Not figured out yet

So, for my part of the country, this past weekend was the last weekend of duck season. I've only hit it moderately hard this year by my standards. I'm just a weekend warrior and I only managed to get out ten days of the ninety-some day season. In honor of the last weekend, and in reflection of the fact that a planned semi-marathon of hunting over the New Year's holiday was sidelined by a persistent and nasty cold, I got out both days.

Saturday was the best day I've had in the last two seasons. Booker and I got a bit of a late start. Nonetheless, once we were set up and before I could even get sat down and arranged three mallards tried to land on us. They flared off with a hail mary attempt following them once I could get to the gun. It was fairly chilly, around 20F, causing a bit of mist off the river and hoar frost on the brush, dog, and me:



When I used to do a lot of winter fishing, I could pretty well tell the temperature by how quickly I lost feeling in my fingers while rigging up. If I could get three knots tied without losing sensation, it was around thirty. Mid-to-low twenties, I'd lose feeling about done with a second knot. Low twenties to high teens, right around finishing the first knot. Below that, I couldn't get an improved clinch finished before my finger tips went numb. Saturday wasn't bad, but these drops on the gun are ice from Booker shaking water out of his coat (while standing next to me, rather than down the bank a bit, of course):



Lots of snow geese were flying over, temptingly low in some cases. I hadn't thrown any goose loads in, though, so we contented ourselves to watch them. Most of the geese were up high, anyway:



Not that many ducks were flying early on, but then a pair of mallards circled twice and dropped in to the decoys. When they were twenty feet off the water, I stood up, dropped one, then the other. I'd hoped to have a double retrieve for the dog, just to see how he handled the situation, but I was too slow on the birds and the second one dropped in the brush behind us. Booker didn't see the fall so I had to call him back there after the first bird and have him hunt up the second.



Later on in the morning, around nine o'clock, groups of a half dozen to a dozen mallards were working up and down the river. I was in the right place, this time, as even when the birds were fairly high up they'd turn and come parachuting down. It is amazing how quickly they can lose altitude when they want to get down somewhere.

Just about the biggest thrill in waterfowl hunting over decoys comes when birds see your decoy spread and then start working into it. The birds will frequently make at least one circle, even when they come in without hesitation, and the combination of a close range encounter with them and the tension imparted by the potential for a last-minute error which will send them off makes for a thrilling experience. On Saturday, the birds were trying to land in the area I had set aside for that purpose, but were making their last circle right into the bank I was sitting on, meaning I was face-to-face with the ducks at some fifteen yards. The whole thing, from spotting the birds to having them come down right on top of you, is just too much fun.

We did lose one bird. I was slow getting on him and getting on the gun and, despite two hits, he set his wings and crossed the river into the woods on the far side. Getting back there required finding a spot we could cross the main river channel, which required going downstream a couple of hundred yards and then pushing across a pretty good current of rib-deep water. It's always a good idea to remember to lift up your hunting jacket when you do that, otherwise your shells can freeze together in the pockets. In any event, we worked up to about the right place and then searched the woods and riverside drain well up and down without finding the bird. I've lost four birds now in seven seasons. Some loss is inevitable, but I think shooting steel makes it a bit worse. A couple of times I've hit birds only to have them set their winds and coast for a couple of hundred yards. Those that land in the river or where I could find them were inevitably stone dead by the time I got to them and frequently had good hits that penetrated well. The hard pellets just seem to penetrate, though, rather than imparting all of their kinetic energy into knocking the bird down. So, counting the lost bird we had our limit of five mallards and called it a productive day.


After Saturday's great hunt, we headed back out to the river on Sunday feeling fairly optimistic. Sunday morning was warmer by four or five degrees, meaning no mist off the river and no ice on the Chessie. It was also a bit cloudy, as we had a little front coming in. I set up about seventy-five yards down the river from Saturday's location, hoping that a wide, dry channel downriver from the bend we were on would make the decoys visible for a longer distance. Once set up, Booker and I sat down in the streamside brush and watched snow geese, then several large flocks of pintails, head respectively down and up the river at high altitude. Then, pretty much nothing happened for the next few hours. Quite a few birds went by, but they weren't that interested in the set-up and gave us no more than a cursory glance or two. If not for a suicidal drake wigeon, we'd have gone home duck-less.

We did have a few opportunities, but managed to blow them in various ways. We had three mallards come bombing in shortly after shooting light, only to flare when I turned and looked directly at them, as unaware of their presence as they were of mine until that moment.

At another point, three drake pintails circled us, then decelerated some thirty feet over the decoys. Pintail numbers are down and the limit is one bird per day. For that matter, I've passed on pintails for the last seven years. In this case, I was going to make an exception; however, a pair of mallards was also circling to come in. I held off on the sprigs to see if I couldn't get the drake mallard- some small greedy part of me thinking "if the pintails land, shoot the mallard then try to swing over and pick up one of the pintails and end the season with a really nice double"- only to see the pintails decide to head off down the river and the mallards follow.

Booker did his part, as he broke for the first time this season as three more mallards circled in quite low and mostly behind us. On their last pass, some twenty feet high and preparatory to swinging around to our front and into the decoys, Booker charged after them, crashing through the willows and dead grass and sending them frantically winging off. Then we had words.

At the last, with no birds flying, we walked down river a half mile or so, putting up a couple of bunches of ducks tucked into various pockets on our way. Clearly, the problem wasn't a matter of the birds not seeking to land in the river, but rather with my choice of location or set up. On our way back to pick up the decoys, a lone duck came flying down the river at low altitude. I've found that, often enough when you see a duck a couple of hundred yards distant if you take a knee and hunker down a bit, they will fly right over you even though you are in the open. In this instance, I called Booker to me and made him sit right at my side, then got down myself. The bird flew some twenty yards off to the side and once I saw the white wing patches and white forehead patch of a drake wigeon I went ahead and took him. That duck has added his part to the cassoulet I put together yesterday afternoon and plan on enjoying over the course of this next week. A bit of success from the red gods to finish off a very fun season and grace a frustrating day with a high note.

I'm really not sure what the differences between Saturday and Sunday were, as the decoy arrangements were similar and only a short distance apart in similar sorts of water. Something, weather, the overall look of the thing, something, was different and not to the birds liking. Of course, trying to figure all that stuff out is what keeps quite a few of us out there hunting and fishing. Hope everyone else's season has been as much fun as ours.

Interesting Photos

Via Dr. Hypercube, a link to the Library of Congress Flikrstream, with two sets of photos- news from 1910-15 (sports figures, Mexican Revolution, early planes, and much more) and color photos from the 1930's-40's (Depression Era construction, homesteading, war work, and much more). Set aside lots of time to browse!

