Really, Really Slow Food: Build Your Own Hunting Rifle

I've got a new type of course in the works that I think is ready to start talking about here. Working with Paul Fritz, who co-teaches the range sessions for our Deer Hunting for Locavores classes, we are going to offer a 2 day class on building your own deer rifle.

Because hunting, field dressing, butchering and cooking your own food isn't quite DIY enough.

We are going to be starting with surplus military Mauser bolt actions from the early twentieth century. Taking that basic barreled action, students will learn how to forge a bolt handle, fit and glass-bed a stock, install an after-market trigger, mount and zero a scope, etc. Range time will be included. Each student will take their finished deer rifle home in a case along with a cleaning kit, set of basic gunsmithing tools and a gun vice. You will go home with a complete package as well as a body of knowledge and experience that most people never have the opportunity to acquire. Hunting and butchering your own food is pretty satisfying as it stands; obtaining that food with a tool that you built yourself takes you to a whole new level.

No previous experience with firearms is required and all types of people are welcome, but students must be 18 or older for this class and must pass the standard state and federal background checks for the purchase of the rifle. Class sizes will be limited to 4 students each, due to the necessity of very close supervision. All tools, parts and materials will be supplied by Paul and myself.

We are still figuring out the exact dates. The price will be $900, donor rifle included. For those who wish to bring their own Mauser, the price drops to $725. Please note that there are scads of Mauser variants out there and not all of them will be suitable for what we are doing.

The class will be conducted in Paul's workshop near Charlottesville, Virginia. Paul was trained as a blacksmith and holds a degree in Applied History. He spent several years as a historical interpreter working at Harper's Ferry making and fitting parts for muzzleloading rifles and can do pretty much anything with metal and wood.

Any interested persons can contact me directly at jack dot landers at gmail dot com.

[Photo used courtesy of John Athayde under Creative Commons License.]

It Became Necessary to Destroy the Worm in Order to Save It

I am a big cryptozoology geek. While I don't buy the idea of a chupacabra for a second, I do believe that there are many species of both vertebrates and invertebrates out there which have not yet been encountered by science. I also think that the Earth has a few more Lazarus taxa waiting to be found.

Whether or not you want to call the giant Palouse earthworm a Lazarus taxon per se, it has long been one of the most promising candidates for discovery among cryptozoology's darlings. The Palouse earthworm was native to a big stretch of the North American great plains and was described many times by early settlers. Supposedly, it was white, grew up to 3 feet long, and had an odor similar to that of lilies.

Most of the common earthworms that we find in nearly every square foot of soil in most of North America are invasive species that showed up in potted plants, were deliberately introduced for agricultural/horticultural purposes or were released from bait containers by fishermen.

No, I will not being eating them for my new book.

My point is that at long last several giant Palouse earthworms have been found alive by scientists. Two of them were found in an area of native prairie near Moscow, Idaho. The only two known to science. Guess what they did with them. Go on, guess.

They killed one to dissect it. Supposedly they could only be 100% certain of the species by inspecting its digestive organs. What I don't understand is why they couldn't give it an MRI or something instead. Or if not, then just don't kill it. Go ahead and be less that sure that you've got what you hope you've got, and meanwhile wait for the juvenile to mature. When it did they could have tried to recreate whatever conditions in the lab would be probably be ideal for breeding. Then let the offspring get big enough to dissect one.

I confess to having impaled my fair share of common earthworms on fishing hooks. But when you are talking about the only 2 known examples of a species that had been thought to be extinct, I cannot understand how these people could possibly think that it would be a good idea to kill 1 of them.


[Photo used courtesy of the University of Idaho]

Welcome, Vegans

Rhys Southan has a lengthy interview with me posted today on his blog, 'Let Them eat Meat.' Since Rhys' blog is read by rather a lot of vegans (Rhys is an ex-vegan who writes frequently about veganism), I expect this to turn into a big, entertaining explosion of debate and outrage.

