so, bones

After the meat, and a couple of big bones for the delectation of the dog, what about the other bones? Neck bones didn't make it out this time, two rounds through that portion pretty much wrecked any use out of those bits, but we still had bones from quarters:



Part of those bones were the knuckle ends from the shanks, lots of meat and sinew and such on those. Bones mean stock, building block for so many things. Bones and veg:





I'd leave the skin on the onions for color and flavor, but these were dirty and in bad shape. Beside, plenty of flavor from the leek leaves.

Some bones roasted, some raw, for a mix of flavor.



Two twenty quart stock pots to start. The silver pot on the right has stock from a pan that was deglazed with red wind and that includes some roasted tomato paste, the black pot on the left is a simpler concoction of bones and veg. Both have bruised peppercorns and bay leaves.



Now, Michael Ruhlman says (in "Elements of Cooking") never to boil stock, that you'll lose to much flavor. Jacques Pepin and Julia Child and various others say "bring it to a boil". I'm of the latter school. A nice boil and skim off all the foam and floaty bits.





Cook for about six hours at what Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall describes as a "nervous shimmer", just short of a boil, then the clear stock is reduced by about a quarter, the dark stock strained, then reduced by a good third. The result?

.



So, about twenty quarts of stock in all. The light stock is very neutral, very similar to veal stock though without quite as much body. The dark stock is a bit more intense and is destined for a few batches of bordelaise with orxy and frites and other sauce, as the wine comes through despite all the cooking and reduction.

Next, yet more bits.

so, meat

I'd guess a good sized oryx at running about 250 field dressed. Not so big as a good sized cow elk, but much bigger than any mule deer I've run into.

We quartered out our animal, saved the heart, liver, tenderloins, backstraps, and miscellaneous bits along with the quarters, then got to cutting. Dad and I got most of it done in a day and a half- deboned, silverskin off and sinew out, wrapped and in the freezer:



Even the dog has his bits stashed:



I've read, and heard from other hunters, that oryx is "the best wild meat you've ever eaten". We saved out a chunk and grilled it, just meat and fire, served alongside baked potato and relleno casserole with a green salad and a decent red (one of my all-time favorite meals, all in all) to see what we thought.


(yes, it's a little rare. Wild meat I've dressed and prepared myself I prefer cool to cold red in the center. You can taste it better that way.)


The meat is a lighter color than deer or elk and is also more mild. More mild, even, then well cared for antelope and with a coarser grain, closer to elk, than antelope. Wild meat for those who like their meat less wild. Can't say that it'll be my favorite, but I wouldn't be sorry to see oryx across the deserts of the southwest. It's not like the bighorns stand a realistic chance of refilling those ecologic niches.

Next post, dealing with bits.

Oryx

Back in the late 1960's and after urging by archeologist and frequent African hunter Frank C. Hibben, the NM Dept. of Game and Fish acted on the idea of bringing oryx (pdf link), or gemsbock, into New Mexico to add another species to the Chihuahuan desert lands of the Tularosa Basin, essentially the White Sands Missile Range. The animals did well there, and now you can put in for and draw a tag to hunt them as they range freely on the missile range and beyond. The Dept. of Game and Fish estimates three to six thousand oryx roam south central New Mexico now. Since natural predators aren't doing much to control oryx numbers and Chihuahuan desert is apparently a bit more hospitable than the Namib, population reduction through hunting (and providing another hunting opportunity was the whole purpose of bringing in oryx).

We were lucky enough to draw tags last year for a once-in-a-lifetime hunt on the Missile Range for this past January.

On one hand, I'm tempted to bring out my inner Capstick:


The cerulean sky was marred by a crepuscular smear of cloud, dimming the hard winter sun and we crossed the many dongas leading down from the mountain like fingers and cut our prey's spoor. That spoor was wide and bold and our experienced tracker had no trouble. Past hunts allowed my eye to follow the bright splashes of lifesblood splattered on the hard stone of the unforgiving landscape easily as well- A kept overwatch in case it turned. Where the quarry had paused, viscous lakes of gore slowly filtered into the desert sand....


