One tough mother

[TARNATION !!!]

Ma Nature that is. It's been about a month since CHARLIE and RIO got the birds, while Jack and the GHE just looked on.

CHARLIE and KYRA get a daily hike, no matter the weather - and they will never let me off the hook. Today was snowshoeing along a nearby creek. CHARLIE flushed four huns from under a spruce tree that is along the edge of a golf course that borders the creek. They did not fly in the explosive manner that huns normally do. At first I thought they might have been sharptails, but they were too small. Didn't think much about it after they left and we carried on along the creek. The dogs will never want to go back but eventually I do. Calm day, so the -20C (4 below zero F) didn't seem too bad (dressed for it). Nice thing about snowshoes is the return trip is easier when you follow your own trail back. We were about 200 yards from the car. CHARLIE poked her nose skyward picking up scent. She buried herself into the cattails and snow and came out with a hun. I found this strange, as those birds normally put your heart in your mouth when they explode from cover with a cry that sounds like a couple dozen guys trying to cross barbed wire fence all at the same time. CHARLIE dropped the hun onto the snow. I picked it up and it seemed to weigh next to nothing. Took it home and opened it up. Crop had a small ball of green grass (from under the snow on the golf course) The breast was essentially the bone with about as much meat on either side as a healthy robin. The bird was starving to death. A cloud of 7 1/2 shot in December would have been a kinder end.

I felt badly for the bird and the others I know that won't see spring. For the non-hunters this is the apparent contradiction, the hunter's paradox - a conundrum. Yes, we kill and eat the same bird during a certain period and then feel sorry for them or work conservation projects or even rescue when it's not hunting season. Brings to mind a post from Richard Flanders and a rescued chick (grouse/ptarmigan can't recall).

Enough rambling. Ma Nature - she's one tough mother that's for sure.
Jack

[Dean Romig]

Makes me think of all the Red-Tailed Hawks I see dead along our highways in the winter when we have prolonged deep snow and they have no way to hunt their customary woodlote and fields. They wait in trees along the highways for mice and voles that scurry across the road surface and the younger hawks, not having had enough "close calls" to learn from.... or are just too hungry to resist the urge, fly down and pounce upon their prey only to be slammed by the next car or truck speeding along oblivious to the impending tragedy. Pretty sad. I counted seven just today.

Yes, the hunter's paradox....

[Old and Reliable]

A hard concept for the anti-hunting and gun banning folks to grasp. Hunting waterfowl is a lot like deer hunting from a stand or steelhead fishing- there can be a lot of waiting before the action, and here is where patience is developed, or else the "A-types" who can't sit still for long give it up and take up other interests-

I like to think about a piece the late Ted Trueblood wrote years ago in his F&S column- "Other Values"- you are in the duck boat or blind, shotgun at the ready, decoys bobbing, heavy cloud cover and a wind coming from behind you- and no ducks appear-his advise-- learn to admire the beauty of Nature and be grateful for the day and that you could leave work behind to be there, ducks or not, and have the health to use your gun if the opportunity developed--

I went out again this afternoon to hopefully pass shoot for Canadas on an area river- snow, some sunshine through the clouds, tons of mallards, but the season on ducks is now closed- so I practiced moving through the snow quietly, using shadow and trees and brush- to see how close to the bunched "quackers" I could get- if they didn't flush, and I could stay hidden, they make the best decoys, and passing geese will often look over a bend or backwater in a river that is holding ducks-

I headed slowly for a big brushy deadfall, some mallards flushed as I approached, and as I got to my spot, two greenheads (lay birds I think the quail hunters call the late flushers) got up right in front of me- I brought up the big 2E 12 Smith and covered their heads as they climbed and said- Bang, Bang boys- you're dead- brought the barrels down and saw them hightailing it around the upstream bend.

This stretch is home to a beautiful male Bald Eagle- and he was out doing his exercises in flight- what a spectacle-- he made a few passes at above tree top height, and banked away upstream- about 5 minutes later a handful of mallards came at me from upriver, and without circling, dropped right into the river- Ker-splash 5 times by my count- then disappeared, hidden from my view by the big brushy downfall- I saw the Eagle's big shadow from the corner of my eye, and then the ducks quacked and hauled freight-they had to have seen or sensed the overhead "Death From Above" spectre- and here's what's strange-all puddle ducks, especially mallards, almost jump from the water (like a big Rooster pheasant from cover) and gain height quickly- that's why the old adage- "when ducks (mallards and blacks) are taking off, shoot above their nose, when they are dropping in, shoot below their toes'-- but these five stayed low to the water and went into mach 3- they were at least 200 feet and gaining from their take-off point when they started to climb- just like divers usually do--

