'Tis the season

The prickly pear is beginning to perk up. These warm days have greened it up substantially. The other day I cut one pad, processed it, and cooked it up. It was good, but will be better with a little more sun and moisture. The Indians thought highly of it as a food, and it has several medicinal applications.

"Do you still hunt?"

Just a few days ago a long-time reader of this blog asked me that question in the comments section of one of the posts about the return of my deer.

It's a good question, and takes more than a line or two to answer.

I'm a life-long hunter. Over the years, hunting has put much meat on my table and in my freezer. But I have gone "deerless" for the past two years, and not for the lack of opportunity. This past season, for example, stretching from mid-November thru the end of January, saw me with chance after chance for fine critters. Each time the outcome was, more or less, "Nah, not this time."

The attached image shows one of my many cervidaen visitors. It's an infrared "trail camera" picture of a buck that practically lived on the place all winter— finally depositing one of his antlers in the front yard by the porch, perhaps a gift. (In the picture he is standing a measured thirty feet from the house.) He was in my sights several times and the decision guiding the trigger finger was always a "No." Why?

I'm not sure I can answer that question very intelligently. Perhaps still having venison in the freezer has something to do with it? Maybe. But that's not the whole answer, or even most of it. I think I have just reached a point in my life when I have no desire to kill much of anything. Killing was never the best part of hunting for me. In success there was always a measure of regret along with the satisfaction of having "made meat" as the old-timers used to say.

Nowadays, immersed as I am in the day-to-day flux of nature and her many critters, I feel I have nothing to prove to myself or anyone else with regard to my ability to take animals for food. (Trophies have never interested me at all.) Younger, more eager (and perhaps "macho") hunters would surely call me a wuss. That's OK. I really don't care and I don't need their approval.

Bird-hunting is slightly different. It's not at all a solitary activity. I am in the field with at least one of my dogs, usually both, and often with several other hunters and their dogs. It is almost a communal pursuit. Following behind and watching the dogs work is one of my greatest pleasures. I could easily do it without a gun, but the dogs will have none of that. The point, the rise, the shot, the retrieve— all are at the very center of their lives and it is no rationalization on my part to say that to deprive them of that whole process would be a cruelty I cannot bring myself to be a part of.

If I choose not to take a deer for my table it should not be taken as a criticism of or a rejection of the practice and ethics of hunting. It definitely is not. I believe in the value of hunting both as a means of responsible conservation and a personal pursuit for sustenance, both physical and spiritual. I'm sure I will take deer again, perhaps when the freezer is empty, or when I feel that the time is right. When that happens, the little voice will say "Yes!" and I will act accordingly.

Fast moving High Plains weather

Yesterday I awoke to a glorious, bright, sunny morning. It promised a balmy day of warmth and spring-time bliss. But off to the west it was very dark, a solid mass of dark blue from zenith right down to the ground. Within half an hour a deep, cold overcast had taken over, the wind came up, and it began to hail. In the next half hour the storm had moved on, the sun came out, and the afternoon developed just as the earlier morning had promised. Boredom tends not be a factor where weather in the 'Great American Desert' is concerned.

Spring, inexorable spring!

Surely the certainty of its arrival, sometime, has something to do with human beings' tendency to live in hope and expectation. A bit of "programming," I think.

Prairie ballet!

Thought I'd post this from the mulie sighting the other day. This little guy is "pronking." I believe it is an Afrikaans word for the stiff-legged, prancing run that some antelopes over there, and mulies here, use to cover ground. Whitetails do not indulge. What fun it is to watch a mob of a dozen or so mulies pronking away over the plains like a gaggle of wind-up toys!

The mulies are back

A nice gift for the First of April: the return of the mule deer. Ten females. They left early in the fall and haven't been on the place all winter. Plenty of whitetails, but no mulies. It's good to see them again. Even better will be seeing their fawns in a few weeks.

The First of April

And, apparently, the first day of summer as well: at 245PM today the thermometer topped 97°.