To all of the vegans who will inevitably end up clicking through Rhys' link and finding this blog, welcome. I honestly have nothing against whatever diet you care to practice. You and I probably agree on 90% of animal rights issues and I hope that you will consider that someone who agrees with you 90% of the time is probably your ally, not your enemy.

While my approach to obtaining meat by hunting still requires that living things die, I do sincerely believe that this is ethically the next best thing to being a vegetarian. Unless maybe you want to start butchering roadkill, which I have actually done and should probably write up an entire article about it.

[Photoshopped image courtesy of C_kick, licensed under Creative Commons]

Asian Carp as Food: NYT Gets It

The message is getting out there. The Times has a neat, if short, article up today about fishing for invasive Asian carp for food.

I'm making a trip to the Missouri river this summer to fish for Asian carp in order to give them a full chapter in 'Eating Aliens.' I think that the problem most American fishermen have had with carp is that they've usually tried to cook it just as they would bass or trout. We're going to be looking at traditional Chinese recipes as a starting point for learning get the most out of this food.

Rehabilitating Man-Eaters?

The NY Times has an interesting article up right now about attempts to rehabilitate wild Sumatran tigers that have killed people in Indonesia.

Only around 400 Sumatran tigers remain in the wild, so I can certainly understand why there is this effort not to waste a single one. Among all subspecies there are probably less than 3,000 wild tigers left on Earth. Far too few.

That said, I think that this program is a bad idea in terms of a future for the species. Big cats that become man-eaters are a danger to others of their own species as well as to the humans they threaten. This is because the humans that are being attacked, quite understandably, will try to kill the man-eater at the first opportunity. The problem is that the odds of them killing the right cat the first time aren't very good. If they are putting man-eaters back out into the wild in the vicinity of humans, then aside from the risk to human life you've got the potential for a bunch of innocent tigers to be killed by the locals before they finally hit on the right one and the attacks stop.

I am unimpressed with the basic theory of rehabilitation in this case. The Times describes it thus:

In Balimbing, workers try to recondition the tigers, mostly through isolation from people, so they grow to fear human beings again. Tigers instinctively stay away from people, but conflict tigers have lost that fear to varying degrees, said Tony Sumampau, who is spearheading the rehabilitation program here.

“Once tigers kill human beings,” Mr. Sumampau said, “they realize that we’re nothing.”

These are not stupid animals. No matter how long you keep the animal in isolation it isn't going to forget the experience and methods of hunting and killing humans any more than it is going to forget the experience and methods of hunting any of its other prey. If this worked at all, then it stands to reason that the tigers would also forget how to hunt for food and wouldn't make it in the wild again. The description in the article of the tigers running in circles in their cages and lunging at a human outside doesn't sound paint an especially compelling picture of success.

If a man-eating tiger can be captured rather than killed then I am all for it. But they should be kept in captivity to be used as part of a carefully controlled breeding program to preserve genetic diversity and should never be released back into the wild in any place where they could come into contact with humans again.


[Photo used courtesy of EssjayNZ under Creative Commons license]

Nature is All Very Well In Her Place

Before I'd even started working, I knew that there was a copperhead in the well house. The 'well house' is a 5'x5' concrete box over which I built a workshop, turning the well house effectively into a sort of tiny cellar. It contains the pressure tank and other equipment for my household water supply and this pressure tank recently ruptured, requiring replacement.

When I first had a look at the problem I saw the snake slither away from the daylight and hide itself behind the very tank that I needed to replace. Nevertheless, the job had to be done. We needed water.

At first I considered strapping my Ruger Mk. III .22 pistol on my hip. I needed something that I could bring to bear on a target in the confined space of the well house. But I didn't dare use regular bullets for fear of putting one through the wiring and plumbing. Ricochets off of the concrete were also a danger. CCI .22 shot shells were the natural choice of ammunition, being enough to penetrate a few millimeters of snake but unlikely to puncture a plastic pipe or a sheet metal control box. The problem is that these types of shot shells do not tend to cycle well in a semi-automatic action, because the plastic capsules surrounding the shot pellets tend to split open as they are fed from the magazine.

