- Anonymous

If Pete drank it all, why did I have a headache? - Ed.

Once again, it’s hard to believe the year is gone.  I’ve been away from the blog for a while because I’ve been busy doing things that will hopefully prove worth writing about in the months to come.  From the end of deer season to the beginning of spring turkey season can be a long haul, not to mention how far away good fishing weather seems right now.  I’ll try to serve y’all a steaming cup of Armchair gumbo in the meantime, a little bit of this and a little bit of that until we’ve cleaned out the freezer.  Maybe I can tie up some loose ends by finishing some of the multi-episode stories that seem to have taken on a life of their own in the telling.  I hope your 2009 was as blessed as mine, and here’s wishing you and yours a safe and prosperous 2010.

Although I enjoy a hunting or fishing outing regardless of whether I take any game, it’s always nice to feel I’m doing something besides nature watching.  When someone catches the first fish, I always say, “The skunk is out of the boat.”  With that in mind, after Thanksgiving in Tennessee, my deer season is officially deskunkified.

Cousin Tim looks pretty excited, and who wouldn’t be with a nice 8-point on the front rack?

There’s nothing better than seeing the next generation coming along behind us.  The young sportsman is Tim’s son Garrett.

I took a nanny-head for the freezer, but hey, that’s why they call me the Slayer.  I let several immature bucks ease on by to get a shot at her.  She should be clean, because we had to drag her across a creek.

Tim and I actually put our deer on the ground at the same time from different stands.  We called in Uncle Gary for reinforcement.  Not to be left out of the story, he culled this big-bodied 3-pointer the next morning.

The skunk is definitely out of the stand, so we can all relax and enjoy the rest of the season.

- John Barsness, Shotguns for Wingshooting

For reasons I still fail to understand, an anti-hunter recently began posting on another outdoor blog I read. (O.K., it was Field and Stream.) I can’t fathom why an anti-hunter would frequent that site, but as I said in one of my comments, it’s just as well. If she were not online annoying us, she might be running around loose in the world where she could do some real damage. There was some ridiculous stuff, like her assertion that Jesus wouldn’t condone hunting or fishing. I replied that by all indications, Jesus spent his time hanging around with a bunch of fishermen, and they didn’t practice catch and release.

Along with all of the other tofu-induced liberal frothings, however, she did raise some semi-serious questions. She seemed to be particularly incensed by her misconceived notions of trophy hunting, and she was perplexed by the idea of managing for bigger and more numerous deer one would then attempt to “murder.” In situations such as this, I advocate speaking in a low, calm voice while slowly backing away, so I posted the following response to her questions:

Not that it will matter, but I will give you a straight answer. Wildlife management is not just about numbers. The goal of wildlife management is a stable and healthy population. Can we get off deer just for a second and look at snow geese? The population of snow geese has exploded to the point that liberal bag limits and long seasons are now in place to reduce that population. Animal numbers in nature are regulated by disease and starvation in addition to predation. If snow goose hunting were banned tomorrow, the population would be curbed eventually by a massive die-off of the species.

Now, back to deer. People seek to increase the size and number of deer on hunting properties managed for deer hunting. This does not impact the population of your state’s deer herd nearly as much as other factors such as human population density and agricultural practices. Hunters want to take healthy animals and leave a sufficient population of healthy animals to ensure a good harvest for the future. You won’t agree with me here, but animals are a resource.

Many people who hunt like to take “trophy” animals. I’m more of a meat hunter myself, but to each his or her own. I have no problem with someone who wants to take a world-class animal, and you wouldn’t either if you understood how many immature animals or others that just don’t “measure up” that hunter will have to pass up in order take (and you may substitute kill if you like, the terminology makes no difference) that ideal specimen. You can’t shoot the first doe you see and think that an 8-point is going to come trotting out right behind her to see what that loud noise was. I’m fine with holding out for a “stud” as you call them, so long as there is already a doe or two in my freezer to last my family until the next season. Before that, if it’s brown, it’s down. I didn’t come up with that one, but you can quote me if you like.

Finally, let’s address what’s really bugging you. When I take, kill, slaughter, again whatever term you like is fine, an animal, I am really happy. I enjoy it. I am thankful to have food for the table, and I snap a few photos so I can show my friends what a fine specimen I have taken. I usually substitute a handshake for the high-five, but a 75-pound doe merits the same fanfare to me as a “hoss” buck because I have accomplished what I set out to do. True, I have cut off the rest of that animal’s natural lifespan, but why should coyotes and buzzards eat better than me? Do you believe those other species eat meat only because they don’t know any better?

