The Agrarian's Lament: Dogs

Showing posts with label Dogs. Show all posts

The pause that refreshes.

The The pause that refreshes.

Going Feral: Fishing season is over, and hunting season has begun.

Going Feral: Fishing season is over, and hunting season has begun.:

Fishing season is over, and hunting season has begun.

I am, by vocation, a hunter. A hunter of wildlife and fish. And I'm not exaggerating.

This isn't a hobby with me. I'm stuck in a feral past, or perhaps a more feral future, but lving in the present.

And I'm more of a hunter than a fisherman, in contrast with my father, who was the other way around

The first two seasons of the year open on September 1. Like most years, due to my occupation (which most people, at least who are professionals, would claim as their vocation, although I'd wager that it is with less than half, very conservatively), I worked. Opening weekend for me, therefore, is usually when I first get out, and I first get out for the greatest of the wild grouse, Blue Grouse.

They are, I'd note, delicious.

This is a somewhat complicated story, but because of the route I take in, I need permission to cross, which is always forthcoming but I didn't hear back in time this year. That meant that I needed to drive into a location a good two miles further from my normal jumping off point.

And the road, due to the heavy rains this year, and the winter snow, was eroded to impassable. So the walk was further than expected.

But still very pretty, in the morning light.

Because of the very long hike, and my recent surgery, I armed myself with a kids model 20 gauge and buttoned my shirt up to my neck. Because my old M1911 campaign hat was a casualty of a rattlesnake event two years ago, I wore a replacement United States Park Service campaign hat. I don't like it nearly as much as my old M1911.

I will say that those wearing synthetic hats are, well, missing the point, and the boat.

The entire trip involves some mountain climbing for the dog.

The dog won't eat in the morning (poodles and doodles are strange about this) due to excitement, so I packed his uneaten breakfast with me. When we hit the high country, he was by that time hungry, in spite of his excitement.

Those boots? White's smoke jumpers. Best boots ever.

We hike a fair amount. The dog drank out of a few streams, but I also carry a canteen and he's learned to drink out of a canteen cup.

We found and bagged two young grouse.

And ate them one that evening. I fried both, that night, and had the second one, reheated the second evening.

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, June 7, 1923.

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, June 7, 1923.:

Thursday, June 7, 1923.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The 2022 Season Ends, the 2023 Season Begins.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The 2022 Season Ends, the 2023 S...:

Lex Anteinternet: The 2022 Season Ends, the 2023 Season Begins.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2022 Season:

So on to 2023!

I decided to go ice fishing today.

My daughter is the real ice fishing aficionado in our family. I had some experience with it as a boy, but oddly enough, my father didn't really engage in much ice fishing. He was a dedicated fisherman, so that's surprising. Indeed, he probably was slightly more of a fisherman than a hunter, and I in contrast I am definitely more of a hunter than a fisherman. I know that his father did both, as we all do, but I don't know how that scale balanced. I've really only heard about my father's father in regard to bird hunting, although I know that he fished the streams as well, like we all do.

Anyhow, back when I was young, in the 70s, I recall ice fishing at Alcova, which I'd be a bit afraid to do today, but it wasn't very often. I also recall people parking their trucks on the ice, which I'd never do today. My father chopped a hole in the ice with a spade, which I don't recall anyone doing since that time.

It was fun.

We have a hand auger. Much better than a spade. And little ice fishing poles, which isn't what my father used.

I didn't make it out last year. I hunted geese until the end of January, not terribly successfully, and it warmed up too much to ice fish.

Not this year.

In fact, today, going out by myself, as my daughter lives in Laramie now, I found myself flagged down going in, after I passed the snow plow. A really nice fellow I know, having called him as a witness on the Reservation, and a city councilman, formally one of my kid's religious education teachers, informed me the road was drifted in. I thanked them and pulled off

The dog wasn't pleased.

The dog believes that he's integral to fishing, and that without him, the endeavor will fail. He's very serious about his hunting occupation, and fishing is of course fish hunting.

I pulled off to let him wee. .. okay and I needed to wee too. After that, in spite of being warned, I drove down the road toward the lake.

Oh man, was it ever drifted in.

I went back down the road and met a fisherman from Douglas near the highway. He was waiting for me for a road report. He'd driven a long ways and had a lot of poles, a true ice fisherman. I gave the road report to him. He decided to try Alcova. I decided to try a different high mountain lake.

And yes, I'm not going to mention it.

