Lex Anteinternet:

Going Feral: The 2023 Season. Third Year (or more) Running

Going Feral: The 2023 Season. Third Year (or more) Running: 

The 2023 Season. Third Year (or more) Running

I noted last year, when I did this report, the following:

The 2022 Season

The 2022 hunting season has ended.

In 2022, when I wrote about the 2021 season, I started off with this:

 It wasn't a great one, for a variety of reasons.

And that statement was true once again for 2022, but for different reasons, a lot of which had nothing much to do with the hunting season itself.

That's because 2022 has been the year of the field of Medicine, or age, or perhaps lifestyle, or whatever, catching up with me.

Well, I'm beginning to sound like a broken record on that, as it was once again quite true.

On big game, I didn't draw anything.  So, no antelope tag again.

Indeed, sometime in the fall, in one of the blogs linked in here, an out-of-state hunter posted about the great time he'd had in Wyoming antelope hunting and I nearly posted a crabby linked in post regarding that.  If out of staters are getting tags, in staters should be.

I didn't want to insult that person, so I didn't make that post, but I'm still not very happy about it.

I had general deer and elk tags, and I did go out for deer, but no luck.  For deer, I did have a very pleasant early winter hunt, if that's what we call this frighteningly warm mid-year season this year, but the only white tails, and that's what it was limited to, that we saw were on private land where I didn't have permission.  So, no deer.

Bird wise, the season was good for the most part.  Blue Grouse, which are illusive in my experience (a Game Warden who checked me didn't seem to think so) did make an appearance this year, so we did okay, but not great.

Doves were abundant, but I mostly missed shooting at them, which was sort of the story of the year in a lot of ways.  I did get a Mongolian Collared Dove for the first time, so was able to appreciate how much larger they are than Mourning Doves.

Sage chickens were also plentiful this year.

Chukars and Huns, which are in my experience very hard to hit, were abundant, but I didn't do well with them as I missed them more than I hit them.  I did get in a lot of late season chukar hunting close to town for the first time.

Waterfowl, which we hunted more than anything else, was very abundant.

So, not a self-reliance banner year. . . or was it?

Last Prior Edition:

The 2022 Season

Going Feral: Subsistance Hunter/Fisherman of the Week: Dick Proenneke

Going Feral: Subsistance Hunter/Fisherman of the Week: Dick Pr...: 

Subsistance Hunter/Fisherman of the Week: Dick Proenneke

Dick Proenneke may be the ultimate modern subsistence hunter and fisherman in so far as the Western World is concerned.

Proenneke was born in Iowa in 1916.  His father was sort of a jack of all trades laborer, which is and was common to rural areas.  His father was also a veteran of World War One.  Dick followed in his father's footsteps prior to World War Two, leaving high school before graduation, something extremely common in that era (less than 50% of males graduated from high school prior to World War Two  He joined the Navy in World War Two and took up hiking around San Francisco while recovering from rheumatic fever contracted in the service.  Having the disease was life altering for him, as he became focused on his health.  He received a medical discharge from the Navy in 1945.

After the war he became a diesel mechanic, but his love of nature caused him to move to Oregon to work on a sheep ranch, and then to Shuyark Island, Alaska, in 1950.  From 1950 to 1968 he worked for a variety of employers, including the Navy and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.  He moved to the wilderness in 1968, at age 52, the year that in many ways gave us the Post Post World War Two World we are now seeing collapse.  He lived there, as a single man, until 1999, when old age forced him out of the woods and to his brother's home in California.  He died in there in 2003, at age 86.  His cabin now belongs to the Park Service.

Proenneke loved photography and left an extensive filmed record of his life in Alaska.

There's a lot that can be gleaned from his life, some of which would probably be unwarranted, as every person's life is their own.  Having noted that, however, it should be noted that Proenneke is not the only person to live in this manner in Alaska's back wood, including up to the present.  So he's not fully unique, but rather his high intelligence and filmed record has made him known.

