When I first started this blog, I used to write a lot more about interesting hunting- and nature-related stuff I found on the web, but once I started a Twitter account, I shifted a lot of those tidbits to the Twitterverse.
Twitter, with its 140-character limit, seemed like a great place to share something that's interesting, but not necessarily worth a whole blog post. That's still true, but I've found increasingly that I've wanted to share some of these things with blog readers who aren't on Twitter (or don't stay glued to it every waking moment).
So, behold, my first installment of Cazadora's Top Tweets: a sampling of some of the stuff I've been tweeting about in the past week. Here we go:
Decorah Eagles: My foodie friend @CarolBlymire turned me on to this one, which has been utterly consuming: There's a webcam trained on a bald eagle nest in Decorah, Iowa, and you can tune in day or night to see what's happening. Two of the three eaglets have hatched so far, so it's not too late to try to catch the final blessed moment.
The live footage, courtesy of the Raptor Resource Project, has been utterly fascinating to watch: the partnership of the parent eagles (they tend the nest in shifts), their odd little way of rocking when settling down on eggs and/or eaglets, the way the stronger eaglet bullies the weaker one, and the incredible collection of dead animals piling up on the nest to keep the little ones (and the eagle on nest shift) well-fed.
If you love nature, you'll love this. And if the live action is slow when you tune in, scroll down and it'll take you to replays on YouTube. The replays could stand to be edited down a bit - I'm a cut-to-the-chase kind of viewer - but they do catch key moments.
A hunting television show we don't need? Steve Sarley, a columnist for the Northwest Herald in McHenry County, Illinois, tells us there's a new hunting TV show in the works: Bikini Buck Shot. It's about three Chicago city girls going out to the country and attempting to hunt.
Sarley planned to do an interview about it until he watched a video one of the participants had posted on Facebook. You should check out what he had to say about it, but the short version is it didn't seem terribly ... serious.
Of course, I could be wrong about this show - it could be an amazing way to get urbanites into hunting, which is something I'm actually quite interested in. But if that's the case, the word "Bikini" in the title really doesn't serve it well.
Yo producer, are you reading? If you can make a case for this show being serious, email me.
Mean old hunters: Newhampshire.com columnist Stacey Cole wrote a column this week about something that really bugged her, and the headline says it all: "Careless hunter left arrow in living turkey."
The arrow was sticking through the bird's chest, close to its neck (ow).
Cole, who says she's not anti-hunting, writes, "How a bow hunter could hit a turkey with such a direct body shot and then not follow the wounded game until it could be retrieved, is a bit beyond me. It certainly appeared to me that this was not the action of a hunter who was interested in a quick, clean, kill."
Sigh. It never ceases to amaze me that when people see a wounded animal, particularly one with an arrow stuck in it, they tend to assume that the hunter was mean, negligent or cruel.
Sadly, there is no comment function on that website (though, for some reason, the site lists Cole's address). If there were, I would happily point out that most hunters really want to kill what they shoot at, and when the animal doesn't die right away, they generally work really hard to get the animal and finish the job.
Unfortunately, most animals run faster than we do, and turkeys can actually fly away, which really makes it a challenge to give chase. Sheesh!
Field & Stream ethics column: Field & Stream announced Friday (yes, on April Fool's) that it's starting an ethics column. For real.
The editors are inviting readers to pose questions for the column to address, click here if you'd like to add to the pile.
Straight-up funny: Hank (@Hank_Shaw) turned me on to Darth Vader vs Hitler. Epic Rap Battles of History 2. Nothing to do with hunting or nature or food - it's just funny as hell. Be warned, though: There's a bit of inappropriate language, so if your kids' ears are pristine and you'd like to keep it that way, check this out after you've put them to bed for the evening.
Want to follow me on Twitter and get these updates as I tweet them? Go here, and if you already have a Twitter account, just click on the "Follow" button. If you don't have an account, it's easy to start one.
© Holly A. Heyser 2011
Very bad news from Down Under today: A woman who was part of an organized protest of duck hunting was shot in the face, allegedly by a 14-year-old duck hunter.
Click here for the first story in the Melbourne Herald Sun on the topic, and here for a more recent story and video.
Apparently, there's an extended duck season in Australia this year, and yesterday was the first day of that extended season. There are organized duck-hunt protesters who actively interfere with hunts in Australia - something that used to happen here in America until just about every state made it illegal.
According to the Herald Sun: Witnesses claim they saw the 14-year-old boy taunting the victim, St Kilda woman Julia Symons, minutes before she was peppered with shotgun pellets at Lake Buloke in the state's northwest.
But police described the shooting as an accident after taking the teenage hunter and his uncle to nearby Donald police station for questioning and seizing the firearm involved.
The facts ultimately must be decided by the Australian judicial system, but some things are worth saying up front:
1. If the boy shot the woman in the face deliberately, he deserves the maximum punishment the judicial system can mete out.
2. If the boy accidentally pulled the trigger while waving a gun at her, then he's an idiot who deserves at the very least to have his right to hunt and use a gun revoked for a long time, if not for life, even if the justice system is lenient.
3. If it was genuinely a freak accident, it's a reminder that one shouldn't engage in hostile interactions while carrying a gun, because any subsequent accident will be viewed as deliberate.
I have no idea what hunter education is required in Australia, but good lord, even the instruction manuals that come with guns make it clear you don't point them at people, even if you think they're unloaded.
Obviously I don't know the whole story, but if the boy is charged and found guilty, I would have no qualms seeing him made into an example and a reminder that you just don't wave guns at people.
That gunshot did not just wound a woman, which is horrifying; it is a black eye to hunters and hunting worldwide. I have absolutely nothing to say in his defense.