More realistically (and lacking much of a Capstick), we hunted pretty hard and, as two of a hundred hunters in an area the size of a couple of different states on the eastern seaboard, felt crowded. One stalk was ended when other hunters took an animal out of the bunch we were working, we passed a couple of others and figured we had things scoped for the second day, which turned out to be cut short for some sort of military exercise. That second day produced nothing much early on, except a road I wouldn't quite brave, and, on the way to a high point to eat lunch and glass, we saw a critter that present a shot which was a bit long but do-able. I shot too far back despite repeated warnings to the contrary, and a bit low as well, so A got to see how you follow a blood trail and we found our oryx a bit away in greasewood scrub studded with mesquites and cut by a lot of little draws. Once down, dressing and quartering started. My dad was along as observer, adviser, and factotum and headed off with the first quarter, A followed with a second and I finished dressing the animal and, once Dad made his return trip, we headed off with the rest of the meat, hustling to meet the national security deadline for getting off the range. The truck was visible, but a darned good little hike. Meat for the next year, the subject of a couple more posts.

good show

Fred Eaglesmith came through town last night. Neil of AMP arranges good shows and this one was a bargain, $15 on a Friday night. We've missed Eaglesmith on his way through town before, so we jumped at this chance, though I saw the notice of the show only a day or so off.

You've probably heard a Fred Eaglesmith song before, even if you haven't heard of him. He's written lots of things that've been covered pretty successfully by various folk and country performers.

Eaglesmith explained how he was going to go to Nashville but had a standing date at the Red Mug in Minnesota and couldn't make it down there. This was my first time to his show and I was surprised how good his voice is, in a gravelly singer-songwriter alt-country (Canadiana?) sort of way. He talks, tells stories and jokes and generally has a good time so that you do, too. Check out his schedule, he's heading west from NM and then'll be back in points east and north. If he's in your neck of the woods you'd be lucky to catch him.

Not my video, but a pretty good representation of the show (although the sound is better live):

End of the Duck Season

Last weekend saw the end of duck hunting, the end of fall, really, as I see it. We didn't get out, being busy with other worthwhile pursuits, but we did make a last hunt the weekend before.

We set up on the west side of the river, bad because you face back into the rising sun, but thorough camouflage and plenty of overhanging vegetation on the steep bank mitigated the problem.






The ducks liked the spot we set up pretty well, so we had some birds dropping in, mostly right over our heads. Hard shooting, but fun.



That banded bird on the end picked up his jewelry two weeks earlier and twenty miles away. Not a whole lot of info for the biologists, I'm afraid.

Since it runs ninety days, I always feel like I have worlds of time when duck season starts. Lots of weekends to get out, chances to tweak the set up, find different spots, adjust to the ever-changing river. All of the sudden, the holidays are done and only a day or two is left. Looking back, we didn't make all that many hunts after all. I think there is a lesson in there about taking advantage of a situation while you can.



Next year!

Goose, goose, goose

Last year we happened into a Greater Canada Goose.

This year, we prepped a bit more, put out a couple of goose decoys just off the duck spread. I even packed a goose call and practiced my "her- onk!" a bit. Didn't matter much, as I didn't call at 'em. Another slow day for ducks. New spot, and the ducks weren't liking the spread. After an hour, though it was still prime time, we loaded up all the blocks and moved upriver a couple of hundred yards to where a couple of bunches had gone in. We were just set up when a small bunch of mallards landed at the tail end of the spread, then took off to a couple of hasty shots that didn't score. "Here we go", I thought "we're in the spot". However, the flights pretty much stopped and no more birds came in, to speak of.

We were standing up, discussing packing it in, when I looked downriver and saw a bunch of birds. Geese! We got down and watched them come- fourteen or so big Canadas. They didn't call, so I didn't call either, and they set wings and came right in.

One goose per hunter made for a pretty good day:




First goose retrieve for Booker, who seems to have left his limber tail woes behind:





Goose frites, goose leg confit, stock or soup. A morning of watching, a few moments of excitement, and a number of good meals to follow.

easy hunts

This post has been kicking around in draft for over a year now and I haven't had much luck in massaging it into a cohesive essay. Since content is scant while life is busy, I'm going to throw it out in it's current, messy form. You have been warned.

I've written previously about a couple of successful big game hunts that I've enjoyed. Generally, those hunts were noteworthy in part for the physical challenge they offered and were the result of substantial preparation as well as years of honing skills (or at least tromping around in the woods with a rifle). I've also had some easy hunts. My last successful elk hunt turned out pretty easy.

