Have you read that?

Via the amazingly prolific and popular postings of Instapundit, a link to an article on bookshelf etiquette. Per the author, Scott McLemee, a blogger for Time magazine opined that you should not display a book in a public space if you haven't read it, where Ezra Klein wrote in the American Prospect that the books on your shelves should indicate the sort of person you want to be. The author of the piece is sensible "Likewise for bookshelves. Many items there are staples. Others are ingredients that, like salt, are only good in combination with something else. Some things you keep around are healthy, if not very tasty, while a few might count as junk food. (A couple of scholarly presses are indeed known for their Pop-Tarts.) And it’s hardly a decent pantry if you don’t have a few impulse purchases you later regret, or gourmandizing experiments that didn’t quite pan out."

Looking around, most of the books on my shelves are things I have read, but have decided to keep around. Some things are showy, I spent a while (pre-Internet) haunting my local used book stores to pick up Robert Ruark's various novels in hardback. Just recently I came across a 1963 hardback of John Graves' "Goodbye to a River" and bought it, even though there is a nice trade paperback on the shelf. The couple of dollars for the nice hardback were worth it, as I'll read or lend that book again. On the other hand, the shelf nearest me is a hodgepodge of read and un-read books- paperbacks stashed for the next plane trip, the fruits of my last book-browsing, others that I'll keep for a while or perhaps forever. Unlike a couple of other shelves in the front of the house, only a few things on this one have an assured place.

I'd guess the real question if one were concerned with bookshelf etiquette is where to put the books you started but couldn't finish.

Sub-urban

Unlike (or like) some of the other folks on the blogroll, I live in the big (well, biggest for a couple of hundred miles in any direction) city. Even so, just two and a half miles from my house the foothills of the mountain behind town start up. Those foothills are public land and provide a nice, if generally well-peopled, quick walk in a less urban environment.

This afternoon the dog and I took advantage of warm-ish temperatures and a break in the weather to walk up until our (my) legs got tired then fell back off the hill to return to Sunday chores. Apart from some likely ringtail, or possibly fox, scat, scenery is mostly what we came across. No surprise given the popularity of the area and the early-afternoon hour we were out.



Here, you can see all the way to Querencia country, the peak in the distance on the right side of the frame is Ladron and those are the Magdalenas to the left and behind it.



One thing about the Southwest, you come to take your hundred mile views for granted. My first thought was "the light's not great and there's a lot of humidity (23%!), I wonder if the photo will come out?"

The Joy of a Large Carbon Footprint

For the past half dozen years or so I've had a few friends over at some point around the end of duck season for a pot of gumbo and another of red beans. This is one of my favorite social events, as it is perfect for a lazy host. I open a couple of bottles of wine, chill some beer and soda, then have the pot of gumbo and the pot of red beans, along with another of rice, ready to go. A few sliced baguettes and some good butter and dinner is done. Guests are directed to fill their own glasses and bowls, sit where they please, eat what they please, drink what they please, and the host does the same.

The gumbo for this event is based upon ducks and comes from The Plantation Cookbook. You start the day before by simmering three large or five small (wild) ducks with various aromats to make the stock. This doesn't look like much, but the stock pot holds 20 quarts:



Further evidence that this is a meal for the lazy host- the recipe specifies skinned ducks. No tedious plucking! No singeing!

The next day, after the stock has cooled, you skim off the fat, strain, remove the veggies, then bone the ducks and return the meat to the stock and heat it up gently.

Meanwhile, you chop lots of veggies- first the holy trinity of onion, celery, and bell pepper, then about half a head of garlic and a bunch of parsley.



Next, you make a roux.



Get it nice and dark, about the color of an old penny.



Next, add the veggies, along with a healthy shot of cayenne and black pepper (the small dish on the side of the veggie picture).





Cook and stir until it gets glossy and very dark, a little darker than this:



You stir the roux into the simmering stock by the spoonful, then set it to just simmer. Next, okra, only available frozen at this time of year.



Saute the okra until the ropiness is gone, then add it to the gumbo and do something else for the next few hours, stirring every so often.

Check the seasoning. Once your guests have arrived, bump up the heat so that the gumbo is simmering pretty well. Add shrimp (frozen again) and then oysters.



I go for fresh oysters, I think they make a difference in the flavor of the gumbo. This year, all I could find some thousand miles from saltwater were oysters still in the shell. Even then I ended up with a dozen Alabama and a dozen Pacific oysters.



The Alabama oysters are the big tan ones up on top.

The Chessie was very interested in the shucking process. He sat facing me as near as he could get and drooled uncontrollably. Somewhere in that dog's past I think he had an oyster or two. Unfortunately for him, these were reserved for company. Heck, I didn't even try one myself.



Regionally speaking, this gumbo ought to be enjoyed along the Gulf Coast somewhere, but it is awfully nice to be able to indulge in some of those flavors here in the high desert. The ducks were collected locally and it seems only courtesy to the birds to honor them by making them the base of a favorite and seldom indulged extravagance.

