My Interview on Versus

I just got word from a producer of Deer & Deer Hunting TV that my interview is going to air on the Versus channel this Saturday, July 31st at 9 am ET.

Unfortunately I will not be able to watch, since I don't have cable or satellite at home.

This is an interesting moment to observe because as far as I know this will be the first time that the locavore hunting movement has been formally introduced to the traditional American deer hunting culture. These are two groups that seem very different, yet can be beneficial to each other. I am surprised that this is happening through a TV show rather than a piece in Field & Stream or a similar mainstream hunting publication.

There's no telling what the mainstream hunting culture is going to make of us. Some of them might be suspicious of us, others contemptuous of our odd methods. My hope is that we will be seen as complimentary to mainstream hunting. With our focus on meat-hunting, we tend to shoot does rather than bucks and we may take of some of the pressure off of trophy hunters to cull does while happily leaving the trophy bucks to them.

[The photo is me, speaking to a group of aspiring locavore hunters in NYC]

Deer Class Update

I know that a whole lot of people are waiting for me to announce new dates for the 'Deer Hunting for Locavores' classes. Right now the weather is just too hot for us to be confident of getting a fresh, intact deer to the field dressing site before the meat spoils. This is such an important part of the class that I'm not willing to teach without it.

When the weather cools down, I will schedule the next weekend class. Look towards October for that. Meanwhile, I'll probably have the details up in the next 24 hours on small game hunting instruction and outings for September.

Skinning a Deer with Obsidian

Fergus Clare, primitive skills expert, skinned this fallow deer a few weekends ago with a piece of obsidian. It hadn't even been turned into a proper tool. Just a broken shard of rock. You could also do this with a knife but it wouldn't be nearly as awesome.

I have skinned more deer than I can even remember using the more common modern technique of cutting the hide off with a skinning knife. Yet after watching Fergus use this method a few times I am fully sold on it. The old-fashioned hunter-gatherer method that Fergus favors is quicker, easier, carries less risk of injury and results in a hide that is easier to scrape and tan.

Please be aware that this is an extremely graphic and honest portrayal of cutting and pulling the hide off of an animal that had been alive only about 15 minutes earlier. If this is going to disturb or offend you then please do not watch the video.

I'm the guy holding the camera and assisting. We were in a serious hurry on account of the hot summer weather that risked spoilage of the meat. There was no time to set up the perfect shot but I think that this video will still give you a good idea of how to use this technique on your next deer. The video is in 3 parts. I wish I could edit it down into 6 or 7 minutes to tell the story more succinctly, but I have no software, talent or time for video editing.

Installing Mauser Discs in a Synthetic Stock

Nothing says 'Mauser' to me like those classic silver discs of metal on the stocks of early K-98s. That design element is so distinctive that Hayao Miyazaki used them in the first ten minutes of his animated film, 'Howl's Moving Castle.'

Several people have asked how we installed the original Mauser stock discs in the synthetic stock used for a .35 Whelen that I built in one of our classes a few weeks ago. The best answer is a video of the process.

This is another .35 Whelen that Michael, one of our students this past weekend, was building. I did the stock discs but he did the vast majority of the other work himself. The reason for heating up the discs with a blow torch is that the bottoms of the discs are flat while the side of the rifle stock is curved. We are recessing the discs into the plastic in order avoid a raised edge. Letting the disc melt its own recess guarantees a perfect fit, unlike trying to carve out a recess by other means.

I apologize for the terrible camera work in the first 30 seconds. That is what I get for trying to hold the camera myself while working. After that, Paul Fritz and Michael take turns holding the camera for me.

The parts that are not shown and are not self-explanatory are the flaring of the brass pipe and the clean-up of the area surrounding the discs. After the discs have been melted into the plastic it is still necessary to press something into either end of the pipe to seal it tight into the rings. We used a lathe in this case but any pair of conical pieces of metal pushed hard into either side should work, given enough pressure. The bubbles of melted plastic around the edges were cleaned up easily with a a couple of sharp blades.