© Holly A. Heyser 2011
This is one of those posts that's sure to sink me in that popularity contest I keep hoping to win, but what the hell - I've got something to say.
Last Friday, I was whipping through my Google alerts and Tweetdeck feed when I came across these two things:
First was an ABC News report in which my girl Kirstie Pike, founder of Prois, was quoted talking about the rising number of female hunters.
That was cool, but it was the headline that really got my attention: "Hunting and Shooting Industry Targets Women for the 'Sarah Palin Effect.'" In this story, reporter Susanna Kim seemed to be working really hard to get her sources to say that the rise in women hunters (and bless her soul, she didn't fall into the trap of quoting any wacky numbers) was a result of the "Sarah Palin Effect."
The sources didn't particularly cooperate with her, but that didn't keep Palin from being a focus of the story.
Twenty-five minutes later, I came across a story in the UK's Daily Mail from the day before with this headline: "Hot shot: Meet Regis, 19-year-old big game huntress who's America's deadliest teen."
How stupid is that? Like we have a competition to see which girl in America kills the most game animals. Duh.
Turns out the two stories were related: When I read through the Regis Giles piece, there was the source of this new "Palin Effect":
"Alaska’s most famous former governor’s much publicized love of hunting has led to an unexpected rise in female membership in the National Rifle Association - which some are calling the ‘Palin effect.’
... "Diane Danielson of the NRA’s Women On Target programme explains that the ‘Palin effect’ has increased female membership 20 per cent, with the NRA teaching 10,000 new women a year to shoot, and making more girls want to take up hunting, like Regis."
OK, now this made more sense. It appeared the ABC reporter was responding to that Daily Mail story. That happens in the news biz, bigtime - a competitor gets a good story and someone gets stuck with trying to make something "new" out of it the next day.
By the time I pieced all this together, the story was making its way across the Internet like a bong at a Berkeley sit-in. Suddenly, Sarah Palin was the inspiration for hundreds of thousands of new women hunters.
OK, Holly, you're saying to yourself. Why does this bother you so much?
Reason No. 1: I've worked with a lot of new women hunters over the past couple years, and not one of them said Sarah Palin was her inspiration. This, of course, doesn't mean that they weren't thinking that, but you'd think if Palin was having such a huge effect on the number of female hunters, someone might've mentioned it.
But that's really minor. My bigger issue is...
Reason No. 2: Sarah Palin is an extremely polarizing figure - a real love-her-or-hate-her character. If you love her, these stories are great. If you hate her, though, there's suddenly a real negative connotation associated with being part of the wave of new female hunters.
But Holly, you say, how many new hunters are being recruited from the ranks of liberals anyway?
Don't I wish I had numbers! A 2006 survey by Responsive Management, which I wrote about here, suggested that 11 percent of hunters and anglers consider themselves liberal, and another 37 percent call themselves moderates.
But the politics of new hunters? I got nothing. Except the fact that the idea of hunting for healthy, tasty, organic food is gaining traction in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area, and that's where a fair number of new hunters I deal with live.
Maybe this is much ado about nothing.
I'll be the first to remind you that I blogged excitedly about Palin's nomination before the news had even been confirmed back in August 2008 - I was thrilled that there might be not just a hunter, but a female hunter, on the Republican ticket.
And if she actually does inspire more women and girls to hunt, that's fantastic.
But it's always been important to me (well, "always" being as long as I have been hunting, which is four and a half years now) for hunting to be a bipartisan pursuit.
One reason is political. Politicians are beholden to - and will act in the interests of - the people who elect them, and, frankly, I'd like to see the Democrats a little more beholden to us. That means you need a pretty solid group of hunters who vote "D."
The other reason is social. If hunting is seen as something for conservatives only - and I fear the use of the term "Sarah Palin Effect" will exacerbate this notion - you're cutting out a huge portion of your potential recruits, male or female.
And that's something we can't afford to do.
© Holly A. Heyser 2011
I seem to have bear on the brain these days. Got my first bear tag ever this year, but I haven't filled it yet. Ate my first bear ever tonight, and damn, it was good. And then there's the latest in the bear wars.
A couple days ago, I came across this delightful little gem: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a majority of New Jersey voters believe bear hunting should be allowed "if wildlife scientists conclude that bears are exceeding their recommended habitat limits and are destroying private property."
Well, isn't that interesting! I distinctly remembered a poll commissioned by the Humane Society of the U.S. in New Jersey this spring that made it seem like New Jerseyans hate bear hunting. "New Poll Reveals NJ Residents Oppose Trophy Hunting of Black Bears," the headline blared.
So what's going on here? Look below the headlines and you'll see.
But first a little background: New Jersey was one of HSUS' bear battlegrounds this year. The state, faced with burgeoning bear populations, wanted to allow bear hunting again for the first time in some years.
California also wanted to expand bear hunting this year because it's seeing similar growth in bear populations, and HSUS fought the bear wars here too. In fact, I wrote back in April how peeved I was that every HSUS quote about the bear debate in California referred to "trophy hunting" of black bears.
The public takes a dim view of the notion of people hunting just for a head on the wall, so HSUS starts flinging around the word "trophy" whenever it wants to win on a hunting issue. Never mind that putting a head on your wall does not preclude feeding your family with the meat. Never mind that it's illegal to waste bear meat in California.
Long story short, Cali officials backed down in the face of HSUS histrionics, while New Jersey stood firm and its bear hunt will take place Dec. 6-11.
