@#$%&**!!! 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.

West Texas

"West Texas" can mean a lot of different things, given the size and variety of the state.
On a tip from my Dad, here is a very interesting history web site about Texas. One of the many extensive sections gives a lot of information about the part of West Texas wherein I spent a fair amount of my growing up.

Back when my family lived there, my ten-year-old archeologist self didn't know anything about leaving things in context. We hunted arrowheads and other flint tools, which could be found even right around town.



Cabeza de Vaca stumbled through that country, then nearly everyone left it alone. For a history of settlement after statehood, Baronial Forts of the Big Bend is a good book if you can find a copy. Apart from some brushes with fame during the Mexican Revolution, a little ranching, a little mining, a little farming, and a lot of emptiness characterizes much of the Big Bend.

That is still a relatively little known corner of the world, although I've found a surprising amount of material on the web just looking around now. For years the best way of explaining the part of West Texas my family spent a few years in was either as "the Trans-Pecos", which wasn't particularly illuminating but satisfied some, or "a couple hundred miles down river from El Paso", which more people can envision. If you gave a town name, it is most likely heard of or seen by people on the way to the big national park or perhaps an exclusive resort. Back in the 70's, I don't think anyone would have expected Lajitas to become a resort. Mostly it was just the last little place you drove through on your way to the Park or, for the people that participated in that, a famous chili cookoff. The best restaurant for a couple of hundred miles in any direction when we lived there was in a ghost town.

We had the good fortune to have access to a big ranch, now also a park, where we got to hunt, picnic, and see some pretty interesting prehistoric sites- pictographs in rock shelters, metates and manos, and deep mortar holes in the rock where grain or seeds were ground. On further expeditions, we'd head up to higher elevations and check out the fort or swim in a really nice pool.

I'm taken a bit back to find so much of that country on the web. Check out the county courthouse, fitting for the second biggest county in Texas.

blog-rolling

Thanks to The Regal Viszla for inclusion on their blog roll. Stories about hunting dogs are always a welcome part of the web and I'm flattered to be linked. I hadn't really looked at their site prior to noticing a couple of referrals, and wanted to call attention to it as well as use the linkage as an excuse to put up some pictures, older and not.

First, my sister's wirehair viszla, Bator:





He is quite probably the smartest dog I've ever been around.
Grouse hunting in southern Colorado, Labor Day snow:



My folks wirehair, Liszka, a water monster and shown here as just a pup dealing with East Texas heat:



and relaxing on a New Mexico grouse hunt:



And then back to the smooth coat viszlas I grew up with- Red and Anya. I'm lazy, so I'll quote what I wrote earlier about them:

"The first vizsla we got as an adult; he'd been abandoned by someone and came to us as a burly and wild two-year old. He turned out to be a wizard bird dog with a great nose: capable of pinning of covey of blue quail as he literally slid into a point, dust raising around his feet from the sudden stop. He also ate the birds he picked up for the first couple of seasons. He never got over a hard mouth but we accepted the few extra puncture wounds as the price of doing business and finding more birds. The female was a decent bird dog in her own right, though her nose never matched Red's. She particularly loved to fish in small mountain streams, shuttling back and forth between anglers leapfrogging each other to hit the pools and runs. Every so often she'd wade out next to your fly or bait and look intently in the clear water for fish. Of course, finding none with forty-some pounds of bird dog in the middle of the hole she'd give you a quizzical look as if to question your choice of spot. I'll probably always have an affection for red colored dogs after those years."

Here are serious Red and clowning Anya:


and Anya grinning in a posed shot with a cock blue grouse:



and last posing photogenically in some Texas bluebonnets as an old girl:




I have to say, one of the really nice things about the Chessie is his insistence that he be right next to you almost all the time you're home, shades of a velcro viszla. In any event, this recent bit of linkage is perhaps more apropos given my viszla history and connections.

The last on...

D.C. v. Heller, at least until the decision comes down and possibly not even then. A few links. First, the transcript of the oral argument is out, even though it just concluded a couple of hours ago. A rundown of the argument and some analysis is available at the Scotusblog. More analysis and lots of comments, as usual, at The Volokh Conspiracy.

All the above is interesting to people really into Conlaw analysis, the courts' take on the Second Amendment, and Supreme Court watchers. Still, court watching is a pretty slow ballgame. The decision most likely will be handed down some time this summer. In the meantime, I recommend everyone do something really helpful (and almost as exciting as waiting for the written opinion on Heller from the Supremes) and assist in this noble effort to prevent spontaneous gun violence.

Recent Bits of Web

Some interesting posts around the web, some more old, some more new:

First, some free legal advice to bloggers which is potentially worth much more than you'll pay for it.

