reference blogging

Chad Love on the lack of advocacy for grassland and prairie conservation. He makes the point that there is little public land for the public to access to develop an appreciation for the grasslands. I think he's on to something. I've written before on how a regular connection to a place encourages advocacy for its preservation. Western states that limit out-of-state licenses are making a mistake in some respects, in my opinion, by shutting out or limiting a national audience that cares about habitat, which is often on federal land. As Chad notes, there is precious little federal prairie for people to tramp about, hunt across, camp on, or care for in contrast to the millions of acres we can access further west.

New to this blog roll, and off Querencia, find Hits and Misses: "Hunting, fishing, cooking and other critical aspects of life". Gee, nothing simpatico there at all. In any event, check out Gerard Cox's reworking of a sporterized Lee Enfield in the style of a British sporting rifle. Neat work.

pushed to an extreme

For those subjected to 80's music, a version of the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" slowed down about as far as you can go by The Watson Twins:



Original here.

meme

Behind on blog reading, let alone writing, I recently chanced across Steve Bodio's contribution to a recent meme, that of "5 dream guns".

I suppose I'm just not very dreamy with respect to guns right now. Most of what I list, I own. This comes not from years of searching, trying different arms, or collecting, but in part by chance and in part by selection. Guns that I don't have would mostly be for niches in my battery that are currently full, and might not be improvements. That said, here are five choices for five very broad categories of useful firearm (for I'm interpreting the meme as Steve does, five dream guns that would be the only five you've got)- big game rifle (North American, that is); rimfire rifle; rimfire pistol; shotgun, and centerfire pistol.

As to the first, a rifle for deer, elk, etc., I have previously gone over my current primary hunting rifle and the genesis to its current configuration. I wouldn't categorize it as quite a dream gun, but I would have a hard time configuring something more precisely to my tastes. To my mind, for class, you can't do better than a pre-64 or "Classic" Winchester Model 70 action (although a classic Mauser 98 action is close), and I'd barrel it to 22 inches, put on a fixed 4 power scope, and for elk have it chambered in 35 Whelen, a cartridge of no little romance (or elk dropping ability). A nice piece of walnut would round out the package. That said, the trigger on the Model 70 would probably require some work or a replacement by Canjar or Timney, stainless or some sort of high tech coating would provide some more weather protection, and a laminate or composite stock would help prevent zeros from drifting. Then, too, 35 Whelen wouldn't be anyone's first choice for pronghorn and is even more over-gunned for whitetails than 30'06, which is no less classic than the Whelen cartridge (which derives from it) and loses romance only through ubiquity. Suddenly, I'm carrying something that looks very much like the rifle in the safe right now- an all-weather rifle, not nearly "classic" in detail, that is reliable and comfortable and has a good trigger. Hunh.

As to the next, a rimfire rifle, I've been carrying and shooting a Remington 541-S for over thirty years now. This rifle started off with a 10 power target scope on it and fired thousands of rounds in smallbore rifle silhouette competition and practice.



The competition explains the sticker on the forend- it is from an old match and indicated that the rifle had been inspected and met the requirements for competition. There are more on the other side of the rifle. Now, this is not the perfect rimfire sporter. The plastic faux-burl forend tip is ugly and the magazine and magazine release protruding below the stock isn't ideal. However, it has a very good trigger that breaks at twelve ounces and will hold an inch at 100 meters with Eley Tenex and not much more than that with some other ammunition. Remington cleaned up the aesthetics with their short-lived Model 504 and you can get a prettier rifle that is as accurate from Cooper, or a prettier (and in my experience, frequently troublesome) Kimber, but, practically speaking, you'd be hard pressed to find a better small game rifle than this one, particularly topped as it is now with Leopold's most excellent 2x7 rimfire scope. I suppose a Cooper would be the dream gun, but given the many rounds I've put downrange with this rifle, I'm not sure I'd exchange it for one.