You are entitled to your own beliefs and to live your life as you see fit, but you don’t extend that same courtesy to others. You want instead to impose your will. I don’t spend my time on the PETA site, and I don’t berate my vegetarian and vegan friends. They have the good sense and decency to realize that what I do in hunting game is moral, ethical, and right although they choose not to do it.

- The Armchair Outfitter

Raimey invited me to come and hunt the opening day of the Alabama season at Kirk’s farm. R.J. would be there also, and it would be a chance for the Kansas-trip hunters to reunite after I had to skip last year for work reasons. I accepted of course, and I was almost as anxious to see my “new” friends again as I would have been to see the old gang, but I was still a bit down in the mouth. Preparing my things for the trip, I found an old metal folding chair in the garage. This was one of the chairs used at the Tennessee dove hunt and inadvertently brought home in the back of my truck years ago. I decided to take the old chair to Kirk’s as a link to all of the Tennessee hunts.

The day of the hunt, we met in the field for barbecue sandwiches and cold drinks before legal shooting time began at noon. We all took our places, and both birds and lead were soon flying. I was using a side-by-side double that I’m not too familiar with yet, and for a while, I shot poorly. Everything seemed wrong. I don’t think I could have hit the ground with my hat. As the afternoon wore on, however, I began to relax. I tried to put my depression about the “glory days” out of my mind and focus on the present. I started having fun, and while I didn’t put on a Tom Knapp exhibition, birds were falling to my gun. Sitting on my metal chair in the blistering sun with a big stupid grin on my face, I didn’t feel any older than when I went on that first Tennessee hunt. No, you can’t escape change, but at just the right moment, you can stop time.

Waiting for birds to come over back in the glory days.

Hershey wants to see some birds too.

Apparently, dove hunting involves a lot of sticking out your tongue for Hershey and the Sporting Wife.

Someone on another outdoor blog (o.k. it was Field and Stream) recently posted a question regarding the songs you would choose if you could only have 20 for the entire hunting season. That got me to thinking about what I would pick for a hunting mix if I were limited to only 20. Hunting involves a lot of different settings and moods, from blasting down old logging roads on a 4-wheeler to relaxing with an adult beverage when the day is done. Let’s not forget those moments when one is alone to revel in all the glory of God’s creation either. For what it’s worth, here’s my list. Some of these choices are not P.C., but then again, neither am I.

Motivation:

1. “Search and Destroy” - The Stooges

2. “Feuer Frei” - Rammstein

3. “God Save the Queen” - Motorhead (cover)

4. “Rock Candy” - Montrose

5. “War Machine” - KISS

6. “Lonely is the Night” - Billy Squier

7. “Rock Superstar” - Cypress Hill

8. “Volcano Girls” - Veruca Salt

9. “Cowboys from Hell” - Pantera

10. “Are You Experienced?” - Jimi Hendrix

Relaxation:

11. “Cedartown, Georgia” - Waylon Jennings

12. “Legalize It” - Peter Tosh

13. “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” - Richard Thompson

14. “What Made Milwaukee Famous” - Jerry Lee Lewis

15. “Stoned at the Jukebox” - Hank Williams, Jr.

16. “Gin and Juice” - The Gourds (cover)

17. “In My Own Mind” - Lyle Lovett

Inspiration:

18. “Mission Temple Fireworks Stand” - Paul Thorn

19. “The Eagle and the Hawk” - John Denver

20. “Love is My Religion” - Ziggy Marley

I realize that your list will be different from mine. If I thought about it for 15 more minutes, mine would probably change too. That’s why editors love topics like this. I fully expect to get, “Why would you ever pick . . . ” or “How could you leave out . . . .” Fire away.

In order to access the factory bumper bar, you must first loosen the plastic bumper cover.

There are small screws inside the fender well that join the bumper cover to the bumper bar inside.

More screws connect the bumper cover to the plastic wheel well liner.

Next, it’s time to go underneath and remove the row of screws across the bottom.

Once the screws are out, it’s time to start looking for the four bolts that hold the bumper bar onto aluminum mounting brackets that are in turn attached to the frame.

The bolts you’re looking for are the ones to the left in the next photo. Like most of the fasteners you will encounter from this point forward, they are metric. Thanks a load, Ben Franklin! The ones in the right foreground come out also, but don’t loosen them yet.

Once you start working on these bolts, things will get moving. If you’re not ready, this may not be a good thing. Time to deploy the jack stands. This is especially important if you are working on this project without a buddy to hold the whole works in place while you’re torquing on it.

There are two nuts on the inside outboard face. These are the last fasteners to remove before you should be able to slide the bumper out a little. Don’t pull it all the way off; there are fittings you need to disconnect first.

