. This is always a big holiday for folks to head out into the woods, much like Labor Day. Consequently, I generally stay in town. Sometimes, though, you can get out to a popular venue or on a big weekend. A couple of years ago some friends and I took a long weekend and popped up to Rocky Mountain National Park. I have no idea how many people go through that park annually, other than "lots". Even so, we managed to see fewer than a dozen people once we got off the road.

Newlywed, my friends had been in the park but not backpacked, while I had gear but hadn't been up there. Despite the popularity of the park, we found a trail on the backside with no other folks signed in for a couple of open camping areas. We camped on a bench up above a little creek, a couple of miles in from the trailhead.

Next day, up to a lake which we shared with three other anglers and a couple of sightseers.



Once there, we found some nice Cutthroat:




and after a couple of hours of lunch and chasing the fish we headed back down the trail, rushing to beat a rainstorm. We camped the next night on an anonymous piece of Forest Service land, rigging a tarp to beat the rain and enjoying a bit of forest to ourselves.

Here's to public land, one of my favorite things about this country.

follow up

Head here for a nice, well written and lawyerly parsing of the Heller opinion. For detail, I don't think you can do better than that.

Another nice and relatively short (and accurate, in my view) digest at Volokh Conspiracy and authored by Dale Carpenter here.

Heller decision

This morning the Supreme Court released its opinion in the case of D.C. v. Heller, which I've discussed a bit before. At issue was whether the District of Columbia's ban on privately held pistols and strict limitation on long guns and the manner in which long guns are stored violated the Second Amendment of the Constitution. I'm sure the legal and gun blogs will be full of this for the rest of the day and a while. In any event, did the Court find an individual right protected by the Second Amendment?

Shortly, by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court, the answer is "yes". You can find the opinion (unfortunately, right now only in the form of a 157 page pdf) here.

Lots of good, chewy stuff in the majority opinion (authored by Justice Scalia)for those who have been following Second Amendment scholarship for a while. Much historical and grammatical review. For example, the majority first notes that the initial clause of the Amendment ("A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,")is a prefatory clause and does not limit or expand the operative clause ("the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."). Hurrah for logic and the hope that the pernicious-but-silly argument that the Second Amendment protects only the right of the states to arm militias has seen its end. Lower courts have been writing "the people" out of this section of the Constitution for too long.

No, wait. Based upon the dissent, the argument is not over and that idea still has legs. From Justice Scalia's footnote (footnote 3) on this section: "JUSTICE STEVENS says that we violate the general rule that every clause in a statute must have effect. But where the text of a clause itself indicates that it does not have operative effect, such as the "whereas" clauses in federal legislation or the Constitution's preamble, a court has no license to make it do what it was not designed to do. Or to put the point differently, operative provisions should be given effect as operative provisions, and prologues as prologues."

Amazing how some arguments and sentiments come up again and again. From the majority opinion (slip op. at 18) referring to the early American edition of Blackstone's Commentaries (pretty much the most important early legal compendium and commentary) which came out in 1803 "...Americans understood the 'right of self-preservation' as permitting a citizen to 'repe[l] force by force' when 'the intervention of society in his behalf, may be too late to prevent an injury'". Of course (and not in the opinion) today the same sentiment is common and popularly phrased as "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away."


Bad news:
with respect to U.S. v. Miller, the last case (circa 1937) when the Supreme Court considered a constitutional challenge to a firearms law. First, at page 49, the majority notes that "Miller stands only for the proposition that the Second Amendment right, whatever its nature, extends only to certain types of weapons." At page 52-53, the majority concludes that Miller's "ordinary military equipment" language (which was where that opinion concluded that short-barreled shotguns were not protected by the right to keep and bear arms, as they did not constitute ordinary military equipment such that the militia might use) must be read with the understanding that, when called to militia service, citizens brought with them arms in common use at the time for lawful purposes such as self defense. The majority concludes "[w]e therefore read Miller to say only that the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short barreled shotguns."
This interpretation is repeated and expanded a bit on page 55 of the slip opinion. I'd look for the statement to be heavily relied upon in future court decisions regarding restrictions on the type of weapons which can be possessed. In this effort to preserve the Miller case, the majority's opinion is disappointingly circular and ahistorical. As to the first, the law bans short-barreled shotguns, then a court relies upon the fact that short barreled shotguns are not typically possessed by law abiding citizens to conclude that the law is ok. As to the second, Ithaca Auto & Burglar? H&R Handy-gun? (To clarify for those who don't follow or understand the links, I refer to two moderately popular short-barreled shotguns manufactured expressly for personal defense and rendered illegal by the National Firearms Act of 1935.)

Apart from the very important recognition (by the majority only) that the Second Amendment preserves a historical right, I find the meat of the policy portion of the decision and the guarantee of years of future litigation here- from the majority opinion, page 54: "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose....Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."

On the other hand, when examining the actual DC law at issue, the majority rejects the "rational basis" test. (Slip op. at 56). Further, there is some nice language that ought to lead to reconsideration of statutes in places like Morton Grove. From p. 57-58 "Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid." and "We must also address the District’s requirement (as applied to respondent’s handgun) that firearms in the home be rendered and kept inoperable at all times. This makes it impossible for citizens to use them for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional."