Now, back to those dueling polls. Let's take a look at the first question in the HSUS-commissioned poll:
The state of New Jersey has protected black bears since 1970 with only two trophy hunts permitted in the past forty years. The state is now considering allowing hunters to kill up to 400 black bears. Do you support or oppose hunting of black bears in New Jersey?
Amazingly, despite the loaded language, 35 percent of respondents (registered voters) said they support bear hunting. Forty-five percent opposed it; 20 percent said they were undecided.
Fast-forward to October, when Fairleigh Dickinson University does a PublicMind poll of New Jerseyans on the issue. It split a bunch of registered voters into two groups and asked each one a different version of the bear-hunting question. Here's the first one:
Now thinking about New Jersey wildlife including bears, do you agree or disagree with allowing bear hunting in New Jersey if wildlife scientists conclude that bears are exceeding their recommended habitat limits and are destroying private property?
Honestly, that's just as loaded as the HSUS question. HSUS painted bears as victims of trophy-hungry hunters; this poll painted humans as victims of out-of-control bears. And the results are predictable: 53 percent supported bear hunting under those conditions, 36 percent opposed it and 11 percent were unsure.
Then there was the second question, stripped of emotional taint:
Now thinking about bear hunting in New Jersey in general, do you approve or disapprove of allowing a bear hunting season in New Jersey?
The results? Forty-nine percent approved, 33 percent disapproved, 18 percent weren't sure.
If you look at it in a chart, it's pretty clear:
In case you're wondering, the margin of error refers to the accuracy of the poll. In the case of the HSUS poll, its margin means that if you actually counted all New Jerseyans' opinions on this matter, the results would be no more than 4 percentage points higher or lower than the numbers in the poll results. That figure is 5 percentage points for the Fairleigh Dickinson poll, making it less accurate than the HSUS poll. But even if you factor in those margins, you still get statistically significant variations depending on how you ask the question.
Now, strictly speaking, it's not a good idea to stack two different polls against each other, particularly when they were taken six months apart, using different methodologies. But I think there's a valid point to be made here: If you run around saying "Trophy hunt! Trophy hunt! Trophy hunt!" - which is exactly what HSUS was doing last spring at the time of its poll, not to mention in the poll question itself - it does affect public opinion.
And that's why I call BS on the HSUS when it trots out this rhetoric - it's a bad idea to let it go unanswered.
For the record: Do you want to know what kind of trophies we dig in my house? This kind:
Those are pelmeni, Russian bear dumplings. The bear was courtesy of Cork Graham, and the food was prepared, of course, by Boyfriend, who blogged about it here. It was my first taste of bear ever, and it was amazing - distinctive in a way I can only describe as sturdy, but not at all overbearing (pun slightly intended). It had a little whiff of porkiness, but not much. It was damn good. I want more.
Bear hunting, anyone?
© Holly A. Heyser 2010
Am I the only one who's utterly bored with the sameness of magazine covers? Is it not bad enough that whitetails account for 75 percent of all the hunting magazine covers? Must we have almost exactly the same layout and teasers?
I shouldn't mock them too much - I've worked for newspapers in two-newspaper towns and woken up to see front pages that seemed nearly identical, despite a total absence of collaboration or collusion.
And I know I need to acknowledge that deer hunting is the most popular form of hunting in America, and that whitetails are what the rest of the country hunts, and that most deer hunters get to hunt the rut (yes, California seasons are generally timed to end before the rut).
But honestly, I would love for one of my magazines to surprise me. I'd like to see a big fat hairy boar on the cover. Or a rabbit. Or a coot, even! When I get behind on my reading - which I do often, with no less than a dozen hunting mags coming to my home - I'd like to be able to use the covers to distinguish between issues (and between magazines).
OK, end of rant. I have grading to do.
Hunting competitions can be fraught with risk: If you reward those who kill the biggest animals, you risk making it appear that the hunting is all about racks. If you reward those who kill the most animals, you risk making it appear that we'll kill way more than we can eat just to rack up numbers.
But I read a story in yesterday's New York Times about a hunting competition that seems to be absolutely perfect.
From the headline, "A Kind of Hunt That Even Deer Can Get Behind," I thought it might be a video game competition, or one that traded guns for cameras, both of which make me groan. (Nothing against wildlife photography; it's just not a meaningful substitute for hunting for me.)
But this competition - the Whitetail Pro Series, which will air on the Outdoor Channel in 2011 - focuses primarily on what I think is the most important aspect of hunting: making a clean kill. Read more...
In this contest, hunters head out each day with bolt-action 20 gauge shotguns, five blank shells and $1,200 digital scopes mounted on their guns. When they spot their deer, they hit a button to start recording and have 10 seconds to make the shot.
The judging for this contest involves taking the memory card out of the scope and reviewing all the shots frame-by-frame to see who made the cleanest shots. Hunters also earn points based on the age of deer they "shoot" - shooting a wary mature doe is worth more than shooting a goofy young buck.
Says the story:
The main goal of the series, according to Greg Koch, the founder of the group, is to reward hunters who consistently take clean shots on mature deer.
“In most states, you can kill one deer per season, and that hampers your ability to prove your skills,” Koch, 53, said.
So, what's not to love about this? It rewards all the right behaviors and skills without even remotely cheapening the lives of the animals we hunt by turning them into mere points on a scoreboard.
The Times story compares it with Bassmaster catch-and-release fishing competitions, but I'd say the Whitetail Pro Series sounds superior because the animal is subjected to less trauma for the sake of competition. The sound of gunfire can't possibly be worse than being reeled in with a hook through your lip.
What I really love about it is the emphasis on values that I think most hunters hold (at least the ones I know), but that aren't always emphasized on hunting TV.