(not quite) Dead Horse

I apologize for the dearth of posting. I had another version of this particular post just about completed a few days ago when I somehow managed to delete most of the text and then Blogger did the automatic save thing before I realized the error and could restore it. Drat and blast. Discouraged, it took me a while to get back to this thing.

Recently, in a discussion with friends, one of them made a brief and to me very interesting case that the Second Amendment is a perfect bit of Constitution to employ and examine the limitation of original intent analysis.

"Original intent" is a method of Constitutional and statutory analysis which looks to the purpose of the Framers of the Constitution or statute to determine the application of the words today. "Originalism", more generally, seeks to determine the common understanding of the meaning of the law or provision in order to apply it today. The terms are frequently conflated.


So, looking at the time the Second Amendment (text: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.") was ratified, a citizen could and in some cases was obligated to procure the most current military technology available. For example, the second Militia Act of 1792 directed "That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia . . . . That every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball: or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder. . . ."

Around that time and for a good while thereafter, people could buy the arms the could afford. For example, there was no problem with a ship captain buying cannon to place upon his merchant vessel to defend it, or with private individuals buying cannon, mortars, and whatever advanced small arms were available.

If that understanding had continued, once the Fourteenth Amendment passed then local prohibitions on the purchase and most restrictions on carry of various weapons, including about all small arms, should have been struck down. Under the original rubric, the current restriction on the manufacture and sale (to civilians) of automatic weapons and grenades would, and should, require a Constitutional Amendment, as those would be just the weapons the people should arm themselves with to secure the freedom of the state.

That argument doesn't really do us any good now, as history developed otherwise, but it is an interesting thought and shows clearly the great difference we would see in our regulatory landscape if our courts had been strongly wedded to original intent from the time of Marbury v. Madison forward. I'm not that strong an originalist, in part because of things like the fact that it took until 1963 for the Supreme Court to realize that the right to counsel enshrined in the Sixth Amendment means that the government is required to provide a defense attorney at state expense if you can't afford one when facing serious criminal charges. The law had long before become so complex that a pro se criminal defendant was at a serious disadvantage in trying to mount a defense. I don't think the Framers considered that a problem, and perhaps an amendment should have been required to the Sixth as well, but I can't say that the decision had a bad result. Of course, a lot of folks would say that about various gun control statutes and lower court decisions upholding them, too.


I post these thoughts because the meaning and effect of the Second Amendment is coming up for Supreme Court review for the first time since the 1939 Miller case. Miller didn't really say anything useful and is a pretty wretched piece of judicial reasoning, but it was the last word from the Supremes. However, at some point in this term the Court will decide District of Columbia v. Heller, which is an appeal from a decision by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit holding that the Second Amendment preserves an individual right incompatible with the District's prohibition on the ownership of handguns (brought into the District since 1977) and extremely restrictive limitations on the possession of long arms and overturning the District statute. The principle briefs and various amicus briefs for each side have been filed and make the best reading on the ins-and-outs of the debate on the Second Amendment that I'm aware of. Go to The Volokh Conspiracy for links to the various briefs and discussion of them. Fun, chewy stuff by conlaw standards, with lots of references to common law, Revolutionary War era writing, philosophy, and various social policy arguments. Even if you don't feel like wading through Supreme Court briefs (and I mean, come on, who doesn't read legal briefs for amusement in their spare time? After all, amicus briefs can only be 9,000 words) you might want to go through the Conspiracy postings on the subjects, just to get a gist of the arguments and note the various groups chiming in on either side of the issue. I'm waiting with some trepidation to read what the Court will come up with regarding the characterization of the right guaranteed by the Second Amendment and to see if they address what level of regulation is permissible before the right of the people to keep and bear arms is infringed.



A last note on the Second Amendment, just in case anyone who stumbles on this is on the wrong (that is to say, not my) side of the gun control issue:
Much of the debate around the Second springs from the first clause, describing a well regulated militia. First, that section is a dependent clause, describing or justifying the independent clause. Unique in the Bill of Rights, it explains why the right to keep and bear arms is important but does not as a matter of either grammar or logic limit that right. Even if it did, as discussed many places "well regulated" in the common usage of the day did not mean "subject to regulation" (although the militia was) but rather "well ordered" or, even, "efficient". Also, contemporaneous statutes (the Militia Act of 1792, in the text reproduced above), defined the militia as every free and able-bodied white male between sixteen and forty-five. Updating that definition a bit in light of the end of slavery and extension of full citizenship to all races and women, you end up with a militia of all able bodied people, just about. In fact, the Virginia Declaration of Rights from 1776 characterized the militia as "composed of the body of the people". The current Militia Act, enacted in 1956, isn't quite as inclusive as the original version, but no one who has read much history can credibly argue that militia=National Guard. As noted, even if militia did equate to National Guard, it still would not limit the right of the people to keep and bear arms. This is, in part, why the idea that the Second Amendment preserves a collective right (which is to say, a right of the state or the people as a whole) is incorrect.

another old elk hunt

So, back a few years ago, I drew an elk permit for a unit in New Mexico that has an area that borders, in significant part, a couple of large chunks of private property. I had learned about this piece of public land from my father and had first hunted it some twenty years before. Dad had learned of it from a guy at the gun club that had a son who worked for the BLM some and who'd seen a survey that showed a bunch of elk up there. Both the guy and my father had hunted it before I ever got involved.