In an earlier post (also linked above) I mentioned professor Lawrence Tribe's suggestion that the individual right to keep and bear arms would not prohibit banning arms in certain locales, such as urban areas. Interestingly, this comes up in the Heller decision and dissent. In his dissent (there are two) Justice Breyer proposes that an interest balancing test be used to determine whether laws unconstitutionally infringe the right to bear arms, suggesting that such a test would allow the D.C. statute. Here is a big quote from the majority opinion that I find generally appealing and that I also find the perfect answer to the proposition in Tribe's article and Justice Breyer's dissent:

The majority, slip op. at 62-63: "JUSTICE BREYER arrives at his interest-balanced answer: because handgun violence is a problem, because the law is limited to an urban area, and because there were somewhat similar restrictions in the founding period (a false proposition that we have already discussed), the interest-balancing inquiry results in the constitutionality of the handgun ban. QED. We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding “interest-balancing” approach. The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government-even the Third Branch of Government-the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. We would not apply an “interest-balancing” approach to the prohibition of a peaceful neo-Nazi march through Skokie. See National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie, 432 U. S. 43 (1977) (per curiam). The First Amendment contains the freedom-of-speech guarantee that the people ratified, which included exceptions for obscenity, libel, and disclosure of state secrets, but not for the expression of extremely unpopular and wrong-headed views. The Second Amendment is no different. Like the First, it is the very product of an interest-balancing by the people-which Justice Breyer would now conduct for them anew. And whatever else it leaves to future evaluation, it surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home."


I've read a bit of commentary suggesting that the Court is less adversarial under Chief Justice Roberts, but that is not evident in this opinion. For example, in discussing a construction of "to bear arms" that limits the meaning of the phrase to military service Scalia writes- "The right 'to carry arms in the militia for the purpose of killing game' is worthy of the mad hatter" (Slip op. p. 16).From footnote 14 "Faced with this clear historical usage, JUSTICE STEVENS resorts to the bizarre argument....". Justice Stevens in response, (Slip op., Stevens Dissent at 17) "Indeed, not a word in the constitutional text even arguably supports the Court’s overwrought and novel description of the Second Amendment". Not terribly collegial, but rather strong debate.

More, perhaps, later.

Sans pictures

One of the things that I enjoy about knocking around the woods, water, or desert is that if you pay close attention or spend enough time, you'll almost always see something new. A corollary to that truism is that if you don't have the camera along, more remarkable sights will present themselves.

Yesterday, we headed up a very nearby mountain for a bit of a hike at altitude and to give the dog a chance to splash in the little creek. Since the plan was for no more than a short duration hike, an hour or two, in an area which sees a lot of traffic, on a weekend, I didn't pack much in the way of gear. I almost didn't bring my daypack and I didn't load a lot of the little things that regularly ride in there- parachute cord, a bit of duct tape, the headlamp, matches, firestarter, etc.. Instead, I threw in a couple of water bottles, a fleece sweater, a rain jacket and a first aid kit. Some of that was just for weight.

During the walk I was frustrated in that I also forgot to throw in the little digital camera that makes almost all my outdoor trips now. Several new-to-me wildflowers begged identification (and I had left the flower guide at home, too) and some of the views were really nice and would have provided blog-fodder. Later, I was to regret leaving the camera a bit more, as I lost the chance at some photos from a rescue.

We were driving back down the canyon and passed a nearby village's Volunteer Fire Department's ambulance in a turn out by a trail head. They were pulling out gear and assembling a wheel under a Stokes litter. There were only four people at the ambulance and they looked to be in a bit of a hurry. I mentioned to A that we ought to see if everything was ok, so we stopped. In response to "You all need any help?" the answer was "Probably." I was a bit surprised.

Turns out, they were just responding to a call about a fellow who had suffered a myocardial event some distance up the trail. Hot day, high altitude, and some steep slopes can be a tough combination, I'm sure.

I dumped the little bit of stuff out of my day pack and we grabbed ends of the litter and started down the trail with it. Concerned for the patient, a couple of the EMTs took a defibrillator, some iv packs, and bit of other gear and went on up to his location. A, one of the volunteer firefighters and I hauled the litter well in their wake, pausing as terrain and breath required to drink water and rest a bit. Shortly, we were passed by a paramedic and then joined by another volunteer fireman, then a local search & rescue volunteer. The last pitch up to the rim the patient was located just under was quite steep (really glad he wasn't on top of the rim), but more hands made a difference and soon we were there. Just after that, a Forest Service law enforcement officer arrived and then another search & rescue volunteer. We retreated a bit down the hill to stay out of the way and then helped the FS officer move some brush and downed limbs to clear out an area they were considering for use as a lift-off spot as an alternative to hauling the litter and patient down that steep stretch to get to an open flat where the in-bound helicopter could land.

By the time we were done with that, others had the patient on the litter and moved him the few yards to that gap in the trees and the search & rescue folks were really starting to come in (one of them turned out to be a guy I've chatted with at the last few RMEF banquets, always surprising where you run into folks). The person coordinating the rescue and the helicopter pilot made the call to winch the patient to the aircraft from that gap, perhaps out of concern with the lack of lift due to the low humidity, warm air, lack of breeze, and altitude as well as to avoid moving him further than necessary in the litter. Since more bodies were not going to be needed to handle the litter all the way back down the trail, the volunteer fire department leader decided to clear some unnecessary gear and people from the area so we grabbed some of the equipment he indicated and headed back out. On the way out we passed a couple more Forest Service folks inbound, chainsaw and Pulaski in hand and on their way to clear the pick-up area a bit more, perhaps to remove a couple of standing dead trees.

A mile or so on, we could look back and see the National Guard Blackhawk helicopter hover, drop gear, drop a crewman, then circle, only to come back a few minutes later to pick up the patient and crew member. At the trailhead, more volunteers, a communications trailer, and the state police were on hand. Our bit done, we gave the fire department their bags of gear and drove on down the hill to a late dinner.

The whole experience was pretty thought provoking. First, a mile-and-a-half can be a terribly long way under the wrong circumstances. Hauling that gentleman out on the litter would have been really wearing and pretty darned slow, likely finishing close to dark. This even though most of the trail is what I would have considered a good one (the tread was 1.5 feet wide and well beaten) with quite a bit of maintenance done on it and only two blowdowns. It would have been slow and hard on the patient even given that a bunch of those search and rescue folks looked pretty gnarly and in-shape. Not that in-shape, I was blowing from pulling half the litter with only forty pounds or so of gear on it.