Pike!

These are old photos, as I haven't been pike fishing in a while. The Rio Grande Gorge in northern New Mexico holds Northern Pike that escaped from lakes in Colorado and made their way down the drainage. Later winter, about right now, is one of the best times to fish for them, as the frequently turbid Rio is fairly clear. Also, the pike are pretty cold tolerant and are starting to stock up some calories in preparation for spawning.

In trying for trout, I've had a rough time fishing the Rio Grande up there over the years. The river turns muddy at a drop of rain and has a big drainage. The hatches seem irregular and the trout moody. I've yet to catch a good sized trout and have made several trips that resulted in nice hikes through pretty scenery, but darned little in the way of fishing. I've talked to guys that have gotten into good hatches and caught nice fish, but haven't hit it quite right myself. Part of the problem is I live a little too far away to hit the river that often and I'm not quite in touch with the conditions. Pike, though, have been more consistent for me. I first heard about them via a conversation by other anglers in a fly shop, one guy complaining about a pike glomming onto a nearly-captured trout and breaking his tippet. Later, one of the guys working in the shop gave me a couple of suggestions for finding them.

My first few trips looking for pike met with no real success, although I did get one heart-stopping follow from a nice fish and lost a small one. I tried different flies and changed around set-ups, finally determining that a mini-sink-tip or a sink-tip line and a heavily weighted fly made of Fis-hair or similar material works best. An eight weight rod is about right. The streamers I put together aren't much- a 2/0 hook wound with .035 lead, then mounted with a short wire leader and a six-inch hank of material tied on and wound forward. Coming through the water, they snake along about like a plastic worm on a bass fisherman's line. Also, being simple and cheap, you don't feel too much regret when you hang one on a boulder in the river bottom, which is a fairly common occurrence.



The Rio Grande is a pool-drop river and flows fairly steeply through the Gorge. The trick to finding pike is to find resting water. A nice mud bar or bank is a good sign. The water has slowed enough for silt to deposit and the mud warms up a bit faster in the winter sun light. The other aspect of a successful pike trip is timing and weather. When the lows in Taos don't fall below the upper teens for a couple of sunny days, you stand a chance. You don't want to be on the water before about eleven in the morning. At that point, the sun has warmed the water just enough the fish ought to be getting more active. Once the sun gets off the water, any action usually shuts right down. You're generally finished by three in the afternoon, if not sooner.

You have to get the fly down in the water and casting is generally a bit of a challenge. The walls of the Gorge rise steeply behind you, jagged lava boulders surrounded by fly-grabbing brush, so back casts have to be high and short. Generally, a nice steady retrieve against the current seems to be preferred by the fish, which will frequently follow the fly right up to your feet. Most of the fish I've caught have been around two feet long, with thirty-three inches being the largest I've come across. One interesting thing about the fishing I've done for pike up there is that they will frequently seize the fly in their jaws, holding it so tight that even a vigorous hook-set doesn't pull the lure out of their teeth and lodge the hook in the fish. After a few minutes of fight, the pike simply opens his mouth and swims off. Consequently, setting the hook repeatedly is encouraged.



Assuming you get decent weather, get up to the Rio, then down in the Gorge, then get the fly out and a pike on (and hooked), you are by no means done with the excitement. a pike beached into shallow water will lie quiescent right up until the point where you reach for the fly -using pliers!- whereupon he will start rolling and thrashing, with his mouth open, needle-sharp teeth slashing back and forth. Their jaws are quite tough, so getting the fly back as the fish turns and chops is almost as exciting as the strike. You probably won't forget to turn the barb down on your hook twice.



For a late winter distraction, pike are tops. These are wild, big, and fairly unknown (locally) fish that not many people bother with that are active at a time when trout fishing is largely an exercise in frustration.

GMF

Via Two Blowhards I read that George McDonald Fraser has passed away. Sad news that a favorite author is gone. Via links from the Blowhards you can read about the Flashman character who is central to Fraser's most popular books. A word of warning to any unfamiliar with them- Flashman is very much an anti-hero and displays about all of the bigotry to be found in Victorian England. Nonetheless, the contrast between Flashman and many of the historical characters with whom he interacts serves to highlight many of the incredible figures from the 19th Century. For that matter, Fraser also does a good job of pointing out that many of the folks battling against the British Empire were not necessarily good guys just because they were fighting imperialism, an un-PC thought which is seldom encountered. You must love the Flashman novels for the endnotes, though. The lovely endnotes that serve to illustrate the research behind the novels and flesh out the minds of the day make Fraser's work stand far ahead of other historical fiction. The lively writing and humor don't hurt, either.

If the Flashman books are not a reader's cup of tea, I'd suggest another very nice historical novel/romance- "Mr. American". Beyond that, Fraser's "Quartered Safe Out Here" is one of the best memoirs of the Second World War which I've read. It deals with the British campaign in Burma against the Japanese, which is an aspect of the war which hasn't received as much attention as some of the other theaters.

Hard not to imagine Flashman not being one's cup of tea, though, if you are interested in the Victorian explorers and adventurers or the Raj. I haven't met a female fan, though, so that might be the dividing line.

A bit from Flashman and the Redskins, which is Flashy speaking of a confrontation in a London club with an academic, this in his eightieth year or so-
"You may wonder that I got in such a taking over one pompous windbag spouting claptrap; usually I just sit and sneer when the know-alls start prating on behalf of the poor oppressed heathen, sticking a barb in 'em as opportunity serves- why, I've absolutely heard 'em lauding the sepoy mutineers as honest patriots, and I haven't even bothered to break wind by way of dissent. I know the heathen, and their oppressors, pretty well, you see, and the folly of sitting smug in judgment years after, stuffed with piety and ignorance and book-learned bias. Humanity is beastly and stupid, aye, and helpless, and there's an end to it. And that's as true for Crazy Horse as it was for Custer- and they're both long gone, thank God....
So, I'm slung out of Traveller's for ungentlemanly conduct. Much I care, I wasn't a member, anyway."


I hope Fraser gets to meet all those Victorian adventurers he drew so very well.

2007

Here's wishing everyone a happy new year!

seasonal bird

A while back I had mentioned seeing an Inca dove in my backyard.

Well, the little guys are showing up again, small bird of peace here for the holiday season-


They look tiny next to those whitewing doves, don't they? Five thousand feet of elevation, a bit of snow in the last week and here they are- not bad for "a small tropical dove of arid areas". Inca doves make a distinctive little rattle when they flush from where they are feeding on the ground. I've enjoyed seeing them, as they are familiar to me from time spent on the Texas-Mexico border and the seeming expansion of range by whitewing and now Inca doves strikes me as a good thing.

