You’re a whitetail buck and the rut is on. Your neck is swollen with lust, you’re rubbing your new antlers on every little tree you can find and making scrapes in the ground all over your territory trying to find the right girl for you. What is your worst nightmare?
Good opening weekend at the Lone Oak Duck Club, then tapering off. Now we’re iced up but hopefully not for long thanks to climate change. This cold weather should bring new birds down from up north (or push the ones that are here on down south). We’ll see what the rest of the season brings.
Speaking of climate change, the current issue of Delta Waterfowl magazine has an article about waterfowl migrating later than they used to.
Short answer:less severe winter weather and more acres of corn being planted in the Dakotas.
In fact the last few years some mallards and Canada geese haven’t migrated’t all. They don’t do it just because they like to fly.
Meanwhile we’re having fun and that’s what it’s all about.
Even though I don’t deer hunt in Missouri anymore I think it’s fun to play with my Bushnell trail cam just to see what’s sneaking around our Bates County property at night. I keep hoping I’ll catch something exotic like a mountain lion or bear, but this eight point buck will have to do for now.
He may even make it through the coming deer season as he seems to be pretty nocturnal. But if anybody bags him, can I have a couple of loin chops?
Want to feel like you’re a real hot stuff trout fisherman? Spend a few days at Rockbridge Trout Ranch in southern Missouri. Nice people, beautiful scenery, comfortable accommodations, and millions of huge, hungry rainbows finning lazily in the clear water, hoping somebody will throw them a woollybugger or zebra midge. But you’d better use 6X or even 7X tippet because the day of reckoning comes at check out time. You have to keep every fish you catch. They clean them for you and charge by the pound.
With the picturesque old mill and the excellent dining room with full service bar, Rockbridge isn’t a bad way to spend a few days. We were a little early for the full fall color display but it’s a beautiful area any time of year.
You don’t fish? Just go to Rockbridge anyway for the food, scenery and relaxing atmosphere. For reservations call (417) 679-3619.
It’s been a long time between blog posts. That’s because I haven’t been doing anything interesting to blog about, which is my own fault.
Thankfully Scott Morgan of Baldwin City, KS has sent me another beautiful trail cam shot of a nice buck checking out his deer feeder. Wouldn’t you like to see this big guy opening morning!
I’ll never use “birdbrain” as an insult again. A robin was intent on building a nest on the light fixture over our deck. I knew it was a terrible location but she wouldn’t listen to me. You know how women are.
She worked and worked, flying material up and placing it around like she wanted. Most of it fell to the deck, making a big mess. I thought she’d finally give up and find a more suitable place. I would have. But she kept piling stuff up and finally a little began to stick.
Then the whole thing fell off. Time to quit, I thought. Not Birdbrain! She started over with mostly the same results. But after several days of looking around for just the right twigs, pieces of string etc. and flying them to the light fixture they began to adhere to the mud she brought up in her beak. I assume that’s how they bring it. Can you imagine flying around with a mouth full of mud?
Successful at last, now she’s incubating eggs in the nest, flying away quickly whenever we open the door but never going far or staying long.
I’m looking at her through my studio door right now and I swear to God she looks like she’s panting.
Once again it’s Tweener Time. Tweeners are those cartoons too raunchy for outdoor publications but to outdoorsy for Playboy.
Catfishermen with stink bait have nothing on bow hunters, who use a variety of smelly substances to mask their own odor. Raccoon urine was in vogue for a while but you don’t hear much about it lately. Maybe the supply dried up (pun intended).
As you may remember, Tweeners are cartoons too edgy or raunchy for outdoor magazines but too outdoorsy for Playboy. They are in between.
If this particular Tweener seems mild to you that’s because you’re not a magazine editor. To we normal people this cartoon depicts two toms discussing how they hope to wind up in the sack (or where ever turkeys do it) with that sexy female turkey on the right. To an editor it conjures up images of inappropriate sexual advances, tag-team rape and possible job loss.
And you thought the cartoon racket was easy.
More trail cam photos from Scott Morgan. Looks like Scott knows where he’s going to be on opening morning of the Kansas deer season.
Speaking of deer season… we Missouri non-resident landowners now have to pay full price for a MO non-resident deer tag, even though we’re hunting on our own land where we pay MO taxes. Full fledged bitching session coming up soon!