The .22 caliber weapon in the house with the next shortest barrel happened to be my daughter's pink, single-shot Rossi rifle. I stuck a few shells in my pocket and brought the pink rifle out with me.

I kept this rifle loaded within arm's reach throughout the entire project. Surprisingly, I saw no trace of the snake for several hours. I drained the tank, disconnected the pressure switch, removed the tank and installed the new one. Then the copperhead appeared. It was about 2 and a half feet away from me. The head was not visible and I hoped that it wasn't able to see me at the moment. My hand went out to the rifle and I thumbed the hammer down as I brought it up to my shoulder.

I was ready to shoot, but had no real target. Shooting a snake anywhere but the head doesn't tend to get you anywhere in the short run. I considered the exposed anatomy and decided that I was pretty sure that I had a clear shot at the base of the neck. Good enough. I squeezed the trigger.

Whoops. My shot was about half an inch off, which meant hitting completely the wrong coil of snake. Now it was pissed and turned around to see what had bit it. I broke the action of the rifle open and loaded again. Bang. With the snake now in motion, I missed it clean. I frantically pulled a third cartridge from my pocket, loaded it, and hit the wriggling snake in the wrong spot yet again.

That was it. I was all out of ammunition, stuck in a 5'x5' concrete box with an angry copperhead. For lack of any other options, I turned the pink rifle around and began furiously clubbing the thing with the stock.

Success. My enemy was vanquished and I climbed out of the well house. Unfortunately, Rossi's pink plastic stocks do not seem to be designed to withstand this sort of thing. My daughter, Ida, was not pleased with the state of her target rifle. The photo here really doesn't do justice to the degree of ruin that resulted. The stock is twisted nearly off.

If I was going to do it all over again, (which I probably will sooner or later, because I seem to find myself in these sorts of situations with alarming regularity) I would have ordered some CCI shotshells for my .38 revolver and gone in with that on my hip. I really can't think of an intelligent way of resolving that situation without the use of a firearm.

I have nothing against snakes generally. They are a useful part of the ecosystem and have a right to exist. However, I draw the line at sharing a 5'x5' concrete box with anything that is both poisonous and fanged unless it has at least bought me a drink first.

As Stella Gibbons wrote in Cold Comfort Farm: "Nature is all very well in her place but she must not be allowed to make things untidy."

The Mothership Connection

I've largely moved away from blogging about this sort of thing, but I can't resist pointing out the sheer absurdity of this group of pirates opening fire on an American frigate today. Not only did we immediately capture the pirates and sink their skiff, but our guys also caught up with the pirates' mothership and captured that as well. I believe that this capture of a mothership is a first in the international fight against modern piracy.

Can anyone tell me what exactly these pirates could possibly have been thinking would result from this?

Snakehead Fishing in NoVa

It has come to my attention that I have tomorrow (Friday, April 2nd) off from work and I can do pretty much anything I want to. What I'm considering doing with this free day of perfect weather is going fishing for snakeheads in Northern Virginia.

Most readers of this blog are probably aware of the northern snakehead's status as a serious ecological problem in the United States. Imported as food by Asian immigrants and as pets by the aquarium trade, the fish adapted very quickly to fresh water after some idiot dumped them into the wild.

The whole country seemed to go into a panic over these fish in 2002 when they were first found in the wild. Jay Leno made them a staple of his monologues for a while. Demonized for their strange appearance and ability to wriggle over land for short distances (like American eels), several low-budget horror movies were made about the snakehead. Personally, I try not to blame or despise the fish, which never asked to be put here and are only doing what comes naturally. Nonetheless I would like to catch and eat as many of them as I possibly can.

As apex predators these fish could slowly push native species like striped bass out of their habitat. Let us be rid of them.

If any readers of this blog in the Northern Virginia area can direct me towards a hot spot for catching snakeheads then I would appreciate it. I will be either on foot or in a canoe, so the open water of the Potomac is probably not a smart destination for me.

[Photo used courtesy of Brian Gratwicke under Creative Commons license]