Second, my daypack goes with me always, now. I was feeling silly taking it on what was more a walk than a "hike" to my mind, but I was really glad I had it- to loan to one of the EMTs to put medical equipment in so they could scoot up the trail to the patient and then to carry out a bunch of rope (which fortunately wasn't needed) webbing, defibrillator and other gear back out. For that matter, a little bag is going to live in my daypack and that bag is going to have some basic stuff- p-cord, marking tape, headlamp, duct tape, and some other odds and ends. I carry all that stuff in my hunting pack, but I don't want to shuffle stuff around and leave some out. I'd rather have it always to hand. We were just talking about first aid kits and I realized I need to go through, replenish, and replace some expired meds in a couple of mine. Now I have a bit more incentive.

Third (and somewhat counter to the first point) it is pretty amazing to me that within an hour or two of a call, emergency help and trained medical aid was on hand for the patient. While the location was a long way from wilderness, it also wasn't a street corner and the guy was being treated in very little time and was on a helicopter to the hospital in just a couple of hours. Search & rescue volunteers were really pouring in, too. Cell phones and GPS systems are making the world smaller in some interesting ways.

Last- yeah, the camera goes with me, so I can ID flowers and hopefully take a bit of video of the next time a Guard pilot holds his helicopter rock-steady over a ridge while winching someone aboard.

"New Mexico is mellow, people there they treat you fine"-Townes Van Zandt, "White Freightliner Blues".

Down the Rio

So, last weekend was our tenth whitewater trip in the last eleven years. We headed down the Taos Box with these guys, going in at the Little Arsenic Trail and taking out at the Taos Junction Bridge. This is a good year for water in the Southwest, a dry spring offset by a good winter and cool temperatures that spread out the runoff.



Going in at the BLM trail mentioned above means you get to run the La Junta Rapid, where the Red River has dumped a few thousand years' worth of debris into the Rio Grande, almost first off. It is a fun, splashy Class IV with a couple of moves you have to make. John, our guide, directed us through it with aplomb.

The first time down this canyon, the river was running around 2200 cfs, as opposed to the 3200 this year. The higher flow flattened out some of the drops in this pool/drop river, but made the standing waves all the higher. Good fun! The NM Dept. of Game and Fish has reintroduced bighorn sheep to the canyon and we were graced with an ewe standing riverside. A clout shot with a decent camera, the little disposable waterproof model we carried was not up to the task, sadly. We'll just have to remember that, and the Golden Eagle landing on its nest, and the unused peregrine nest, and crashing through the six-foot standing waves.

We had camped out the night before the trip, finding one of what must be the last non-fee Forest Service campgrounds (picnic tables & a pit toilet) available in the southwest. Miraculously, we also had it all to ourselves. Bacon wrapped nilgai fillets, some good red wine and a big green salad led to a nice slumber next to the thrashing creek. Normally, the creek would chuckle, but it was at about 2x regular flow with runoff, though clear and fishable. Small, though, so it doesn't roar absent a flood, which hasn't happened this year. Nice to sleep by running water in any event. On the trip with the rafting company, Far Flung, we slept by the river the next night, too.



Morning rising was nearly mandated by a couple of busy canyon wrens right up the slope.

The next day was mostly rapids and passed all to quickly. With only three of us in the boat besides the guide, we were able to bop all over the river at the price of a bit of deep digging on the paddles.

Here's guide John, having turned the boat around for a bit of paddle and a look-see in a more quiet stretch:


All great fun and just the taste of white water we were looking for!

Pithy, yet accurate

Michael Blowhard quote from an otherwise unrelated post:

"I'm reminding myself of an argument I make when friends try to put down or dismiss blogging and other kinds of online fun. A friend might say, for instance, 'Show me the blog posting that's the equivalent of the best literature.' My response: You're missing the point. Blogging is a different (if perhaps related) activity than the traditional "literary" thing is. It isn't about exposing yourself to self-contained bits of "the best." It's about taking part, perhaps in the modest sense of surfing around under your own power, perhaps in the more ambitious sense of writing comments or of running a regularly-published blog."

pickin' chicken

This last weekend some friends and I engaged in a bit of an experiment. I bought 2 chickens from three different sources- 2 fresh, local, grass raised birds, 2 bird raised on organic grain, also fresh, but not local, and 2 birds from the grocery store, the least-expensive I could find. I cut the backbones out of the birds (and reserved those for stock) and then flattened them out on a cutting board, rubbing each with a mixture of salt, black pepper, and smoked paprika. Then I grilled them over a slow charcoal fire with some water-soaked mesquite chunks. The different birds were identified by kitchen twine around the drumstick and the guests were subjected to a blind taste test of the breast meat. Each of the eight of us ranked each piece of meat from 1 to 3, so the best possible score for a bird was eight, worst 24, and total points available 48. The grocery store bird scored a 13, the organic, grain-raised bird a 17, and the grass-raised bird an 18.

I would in no way call this a definitive test, as the birds were pretty highly flavored by the smoke and spices. For that matter, two of us knew which sample was which. It was still interesting. Grilling on the bone like that is one of my favorite ways to cook a chicken and I think I achieved comparable levels of done-ness. I thought that the grass-fed bird and the grocery store birds were closest in flavor and better than the organic grain-fed bird. As one guest pointed out, the mass-market bird was probably injected with a bunch of brine and other things to add juice and flavor and that might well be why it did best.