It's also notable, fwiw, that he was a single man.  Basically, if looked at carefully, his retreat to the woods came in his retirement, as he had very low expenses up until 1968, and had worked for the government for many years.  He never married, so he never had a family or responsibilities of that type.  Many of the men who live in wild Alaska have married into native families, so their circumstances are different.

Probably every young man who loves the outdoors has contemplated doing something like what Proenneke actually did, while omitted the decades of skilled labor as a single man that came before it.  And in reality, Proenneke, had lived over half his life as a working man with strong outdoor interests, rather than in the wilderness.  People really aren't meant to live the way he lived, in extreme isolation, save for a few.

Related Threads:

Dick Proenneke in Alone in the Wilderness

Dick Proenneke in Alone in the Wilderness part II

Going Feral: Subsistence Hunter of the Week: Jack O'Connor

Going Feral: Subsistence Hunter of the Week: Jack O'Connor: 

Subsistence Hunter of the Week: Jack O'Connor

Arizona born writer/professor/big game hunter Jack O'Connor was, in my opinion, the best firearms author the country has ever produced, and certainly the best one on the topic of North American big game rifles.

Born in Arizona in 1902, he was partially raised by a bird hunting maternal grandfather, due to his parent's divorce when he was five years old, which influenced him heavily.  His paternal grandfather was a judge who also ranched, which also influenced him a great deal.  His mother became a university professor after that, at the University of Arizona, which he ultimately would as well.  As a very young man, he'd briefly worked as a market hunter for an uncle's saw mill.

O'Connor served in the military twice.  He joined the Army at age 15 during World War One, but was discharged due to tuberculosis.  He later joined the Navy in 1919, serving as a hospital corpsman until discharged in 1921.

He took to big game early on.  By profession, he was a writer, as noted first being a college professor.  He was the first journalism professor at the University of Arizona, a position he left to write in sporting journals full time in 1945.  In that role, he became famously associated with the .270 Winchester and Mountain Sheep hunting.  Not too surprisingly, he moved to Idaho in 1948, where sheep are indigenous, although he stated that this was in part as he felt Arizona had become overpopulated following World War Two.

While associated particularly with sheep, O'Connor was the class western North American hunter, and hunted every big game animal native to the region, frequently with his wife.  He was a noted conservationist as well.

Subsistence hunter/fisherman of the week, and Agrarian of the Week, Tom Bell.

Wyoming rancher Tom Bell, a Fremont County rancher who lost an eye from flak during World War Two, fits both of these categories this week.

Indeed, he nearly defined them.

So, too, the memories of youth return on occasion to bring the warmth of old friendships remembered and old experiences renewed. Some of my fondest memories are of the dog days of August. Then much of the ranch work was done and cares slipped away. School was in the offing but far enough away to leave free time. And even after school hours, there was still time to slip away and meditate beside some branch of the river — a retreat unsurpassed even yet in my mind’s eye.

It was during those days that we often fished. Two boys and a girl, a boy and a girl, two boys, and on many occasions — a boy. Whether together or alone, the memories recalled are always pleasant.

We caught fish, sometimes excitedly, but mostly we just fished. It didn’t really matter. They were the pleasant hours when teenage cares could be temporarily submersed.

Tom Bell.

Bell was born in Winton, one of the variety of Sweetwater County mining towns that once existed before they boiled down to Rock Springs and Green River.  His parents moved him to Lander when they took up farming during the Great Depression.  He graduated from high school in 1941 and lost his eye as a crewman on a B-24 run over Austria.  He graduated from the University of Wyoming with a Masters in Zoology/Ecology in 1957, was a founder of the Wyoming Outdoor Council and the High Country News, as well as being a rancher.

 

The pause that refreshes.

The The pause that refreshes.

Lex Anteinternet: Rediscovering the obvious: Diet and hunting, fishing and gardening

Lex Anteinternet: Rediscovering the obvious: Diet and hunting, fish...: 

Rediscovering the obvious: Diet and hunting, fishing and gardening

For those who follow dietary trends, the current in vogue diet is the "Paley\o Diet".  And for those who take the National Geographic, you are aware that they've been running a semi scary series of articles on food in the 21st Century.