The hunt that introduced me to the area, my first for elk, saw my dad kill a five point bull that was too big for three of us to load in the back of the truck even after we'd dressed him out and cut the carcass in half. Heck. the truck was on a slope so the tailgate wasn't more than eighteen inches off the ground and it was still to much for us. It also saw us watching and shooting at one of the biggest bulls I've ever seen, with a rack so large that when he laid his head back, the end tines of his antlers scratched his butt as he stood way off uphill through the mist and rain. For that matter, callow youth that I was, I saw my first legal bull in the dark timber, some twenty yards off. Appropriately, he was a rag horn four point. I saw his butt first, sticking out from behind the giant spruce he was bedded against before he'd stood up. Once his head came out the other side and I'd counted tines to make sure he was legal, I filled the scope with hair and, despite the long smooth trigger (original military) on the sporterized Springfield that I carried, I managed to lose the crosshairs and shoot right over his back. Three jumps, one other shot, and he was gone. I was convinced I must have hit such a large target until we'd tracked him a couple of hundred yards, as he went from sprint, to trot, to walk, with never a cut hair nor drop of blood to mark the encounter. By now, that rag horn has gone from herd boss to old bull to mulch, but I'll never forget the sight of him.

So, I was back. A couple of big fires, more people, and some road closures had changed the usage of the land by animals and by hunters. A couple of days hard hunting and on my last available day I finally found the elk, hanging out around the heads of some truly intimidating canyons. An elk 800 yards off might be half a day's walk away. For that matter, I could sit high up and count a dozen bulls, some so far off that their racks were mere suggestions, but could get to none.

The next year, I put in and drew a tag for the same area. The first day, I hunted a big meadow that was an easy mile and a half walk off the road. No elk, no dice. The next day, I drove and tracked lower country leading right up to the private land. Other hunters, but not much in the way of elk sign. So, bowing to the inevitable, I headed over to the broken country. I hunted up a ridge bordering one of the big canyons (to my left) with a burnt-over draw to my right. Elk had been using it and browsing the young aspen and wild rose in the draw, but none were there now. I'd sit overlooking the big canyon and glass elk by the dozens, including several nice six-point bulls. They were all a couple of thousand vertical feet away. The down isn't so bad, but the loaded uphill trip is a killer, especially as steep as those canyon walls are. In addition, the slopes below me were south-facing and inadequate cover. So, I worked up my ridge, eventually heading one canyon (elk-less at the top) and getting to a high meadow above another. There below me were a dozen cows and two small bulls. I waited for them, and perhaps some others, to walk out toward me and graze on the grass exposed by the wind, closing the distance between us, without any success. As time was getting on, I began a long slow crawl through the knee-deep snow, shortening the distance to the elk. At four hundred yards, I ran out of cover. I guessed the distance at three fifty and leaned against a wind-tortured pine to aim at the four point bull bedded in a slight swale. At the shot, he and the other elk stood, then trotted off for the timber, my bull obviously hit. I shot again, then lost him to the trees and sprinted down the hill, entering the timber and following the blood trail to see him staggering some fifty yards in front of me. A quick shot to the back of his head and I'd accomplished what I intended with the first round.

It was now three in the afternoon. I dressed, skinned and quartered my bull, then loaded a quarter and the loins and headed over the mountain. Nearly a thousand vertical feet and an hour and a half later, I had a two thousand foot descent to the truck. I got to my vehicle at eight in the evening and drove home. That night, a snowstorm blew in, shutting down highways and dropping substantial snow. I bought a plastic toboggan in town and headed back up to my elk once I could get on the road. Parking a bit closer, I headed up slope with two liters of water, two power bars, my pack frame, the toboggan, and quite a lot of line. I started at noon and reached the elk, feeling a bit blown, by three in the afternoon. I loaded two quarters, the miscellaneous cuts, and the rack on the sled and the third quarter on my back. Then I started up the hill. The snow ranged from knee deep to mid-thigh and, even following my trail down, each twenty yards of gain required a rest. By five, it was dark. About ten at night, I reached the crest of the mountain. From that point, I rigged a second rope to the back of the sled and let it precede me down the mountain. The main trick was to keep control and not build up too much speed to avoid having a hundred and fifty pounds of meat go shooting down the hillside to land well up some spruce. By midnight I was in the truck and, still in the early morning, home. Blessed by the red gods once again.

No brag, and I still believe in shooting them where you find them. At the same time, every now and then they might be so far back you better be pretty hungry before you pull the trigger.

Never look an easy, that is to say easily packed, elk in the mouth.

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: