Trained Ferrets?

Remember all that time ago when I looked into the world of Ferret legging, and then hunted Rabbits with James using Ferrets? Well this afternoon on my way to pick the Littlest Bushwacker and Bushwacker Jnr up from school there was a chap on the train with his Business, just a nappin' away happy as larry. I thought of you dear reader and took a picture.
have a good weekend
SBW

Mini Cannon!

Gotta love-a Mini Cannon!
SBW
Found by Chad

Deer Hunting In The UK Pt1

With a squeal of tires a big man swung a small blue suzuki jeep (for readers in the US - golf cart sized) into the station car park sending a shower of gravel into the air. He bounds out of the car, shakes me warmly by the hand and before I can issue the traditional blogger-meets-blogger salutation 'Ah Dr Bambi Basher I presume' he's slinging my bag in the back and we're off.

The car is clearly the hack of a countryman - smells of dog, covered in mud and pro hunting stickers. He drives it like he stole it. In juxtaposition the radio is set to the genteel sound of BBC Radio 4, who are just commencing the third part of a series on the history of the duffle coat, read by a woman who sounds posher than the queen.

We rock up at at chez bambi basher and all hell breaks lose. Two cats, six chickens, TEN dogs, and a pair of teenagers, its the pandemonium of family life, with Bambi Basher and The Tea Lady using semaphore to communicate with each other, they pour me a glass of rum that would floor a sailor and it's a home from home. I fall into a fitful sleep on the couch.

The morning is announced by dogs licking my face, The Tea Lady serves a breakfast fit for a king, well several hungry kings, and we're off into the day. Bambi Basher has about 35,000 acres of woodland to stalk  but it's all parceled up into a bit here and a bit there. One heavily coppiced section is where he holds his pheasant shoot and its also the rifle range. We set up the range table and the lesson begins with a shooting test. I was using a 6.5 x 55 CZ 550 FS.

Defiantly not a group, probably not even an assembly, maybe a coalition?

I've been practicing off-hand with my Air Arms and was keen to see if it had done me any good. I forgot that during the week I'm not your pal the bushwacker, I'm london's gentleman plumber and having run out of laborers had carried many sheets of plasterboard (AKA dry lining) up many many stairs the day before. My left shoulder had taken umbrage at being asked to engage in manual labour with insufficient notice and put a hurting on me in retaliation. I breathed, I focussed but it was all i could do to keep the first six on the board. Opps! The look on the Bambi Bashers face told me things were not going according to plan.

Luckily you can take your shooting test from the bench and the next three were all within a 'Minute Of Deer-Rib' and the last three made a comforting line across the target. Phew!

Bambi Basher cheered up right away and let me have a go with his .275 Rigby. Which was nice.

The next part of the training is the simulated stalk where we walk though the woods, seeking out deer targets and assessing their suitability for a safe and humane shot. Nothing through the bushes, nothing without a known backstop to catch the bullet.
A close shot served as a good reminder of just how much you need to adjust for range even with a flat shooting round like the 6.5x55. Bambi Basher told me how a client had managed to shoot right under a trophy Roe doing the same thing. Woodland stalking is sometimes at such close ranges that both-eyes-open and under-the-scope also need to be practiced until they're second nature. A massive learning curve awaits me. Excellent.

We drove to another wood to stalk for Roe and Fallow deer, lots were seen, none were legal. Sadly I'd not set my camera up to work silently so no photos.

More of this one to come - bit distracted from blogging at the moment - work and stuff - good stuff - distracting stuff.
your pal
SBW

