At last, rabbits!

Throughout the spring, because I don’t want to spend the money to hunt pig on private ranches, I suffer from  hunting withdrawal.  So by the time July 1 rolls around, I’m ready to hunt anything.  Just give me a field, a shotgun, and something to chase!  The answer is rabbit.  On July 1 the brush cottontail season opened, and this coming weekend I’ll be in my favorite canyon, flushing brushies and jacks.

These little creatures are surprisingly fun to hunt.  They run fast, break without warning, and turn out great in a stewpot.  We typically hunt with number 6 shot, but I tried number 4 last time out and found it very satisfactory, with better knockdown for the sturdy jackrabbits and a sure, clean kill on the cottons.  You are likely to find the jacks in grassy areas, where they will run fast and erratically, relying on their speed to reach cover before you can take them down.  Flush the cottons from brush, like sparse chaparral, on the slopes.  They will break fast and run for cover.  The window of opportunity for a shot is small, and you’ll have to swing the shotgun quickly.

The jacks, which are considerably larger than cottontails, produce a dark, beefy looking meat that you’ll want to debone and dice for stews or pot pies.   Don’t forget the backstrap when butchering them.  Cottontails are smaller, produce an almost white meat, and the only real worthwhile meat is found on the hind legs. Cook the legs whole on the bone.  My favorite is chicken fried.  For another very tasty idea, go to Hunter Angler Gardener Cook for this very nice Greek Rabbit Stew. 

So enjoy some fast paced, fun, early hunting in the rabbit season, and put some different game on your table this summer.

UPDATE

For the British take on rabbit hunting, go to Suburban Bushwacker’s post on rabbit hunting.  He also has a tasty-looking recipe for rabbit here.

CA Lead Ban Starts July 1

Like it or not, the California lead ban starts July 1.  The Department of Fish and Game has created a very helpful page on their website ( click here ) that contains the information most hunters will need to comply.

Whether we agree with the decision or not, it’s the law now.  Let’s prove that hunters are the law abiding, conservation-minded people that we’ve always been.  The best PR for hunting and hunters is our performance in the field.

Hog Hunting Makes the NY Times

Hog hunting, or more precisely the rising need for more avid hog hunters, has finally made the pages of New York Times.  As the feral hog population explodes, more states are pulling out the stops to cull hog populations.

They had been hunting since 4:30 a.m. without success. Thirteen hours in the East Texas sun had made a discouraged mess of the seven dogs and their masters, Dusty Kennedy and Clint Watson.

“All that rain washed their scent away,” Mr. Watson said earlier. “They’re out here though, somewhere.”

The hogs, he meant. You could tell by the wallows in the fairway, mud patches 6 feet long by 12 feet wide with deep ruts like the tracks of a semi truck.

Click here to read the whole story.

Tuning Up

Saturday we started tuning up for the upcoming hunting seasons by spending a couple of hours at the shooting range, knocking down clays.  We had very productive session.  All of us started rather rusty, but by the end of the time, we were hitting the trap with fair consistency. 

It was my solemn duty as a father to provide coaching, however dubious the value.

 

Will swings on a target low and moving right.

Dad breaks one.

You may not recognize the location, but this is the Prado Olympic Shooting Park, home of the trap and skeet competitions during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

Pictures courtesy of my daughter Shannon.

Fog, Rain, Cold … and Trout!

This is one of my favorite stretches of the Kings River.  It requires wading to reach the best spots, and with the river still at flood stage the wading was limited.  The currents in the Kings this time of year can be exceedingly strong, and the footing quite treacherous — fishermen in the area liken walking on the Kings River bottom to walking on bowling balls.  Needless to say, after a few fruitless hours of searching for fishable waters, I gave up. 

 The river was just too blown out.  You can see in this picture how cloudy it was.  In fact, the clouds shrouded the tops of the cliffs on both sides of the canyon, giving it a closed in feel that I don’t generally experience.  Sunday I opted for Hume Lake.  The weather was cold, foggy, and rainy.  It even hailed at one point, and it snowed at higher elevations.  This is very unusual for Memorial Day in the Central Sierras.  (Must be global warming.)  Undeterred, I fished the entire morning, and caught five good ‘bows.  In two weeks we’re going back, and I’m hoping for lower flows on the Kings.

 

A Real Life Hero

Perhaps the highlight of our recent trip to Washington D.C was one day at the World War II, museum, when we met a genuine American hero.  We were walking through the memorial, which was very crowded, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted an old man strolling slowly across the central pavement by the Atlantic pavillion, and he looked like he was crying.  He wiped his eyes, and my eyes were drawn to him.  He looked up at me and through glassy eyes and a choked voice said: “I was there.”  