Photos are omitted because I got busy and forgot to take any. There goes my career as food-blogger. For that matter, as a liberal arts major with no real pretensions to actual, well, science, I'll take this short experiment as grounds to reach a conclusion: while there are lots of good reasons to buy local, organic, and/or grass fed chickens, taste is probably not the definitive one.

link from a link

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy there's post about and a link to a news report regarding a concealed carry license holder who used his weapon to stop a bar shooting, though not before two had been killed and two wounded. He apparently shot the gunman as the killer was reloading. Unfortunately, the comments denigrate into all too predictable posturing.

Fortunately, as anodyne and a change of subject, from HunterAnglerGardnerCook one can find his way over to UK blog Sporting Shooter, who has a post with a great link to foul-mouthed chef Gordon Ramsay in one of his British shows going ferreting with his eight year old son. They catch a couple of rabbits (though not Florida football style). After that, they show the boy how to field dress them (they don't do it the way I learned, which is to skin first, then gut). What a cool show! I don't watch the outdoor programs, but back when I did catch a few things like field dressing were never addressed, aside from the occasional "how to" segment. Kudos to Ramsay, for including a segment like that in a food show. He seems to have a bit of a different face for this show- no swearing or confrontation for over two minutes. I hope it makes its way to BBC America.

@#$%&**!!! Snake!!

Hope you all had a good weekend. Ours was good, just interrupted a couple of times. Kind of a southwestern version of unwanted encounters. Saturday was devoted to chores- getting the swamp cooler hooked up and ready to go, pulling a mort of weeds, watering, mowing, and all those little things.
Sunday, A, the dog and I took the morning and headed up the mountain behind town.


Our exercise was cut a bit short by running into this fine fellow:


At least he had the grace to start buzzing right away. It's been a while since I've run into a rattler and I'd nearly forgotten the full body adrenaline rush that sound can inspire. Cue bad words and me skipping backwards yanking 95 pounds of confused Chessie behind me. The weather is nice enough for snakes, but I was a bit surprised to see him at what must be at least 6000 feet in elevation. Wonder what particular type? Not diamondback. (Edited to add- I think he's a Northern Black-Tailed Rattlesnake).


Since I was seeing snakes under every rock, and there were lots of rocks, we headed back down the hill. Booker is training for the summer backpacking season:



That evening, we blew up to one of my very favorite venues and caught Blue Rodeo. I'm happy to report that they are every bit as good, if not better, live as they are on album. The whole scene was definitely something white people might like, with lots of folks up by the stage, bobbing their heads and tapping their feet. No judgment, I was happily bobbing & tapping along, noting Los Alamos Barbie & Ken in the audience. All in all a very good time, great weather, lovely patio, good music, very good beer and a superior type of bar food. Get the Asian slaw as a side. That place is one of the things that makes me happy I live where I do.

Today we headed up into the mountains, looking to dodge holiday crowds and find some water. The dog was not impressed with the plan-


We had just bailed off the trail to head down to the water when we ran across three and a half feet of bull snake, an unwelcome surprise at 8000 feet.


I didn't think any snakes hung around up there, but he was big around as a ball bat in his middle.


I used the encounter to engage in a little snake training with the dog, as I saw the reptile first. Once Booker noticed him, I yanked to dog downhill, shouting and doing my best to instill a little aversion. Still, my equanimity had been lost. Soon, though, we got down to the creek.

Runoff swollen, but fishable. Swimable for sure.


Cold water? No problem:


That stuff was snow 10 hours ago.

I'm going to need to work with the dog a bit on the concept of fishing, though. He takes my interest in a stretch of water as a reason to check it out first hand:


Little mountain trout don't rise to the fly under these circumstances:


In the end, a beautiful outdoors day and a tired dog:




Hope everyone else fared as well.

thinking about the weather

We've had an odd and chilly spring this year- when I went to buy tomato seedlings a few weekends ago the nursery informed me that their stock had been nipped and advised me to check back in a week. I did, and the low the Friday before the plants went in was a chilly 33F. Even so, it turned hot and we seemed back on track. This last week started sunny and reaching for the 90s. The weather had the feel of the hot spell we frequently fall into in the beginning of June or late May and 100 degree temps seem right around the corner. Day before yesterday, though, a cool breeze came through in the late evening and both yesterday and today have been drizzly, cool and cloudy. It feels like fall, one of those best elk hunting days in mid-October when the clouds hang on the ridgetops and the woods are damp, curtains of mist and drizzle hiding the other side of the canyon. It also feels a bit like Alaska, at least where I've fished down off the Prince William Sound and drizzly, rainy, breezy and cool are the most frequent conditions. So, in reflection of the weather and anticipation of a trip only a few months away, here are some of my favorite Alaska shots, most from a few years back when we went out late enough for the colors to be well on their way to changing.

My father fishing- this is my screensaver:


My uncle on the same trip:


Scenery everywhere:










And then, a tangible prompt to memory:

recent trip

This last week and a bit I was off doing a bit of fishing and some visiting. Back to the lower Laguna Madre on the Texas coast and then to points east. For us, at least, fishing in the bay was slow.

A ladyfish, or as we know them colloquially, a skipjack:



If skipjacks ran a consistent five pounds and larger, rather than the usual one-to-three pounds, bay fishermen would all have to use heavier gear anytime they were in slightly deeper water or else sacrifice a lot of gear. Skipjack jump and run harder than their size would indicate, frequently throwing the hook on the second or third jump. Though they lack teeth, the rough patches on their lips and their sharp gill covers will pretty regularly cut you off or tear your leader up to where you have to re-tie. Since they aren't edible, they're considered "trash fish" and an obligatory "darn skipjack" must be muttered once your line heads for the surface and that first rattling jump is made. Aside from being a bit slimy to handle and the risk of getting cut off, it's good fun when a skipjack rockets to the surface and darts off in short runs, zipping line off against the drag.