Why so? Can't say for sure of course, I ain't no duck- but my guess is- Mother nature told them by staying low to the water, they could better see the shadow from above of those huge wings, and could turn from the talons quicker if that became necessary to survive then if they were climbing. I'll never know, so that's just my guess-

Never heard a Canada, so after a few hours, came back home, warmed up some coffee, set the 2E on the gun room table to re-warm before a wipe down and back into the cabinet, and turned on the College basketball game--

One of my favorite of all of the late Gene Hill stories tells of his friend, who was diagnosed with a terminal disease, and his last hunt for a trophy elephant- which he didn't shoot after 6 days of bone-wracking dead-on-your-feet stalking in Africa-- "Sometimes, we come to learn, that the greatest pleasure in owning a good gun is not always using it"!!

[Dean Romig]

One of my favorite writers is Gene Hill. He had the ability to make us laugh at ourselves, to see our own experiences through a different lens, to be comfortable in expressing our love for our wives, daughters, sons and our friends. He still chokes me up every time I read his stories (not quite like Boehner) and that's one of the reasons I read him I think.

Hey Francis, I could never do it..... Except for the difference in size I can't tell the difference between a male and a female Bald Eagle and if they're not close enough together to compare sizes.... how do you do it?

[Old and Reliable]

Of all his great stories, I like best "The Stranger" and "Pepper". Gene wrote so often and so well about dogs and men and shotguns and whiskey and grouse coverts and Chesapeake duck blinds- I have 4 of his books all personally signed to me by Gene when he and the now late Mike McIntosh visited our area in Oct 1990 on an Orvis tour.

How did I know the large Bald eagle, our national bird and also symbol of the storied 101st Airborne Div. (aka- "The Bloody Battered B%$#@*&S of Bastogne) is a male? Good question. Had some Canada Geese been in view, you would have to be a game biologist with X-ray vision to tell the sex of any given bird whilst airborne-

So I went to Hemingway's post-humously published novel: "True At First Light" and the part where he had shot his aging horse "Kite" and left him to bait the Eagles in the area-- and I quote pages 208-209: "I lay there watching them eat the body of my friend and partner that I had killed and thought that they were lovlier in the air.------I wished that I had a shotgun, but I hadn't. So I took the .22 Winchester finally and shot one carefully in the head, and another twice in the body. He started to fly but could not make it and came down wings spread and I had to chase him up the high slope"

Note that Hemingway referred to the dying bird as He-him- male. How did he know? Here's where all the years of heavy drinking and womanizing and burning through 4 wives and their inheritances really affected this man-he writes: "-- nor why I had killed these two, the last one by smacking his head against a tree down in the timber, nor what their skins had brought at Lame Deer on the reservation.

So, how did I know it was a male- a solo event, our magnificent National Symbol, and thank God old skirt-liftin' Benny Franklin didn't get the turkey instead= no comparison. Same way that Hemingway did I suppose- literary license. But to admit in print of killing two highly protected National birds, and then the utter BS of picking up a wounded Eagle by the legs and where the talons are, and smacking his head against a tree until the bird succumbed to death. I lost all respect for Hemingway after I read that. How he escaped prosecution by the Feds is beyond me- just as how our former lawyer shooting Vice-Prez. Dickie Cheney didn't get a fine for NOT having a valid Texas non-resident hunting license--

About 15-18 years ago a wealthy Bloomfield Hills Dr. (with apologies for the inherent redundancy therein) shot a Bald Eagle up in Northern Mi in the Kirkland Warbler preserve- drove his Jeep into a two track, uncased his new .270 Weatherby magnum scoped rifle, and shot dead the bird that was sitting on a nest. He left the dead bird, the tracks in the sandy soil (that's the general AuSable River area- and that means "Of Sand" in French)and the fired empty case- and departed- but some mushroomers heard what happened, called the DNR- they kept the deceased bird, the empty case and made casts of the bootprints and tire marks- end result- The Dr. paid a $25,000 fine, lost the Jeep and rifle, and had a 15 year ban on legally obtaining a hunting license in MI- I think he got off cheap--

[C.O.B.]

I saw a mature Bald Eagle enjoying a road killed deer not long ago. I have a Owl mounted I found along the HWY but have never seen a dead hawk along the road.

The sick and weak perish so the strong can survive...it's true in all living things..except humans we have government programs

[Dean Romig]

Man.... It was hard to sift it out but I found it at last.... "literary license" says Francis.

So, there really isn't a way to determine male from female Bald Eagles by field marks just as I have always believed.