Nearly as handy as a rimfire rifle is a rimfire pistol. I've got a couple (few) but for me the dream pistol is a Hi-Standard "Field King". A relatively rare model, the Field King had adjustable sights and a "medium weight" barrel as opposed to the much more common "Sport King" which was made with a lightweight barrel and fixed sights. My father carried one while hunting or in the truck for years and shot a fair bit of outdoor pistol with it. A few years ago, I came across a Field King with a 6 inch barrel at a gun show. The pistol was in very good condition, except that the Davis rear sight was bent, likely from someone dropping the pistol. The guy selling didn't want very much for the pistol and came down from that based upon the bent sight, which was easily taken care of by an order from Numrich.



It was made between 1950 and 1953. I haven't found a proper 4 1/2 inch barrel for this pistol, the pictured additional barrel comes from an Olympic model (which can be told by the rib on the barrel and a slot for weights on the bottom of the barrel). Nonetheless, both barrels work fine and, while a bit heavy in the holster compared to my S&W 422 or my S&W 317, it is easier to shoot and has a much better trigger than either of them. If I ever get around to shooting .22 pistol competitively again, I'll slip in the 6 inch barrel and be ready to go. Meanwhile, after over 50 years of sitting around (apart from being dropped that once), this pistol is getting carried and used.



For shotguns, if it comes down to one, I wouldn't make much different a choice than the Browning Citori I received as a graduation present from my folks. I fell in love with over/unders after being loaned a Zoli 20 gauge to shoot doves when my single shot Winchester Model 37 broke and, at the time I got it, the Citori was one of very few reasonably priced over/unders available new and the only one you could get with interchangeable choke tubes. With 26" barrels, it weighs a substantial 8 pounds, so it isn't quite a quail wand.



Further, it is made in Japan and, while the wood is nice, the glossy synthetic finish doesn't show it well. On the other hand, the gun shoots well for me and has shot everything from quail to cranes to turkeys. 3" chambers and choke tubes mean I can shoot steel shot at ducks and geese through fairly open chokes or switch out for full tubes and shoot turkeys (after wrapping the gun in camo). With those heavy loads, I appreciate every ounce of the weight. At the same time, the short barrels are quick to swing when it comes to quail or doves. All things considered, I'd rather have double triggers, a round-knob pistol grip and the "Lightning" model forarm, but as with the .22 rifle, I'm not sure I'd switch out at this point.

Now, I admire quite a few classic shotguns and for a while considered getting a side by side. I came across a somewhat beat up L.C. Smith Field Grade a few years ago and have shot it some since. This gun has a replacement butt stock and someone polished the sideplates, removing any traces of case coloring (and doubtless some rust), so it is very strictly a shooter. Apart from that, it has extractors, 30 inch barrels choked light improved and (very) full and weighs just under seven pounds. From the serial number, it was built in 1913.



It also shoots very well for me. All in all, if it were a dream gun, the 3 position safety would be only two position, the butt stock would sport a half pistol grip and match the forend, and it would be perhaps an Ideal grade, as I admire the engraving on those. For that matter, it could be a hinge-pin Fox Sterlingworth or a New Ithaca Double, or one of a whole host of British or European doubles with similar features and I'd be as happy or happier. As it is, though, if down to one gun, some small variant on the Citori up above is more versatile.

Which brings us, finally, to a centerfire pistol. I have to say, I have no such dream gun. I'll likely always have such a pistol around. I admire some of the old Smith & Wessons and, a few years ago, passed up buying a Lightweight Colt Commander in 9 mm that would have made a great concealed carry piece, but I can't really categorize any of those weapons as "dream". Centerfire pistols, to me, are protection pieces and an inexpensive yet reliable truck gun, or an accurate and well set up target pistol are each great things, I don't really have one or the other that gets me excited. Guess I'll just have to dream shotguns or rimfires while keeping a good enough pistol or revolver in the nightstand.

web miscellany

A few changes to the blog roll. I've removed a couple of blogs that look to be defunct or not quite started, though I try not to be hasty about such things given my own lapses in posting. I have hopes that Hubert Hubert will start after rabbits again and that McIntyre and Chappell will commit pixel to screen rather than mere word to page.