Better luck next time, perhaps.

wine post

Via the Volokh Conspiracy, I see that Eric Asimov in the The New York Times has an article regarding the correlation between price and satisfaction with wine. It seems that the more something costs, the more likely you are to be satisfied with it, including a bottle of wine. The study in question did not require the test subjects to pay for their wine, though. I think a good follow up would be to have the test subjects use their own money to buy the same bottle twice, once being charged $20, the next time $50 but without being told it was the same wine. This would test the effect of thrift on the wine drinkers' perception. Personally, I've had lots of "not bad for $5" bottles of wine and quite a few "not great for $25" bottles. If the latter had been priced like the former, my pleasure in them would have been greater. A nice bottle of wine at $7 is a find. A nice bottle of wine at $30 is expected.

My very favorite wines are all under $15, though it is a short list. Gruet Blanc de Noir is a really good sparkling wine, made in New Mexico by a family of Champagne makers and is fairly regularly placed on sale for $12/bottle.

My taste for plonk-priced wine has another explanation than thrift. In the same article, Asimov writes a bit about another study where 500 volunteers samples 540 wines and rated them, regardless of price (which they did not know). The study is discussed in a new book to be published soon called "The Wine Trials" and, as described by Asimov, "... the book shows that what appeals to novice wine drinkers is significantly different from what appeals to wine experts, which the book defines as those who have had some sort of training or professional experience with wine." While not a novice wine drinker, in the sense of having twenty-some years of imbibing behind me, I think the lack of sophistication of my palate explains my enthusiasm for low end wines, as opposed to those loved by the experts. Then again, I like lots of garlic, lots of black pepper, lots of green chile, plenty of any spice but cumin and salt- strong flavors generally appeal most to me.

With respect to the more expensive bottles, while back there was an article on Culinate about picking up an otherwise bland evening with a good bottle of wine, I belatedly came across knowledge of "open that bottle night", or OTBN, created and advocated by a pair of writers for the Wall Street Journal. They set aside a day each year to open one of their best bottles and advocate drinking those bottles set aside because they are sentimental or too expensive, rather than leaving them up on the shelf to admire. Rather like taking out that old shotgun or heirloom rifle and using it, rather than stashing it in pristine uselessness in a safe.

I'm guilty of stashing good stuff, prime cuts of elk or redfish fillets or a good bottle of wine, sometimes past the best due date. Friends and family laugh at my spare bedroom (when I forget and leave the door open) and the cases of wine stacked in two corners. From a high of eight or ten cases a couple of years ago, I've whittled it down to six or eight after resolving to drink up everything but two, for the sake of space if nothing else. Not that I've only consumed two cases of wine in the last year or two, by any means. Regular purchases of every day drinking wine as well as the occasional nicer bottle, or half-case if I find a deal, has complicated the project. Time for a new resolution to drink before I buy.

photo links

Via Andrew at The Regal Viszla, Chiendogblog and a great photo of a running whitetail. Cool blog, dogs & hunting & really good photos from up North. A word of warning if you go through the archives- the folks at Chiendog lost their beloved Weimaraner at age 10 and their cat at nearly 18 within just a few weeks. He writes well and movingly about both, better than I could about something like that, but read it and you'll cry.

Over at Prairie Ice, John Carlson posts the coolest bird photos I've seen since, well, since upside-down Canada Geese!

I admire the folks who can not only see neat stuff like this, but get the camera up and focused and get it photographed before the fleeting moment has passed. Perhaps one day I'll post my collection of "splashes from where a fish just jumped" photos.

bad apples and double standards

I am, and always have been, a suburban recreational user of outdoor resources. I hunt, fish, hike, backpack, cut a little wood and earn no income from public lands. Nor do I depend upon a chunk of private land to support me or to produce anything. Nonetheless, I recognize the important role of ranches in providing large blocks of habitat to wildlife. I'm also aware of the folks who make a living off of their land, whether through farming, grazing, timbering, or combinations of all of those. I've talked to ranchers who take great pride in their efforts as stewards of the land and I've read countless essays and articles extolling the virtues of private landholders in that respect. For that matter, I'm fortunate to have been allowed access to some beautiful and well kept pieces of private land.

On public or private land, as a hunter, I'm only too conscious of the fact that a few slobs can ruin my reputation as well as that of all my fellows. Were I inclined to forget it, I'm reminded regularly in the hook & bullet press and by game department publications in their efforts to maintain a favorable impression of hunters in the eyes of landowners and the public. Just so and good enough. Western landowners, the dusty booted heirs of the pioneers, must keep an eye to their reputations as well. It should be impossible to ignore historic overgrazing and other detrimental practices of western husbandry and it requires willful blindness not to see examples of contemporaneous range damage occurring all over the west, in far from isolated instances. Further, I do not believe that the general public or many sportsmen perceive ranchers and farmers to have the patent on the moral high ground they seem to assume when it conflicts over land usage arise. In any event, phrases like "welfare rancher" are no more palatable than "slob hunter" and stem from similar kernels of truth.

Recently a New Mexico rancher up in the northeastern part of the state shot 39 pronghorn antelope which he asserts were eating his sprouting winter wheat. The Albuquerque Journal ran the story and put up a video from the NM Dept. of Game and Fish, but the Journal keeps their articles behind a subscriber only firewall, so here is an article in the Santa Fe New Mexican. The video, which I have not found on-line, was taken by Game and Fish officers called to the scene and shows antelope lying in fallow land outside of a high fence around some wheat, but doesn't provide a panoramic view of the situation or document every kill. Outrageously, it shows a doe antelope hobbling on a broken foreleg and another wounded and unable to stand, but still breathing. Both animals had apparently been left suffering, rather than humanely dispatched. According to the news stories, the rancher, Neal Trujillo, reported shooting the antelope with a shotgun.