I was also visited by what I'm pretty sure is a white-breasted nuthatch. The photos aren't great, they were taken through a kitchen window and my little pocket camera does not do real well on "digital zoom". The little dude was too small and quick to catch with the optical zoom feature, which doesn't offer quite the magnification. I also wasn't going to break out the 300mm lens and a roll of film just to get a better picture.





In addition, there were a gaggle of juncos at the feeder. They are very common, but favorites of mine and rare to my backyard. Typically, I only see doves, English sparrows, and house finches. Then again, I'm gone on weekdays during the hours most of the winter feeding goes on.

Hard to walk in the same river twice

Well, the weather this morning was supposed to get down into the low teens, but Booker and I decided to see if we could find a few ducks anyway. I drove by one thermometer that said seventeen degrees Farenheit, which is pretty chilly. I ended up overdressed and sweating, though. It really didn't feel like the teens down on the river, my facemask wasn't freezing up too badly and the reeds on my calls weren't freezing in place. Those are usually pretty good signs of colder weather.

We got down to the river in good time and walked through the trees to the bank to find it up considerably, no doubt due to recent rain and melt from snow the last few days. More than that, the course of the river has shifted, putting me belt-deep in some decent current where a couple of weeks ago the water came to mid-thigh. Step in the wrong spot and the decoy bag would start to lift up on its shoulder straps, giving that walking-on-the-moon feeling.

Back in the beginning of November the blind looked like this:



Lots of bank between blind and river.


Now it looks like this:


The channel running in front of the little flat that blind is on has filled in from waist to knee deep and the river has spread out, all in the course of two weeks between my last hunt and this. We couldn't really use the blind, as I wouldn't want Booker to be sitting in a foot of cold water and most of the brush on the sides and front has washed away.

Accordingly, we shifted around to sit on the bank in some willows just a bit upriver where I could put out a decoy spread that looked good to me. Booker did well at sitting with me and holding still, but he did have a couple of issues with the brush, especially as not many birds were flying:



We got buzzed by a nice bunch of wigeon right at shooting light, but I wasn't ready and they didn't tarry. Surprisingly, the first hour of light, usually one of the busiest times, was very quiet. We persisted and managed to pick up a couple of birds.



Despite the lack of action, we hung on hoping for a bunch or two of birds looking for a late-morning loafing spot, but not even the hawks and cranes that usually provide distraction were much in evidence. Eventually we picked up the decoys and headed back in.

dinner blog

So, I'm coming up on one year of more-or-less consistent blogging and I've devolved to "what I had for dinner", surely a low water mark. I'll try to add some anecdote or throw in some links.

My plan for dinner tonight was a pasta dish I'd tossed together some time back that had worked well. For that, I had a bit of leftover link sausage, so I browned it in a bit of very hot olive oil, added some crushed garlic, then wilted mixed chard with a can of fire roasted tomatoes in the same skillet and tossed it with some penne. Very good, between the garlic, spicy rich sausage, and bitter-ish greens. Unfortunately, I planned this dish a bit too far in advance and my chard had gone slimy. Slimy greens are something up with which I will not put, absent dire circumstances, a relic of working for a caterer/restauranteur who had me and her other staff (all two) wash the slimy layers off nearly gone lettuce so we could chop the moderately firm centers and serve them. After the first case or so= Blech. Old lettuce (or other greens) still sets me off a bit.

In any event, home from work, walk the dog, get ready for dinner and discover it wasn't going to work. Into the compost with the chard and out to the freezer go I, to pull a package from my last elk labeled "thin, flat barbecue". That's what I label the 4 steaks you get from right off the shoulder blade of an elk- the cuts are an inch thick at the thick end, but pretty tender given the short grain of the meat, which must be sliced right off the blade of the bone. That package went into a sink of warm water to quick thaw while I scrubbed a package of Klamath Pearl potatoes from Trader Joe's, then tossed them in a bit of olive oil and cracked black pepper and sea salt in a roasting pan, which went into a very hot (450 F) oven to roast. Once the potatoes were about done (twenty minutes) and the meat well on the way to thawed, I put a knob of butter in a large cast iron skillet over high heat and let it melt.

When I went away to college, I faced the daunting prospect of life without access to a grill. My dad is California born and grilled meat and green salads were fixtures of my growing up that I feel deprived without. In the course of setting me up for solo cooking, my mother instructed me in the basics of pan-frying (to no means to be confused with just plain frying or chicken-frying) a steak. First, use an iron skillet. Second, get it hot, though not blazing hot, third, add a bit of butter, then the meat. Once the meat is well seared, set it aside, then deglaze the pan. The best way of doing that is to throw in a handful of mushrooms and, once they begin to release their liquid, add a healthy dash of Lea&Perrin's Worcestershire Sauce and a bit of red wine, then cook until the mushrooms are tender and the sauce starts to thicken. Until I was the glad recipient of a baby Weber Kettle at the semester break, which grill I still own and cooked on for a good fifteen years, I practiced on an iron skillet when budget allowed and taste required a bit of red meat suitable for something other than stew or burritos.

Generally, I advocate game cooked rare and generally prefer to cook mine on the grill. However, I've learned that well dressed and butchered game, particularly elk, is remarkably flexible. John Barsness, in one of his books, notes that guests were surprised that he and his wife cooked elk "just like meat" in a stir fry. He contends that with proper prep and care such is entirely possible and appropriate, allowing for the lower fat content of game meat. Ditto.
So, in this case, once the elk was brown on one side, I sprinkled it with cracked pepper and coarse salt, then flipped it to get the other side to the same point. Then I placed it on a platter that went into the oven that the potatoes had recently vacated and was turned off, in order to rest it while I deglazed the skillet with a glass of red wine and a tablespoon of dried shallots (mushrooms not being on hand). Once the wine was reduced by half, I added a bit of elk demi-glace I'd prepared from bones of that '06 elk- a luxury, but, hey, the British version of "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" was blabbing from the tv and I was subject to repeated exhortations to use good ingredients and prepare them simply. Now, demi-glace is not exactly simple in my book, but it is awfully good and the whole production would surely qualify for Gordon "Two Michelin Star" Ramsay's definition of "simple". Once the demi-clace was melted and trying to boil, I poured it over the meat, sliced off a large chunk, surrounded it with potatoes, poured a nice glass of cabernet and sat down to steak frites, loosely interpreted and impromptu. Fine eats, happy place.

Better, less personal blogging in the future.