Bambi Bashers side of the story

A Suburban Bushwackers Bucket List

1. Visit Martha's Vineyard  ;-)
2. Bowhunt a suitably HOOJ Elk 
3. Hike into in the last wilderness of these islands, high in the Scottish highlands for Ptarmigan
4. Bushwhack a ghostly Roe in the southern woodlands of the UK - rather than the other way around.
5. Hunt a white Fallow buck 
6. Hunt a very big female bear in Canada, keep her skull on my desk, spread her pelt across the bed and make 'observances'.
7. Hunt the fanged cuties known as Chinese Water Deer
8. Participate in the Battue (without getting shot - important that bit)
9. Fly fish and campfire cook a trout as long as my arm in NZ
10. Successfully hunt Thar, Red Stag, and bad ass hog in NZ - its a long trip might as well make it the Kiwi Grand Slam
11. Find and obtain permission for a good rabit ground less than one hour from the house. 
12. Buy a stunning handmade recurve bow and get competant enough with it to hunt.
13. Hunt Marco Polo sheep in Kazakhstan -
14. Finish the Mongolian rally and Plumb-out a school in Mongolia - think of the bragging rights to this one!
15. Catch a double figures Sea Bass off Hastings - with Johna there to watch
16. DIY pheasant hunting in South Dakota 
17. Visit all the coolest, wittiest bloggers I'm yet to meet in real life - you know who you are
18. Be friends again with the Ex Mrs SBW - the kids like her, if I'm going to know her for the rest of my life we may as well get along.
19. Actually finish some film scripts/novels/patent applications
20. Prove to everyone, once and for all, that your dreams can come true.

Only one and twenty are in order.
Your pal
The Bushwacker

I Could Definitely Kill One Of Those

If you've ever had a thought about the ethics of the food chain and your place in it.

Read this post by Tovar.

Nuf Sed

SBW

BER-DOING!!!! Pt2 The Re-Write Of Spring

Fish eggs, fallen from the sky, a pair of them on the roof of a car,

at a wedding, in suburban Leeds no less.

I always wondered how lonely Tarns in the highland hills got to have fish in them. Well now I know, sometimes things just fall from the sky, in that way that leaves me wondering about the elusive pattern that we call serendipity, where one random impulsive act can change the course of events, give us a new lease on life, and even provide a doorway back to when we we're young and weren't so stupid as to believe we've seen it all before. Last night I was suddenly and without warning 15 years old again - felt better the second time around.

SBW

The Dog Blokes - The Dog Blogs

The Bambi Basher and I were standing in the woods the other day talking his new line of T shirts and about bloggers and their dogs when he asked me to recommend him some dog blogs, never one to turn up the chance to turn something I was going to do anyway into a blog post. Here's a covey flushed from the bloggersphere. Boom Boom.

mouthful of feathers

Five scribes put this one together: I was going to post a snippet of my favorite post, but they're all good and many are exceptional - this is their raison d'etre. Better written than anything I could manage.

Why? Because too little upland writing and imagery, particularly in regard to the West, inspires us or seems to reflect our reality. We feel the need for fresh voices that articulate the experience as we know it – wild, elusive birds in massive country, imperfect dogs (and people), dirtbag camps, true field guns, trucks stuck in the mud and days spent putting miles on the boots with nothing to show for it. Is it possible to bring this whole upland thing down a notch and take it to a new level at the same time? We’re gonna try.

We like to get after it far from the beaten track whenever possible, though we’re not immune to a little luxury now and then, more than likely in the form of a good cigar and a flask of bourbon on the tailgate. Now temper this brew with a generous dose of dry irreverence and appreciation for the absurdity of our pursuit – an ingrained, hardwired obsession that truly haunts us, no less than our dogs, for half the year while we wait for opening day. You won’t find any “how-to” articles here, though you may find the occasional example of “how-not-to.” Besides, there are plenty of other places for that sort of information – some of it even useful, in our experience. We’re here to celebrate the “whys” and delve deep into the soul of this thing. So throw your gear and your dog in the back and let’s go. We’ll try to be back by dinner time…

On the Eastern seaboard: Uplandfeathers keeps up a steady commentary on

The adventures of Bella and Cooper our two German Shorthair Pointers, Unboxing posts on the latest upland hunting gear, Gun-owner rights (2 nd amendment), Conservation programs, habitat restoration efforts and the latest news from state and federal wildlife agencies

In Newfoundland Canada a chap called Dan [occasionally] writes

Out On The Rock a diary of hunting and travel with dogs in the pristine boreal wilderness.

No list of dog blogs could ever be complete without name checking Patrick Burns' The Terrierman's Daily Dose - literally one of the great finds of the bloggersphere, really sharp investigative skills, insightful local, national and international political commentary, really sharp writing, my favorite PETA basher, and razor sharp wit are delivered daily. Gawg-nabbit how's he find the time to do anything else?