Pronghorns, commonly known as "antelope" or "pronghorn antelope" are a creature unique to North America and have populations in most of the western states, including New Mexico. At one point, things didn't look too good for them. "By 1920 it was thought that only about 30,000 pronghorn remained. But then the future for pronghorn became brighter. Conservation-minded organizations supported state, provincial, and federal programs that curtailed hunting by settlers and market hunters and provided protection through refuges." In his memoir "Smokey Bear and the Great Wilderness" Elliot S. Barker recounts that Aldo Leopold surveyed New Mexico and found only about 1700 antelope in the state at about that time. As recounted by Barker, "Alarmed by this precarious situation, the organized sportsmen of the NMGPA (New Mexico Game Protective Association) took prompt action to save the antelope. They secured the cooperation of the cattle and sheep growers, the Forest Service and the greatly under-financed and political Department of Game and Fish." As a result, "By 1928, Dr. J. Stokely Ligon, the wildlife biologist of the U.S. Biological Survey, estimated the herds increased to 4,500." Barker became the state Game Warden in 1931, and in 1937 New Mexico's Game and Fish Department pioneered antelope trapping and transplanting in order to return them to suitable range from which they had been killed out. Antelope are now widely distributed and doing pretty well in the state.

As a result of the legacy of cooperation between sportsmen, the Game and Fish Department, and landowners, in New Mexico those who have elk or antelope on their property can obtain permits for the hunting of those species. The number of permits issued for a given piece of land is based upon the acreage of the property and its usage by the species in question. The permits are transferable, so that the landowner can sell them and thereby gain some income in return for the habitat he provides. Looking on the New Mexico Dept. of Game and Fish website, specifically the pdf listing of landowner antelope permits, and going to Animal Management Unit 54 (AMU 54) I see that Neal Trujillo got 4 antelope permits for his property near Cimarron, NM, last year. This is, presumably, the property where he shot the antelope this spring. I couldn't find anyone on the web advertising just permits right now, but permits advertised in the Albuquerque paper in the fall seem to go for around $1000 a piece. Here is a site advertising guided hunts starting at $1800. The New Mexican article quotes a Game and Fish Officer as saying that Trujillo gets 15 antelope permits for various properties he controls.

While Mr. Trujillo complains that the antelope are eating his wheat and forage, he neglects to account for the money he can obtain by selling permits. He apparently wishes to have all the forage and antelope, too. Coupled with the callous act of allowing wounded animals to suffer and the fact that each of the doe antelope were almost surely pregnant and bound to deliver in the next couple of months, I find it impossible not to perceive Mr. Trujillo as a bad apple.

The situation leading to Mr. Trujillo shooting the antelope without being subject to prosecution is interesting, too. In New Mexico, property owners are required by law to fence out any livestock they don't want on their property. Under NMSA1978 Sec. 77-16-1 "Every gardener, farmer, planter or other person having lands or crops that would be injured by trespassing animals, shall make a sufficient fence about his land in cultivation, or other lands that may be so injured, the same to correspond with the requirements of the laws of this state prescribing and defining a legal fence." A subsequent section of the law, Sec. 77-16-3, prohibits anyone from recovering damages from trespass by "cattle, horses, sheep, goats, hogs or other livestock" unless the land is properly fenced.
For example, back in 1994 the New Mexico Dept. of Game and Fish spent $35,000 to strengthen a fence around a wildlife area in northeastern New Mexico in order to keep a local rancher's buffalo herd, which was pushing through the regular barbed wire fence, off of the sensitive area. Anecdotally, I can think of half a dozen different riparian stretches where habitat improvement funds raised by stamps required of hunters and fishers have been used to fence out cattle grazing on public lands in order to allow the streamside to recover. Private or public, if you don't want stock there, you have to fence it out.

In contrast, thanks to a law, NMSA Sec. 17-2-7.2, sponsored by the legislator/rancher Tim Jennings mentioned in the New Mexican article, a landowner or lessee can kill wildlife on his land that presents an immediate threat of damage to his crops or property. Actually, Jennings' law doesn't specify "wildlife" but rather "game animals or other quadrupeds, game birds or fowl", which seems rather a conflict with the NM livestock statutes which first require you to fence out stock and then specify how and when trespassing stock can be held. Cows being quadrupeds, it would seem to be open season once they present danger to crops on private land. While I couldn't find a case resolving the conflict of law I know what defense I'd use if I'd mowed down a bunch of cows that had gotten on my property. I don't recommend such a course, though. I wouldn't want to bet on a favorable resolution of the apparent conflict of law from the courts.

In any event, I find it a bit hard to swallow the distinction between having to fence off private cows from private land, or even public land, but being able to shoot public wildlife regardless of the condition of one's fence.

Sunday morning flowers

It feels like I should have the tomatoes in, but the fact that last Wednesday morning featured a few snowflakes spitting down warns me not to take today's 80 degree temperatures too much to heart. Tomatoes soon. Meanwhile, the tulips, hyacinth, and narcissus (the few of each that I have) are gone, but the first iris opened today:



and my little Austrian Copper Rose is starting to open a few buds:



I paid a decent price for a fairly large plant when I put this in, only to have half the roots tear away when taking it out of the nursery pot, despite having given the soil a good soaking. Accordingly, about a third of the plant died and its first year in the ground was a bit of a struggle. Last year the little rose was covered with blossoms, it looks like this year will be a repeat. You have to enjoy them while you can, only one flowering per spring:


Too bad the Austrian Copper isn't fragrant. For that I'll rely on the Wood Rose on the other side of the yard and the hybrid tea in back.

Beyond that, looks like container catnip is getting a start:

Gun thoughts

Caveat- to any non-gun non-shooting readers (and there might be one or two out of the dozen regulars here) this post is a bit dense on jargon. Apologies, but the hour is getting late and Google is your friend. I might revise at some future time. For now, the muse is fleeting and I've recently been in a dry spell, writing-for-fun wise, so this is going up without much in the way of links or explanations (or, likely, coherence- here I am on my second parenthetical in the first paragraph, always a bad sign).