Panhandle again

This guy turns out to be a good guide. Good dogs, good property, and he knows that property. We had a good hunt, saw quite a few (and our first) pheasants and even managed to shoot some. We'd hoped to goose hunt in the morning, but the playa lakes are mostly dry and the weather hasn't driven the geese down yet, so a goose hunt was foregone and we walked for pheasants all day. Hard life!



The first day, we were in shirtsleeves by ten in the morning. The next day, fog thickened and thinned and the temperature hovered in the thirties.



None of us had hunted pheasants before and this was probably a pretty easy introduction- birds on private land that have seen limited pressure, hunting strategies from a guide who works those areas every year, and dogs that hunt almost every day during the season. Pheasants were fun, though. Shots ranged from quick, quail-like rises at close range to wild flushes further out that allowed the birds to get up a good head of steam before they passed. Different scenery for me- grain fields and CRP, fence rows, weedy corners, and mostly flat.



New birds, some good shots made and some others missed and a good time with family.

Guided

Family and I are off to take a crack at a Panhandle hunt for goose and pheasant with an outfitter who is an unknown quantity to us.

In "Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing" John Gierach writes that "Now and then you'll hire a guide and that's about all you'll get: a boat and someone to row it." Of course, he also writes: "If you decide to be a guide, I think you should do it for reasons other than that you love fishing."

Guided trips are a bit of a minefield of expectations for me. Growing up, we never did or even really contemplated guided trips. We knew some guys that guided, on a part time basis, but didn't make those sort of hunting or fishing trips. Heck, we hunted with those guys other times. Having a professional to help you out, get access to property and scout out the situation, seems like it ought to result in a sure thing, though it shouldn't and doesn't.

As an adult, I've been on a few guided fishing and bird hunting trips. The initial experience down in Belize set a high bar. We were down on our first trip there and had never done any saltwater fly fishing. The hotel had an arrangement with some local guides and we booked a trip for flats fishing and completely lucked out with the guy who showed up. Severo had some gear and took my father and I out to some flats surrounded by mangroves and channels where he rigged up an 8-weight fly rod and had us cast to show him what we could do. Once that was established, he began to pole us to various little pods of bonefish, eventually finding a small mud and staking-out up-current so we could cast into it. After we had both caught a few bonefish (and for your first bonefish, "one" is significant and "few" is very significant),



he asked "Do you guys want to try for tarpon?" What else could we say but "sure"? We ran back to a large lagoon where a series of four-foot tarpon systematically refused the few flies we could get in front of them and the large mirrolure thrown as a back-up (neither of us could throw with a 12-weight at that point). Despite the lack of cooperation of the fish, it was an afternoon of high excitement: first the tarpon would appear, as it grew closer, Severo would guide his panga so that we would intercept the fish, a cast would be attempted, after the rejection or failure to get the fly by the fish, we'd throw the plug, then the fish would ignore that and we'd look for another. The sense of anticipation as the lures were presented to the fish is impossible for me to adequately convey.
The next day, we went out with Severo and trolled around a reef for snapper and other reef fish, then for barracuda, all great light-tackle fun. Since that trip we've fished with Severo and his brother any number of times and always had a good trip.

Alas, other trips have not met the high expectations set by that trip. In southern Belize, we were taken on long boat rides punctuated by walks on empty flats by a guy who knew how to run a boat, but didn't appear to have much fishing experience or knowledge. Schools of bar jacks and other jacks were pinning baitfish against flats and tearing them up, but he continued a fruitless search for a flat with bonefish or tarpon on it instead of putting us on some of the easier fish. Finally, late in the second day and after repeated requests, he stopped and poled us to meet some of the jackfish. Since neither tarpon nor bones had been seen, we were happy for the chance to bend a rod. A later trip to the same region and we stayed on a caye with its own little flat and managed to find lots of shots at bonefish and quite a few at permit right there.



Waterfowl hunts have been mixed as well. One East Texas duck hunt went fairly well, the guide had a nice piece of property leased and a good blind and we got into a few ducks. My sister was also treated to lots of opinions as to why hunting is ok and a more than a bit of condescension, probably an unavoidable hazard for women who hunt but not something you really want to pay for. A later trip in flooded timber was worse: the guide brought his adult son along as an assistant, they sitting in either end of the blind. They insisted we keep down and keep our heads down until the ducks were right upon us, then opened the shooting themselves. "Take-bang! bang!-em!" Several ducks were killed, but I only pulled the trigger once and all our chances were at birds flaring from the opening volley. I think the guide and his son had a pretty good hunt.
My father and sister have made several goose hunts on the east Texas rice fields. You get up and out early then set hundreds of decoys in the gooey mud and fire ants, typically to watch flocks of snow geese several thousand strong ignore the spread. In three or four trips they've been unable to get a shot. Of course, the huge flocks of snow geese over there are notoriously hard to decoy. A Panhandle Canada goose hunt a few years back was worse. The guide set a group of us out in a cut-over corn field and set up his decoys, then called and flagged as flocks of Canadas came our way. A hundred birds peeled off and began to circle over us as we lay out on mats in the stubble, the birds talking and drifting down, only to flare repeatedly just out of range. It turned out that the guide's young dog was unable to contain himself and was running through the spread behind us. Sixty pounds of Lab tearing around will flare geese, don't you know. Fun to lie there and watch the birds come in and hunting is not all about killing, but it isn't just a matter of going out to run the birds off, either.