Peculiar of Odious and Peculiar on the recent pseudo-flood through the Grand Canyon: "The problem with doing flooding experiments in the GC is that there is no large amount of water to use to mimic a flooding event, the dam notwithstanding. Releases from Glen Canyon are determined by a bewildering host of factors: agriculture in California; municipal water needs in Phoenix, Vegas and So-Cal; electricity needs in Arizona; our treaty obligations to provide Mexico with 2 million acre-feet yearly; balancing inflow (i.e., snow melt) with diversions in upper basin states while maintaining useful water levels in three major downstream reservoirs and three major and a host of minor upstream reservoirs."

Via Fretmarks, a heads-up and link to a post by Patrick Wright which contains some interesting history as well as a strong whiff of England when there was still an empire. Correspondence in the Times regarding the proper arsenal for a long trip back of beyond. Hah! for any newspaper today to publish such correspondence (here only a bit of one letter in small part, you really need to read the whole thing): "I wonder how those who look on a .22 rifle as a childish toy would like to make a target of the plump part of their own back view at 100 yards – or even 150 – for a good .22 cartridge.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
G.A. ANSON, Lieutenant-Colonel.
Naval and Military Club, 94, Piccadilly, W. 1, Nov. 28."

Keeping with the UK theme, here's a bit on a blog about hunting geese with a 130 year old 8 gauge in Scotland, complete with video.

From last month on Rigor Vitae, rattlesnake appreciation: These reptiles are not only specialized at their very tips; the musculature of the tail itself is dominated by three pairs of “shaker” muscles, two of which produce lateral, back-and-forth movements, while the third pair applies torsion, drawing the ventral edge of the rattle outward to either side.

From Atomic Nerds, a fairly recent hit about nature red in tooth and ... well, let's just say that biology works in some mighty strange ways. Not a post for the squeamish, or anyone under twelve: "My personal favorite, because it makes my inner thirteen-year-old giggle madly, is Xylocaris maculipennis. Like a surprising number of other bedbugs, Xylocaris reproductive process is 'traumatic insemination'...."

From Prairie Ice, some really nice photos of Canada Geese on their way (farther) North. Go here and check out the third photo down, where the first bird on the left is completely inverted while flying. He has a bunch of other great photos from this spring's migration once you scroll around a bit.

Camera Trap Codger is a great biology and photo blog. Recently, he put up mountain lion photos from one of his automatic cameras in the California mountains. That's another good site for scrolling around.

Next, from Maggie's Farm, a series of photos from a very exciting bear-relocation effort. Click here to see the poor Game Warden have a really tough day at the office.

Food! Via Ruhlman, here is an opinionated, fun report of an unusual dinner prepared by famous chef Chris Cosentino. Sounds challenging: "Imagine yanking a snail off the side of a house and sticking your tongue deep inside the shell, and you're about halfway there." but fun "It had a rich, silky texture and a wonderfully full, pork flavour--heaven's lunchmeat." Rulhman actually links to several reports of the dinner if you feel like reading a couple of perspectives.

Sea ducks are pretty quick. Here's a computer game with a view from the rocks. You lose points if you shoot a hen. (37 points)

A couple of interesting blogs: A Smallholder in Scotland- just starting out but good so far, with a recipe for pigeon goulash. Then there is "Hunter Angler Gardener Cook"- check out the dinner with five wild duck dishes.

Whitewater

Well, so far this year the snowpack is looking really good. To any outdoorsfolk here in the Southwest, this is welcome news, particularly given the very dry years just past.

Every spring for the last decade or so, my sister and I have taken a whitewater rafting trip somewhere in the Southwest. We go with professional rafting companies and generally seek an overnight trip with at least a few class IV or even a couple of class V rapids. The last couple of years, seasons have been short and the flows down, a tough condition on the rafting companies and we tourists. This year promises a longer season, provided spring doesn't get too hot too fast, and bigger water. The Rio Grande through the Taos Box in New Mexico provides a whole different level of excitement at 2800 cfs than it does at 1200.

Here's a couple of guides working a supply boat through a tight spot on the Gunnison in '03- barely enough water to get through there. Interesting ("technical") but not exactly a matter of adrenaline. More like work pulling on the lines:



Here's a different sort of work on the lines- a couple of guides lining a boat down a tight spot on the Piedra in southwestern Colorado:



Year before last we went down the upper Animas, between Silverton and Durango, Colorado.



That was our second trip down that particular river. The upper Animas is unusual amongst southwestern rivers in that instead of presenting a pool-and-drop scenario, the gradient is so steep that you have almost constant class II and III rapids with occasional stretches that spike up to IV. You really don't want to fall out of the raft or have it turn over, as there aren't many spots along the steep banks that offer a chance to eddy out and crawl out of the water, which is very cold. On the plus side, you get lots of work and excitement and the Animas usually flows at a decent rate. The company that we've gone with insists on running a stern rig with oars, rather than pure paddle boats, and I can't really blame them or be too sorry about it. We're just doing this to have fun.