One of the competitors - Todd Hamilton of Oswego, Illinois - really hit the nail on the head with this quote in the Times story: “That’s been my big pet peeve lately: people are almost accepting wounding. ... I was raised that when we butchered or slaughtered something, it goes fast and it’s quick, and that should be our goal, not to wound anything."
I'd love to see a lot more of this mentality rewarded and highlighted in hunting television shows. Our kids need to know that our entire community believes ethical and clean shots are more important than getting the biggest rack at any cost.
And so do the non-hunters, because they'll judge us by our TV shows, whether they accurately reflect our values or not.
© Holly A. Heyser 2010
Or does it matter, given the behavior the warden describes? Not showing the full antlers seems pretty odd - like Nugent knows he's got something to hide, which seems to address that big question I had: Would Nugent knowingly put an illegal hunt on TV? Yet Nugent was not convicted on the spike buck charge. He pleaded no contest - which means, "I'm not fighting it, but nor am I admitting guilt" - to charges of baiting ($1,225 fine) and failing to follow the California rule that you have to find some sort of officer to countersign your deer tag after killing a deer ($525 fine). "Camera dude" was convicted of and fined $700 for unlawful possession of animal part(s) taken in violation of the Fish and Game Code (not sure exactly what, but the search warrant evidence inventory from his house does include "6 x 8 deer antlers"). Ross Patterson, the guy whose family property they hunted, was nailed on the baiting charge too, getting hit with a $1,225 fine. The baiting violations, for what it's worth, appeared to be pretty clear. "The video on the 02/09/2010 television show depicts deer licking the dirt, which deer do not normally do," Lt. Laughlin wrote in his investigation summary. He also noted that Nugent's show is sponsored by C'Mere Deer, a product that bills itself as a "revolutionary deer attractant." It's worth noting that C'Mere Deer's own website says "some states' game laws may prohibit the use of an attractant. We encourage each individual to know their local and state game laws to ensure if it is legal to use C'Mere Deer products where he or she desires to hunt or apply it." But what about the spike charge? Why no conviction there? That's one of the things that really riles up hunters here because we can easily hunt for days without seeing a legal buck. The idea that we have to pass on spikes, and that maybe Nugent didn't, really grates on our nerves. The problem is that the case was resolved with a plea bargain - it did not go to trial. Does that mean the state's case on the spike buck charge wasn't strong enough? Or was the state eager to resolve the case at minimal expense, even if it could've gotten a conviction on the spike buck charge? We may never know the answers.
The news accounts last week of the Ted Nugent deer poaching case left many hunters wanting more information. Because I live within an hour of where the case was prosecuted, I decided to go check out the case file myself.
In case you missed it, news broke last week that Nugent had pleaded no contest to two charges stemming from a TV show he did about hunting blacktail deer here in Northern California. What got the most attention was the accusations that he'd killed a spike buck (neither antler forked), and that he'd hunted over bait. Although both of those things are entirely consistent with Nugent's style of hunting, neither is legal here in California. Read more...
In discussions here on my own blog, and on others as well (Hog Blog, Thinking Hunter and Othmar Vohringer), some of the biggest questions I had were these: Would Ted Nugent knowingly televise a hunt if he knew he'd done something illegal in it? While hunters are responsible for learning the laws of the lands where they hunt, did this case also point to a failure of Nugent's California guides to let him know he was doing something wrong? And what happens to a guide who participates in an illegal hunt?
My take at the time was that Nugent would not knowingly put an illegal hunt on television. He's pretty wacky, but he couldn't possibly be that stupid. Could he? I also thought any guide who'd let an illegal hunt happen on his watch should have his guide license revoked.
So what did I learn from the case file? First, it does not appear that either of the men working with Nugent on the hunt is or was a licensed guide. Neither of them is on the state's list of licensed guides. But one of them - Mitch Moore (whom Nuge referred to on the show as "camera dude") - is a taxidermist and I'm pretty sure there isn't a taxidermist in this state who doesn't know that a buck has to have at least three points to be legal.
Here's the part of the case file, though, that really caught my eye. In the investigation summary by Lt. John D. Laughlin (himself a lifelong hunter), he describes Nugent's "Spirit of the Wild" episode featuring his blacktail hunts:
Generally, when hunters take pictures or video of game they have taken, they take some pains to display the antler size or characteristics; in other video I have seen of Mr. Nugent on his television show, he almost always follows this general pattern. With respect to the spike buck on the video however, after the deer is dead, Mr. Nugent approaches the buck, partially conceals the upper portion of the antler and describes it, in part, as a forked horn buck; unlike the other two deer shown being taken on the 02/09/10 television show there is no close up of the spike buck's head. (Click on the image to see the actual excerpt.)
I cannot for the life of me find this video on the Internet, which seems bizarre. But I did find this screen shot of the show from a raging debate about the show on the Jesse's Hunting & Outdoors forum:
Yeah, it looks like a spike buck, but the shot is so grainy you can't really tell. Is that grass in the background, or a fork in one of the antlers?
© Holly A. Heyser 2010
What. The. Hell.
I remember reading about this on a forum a couple months ago: Ted Nugent did a deer hunt in California and put it on his TV show, and Cali hunters were all abuzz because the episode showed him killing a spike buck (illegal here) over what looked like bait (also illegal here).
I didn't see the show, but apparently a couple California game wardens did, and now comes the news that Nuge has pleaded no contest to misdemeanor poaching charges. Read more...
Dude! What were you thinking???
Of course, some of the first comments I read on the Sacramento Bee's story (before stopping in disgust), criticized the Bee for picking on Nuge, and "Kalifornia" for having such restrictive laws. Way to show your inner caveman, guys.
