Spring WILL Come & A Thought on Bloomberg

I am now starting to believe that this North Dakota winter will finally end!  The temperature has been creeping up by just a degree or two each day and in response the snow pack depth has been dropping by an inch or two each day.  Eventually green will replace white and I’ll be reaping the rewards of North Dakota’s long summer days.

Yesterday I heard the snow geese flying over but the fog was so dense I never got a look at them, but it was good to hear them after a long winter with howling winds carrying the yip of coyotes.  After hearing the geese I did take a short drive into the countryside to see if the snow melt will let me get to hunting fields. Nope. The mud is deep, thick and clinging which leaves me looking for some pass shooting opportunities as snow geese drop into or leave a field. The season is open until early May so I’ve got the whole month of April to get some snows. I am pretty confident I’ll get the opportunity to bring some down for Cookie to bring out of the muddy field so my feet stay dry!

When the idea of spring goose hunting was first being kicked around I wasn’t impressed because, like most other hunters, I had been brought up on the idea of waterfowl hunting in the fall and early winter.  Somehow, I thought that spring hunting was cheating and it gave hunters an unfair advantage. It took a few years to change my thinking but I did and now I look forward to the spring season as a reaffirmation of nature’s bounty and, of course, our position as hunters within nature.

Another Thought.  .  . .

I hope that this insane anti gun hysteria that has flamed across the country is not going to morph into more anti-hunting hype, all because of Bloomberg’s misrepresentation of hunters in his gun-control ads. What has truly vexed me is that he and his crew of malcontent mayors and coattail hanger-ons seem to feel they have the right to influence how North Dakota’s elected officials should vote.  We elected our officials, Bloomberg’s Bums didn’t. What we are seeing from Bloomberg and his followers is another step in the direction of greater class separation, a conflict that is being fueled by those who have the biggest bankroll! In today’s culture of wealth at any cost, as an individual’s bankroll grows, if they spend a proportional amount of time admiring their reflection in the mirror, they will begin painting gilt on the mirror’s frame, adding more gold to the mirror until the frame breaks the mirror, and they then believe thieves from the lower classes smashed the frame to steal the gold. In their minds they are justified in denying rights to others because of the broken frame mindset. Fortunately, not all members of the wealthy class are fooled by a gilded mirror frame and do not align themselves or their business with the paranoid Bloomberg culture. 

glg

Thoughts on Early Snow Storm

Throughout the day I’ve been jotting down notes about this snow storm. I know many of you are way ahead of me on receiving the first snow of the year but today’s storm has my full attention! I am not happy about the storm for several reasons and at the top of the list is that I’ve still got several chores to complete before I can write off my office project as “completed.” Also, as a hunter, I am concerned that if this snow does not melt away in the next few days the opening of pheasant season will be interesting. Not that the opening will be delayed, but the early snow will make the birds hold longer, giving hunters and their dogs an advantage they don’t normally have in the opening days.

This advantage is troublesome. On one hand it is great for hunters because it is easier to get a limit of birds, but the easier limits have a price—lots of birds killed early in the season. The ideal, then, is for nature to provide a counter-weight by dumping more snow later in the season to be a counter weight to the earlier easy hunting. The later snows often provide late season birds an escape by preventing all but the most dedicated hunters from penetrating the bird’s hiding places in thick cover.

Unfortunately, the problem of weight-counter-weight is that it has other consequences, if the temperature drops too low, as it did last winter, the birds struggle to survive the cold. I believe there is something that hunters can do to have a positive influence on game bird populations when it is a little too easy to get a limit—practice self restraint.

Suppose a hunter is able to easily shoot a limit of birds on day one of the hunt. On the next day, if the birds continue to hold close and the shots are still fairly easy, reduce the number of birds killed by one bird. If the limit is three roosters a day with two or three days limit a possession limit, then reducing the second and third day’s kill will keep two birds in the population and increase the population’s chances of surviving late season severe weather. I know some people will argue that if one hunter doesn’t take the birds then another hunter will. That’s not true. Certainly, another hunter may ignore the restraint idea and kill a full nine birds over the three days but the two birds the other hunter didn’t kill are still in the population and the number is up by two.

After witnessing last winter’s devastating kill of game birds with the prolonged cold weather I have come to the belief that hunters can take the imitative to protect the game bird populations by insuring that hunting remains just that—hunting. When it is too easy the “hunting” difficulty index begins to drop and we should practice self-restraint. I’d rather have a great hunt and kill one or two birds that I am proud of than a hunt where the birds were too easy and I feel somewhat uncomfortable.

What do you think?
Best,
Glg

A QUESTION
While I was at the SEOPA Conference several people asked me why I don’t have any advertising on my Blog. I didn’t have a good answer. Many suggested that while letting Google put up advertising wouldn’t help the content of my blog they didn’t think it would hurt because the advertisers have no control over the content of the blog, beyond the rules imposed by the site’s owners. So, my question to you, my readers, is whether you think I should allow advertising? I’d really like to hear your opinion. I haven’t made up my mind and don’t propose to do so too quickly. Let me know your thoughts. glg