A few years ago we took a day trip through Westwater Canyon on the Colorado, just into Utah. The outfitter provided inflatable kayaks and oar boats.



There is a fair amount of flatwater on the trip and quite a few small and medium rapids that were plenty exciting for novices to IK's. The trip got a bit more exciting for my sister and I when we missed eddying out after Surprise rapid. We'd picked up another trip member (actually, our friend) who'd dumped and was swimming, then ferried him back up to one of the escort rafts. The guides had everyone pull river right and eddy along the cliff wall, but we bounced out of the first couple of eddies and were getting pulled progressively downriver. Getting tired, we tried one more eddy (my sister even attempted to wedge her paddle in a crack in the cliff) but were ejected once more. The lower safety boat had long since gone downriver and the guide in the follow boat helpfully exhorted us to "Eddy out!" As we drifted toward the horizon line he even more helpfully shouted "Eddy out! You really don't want to go down there!" Sarcasm ensued in our boat. We knew darned well we didn't want to go down there, but we couldn't catch the eddy and needed to rest a minute or two before hitting what was obviously another rapid. We didn't really have a choice, wants aside.

By that point we were about in the middle of the river and, once we could hit the top of the rapid, we could see a huge hole river left. Even worse, the river appeared to split on a cliff right in front of us. Lacking apparent options, we tried to run the main current, knowing for certain that we wanted no part of the big recirculating hole. We hit the wave train, got caught, bounced, then flipped. I came up a few feet from the rock face, sucked in some air, went under at the face, then came up in a huge eddy. I let that carry me back up to the midpoint of the rapid, crawled out, then started looking for my sister, who was nowhere in sight. The other IKs and the escort raft showed up sneaking the rapid on extreme river left, going around the back of that huge hole, which turned out to be Skull Rock. Yep, we went down Skull Rapid the wrong way, at least wrong for a couple of novices in an IK. The guides were less than thrilled to spot me on the wrong side of the infamous "Room of Doom" (the eddy), too. The guide who drew the short straw got in an IK then ferried across. Once he'd caught his breath, the two of us ferried back over, paddling hard to avoid being swept into the rock face ("The Rock of Shock"). It turns out that my sister managed to miss the rock face entirely and swam the rapid with no incident, getting picked up by a Utah park ranger waiting below for just such an occurance. This remains our one scary, as opposed to thrilling, rafting encounter. I wish the guide has used some of his breath to yell "Go river left, hard left, all the way left!" once it became clear we were going down, as then we'd have stood a chance of making the run. Here's a YouTube video of a raft making the same run we made, though they stay upright and manage to scrape along the rock without getting stuck in the Room of Doom. (Language warning on the video).


The big hole is right under the camera here. The Colorado is running about 6000 cfs in this video (according to one of the author's other videos from this trip) whereas we were on the Colorado at about 12000, which made that wave train they crash through all the larger.

One sure-fired hangover cure is to start your morning off with a nice rapid. The combination of gallons of cold water crashing over your body and a good spike of adrenalin works to shrink your brain right back to size, get your heart pumping, banish any fuzziness, and leave you ready for the rest of your day.

Whooops!

dia-Tribe

Via the Volokh Conspiracy, a bit of news and a link to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Laurence Tribe on the DC v. Heller case I mentioned last month.

Tribe urges that the Supreme Court should explicitly limit its decision in Heller to the terms of the Federal government's power to restrict the right to keep and bear arms on a Federal reservation, leaving aside the question of the extent to which states or the Federal government can restrict ("regulate") the right in other contexts. Tribe contends that such a decision would be consistent with the principle of judicial restraint (pause for all lawyers who graduated in the last twenty years to recover from their faint at the prospect of Larry Tribe urging judicial restraint) and appropriate because "scholarship on the reach of the Second Amendment and its implementation is still in its infancy". Hubris, thy name is law professor. The extent of legal scholarship on any given subject is hardly determinative of whether that subject presents a question of law. For any who've read about this sort of thing for a while, Tribe's statement is particularly exasperating and amusing because much of the recent scholarship on the Second Amendment can trace a fair part of its inspiration to an article by Professor Sanford Levinson which appeared in the Yale Law Journal nearly twenty years ago and titled "The Embarrassing Second Amendment". In that essay, Professor Levinson mentions Tribe's near exclusion of the Second from discussion in his widely distributed (as a required text in law schools) constitutional law treatise. Because Levinson is a respected legal scholar and also a self-avowed liberal, his article attracted a fair amount of attention. Somewhat famously, Tribe later examined the resulting new scholarship and changed his treatise to reflect his new found opinion that the Second Amendment protects an individual, rather than a collective right. Thank God John Locke and Edmund Burke engaged in a bit of new scholarship and and those other crazy guys who wrote our Constitution went ahead with those ideas, rather than waiting for them to be adopted by the academy.