Before I left for that one, I received a call from my son's girlfriend. She's a dedicated fly fisherman, a rare quality in a girlfriend and one to be seriously admired. My pickup, which my son is driving, she related, had been rear ended in a Laramie blizzard. I have his truck right now as it's having a complete mechanical breakdown.

Turns out it wasn't bad.

Couldn't make that other high mountain lake either. It was also drifted in.

Oh well.

Lex Anteinternet: Wha't's wrong with the (modern, western) world, pa...Cats and Dogs.

Lex Anteinternet: Wha't's wrong with the (modern, western) world, pa...:

4. One of the odder examples of this, very widespread, is the change in our relationship with animals.

Our species is one of those which has a symbiotic relationship with other ones. We like to think that this is unique to us, but it isn't. Many other examples of exist of birds, mammals and even fish that live in very close relationships with other species. When this occurred with us, we do not know, but we do know that its ancient. Dogs and modern wolves both evolved from a preexisting wolf species starting some 25,000 to 40,000 years ago, according to the best evidence we currently have. That likely means it was longer ago than that.

Cats, in contrast, self domesticated some 7,000 or so years ago, according to our best estimates.

Cat eating a shellfish, depiction from an Egyptian tomb.

We have a proclivity for both domesticating animals, and accepting self domestication of animals, the truth being that such events are likely part and parcel of each other. Dogs descend from some opportunistic wolves that started hanging around us as we killed things they liked to eat. Cats from wildcats that came on as we're dirty. Both evolved thereafter in ways we like, becoming companions as well as servants. But not just them, horses, pigs, sheep, cattle. . .the list is long.

As we've moved from the natural to the unnatural, we've forgotten that all domestic animals, no matter how cute and cuddly they are, are animals and were originally our servants. And as real children have become less common in WASP culture, the natural instinct to have an infant to take care of, or even adore, has transferred itself upon these unwilling subjects, making them "fur babies".

It's interesting in this context to watch the difference between people who really work with animals, and those who do not. Just recently, for example, our four-year-old nephew stayed the night due to the snow, and was baffled why our hunting dog, who is a type of working dog but very much a companion, stayed the night indoors. The ranch dogs do not. . . ever. The ranch cats, friendly though they are, don't either.

Lex Anteinternet: The Blizzard

Lex Anteinternet: The Blizzard:

The Blizzard

We went waterfowl hunting.

By we, I mean my son, his girlfriend, and the dog. We loaded up in the Dodge D3500, and we went waterfowl hunting

The highways were all closed, so I got there by going through a small farm belt here, hitting a rural road, and taking it to the river, the back way. We were the only vehicles on it.

Yes, this can be argued, and probably correctly driving out in a blizzard was not smart. But people wanted to go, and it looked like good waterfowl hunting weather, which in fact it was.

Out on the river, in fact, the weather wasn't nearly as bad as it was in town. It snowed lightly off and on, but it wasn't a blizzard. At some point, it had been, as the snow was quite deep.

And we had the river all to ourselves.

And has we headed back into town, the snowstorm cranked up again.

And yes, there were some spots on the road that were really bad. Only the fact that I was driving a very heavy, and powerful, diesel 4x4 allowed us to get there. Frankly, a 1/2 ton gasser probably wouldn't have. And yes, you ought to stay off the road in weather like that.

We were going to do this on Sunday, New Year's Day, but the blizzard made that impossible in town. It was also rendered impossible by the fact that the batteries on the diesel had given out the week prior, and I'd only learned that on Saturday when I was heading out, in advance of the storm, to hunt geese near Torrington. I changed, the batteries, in the blizzard, on Sunday after Mass, but only after nearly wrecking my very lightweight Jeep going to get the batteries.

The point.

Well, as follows.

I have a new neighbor across the street that I spoke to, two snowstorms ago. He's from Maryland and asked about the snow. I told him that it snowed all the way through April, as it does.

He apparently didn't believe me, as his next door neighbor, who was out while I was snow blowing when I got home yesterday, was stating that the same neighbor had asked him, that day, about the snow. He got the same information.

My prediction is that the new neighbor will leave.

Late last night, I got a text from a coworker. Should we close the office, today?

In fairness, the county has closed, and the school districts.

This is of interest as it's become, all of a sudden, a really common event. A couple of snowstorms ago, all of a sudden a coworker was asking if we should send people home early. It caught me completely off guard. It was very cold, and slightly snowy, but why would we do that? I vetoed it as I had stuff I had to go out, but this came after another similar event. Light snow, and we're sending people home. And we're not the only ones.