Last but not least: one of the good guys, miserableist, punk rock aficionado, 6.5x55 evangelist, DIY fishing tackle guru, bibliophile, storm chaser, bait caster, bird hunter, regular commenter on this blog, dog bloke, and renaissance redneck Chad Love. Writes The Mallard Of Discontent

Oh and if you found this while looking online for stuff for your dogs The Tea Lady is the go-to-gal for all the best gear at the lowest possible prices. Catch up with her stand at most game fairs or

you can find her online or on the phone at http://www.dogtrainingsupplies.co.uk/

Enjoy

SBW

PS all pix credited to the blogs they're from - Bambi Basher and The Tea Lady will have the T Shirt soon.

Thanks For Reading Team Bushwacker

Wow! A hundred of you have been gracious enough to use the google follower function to keep up to speed with my journey. Thanks for your support. I'm stoked.

If there's anything you'd like to see on this blog, leave a comment and you never know.....
SBW
PS as usual when there's a cartoon involved The Terrierman got there first.

Vintage Firearms - The Rigby .275

As I started telling you in the last post I met up with another blogger last weekend: Bambi Basher is a massive military history and firearms buff who I'll be taking my deer management cert. with. He's recently become the latest delighted owner of a rifle made by Rigby of (first Dublin and then) London. I think of myself as the kind of bushwacker who likes his tools to be tools, but made in the 20s or 30s this one is pre Carbon and Fiberglas, so it's stocked in Walnut, and I was surprised how taken with it I was. Svelte in the hand, and older than both of us put together it's obviously been cared for, but bears the marks, scratches, and dings of many adventures. It's chambered in .275 Rigby (7x57mm Mauser) which many of the internets gun nuts seem to regard as a wonder hunting round having a slight edge over the more common .270. Here's a video from last weekend - much more to tell you about my weekend with the him but that'll have to wait.
Cheers
SBW

When Bloggers Meet

It's been a while hasn't it? Quite a bit has been happening and not much of it anything to do with my SBW life. But all that was to change this weekend when I met up with Bambi Basher and The Tea Lady. As most of our activities took place at 'hunter-o'clock' which is even earlier than builder o'clock I'm too battered to write it up now but you can get his side of the story The Suburban Bushwacker & I
Night Night
SBW

On This Day 1916: Ishi Died

In europe we have Otzi the iceman, we have a few artifacts, some of his EDC if you will, but the languages we speak were not due to be heard for thousands of years after his death. He's a Polaroid, a snap shot, just one frame (in not too sharp a focus) of a world we can only imagine and even then imagine only through the distorting lens of a viewpoint far far removed from anything Otzi would have known. His world was long gone before ours was born or thought of. We'll never know the date of his death, or the shape of his life, we just get a tantalizing glimpse into the day he died on. A glimpse that asks a lot of questions and answers very few.

On the other side of the pond there's an actual date, a day and a time when the last stone age man in North America saw the door close behind him, and breathed his last. His friends put some of his tools in a simple bag by his side, and committed his empty body to the flame. I like to think of his spirit going to the happy hunting ground. Wherever he went, his body turned to ash and his brain went to medical school.

A lot of things flicker to life in my imagination, but very few have consumed me like Saxton Pope's book about his friendship with Ishi the last of the Yahi people - the last north american to live in the stone age - literally a time traveler who came to the 20th century.

A victim of genocide, born on the run from an encroaching culture that was totally alien to the frame of reference he'd have known. Fresh out of options, he turned to face the very thing he'd run from his whole life, and one afternoon bewildered and exhausted Ishi stepped out of the stone age and into the 20th century.  He was imprisoned, poked, prodded, and gawped at. Then at last, protected, befriended and given the welcome such a stranger deserves.

None of us can ever know the 'real' Ishi. We can only project the Ishi that we wish for onto his legend, but that probably makes him all the more special. I've read Pope's book several times now. It's not a very well written book, its in the style we might now call 'blogging' (it slips from history, to how-to, to eulogy, to call to adventure), but there's something about it. Something beguiling. I sometimes feel it's the book I'd been waiting to read. Pope and Ishi's friendship is a reflecting pool can I see myself in, and if you ever played at Robin Hood with two sticks and a shoelace you too may hear the call Pope was so compelled by.