The fact is, the rules are the rules. We're all responsible for knowing the rules before we hunt. And someone who's going to televise his hunt is doubly responsible.
(And not for nothing, but one of the reasons we have restrictive rules is that this is not whitetail country. Our deer are NOT that abundant. In fact, we've seen a decline in parts of our blacktail population over the past 20 years.)
Now, I can see how Nuge would get into this bind: This is the way he hunts all the time. That doesn't excuse him for not familiarizing himself with our laws, but it does show that the hunt was nothing out of the ordinary for him.
What boggles my mind is that his guide, who does live in California, not only let those violations happen, but let them happen on film. That's just flat out stupid. If you live in this state, you can't not know that it's illegal to bait, and illegal to kill spikes.
The larger problem is that this contributes to the non-hunting public's impression that we're all a bunch of poachers. If a guide and a rock/hunting TV star break laws brazenly, then what must the ordinary hunters do?
Sigh.
© Holly A. Heyser 2010
Folks who live in California might remember that there was a terrible helicopter crash here in January in which three Department of Fish and Game biologists and the pilot died while on a routine aerial deer survey. At the time, a memorial fund was set up for their families.
Last week I heard the rest of the story while attending the Legislature's Outdoor Sporting Caucus annual dinner: Two of the biologists, Clu Cotter and Kevin O'Connor, had children, and apparently a number of outdoors organizations had come together to purchase lifetime hunting licenses for those kids.
Nearly five months later, though, they hadn't raised enough money to purchase lifetime fishing licenses, and I think that effort deserves a little help.
We all know that a fishing license couldn't possibly take the place of a dad, but it is a small way that Californians can let these kids know that their dads' work was appreciated, and that we all mourned their loss. Let's keep in mind that biologists are the people who make the science behind the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation work: They monitor wildlife populations to determine how much hunting and fishing is possible without damaging a species. Under this model, no game animal in America has gone extinct. This is important work.
It turns out they need another $7,500 to get lifetime fishing licenses for Cotter's and O'Connor's kids. If you'd like to help, you can do a couple things:
First, share this post with all your friends who are avid anglers and see if they'd like to be a part of this effort. Anyone who cares about getting kids into fishing can certainly relate to this cause - these kids no longer have dads to help them.
Second, write a check for whatever you can afford, made out to COHA (which stands for the California Outdoor Heritage Alliance), and write "Lifetime License Fund" in the memo line. Mail the check to:
COHA
1600 Sacramento Inn Way, Suite 232
Sacramento CA 95815
ATTN: Bill Gaines
If by some chance they collect more than enough money for the licenses, the surplus will go to those children through their memorial fund.
Yesterday was payday for me, and I'm writing my check tonight. I hope you'll join me.
© Holly A. Heyser 2010
Dear Blog:
I've been cheating on you.
I know you suspected something was going on because it's been 11 days since I caressed you with a new blog post.
But I swear there's a good reason for it! Read more...
See, I've been doing this freelance work. No, really, I have evidence - check out this story in today's Sacramento Bee. It's about pig hunting.
I would've put the story of that pig hunt on your lovely black page, but honestly, nothing happened. I was with Phillip, and it seems whenever I go hunting with him anymore, I don't see any damn pigs. I can only write so many stories about not getting anything before this starts feeling like an endless re-run of Tred Barta's show.
But hey, I can turn an unproductive pig hunt into a newspaper story no problem!
Anyway, dear Blog, you should check out this pig story: It's already 2 p.m., and there is not one single negative comment on it! No one calling me a cruel, cold-hearted bitch for killing poor defenseless wild animals. Isn't that weird?
I'm thinking it's one of three things:
1) The public is accepting hunting much more these days.
2) No one cares if you kill a pig because they're scraggly and dirty.
3) The readers noticed that I didn't actually kill a pig, so they doubt that I have the skills to be a cruel, cold-hearted bitch.
No, Blog, no! I'm not trying to distract you. I'll get back to posting more often as soon as I'm out of the weeds. One more freelance piece to do, a little more craziness at my day job, and then everything will be right as rain.
I promise.
© Holly A. Heyser 2010
Hunting and food. The connection between those two things is pretty obvious to those of us who hunt, but all too often the culinary aspect of what we do has been marginalized in the media.
But there are glimmers of hope. Field & Stream recently did a huge spread on cooking wild game, featuring the work of prominent chefs and home cooks alike. Mainstream media stories about hunting - like this one on National Public Radio - are mentioning food before they get to the predictable anti-hunting gripes from HSUS.
And now we have an entire new magazine dedicated to the food we eat: Cooking Wild: Hunt Fish Forage Feast. Read more...
I have high hopes for this magazine, in part because I'm watching news from all over the country about urban nouveau hunters who are taking to the field because they care about the food they eat. They are good for the future of hunting, and this magazine is a resource that will sustain them.
The other reason I have high hopes is that I know two of the key players in this endeavor.
Associate Editor Sarah Swenty is a good friend and duck-hunting buddy of mine who has appeared in this blog before (she's the one who helped me field-test the new Cabela's Cazadora Women's Waders - you can see her in the photo in the upper lefthand corner of this blog). She's also the coordinator for the 2010 federal Duck Stamp Contest.
And Managing Editor Andy Donald is a longtime hunter who works in the restaurant business here in Northern California. I haven't hunted with him yet, but I've interviewed him twice for hunting articles I've written for the Sacramento Bee. As you can see here, he gives good quote:
"To put it simply, the magazine is going to answer the question, 'You killed it, now what?' Cooking Wild is here to help!”
Checking out this new magazine is easy, because you can sign up for a free copy of the inaugural issue (which will include a recipe by Boyfriend and a photo or two by me). Just click here and follow the links. The first issue is expected to go out around the end of this month.
I hope you'll join me in welcoming this new voice into our community - the timing couldn't be better.
© Holly A. Heyser 2010
So I was going through my news alerts after work this evening when I found this fresh headline from Oklahoma: "Bill may alter military fees for hunting in state."
Could it be that this was a step toward letting any active-duty soldiers pay in-state fees - the idea floated by my new friend Maj. Darin Harper?
Not quite. But state Sen. Todd Lamb, a Republican from Edmond, Oklahoma, wants to make sure soldiers returning home to Oklahoma on leave can pay in-state fees, even if they've had to establish residency in another state where they're based.
Not entirely what Maj. Harper was hoping for, but it's a step in the right direction.
Of course, it's just a bill, and it's a long way from bill introduction to passage by the legislature and signing by the governor. If you'd like to express your support for this bill or see how you might be able to help, consider kicking an email over to Sen. Lamb - especially if you're from Oklahoma.
© Holly A. Heyser 2010
I did a radio interview last week with Radio Netherlands Worldwide about hunting as an alternative to buying factory-farmed meat, and after I left the studio, I couldn't stop thinking about this one word that I'd kept saying in reference to meat and animals: "respect."
In particular, I talked about how much more I respected animals since I started hunting. I've said that many times before, but in this interview, I also talked about how I grew up in a family that raised animals for meat.
Afterward, that left me wondering: Taking responsibility for killing animals that provide your meat increases your respect for the food they provide. But why was it that hunting increased my respect for the animals themselves? Read more...
I'd answered that question for myself before: When you hunt, you see animals at their full potential - most often doing their best to evade you, but also exhibiting playfulness, resourcefulness and - in the event you wound one - sheer will to live. Sometimes you win. More often than not, they do. Wild animals are not the defenseless, cowering Bambis so many non-hunters think them to be.
So why the hell hadn't I respected animals when I raised them for food? Suddenly, the dots connected: Those animals weren't free. They could be playful, or even manipulative, but they rarely showed resourcefulness or cunning because they didn't have to. They simply waited to be fed every day. Or milked. Or slaughtered.
I didn't respect them because they weren't free to be what they really are meant to be. They were just slaves.
This was an interesting little revelation in light of the fact that I also mentioned during this interview that hunting connects me to what I truly am - what my species and its antecedents have been for 2 million years. What I am meant to be.
And the more I hunt, the more I look at non-hunting people around me and feel sorry for them, because they don't even know what they've lost.
This revelation also struck me because one defense I have heard from some people who eat meat but hate hunting is that domestic animals were meant to be eaten while the wild animals I shoot would be running around happy as a clam if I just didn't pull the trigger.
That defense has always pissed me off because it sounded so much like one of the rationalizations for for black slavery in America: They're meant to be slaves. They're born into it. So it's OK to eat captive animals. But wild animals weren't born for that. It's not OK to eat them.
Of course, the fact is, we're all destined to become food for something else, whether we're eaten by sharks or mountain lions or we merely feed grass and trees and mushrooms wherever we're buried. And I have no problem eating animals, wild or domestic.
But it bothers me that people - some people, at least - value captive meat animals so much less than wild ones. I believe it's why we have allowed some of the more grotesque practices of factory farming to take place - crowding, mutilation, genetic manipulation. And now I'm thinking the reason for that is that we see them as nothing more than slaves.
This discussion could go a hundred different directions from here - Hutch, I can already hear your fingers tapping on the keys. So have at it, folks. I'm interested in hearing what you think.
© Holly A. Heyser 2010
When I wrote a blog post Wednesday about being irritated with Field & Stream running a photo gallery of SHOT Show Booth Babes, I thought to myself, Hell, there goes your chance of ever writing for Field & Stream!
So when I woke up the next morning and saw the name "Anthony Licata" in my inbox, I must say I just about pissed myself. I know that name, I know that name... That's the editor of Field & Stream. The editor!
I clicked on every other email before I summoned the courage to click on that one. Reminded me of my old days as a reporter when my blood would run cold at the sight of the blinking red voicemail light on my phone the morning a controversial story ran.
Click. Read more...
"I really liked your post calling us out on our annual booth babes gallery. You make a lot of great points.
"Would you be interested in writing a guest post our our Field Notes blog that takes on this topic?"
Uhhhhhhhhhhhh. Yes!
So I did. And you can see it by clicking here.
The comments actually start off eerily supportive, but they quickly turn into pretty much what I expected.
WA Mtnhunter: Let's see a photo of the author. That could explain a few things. Just a thought.....
crm3006: WA Mtnhunter- Follow the link to her blog, click on her picture, enlarge it if you dare, ALL IS EXPLAINED!!
Well, gentlemen, it's hard to argue with your incredibly intelligent rejoinders. You're right: It's jealousy. When I was young and cute, I thoroughly enjoyed having chicks dressed as sluts for my role models. But now it just pisses me off. Drat! You've figured me out!
Yep, it's a little rough making my debut in Field & Stream by attacking readers' sacred cow. (And, why no, I didn't say that to employ udder imagery at all!)
But I've had some great conversations with Licata now, and this whole thing has stirred up a pretty lively discussion both on the F&S website and here. Never hurts to get people thinking. So I guess I can't complain.
Have a nice weekend, folks. I'm goin' duck huntin'. And I'm gonna look sexy doing it! Because that's what matters, right?