I've mentioned before that I'm a bit of a gear head. I get a kick out of a nice piece of equipment- something well designed that makes a job easier or accomplishes it's task well. One example would be the Princeton Tec Aurora headlamp- 3 little Triple A batteries provide sixty hours or so of light, it weighs a couple of ounces, is waterproof, and can stand more than a bit of bashing around. You can wear it over a cap and it stashes easily in a pocket- useful light for a week of nights and $20 brand new. Of course, to find the perfect piece of gear sometimes you have to purchase and try out a replacement for the device you are currently using, just to see if the new one might work better.

Gear wise, gun culture is an interesting milieu. I got started in target shooting, where there is a definite tendency to play equipment games. Sometimes, the benefit is psychological. If you really believe that the new Anschutz rifle, Perazzi shotgun, or Hart barrel is going to make you shoot better, you probably will. At some point, shooting competitively is as much a mental game as a physical. You might develop the reflexes and muscle memory, and be blessed with the ability to hold steady or swing smooth, but you have to maintain concentration and pay attention to tiny little details to get the scores that'll win. Confidence that a certain piece of equipment will contribute to success frequently leads to success. On the other hand, there are the shooters who continually seek technological solutions to a human problem.

Talking to hunters and reading hunting boards, there are a lot of guys who get into equipment as well, I feel they do it as a sort of proxy for time afield. They have lots of rifles, refining concepts or striving to find the perfect piece for a given purpose. A little better cartridge, something a bit easier to carry or smoother swinging, they keep at it. They can end up with lots of guns, many of which don't get fired much.

In contrast, hook and bullet writers all seem to have a story about some guy they knew back in the day that had a MkIII Enfield or sporterized Krag or the like that they bought a box of shells for and then killed ten deer over the next ten years, annually burning one round to make sure the sights were on and one to kill the deer. I've never met that guy. Apart from the necessity of practice to maintain skill, the concept has a certain attraction.

In that vein, reasonably, all a North American hunter really needs is a good .22 bolt action rifle, a good big game rifle, a waterfowl shotgun, an upland shotgun, and a .22 pistol. Pretty much everybody ought to have a pistol for self defense as well, but there you are, the adequate six-gun arsenal. No fun at all.

I look to the example of my father. My dad is pretty practical. Not ruthlessly so, but pretty practical. Back when metallic silhouette shooting was getting started along the border, he, being a decent shot, entered a local match and did pretty good. Shortly thereafter, he bought a pre-64 Model 70 from a family friend that had less than a box of shells through it. The provenance of the rifle was well known, the family friend bought it to hunt, didn't do so much, and, as godfather-in-spirit if not fact, wanted my dad to have it. A couple of years later, blessed with practice time and fair immunity to recoil (for this was a standard M70 in 30-06) Dad put 4k Sierra 180 gr. seconds through it in one summer, practicing up. He'd bolted a Canjar trigger into it and strapped on an early Redfield target scope (now long since gone- it didn't handle that kind of use well). Dad carries the rifle elk hunting today, albeit without the target scope it bore for silhouette shooting. With the Model 70 for an elk/deer rifle, he still hung on to his sporterized Springfield as a spare. This was particularly useful when the Model 70 was carrying a 10x target scope with large and delicate adjustment turrets. The Springfield was the rifle I carried on my first few elk and nilgai hunts. It has the original long, smooth military trigger, which, with a bit of practice, is pretty deadly for a good shot. Not in the Canjar/M70 league, but danged effective. The biggest whitetail buck I'm likely to shoot came off my Aunt and Uncle's lease in South Texas at 250 yards with that Springfield on a cold December morning- put the K4 skinny crosshairs right behind the shoulder, halfway up the side, then start pulling. That trigger just glides back until the next thing you know you're recovering from recoil, watching through the glass as you cycle the bolt and the buck's legs kick up from the grass.

Getting more competitive, Dad built up a Remington Model 700 in 308, this being in the days before the 7mm-08 was making inroads in metallic silhouette shooting. An El Paso gunsmith took off the safety and worked the trigger down to 6 ounces and Dad ordered a Fajen stock blank that he spent a lot of time finishing- a high, roll-over comb target stock that turned out to have gorgeous figure through the butt. Dad finished it blond and shot the rifle for years and thousands of rounds. You could always pick it out on the rack and it was one of the prettiest rifles on the line as well as accurate. I shot it quite a bit, too. The stock was short for me and I'd scope myself every so often. That rifle is gone despite the hours of work and practice, sold. Back to practicality, inspired in part by economics. When we got into KD highpower, Dad sold a .30 carbine (wish we'd have known what today's prices would get to), a couple of cases of ammo and a Colt Gold Cup from his Outdoor Pistol days to defray the cost of a used M1A with a heavy stock and a good barrel, as well as an accuracy and a trigger job. That rifle, too, passed on some time ago. At some other point, he sold a Colt Commander in furtherance of the purchase of a .22 target rifle for my competitive shooting. Dad's not immune to sentiment, he still has his first adult-purchase deer rifle, a .300 Savage Model 99 with straight stock and schnabel forend, sex-on-a-stick, early twentieth century version, as far as rifles are concerned, but then the resale on the old Savage was nothing until the recent interest of collectors. Even so, his old Savage came to him hard used and saw many further miles and it's in the most common of chamberings for that rifle, so it carries history and sentiment, but not much in the way of dollar value. With a few exceptions, Dad's kept things down to the basics. For that matter, he doesn't really tweak with what he's got.