At the end, against the express wishes of those who knew and cared for him, his brain was taken to medical school with what intent we can only speculate.  Ishi's legacy hasn't come from that bag of cells and inanimate neural pathways, it's come from the fire he lit in the hearts and minds of Dr Saxton Pope and Art Young.

If I couldn't have my hearts desire and become more like Ishi, I'd settle for being more like Saxton Pope and consider it a life well spent.

How you treated that stranger might just be how you really are.

SBW
PS: "Ishi felt Western society was essentially silly - the only things that impressed him were matches and glue,"  

A bit more about Ishi

BER-DOING!!!!

This afternoon as I was standing in a suburban garden wondering if there was any hope of getting the Runner Beans off the windowsill and into their beds I noticed, at my feet, the rite of spring was, if not sprung already, certainly about to be.

That we should be all so lucky this weekend
your pal
The Bushwacker

Spinning: A Yarn With An Urban Fly Guy

Some lesser known species of ‘trout bum’ found in the mud

A long-time ago another blogger had given me my first lesson on the fly, we’d stalked wild trout inside the M25 (the orbital road that encircles London), a summers day in the garden of england, a delightful afternoon spent on the banks once fished by Dickens, out in the further reaches of the ‘burbs but still technically within the city. 

You can read about it here.

Ah Mr Quinn I Presume?

After much to-ing and fro-ing we’d set a new challenge, fishing the lowest pool of the Ravensbourne, where it meets the Thames, just as the tide turns and starts to fill it with salt water – as the big-uns came to snaffle up the little-uns. Cold enough to snow, wet enough for the constant light rain to keep it from ever settling, welcome to urban fishing, in London, in the mud, in February. Brrrrrrrrr! 
'Where the Ravensbourne meets the Thames' sounds kind of classy doesn't it? 
It's also known (somewhat more figuratively) as Deptford Creek.

'And for my next trick..............'

We’d both attended the Creekside Centres excellent Low Tide Walk (my version of events here) and seen first hand evidence of the juvenile Flounder, Mitten Crabs and Urban Detritus. The tackle shop didn't have a 'caddice of old bike flys' so  Jeremiah had armed himself with a Flounder Fly. He's an optimist.

The history books are full of mentions of the Eel fishing industry that flourished in symbiosis with the tanneries the area was also known for, even all these years later the mud is still throwing up plenty of evidence both of the tanneries and of course the south londoners inbred impulse, that when disposing of almost anything, lobbing it in the river is best practice.

There is very very little solid ground in this part of the river mouth. Armed with 9 ft of spinning rod I cast out a sprat intending to freeline the current. I was temparily fascinated, and distracted by Jeremiah's vigorous casting.

I thought I was standing on the only other bit of solid ground, I took his photo and suddenly I relaised that my bait had crossed the river at 90 degrees to the current and my line was now disappearing into a mud bank. I stuffed the camera into a pocket, pulled and pulled at the line, but before I could get any back my legs had sunk beyond the tops of the famous YELLOW wellies! Opps!

The guys from the building site on the opposite bank were pissing themselves laughing, and shouting. [As yer do].

Building Site Guys: “Should we come and get you out?’

                                  SBW: “No No I’ll be fine”. [gives cheery wave]

I literally had to use my hands to dig out my boots, thankfully with my feet still in them. The mud really stank. It sucked.


Defeated but not disheartened, we retreated to The Birds Nest to plot further adventures, where our arrival was celebrated by another group of builders.

Building Site Guys: 

"Fishing in the morning, pub in the afternoon, that's the life boys"

I made him about right.
Your pal
The bushwacker

One Of The Good Guys.

A couple of nights ago I saw the first part of a new series on the BBC.  Mastercrafts is  Monty Don's new program about - well der - Masters of  crafts. The first episode is about green wood working and features my old mate Guy Mallinson.

Guy is something of a master of understatement too, the program describes him as 'having been a successful cabinet maker in London' he probably told them 'oh I've made a couple of bits and pieces'. That's like Dave Petzal saying he fired a couple of rifles one afternoon. Twenty years ago Guy was already making incredible furniture, and as the years have gone by although I've not seen a lot of him, every so often I've seen him win an award for the fitting out of some new and ground breaking building. 