Elk hunter in northwest Wyoming, first decade of the 20th Century. For many in this region, this scene could have been taken any October.

The National Geographic articles have been inspired by the scare that's existed since at least the early 1970s that the planet is about to run out of food, although that particular article isn't really on that topic.  Quite frankly, and as well explored by an earlier National Geographic article, there's small chance of this indeed.  If anything, production agriculture has so vastly increased the global food supply that there's an overabundance of food and most fears of this type are very poorly placed.  Production agriculture, in fact, has hardly touched Africa and there's vast potential there, although not without vast cultural cost at the same time.

That's not what this article addresses, however. Rather, it addresses something that has been so obvious to me for decades that it not fits into one of those "geez, I wish I'd thought of marketing that way back when. . . " categories.

That is, human beings are evolved to eat a diet that we ate in our aboriginal state, for the most part, which we could still largely do.  Failing to do so has all sorts of negative health impacts.

Now, I am very well aware that this idea, which is an obvious truth, runs counter to the whole peak of the vegan trend, but that entire trend is one that is basically neopaganistic and hateful of nature.  We are part of nature, are evolved to eat a natural diet, and that diet was a wild one.

 Deer hunters with camp, early 20th Century.

So, hence the paleo diet trend, which I've largely ignored  A better study of this was presented by the National Geographic.

And what did the National Geographic discover? Well, people in their native states are hunter gatherers, with the emphasis on hunters. They eat a lot of vegetative material, but mostly because they're left with little choice.  When they don't have meat, it's because they can't find it, and they crave it.  If meat is abundant, their diet is heavy in it.  If it isn't, they feel deprived and make do with what they can find.

 Don't have the time, or perhaps energy to pursue deer or elk, or whatever.  Well, poultry lovers, perhaps you should try something a little more wild. Women hunters with pheasants.  Pheasant taste better than chicken any day.  For those who worry, moreover, about mass poultry production and how chickens are killed and raised, these pheasants enjoyed a wild bird life and generally when they're culled, they go from that to processed, so to speak, instantly.

And, as we now are increasing learning (and which I've known for decades) a natural diet of that type, with what you could locally hunt, is the best thing for you.

Now, as folks around here know I'm a fan of agriculture, and indeed I own beef cattle (although I'd live off of deer, elk and antelope if my wife, who is more of a beef fan, would allow).  And agriculture does have a peculiar role here.  

 Female pheasant hunter, 1960s, Colorado.

Agriculture is, or can be, the enemy of the wild in that it's allowed, as has long been known, civilization to rise.  Only the production of surplus foods can sustain urban development and our type of civilization, even though farmers and ranchers are often shunned by the people who depend upon them 100% in cities.  This has long been known, and some cultural anthropologist in fact make a big deal out of it and sort of smugly argue that all production agriculture is the enemy of the wild.

But in fact, as the National Geographic explores, agriculture can exist and does exist in a blurry line with hunting and gathering in those societies.  Nearly all, but not all, hunter gather societies are actually small farm, hunting, and gathering societies.  That's been obvious for millennia, but is generally ignored.

 Rabbit hunter, early 20th Century.  Rabbit taste nearly identical to chicken, and is the leanest meat on the planet.  It's so lean, in fact, you can't survive on a diet of it alone.  In many nations, domestic rabbit is a common table item.  It oddly isn't in the U.S., but there's no good reason for that. Wild rabbit taste like chicken and can be used anywhere chicken is.

Okay, so what's all this have to do with diet?

Just this.  While it puts me in the category of food campaigners, a wild diet is the best diet, and some direct relationship with your food is vastly superior to none.  People who sit around extolling vegetarianism or veganism are largely allowed to do that on the backs of farmers who are supporting their pagainistic anti natural dietary beliefs.  People who have a direct relationship with consumption and understand it (the two not necessarily being the same) tend to feel differently.