I stopped cold.  He was a stranger.  I had no reason to stop, but I was drawn to this man, old, slightly bent, moving slowly through memories decades distant, and yet obviously as fresh and acute as yesterday.  ”You were in the War?” I asked.  

He held out a photograph, printed on plain computer paper, of a young American soldier, standing in the snow holding an M1 carbine, and I noticed that it had been signed by President Bush.  

“That’s me,” he said, “at Bastogne.”  

I was incredulous.  ”You were at the Bulge?” I queried.  

“Yes.  Hundred and First.”  

“Wow.”  That’s all I could muster.  I was standing in the presence of a real life hero.  A man who had placed his life on the line for his country and his buddies and lived to tell about it.

“Please let me get a picture of you,” I begged.  I called my son Will to stand with me, and asked my wife to take the picture.

 

For the rest of the day, and for the rest of the trip, I could not get this humble, soft-spoken hero out of my mind.  Everything we were seeing in D.C. was suddenly given a new perspective. 

I thank God every day for the men and women, nearly a million of them since the founding of our great nation, who have paid the ultimate price for our freedom.  And I thank Him again for the millions more who survived their ordeals to bear witness to the rest of us of the sacrifices we must all be willing to make.

I tried to imagine what those dark days at Bastogne must have been like — surrounded by Nazi divisions, bitter cold cutting through everything one could wear, ammunition and food both critically low, and a general who believed in his men and his country enough to reject the German demand for surrender with a single word: “Nuts!”  And I thought of this Psalm, which David wrote after a period of bitter war in Israel.

Psalm 18  “A Psalm of David”

1 I love you, O LORD, my strength.

 2 The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.  He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

 3 I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies.

 4 The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.

 5 The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me.

 6 In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears.

 …

 16 He reached down from on high and took hold of me; 
he drew me out of deep waters.

 17 He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me.

 18 They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the LORD was my support.

 19 He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.

 …

 28 You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light.

 29 With your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall.

 …

 32 It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.

 33 He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights.

 34 He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze.

 35 You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great.

 36 You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn.

 37 I pursued my enemies and overtook them; I did not turn back till they were destroyed.

 38 I crushed them so that they could not rise; they fell beneath my feet.

 39 You armed me with strength for battle; you made my adversaries bow at my feet.

 40 You made my enemies turn their backs in flight, and I destroyed my foes.

…

 46 The LORD lives! Praise be to my Rock!  Exalted be God my Savior!

 

The Gunsmith

I haven’t posted in a while.  Work has been crazy busy.  We also went on vacation to Washington D.C.  On the way we stopped at Williamsburg, Virginia.  The whole town is great big working museum of the revolutionary era.  The people who live and work there are in character, dress the part, and actually work in the trades using eighteenth century methods.  Among them was a gunsmith.

The picture above is the smith leaning on a working copy of an eighteenth century rifle saw.  Below is the boring drill.

The walls were hung with various guns and powderhorns made on the premises.  Everything these guys do is done with tools, materials, and methods that were used in the eighteenth century.

 

Outside we found the  forge, where the smiths manufacture their steel blanks and other gun parts. Every part of the guns is manufactured on sight using tools also made on sight. The tools are all exact copies of extant eighteenth century examples or based on designed found in contemporary books.
 

The Next Day

The day after I shot the photos of the huge herd of mule deer, I went back to see if I could get more pictures.  Sure enough, I found some of the same deer.  This time, however, there were a couple of young bucks with them.

 

 This handsome 2×2 was wary of me, even if the does were not.

 

After one last look, he headed into the black oaks and disappeared. 

He had a younger friend, a spike, who didn’t run. 

 

Instead, he hid behind the skirts.  The tagged doe on the right appears to be the grandma of this herd.

In the east, the moon rose large over granite peaks that guard Kings Canyon.

While overhead the red-tailed hawk circled, its sharp eyes scanning the hillside for a hapless rodent that might volunteer for the evening meal.  

Stunning Sight

Last weekend I went with a friend of mine to check on the herd.  We located a small group of mule deer below us on the mountain by glassing from a rock outcropping, then climbed down for a better look.  Following them as the traversed the hillside to stay ahead of us, they eventually stopped at the end of the ridge, where we watched in amazement as they were joined by more and more deer.  The group eventually numbered thirty five mulies eager to browse on the newly uncovered hay on this sunny side of the mountain.  They watched us watch them for about thirty minutes before they finally decided they’d seen enough of the two stalkers and skeedaddled.  I have more pictures, which I’ll post over the next few days.   

Mother of a Future Trophy

This little girl showed up to drink at the spring across the road from our cabin last summer. I’m hoping she found a husband and drops my future trophy soon!  I especially hope the father was the 4×4 that I saw over Christmas in the same spot.