This is just an observation, really. Maybe it's a good thing that these events are taken more into consideration than they used to be. Or maybe we're really unprepared for them. Probably both. I'm glad they close the highways more than they used to, as they used to leave them open in horrible conditions. But I don't quite know what to make of the situation where people choose to move outside of town on a windblown flat, and then can't make it to work. It makes sense to me to close when weather is genuinely bad, but for regular in town operations, closing everything as a few folks might have trouble getting there, who should be given consideration for that, seems odd.

Lex Anteinternet: "If this is a time to rest and recover, then be su...

Lex Anteinternet: "If this is a time to rest and recover, then be su...:

"If this is a time to rest and recover, then be sure and do so without guilt."

If this is a time to rest and recover, then be sure and do so without guilt. God made rest a part of His commands to us. Enjoy the joy and remember that He made us human beings, not human doings.

Fr. Joseph Krupp.

Fr. Krupp's Facebook post here was synchronicitous for me.

I didn't take much time off last year. And my not taking "much", what I mean is that I took three days really off, just off, because I had surgery and was laying in the hospital.

That's not really good.

I'd like to claim that it was for one reason or another, but truth be known, i'ts something I imposed upon myself. And I do this every year.

Indeed, I'm much worse about it than I used to be.

All the things you hear about not taking time off are 100% true, if not 200%. You become less efficient, for one thing. And if you work extra hours, sooner or later, you'll acclimate yourself to working the extra hours to the point where you need to. That's become your work life.

Christmas in my work place essentially always works the same way. We work, normally, the day before Christmas, December 24, until noon. At noon, we dismiss the staff and all go to a collective lawyer's lunch. That institution is, I think, a remnant of an earlier era in our society in general, when it could be expected that most professional institutions would remain a certain size and everyone who worked there would have a sort of collegiality. It sort of recalls, in a way, the conditions described by Scrooge's original employer in A Christmas Carrol, in the shop run by Mr. Fezziwig.

This use to really prevail in firms when I was first practicing. I recall being at lunch on December 24 at a local club restaurant in which other firms would also be there. Everyone was doing the same thing. I haven't seen another firm at one now, however, for years. Maybe they just go somewhere else, but I sort of suspect that they're not doing it.

Well, good for us. It's hard not to have a certain feeling of sadness about it, however, as three of the lawyers who once were part of that are now dead. Others have moved on long ago. New faces have come, of course.

Anyhow, that institution sort of ties up the afternoon of December 24, but it's an afternoon off. If you are a Catholic with a family, it's always been a bit tight, as we normally go to Mass on Christmas Eve and then gather after that. Christmas is obviously a day off, as is Boxing Day, December 26, although most Americans don't refer to Boxing Day by that name.

This year Christmas came on a Sunday, which was nice as it made December 23 the day of the lunch and effectively an extra day off. We took, of course, Boxing Day off.

Sometime in there, I began to wonder why I hadn't taken the whole week off. With just three days off, beyond Sundays, and having worked most of the 52 Saturdays of the year, I should have. I had the things done, pretty much, that I needed to get done.

What was I thinking?

If this is a time to rest and recover, then be sure and do so without guilt. God made rest a part of His commands to us. Enjoy the joy and remember that He made us human beings, not human doings.

Well, I'm actually at the point, in spite of myself, that I'm so acclimated to going to the work that I feel guilty if I take time off. And frankly, the Internet hasn't helped much. On the afternoon of the 23d, I received a text message asking me if I was working that afternoon. I wasn't, and they were gracious about it, but this is how things tend to be. It's hard to actually escape the office.

On Boxing Day I went goose and duck hunting. Conditiond were great.

I should have had my limit of geese and ducks, but I shot like crap. It'll be part of an upcoming post, maybe, but my hunting season has been messed up due to surgery.

I was going to go with my son, but events conspired against it, so it was just me and the dog.

Earlier this year, my wife had us buy a bigger smoker. We had not had one until fairly recently, when we won one at a Duck's Unlimited banquet. That one is a little traveling one, sort of a tailgating smoker, and can work from a car's battery system. You can plug it in, and we've enjoyed it, but due to its size, we decided to get a bigger one and did. It's been great.

This was my first occasion actually using it, something necessitated by the fact that our oven is more or less out due to some sort of weird oven thing that happened to it which will not get addressed until sometime this week. Besides, I'd been wanting to try smoked waterfowl.