Far more easy was a hunt many years ago in northern New Mexico, when I had a chance to get in with a group of guys for landowner cow tags on a large ranch. We were over-geared; loading daypacks with compasses, spare clothes, water, extra ammunition, and other sundries for a day in the woods far from the road. As it turned out, opening morning the guy working as a fence rider for the ranch led us to a winter wheat field at sunup and we walked over a little rise to see a couple of hundred cow elk that had been feeding there that night. Within fifteen minutes, half a dozen elk were down and the work began. Dressing, skinning, and quartering that many elk was work, not fun. Heck, the hunt wasn't exactly fun. I shot my cow in the back of the head from 150 yards- a nice, clean, instantaneous kill, but the hunt wasn't exactly a hunt. It was more truly a harvest.

Would I do it again? Perhaps, particularly if short on time and without other meat. Would I spend a lot of time thinking about it, or get particularly excited? No. It would not be an unpleasant chore, but it would be just that- a chore. Work. Putting meat in the freezer as surely as heading to the office is work in pursuit of putting bread on the table.

Certain hunts are more challenging, whether due to the scarcity or wariness of the game. Where challenge is lacking, you'll find some hunters raising their personal bar, limiting their effectiveness by using weapons, such as traditional muzzleloading rifles or bows, which lack range and require greater skill to master or by limiting themselves to taking only the largest, oldest, most wary animals. This is generally a good thing and reflects well on human spirit, in my opinion.

One of the rubs with a hunter using weapons which are more difficult to master or otherwise imposing handicaps on himself is that the chance of wounding his prey is increased. While each is easily capable of taking game humanely, bows, muzzleloaders, and pistols all require more precision in range estimation and generally deliver less immediately-lethal projectiles over shorter ranges than modern hunting rifles Their use requires more practice, skill, and discipline on the part of the hunter. One of a hunter's ethical obligations is to take his game as cleanly as possible, without causing any more suffering than absolutely necessary. Emphasizing again that ethical kills can be and are made with each of the above mentioned weapons, their use is somewhat in conflict with a hunter's obligation to kill game quickly.

In turn, the obligation to make quick, sure kills leads to the query, why not take all possible advantages in hunting? Rather than condemning hunting over feeders as antithetical to appropriate hunting skills, why not advocate for the practice as an efficient way of ensuring relaxed prey which is not distressed and can more easily be instantly killed? Rather than condemn high fence hunting operations,* why not embrace them to the extent they accomplish the same goal?

This point was made (quite some time back now) among the comments in a earlier discussion on Norcalcazadora's blog regarding hunting programs on television in which the comments got going on hunters' behavior and ethics. Phillip of The HogBlog makes a point that "There are those who would argue, and somewhat soundly if you stop and listen, that taking every advantage over the game we pursue is actually more ethical than drawing arbitrary rules around the means of take and limiting hunters to difficult and overly-challenging methods. An animal unaware and feeding over a bait pile at close range is going to offer a much better opportunity for a clean, quick kill...especially if the hunter is armed with the most efficient and accurate equipment with which to make the kill." He goes on to write "My personal standard falls somewhere in the mix of all that.... But the thing that stays in my mind throughout it all is that what I'm there for is to play my role as predator, and in the end game, it's all about killing meat for my table."

A good while back Steve Bodio put forward a nice, clear perspective in a blog-comment, (on a slightly different topic) stating: "I think restraint (including in pursuit of game) should be encouraged, and excess discouraged, by custom and peer pressure.
I do NOT think most of this should be law-- and my inclination on this goes beyond hunting-- ie, I don't believe in compulsory anti- smoking, to pick an issue at random, but I DO in manners.
Bag limits are (or should be) compulsory and biologically determined. The rest is culture. It may be too late to promote good manners and sportsmanship in this society but I am willing to try."

Opposite the idea of using every advantage to humanely and efficiently kill game is the thought that, at some point, advantage over our prey offends the idea of fair chase. Game must have an opportunity to escape and cannot be in a "sure thing" situation, or the activity isn't hunting and, from the perspective of sportsmanship, isn't ethical. If you're always going to win or succeed, who would keep trying for long? The discussion is complicated by the fact that the ideas of "sportsmanship" and "sport", emphasized in older hunting and fishing literature and seemingly assumed as part of the chase are approached warily by today's hunter/fisherman speaking to those who neither hunt nor fish. Admitting to enjoying hunting, which inarguably (at least if you read Ortega y Gasset and agree with him at all) culminates in a death, or fishing for the pot, is a dicey business in many circles.** Leave the killing stuff to people paid to do it. This is part of why, when in some social circles, many of us emphasize that we hunt for the meat.