He's managed to pull of that great city-dweller fantasy of moving his operation to the wilds of Dorset slashing his living costs and vastly improving his standard of living. He's developed a another career as a teacher of Green Wood Working, the main difference between green wood working and regular carpentry is the craftsman use green or unseasoned wood and all the joints are self affixing - no screws or nails,  just the tension caused by the wood drying and contracting. Literally the pathway from a freshly sawn log to a piece of furniture - unplugged. All without the use of power tools.

Being a TV show certain annoying conventions 'must' be followed, despite the name of the show telling us its going to be about a master of his craft, the program makers felt the need to up the 'human interest' factor and take their cue from the big book of reality television. They found three volunteers and Guy took on the role of gently nudging them towards a finished chair by the end of the show.

Personally I'd rather have seen Guy work his magic from standing tree to siting at a table and chair, but the conventions of TV now mean we have to inject some 'human interest', with some participants first set up to fail so they can be swept along by the redemptive power of their new skill. Yawn. 

"Who cares if she cant Whittle a Skittle, I wanna see your mate do his stuff" 

Ex Mrs SBW [she's all heart, no?]

At one point we see Guy explaining how the tolerance required for two pieces of wood to fit and stay fitted as they dry is 0.2mm (0.007 in.), this caught my attention and as the students look on dismayed at what's needed of them Guy breezily says ' I've got a trick for that though'. Sadly we're never shown just how this piece of carpentarial voodoo is pulled off.

But the good news is if, like me, yew wood [sorry] like to find out what it really takes to do this sort of thing you can attend one of his courses in the stunning woodlands of Dorset. We may even meet there?

Here's the link to his site, the courses look like a lot of fun as you can see from the show Guy is an extremely patient man, who makes sure that no student, whatever their previous experience, is left behind.

Defiantly one of the good guys

Your pal

SBW

PS if you want to watch the show or any other BBC shows but you're not in the UK here's how anonymous proxy severs will let you change your IP address so you can watch.

PPS Guy now has his own blog
http://guymallinson.blogspot.com/

Handpresso - wilderness expresso maker review

Wanted one of these puppies for a while now. Here's for why

The punters have to trust us not to take pictures of their hideous taste in interior design and post them on the internet (heartily pasted in disparaging remarks), and we have to trust them to lay on an acceptable minimum standard of recuperative. Sadly even your pal the bushwacker AKA London's gentleman plumber is unable to consistently find customers worthy of the customer service they are treated to. 

Face facts: 
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INSTANT COFFEE. 

You might drink that filth, but madam, we don't. End of.

I've often though that we should get an expresso machine and flight case it, so we could set up our own coffee bar where ever we are, train one of the apprentices as a barista and improve our working conditions. So I was intrigued when I saw the Handpresso wilderness expresso maker in a french hunting magazine. Once again the internet came to my rescue and I was able to buy one at an 'unwanted christmas gift' price.

Let the Un-Boxing commence

After the customary new product dismay - as is usual today the packaging had been designed almost thoroughly as as the product it's self - I finally wrestled it from its box[es] and got to work. 


It's quite a chunky beast  - you wouldn't really call it 'wilderness equipment', but I'm not sure how many they'd sell if they called it the 'Handpresso builders expresso maker'. 


It really couldn't be much easier to use, if fact its a lot more straitforward than a lot of the counter-top expresso makers i've used. You set the release valve to closed, give it 30 pumps pressurizing it to 16 BAR [or 240 psi], pour a little boiled water into the clear plastic dome, tamp coffee grounds into the little hopper, drop the hopper into place, click the lid shut and you're good-to-go. 


Out squirts a very convincing Expresso, just the kind of required recuperative that puts a spring in your step, widens the eye, fires the synapses, and lifts the human spirit. In summation a great bit of kit for picnics, beach casting, and car camping. Not really the kit of a backwoodsman. But as i've reported before if a little 'Glamping' is the price a purist such as myself must endure to have my sleeping bag warmed by the likes of the Ex Mrs SBW, well so be it.


Design, build, and the end product, defiantly put it in the category of 'things that don't suck'.


All the best
Your pal
The Bushwacker.


EDIT It's stopped working - Company declined to fix it - new review on the way

Pinole In One - Trail Foods

After a few weeks where the temperature rose as high as 10c (50F) it’s now dropped down again and is snowing outside. I'n not working this week so my retreat into the classics continues, I’ve been re reading Kephart’s “Camping and Woodcraft’ where I came across this insight do any of you have any experience of it?

Kephart writes: 

Some years ago Mr. T. S. Van Dyke, author of The Still Hunter and other well-known works on fieldsports, published a very practical article on emergency rations in a weekly paper, from which, as it is now buried where few can consult it, I take the liberty of making the following quotation

'La comida del desierto, the food of the desert, or pinole, as it is generally called, knocks the hind sights off all American condensed food. It is the only form in which you can carry an actual weight and bulk of nutriment on which alone one can, if necessary, live continuously for weeks, and even months, without any disorder of stomach or bowels. . . . The principle of pinole is very simple. If you should eat a break- 

fast of corn-meal mush alone, and start out for a hard tramp, you will feel hungry in an hour or two, though at the table the de-wrinkling of your abdomen may have reached the hurting point. But if, instead of distending the meal so much with water and heat, you had simply mixed it in cold water and drunk it,
you could have taken down three times the quantity in one-tenth of the time. You would not feel the difference at your waistband, but you would feel it mightily in your legs, especially if you have a heavy rifle on your back. It works a little on the principle of dried apples, though it is quite an improvement. There is no danger of explosion; it swells to suit the demand, and not too suddenly.

Suppose, now, instead of raw corn-meal, we make it not only drinkable but positively good. This is easily done by parching to a very light brown before grinding, and grinding just fine enough to mix so as to be drinkable, but not pasty, as flour would be. Good wheat is as good as corn, and perhaps better, while the mixture is very good. Common rolled oats browned in a pan in the oven and run through a spice mill is as good and easy to make it out of as anything. A coffee mill may do if it will set fine enough. Ten per cent, of popped com ground in with it will improve the flavor so much that your children will get away with it all if you don't hide it. Wheat and corn are hard to grind, but the small Enterprise spice mill will do it.


You may also mix some ground chocolate with it for flavor, which, with popped corn, makes it very fine. . . . Indigestible? Your granny's nightcap! . . . You must remember that it is "werry fillin' for the price," and go slow with it until you have found your co-efficient. . . .

Now for the application. The Mexican rover of the desert will tie a small sack of pinole behind his saddle and start for a trip of several days. It is the lightest of food, and in the most portable shape, sandproof, bug and fly proof, and everything. Wherever he finds water he stirs a few ounces in a cup (I never weighed it, but four seem about enough at a time for an ordinary man), drinks it in five seconds, and is fed for five or six hours. If he has jerky, he chews that as he jogs along, but if he has not he will go through the longest trip and come out strong and well on pinole alone.'
Shooting and Fishing, Vol. XX, p. 248.

And because there are no new ideas in blogging Stealth Survival has beaten me to it by a month, posting a piece with all the relevant stats about the make-up of this super food. Not that I wish to encourage this sort of thing, but the No Meat Athlete has a bit more info, some useful pictures of the cooking process, showing how to make trail-cakes as well as the drinkable form.

EDIT - Also worth a look is The Ultralighters take on Pinole

Your pal

The Bushwacker

If You Write It - We Will Read it

"They take unbelievable pleasure in the hideous blast of the hunting horn and baying of the hounds. Dogs dung smells sweet as cinnamon to them."

Erasmus Desiderius - who must be a friend of Chad's, who else could he be quoting when he said "When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes."

After my last post I sent begging letters to far-flung places requesting dog-eared copies of yesteryears hunting and adventure magazines and writings. As I dreamed of reading something a bit better written,  from a [mythical] past where all the writers were always on fire, a piece that could invoke the spirt of those quiet places. My RSS feeds reminded me that tomorrows bloggers will only see this golden age of outdoor blogging if we tell each other about it: Chad had sat down at his keyboard to cast his spell

County Garbage Truck No. 2

Where Chad reviews a book and his reasons for reading it

....early on in life I found my primary solace in the solitary comforts of books, ponds, rivers, woods, fields and the company of dogs. I found something there I simply couldn’t find anywhere else. I knew it the first time I walked along a forgotten little trash-strewn suburban creek more drainage ditch than stream, casting for bluegills and finding such wonder and mystery in its tepid waters. I knew it the first time I sat huddled and freezing against the base of a tree as a buck - the first I’d ever seen not running like hell in the opposite direction – apparated before me like a passing drift of smoke. And I knew it the night I first heard the plaintive calls of a passing flock of Canada geese, somewhere far above me in the impossibly black night.