My experience with guides on common waters or lands has given me some pause, too. Years ago we were hunting western Colorado and would run into guys in a large tent camp that an outfitter had packed them into on horseback. Of course, we were parked at the end of a road only half a mile or so up above them and the gear was brought in before the season on four-wheelers. Not exactly false advertising, but those guys were paying a fee that bought them a bit of a ride with respect to the difficulty in getting to their camp,if not in other ways.
Some guides have a sort of proprietary attitude- because they are out every day and have to make a living off a particular patch of water, they don't hesitate to crowd the rest of us for their sports. When I fished the San Juan in north-western New Mexico quite a lot, I ran into a fair bit of that from guides. The most egregious example that springs to mind was one afternoon in March when I'd found a pod of rising fish a bit down a deep channel. The San Juan is mostly a matter of nymph fishing, but winter and early spring afternoons the blue-winged olives will sometimes hatch and get a rise going. After a (fun) morning of catching fish on nymphs, the spoiled 'Juan angler might head down to Baetis Bend and try to find some fish on a dry fly for variety in his sport. In this case there was no way to get right up to the half-dozen fish on foot. Consequently, I was upstream in water near my wader tops and making about as long a cast as I could manage, trying to throw some slack into it so I could drift a #20 Adams to the fish in a natural fashion. Hard fun! I had hooked one fish and was working on another when a guide in a drift boat with two clients came by. Instead of passing, he rowed back up until parallel with the fish and about thirty feet off, then anchored and proceeded to direct his clients to cast to them. Rude!
Not to paint all who guide with the same brush. The vast majority of whitewater rafting guides I've been on trips with have been professional, competent, and fun. My only grief there is that they have started getting a little young in the last few years. I like these guys because they still have a few long-time Terlingua based guides who wouldn't start to be tempted to call me "sir". For that matter, I was on the San Juan another afternoon waiting to see if a hatch would develop in the same spot as had happened the previous two days about that time. Sure enough, BWO's started showing up and fish started rising. I had a prime spot staked out and clipped off my nymph rig and strike indicator, tied on some more tippet and a dry, and began fishing. This guy came by with three clients, an eighty-something grandfather, forty-something dad, and teenage son. He asked if I minded if he placed his clients around me, to which I of course responded "no problem". Kim placed the grandfather first, helping him find his footing and warning him not to venture out further, then bringing the son and grandson up past me a decent distance to get them in position and casting. Before he could get them sorted, the grandfather had a fish and began wading out to it. Concerned for the slippery rocks, deepish water a couple of feet out, and the man's unsteadiness, the guide ran down to him, netted the fish, released it, checked the fly, then came back up. No sooner than he had father and son placed and untangled, the scene repeated. As he chugged back up past me with a little grin, I looked over his shoulder to see his oldest client had yet another fish on. I laughed and pointed him back that way, which was met with a wry shrug as he trotted back down to the old gentleman, who clearly had some ability with a fly rod. Hard working, and polite, guide.

I think I can imagine some of the difficulties of guiding and the grab-bag of people you have to deal with in the course of making very little money and doing a lot of work. Nonetheless, for a regular-Joe type sportsman, a guided trip is a big deal and higher expectations are near unavoidable. With any luck, this upcoming trip will prove satisfying for everyone, guide and client alike.

Book meme/request

The holidays are right around the corner and I find, to my surprise, that I don't have much in mind in the way of books that I'd like to give or receive. In an attempt to remedy that situation, I'm going to list five titles that I've read and enjoyed in the last year or so that are in print or readily available and exhort various literary, knowledgeable and interesting(fascinating, hot) bloggers, as well as anyone who might read this, to contribute their recommendations. Fiction, popular science, popular history, biography, good stuff that might not come to one's attention absent a suggestion. The things that have made the biggest impression on me in the last year or so aren't exactly obscure and some are a couple of years old, but I don't hesitate in recommending any of the following:

1) 1491 by Charles Mann. Really, really interesting. Fantastic compendium of new theory and knowledge about that population and landscape of the Americas before European arrival and record keeping. One of these days I hope to get around to working through some of the material in his bibliography.

2) Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. A look at food production and a meditation on modern Americans' connection or lack of connection to their food. Lots of interesting information about growing corn, feed lots, organic farming, mushroom hunting, and an interesting look at hunting itself.

3) Heat by Bill Buford. A really interesting look at working in a commercial kitchen (Mario Batali's Babbo!), traditional Italian cooking, and, somewhat tangentially, Batali himself. Not at all like Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential" except that it draws several pictures of a busy New York commercial kitchen, I found myself reminded of Bourdain's book frequently but enjoyed this one more.

4) 1634:The Baltic War by Eric Flint and David Weber. This is more a recommendation for an alternate history series, which starts with "1632" than the specific book, which is not the strongest in that series. Interesting premise and a very active publishing schedule from Flint, who does a lot of editing of and collaborating with other authors he's invited to participate in this setting. This is a good introduction to alternate history for non-science fiction fans. It is also good for fans and has the added benefit of a pretty big back catalog with more books forthcoming. I do wish Flint would return to his core characters a bit more, but that's me.

5)Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen. Fun mystery/thriller with an ecological bent by Hiassen, who sets his books in southern Florida and populates them with very eccentric characters. I can't imagine anyone not laughing out loud at least a few times when reading a Hiaasen novel.

Lagniappe: Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett. Most recent in a series of young adult novels. If you're not allergic to fiction for juveniles or have an eight to fourteen year old who needs a book to read, get this or, better yet, start with "The Wee Free Men", the first of the books involving Tiffany Aching. For that matter, if you can stand to read things in a fantastic setting at all and haven't read Pratchett, you're really missing something. I hadn't read any of his books before a couple of years ago and ripped through his back catalog in no time at all. Suggested beginnings are "Guards, Guards!", "Reaper Man" or "Small Gods".

So, what made an impression on you all? Comments solicited!

Dog discovers fire

Guess he's never seen a fireplace in action before. Things have turned cold here, so I've built fires the last couple of nights. Booker has only ever been around one camp fire with me and considers this to be high entertainment.



The cat has added "crazy" to his list of reasons why the dog annoys him.

Tom Kelly's "The Boat"

Tom Kelly is probably best known for "Tenth Legion", a great book largely about turkey hunting. A while back I ran across another book of his from The Lyons Press titled "The Boat" with a cover blurb that read in part "One man's quest to build his own wooden boat-". Now, as I science fiction reader, I long ago learned to disregard the cover of a book, as the stalwart figure in the space suit or the exotically-clad woman illustrated there, respectively shooting at or cowering from a BEM, seldom reflects the contents. I think the covers have gotten better with time, but they are still more misleading than not. While the illustration on this book was fine and appropriate, that blurb shows that someone had not read the boat. While the narrative is generally tied together by the story of a boat Kelly built and then used for thirty years, no "quest" is involved in the construction, which is described in a very few general and self-deprecating pages. Rather, the book talks about the history of timber cutting in the South, turkey hunting, fishing, river bottom land and its importance as habitat, and a whole host of other things. Kelly has what sounds to me like a classic Southern voice and the short book flies right by. Just don't expect to read about boat building.

Trinity Session

Not having anything to do with the Trinity Site, down south of me, but the album by Cowboy Junkies. That album came out twenty years ago (I didn't pick it up until a year or two later after hearing their cover/reworking of "Sweet Jane".) It is, in my opinion, one of those rare perfect albums where all the songs are not only good but are better as part of the whole. Critics toss around terms like "moody" and "ethereal" when referring to it. There are a few covers- Lou Reed, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, but it isn't as country as you'd think from that list. I'd call it "spare" and maybe go for "contemplative", the latter largely because I enjoy listening to it while driving through mountains at night. The tempos are about right for slow dancing with a couple/three of them in 3/4 time.

So, in celebration of the anniversary of the recording of their break out album, the band went back to the church where they all sat around a very expensive microphone and recorded "Trinity Session" and, with the addition of Natalie Merchant, Ryan Adams, Vic Chesnutt, and Jeff Bird, recorded all the songs again and titled the effort "Trinity Revisited".

Since I'm a fan, I pre-ordered the thing like I have most their albums since they started doing things off their own label and website. The package got here the other day and so I tore right into it.

There is always a risk in reinterpreting something that fans have listened to thousands of times and come to love. I've read that the difficulty is an artifact of recorded music. Before we listened to exactly the same version of a song repeatedly people didn't have such fixed expectations as to what a given song should sound like. I've heard Jimmy Buffett complaint that he can't recall all the words to his own songs as exactly as the fans, as he hasn't listened to them over and over again.
Nonetheless, I was optimistic that "Trinity Revisited" would be a good album. In part, with was because I think one of the Junkies' strengths is their covers- apart from "Nebraska" I don't care for Springsteen, but every cover of his work I've heard by Cowboy Junkies has pointed up how good his songwriting can be and brought out beauty that never gets through the bombast that is all I get from the songs when Springsteen performs them. At best, it is going to take a couple dozen listens to decide about this album and I'm not sure I'll get there. Margo Timmins, the Junkies' singer, has become a stronger vocalist over the years and her voice is wonderful. In contrast, the male singers on this album are terrible, unmusical, and not good despite having other, decent recordings. For that matter, I'm not sure what the deal was with Natalie Merchant. She wasn't singing in harmony much with Timmins and seems to sing in an increasingly stylized manner as time goes on. Hard stuff.

It's always interesting going back to something you really enjoy, whether it be a food, a movie, an album, or whatever. Much as I like live music and appreciate how a new take on a song can give it a different feeling, I haven't really been able to warm up to this recording and find myself thinking "they're messing up this song" because it doesn't sound like the original. You all can see a bit of "Trinity Revisited" here. If you don't have it, buy "Trinity Session", from back in '86, the very first opportunity.

The dark side

Good dog:







Bad dog:

What were they thinking?

When I was growing up I used to read in the Big 3 outdoor magazines about "slob hunters". Every other issue or so there would be an editorial encouraging hunters to behave well to avoid alienating landowners and non-hunters. "Slob hunters" was the slogan or phrase that the writers and editors adopted to label thoughtless, crude, or destructive behavior. To tell the truth, I never thought too much about the term or the exhortations. We didn't do that sort of thing and I was fortunate never to really run across any egregious examples of bad behavior. Now, the following isn't really that egregious, I don't suppose, but it is a good example of some low-level carelessness that just can't do hunting any good.

The area I hunt ducks is a stretch of river between towns, but surrounded by fields and houses. Access is via locked gates administered by a conservancy district. You pay an annual fee to get a key. The stretch through which the river runs is a mile or so between levees, the space not water taken up with cottonwood river bottom forest and tangles of salt cedar (tamarisk) and Russian olive. Coming out from a hunt the other day, I let myself through the gate to see the following:

some fellow hunters who had enjoyed a decent morning cleaned their four ducks (two mallard hens, a drake, and a hen widgeon) and left the offal, heads, feet, and wings in the road right by the gate, almost in the access road. Now, what would the folks using that land behind the gate in the background think when they come across the bits and pieces as they go to fetch some of their hay? I'd guess they would probably elevate hunters from the minor annoyance of "guys who drive by in the early morning and make the dog bark" to "slobs". For that matter, quite a few folks ride their horses or bikes down the levee roads, even down there. A bunch of duck guts and heads isn't going to strike them well, either. What I really don't understand is, why there? That levee road runs for ten miles before the next gate, with hundreds of acres of forest they could have cleaned their ducks in and left the remains out of sight. Advertising their success? I tossed all the bits over the edge of the ditch bank for the delectation of the first crow, coon, coyote, or other scavenger to happen upon it. The scattered feathers won't draw flies and I didn't bother to hunt them down. I kind of wish I'd run into these folks as they were dressing the birds, just to ask "why here?" and hope it would shame them into a bit more discretion. It's not a big thing, but, heck, so avoidable.

Ducking

Duck season opened last weekend but I didn't make it out until this past Saturday. I was looking forward to see how Booker the Chessie would handle his first duck hunt and I have to say, my expectations were pleasantly exceeded. We got the decoys out and he settled into the blind with no problems. We got buzzed by a couple of bunches of ducks and he was busy watching the birds, sometimes seeing them before I did. Of course, being a bird dog, Booker doesn't distinguish between cranes, crows, hawks or blackbirds. If it's close and flying, you can feel the mental pressure from the dog to "shoot!".

Scanning up-river:


out front:



and down-river:



you got to watch close or they'll sneak up on you.

I started off on an embarrassing note; we had a bunch of teal blast through the decoys, then circle around and come back through. I stood up, swung, and missed. Booker charged out and insisted on checking every single decoy to see if it was the bird he was sure had been downed. Poor guy, he's going to have to get used to hunting with me, where every shot by no means indicates that a bird will be falling. After having to wade out to bring him back in from where he was still looking for a bird, I leashed him up. The next couple of opportunities, he tried breaking at the shot but furthered his acquaintance with the command/suggestion "whoa" courtesy of a stout blind support the leash was looped to. Once I did knock down a bird- off he went, having marked the fall and returning the duck to a couple of feet short of the blind before returning to the water to look for more. Retrieving is still not perfect.

We had a bunch of ten mallards, all but one drakes, circle us a couple of times then put in a couple hundred yards up stream. They swam down a bit, then headed back up and could not be convinced to join the decoys. After pretty much everything had stopped flying for an hour or so, Booker got bored-



so I told him we'd sneak those ducks. I leashed him up and we crept up a dry side channel and then through the cockleburrs until we got to about where they ought to have been. I stowed the leash and then we eased up to the bank to have the whole batch, plus a couple more, jump up. I took the closest drake and Booker made a great retrieve, swimming across the current to nab the cripple in a very decisive manner then bring him right back to hand-






A couple of birds and high note to end the day on. I'm going to have to really make an effort to get out this year.

ATV

I hate ATV's. I'll say that right up front so that there isn't any question of bias. No question, there's bias. I say this as a person who admires the ability to travel bad road, to know where your wheels are and ease over rough spots while dodging rocks and avoiding high-center. I admire that ability in outdoorsfolk so long as those bad spots consist of roads. Damned 4-wheelers, though, that is, the ATV variety, don't stick to roads. I recognize the usefulness that 4-wheelers provide for folks who work outdoors and have haul stuff to out of the way locations. My dislike springs from the fact that, regardless of the restrictions placed by the Forest Service or BLM on off-road vehicle travel, I frequently find ATV's or signs of ATV's well off roads or well down closed roads. I guess the temptation to ride rather than walk is just too much for most folks.