As for me, less so. Unlike other gear, I have a harder time letting go of guns and can't look at them entirely practically, sort of like antlers from old hunts. As an example, I bought an SKS right before the assault weapons ban, hoping for appreciation and not interested much in the weapon per se. Once the Curio and Relic Russian models started flooding in, I congratulate myself for getting my money back after ten years, trading it toward a CZ 527 American in .223, the rifle that started this musing. It was easy to get rid of the SKS- that is no Commie .30 Carbine. In contrast to the carbine it is heavy, awkward, and kicks. Of course, it runs a more powerful cartridge, but the SKS wasn't fun, in my opinion. I felt sort of lucky to get my money back for it. I bought the CZ because I had long thought that a .223 would be just the thing to take advantage of cheap surplus ammunition and get some center-fire practice in. On top of that, the Czechs build a lovely little mini-Mauser action, something of some romance itself. This rifle is blued steel and walnut, a decent blue job and a stock with a bit better than decent wood and better-than-most checkering (the guys in the gun shop that handled the FFL gathered around when I opened the box- collective sigh and "nice"). The protruding detachable magazine spoils the lines of the rifle a bit, but provides a fine palm rest for offhand shooting (my favored position, anyway). I use the ugly CZ rings that came with the rifle, they are just about the right height for the scope that I had for it. If I really worried about aesthetics, I might stick on some Talley rings.


This rifle pleases me a great deal- but it is not a deer rifle, an elk rifle, a duck gun or an upland gun. I don't shoot coyotes and don't live around groundhogs, purposes for which it would excel, absent really long range shooting, and I haven't even wrung all the accuracy out of it beyond determining that it doesn't like bullets heavier than 62 grains. Before the recent spike in ammunition prices I bought a mort of South African 55 grain soft points, but haven't put more than a couple of hundred rounds through the gun. If I ever find myself shooting little Texas whitetails, I wouldn't hesitate to use it as a deer gun, choosing my shots and taking advantage of the accurate cartridge and rifle, but that doesn't look likely anytime soon. Nonetheless, the rifle, impractical as it is, pleases me a great deal.

I find it funny how firearms feel different than other pieces of gear. Not all are the same- my duck gun I love for ruggedness, ergonomics, and reliability and if any of those characteristics should be bettered or fail I'd trade it in a heartbeat. Nonetheless, most guns inspire a bit more sentimentality than other types of gear. Perhaps it is their durability- a well-built weapon can easily be in use after a hundred years service. Perhaps it is the many hours we can end up carrying them in the field, or the care demanded in their handling and maintenance.

While I aspire to hard headed practicality toward well cared for but well used tools, including guns, I guess I haven't gotten there yet.

Small Streams

Down here in the Southwest, I can fish a couple of different mountain streams for trout after a drive of less than two hours, which counts as close. Most of our streams are quite small, whether designated as a "river", "rito", or "rio", you can jump across most and, picking your spot, wade across almost any without getting your hip pockets wet. Except for right now. At the moment, all are high and turbid. We'll just have to see if the run off finished in time for the giant stonefly hatch, which is usually good fun around the end of May or beginning of June.

Fly fishing these small streams calls for a different set of skills than you find in most instructional books, or, now, videos. (Two exceptions to this are William Black's "Creekcraft" and John Gierach's "Fly Fishing Small Streams"). Apart from fishing the occasional meadow stretch, like this one where my buddy Scott is seen releasing a small Rio Grande Cutthroat:


you have to watch more back cast as much as anything else. Try not to false case more than you absolutely have to, every false cast is an invitation for a hung fly. You can go most of the day without getting more than the first fifteen feet of fly line wet, too. I prefer a short leader, about seven and a half feet, which makes it easier to tuck casts under branches and brush. That meadow stretch up above is a couple of miles from any road and, while it gets pressure, used to be good for the occasional 11 or even 12 incher. When I walked up there year-before-last, drought had cut the flow down to the point that the fish population had crashed. I only saw a couple of fish all day. I hope the last two wet winters have allowed the survivors to start replenishing the population.

Here is Scott again, fishing another creek the best way- wet wading and stalking upstream.


The little wild trout are unbelievably fast; they'll hit a fly and reject it in no time at all. After fishing for them a bit, I get to where I'm a little too quick on the gun with lake fish, yanking the fly out of their mouths in anticipation of the lightning fast take and rejection I see on the creeks. Generally speaking, the hardscrabble life imposed by a small stream keeps the trout from being too picky, so long as the fly is a size 16 or smaller. Being trout, of course there are some days when they just won't eat. The little wild guys seem particularly prone to slap a rejected fly with their tail after a false rise. One of the most consistent flies I've found in recent years is a foam or deer hair beetle, which is terribly hard to pick out on the surface of the water, even with a bright dot tied on the back. More easy to keep track of and also good are the Royal Coachman dry (especially hairwing) and the western House and Lot. 6x tippet gives the best drift.

Just for any Eastern readers- we even have a very few brookies in beaver ponds:

Legwork

Well, this past weekend was spent in part looking for turkeys, as the season opens soon. Despite getting up to the woods at a reasonable hour, if not the crack of dawn, I didn't hear any birds calling. My plans were thrown into a bit of disarray as the road to the area where I've found birds in the past is closed right now. A call to the Forest Service this morning led to the news that they aren't sure when it will be open, it's closed to keep hunters and other folks from tearing it up in its current wet and vulnerable state. Signs of this year's good snow pack were plentiful:


Things are just greening up at 8k feet and every little draw is running. The woods are full of birds and the tanks and draws are ringing with frog's song to compete with the birds. The dog managed to have a fine time,


getting out for a couple of walks and seeing some deer and, especially as we managed to find enough water for a swim:


I'm not sure what I'll do about finding a turkey this year.

Timely news

For folks interested in food, the logical next step in the quick and easy cooking wars.

On the Second Amendment front, practical grassroots efforts in the Southwest.

Last, sad news about my favorite food blog.