Each polarity contains the seed of its opposite,  the inner peace of solitude would just be loneliness if  not set against the counterpoint of bonhomie,  and who better to demonstrate bonhomie than The Chief Chronicler himself? 

Charged! Hog Hunting Adventures.
Charged they were, misadventures they nearly were!

“We drove up to the guides ramshackle house, the driveway entrance marked by a couple of mismatched fire hydrants (ill gotten to be sure). A couple of hounds of questionable pedigree lifted their mange ridden heads to see what the wind was dragging in, and wearily dropped them back into the dust wallow they were in. A little cur with half an ear came up happily to meet us, his tail just a waggin, and a look on his face, that in hindsight could have easily been taken as "Please, take me away from here!" But I was more taken by the charnel smell in the air; a mix between a slaughterhouse and a municipal waste dump. It wouldn't be long before I was to find out what caused that peculiar and most disagreeable odor.”

A Nice Walk In The Park
Where fitness is tested, and lessons in preparedness are learned.

“As I was licking the last bit of bacon grease, tomato, and mayo off my finger tips, I thought of how fortuitous I was to live on some land, far from the foolishness of subdivisions and McMansions. I made a comment to my wife about it. She nodded in agreement, and offhandedly remarked that, not only had I not shot any of my firearms in quite some time, but that I hadn’t even done any of my usual scouting either. Handing me the keys to the gun safe, she said I should really go and spend some quality time by myself and do a little shooting and maybe some scouting. “Who knows,” she said, “there could be a hog on the prowl somewhere.” Well I certainly didn’t need anymore encouragement.”

Chad reminded me that the future is still unwritten - so the benediction should be:

"may you live in interesting times and get to be a part of them write them up on your blog".

Your pal

SBW

PS If you have any old hunting mags you think i'd like send me an email.

Picture credit Chad

Write Your own

Another of those strange blogin' coincidences took place this afternoon, just as I was going to tell you about a new online magazine called Sleeping In The Dirt that Urbn Outdoors had linked to, Tom who writes the Trout underground has posted this piece, using his crystal ball to look a the future for Fly Fishing magazines, Hook and Bullet magazines, and perhaps magazines in general.

With the quality and passion that crews like 'sleeping in the dirt' and 'this is fly' are serving up in the digital format, it's easy to see his point. Sleeping in the dirt is, I'm guessing a labour of love as the mast head proudly proclaims

No Sponsors No Advertisements, No Limits...No Shit.

With 'No Cash' the team will just have to plug away at it like the rest of us for the love of it. Good on 'em.

It seems to be working as they report a hit count of 110,000 already. Not quite up there with the market leaders but defiantly well ahead of some of the print titles their voice is replacing. Good luck chaps.

So what is it that makes these new voices so compelling? I think its a mixture of perceived honesty of the new school and the old guard looking caught out by the changing landscape. The authority that magazines used to have is waning, and fast.

I've recently been running that most classic of man-style purchasing strategies and 'researching' a new pair of boots.

I will buy a pair, but first I have to feel I've looked into enough options. It may take months as every choice has to be evaluated against every other potential choice. This is a behavior that once upon a time involved buying lots of magazines, best buy guides and special editions. Now I do it online. The woman-style purchasing strategy is very similar but often takes place on foot going to shop after shop, the man-style takes place in an armchair collecting data - sometimes for months before walking up to the counter telling the shopkeeper the size colour and specification before marching out of the door in double quick time, proudly telling the Mrs' See babe, i just go and buy it, why do you have to take so long?'

While researching I found an option that i hadn't seen or considered before, typed it into a google, and searched for the user reviews by owners. There's the sticking point that big media has - I've come to favor the perceived honesty of bloggers and forum members over the 'bought endorsement' of journalists.

Not all bloggers are experts - we all know there are bloggers chasing 'numbers' who will gladly repeat pretty much any press release that gets sent to them with a dollop of praise from 'Tiffany' the 'online specialist' [in this instance 'online specialist' is a euphemism for intern].