The stock discs are fully functional with the strength of the brass tube. I still need to put a video up here that shows how to use those discs to fully disassemble a Mauser bolt.

New York State's Wanton Waste of Geese

This piece of news about New York state's plans to wantonly waste the lives and bodies of 170,000 resident Canada geese infuriates me.

Following many months of discussions between the FAA, the Dept. of Agriculture and various state agencies, the goose population is being deliberately reduced in order to prevent the plane crashes that can result from the geese being sucked into the engines. I'm ok with this and such an effort is past due. These large populations of resident geese do not behave and migrate the way that their species traditionally has and they are out of synch with the environments that they find themselves in. In some areas of the US, they are arguably an invasive species.

What I'm not ok with is the way that they are planning to do this. Quoth the New York Times:

“The captured geese are placed alive in commercial turkey crates. The geese would be brought to a secure location and euthanized with methods approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Euthanized geese would be buried.”

If a hunter like myself engaged in this behavior, I would (justly) be prosecuted for wanton waste. All 50 states, including New York, have laws against wanton waste. The point of such laws is to ensure that birds and animals are not killed in waste and that they are used as food or for some other legitimate purpose. New York's statute is less restrictive than that of some other states but I think that it makes the point well.

This is the wrong way of doing it. Poisoning the geese to death by gas or injection and burying the corpses is a despicable and unethical waste of food. I think that it is also unnecessary. Hunters could be taking far more Canada geese if New York would change their hunting regulations into a body of law focused on hunting geese rather than playing a game.

I suggest that they do the following:

1. Eliminate the 3 shell capacity limit for shotguns used to hunt Canada geese. Federal regulations now allow states to do this.

2. Allow the use of electronic calls. Again, federal regulations changed to allow states to do this.

3. Not only allow, but actively encourage geese to be hunted with archery equipment. Work with targeted municipalities around airports to create urban archery seasons for resident Canada geese.

4. Allow the use of bait.

5. Allow the use of nets in designated urban and suburban areas.

These regulations that I suggest changing are things that have added up to a game rather than a sensible regulatory framework for hunting. If a hunter chooses to limit herself to a particular weapon or tactic, so be it. But prohibiting these hunting tactics by law is not in the public interest and is not necessary to prevent over-harvest, given that harvest totals are already regulated by bag limits. None of these items are safety issues, either.

The government of New York can't be especially concerned with hunting ethics or fair chase of Canada geese, given the fact that they are going to round 170,000 of them up in order to gas and bury them. So how can they say, with a straight face, that hunters shouldn't be using nets, crossbows or electronic calls in order to eat the geese?

They should be using some of this budget instead to offer goose-hunting workshops to potential new hunters, complete with lessons on shotgunning and archery. There are legions of locavores in the state of New York who would jump on such an opportunity.

You will be hearing about this issue again and again over the next few years as the FAA and the DOA work to reduce goose populations near airports all over America. This is a broad enough issue that we need to find a more ethical way of reducing resident goose populations. Something that doesn't involve killing animals without at least having the decency to use them as food.

Saturday Morning

"Go with God now. Go with God."

Gail Rose closed her eyes and pressed her hand over the dying heart of a fallow deer which lay twitching on the bare dirt. I knelt behind her and watched a thick stream of dark, viscous arterial blood wind its way down the dusty slope and into a coagulating pool.

Cicadas trilled together in a rising and falling uniform drone. Chickens clucked and argued in the coop beside the deer enclosure. The 10 AM sun was already in my eyes, baking the ground and promising another day of drought.

The old woman was barefoot. She said we could take any of the deer except for the white one and except for the ones with orange tags. Fergus had steadied my rifle against his shoulder and chosen this one with a bullet through the head. It was as good a doe as any.

There was not the time for a long goodbye for the deer that was already dead even though its heart did not know it for a while. Tourists could come to the farm at any moment to pick their own beans and tomatoes and to buy eggs. We lifted the deer into the back of Fergus' truck and said goodbye to Gail.

In the heat of a Virginia summer we knew that the meat would spoil before the end of our 2 hour drive. Fergus knew of an old Confederate forge close by. Grant and Sherman couldn't find it so it kept making cannon balls and artillery pieces and it didn't get blown up or torn down. Grant's army couldn't find it but Fergus could.

We pulled off the road and parked the truck in front of a massive old chimney with a cracked lintel. I lifted the deer while Fergus tied it by the neck from the rafter tails of a spring house. Fergus produced a chip of obsidian and began skinning the deer as I filmed it. When he spoke I wasn't sure whether to film his face or his hands. I thought that people would probably like to watch a tall Irishman skinning a deer with a piece of stone so I had better get it all on camera.

I thought that every car that whizzed past would be a cop car. I imagined the sound of wheels crunching slowly on gravel and a car door slamming and then silence as the officer looked first at the blood and brains spattered in the back of Fergus' black Toyota pickup truck, then at the rifle on the back seat. Would he even question us before calling for backup?

A swarm of green flies grew. The temperature climbed and we worked more quickly, not bothering to gut it but desperate to quarter off the meat and put it in the cooler before it spoiled.

The square, spotted hide came off like a big wet sock and Fergus held it up in brief triumph. I handed him the camera and set to work at quartering the deer. Yellow jackets joined the flies. My knife grew dull and I stopped to sharpen it. The last rich, red backstrap finally fell off, leaving the absurd sight of a bare, upright spine suspended in mid-air with a teardrop-shaped sack of guts at the bottom of it. It looked as though H.R. Giger had been hired by Field and Stream.

I walked to the stream that trickled beside the forge and washed the blood and fat off of my hands and blades. A handful of wet sand to scour my skin. A bottle of water to rinse off the lid of the cooler.

The sloped stone walls of the forge beside the truck were enormous. Like a fortress. I could smell the horses that ignored us from across the street. Fergus strapped the cooler to the tailgate of the truck and we drove away.

[Photo used courtesy of Universal Pops under Creative Commons license]

NYT: Airbrushing Gun Violence

I really like New York City a lot. I visit regularly, I have friends and family there. I also really like the New York Times, which I read every day. But New York, we need to talk.

I understand that you guys find guns scary and don't want them around. Given your negative experience with them and lack of opportunities to have positive experiences, this makes sense. I'm not mad at you for the way that you feel. What makes less sense is the constant barrage of imagery on the streets of NYC and the pages of the Times that glorifies the violent presentation of guns.

Right now I'm looking at the main page of the NYT and seeing an ad right there next to the name of the paper. It is a promotion for a TV show called 'Covert Affairs,' depicting an attractive woman looking seductively over her shoulder towards the viewer while pointing a pistol at an unseen target which is apparently on the ground, given the angle. This is the front page of the same paper that runs anti-2nd Amendment editorials like clockwork.

Walking the streets of the city that has banned and seized privately-owned semi-automatic weapons from the hands of law-abiding citizens, I see posters everywhere promoting various entertainment involving pistols and assault rifles pointed menacingly at passersby. Invariably in the hands of someone selected and primped and airbrushed to be as sexually appealing as possible.

Make up your damn minds, people. For a society that so readily condemns the private ownership of firearms by people who mostly just want to mind their own business, you guys seem disturbingly willing to glamorize not only gun ownership but the violent presentation of firearms.

This doesn't make you horrible human beings. Your food, theater, bands, literature and journalism are all still great. Keep up the good work in those departments. Just stop and think about this hypocrisy at work in the city and the paper as a whole. If you guys really deplore gun-related violence so much, then perhaps you'd better stop airbrushing it and packaging it in push-up bras.

"This Wallpaper is Killing Me..."

Work and hunting for food were interfering with each another so one of them had to go.

As of September 1st, I am going full-time. I am ending 11 years of happy employment at my comfortable job as a wholesale insurance broker in order to travel to the most God-forsaken corners of America that I can find in order to hunt, fish and forage for invasive species that I will be eating in the interest of producing the best book on the subject that I possibly can.

There are other books and other projects on the horizon as well. I intend to continue teaching classes and workshops at, hopefully, a greater pace. I'm looking to do some 1 day squirrel hunting workshops in September (groups of no more than 4 students going out on actual hunts).

If I've been a little quiet here lately it is on account of needing to have the final, polished draft of 'A Locavore's Guide to Deer Hunting' in my editor's hands by August 1st. Any spare time in front of a keyboard has been spent plugging away at that and I apologize for the relative lack of classes, events and correspondence during this push.

Come September, I am a free man on most days. Any readers who happen to have a population of invasive fish, birds, reptiles or mammals nearby that can be dependably hunted are invited to shoot me an email at jack.landers@gmail.com. I will be extra grateful to anyone who can accompany me in the field with their local knowledge. I'm willing to travel pretty much anywhere in the US for this, and potentially abroad if the opportunity is good enough and there is a couch to sleep on or field to camp in.

New Class Covered by the Daily Progress

Our regional newspaper, The Daily Progress was kind enough to put us on the front page for the 4th of July. The story on our rifle building classes is well done and there is also video and an image gallery.

The reporter, Brian McNeill, was modest enough not to mention the fact that during his work on this article we discovered that he is a natural dead-eye. When he accompanied us to the shooting range to test the rifles we built, Paul Fritz offered to let him try out a 7mm Mauser. Brian had never fired a rifle before, yet the second time he ever pulled the trigger he nailed a 4" clay target at 150 yards.

He may even have been aiming for it.

DIY Mauser Class: The Black & Tan .35 Whelen

The rifle in this photo is a custom K98 Mauser in .35 Whelen that was produced in our rifle-building class last weekend. This was built in a single weekend, with the exception of some additional painting that I did in the space of 45 minutes a few days later.

It wears 500 degree enamel engine paint that seems to be holding up pretty well. The distinctive black and tan color scheme blends well into the woods as camouflage.

The steel disks set into the synthetic stock are from the German K98 that also provided the donor action. Having seen some hundreds if not over a thousand sporterized Mausers in photographs and in person, this is the first time that I have ever seen the original stock disks used in a synthetic stock. They are completely functional, having been pressed by a lathe into a brass pipe running through the center of the stock which is strong enough to assist in take-down and reassembly of the bolt as originally intended.

Classes are limited to 2 students in order to provide one-on-one instruction. The cost is $800, which does not include the donor action (which we cannot legally sell or provide, since we are not firearms dealers). That cost includes all other parts, instruction and use of machinery necessary to build a custom deer rifle on a vintage Mauser action. Interested persons may contact me directly at jack.landers@gmail.com with any questions.

More photographs from a previous class can be found here.

Eating Kudzu for NPR

WVTF, Central Virginia's NPR affiliate, did a two-part story recently on kudzu that I really should have posted here last week. In the spirit of my on-going 'Eating Aliens' project, I organized a small kudzu dinner and invited Sandy Hausman of WVTF.

Yeah, kudzu. The giant weed that is conquering the American south. We cooked it and ate it and it was good. Steve Friedman did the actual cooking while I prepped according to his instructions. We had kudzu pesto, kudzu quiche and several other courses that all turned out surprisingly well.

You can listen to part one and part two on WVTF's website.

My book in progress, 'Eating Aliens' is intended to be all hunting and fishing. But the kudzu thing still definitely fits into the spirit of the book and I could see doing a companion volume or sequel that focuses on invasive plants.

[Photo used courtesy of Martin LaBar under Creative Commons license]