Tribe also believes that the fact of an individual right presents no limitation to gun control measures. To whit (and from the WSJ op-ed): "The lower court's decision in this case [Heller] -- the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals found the District's ban on concealable handguns in a densely populated area to be unconstitutional -- went overboard. Under any plausible standard of review, a legislature's choice to limit the citizenry to rifles, shotguns and other weapons less likely to augment urban violence need not, and should not, be viewed as an unconstitutional abridgment of the right of the people to keep or bear arms." Tribe ignores the fact that the D.C. Circuit also found the law at issue's requirement that you keep your shotguns and rifles locked up separately from your ammunition, basically unavailable on any sort of short notice, unconstitutional. I truly look forward to Professor Tribe explaining how an individual right memorialized in the Constitution can be restricted on the basis of location (which is to say urban or densely populated areas) and that restriction pass strict scrutiny. Perhaps he does not consider the latter a plausible standard of review.

Just a bit more- Tribe: "Equally foolish would be a decision tilting to the other extreme and upholding the lower court's decision simply because the right to bear arms is, judicial precedent to the contrary notwithstanding, a right that belongs to citizens as individuals. Such a holding would confuse the right to bear arms with a right to own and brandish the firearms of one's choosing." Nice of the professor to note that judicial precedent hasn't been kind toward the Second Amendment, too bad he neglects the "shall not be infringed" part of the amendment. "Brandish" is a nice touch, too. We've gone from a pistol in the night stand to citizens wildly waving such about in the space of two sentences. Personally, I fall in the "bear" school of gun handling, never having had cause to "brandish", though I might if I could avoid having to shoot someone by virtue of running them off with a little brandishment.

p.s.- if you want to get a nice primer on the Second Amendment and the individual rights view, I cannot recommend Professor Levinson's piece highly enough.

p.p.s.-original title of this post changed to something more clever thanks to the suggestion of a reader.

Reference blogging, re: food

Last week, Steve Bodio put up a post linking to a piece on Mark Bittman's New York Times food blog regarding British cookbook author Delia Smith's statement in favor of frozen mashed potatoes, amongst other things. I was surprised the conversation didn't roar a bit more, though the post did draw some interesting thoughts in other quarters.

The rather extreme comments on Bittman's blog led me to think a bit about the eating cheaply, eating well and/or eating conveniently. Anyone who's been around a college in the last thirty years is probably aware of the siren call that is ramen noodles. Eight for a buck and good for quelling hunger and fulfilling your daily msg requirement. Instant mashed potatoes, canned beans, canned soup, canned stock, frozen pie crust, frozen pies, frozen dinners- there is a continuum of convenience.

This continuum is by no means limited to the regular grocery store. Upscale groceries, with lots of pre-prepared salads, dishes, and meals, are as bad or worse. Whole Foods has plenty of semi- and fully-prepared foods stocked. The packaging is more likely to be biodegradable ink on cardboard or unbleached-appearing paper and the ingredients may be organic, but it's still a tv dinner. Trader Joe's has made something of a specialty of the convenience food and also tends to emphasize food characterized as "fair trade" or "organic". I love Trader Joe's, but will admit to being a bit taken aback the other day upon noticing the packages of shelf-stable cooked rice and cooked lentils for sale. My first thought- "water in, too heavy for backpacking". My second "heck, who can't boil rice?" I'm by no means speaking from a position of some sort of basic ingredient purity- I'll testify that the TJ's frozen gyozu are pretty darned tasty. On the other hand, I consider pre-made pie crust to be a cop out and kind of unworthy.

I suspect that where one falls on the continuum of convenience depends largely upon how important food and eating really are to you. How much enjoyment do you get from a really well prepared, that is to say well flavored, dish? The more important novelty, or subtle improvements in flavor are to a person, the more return he gets for his investment of time and effort in preparing something from basic ingredients.

Much as I enjoy eating what I consider well and much as I enjoy my local grower's market, or eating meat I shot, carried, butchered, and packaged myself, I can't get too carried away with the idea of local, fresh and organic. Cold pizza is a near ideal breakfast food. For that matter, I was going through some old recipes the other night and came across a couple that require a can of cream of mushroom soup. I not only enjoy those recipes, but I'll probably always have a can of condensed cream of mushroom in my pantry for emergency purposes. In fact, when confronted with meat of dubious tenderness and/or strong flavor, you can't really go wrong by flouring it a bit, browning it, taking it out of the pot and cooking some onion in there until the onion turns translucent, then deglazing the pan with some wine, then returning the meat, a can of cream of mushroom soup, some pepper, perhaps thyme, and a bit more wine. Cover tightly then place in a slow oven and let it cook for a few hours. Serve with rice. Works in a dutch oven on coals, too. Hide the empty can.