Not all journalists are the puppets of PR departments - I once heard a great example of this from one journalist along the lines of 'they sent a pair of boots for review, they came with a not asking for the boots to be returned by the end of the week - UNWORN'. He had the luxury of sending the boots back not only unworn but ignored. Not every magazine has that freedom.

The boots I might have wanted are a new 'teched-up' version of range-topping model by well known european manufacturer. One who due to their high prices has the money to position themselves in hunting mags across europe.

I liked the blurb, I liked the fact that I could get 25% off, but once I'd read THAT user report....

"Whatever you do don't buy them. I did, leaked in a week, fell apart in twelve weeks and the company said their one year warranty doesn't apply as I wore them everyday and they are outdoor pursuits clothes designed for occasional use'

"An even stronger version of our strongest boot" just doesn't sound so enticing when compared to the expectation of 'occasional use' does it? Did he really ever own a pair? I'll never know, but the perception of first hand knowledge and hard field use was there. Could a print magazine afford to come to such a conclusion? I doubt it. So what's left for the great magazines of yesteryear to do? Let's take Field and Stream as an example.

Regular readers will know about my admiration for, and dismay at the Field and Stream empire - I think of F&S as a smelly, slightly sexist uncle who knows a lot of interesting stuff, occasionally tells really good stories about the old days, but has some throwback views and probably has a few racist friends. I keep up my subscription, ignoring the fact that only half the issues i pay for actually make it through the US postal service, hoping, ever hoping, that the bean counters will let the magazine be itself again.

The last two issues have been a partial return to form, Bill Heavy's piece about spending time with the Alaskan trapper was fantastic - the kind of long-form journalism that belongs on a page not a screen, the kind that prompted me to take the copy round to The Northern Monkey's boat and tell him to read it. Great moments, sadly looking all the greater as they are set against some of the most pointless shit yet published. Sorry chaps but it's true, that '50 states of the great outdoors' or what ever it was called was rubbish and obviously rubbish culled from the internet by an intern. Cheap to produce, would have worked on a blog, but not good enough for F&S.

So it's been interesting watching developments around the 'digital campfire' that the F&S site and blogs purport to be.

Holly who writes the excellent NorCal Cazadora blog fulfilled a long held prediction of mine and was asked to contribute to the F&S blog-site - the subject was Booth Babes. I've long been a fan of Holly's blog - if I wasn't the first commenter I was certainly one of the first - so I was made up to see one of our own receive such recognition. Holly is exactly the kind of person I'd invite to write for the magazine - she can really write, knows how to meet a deadline, never needs to play the expert, and is full of enthusiasm. As the old demographic dies off she represents a pretty good template for a future audience. Double Income No Kids, and an evangelical streak a mile wide - an advertisers dream.

Cabelas were smart enough to see the potential in getting her onboard and they buy a lot of space from F&S. Could I be any blunter?

Holly wrote a short blog about her view that covering the SHOT show Booth Babes feature being the days top story was not conducive to promoting F&S as an inclusive space that welcomes newbies. Boys: I'm sure many of us have had more than a passing interest in the 'visual arts' or magazines catering for 'gentlemen's interests' over the years, but wether or not you live in the puritanical US or the come-as-you-are metropolis's of europe, i doubt any of us would feel comfortable or appropriate discussing such interests with say, a neighbors twelve year old daughter? The space has changed and it would be prudent to keep that in mind - did I understand you Holly?

So how did it all turn out? Some comments were well thought out, some ran the whole gamut of intellectual rigor from A to B and at least one loafer wearing smart arse chimed in a few times taking great delight in repeating the sage words of the F&S mascot and offering patronizing dating advice to the fudds- he thought he was being funny. Correct me if I'm wrong but i don't think there's ever been a story on the F&S site that's had so many comments. If this thing gets any blunter it'll be a spoon.

The Booth Babes piece on F&S

Holly's first post on her blog Ahem, there are GIRLS in the room!

Her second piece The F&S Booth Babe saga continues

Her guest editorial Is here

Your pal

SBW

PS just to prove that I'm not giving up my position as armchair evolutionary psychologist/ Sexist pig - BABES?!!! WTF!!