If you’ve gotten this far in one session, it’s probably time for the old “cold wrench.” Get out from under the truck first and then enjoy.

Regular visitors to this site (both of you) will no doubt remember a story about me shirking my responsibilities at a work function and slipping away for some redfish action after dark. That might have been just an isolated incident, but now a pattern seems to be emerging. I’ve been working on the Rover bull bar project in my free time the past couple of weeks, and by all rights, I should have been doing that this past Saturday. As you can see from the above photo, I was not.

My buddy Marty called me on Friday and left a couple of messages asking if I wanted to go fishing Saturday with his friend Charles. I’ve been out with Charles before on his gorgeous 25′ Grady White, and I know that Charles is a super-nice cat, so the offer was tempting. Unfortunately, I didn’t receive Marty’s messages until 23:00, and a marathon push to close cases had me scheduled to work until midnight. I told the Sporting Wife that I was going to have to blow it off and work on the truck as I had planned. Ever the responsible one, I am, but she insisted that I might not get the opportunity to go again for a while. She also observed that I had been grumbling and generally down in the mouth of late, and she thought it might do me some good to get away from the house. Translation: “You are working on my nerves, and you should get away from me for a while.”

I am not the world’s most intelligent man, but I know that when you have made enough of a nuisance of yourself that a woman urges you to go fishing, you go. Gathering my stuff and packing a cooler while watching the second half of the Lakers game on Tivo, I grudgingly set my alarm for 4:30 and hit the sack at about 2:30. I’ll admit that if not for the elbow in my ribs at 5:00 as Frank Zappa poured from the alarm clock speakers, I’d never have made it.

Marty and I met Charles and his son C.J. at the boat ramp a little after 6:00, and we were under way. C.J. tried for some hardtail just off the end of a rock jetty, as they are like candy to amberjack, but he only managed one. We had live pinfish from Marty’s backyard trap and some frozen squid, so we set out over calm water for the nearest of the rigs. Charles nailed the twin 150 Yamma-hammers, and we were seven miles out in no time.

Unfortunately, someone had beat us to this particular spot. Using a rig hook to hold position, they were pulling up one “endangered” red snapper after another. If you don’t live on the Alabama Gulf Coast, just take my word for it that we have a huge controversy down here over the very restrictive snapper season and limits. We watched these folks catch and release ten good-sized snapper in as many minutes because it would have been illegal to keep them. The season opens today, and even then, they could only have kept two.

Marty caught a big remora that he managed to release without bringing it over the side. If you’ve never made the mistake of getting a shark-sucker in your boat, don’t. They are relatively calm until they hit the deck, and then they go into berserker mode. Slime is not an adequate word to describe their skin secretions, and they bleed like stuck hogs as well. C.J. handily caught what today would be a limit of two nice snapper, and we decided that throwing a red snapper dinner repeatedly back over the side was for the birds. We hauled in the lines and pointed the boat toward Cuba. A pair of porpoises joined us, playing in our bow wake for a while. We were making pretty good time, and they were just loafing. I could hear their sighing exhalations over the engine noise as they exchanged stale air for fresh.

Starting about twenty miles out, there are a number of old Army tanks sunk to provide artificial reef habitat, and we decided to see if they were holding any fish. We set out trolling rigs to make a pass or two before settling down to bottom fish, and our efforts were rewarded almost immediately. I hooked into the king mackerel in the photo. Foul-hooked in the back with the rear treble of a diving plug, she pulled straight away like a nuclear sub, burning line off a medium-heavy rod and reel in short runs. It took me at least a half-dozen tries to get her into position for C.J. to gaff her. She was definitely legal, as we measured 28 inches to the fork of the tail, but I regretted keeping her later. Although outwardly there was no sign, when C.J. was filleting her, we saw that she was full of eggs. With the gash in her back from the hook, she probably would have been an easy meal for a shark if we had released her, but I still hate the loss of all those future generations.

The bottom fishing never materialized, as the fish couldn’t leave the trolling lures alone for the rest of the day. We even caught one of the “rare” red snapper on a trolling jig. When a fish normally caught on bottom rigs with live bait takes a jig trolled at eight miles per hour, you are having a good day. We got two more kings, and we caught seven little tunny, locally known as bonita. These are the false albacore of the eastern seaboard, and they are reputedly not fit to eat. We kept six as an experiment. I am letting the fillets bleed out in an ice water brine in preparation for the smoker, and I shall report my findings. We went back to the bottom rigs at the end of the day just to see what we could get, but an undersized gag grouper for me was the only result. That potential entree went back over the side, and we headed for home.

I don’t know when I’ll ever get that truck finished.