 Trout fishing in the Catskills.  Fishing is really fish hunting, and I've always thought that people who try to make a distinction between hunting and fishing are fooling themselves.  For that matter, anyone who eats fish, poultry or meat and doesn't think that they'd personally hunt or fish is really fooling themselves anyhow.  While on this, I'll also note that I truly find the modern emphasis on "catch and release" a bit bizarre.

Even now, in the 21st Century, many of us could have that direct relationship.  Most urbanites have the room to plant a garden (and yes, I've done so in the past but haven't the past several years, so I'm being a bit hypocritical).  And hunting is on the rise in the United States.  Taking some of your food in the field, either by hunting or fishing, is to be encouraged, and not only has the benefit of giving you a diet that somewhat replicates the one you are evolved to actually eat, but it gives you a lot of exercise as well.  Indeed, something non hunters don't appreciate is that the actual work in hunting involved can be quite intensive, and usually really dedicated hunters in the west try to stay in shape for that reason.  For those who can't do that, a direct relationship with your beef supplier, or pork supplier, or poultry supplier, is nearly always possible.  The cow in our freezer has always been the trendy "grass fed" beef just because of that sort of, but of course it's one of our own that's a "volunteer" having determined to retire from calf raising.

 World War One vintage poster campaigning for War Gardens, which the U.S. encouraged to be planted in towns and cities.

 World War Two photograph of a Victory Garden being planted.  This fellow had such a big yard (its in a town) that he's acquired a tractor to do it.

 School Gardens probably passed away about the time this poster was made during World War One, but there's plenty of space in most urban areas for yard gardening.

There's no down side to any of this, and we can only hope that this trend continues in the future, with more hunting, gathering and planting, on their own.  Shoot, most urban areas are so darned boring in real terms, the benefits can hardly cease.

Deer hunter bringing in a deer on skies. The uninitiated will think, "oh surely, that's the far distant past". Well, not always.  I haven't hunted deer on skies, but I have hunted snowshoe hares on skies many times.

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: Fish on Fridays, the Environment, and somewhat missing the point.

Lex Anteinternet: Fish on Fridays, the Environment, and somewhat mis...:

Fish on Fridays, the Environment, and somewhat missing the point.

Here's an odd item that I found through a British newspaper:

Catholic Church can reduce carbon emissions by returning to meat-free Fridays, study suggests

Eh?

This found:

In 2011, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales called on congregations to return to foregoing meat on Fridays. Only around a quarter of Catholics changed their dietary habits—yet this has still saved over 55,000 tons of carbon a year, according to a new study led by the University of Cambridge.

FWIW, 10% of the British population remains or has returned to Catholicism (more Catholics go to services on Sunday than any other religion in Britain).  England in particular was noted for its strong attachment to the Faith before King Henry VIII, and even after that, as it was not at first clear to people at the pew level that he'd severed ties with it.  This gets into our recent discussion on the end of the Reformation.

Indeed, Great Britain's Catholic roots never really completed faded at any one time.  Peasants rose up in 1549 over the Prayer Book, a good 30 years after Henry has severed from Rome.  Catholic hold outs continued on, on the island, under various penalties of the law, some extremely severe.  And the illogical position of the Church of England that it wasn't really Protestant, while not being able to rationally explain why then it wasn't that, or wasn't, if it wasn't that, schismatic, lead High Church Anglicans to continually flirt with returning to Rome. King Charles I was so High Church his position in regard to not joining the Church didn't make sense, something that his son, Charles II, ultimately did, in spite of his libertine lifestyle.The Oxford movement by Anglican churchmen in reaction to Catholic assertions that their Apostolic Succession was severed lead at least one famous Anglican cleric, John Henry Newman, into the Catholic Church, where he ultimately became a Cardinal.  In recent years, notable British figures have converted to the Church, along with many regular people.