© Holly A. Heyser 2010
Oh, lord, I hate writing about this subject because the last thing I want to do is come off sounding like a shrill feminist. I personally am not fond of Feminazis, and I cringe when I see bumper stickers that say, "Think women aren't leaders? You're following one." Barf. No, effing barf.
But...
The venerable Field & Stream has just posted its annual SHOT Show Booth Babe Roundup - a photo gallery.
In case you're not familiar with SHOT, it's an enormous hunting and firearms trade show where vendors pitch their products to merchants and media. Hunting and firearms industries being dominated by men, many vendors hire hot babes to stand there and make sure all the passers-by can see their abundant cleavage so maybe some of them will come in for a look-see. At the product, of course. Read more...
It's basic marketing. We see it a lot.
Personally, I don't get my undies in a twist about it. I know men are biologically driven to open their wallets more easily in the presence of nice tits.
But I'm a little irked with Field & Stream.
My problem is this: Hunting is not a men's locker room anymore. 
While male hunters are losing numbers, the number of women hunters is holding fairly steady. And the number of girls ages 6-15 who hunt has nearly doubled since 1991, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's most recent National Survey.
What's my point? We know that boys and young men have traditionally loved hunting mags like Field & Stream. It stands to reason that this growing number of girls who hunt might also like and read such magazines and their associated websites. And if they subscribe to F&S's email newsletter, as I do, what they saw in their inbox this morning was something touting the Booth Babe Roundup as the top story.
Niiiiiiiiice.
Why does this bother me? It's about the messages this is sending. One is that this is what girls are supposed to look like. Of course, the rest of the media already shoves lots of bad messages down girls' throats, leaving them feeling like they must be rail thin and have a huge rack in order to be acceptable, leading to a whole lot of anorexia and - for those with money, anyway - boob jobs.
It just makes me sad that it's not only Cosmo and other fashion magazines where they're getting this message. They're getting it from a hunting magazine too.
Another message is that this is the kind of women male hunters want to see in their hunting mags. Well, of course it is - men like hot babes. I don't begrudge them that. But could we just remember that there are young female readers too?
It's not just F&S that forgets; I see this in hunting forums all the time. Last year some brain surgeon posted a joke in the "Campfire" section of an Internet hunting forum. The question was, "Why can't women work on cars?" The answer was a photo of a woman so incredibly busty that she couldn't roll under the front of a BMW.
Most guys wouldn't share that joke directly with a 12-year-old girl, yet they forget that there are girls in the room when the room is an Internet forum.
I expect that of the oafs on some of these forums.
I do not expect it from a venerable magazine.
End of tirade. I've got work to do.
© Holly A. Heyser 2010
When my friend Logan in Minneapolis was listening to National Public Radio this morning, he heard the announcer promote an upcoming story on women hunting and thought to himself, "They should have talked to Holly Heyser about that."
Well, it turns out they did! Read more...
Idaho reporter Doug Nadvornick called me last week because he'd seen my obsessive writing about the numbers of women in hunting and asked if I'd be willing to be interviewed for a piece he was working on.
"I'd be happy to," I told him, and that was that. The story came out great - you can either read it or listen to it here. I'm quoted about the increasing number of girls hunting, which you can read more about here in a previous blog post.
For those who've come to this blog because of the NPR piece, welcome! Feel free to look around and comment if the spirit moves you. We actually have a lot of great discussions here between thoughtful hunters and non-hunters.
And for those among my hunter brethren who disparage NPR as a bastion of liberal anti-gunners and anti-hunters, please check out this story and take note that it was completely judgment-free.
It does make me giggle just a little bit, though, that I've been interviewed by both NRA radio and NPR in the space of one year. Now that's reach.
© Holly A. Heyser 2009
Yeah, that was insanely good. Click on the link below the photo for the recipe, or click here to see what he wrote about making that dish. Click here to read about what he whipped up last week - Doves on Feed (dove served over a bed of farro, which is a grain that doves would probably love to eat). Or just click here for all his dove and pigeon recipes. Dang. Now I'm getting hungry again. God, I love my man! © Holly A. Heyser 2009
What's not to love about dove season? It's your first bird hunt of fall. You get to hunt with lots of friends. And if you actually hit any doves, you get to eat one of the yummiest birds around...
Mmmmmmmmmm. Food. Read more...
If you're looking for dove recipes, I should direct you to this article I've got in the Sacramento Bee today - it has three tasty recipes with it. This story was actually part of the Sept. 3 Fall Hunting Preview package I worked on, but it didn't fit in last week's paper so they ran it in today's Food & Wine section. And it turns out that's appropriate, because I really focused on dove as feast.
I've got a couple more links to dove recipes below, but can I just say first that I am thrilled to report that I FINALLY got some doves this weekend? Yeah, it's only my THIRD SEASON of dove hunting. The first season, I couldn't hit anything. The second season there weren't many doves flying by the time I got out, so I didn't find out if I was capable of hitting them yet. My opener last week was the same.
But then I went to Michael's Native Hunt ranch near King City for his annual Labor Day dove hunt and feast. Even though dove season started Sept. 1, Michael didn't let anyone hunt the birds before Labor Day, so it was as good as having a second opener.
Everyone was saying the dove flight wasn't as good as it had been in previous years, which I've been hearing from people all over the state. But it was good enough for me to get lots of opportunity to shoot, which is important with such fast-flying, hard-to-hit birds.
I was a little nervous, being the only chick out in the field. I didn't know if I could hit doves, and I didn't want people to think, "Oh, she shoots like a girl." But it turns out I shot better than, oh, a lot of the boys in the field that day. I brought back six, and Fabio, the Italian gentleman hunter I'd partnered up with, complimented my shooting. A lot. God, I love Italian men.