Also, I've added a few blogs with simpatico content- Greg McReynolds of Mouthful of Feathers has a solo project where he writes about shotguns, a subject of infinite fascination to some of us. It is "Shotgun Chronicle". Also, Mark Coleman's "Wingshot", a blog of upland hunting, has been needing to be added for a while now, as has Gary Thompson's "Silk Lines and Paper Hulls" about upland hunting and fly fishing.That lucky dog is off to fish the Green Drake Hatch. Meanwhile, we had our last precipitation in February and it was over 100 for 23 out of 30 days last month down here. I'm not bitter or anything, I just hope we get a little rain so I can assuage my frustration by hunting quail in my shirtsleeves in January. Also, neither last nor least A has a blog up, sort of a different perspective of some of the same things you see here and I've added the New Mexico Wildlife Federation to the list of conservation links.

a link

Just a quick, holiday-appropriate link.

Click here to get some nifty free content from Tor.com- the best zombie story I've read in a long time, called "Preparations" and written by Mark Mills.

History as You Travel

Henry Chappell has recently returned to Home Range. From reading his recent posts, I turned to his blog roll and read up on Wyman Meinzer's blog. There, Meinzer has a photo essay of scenes from the Texas plains paired with excerpts from the journals of hunters, travelers, and pioneers of the nineteenth century describing the spot.

Blasting down an interstate at 75 mph, it is awfully easy to miss or forget the challenge presented to the folks who shaped the lands you're crossing. Even on foot, it can be hard to realize how different a stretch of country felt a hundred years ago, just two overlapping lifetimes. Witness Ecorover's collection of photos of abandoned cabins in the wilder country around Butte, Montana. Designated wilderness areas can be an exception to this, in that they're likely to have been unpopulated, high, harsh, or remote all along, thus qualifying for wilderness designation.

Hiking the Pecos high country, I'm nearly always reminded of reading the books of Elliot Barker, who came to New Mexico in a covered wagon and, son of a homesteader, trapped some of the last grizzly bears out of the Pecos before becoming a game warden, head of the state Game Department, then carrying on trail rides well into the age of jet travel. Barker wrote about many of those experiences. Years (now nearly decades) ago, I was taking a short backpack into the Pecos Wilderness and, on Hamilton Mesa, ran into a Portales rancher horsepacking in with his two young sons for a muzzleloader deer hunt. The trail was level and wide, they had a couple of pack horses and one of the boys was on a pony, so I was able to keep up for a couple of miles while we compared experiences up there. I was quickly asked if I'd read Barker and, having answered "yes", our talk turned to the books and the adventured recounted therein, along with the places described in them that we'd seen. You could see the boys nearly shivering thinking about the huge silver bears up in the dark spruce, gone some seventy years before.

Check out Meinzer's great essay.

blogroll

A few additions to the blog roll, a couple of which I've been meaning to add for a good while.

Long stalks, tense ambushes, tricky shots, and more, including movies, culture, and recipes for the lagomorphs collected. Rabbit Stew, Hubert Hubert's blog (mostly) on rabbit stalking with an air rifle in England.

Tovar Cerulli's thoughtful blog: A Mindful Carnivore, which, among other things, features a lot of thought about hunting from a former vegan who turned to hunting in part as a way of ensuring ethical meat.

Beautiful landscape photos of the Southwest at Crest, Cliff, & Canyon by Jackson, also known as Peculiar of Odious and Peculiar. If you can't get out in a big landscape yourself, get a taste of one there.

Last, there is author and gun writer Tom McIntyre's blog, McIntyre Hunts, pointed out by Steve Bodio at Querencia and Chas Clifton at Southern Rockies Nature blog.

addition to blog roll

Long time commenter Dan has a new-ish blog with lots of fantastic photos and back country adventures in Newfoundland. Check out Out On The Rock!

Back from CO and elk hunting, I hope to post about it here pretty soon.

Food thoughts and food tv

Cooler weather turns the mind toward cooking. We're still enjoying some of the tag end of summer, with a couple of weeks of home-grown tomatoes to go and a few peaches still at the grower's market. However, fall is pretty much here, as evidenced by the really good apples also at the grower's market and chilly nights that have me eying the basil plants- they don't stand anything approaching a frost and so are destined to become pesto soon, thus preserved for the freezer but marking the end of pizza margherita. Getting the eyeball, too, are a couple of elk shanks left from last year are going to come out of the freezer and meet up with a bottle of cheap wine and a long stay in a slow oven, a dish that requires cool weather to really enjoy.

In the vein of thoughts on food, I went over to Ruhlman's blog for the first time in a while and, once there, found an essay on the movie "Jules and Julia", with links to a Michael Pollan essay inspired in part by the movie, and an older Bill Buford article on the changing style of food tv.

One thought running through that writing is the conundrum that Americans are still cooking less and less while paying more and more attention to food matters, as reflected by the changing style of cooking shows from the seminal example of Julia Child's "The French Chef" to popular competition cooking shows like "Top Chef" and just-plain-eating shows, where you watch some host travel around eating at restaurants. Separate from the subject of television, the theme of actually cooking vs. being "into food" appears to be current, Hank Shaw just announced his book project centered on "honest food" in which it looks like he'll detail his amazing energy and efforts in producing and processing intricate foods and dishes in part to try to inspire folks to take the same level of care with their ingredients and tackle some significant preparations.

In one of the above-mentioned articles, Buford's last lines are "Never in our history as a species have we been so ignorant about our food. And it is revealing about our culture that, in the face of such widespread ignorance about a human being’s most essential function—the ability to feed itself—there is now a network broadcasting into ninety million American homes, entertaining people with shows about making coleslaw." In another, Pollan asserts toward the end of his essay that "The question is, Can we ever put the genie back into the bottle? Once it has been destroyed, can a culture of everyday cooking be rebuilt? One in which men share equally in the work? One in which the cooking shows on television once again teach people how to cook from scratch and, as Julia Child once did, actually empower them to do it?"

Rulman, appropriately I think, takes some issue with the idea that people are cooking less, perhaps placing the nadir of American cooking a bit behind us and pointing to the food blogs as heirs to Julia Child-style information sharing. However, Pollan's essay makes a pretty convincing case that while millions of people are watching food shows and reading about food and are, perhaps, getting into more exotic ingredients, many aren't following up by going into the kitchen regularly and cooking themselves. It does seem very, very strange.


For some fun cooking stuff, check out the new addition to the blog roll.

Links

Just a couple. Light(er than the scanty normal) blogging now and for the next bit, I anticipate.


Article by Grant Aschatz on "diner envy", which details the difficulties he's found where diners at very high end restaurants see others getting extra courses and such. "Gee, we got the 97 course tasting menu but the table over there had an amuse bouche that we didn't. We were cheated! We'll never return!"


Forthcoming books by author/bloggers here and here. Either's a pretty safe bet as a great read.

Here's Labrat's review of a fun, fat, speedy-reading paperback, "Monster Hunter International", a first novel by gun-blogger Larry Corriea. I enjoyed the book and the review.

Here's a question I don't really think has an answer but which is fun to investigate anyway: Where to find the prettiest outdoor photos on the web: John Carlson's Prairie Ice, Cat Urbigkit's contributions to Querencia, or Russel Graves' blog?

Tons of fantastic images in each case that reflect not only artistic eyes and speedy reflexes but many hours outdoors.

covers

Listening to music, one of my favorite things to discover is a well constructed cover of a song- one that manages to overtake the original version or, perhaps better still, to reimagine it. In searching the web for links to performances of a couple of my favorite examples, I came across an entire blog devoted to covers performed in the folk/acoustic style, a time sink of the very first water. Of course, the web being what it is, I then found a whole bunch of such blogs.