Abstaining from meat on all the Fridays in the year, which in Catholic terms doesn't include fish, was a long held Latin Rite tradition that fell in the wake, in some places, but not all, following the reforms of Vatican II.  It was not part of Vatican II, as some improperly assume, but something that occurred in the spirit of that age.  It was a penitential act, not an environmental one.

For a variety of reasons, I'm pretty skeptical of the "blame it on cows" part of the climate change discussion.  But as a localist and killetarian, I am game with grow or capture it on your own. That isn't really what this is about, but it's worth noting that anything you buy at the grocery store, or wherever, has had a fair amount of fossil fuels associated with it.  The Carbon reduction here would be because fish don't burp much, if at all, or fart much, if at all.  But for that matter, neither do deer or rabbits, ducks or geese, or for that matter grass fed cattle.

Go out there, in other words, and get your own if you really want to save on the carbon.

For that matter, I might note, for those who are vegan, production agriculture is the huge killer of animal life.  I always laugh to myself when vegans think they're saving animals, they're slaughtering them in droves.  Anyone who is familiar with the agricultural logistical chain or how production agriculture works knows that.

I'm for growing it yourself as well, of course, although I've now been a hypocrite on that for years.  I need to get back to it.

Anyhow, the "this would be a good thing for the Catholic Church to do globally in the name of the environment" might be true, or might not be, but it misses the overall point.

Related threads:

The secular left's perpetual surprise at arriving at the Catholic past.

Secular suffering for nothing

Pancake Day.

Blog Mirror: “A Good Dish for the Meatless Meal” Recipe

Going Feral: Draw Results

Going Feral: Draw Results: 

Draw Results

Draw results for deer, antelope and resident elk are now available

Ugh, skunked again.

Lex Anteinternet: Today

Lex Anteinternet: Today:   

Today

 Today is Earth Day for 2023.

It's also the first weekend day of Spring Turkey Season, which I should be doing, but I'm in the office working, as the law never sleeps.

Or takes a weekend off.

And today is also Independent Record Store Day.

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, March 29, 1943 Meat and fat rationing commences in the U.S.

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, March 29, 1943 Meat and fat rationing com...: 

Monday, March 29, 1943 Meat and fat rationing commences in the U.S.

On this day in 1943, rationing in the US of meats, fat and cheese commenced, with Americans limited to two pounds per week of meat.

Poultry was not affected by the order.

This must have been a matter of interest in my family, engaged in the meat packing industry as they then were.

Contrary to popular memory, not everything the US did during the war met with universal approval back home, and this was one such example.  Cheating and black marketing was pretty common, and there were very widespread efforts to avoid rationing.  Farmers and ranchers helped people to avoid the system by direct sales to consumers, something the government intervened to stop and only recently has seen a large-scale return.

While wholesale inclusion of a prior item in a new one is bad form, here's something we earlier ran which is a topic that needs repeating here:

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...So what about World War Two?

Some time ago I looked at this in the context of World War One, but what about World War Two?

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...: what would that have been like? Advertisement for the Remington Model 8 semi automatic rifle, introduced by Remington from the John Bro...

 Wisconsin deer camp, 1943, the year meat rationing began.

Indeed, a person's reasons to go hunting during World War Two, besides all the regular reasons (a connection with our primal, and truer, selves, being out in nature, doing something real) were perhaps stronger during the Second World War than they were in the First.  During WWII the government rationed meat.  During World War One it did not, although it sure put the social pressure on to conserve meat.

Indeed, the first appeals of any kind to conserve food in the United States came from the British in 1941, at which time the United States was not yet in the war. The British specifically appealed to Americans to conserve meat so that it could go to English fighting men.  In the spring of 1942 rationing of all sorts of things began to come in as the Federal government worried about shortages developing in various areas.  Meat and cheese was added to the ration list on March 29, 1943.  As Sarah Sundin reports on her blog:

On March 29, 1943, meats and cheeses were added to rationing. Rationed meats included beef, pork, veal, lamb, and tinned meats and fish. Poultry, eggs, fresh milk—and Spam—were not rationed. Cheese rationing started with hard cheeses, since they were more easily shipped overseas. However, on June 2, 1943, rationing was expanded to cream and cottage cheeses, and to canned evaporated and condensed milk.

So in 1943 Americans found themselves subject to rationing on meat.  As noted, poultry was exempt, so a Sunday chicken dinner was presumably not in danger, but almost every other kind of common meat was rationed.  So, a good reason to go out in the field.

But World War Two was distinctly different in all sorts of ways from World War One, so hunting by that time was also different in many ways, and it was frankly impacted by the war in different ways.

For one thing, by 1941 automobiles had become a staple of American life.  It's amazing to think of the degree to which this is true, as it happened so rapidly.  By the late 1930s almost every American family had a car.  Added to that, pickup trucks had come in between the wars in the early versions of what we have today, and they were obviously a vehicle that was highly suited to hunting, although early cars, because of the way they were configured and because they were often more utilitarian than current ones, were well suited as a rule.  What was absent were 4x4s, which we've discussed earlier.

This meant that it was much, much easier for hunters to go hunting in a fashion that was less of an expedition.  It became possible to pack up a car or pickup truck and travel early in the morning to a hunting location and be back that night, in other words.

Or at least it had been until World War Two. With the war came not only food rationing, but gasoline rationing as well.  And not only gasoline rationing, but rationing that pertained to things related to automobiles as well

Indeed, the first thing to be rationed by the United States Government during World War Two was tires.  Tires were rationed on December 11, 1941.  This was due to anticipated shortages in rubber, which was a product that had been certainly in use during World War One, but not to the extent it was during World War Two.  And tire rationing mattered.

People today are used to modern radial tires which are infinitely better, and longer lasting, than old bias ply tires were.  People who drove before the 1980s and even on into the 80s were used to constantly having flat tires.  I hear occasionally people lament the passing of bias ply tires for trucks, but I do not.  Modern tires are much better and longer lasting.  Back when we used bias ply tires it seemed like we were constantly buying tires and constantly  having flat tires.  Those tires would have been pretty similar to the tires of World War Two.  Except by all accounts tires for civilians declined remarkably in quality during the war due to material shortages.

Gasoline rationing followed, and it was so strict that all forms of automobile racing, which had carried on unabated during World War One, were banned during World War Two.  Sight seeing was also banned.  So, rather obviously, the use of automobiles was fairly curtailed during the Second World War.

So, where as cars and trucks had brought mobility to all sorts of folks between the wars in a brand new way, rationing cut back on it, including for hunters, during the war.

Which doesn't mean that you couldn't go out, but it did mean that you had to save your gasoline ration if you were going far and generally plan wisely.

Ammunition was also hard to come by during the war.

It wasn't due to rationing, but something else that was simply a common fact of life during World War Two.  Industry turned to fulfilling contracts for the war effort and stopped making things for civilians consumption.

Indeed, I've hit on this a bit before in a different fashion, that being how technology advanced considerably between the wars but that the Great Depression followed by the Second World War kept that technology, more specifically domestic technology, from getting to a lot of homes. Automobiles, in spite of the Depression, where the exception really.  While I haven't dealt with it specifically, the material demands of the Second World War were so vast that industries simply could not make things for the service and the civilian market. 

Some whole classes of products, such as automobiles, simply stopped being available for civilians.  Ammunition was like that.  With the services consuming vast quantities of small arms ammunition, ammunition for civilians became very hard to come by.  People who might expect to get by with a box of shotgun shells for a day's hunt and to often make due with half of that.  Brass cases were substituted for steel before that was common in the U.S., which was a problem for reloaders. 

So, in short, the need and desire was likely there, but getting components were more difficult. And being able to get out was as well, which impacted a person to a greater or lesser extent depending where they were.

And, as previously noted, game populations are considerably higher today than they were then.

New Zealanders entered the Tunisian city of Gabès.

Hitler rejected the recommendations of the German Army to place V-2 rockets on mobile launchers and opted instead for them to have permanent launching installations at Peenemünde.

Life issued a special issue on the USSR.

Nevada joined those states, such as Wyoming, which would no longer recognize Common Law Marriage.

Chapter 122 - Marriage

NRS 122.010 - What constitutes marriage; no common-law marriages after March 29, 1943.

1. Marriage, so far as its validity in law is concerned, is a civil contract, to which the consent of the parties capable in law of contracting is essential. Consent alone will not constitute marriage; it must be followed by solemnization as authorized and provided by this chapter.

2. The provisions of subsection 1 requiring solemnization shall not invalidate any marriage contract in effect prior to March 29, 1943, to which the consent only of the parties capable in law of contracting the contract was essential.

John Major, British Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997, was born, as was English comedian Eric Idle.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2022 Season

Lex Anteinternet: The 2022 Season: 

The 2022 Season

The 2022 hunting season has ended.

In 2022, when I wrote about the 2021 season, I started off with this:

 It wasn't a great one, for a variety of reasons.

And that statement was true once again for 2022, but for different reasons, a lot of which had nothing much to do with the hunting season itself.

That's because 2022 has been the year of the field of Medicine, or age, or perhaps lifestyle, or whatever, catching up with me.

Self portrait, and a bad one, turkey hunting.  I was wearing a coat under this coat, and frankly I don't look like I was feeling particularly well when this photo was taken.

In the Spring I wasn't feeling well, which after much delay and finally responding to a demand from Long Suffering Spouse, caused me to go into the doctor's office, which lead in turn to a prescription for some medicine.  I'll spare you the details, but like most medicines and me, I didn't really respond terribly well to them physically. They did their job, but they also made me a bit ill, and made me ill just in time for Spring Turkey Season.  I hunted turkeys, as I always do, and I did see some, but I never got up on them (I tend to stalk them, rather than lure them in).  I did get a turkey call, which I'd never had before, but that failed to bring any in.  

A couple of weeks later, by which times things had warmed up enough to wear my Park Service dress campaign hat, the replacement for my long serving but now lost M1911 campaign hat.  I miss the old hat.

I also had the joy, and I won't detail it, of being pretty sick while hunting.  Something I rarely have experienced.

It was fun anyhow, but not something for a subsistence hunter to write home about.

That takes us to fishing season, and here too, for one reason or another, I just didn't get out over the summer as much as usual.  Indeed, "didn't get out as much as usual" was the theme of the year.

I fished the river several times, and one of the mountain streams I fish.  I attempted to take my daughter and her boyfriend down a significant local canyon, where I'm sure there are big fish, but we failed at that.  I hadn't scouted the route, and ours was pretty impassable.

I did try something I have not for several years, however, which was fishing from a kayak.

The doctor's visit mentioned earlier lead to a colonoscopy, which I wasn't too quick to get set up.  That ended up getting scheduled for early Fall.  And that lead to a major surgery in October.

The North American Retriever getting a cool drink from a mountain stream while blue grouse hunting.

Prior to that, I got out for blue grouse, but failed to see a single one.  I never made it out sage chicken hunting.  I didn't draw antelope, but my son did, and I went out with him.  None of us drew limited deer, but my daughter and I went out opening morning and nearly got a couple of really good deer in a general deer area until some fool blasted right by us in a truck, scaring them off.  We went back out a couple of weeks later and my son got a nice deer in a very distant area.  So at least that was a partial success.  

I went out for antelope with my son, and he was successful.

I drew an elk tag, but I only got out twice, once before surgery, and once after.

Surgery put me out of action in a major way for well over a month.  When I got back on my feet, only waterfowl was open.  

It's been a pretty good waterfowl season, however.  The weather has been right for it (lousy) and lots of waterfowl have been in the area.  I've shot more geese this year than I ever have before.

I thought about closing this entry out with a quote from Kristin Lavransdottir about Lavran, when he last rode away, or the video clip from No Country For Old Men at the ending with the sheriff protagonist is recalling his father.  Instead, I'm just going to note that I still don't really feel up to speed, but I'm putting in for everything.