Unfortunately, I also lost a discouraging three doves because we were set up next to a deer fence, and anything that sailed over it was inaccessible.
Well, almost anything. When we were done for the morning and everyone was sitting around on trucks and ATVs, I looked on the other side of the fence and spotted a dove in the bulldozed firebreak. Dead. Ten feet from us.
We bemoaned our bad luck, and then moved on in the conversation. But we kept coming back to it. It was driving us nuts seeing that bird out of reach.
One guy - Martin - said if he were younger and more agile, he'd hop the fence for it. I told him that such youthfulness had more to do with stupidity than with agility. And within 10 minutes, he was looking for a way to get over that fence. God, I love men.
But he realized that an 8-foot fall would be bad for a 50-year-old man, so he gave up.
We sat there joking about getting some duct tape and taping sticks together to try to drag the bird our way.
Then another guy, Eric, spotted a big, long pine branch that had fallen from a tree. About 10 feet long. He started ripping twigs off of it, then poked it through the fence wire.
Almost... almost. The branch tip stopped about two inches short of the dove.
"Push on the fence!" someone yelled.
So two of us leaned hard on the wire to extend his reach, and I'll be damned if Eric didn't hook that bird. We got it!
I know nothing in nature goes to waste, but I want to retrieve every animal I shoot, because the point of shooting them is eating them, not just watching them lie dead and waiting for the insects to find them. This dove probably wasn't mine - it wasn't close to where I was shooting - but it made me feel better knowing we'd made the effort to retrieve it.
Now, it's all about the eating.
Back at the lodge, Boyfriend was cooking up the doves that hunters brought in, with his incredible - and not difficult - Grilled Dove a la Mancha recipe.
I can't tell you how many times that morning I heard people gushing that this was the best dove they'd ever eaten.
Back at home, Boyfriend got a little more freaky and decided he wanted to work with a theme: doves with their future neighbors (quail eggs). Here's how that came out:
Doves on toast from Hunter Angler Gardener Cook
Hunters never expect to get much positive attention from city newspapers but they're getting a lot today: The Sacramento Bee has a Fall Hunting Preview! And yes, I did a lot of writing for it.
This is a big leap for a major metropolitan newspaper, because I guarantee you they're going to get grief from anti-hunting readers who'll demand to know why the outdoors section today is devoted to something they don't do. (Never mind the fact that I don't climb rock walls or ride mountain bikes or ski or do lots of the other stuff that typically gets covered in metropolitan newspaper outdoors sections.) Glory? Read more...
So I'm really hoping hunters show the Bee a little love in return. A lot, actually.
If you live in the Sacramento Area, please buy the paper today. The chart I did on page D4 is worth the price of the paper all by itself: It's a full-page look at everything you can hunt in the fall in California - seasons, limits, legal methods of take, etc. It's something I've always wished our Department of Fish and Game would do. (Now that I've done it, I see why they don't - it was a major pain in the butt! But useful. It's going on my wall. I might even laminate it.) You can see a PDF of it here, though if you can't print on big paper, the type might come out pretty small.
If you don't have access to the paper, please read the stories online and share some positive comments.
Here are links to the stories:
Challenge, excitement of deer hunting prove a strong lure by Li Lou.
Bans on lead ammunition spread by Adam Weintraub.
In the field, humans and dogs enjoy a 20,000-year collaboration by me (and this is the story that seems to be attracting the flame comments).
Sac Valley is good for the goose and good for the goose hunter by me.
There's Zen in the art of reloading by Jim Jones.
Outdoor Gear: Keep warm, stay in touch by Jim Jones.
And oh, by the way, the Bee's food section featured a story about wild game cookery yesterday - click here for that. Boyfriend was quoted in it, and a recipe of his was featured.
The good news is all of the stories are well done - I don't think hunters will find anything to quarrel with.
The only disappointment? Not one ad from the outdoor industry - despite the fact that we have three major hunting retailers that Sacramento-area hunters patronize (Sportsman's Warehouse in Rocklin, Bass Pro in Manteca and Cabela's in Reno).
Advertising support is essential, because unlike idiots like me who are willing to write for free, newspapers require revenue to pay for reporters, photographers, printing and everything else it takes to put out a paper.
I wasn't involved in ad sales for this so I can't say why there aren't any such ads in this section. All I can say is if hunting businesses were approached by the Bee and they said no to ads, I'd be very disappointed in them.
At the very least, though, we can say with great enthusiasm today, "Three cheers for the Bee!"
© Holly A. Heyser 2009
When I wrote a story for the Sacramento Bee about that fishing trip Boyfriend and I took on the Trinity River last month, I wondered what the reaction would be.
I'd had two pieces in the Bee - a commentary last year about why I hunt, and a story earlier this year about spring turkey hunting. Both pieces brought the usual comments from anti-hunters, but I wondered if a fishing story would be any different. Read more...
While I personally feel a life is a life is a life - I take the killing of all animals equally seriously - I've assumed the vast majority of humans have far less problem with killing fish than they do with killing mammals and birds. Even in many primitive hunter-gatherer cultures, birds and mammals are classified as "us" while fish are classified as "other."
Well, the fishing piece came out this morning, and wouldn't you know it the first comment on the piece is from an anti exclaiming with fake wonder that there's still a resource I can "ravage and plunder." I must admit, I was a little surprised.
On the bright side, at least there hasn't been a comment yet from "Coppersmom," a rabid woman who made lots of freakish comments on my last story in the Bee. Then again, maybe she just hasn't found it yet.
© Holly A. Heyser 2009