Buying a tribute album or other collection of covers is fraught with the danger of mediocre takes messing up favorite songs (or at least it used to be, before you could preview nearly any album on Amazon.com) so the best covers are generally those of songs that you're not all that fond of in their original version.

For example, having come into pop-music consciousness in the early 80's, I couldn't help but be aware of Prince, though I had little use for his music apart from conceding that he was good at writing pop songs. Those songs just didn't do much for me, whether performed by pretty girls or the guy who kind of looked like he wanted to be a pretty girl. Back then I was listening to more music from the non-psychedelic strain of 60's rock, with The Police, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and a few others thrown in.

That aside, Prince's "When Doves Cry" (note the link is to the original video, in all it's overwrought and risque glory) was a pretty big hit and is a pretty good pop song. Compare, though, the Be Good Tanyas' version (and this link is to a place to listen to the song, music videos seeming to have largely passed from this earth, except for the homemade sort). It seems to me that this is as much an homage as a reworking of the song. A great bit and a favorite of mine.

Another Prince hit which I can take or leave (mostly, leave) in the original is "Kiss". However, Richard Thompson's driving solo acoustic version of this song is pretty amazing and another of my favorite covers. Incidentally, Thompson is not only a great songwriter in his own right, he isn't afraid of covers at all. Perhaps we should be afraid.

Another big name in the 80's that I've never been partial to is Bruce Springsteen. Apart from the moving and perfect album "Nebraska", I just don't care for Springsteen's bombast. However, he does write some good songs. He just needs someone else to sing and perform them. Someone like Cowboy Junkies. Margo Timmins is much nicer to listen to than Bruce, see this cover of "Thunder Road". Mostly, though, the songs are just better stripped down.

Incidentally, Cowboy Junkies play Santa Fe tonight.

Tuna history

One of the books I grew up with, handed down from my father, was "Sea Boots" by Robert C. Du Soe, which told the story of a young boy, the orphaned son of a Mexican fisherman, who stows away on a tuna boat and the adventures on that boat's cruise as they make bait, repair engines and gear, and search for tuna. The boat in the story was set up for hook and line tuna fishing, where the crew stood on racks hanging off the sides of the boat and used stout bamboo poles and feathered jigs to hook schooling tuna and then yank them right onto the deck.

That was a favorite book and made better by the fact that my dad grew up in San Diego and had an uncle, gone before my time, who was a commercial fisherman and did just that sort of fishing. I was reminded of "Sea Boots" when one of the Field & Stream blogs (Honest Angler) recently put up a post featuring a great video from the 40's or 50's: color film of a San Diego tuna boat getting loaded to the gunwales with 1, 2, and even 3 pole tuna. Definitely something you want to check out.

blogroll

Via The Suburban Bushwacker, I learn that Chad Love of Field and Stream's "Fieldnotes" blog has started up a personal blog for his own amusement. It looks pretty good so far and promises "random esoterica from writer Chad Love celebrating the joys of fishing, hunting, books, music, literature, travel, guns, gundogs, photography, lonely places, wildness, history, art, misanthropy, beer and the never-ending absurdity of life."

a couple of links

First, and continuing with the book theme, from the Tor publishing website: author Jo Walton has a series of essays that are worthwhile on Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, which have won half a dozen Hugo and Nebula Awards and set the bar for space opera. Those essays are capped by an author interview. For a taste of Bujold's writing, check this out at the Baen Free Library.

Next, a new addition to the blog roll- hunting, fishing, thoughts on gear and more, with pictures, from way up north.

Last, in the "demons ordering snowcones" department, I read via SaysUncle the news that a federal circuit court of appeals has handed down a ruling on the subject of whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms applies against state and local governments, a question of some significance after last year's Heller decision from the Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concludes that the Second does in fact apply to the states.

Skimming the opinion, it is interesting for a few things. First, it illustrates how the law-review influenced practice of footnotes is getting out of hand in legal opinions. While frequent footnotes may cause an opinion to look more like a law review article, and thus scholarly, they make interrupt the flow of logic and make it harder to read. Any footnote more than a sentence long, or which is other than truly tangential, should be incorporated into the text. Then again, perhaps I'm just a fan of incorporation.

Next, the first section of the opinion is, footnotes aside, a fairly clearly written primer on just what a mess the doctrine of incorporation (of the Bill of Rights as to state governments) is in today's law. I agree with the view that the "privileges and immunities" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment should have prevented this debate. Maybe someday we'll have a Supreme Court that reads the whole of the Constitution into effect. Maybe we're even headed that way.

Which leads to the last point, and that is the slippery slope effect of legal arguments. Once the Supreme Court addressed the Second Amendment and its underpinnings in Heller, something which it had largely avoided, then it opened the door to the right to keep and bear arms being addressed just as other rights enshrined in the Constitution. For example, and from the opinion:
"Heller reveals evidence similar to that on which Duncan relied to conclude that the Due Process Clause incorporated the right to a jury in criminal cases. Heller began with the 1689 English Declaration of Right (which became the English Bill of Rights), just as Duncan did. Compare Heller, 128 S. Ct. at 2798 (noting that the Declaration of Right included the right to bear arms), with Duncan, 391 U.S. at 151 (noting that the Declaration of Right included the right to a jury trial). Thus the right to keep and bear arms shares ancestry with a right already deemed fundamental. Cf. Resweber, 329 U.S. at 463 (plurality opinion) (relying solely on the presence of a prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments in the English Bill of Rights for the conclusion that it is incorporated into the Due Process Clause)."

Last, I reprint footnote 18 of the decision whole, as I find it obvious, a nice turn of phrase, refreshing coming from a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, and amazing coming from the Ninth Circuit:
"18
The County and its amici point out that, however universal its earlier support, the right to keep and bear arms has now become controversial. See generally Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L.J. 637 (1989). But we do not measure the protection the Constitution affords a right by the values of our own times. If contemporary desuetude sufficed to read rights out of the Constitution, then there would be little benefit to a written statement of them. Some may disagree with the decision of the Founders to enshrine a given right in the Constitution. If so, then the people can amend the document. But such amendments are not for the courts to ordain."

In the end perhaps the denizens of hell aren't looking for a jacket after all. The court upheld an Alameda County ordinance forbidding possession of firearms or ammunition on county property and thus closing a popular gunshow held on the fairgrounds, concluding "The Ordinance falls on the lawful side of the division, familiar from other areas of substantive due process doctrine, between unconstitutional interference with individual rights and permissible government nonfacilitation of their exercise. Finally, prohibiting firearm possession on municipal property fits within the exception from the Second Amendment for 'sensitive places' that Heller recognized." Prohibition=nonfacilitation and the exceptions will overwhelm the rule by the time Second Amendment jurisprudence settles out.

fly fishing declining?

From Operation Delta Duck, to Trout Underground, to Michael Gracie, who has a post up about the declining trend in fly fishing. Anecdotally, my favorite fly shop changed hands last year, but the saltwater guru shop guy that I've gone to for advice many times before has moved to a local and independent sporting goods store with a good fly fishing section (and higher prices). I'm still waiting for that flood of garage sale gear that was purchased after the movie, used once or twice, then hung up.

If you don't get around to Gracie's archives, at least check out this short conversation with Lefty Kreh.

various bits

A reference-blogging trifecta:

Via Gherkins & Tomatoes, a food history and recipe blog (check out the post on eating bait), a link to an interesting story on the etymology of "nachos" from the OED. "I had only learned of nachos a few years earlier when a Mexican restaurant opened in our Capitol Hill neighbourhood. Those nachos were delicious! I could have made them my entire meal, but how could anyone who has looked at and eaten nachos see any relationship between one of these and the adjective 'flat-nosed'?"