My poor trees, that are now entirely greened with new leaves, may be in for a rude surprise. Normally at this time of year we would still have snow on the ground, nighttime temps well below freezing, and perhaps even a killer storm on the way. Some of our worst weather "events" have come in April

We are still two months away from a safe window for planting gardens and the like. Never saw anything like it.

My very own mining engineer

No question about it: Jack is the diggingest dog I have ever lived with. He's fascinated by our prairie pocket gopher. He will stand for an hour over a hole waiting for one to show up. If it seems fresh (and sometimes I'm sure he can hear them down there working away) he will go to work trying to dig them out. So far I don't think he has caught one. If he ever does I am afraid he will be a gopher-dog instead of a bird-dog. I've given up on keeping him from digging altogether. But I do have to watch him because he is very fast. I got distracted for a few minutes and he had the hole in the picture big enough to almost disappear into in about two minutes flat. No gopher out of that one, but he never seems to get discouraged.

New look for an old friend

Been quite a while since I've had a gun-related entry here. So...

I recently had a facelift done on an old friend. My Colt Gold Cup is one of my most accurate handguns, in addition to being pretty elegant esthetically as well. Her only flaw was that the short extension of the grip safety coupled with the long spur of the hammer caused her to occasionally give me a painful bite on the web of my hand. I like a pretty high hold on a 1911 and this tendency of the Gold Cup was annoying.

Not too many gunsmiths around here, but I finally stumbled on one that is experienced in that sort of work. Plus, he's only a 210 mile round trip away. Anyway, I had him install an Ed Brown beavertail grip safety and a Wilson ultra-light skeletonized hammer. I was happy with the trigger as it was at 3 pounds 12 ounces, but when she came back it was 3 pounds 9 ounces so all is well. Years ago I had the Elliason sights dehorned for carry purposes, so now she is about perfect as an all-around "field and target" pistol. The extraordinary accuracy of this old classic has not been changed, of course.

The 'smith only took a little over a month to do the work and it's good to have her home again. I can't think of a single improvement that could be made to her now.

Dry!

We have had little snow this winter, a very unusual non-event that does not bode well for our spring. The red flag warnings have been out for a long time, and we keep hoping for a good does of rain that will encourage the grass. A couple of seasons back we were thinking that maybe the drought had broken. Now we are not so sure. Wells tend not to go dry here, but we need surface moisture to make good grass. There's also the ever-present danger of fire

Jack the Doofus

My boy Jack is almost a year and nine months old now, and still very much a pup at heart. I don't think I've ever had a dog that was as much of a play-boy as he is. He's always looking for something to carry around, toss, chase, or otherwise amuse himself with.

Lately, his favorite toy has been a toss-ring— a kind of frisbee with a hole in the middle. He likes to "wear" it and run around at top speed (every fourth step a leap into the air ) as if looking for a tree to run into. Fortunately he hasn't run into anything yet but he seems to keep trying. He's very proud of this toy and misses no opportunity to show me how good he is at putting it on.

I love a dog with a sense of humor. Jack qualifies.

Signs of Spring

Slowly the prairie begins to come alive again.

It's been a strange winter here on the High Plains. So far— and I say "so far" because it is far too early to be toting up the score— we have had very little snow, and only sporadic periods of intense cold. The last couple of days it has reached the mid-70s, with lovely bright sun and little wind. But as the Ides of March approach I am reminded of the old samurai saying: "In victory, tighten your helmet strings!" Good advice, whether you are a plains-dweller or not.

The light is changing, too. We already have "that certain slant of light" that bespeaks the coming of spring. It's the other side of the coin of fall light that tells us winter is coming. Winter may be starting its departure song, but we still have a ways to go until seeds can go in the ground. As usual, I will use Memorial Day as my garden's inauguration day, however encouraged I am by that certain slant of light.

[And a tangential note— our eyes and brains are so accustomed to a familiar symbology that if you look at the picture above from a slight distance, you will swear that it is upside down!]