Regardless of talking to others who don't hunt, among ourselves I think most hunting should be elitist and aspirational. Not in terms of game pursued, or the expense of the tools used, but in terms of our approach. Rabbit hunting is considered pretty easy, at least here in the western US, but it can provide quite a challenge. Change the venue slightly and it can be more so, given limitations on your approach. Check out Hubert Hubert's blog and archives for good writing on the challenges of air rifle hunting for rabbits in England. Regardless of your quarry, your approach to the hunt makes all the difference. A good example of the sort of meditation and inevitably personal resolution we come to with respect to ethics can be found here. Another nice example is in this discussion of "varmint hunting" at Querencia.

While I won't turn down a cow elk standing just uphill of the road, or complain about the days when the ducks just bomb the decoys, the fact that those are rare occurrences makes them both memorable and something to take advantage of. Dry runs and miles walked without game, hours spent scouting and more hours spent driving to places to be scouted all balance those occasions out. So, I'm not out there just for meat. I do hope for a challenge, which can come in many forms and can vary depending upon my skill level. I won't set out to make things hard on purpose, but generally enjoy myself more if I've had to sweat a little.













*I will state that I do not personally believe that a high fence around a property renders a hunt on that property unsporting or unethical, provided that the area enclosed is sufficient to allow the animal to flee and escape. At a first thought, I'd guess that area as being somewhere around 2000 acres, depending upon terrain and vegetation.

**If you want to light up a strict "catch and release" person, tell them that they're guilty of playing with their food and point out that they likely kill one in every twenty or twenty-five of the fish they catch and disfigure more. Some of those folks need lighting up, a personal peeve is the "I only use a three weight" (cue condescending voice) types who have enough skill to bring in a big but exhausted trout and then release it to die. Use a six weight, up the leader a bit, and release a feisty fish, you tools. Not that fishermen are necessarily any less concerned with the ethics of their sport than hunters- Finspot (Langdon Cook) put up a post about a wild steelhead which was legally caught and kept, to considerable condemnation by the angling community, which is concerned that the regulations are too permissive and that all wild steelhead should be released. On the other hand, there are always bad eggs.

Limber Tail

I've read about it before, but now can claim first hand experience with a dog developing limber tail (also called cold water tail). After a hunt this weekend that featured a couple of pretty extended retrieving efforts, we got back, cleaned birds, generally picked up, then noticed that Booker the Chessie was walking funny. I thought he had a cockleburr caught in an indelicate place, but an attempt to check his tail brought a cry from him, the first I've ever heard. His back end was extremely tender and he generally felt down. A bit of internet research suggested an anti-inflammatory. Fortunately, he seems much better today after a little ibuprofen and some rest, though he'd still prefer to lay around and isn't his normal active self.






Normal tail:



Broke-looking limber tail:



We're hoping a week's rest will have him back to form.

out of the oughts

and into the tens or teens or whatever. Happy New Year to you all!

foreboding

"It was still hot back in Mississippi and in Texas, where I used to live, but it was already cold up in the mountains, up in the North, in this place where I was going to start a new life. The immediate, pressing problem, I realized, was that winter was perhaps a month away. I knew nothing about winter. I had never seen it before, and I felt dizzy with fear, giddy with wonder, anticipating it.

The dogs, I could tell, were worried too, and missed Mississippi. I could tell they thought I was making a mistake."

Rick Bass, "Winter"

pheasants

Back for a third trip to the Texas Panhandle to chase pheasants. The birds were doing better up around Dumas, so that's where we went this year. Another good time.



First morning, it was a balmy 6 degrees Fahrenheit by nine o'clock, very cold by our standards. It eventually warmed up to the low thirties. The birds were flushing pretty wild but we found enough slow ones to fill our bag.



The next day we started in the teens, much more pleasant, and had some birds hold close right off. We ended the day hunting wastewater pits full of brush and weeds and, on some of them, the birds would boil out all at once, making picking out the roosters and getting a shot quite a challenge, sort of like a really big quail covey rise, only with the birds going in more directions and the limitation of having to pick out roosters over hens.





It's interesting hunting such an unfamiliar landscape. Almost everything in agriculture, mostly flat, enormous amounts of food on the ground right now in the form of waste grain and seemingly very little cover at all. The number of owls and hawks you see in a day is surprising, too.



If you're looking for a good hunt on wild birds in northern Texas, these guys have good land leased and run a nice hunt.

cooking by the weather (and a lazy man's hint for butchering)

We've had a bit of weather blow through and more on the way. Colder weather lends itself to some very satisfying cooking- stews, soups, braises, long roasting and other slow techniques. In much the same way, some of the tougher cuts of meat are more fun to mess with. A chunk of backstrap is a wonderful thing. Sear it or grill over a hot fire, dressed only with a bit of salt and pepper, and you have a nice meal. Tougher cuts, though, that take some cooking, seasoning, and tenderizing, are both more challenging and, in some ways, more satisfying. Not that I'll be giving up (or giving away) backstrap anytime soon.

In any event, the last elk I put into practice a technique I'd been thinking about for a while. Instead of trimming the shank all the way out and turning it into stew meat or cutting out the big tendons and grinding it for burger, I used a saw cut a couple of the shank portions across the bone and froze them, bone, sinew and all, for braising. I never got around to cooking those during cold weather last spring and now it's the right weather to braise. That and we're about down to the odds and ends of that elk.



Pretty, aren't they?

Steve Bodio wrote about cooking elk shank a while back so, with that in mind and a glance at a couple of osso bucco and daube recipes, off we went.

I browned a half of a pig's foot in some olive oil first:



While it was browning, I tossed the shanks in a bit of seasoned flour:



Once the pork was brown, I removed it and browned the shanks on all sides. In turn, they were taken out and replace with a head's worth of garlic cloves and couple of onions.



A bit of browning for the veggies, then I deglazed the pot with a bottle of (inexpensive, not very good) wine. Once the wine began to boil I added a couple of cups of elk stock and returned the meat along with a bouquet garni of rosemary, sage, and oregano.



Covered, the whole thing was banged in a slow (250 F) oven for the next few hours. Once the meat was fork tender I took the lid off the pot and let things thicken up a bit, adjusted the seasoning, and added a precious half-cup of elk demi glace I'd made a while back. Meanwhile, rolls went into a much hotter oven.



Along with a nice red wine, mashed mixed root vegetables, and a green salad, a very good meal for a cold night.



The first few elk and deer I processed on my own, I didn't have access to a grinder and cut everything into stew meat. Getting enough sinew and silverskin out of the lower shanks took a long, long time and the waste about outweighed the meat recovered. Even once I started grinding my own burger, the shanks were more than a bit of a chore. You can't grind the big sinews in them and all that silverskin hangs up the grinder. This way, that connective tissue was cooked into submission and contributed to a rich, winey stew. I'll cheerfully trade a few hours of running the oven for hours of knife work, especially with such a nice result. Next time, a few mushrooms added wouldn't be amiss.

Various river scenes

We've been down on the Rio a few times recently. We still don't have that many ducks down here and the hunting has been a bit slow. Good fun, though.

A and her Ruger Red Label, sunrise:



Long time friend, good cook, and occasional commenter Matt on his inaugural duck hunt:



We had a good hunt, even if not too many birds were around and our shooting wasn't quite up to par. A few birds in the bag and nice weather- nothing to complain about. Unlike the next.

Fortunately, there's no video to go with this one- me, working on my balky autoloader. Can't imagine why it was acting up. Getting set up early doesn't do much good when you have to work on your gun in the dark. Having a single shot makes you really concentrate on the bird for your one try, too.



Booker, posing with bad grace next to a banded bird. That bird traveled all of seven miles from the banding site, not many northern birds down yet. Books was busy watching the sky and wanted to go find more, not fool around with cameras and a bird in the hand:




Last, a bittern in a riverside drain (may have to click on the photo to see anything). He had the good grace to act exactly as reputed, putting his beak in the sky and mimicking a reed or stump, rather than flying off.

relative absence

Not much blogging lately, a trend that's likely to continue. A house on the market, a sale, moving & consolidating and various other things have cut down on time on the 'net. Heck, you can see the dog is neglected, pushing his ball under the fence in a vain effort to coax some fun out of a day of cleaning up the yard. No complaints, though, we've been having some fun as I'll detail in the next few posts. More on the horizon, too.

quote

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

David Peterson "Heartsblood"

progressing

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




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

really vintage

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

eclipse plumage?

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

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



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









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

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

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

another quote

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

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

more blogroll additions

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

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

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

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