Blog Mirror: An Agrarian Life (revisited)

An interesting agrarian retrospective.  I don't agree with it 100%, particularly the item about religion, but an interesting read anyhow.

An Agrarian Life (revisited)

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: If I fits I sits: A citizen science ...

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: If I fits I sits: A citizen science ...:   If I fits I sits: A citizen science investigation into illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats ( Felis silvestris catus )

Lex Anteinternet: Sportsmen, Market Hunters & Game Hogs: Early Years of Wildlife Conservation in Park County by Brian Beauvais.

Lex Anteinternet: Sportsmen, Market Hunters & Game Hogs: Early Year...: 

Sportsmen, Market Hunters & Game Hogs: Early Years of Wildlife Conservation in Park County by Brian Beauvais.

An extremely interesting article appears in the Autumn/Winter issue of the Annals of Wyoming (which I just received) on the history of wildlife conservation and hunting in Wyoming.  The articles is by Brian Beauvais, and is entitled Sportsmen, Market Hunters & Game Hogs:  Early Years of Wildlife Conservation in Park County.

As the title indicates, the article focuses on one Wyoming county, but in a fairly broad manner, and it does something I've never seen any other article do, which is to take into account the story of subsistence and quasi market hunters in the state during the period of time when wildlife conservation was really coming in.

Los of articles and books deal with the conservationist campaign against market hunting that came about at the turn of the prior century.  I've never read one, however, that dealt with the views of the local yeomanry in any fashion, to whom conservation efforts didn't come easily as it directly impacted their table.  The role of the wealthy in the effort, and the role of the more or less poor in opposition to it, and how they respectively viewed things, is fresh to the story, at least for me.  

Added to that, the role of private pay game wardens, and the role of other agencies in enforcing Wyoming's game laws, which came in early but which had nobody to enforce them, is something I was also unaware of.  And even some of the early history of the Wyoming Game & Fish is included.  Here too, for example, I was unaware that the hunting area concept wasn't brought into Wyoming's laws until 1947.

While by and large Wyoming's hunters came around to really supporting the Wyoming system, which is sometimes regarded as the crown jewel of wildlife conservation, some of these fights never fully went away and some of the stresses remain.  You can see the views of those whose pocketbooks depend on out of state sportsmen vs. the locals reflected back over a century ago.  This work is a really valuable look into the history of wildlife conservation in general and is very much worth reading.

Lex Anteinternet: The Old Homesteads

Lex Anteinternet: The Old Homesteads: 

The Old Homesteads

I went to a ash spreading (i.e., a type of funeral really) out at an old homestead the other day. By 4x4, it was a long way out. Long, long way, or so it felt. I learned while there that the original homestead had first been filed and occupied in 1917, a big year for homesteading.

It was a very interesting place, and felt very isolated. In visiting about that with my father in law, however, he noted that there had been another homestead just over the hill. And, as I've likely noted here before, there were tiny homesteads all over at that time. It was isolated, but sort of locally isolated. There were, as there were with most of these outfits, another homestead just a few hours ride away, at most, if that.

That is not to say that they weren't way out. I'd guess that this place was at least a full days ride from the nearest town at that time. Even when cars were commonly owned, and they were coming in just about that time, it would have taken the better part of a day to get to town, or a town (there were a couple of very small, but viable towns, about equal distance to this place at that time). It's interesting how agricultural units everywhere in North American have become bigger over time, even if they are all closer now, in terms of time, to a city or town.

Blog Mirror: Gift Horses

 Gift Horses