If you think that the motorized travel actually ended 100 yards from this sign, you're sadly mistaken. Nearly every one of these signs I saw last week had similar tracks around them.

Most amazing to me is the number of bow hunters I see driving ATV's. I've encountered bow hunters putt-putting along open meadows, bow in hand, presumably vehicle hunting. Maybe vehicle hunting with a bow works, as I've also seen guys riding along with an arrow knocked as they stand in the back of a pickup.
This fall, while looking for grouse I walked down a steep timber ridge, across a saddle, then up another ridge of broken timber to some meadows on the east edge of that ridge. From the saddle on up I found the well trodden tracks where a bow hunter had gone up there on his ATV at least three or four times, parking to overlook the meadow. I fancy he would have had a much better chance at success if he had left the smelly machine down in the saddle (already well off a road) and hiked up quietly. Later, in the meadow photographed from the top which you can see few posts down, I found where another bow hunter had run his ATV along one tree line to the top, parked, and eaten a candy bar. Snickers, by the way. Of course, my tracking skills are not so marvelous but neither Leatherstocking-like ability nor Holmesian deduction was required when the wrapper was right where he'd tossed it. I had to wonder, given that he was carrying a weapon with a fifty-yard range (being generous) what success he hoped for sitting on his machine overlooking about 10,000 square yards of open meadow full of knee high grass. How do I know these guys were bowhunters? I don't, for sure. However, bow season was the only thing open at the time, apart from grouse, dove, and squirrel. The areas were wrong for dove and squirrel and sitting in one place while grouse hunting is neither the usual practice nor a recipe for success.

I wonder, too, at the hunters I see heading up into the mountains every fall with trailers crowded with their ATVs. Where do they put other necessaries? I see and hear them buzzing up and down the forest roads in the dark, heading to their hunting spots. While an ATV might use less gas for such chores, my pickup is far more comfortable and will get me to anywhere I need to start walking. For that matter, an ice chest, shovel, rope, and a bunch of other stuff travels along in the truck.

I know you can drive up on game. We've all done it. I wonder about ATV's well off-road, though. I recall a hunt hears ago where I was sitting and watching a hillside opposite a good size draw. A dozen deer browsed as the evening progressed. Suddenly, the deer stuck their heads up, looking at the top of their hill. They broke into a trot and made their various ways off down the draw, the last disappearing just as I could make out the putt-putt-putt of a slowly firing four-wheeler that shortly crested the ridge. I was a good ways off any road, though in the driver's defense, there weren't any restrictions on off-road travel in that area at that time. Given that he turned and putt-ed down the ridge, moving any game along the route I planned on hunting out, he managed to confirm a convert to the school of "no off road travel". Every year I hunt big game it seems I see at least a couple of guys who've just made some horrible amazing hike away off somewhere in my binos and I stop a second and admire their effort. I'm not saying everyone should do that, but I do wish the ATV yahoos would keep their stinky, noisy, annoying machines on the roads and leave the rest of the country to those of us who will take shank's mare.

The Season

This blog was interrupted in order to bring me elk hunting.

No elk were harmed this year, though we had a good hunt up in western Colorado. The last few years, the hunt starts with my folks getting in from Texas, then my father and I taking our trucks up into the Colorado mountains. You cross some, then start back up into the high country. Though it doesn't look high yet, there it is on the left:



Then up a canyon:



Further up:




and into the area we hunt, a bit over 8000 feet in elevation:



Within a half mile, you can go from pinyon/juniper to aspen and ponderosa, with the occasional spruce hiding out in wet and shady draws. We were joined by a friend from Denver and his brother in law out of North Carolina, up for his first elk hunt.

A bear had apparently spend most of the late summer on the hillside above our camp, as it was littered with his scat, which was full of acorn hulls. There is a turkey roost up there, too. This was my year for seeing deer, as I came across quite a few nearly every day, including a couple of four-point bucks, one of which was pretty good. Elk were harder for me to come by, though I had one possible shot through oak brush that I declined. The elk didn't offer any further opportunity. Another of our party had a shot, so we won't complain.

I had a good time one morning tracking three elk down a ridge line, just a few minutes behind them. That sort of hunting, watching the trail in rapidly melting snow, reading the tracks to see whether it looks like the elk were spooked or are beginning to slow down or look for a bed, trying to move fairly quickly, yet stay quiet, watching the wind and all the while scanning ahead and to the sides for any hint of buff, tan, or chocolate elk hide, is very intense and very fun. As it turned out, I pushed those elk into my father, who was working the opposite direction down the ridge, but the cover was heavy and they spooked before he got a good look. Few of my tracking attempts succeed, but the interesting exercise and the occasional success is enough to keep me at it.

We managed to catch weather, everything from wind to a bit of snow on the second day of the season:



In this second photo you'll notice the toughest Volvo in Colorado, or at least one of the few to ever find itself on an elk mountain, all-wheel drive or not. Kudos to Chris for keeping the "S" in "SUV":



It was a good year for grouse, the third we have seen.. We found blue grouse up on top, hanging out in bush ponderosa and even down in the p-j. Some of us carry .22 pistols to liven up the walk back to camp with the possibility of picking up a couple of birds. Sometimes, if the elk hunting is looking a little slow, a fellow might find himself cruising areas more prime for grouse than for elk. Shooting only for the head renders the hunt challenging and sporting, while preserving the delicious meat. As John Gierach writes: "A blue grouse is often saved for serious game feasts followed by fine port or a seduction."

My dad ran into most of the birds and took best advantage, being the best pistol shot among us by far:



Despite that weather early on and a good shot of cold, we left in blue bird weather. Those are the La Sal mountains of Utah over there-



We drop back down into the lower country and then headed home. This was it, the most intense hunting requiring the most exertion, at least most years, and the big trip. Now I've got a dog that was left home who needs to spend a lot of time with me working on learning the ins and outs of duck hunting.

Rainbow Family

Back ten or so years ago, I spent some time around the remains of a Rainbow Family camp site. For those unfamiliar with the Rainbow Family, follow the link or know that they are a determinedly un-organized hippie group that coalesce every so often in a stretch of National Forest to smoke dope, pound drums, commune with nature, pray for peace, celebrate, and generally do whatever it is they do. I don't have any sympathy (nor use, in the abstract) for hippies, the term conjures the adjectives "smelly", "impractical" and "annoying" to mind. I'm too young to recall exposure to the real thing, but had the dubious pleasure of seeing plenty of latter day wannabes while in college and listen to way too many of the more aged variety that had found their way into academia. Nonetheless, I have less than no beef with the Rainbow Family based upon my limited exposure to their ways. Here's why:

The summer I observed the effect of the Rainbow Family, I had suggested to my Uncle, Cousin, Father, and Grandfather that we put in to hunt a certain northern NM elk unit. We did, and drew. Before we'd even drawn, I had gone up there to look around a bit and scout out the country some. I'd found a nice little dead-end road that terminated next to a mesa with a stretch of unroaded country going up in three directions, perfect to camp and perhaps hunt in. In the interim, I heard about the RF and the gathering of up to a few thousand hippies and hippie wannabes, right in the National Forest we hoped to head. Later, I learned that they were in fact in the hunting unit we had draw for. Later still, in August, I headed up to check things out. Now, the very last thing any right thinking red-blooded hunter wants is ten thousand smelly people forming drum circles right where he hopes to camp. How very far would a drum circle drive off elk? Shudder to think of the effect of the patchouli and marijuana fumes. On my way in to scout, I actually passed th last couple of wildly painted decrepit Bluebird buses making their way out. I know, it's a cliche. Nonetheless, that's what they were and that's what I did. As I headed down smaller roads to the prospective camp, I started to get nervous- the roads were showing an awful lot of travel. Pounded to dust, in fact. The turn off to my little dead end road was just as bad, confirming my fear. Sure enough, what looked like a good camp to me looked like a good camp to them, too. In moderate dudgeon, I got out and looked around a bit. I found lots of trampled grass, much of it pressed down in circles from teepees or dances or who-knows. I found where sod had been cut for firepits and then replaced. I found rocks that had been moved, but scattered again. Getting interested, I swung wider and checked behind nearby trees and bushes- neither nose nor eye could detect cathole or casual tree-watering. The little creek running nearby even had cutthroats remaining in it. Dang! Two months later, I returned to the spot. We had decided to camp somewhere else, after all. Looking around, there was no sign at all that the area had been negatively impacted.

Contrast that with the aforementioned red-blooded, right-thinking elk-hunting population with which I identify. Head up into the public lands after an elk season and the road will be much easier to follow due to the glint of beer and soda cans tossed in the bar ditch. Note the camps along to roads, easy to identify by the trash left and the prominent fire rings. I've found water jugs, no doubt "left for the next guys", pieces of old carpet probably laid in front of trailers or in wall tents and nastified by wet weather, then abandoned, and countless bits of decaying critters that no one bothered to haul back into the brush of the coyotes and other scavengers. Hunters really need to do better. Assuming that my experience was not an anomaly, they shouldn't only do better for their own sake, or the sake of the forest, but if for neither of those reasons then just to avoid being shown up by a bunch of dope-smoking anarcho-whatevers.

dogblog

Y'all might be a little tired of all this, but I've been enjoying something of a different fall since by virtue of observing a slightly different perspective:

1) wood cutting is ok, particularly with a break to check out a ridgetop or two for grouse:



2) you should take joy in the process of building a duck blind!



3) after you give your Chessie pills in peanut butter for a couple of weeks, you don't really need a timer to tell you when the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies you're baking for the upcoming elk season are done- the crying from the kitchen as the smell grows more intense is a pretty good hint.

Bears

While out recently, I came across a pile of fresh bear scat, so fresh that it's moisture made a ring in the dust around it. Shortly thereafter, I saw where the small bear had walked down the road in my tracks from not an hour before, apparently unconcerned with the dog and I.

Nothing scary, certainly not dangerous. Bears in Alaska, now, the brown bears, are much more intimidating. Maybe all those "Outdoor Life" covers rubbed off on me. Those bears are so big! One of the first bear tracks I saw up there was so wide that I could place the palms of both hands, thumbs tucked under, side by side in it. Apart from size, those bears are really impressive in their lack of concern about people. Still, in over a month of fishing salmon streams, that time spread out over several years, we've only seen a couple of bears.

Black bears down in the Southwest are a completely different matter. It took me years to see a bear. Once I did, it seemed as though I saw one or two nearly every year after that for a time. Having missed this last bear by minutes, it occurred to me that I'm about due, as I haven't run into a southwestern black bear in a couple of seasons.

The first bear that I got a decent look at was actually two, a sow and cub, encountered while elk hunting in southern Colorado. I was working my way up a broad draw that was thick with brush, pinyon, and juniper. For a bit, I'd had the idea that something was up ahead of me- a general feel and anticipation, but never the distinctive thump of a hoof on hard ground or anything visible. Suddenly, about five yards to my front left the big brown sow blew across my path and to my right, closely followed by her cub. After a couple of seconds of crackling brush and thumping hearts, I could hear her sending her cub up a tree; her grunting and his claws scrabbling at the bark. I made a wide circle around up wind and we all went on with our days.

The year after that, I came around the corner on a gravel road and saw this guy:



as he messed about with a reflector marking a culvert. He was a very young bear and one of the most handsome I've yet seen. For once, I had the big lens on the camera, so I pulled off to the shoulder and jogged over a small hill to intercept him, getting a few pictures.



I find bears easy to identify with, in an anthropomorphizing sort of way. Coming across a hillside of overturned rocks in the spring woods and its easy to visualize the hunger that led to all that effort for some ants and grubs. In Alaska, finding a section of boardwalk on a trail scattered- ten foot 2x12 planks tossed about and tumbled- and you get a real sense of tremendous strength and the moment of "pissed off at the world". To me, at least, it is hard not to envy the casual strength with which that pique was presumable worked out. Life as the Hulk. One morning as I was looking for deer in the southwestern mountains, I saw a pair of round ears protruding over some low bush a couple dozen yards ahead. Binos in hand, I slowly eased up until I could see a medium sized bear, this fellow all black, sitting under a spruce with his hind legs flat on the ground, his forelegs between them. His post under the tree had a fine view of the ridge opposite and the rest of the fairly open hillside and caught the morning breeze. He was looking around without an apparent care in the world, despite a jay some three feet above his head which began scolding, perhaps at me. I regret not having a camera handy at that moment to try to catch the air of ease he (or she, of course) projected- sitting in the shade, a fine cool sunny morning, watching the world. I, in turn, watched him until a couple of bird hunters and their dog came up the hill behind, sending us each in search of quieter venues. I fancy our mental reaction to the intrusion was about the same, albeit for different reasons.