Wow, I thought some of Clapton's guns were rather tasteless. Here's a possibly NSFW Winchester Model 42. Just $12k and you could be an envy (or at least focus) of all your friends at the skeet range. Alternatively, perhaps this G-rated version is just the thing for the well-heeled little buckaroo in your life.

Saw this on The Trout Underground, found on the blogroll of Rebecca K. O'Connor's new site-
"The River Why" a long-time favorite of mine is being made into a movie. They'll surely screw it up. The fact that the referred article appears in the rather annoying "Outside" magazine doesn't encourage optimism (the Trout Underground guys do a much nicer job reporting than the magazine). It appears that the author isn't on board, either. Too bad- I'd like to see David James Duncan, make a mint. He's written a couple of very good books and it would be great if he got to see a monetary reward, even at the price of having one made into a bad movie.
Further, Brad Pitt isn't this one so there probably won't be a whole new generation ("horde") of fashionable fly fishers descending on the creeks and rivers. Hard to say, though, apparently some starlet of the moment is going to be fishing in the buff in one scene. Somehow, I don't think that'll inspire thousands of young guys to hit the rivers. I've wondered in the past- where did all that expensive gear go once the yuppie tide receded? I'd have thought there'd have been some deals on barely-used Ross reels and Sage rods & duds. Guess they're all gathering dust in various closets. Someday, though, they'll hit garage sales. I can do without most those early-90's Sage pool cues, but Ross's come with a lifetime guarantee and are awfully pretty, even if they don't do anything my Pflueger Medalists won't.

more reference blogging

Over at A Hunger Artist, Bob del Grosso has an embed of an amusing and clever history lesson of international conflict (centered around the US and Israel) from WWII on.

around the web

Interested in a shotgun with Damascus or twist steel barrels? Lots of information found here. Safe, safe for black powder, or dangerous, some beautiful barrels (scroll down for pictures).

From the Gun Nut blog at Field and Stream, breaking clay birds with a bass casting outfit. Another post there contains a Youtube clip of a program featuring lots of slow motion photography of shotgunning.

A ten worst films list for 2008. This one is notable because of the common sense approach. I quote: "Worst lists are somewhat disingenuous. The truly worst films of the year are always the cheapie slasher flicks and pretentious independent films Blockbuster only buys a single copy of. But my definition of worst is 'worst experience', as in crushing disappointment, as in There’s A Special Place In Hell For All Involved And We Call It 'The George Lucas Wing.'" Found via Bore Patch, which seems like a pretty good blog.

Page for a rescue Chessie which was turned over to a shelter for knocking over a toddler and chasing a kitten- in the embedded video the foster folks spend the last thirty seconds putting a cat in front of and on the dog while he holds a sit and tries to figure out what the game is, without chasing it. "So there! dog abandoning feckless people!" is how I interpret that. Pretty dog, too.

Last, the Smithsonian Magazine now has a food blog.

around the web again

Some of these are a little old.

Benefit of going to high school in France- you might get to eat really well.

Better than most accounts in the print magazines- a Dall sheep hunt in Alaska.

They might be "Best", but the first pair are just tacky. Apparently Slow Hand likes a single trigger. Via Dave Petzal's Field & Stream blog.

Also from Field & Stream, this time a link on the "Field Notes" blog leads to one of the best "close encounter" videos I have ever seen.

In the dwindling Sacramento River salmon run, a big one got away and managed to contribute its genes to another generation.

CBR R&R

Right at one year ago I got my Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Booker. I chose to get a rescue dog for various reasons and utilized the help and good offices of the Chesapeake Bay Retriever Relief and Rescue organization. So far, things are working out pretty well for the dog and I both and we're looking forward to the start of the hunting seasons here in a few weeks.

Each year, CBR R&R raises funds by selling a calendar. Cleverly, they raise more funds by having folks pay to vote for their favorite photos as well as by selling the calendar. Go check out the Chessie photos. The money goes to a good cause and while you're there, you could always vote and support the organization's good works. Heck, you could even vote for this guy: