The Locavore Hunter™

How Dark Coloration Helps Big, Tough Animals

2012-01-18T16:31:00.008-05:00

The great biologist Dr. Valerius Geist observed in his book, 'Deer of the World' (on page 34, with figure 2-12 on the opposite page), that large mammals which are known to typically confront and defend against predators have a strong tendency to have darkly colored bodies.

Geist gives nine examples: the sambar, moose, guar, okapi, water buffalo, musk ox, wild boar, and black bear, and gorilla. I would also add the cape buffalo.

What Geist does not address is why this tendency towards dark coloration should be the case. As a hunter, I have a perspective on this that may be useful.

I believe that these animals all benefit from the dark colorations of their species as juveniles. An animal that is of a mostly uniform dark shade is especially difficult to judge in terms of size unless it is very close. Its not easy to tell a lone, young cape buffalo from a lone, older one at a distance. I won't say that this is impossible to do - just that its difficult. You can't always tell the difference between size versus depth perception.

If you are a predator that can kill and eat a smaller pig but expects to be injured in a fight with a larger pig then you can't go running after any given pig until you have determined how big and potentially dangerous it is. If there is an easier meal somewhere else then you'd probably take it.

This doesn't need to work every time against every predator every time in order to be useful to the species overall. If dark coloration confuses predators and causes them to move on, say, in 10% of approaches then that ought to be enough to justify the trait.

Observe the photo included above. I took this picture at around dusk in Texas a few months ago. It isn't great photography but it illustrates the exact thing that I'm talking about. I took this picture and then stood there with a knife on my belt for a few minutes trying to figure out whether to pursue this particular animal. This was while I was hunting on foot armed only with a knife and I wasn't stupid enough to go charging after some 300 pound boar with tusks like tent pegs that could rip me to shreds. I was deliberately seeking out smaller, isolated pigs of roughly 100 pounds or less that looked like something I could handle without a trip to the hospital.

With its uniform black color I could not tell how big a pig I was looking at. All I get when I look at these wild pigs at more than around 50 yards distance is a silhouette, even in better light than this. On this occasion I stalked in towards them with the wind in my favor until I could tell that one of the others in the field was a good target. Other times I ended up hesitating for too long and finding that they would scent me or see me while I was still trying to make up my mind.

In the field as an actual predator armed only with what amounts to a single big fang (my knife), I discovered that being darkly colored provides a very real advantage to large animals that frequently fight back against predators. I have to hesitate or pass up juveniles because I can't tell if they are actually larger, dangerous specimens. This is the sort of thing that I just don't tend to notice while hunting with firearms.

Geist's book, by the way, is excellent.

[Photo copyright 2011 and 2012 by Jackson Landers.]

Late-Night Lions & the Slippery Truth

2012-01-12T23:49:00.013-05:00

I looked both ways across the highway interchange and darted across the pavement with a flashlight in my hand. Stopping on the grass only a few feet from the road I pointed the light down at the strange carcass below me. A long, tawny-colored corpse with a half-skeletonized face. The blunt, heavy jaw with long, heavy canine teeth.

Reporter Ted Strong of the Daily Progress and I had driven hours on short notice in the dark to look for what we were told was a road-killed mountain lion in a state that officially has no mountain lions. In the first few seconds of staring at the battered body I thought that perhaps I'd finally found what I'd spent years looking for.

A few years ago I accidentally became the point man for sightings of wild cougars in Virginia. I became interested in the topic of sightings of mountain lions in Virginia and in the Southeast generally. So I spent a few weeks doing research and then I wrote up a blog entry summarizing my own thoughts and theories on the subject.

Then a funny thing happened. People really cared. Years later I still get comments on that blog entry. I get thousands of hits every week on that piece. Rarely does a week go by when I do not get an email from someone describing a cougar sighting. It seems that if you search the internet for information about mountain lions in Virginia, my blog entry usually comes up first. All of these people who have just seen something in the wild that they can't explain have been coming here first.

Gradually I began to feel a sense of responsibility. All of these people were looking to me as not only a source of information but as someone to talk to about a strange thing that nobody else will believe. Moreover, they wanted me to do something about it!

I considered every email and photo sent to me with care, concern and an increasingly logical approach. At first the photos seemed particularly important. Photographs really seem like they should be proof of the thing that they show. Only the more I looked and the more that I thought the more I realized that photographs usually tell us more about ourselves and what we want to see than about what is really there.

Someone sends me a picture of what is very clearly a cougar. I can see the long, sinuous body in graceful predatory action. Perhaps it is even dragging a deer carcass. Every detail of the face is obvious. The email says, 'this was taken by a trail camera near the George Washington National Forest in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.'

Hot damn! Photographic evidence! Well, not so fast. How do we know where the picture was really taken? I can see some trees, some indistinct plants. Dirt. A rock. This could have been anywhere. Maybe somewhere in Montana or California where mountain lions are often seen and expected.

That is what I have concluded when sent a photo that clearly shows an unambiguous mountain lion. Every. Single. Time. The location and date claimed for the picture was fraudulent. Usually the person who sent it to me had the best of intentions. His friend, neighbor or cousin sent him the photo with a misleading caption. When in doubt I start tracking it down and ask the person who supposedly took the photo to show me the spot where it was taken so I can see those same trees and rock and dirt. This never ends well.

The ambiguous photos always depict either a domestic cat or a bobcat. There are little cues to look for.

My most challenging source of red herrings is credible witnesses. Time after time I hear accounts of sightings from people who know what they are talking about. Park rangers, former game wardens, experienced hunters, western ranch-owners, etc. People who know what a wild cougar looks like. I don't think that any of those people who have contacted me were deliberately lying. They all really believed in what they felt they had seen. Yet someone who has seen a lot of cougars is, if anything, probably more likely to fit what they have seen into that familiar 'cougar' category than someone who knows very little about them. Just a few days ago I mistook a distant image of a sambar doe for a whitetail. I, who have butchered countless deer and who has written a book on whitetails, made this error. I made it because my whitetail-wired brain wants to turn everything into a whitetail.

The only evidence that might really mean something would be physical evidence. Not a photo or a story but an honest-to-goodness dead cougar on the ground that can be examined and used for DNA analysis. I stopped caring about photos very much and started paying more attention to anything involving dead cats. People would email me sometimes about a cougar that had been hit by a car but in every case it was so long after the fact and so far away that there wouldn't be any point to my trying to go out and collect the evidence.

Finally I got an email this morning from a very intelligent woman informing me that there was a dead lion sitting by the side of the road in Culpeper Virginia and would someone please come and do something about it already.

The premise isn't so ridiculous. Yes, the eastern cougar subspecies is now officially extinct and there hasn't been a 'confirmed' sighting of a cougar in Virginia since the early twentieth century (by the way, there is really no such thing as a 'confirmed sighting' of any species in my opinion. There are only eyewitness reports that you personally choose to agree with or not. No person in a position of authority is much better equipped to discern between the quality of various eyewitness reports than you or I. Sightings alone are almost never hard evidence). But cougars are a species native to Virginia and we know for a fact that they can survive here. They disappeared arguably because of over-hunting due to the bounties put on their heads rather than because of any inherent inability to survive here.

While working on 'Eating Aliens' I went to a lot of different places and saw some pretty strange species thriving in North America that weren't supposed to exist here at all in the wild. African gazelles in Texas; Asian aquatic snails in Virginia; Mexican lizards in Florida. Right now there are central American armadillos breeding in Nebraska. An Asian prawn the size of my forearm just started breeding off the coast of Louisiana and nobody has the slightest idea as to how it really got there.

Nearly any species can suddenly appear nearly anywhere in the world at this point. International trade and the desires for exotic pets and plants have transported absurd things into novel places where they have thrived. The idea that cougars from North America are thriving again in an area where they only disappeared in the last century is less absurd than any of the situations that resulted in chapters of 'Eating Aliens.'

How could cougars get here? There are three explanations that seem likely to me.

First, we could have western cougars colonizing the area. Young cougars can disperse a very long way when they go out on their own to find their own territory. A few years ago one was killed in Connecticut which had traveled all the way there from the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Second, escaped exotic pets could provide a small but genetically diverse basis for a wild population. Many thousands of people have pet cougars and sometimes they escape. Sometimes they escape and other times the door just sort of gets left open when the pet becomes inconvenient for some reason.

Third, it is possible (though unlikely) that there has been a remnant population of the eastern cougar subspecies here in Virginia all along.

Or I suppose it is possible that sightings have resulted from some combination of all three vectors.

What I had hoped that I would find tonight was a dead cougar that could be the start of an examination of physical evidence. That we could sent DNA samples off for analysis to start answering some of these questions.

I crouched on the damp ground beside the body along the highway interchange and looked closely. One of the women who had contacted me about the carcass, Donna, stood nearby.

Donna was as ideal a witness as I could ever ask for. She even knew her big cats. As a former volunteer at an exotic cat rescue facility she had seen cougars up close and personal. If Donna thought that she was looking at a dead cougar then she probably knew what she was talking about more so than 99% of the people who could possibly ever contact me.

The basic shape of the head was right. The size of the animal was about like a young cougar. This fit with the idea of young cougars tending to go a long way during dispersal and getting hit by cars. The partially skeletonized tail was almost the right length. Perhaps post-mortem shrinkage could account for it being a bit short. It was certainly much too long for a bobcat.

Enough hide remained on the body that I could see it was the correct tawny color expected of a cougar.

Man, did this thing ever look like a dead cougar. I started thinking about where we could get a bigger cooler this late at night to haul the entire body away in.

But I saw what I wanted to see. I tried to think more rigorously. The simplest way to narrow things down should be through the teeth, which were intact.

I was struck by the uniformity of the size of the front teeth. They reminded me of my dog's front teeth. Behind each canine was a row of molars that seemed too numerous. I have had the lower mandible of a domestic cat sitting on my desk in front of my computer monitor at home for the last few months since plucking it out of some bobcat scat to identify (I realize how ridiculous I am for even being able to write those words). Often I have noted how very few teeth are behind the canines; it stood to reason that other felids should have the same basic layout of teeth.

The remains of the paws firmed up my opinion. Too narrow. This wasn't a cougar. It was a pit bull.

Even when the animal is dead, right there, on the ground in front of us, most of us have no idea what we are really looking at. We see what we think that we see. And that is with what seems to be unassailable physical evidence. Photographs are worth even less. A glimpse of something strong, tan-colored, and long-tailed darting across the road is so unrevealing as to be meaningless.

I want there to be wild cougars in Virginia. I really do. And I still think that they are probably out there, though I accept the possibility that I am wrong. Meanwhile I'm still looking.

[Apologies for the grisly photograph, copyright 2012 by Jackson Landers. It seemed too relevant for me to fail to include it. This is a photo of the non-cougar that I traveled to Culpeper to see. Note the first pre-molar right below the canine tooth. That gives it all away]

The Fog of Bears: How Bad Maps Make Bad Policy

2012-01-04T23:47:00.009-05:00

While in the field around the US working on 'Eating Aliens' I often saw animals that did not officially exist in the places where I was seeing them. Grant's gazelles running wild in Texas were one of the more dramatic examples. There are a lot of other species native to north America whose ranges I have noticed in the field do not seem to line up very well with the official party line.

One native example is the black bear. I have seen similar maps used on many otherwise credible websites showing the range of the black bear along these lines. But it only takes a moment to prove that this alleged range of the black bear is incorrect.

I know Virginia's wildlife very well, so lets look at the Virginia portion of this supposed range. The map shows the bear's range coming sharply down the middle of the state, just west of Loudoun County in the north and continuing down to the west of Richmond and Brunswick County. These maps sure do make it look like black bears aren't likely to be found much farther east than Charlottesville or Richmond.

Yet we have solid data from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries proving that this is wrong. A dead bear, brought physically into a check station by a hunter, is a pretty good indication that bears are present in a particular county. At least a few bears are being tagged most years in Loudoun and Brunswick Counties and even in the City of Virginia Beach, waaay out of the alleged range. Suffolk, almost 100 miles outside of the official range, had 22 black bears killed last season alone.

Black bears are in fact very well distributed throughout all of Virginia, with the sole exception of much of the Delmarva Peninsula. The harvest data proves this, without even getting into the questions of trail camera photos or other sightings that don't result in a dead bear with a state inspection.

The farther away that you go from hard science sources, the more ridiculous some of the claims about black bear ranges get. This hunting site displays a range map for black bears which appears to almost completely exclude Virginia. Defenders of Wildlife, a serious organization, limits the range to what looks like only about a third of VA (look to the right side of the page). This is a perfect example of (unintentionally, I believe) false information being used as part of advocacy for policy-making.

This is just one species, in one state. It got me thinking that there could be a whole lot of other species whose ranges and populations densities are actually very different from what the official data visible to the public represents. This cannot be good for environmental policy-making.

What happens when some staff person for CITES needs to make a judgment call on whether a species merits additional protection? What about a legislator about to vote on whether to open or close a season for hunting an animal? What about land-owners wondering whether there is a species they need to be concerned about in the area before cutting down trees or brush? Bad maps and bad data like what we find with the bears is much of what they will encounter and it will result in bad decisions.

I ran into some problems with this stuff while going through the editing process for 'Eating Aliens.' I'd get asked about what someone in a white lab coat thinks about whether a particular invasive animal is present or how it got there. But as much respect as I have for the guys in the white lab coats, wildlife does not live in a test tube. We are very good at tracking and studying the animals that we know are out there but by definition we lack good data on the wildlife that we didn't expect to be there in the first place. Personally, I don't believe that we necessarily need a federal study in order to start responding to an ecological problem and I don't believe that someone needs a Phd or a badge from FDA to determine whether they are looking at a snakehead in the bottom of their boat, or a cougar staring them down in the Virginia woods.

Even when a group of biologists knows what is going on (for example, DGIF's own maps show a very sound assessment of black bear ranges), the system overall is apparently not very good at disseminating this information accurately among other stake-holders, advocacy groups and the public in general.

I would guess that these inaccurate bear maps are probably just decades out of date, but who knows? Maybe these maps were never correct. I bet that they'll still be used ten years from now. It is so much easier to grab and copy a map from someone else's book or website and use it for whatever you need than it would be to actually confirm the data. In this age of 'content farming' the accuracy of information has nearly zero value to most of the internet.

The fog of war applies well to making sense of the distribution of wildlife. Its all too fluid and complex and deliberately hidden by the subjects themselves for us to ever have a perfect understanding of what is out there in nature. Which is part of what makes zoology so much fun.

[Photo copyright 2010 by Jackson Landers. That's a bear track I found. In Virginia.]

Guided Deer Hunt Dates

2012-01-03T15:06:00.006-05:00

Saturday is booked, but I have three days of the regular deer season still available for guided/tutored deer hunts for adult beginners. January 4th, 5th, and 6th are open. The standard rate is $150 per day for one hunter. After January 7th, deer will be out of season in most of Virginia but other species are still on the menu.

I can travel to your land (up to 200 miles from Charlottesville, VA, though a mileage fee applies) to help you learn how to understand how the deer are using it and how to hunt it, or we can hunt on wildlife management areas.

[Photo copyright 2010 by John Athayde]

High, Wild and Free

2012-01-02T22:31:00.004-05:00

Most documentary films these days leave me cold. 'Reality' TV has infected documentary film making to a distressing degree. Those movies that don't suffer from an overdose of fakery still seem to be riddled with CGI and endless interviews with people in white lab coats sitting in suspiciously well-lit 'labs'. I hate all of this crap and I rarely watch modern documentary films any more because of it.

For the most part I find that I have to reach back a few decades at least to find documentaries that don't make me want to throw a brick at the screen. One that I find myself coming back to again and again is 'High Wild and Free,' by Gordon Eastman.

The film is a totally unscripted (as far as I could tell, anyhow) document of a months-long ramble through the Canadian wilderness by Eastman in 1968. He appears to have done most of the camera work himself. There is no plot except a vague effort to get from point A to point B but I never noticed this fact until the 3rd or 4th time watching it. Eastman goes fishing for salmon, builds a canoe and floats down a river, hunts sheep, and generally farts around and has a good time.

It wasn't until I was half-way through my first viewing of the movie before I noticed that there is no original audio. The whole thing looks like it was probably shot on 16mm without any sort of sound. All of the audio is provided in the form of narration by Eastman, in the style of Bruce Brown's 'Endless Summer,' which came out that same year.

In fact, 'High Wild and Free' is very much an outdoorsman's version of 'Endless Summer' in terms of narration, era, and overall style. Both are footloose, unscripted journeys that were obviously undertaken for their own sake with the film-making being an excuse for the trip. This, to me, is what outdoor documentary film-making can be at its best. Go out and have an adventure, try not to get the cameras smashed up too badly, and figure that something good can be edited together from what results.

Nobody does this any more. And yet the results were so great back when people did it. Neither Eastman nor Bruce Brown really knew anything about film-making. What they had was initiative and the guts to go out there and live a good story. I could say the same about Thor Heyerdahl, who made the film, 'Kon-Tiki' about his famous voyage across much of the Pacific ocean in a balsa raft and won an Oscar for it without having any notion of film-making whatsoever.

Live a good story and try to get it on camera. This, to me, seems like the right approach to making a really good outdoor documentary. This was essentially what I did to produce my forthcoming travel/adventure book, 'Eating Aliens,' and I hope that it will be the basis for the documentary films that I hope to make over the next few years.

Meanwhile, I want to strongly suggest that you give 'High Wild and Free' a look. They have it for instant play on Netflix. If you can get past the corny opening song then its an excellent look at a moment in documentary film making that seems to have passed us by.

Cooking Geese with The Perennial Plate

2012-01-02T14:45:00.004-05:00

The Perennial Plate Episode 85: Goose Dilemma from Daniel Klein on Vimeo.

Back in September I filmed an appearance for the web TV show, 'The Perennial Plate' with Mirra Fine and Daniel Klein. We met up at Glass House Winery in Free Union, Virginia to hunt and cook giant Canada geese.

The episode is finally finished and online today. I really like what they did with the editing.

Helenah Swedberg put together a quick three minute segment about the same outing. She was filming the filming while working on her movie about me. They each captured an slightly different take on the day's events, with the common theme being lots of shots of my butt.

One thing that I want to clarify about the goose situation is that Canada geese are in fact native to the eastern part of Virginia. I don't want people to think that I'm saying all geese are invasive in all of Virginia. Here in Albemarle County we are way off of the Atlantic flyway where Canada geese would traditionally have been found. What we have here are resident geese of a subspecies that isn't even native to the Atlantic flyway. It was those non-native resident geese that we were hunting in this episode.

The other guy hunting with me in this episode is Michael Macfarlane. We probably wouldn't have gotten any geese that day without Michael's help. Our strategy for bagging the three geese that were warily hanging out on the other side of the pond, out of range, required a two-person approach.

We checked the direction of the wind, knowing that the geese would need to take off into the wind to create the necessary lift (like an airplane). Michael positioned himself straight down-wind of them in plain view. The idea was to distract the geese with Michael's obvious presence. I wanted them to be watching Michael while I stalked up behind them from the woods. Then once I started shooting they would have to fly straight at him and he could drop any that I missed.

The plan worked beautifully. I caught the geese totally by surprise with Helenah and Daniel filming behind me. I bagged one on the water (the point was culling here -- not sport) and took a second on the wing. The third one came right at Michael as planned and he dropped it perfectly.

Those extra shots that you can hear me taking were to finish off the birds as they fell.

Michael also did equal work plucking, gutting and butchering. I was the one being interviewed and filmed but Michael was an equal partner in the day's success.

The Measure of Peter Capstick's Books

2011-12-28T00:49:00.011-05:00

You can count me as a fan of Peter Hathaway Capstick. I don't apply the term 'fan' to myself very easily, either. I prefer to define myself on my own terms rather than in relation to other people's creative output.

I still haven't read the complete works of Capstick but I've read enough of his books enough times over that I feel qualified to write about them as a literary critic. It helps a bit that the man is dead, since I would probably never have the nerve to say any of this to his face.

His first book, 'Death in the Long Grass,' is a classic that I have written about before. I discovered that book and Capstick's work in general while browsing at a book store in the hunting section. I saw this brand new book with a dust jacket that screamed '1970's design' at me. And I thought to myself that if this book had been written over 30 years ago and was still in print as a hardback then there must be something to it. 'Death in the Long Grass' was Capstick's best book, though some of his later books came very close to that greatness. '

'Death in the Long Grass' had a real impact on the way that I wrote about hunting and I think that some of that language might have made it through the editorial process for 'Eating Aliens' (launching in August of 2012). Capstick throws out these magnificently over-the-top metaphors which I want desperately and shamelessly to steal every time I read them. A kudu or cape buffalo is not just 'dead' when Capstick shoots it. It is 'dead as fair play', or 'dead as courtesy,' or 'dead as nickel beer.'

Having now written a couple of books myself, I look back on DITLG and am really impressed with the work that the editor must have done on that book. A lot of editors would have taken that text and struck out half of the language that I love in it on the basis that its "too over the top," or that the slang might be unfamiliar to most Americans. Then the descriptions of some of the kills would be toned down and silenced by many. Capstick's ornery political judgements might have been muted. Most editors would probably have ruined Capstick's first book in the interest of printing and shipping a very safe, politically correct book which nobody would even remember today. Instead, someone had the backbone to let Capstick's voice really shine and the rest was history.

However, in practical terms DITLG was a tough act for Capstick to follow. In that first book he had told the best stories of his years to date working as a professional hunter. It had skipped around from one year and species to another, going pretty much wherever the stories were. As Capstick wrote book after book he seems to have run out of material.

Capstick solved this problem for a few books by writing beautifully about other hunters' careers. One of my favorites is 'The Last Ivory Hunter,' about an old ivory hunter friend of Capstick's who had a genuinely fascinating and unique life in Africa. I often wish that he had written some more books in that vein and perhaps he would have done so had he lived longer than his 56 years (chain-smoking and drinking like Hemingway were probably what caused the heart troubles that ultimately killed him).

There was a long series of 'Death in the...' sequels. 'Death in a Lonely Land,' 'Death in the Silent Places,' etc. Many of these are worth reading. I think that the worst of the lot was probably 'Sands of Silence.'

'Sands of Silence' was a dangerous book for Capstick to write because it tells the story of one particular safari that he took in Namibia well after becoming established as a writer. Because he had a camera crew along for the safari it is very clear that he went out there with the express intent of writing a book and making a film about this one trip.

I say that this was a dangerous book to set out to write because he appears to have boxed himself into a corner. He had to produce this book for his publisher, and I would bet money that he had a fat book advance riding on it. Regardless of whether this particular safari was especially interesting he had to write a book about it.

As it happened, nothing especially interesting took place. Or at least nothing that was all that interesting to Capstick. It would have been very difficult for him to write about leopard hunt number 873 (or whatever it was) with fresh eyes at that point. Yet he still had to produce this book about it all. I know the feeling after just wrapping up the final edits on 'Eating Aliens.'

While writing that book there were a great many trips that I took in order to hunt and fish for all sorts of odd things. In many cases there were species that were must-haves for the book, yet when I got out there and went after them I found that there just wasn't a story worth telling about it. Its always a good yarn when I get either lost, stabbed, or stranded somewhere along the way. Preferably with alligators or stingrays involved. But I am in fact writing non-fiction and so everything I write has to actually have happened and one can not always contrive to bump into alligators or get lost and stabbed. Sometimes I came home after a lot of time and expense on the road and I had to shrug it off and move on to the next species.

So I certainly have a good bit of sympathy for Capstick at that point of his career. He'd already told his best old stories and even while he was trying to create new ones he was subject to the vagaries of reality. I don't think it helped that he seems to have been pretty comfortable, financially. The description of his trip in 'Sands of Silence' sounds entirely too comfortable for drama. Hot showers, plenty of staff, and well-maintained vehicles. Nothing was left to chance and so nothing much could happen by chance. And where is a story going to come from like that?

I can't really tell whether there even was an editor for 'Sands of Silence.' It was reading this book that really impressed what a good job the editor of 'Death in the Long Grass' had done. In Sands of Silence, one suspects that Capstick's established name and excellent book sales might have put him in a position where he could wave away any sort of editorial interference at all. And brother, did he ever need it!

Capstick's snappy style was dead as the balanced budget amendment by the time he got around to 'Sands of Silence.' He'd always had a slightly annoying habit of over-using ellipses at the ends of sentences (an ellipsis is one of these things in punctuation: ...). Here, its totally out of control. There is no rhyme or reason to when he uses an ellipsis rather than a period and it isn't clear to me that he has any idea what that punctuation is even for. An editor with half a brain -- or at least some backbone -- should have done something about this.

Not only was Capstick lacking in a story but he didn't know how to tell it any more, either. On page 53 he sort of punted and wrote: "If I could describe the terrible heat, you wouldn't believe me."

C'mon, Capstick! That's what your job consists of. Just describe the terrible effing heat already, ok? Tell me that it was as though Satan had left the door open or something.

'Death in the Long Grass' was like a story told by a campfire over a meal of sliced rhino heart s'mores. By the time that Capstick got around to 'Sands of Silence,' it feels like your boring great-uncle and aunt forcing you through a slide show of their 50th anniversary trip to Niagara Falls.

Is there advice here for outdoor writers? Man, I hope so. This is what I have learned, as an outdoor/hunting writer, from reading the full spectrum of Capstick's work:

1. Don't box yourself into a corner where you contractually have to write a whole book about one expedition.

2. Accept the fact that a good editor can make your book better than you did.

3. Comfort and security are the enemy of adventure.

I will really try to take these lessons to heart. As an aside, I was reading over Capstick's biography and I realized that it bears an uncanny resemblance to my own thus far. I'm from Charlottesville, Virginia, and Capstick is an alumnus of the University of Virginia right here in Charlottesville. He had a respectable career as a stock broker before deciding to walk away from it all at the age of 30 to become a professional hunter. I spent 11 years as a wholesale insurance broker before leaving that career to become a full-time professional hunter and outdoor writer at the age of 32. Capstick's first book was better than mine was but I think I'm getting better as I go along.

Not being a smoker or a heavy drinker, I hopefully have fair odds of living longer than Peter Capstick did, although doing things like guiding clients on bear hunts and planning a documentary film in Sierra Leone later this year probably won't do much for my life expectancy.

Private Mentorship for Hunters

2011-12-23T21:43:00.005-05:00

Very rarely do I mention this publicly, but during the winter months I offer limited services as a hunting tutor and guide. Most of the guiding work that I do is by word of mouth and I simply haven't felt the need to advertise it.

Without any sort of doubt, my most satisfying days of work at any job I have ever held have been as a hunting tutor. When a student bags her first deer or his first squirrel, it is a life-changing experience that I am thrilled to be a part of.

What I offer is not the conventional services of a hunting guide. Most hunting guides are in the business of knowing where a trophy animal is, generally on private property. They take you to the spot where they know that trophy animal is likely to be and they tell you when to shoot and then afterwards you can usually go back to the lodge and kick back with a martini while someone else butchers and skins your kill.

That's not how we'll be doing things. My job is to teach a beginner the craft of hunting. If you get an animal at all, it will not have a record-sized rack of antlers. I will teach you how to skin and butcher the kill yourself and we will both be getting our hands dirty. My goal is to make you a capable outdoors person in your own right. You'll learn a little bit of tracking, some natural history, and whatever woodcraft is demanded in the course of the day.

No experience hunting or shooting firearms is required. All materials except for lunch and clothing can be provided, including weapons and ammunition. Basic shooting instruction is available if necessary. This is not the same thing as my deer hunting classes, though there is some overlap in terms of what can be covered. Alumni of my classes are very much welcome.

There isn't much of this deer season left, but available dates include December 27th-31st, and January 2nd-6th. During that time, we can hunt for deer, black bear, squirrels and turkey, with possible opportunities for rabbit, Canada geese, mourning doves, and other assorted small game.

In the latter half of January, dates may be available for small game. My standard rate is $150 per day, with an additional $50 per day for an additional hunter. More than two hunters at a time is not advised.

I am also available for hunts on your own land, although rates may vary depending on how far away you are. In some areas of Northern Virginia, deer season extends into March on private land. If you have any questions, or to schedule a private hunt, please email me at Jack.Landers@gmail.com

[Photo copyright Jackson Landers, copyright 2011]

Whitetail Cheese Steak Sandwich

2011-12-17T19:28:00.006-05:00

My eight year old daughter was butchering an aged whitetail hindquarter yesterday and she had an idea. She wanted something like a burger, but without the meat being ground. After some discussion and experimentation she and I essentially re-invented the Philly cheese steak by shaving very thin sheets of meat from the hindquarter, soaking them in pepper and Worchestershire sauce, and cooking them in a pan as sandwich meat.

It worked brilliantly. I ate about four of them over the course of the night until I was physically incapable of taking another bite.

Ingredients:

Approximately 4 oz. of thinly shaved venison hindquarter
Butter, 2 tablespoons
Worchestershire sauce, 1 tablespoon
Ground pepper, 1 tsp
Finely minced fresh onion, 1 tbsp
1 slice of American cheese
Mayonnaise
A tomato
A sub roll

Briefly marinade the venison in the worchestershire sauce and pepper. Melt the butter in a pan on medium heat. Cook the sliced venison in the butter for about two minutes. When the meat is still pink and almost cooked, use a spatula to gather it together on the pan into a patty-like arrangement. Sprinkle the onion over the meat and drop a slice of cheese over it. Cover the pan for about 30 seconds, which should be long enough to rapidly melt the cheese. Slide the cheese-covered meat onto your sub roll, which should ideally be toasted and already dosed with the mayo. Add some sliced tomato and you're all done.

Is this recipe rocket science? No. There is nothing very complicated about it and yet I could not stop eating these things. The sandwich in the photo was made after I had run out of buns and sub rolls and was putting them together with regular sliced bread.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers]

Roanoke Times Interview

2011-12-15T22:06:00.003-05:00

I have been a big fan of Bill Cochran's hunting and fishing column in the Roanoake Times. In fact, Bill's column is one of only a very small handful of links that have been up on the margin of this blog since the very first month that I started it.

It was very flattering to get an email from Bill asking me about doing an interview for his column. The piece ran today in the print edition of the Times and it is also online right here.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. This photo has nothing to do with anything. I just wanted a nice picture to go with the blog entry so here's a catfish that I photographed in New Orleans.]

What is the Best Deer Cartridge?

2011-12-13T18:10:00.008-05:00

New hunters often ask me what cartridge their first deer rifle should be chambered for. This is an important question, but some definitions are in order before I answer it.

Every modern firearm shoots what we call a 'cartridge.' You know that shiny thing that you take out of a box and put into the gun to make it go 'bang?' That is a cartridge, not a bullet. The bullet is only one part of the cartridge. Some well-known examples of cartridges would include the .30-'06 (pronounced 'thirty ought six'), the 30-30, the .357 magnum, and the .22 LR (colloquially called the 'twenty-two' or the 'twenty-two long rifle').

Usually a given model of rifle is sold in different versions that are each 'chambered' for different cartridges. You could have a couple of otherwise identical Remington Model 700 rifles and one of them shoots the .308 Winchester cartridge and the other shoots the 7mm-08. The ammunition between them is absolutely not interchangeable.

Think about it like picking out the hardware for a new computer and then choosing the operating system.

There are many hundreds of different firearm cartridges that have been invented. Most are obscure and the beginner does not need to be concerned with them. Different cartridges were developed to do different things well. For example, some are designed solely for long-range accuracy to be used for competitive shooting. Others are meant to propel an especially heavy bullet in order to quickly kill very large prey. There are all sorts of engineering problems that various cartridges were intended to solve.

Most of these can, under the right conditions, theoretically kill a deer. But some are better suited for deer hunting than others. For example, you could hunt deer with a .50 BMG if you really wanted to but this would be sort of like commuting to an office job every day in a dump truck.

The new deer hunter should narrow down the list of options first by ignoring every cartridge that is not readily available in local stores. Suddenly, our list of hundreds of cartridges has been reduced to perhaps a few dozen at most. Next, for hunting deer we should ignore magnum-sized rifle cartridges. They have more power than you need, with more recoil to boot. Magnums also tend to be more expensive ammunition.

Lets throw out everything that shoots a bullet with less than .23 caliber. All of the .22s, such as the .22 LR, the .223 Winchester, the .22-250. All of these shoot bullets that aren't quite big and heavy enough to reliably kill deer for a beginner.

By the way, the word 'caliber' refers to the nominal diameter of the bullet. Calibers can be expressed in either English or metric terms, though a given cartridge is usually named in one or the other and stays that way. Strunk and White might not approve, but it is standard practice to mix metric and English units within the same sentence when discussing cartridges.

We are now left with a pretty short list of cartridges, which I will list off with a brief summary of their features:

.30-'06 - This is the most powerful of the non-magnum cartridges commonly used to hunt deer. It can be found any place in America that sells hunting ammunition. As of this writing, you can buy a box of ammo for anywhere from $18 on up. A rifle chambered for the .30-'06 can do double duty on elk or black bear, if need be. In fact, you could use this for anything in North America if you really needed to. The .30-'06 is a very flexible cartridge that can do many different jobs with the trade-off being that it has relatively heavy recoil. Out to around 200 yards distance, this cartridge can punch through the body of a deer at any angle to hit the vital organs.
.270 Winchester - The .270 was created by putting a narrower bullet into a .30-'06 shell casing. It offers much of the power of the .30-'06 with a little less recoil and a flatter trajectory. By 'flatter trajectory' I mean that it is easier to shoot accurately with this cartridge over long distances. On deer, you won't notice the different trajectory until you are shooting out past 150 yards. The bullets that the .270 shoots are somewhat light and this wouldn't be a great choice for a gun that you might want to also use for elk or other big game. But for deer, it works great.

.308 Winchester - This cartridge is significantly shorter than the previous two that I mentioned. This means that the magazine, bolt, and receiver of the rifle can also be shorter and result in an overall lighter gun to carry around all day. The .308 is what we call a 'short action' cartridge. It has a lot less recoil than the .30-'06. The .308 is used by many long-range competitive marksmen. It doesn't hit as hard as the .30-'06 but it still does a great job. The ammunition is inexpensive and plentiful. The .308 would not be a good choice for prey larger than deer.

7mm-08 - This short action cartridge was invented by putting narrower bullets into the .308's case. The original purpose behind creating the 7mm-08 was to get most of the performance of the .308 with less recoil. It excels at this. My daughter first shot a 7mm-08 when she was six years old and the recoil didn't bother her a bit. And she's small for her age. Like, the .270, this cartridge is known for its flat-shooting characteristics. It performs very well on deer-sized prey, but what you lose here versus, say, the .30-'06 on the opposite end of the spectrum, is flexibility. If a deer is standing 200 yards away and it is quartering away (facing mostly away from you, at an angle), then I would not take that shot with a 7mm-08. The lighter bullet cannot be relied on to punch through so much flesh on the way to the vital organs.

.30-30 - The .30-30 is a cartridge designed to work well in lever-action rifles. I won't bore you right now with a lot of technical details for why this is the case, but most .30-30 ammunition is loaded with round-nosed bullets that aren't very aerodynamic. They lose velocity quickly. Even if your accuracy is perfect this wouldn't be a great gun for shooting deer out past 100 yards. It just can't be relied on to penetrate enough. But in the Eastern US, the vast majority of deer are taken within 100 yards anyhow. A .30-30 is usually intended for short-range work. It is good for hunting deer in brush or woods with low visibility. All things being equal (which is to say in rifles of the same weight with identical recoil pads), the recoil is milder than a .30-'06, but heavier than a 7mm-08.

These five cartridges are what I suggest a new deer hunter narrow their choices among. If you have the opportunity to try shooting each of them then you'll be able to make a more informed decision.

I believe that a new deer hunter should hunt with the most powerful of these cartridges that he or she can shoot comfortably. There is a limit for all of us at which the recoil of a gun begins to affect us. One of the differences between a good marksman and a poor one is being able to recognize and admit where this line is. There is nothing unmanly about admitting that recoil is bothering you. If the recoil is making you flinch even very slightly right before the gun goes off then you should probably be shooting a lighter cartridge. At the very least, try using a slip-on recoil pad (The 'Limbsaver' model is one that I can personally vouch for).

In my opinion, the especially light cartridges are tools for advanced hunters rather than beginners. Cartridges like the .243 or the .223, where it is legal to use them on deer, are best left to experienced hunters who are very good shots and who have an instant and detailed grasp of every detail of deer anatomy from any given angle. Heavier cartridges provide a little more room for error, which is important to a new hunter.

As for choosing a specific rifle for a beginner, I discuss this (as well as more about cartridges, etc.) in my book, 'The Beginners Guide to Hunting Deer for Food.'

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers.]

Last Call for the December Deer Class

2011-12-09T06:08:00.003-05:00

I've had multiple last-minute cancellations for the deer hunting class this weekend here in Charlottesville. This puts me in a pretty tough spot, since most of the expenses are fixed regardless of the number of students.

If anyone wants to sign up at the last minute, this would be a good time. This is probably the last deer class that we will be able to do, since the deer farm that supplies the fresh deer for the class to work on will be closing soon and eliminating their remaining animals.

As covered by the New York Times, reviewed by We Love DC, and many, many other newspapers, magazines and blogs. The class will be this weekend, December 10th and 11th.

The cost per person is $380. This price includes all ammunition, use of rifles, a few meals, and other class materials. For a full description of what the class involves, I suggest reading the review on We Love DC.

If interested, please send an email to jack.landers@gmail.com. We accept credit cards and bank transfers through Paypal under this email address. Personal checks or cash are also accepted. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to shoot me an email.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers.]

Five Gifts for Over $100

2011-12-08T02:34:00.008-05:00

Perhaps I've been too much of a cheapskate. Every year I do a list of the top five gifts under either $30 or $20 on this blog. If consumer spending really does drive the American economy (which I don't fully buy but that's beside the point) then I'm not doing my fair share. In that spirit, here are my top five Christmas gifts for hunters and fishermen for over $100.

1. The Brinkman charcoal smoker. I received one of these as a gift a few years ago and have gotten someone else's money's worth many times over.

Here's the neat thing about having a smoker: it widens your fishing options. If you live near the coast and catch Spanish mackerel then you probably have a low opinion of them as food once they've been out of the water for more than a few hours. But if you brine the filets overnight and then put them on the smoker then they are delicious. Any oily fish is, really. Eat it as-is, or put it on toast with butter, sliced onion and capers, or use it in potato salad. Ditto carp (which is good many different ways), gizzard shad and every other fish that I have ever tried smoking.

The Brinkman is just large enough to smoke all sorts of other things as well. Whole venison hindquarters stack in easily if you take off the last few inches of bone. I smoked an entire wild ham for Thanksgiving last month by removing the top wire rack to make room. I'll be experimenting with squirrels on it next week. Everything tastes better smoked.

2. 'Blizzard Stalker Pro' hunting boots, by Rocky. Another gift from a few years ago, these things have kept my feet extremely warm in outdoor situations where I would have welcomed the excuse to turn around and go inside. But no, my feet were perfectly warm twenty degrees below freezing so I sat there and kept hunting through the bad weather. Stupid damned boots...

3. Lets just go nuts and throw something really expensive on here. For close to $600 you can make a new hunter (or an experienced one) extremely happy by buying her or him this Leupold VX-3 rifle scope. If you worry about getting the right thing, trust me that this is it.

I personally do not own this exact model, but I have a less expensive model by Leupold on my primary deer rifle and I can vouch for the quality. The difference between this and a $100 scope won't be noticed at the shooting range. The difference will become clear when its drizzling and when the sun is almost down and the light is so low that when you look through a cheap scope all you see is foggy blackness, while the Leupold will still let you see the deer or pig or sasquatch or whatever you are hunting and you manage to make the shot after all.

4. Its not like I would ever consider spending more than $20 on myself for anything except a tank of gas or a heart transplant. But if I wasn't such a cheap bastard then I would buy myself a set of shooting sticks or a tripod along the lines of this Bog Gear shooting tripod. As many shooting rests do, this thing can double as a camera tripod. Personally, I tend to normally use cheap $20 monopods because I know I'm just going to keep losing them in the woods. But my shooting would probably be better at longer ranges if I had one of these.

5. If you are terrified that your daughter or husband is going to ruin their hearing at the shooting range with their new hobby then you can do something about the problem this Christmas. Buy them a set of these neat electronic hearing protectors by Peltor.

This type of hearing protector electronically filters out loud sounds that could damage hearing, while amplifying quieter sounds. That means that the user doesn't have to remove their hearing protection at the range in order to understand what the person next to them is trying to tell them (which is probably, 'keep your ear muffs on because this next shot is gonna burst your eardrums!).

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. Why am I including a picture of fresh rainbow trout? Because trout taste really good when you smoke them on your Brinkman smoker. And its dark while I'm writing this and I can't take a good photo of my smoker or my boots or rifle scope right now. So enjoy the barely relevant picture of the trout, ok?]

SBW Reviews My Deer Book

2011-12-06T03:49:00.004-05:00

My fellow blogger, The Suburban Bushwacker, has posted a short review of my first book today.

Seeing reviews from guys like SBW really means even more to me than the reviews that have run in big newspapers, written by experienced hunters. I appreciate the feedback from the big guys as well, but someone like SBW is the audience that this book was aimed at in the first place. Intelligent adult beginners.

What I wanted to accomplish with this book wasn't impressing experienced hunters. I wanted to tell new hunters what they need to know in order to have that life-changing experience of getting their first deer. I wanted to give them this information without confusing them with things that they'll have trouble getting right at first and don't really need to know to take a non-trophy deer.

And by the way, after the last deer class where I had to literally turn people away, the December deer class coming up this weekend still has open spots so I implore anyone interested to please sign up. Its probably the last one ever, since the deer farm is closing. Email me at Jack.Landers@gmail.com for details or with any questions.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. This is not a whitetail deer at all; rather it is an axis deer from India which I photographed in the wild in Texas. I'm pulling an all-nighter editing edits on 'Eating Aliens' and I just had to reach for an invasive deer photo... ]

Five Gifts for Under $20

2011-12-05T20:17:00.007-05:00

Its that time of year again where I like to make lists of things that you might want to consider buying for the new hunter or fisherman on your Christmas list. My list has changed since last year, owing to my experiences hunting and fishing around the US while working on Eating Aliens.

So here it is. My annual list of the five best gifts for under $20 for the modern beginning subsistence hunter and fisherman. I'll do a pricier list later.

1. The Jitterbug fishing lure is absolutely the best $6 that you can spend on fishing tackle. Arbogast has been making it since 1938 and there is a good reason why its still in production. The Jitterbug catches fish. Largemouth bass, in particular. It makes you look like you actually know what you are doing. Last month I was in Texas to write and hunt and film a documentary and while I was there I tried again and again to catch a nice Texan largemouth. I failed miserably right up until my last afternoon in the Hill Country, when I remembered that I had a Jitterbug still in its packaging on the back seat of my car. I tore it from the plastic and swapped it out for the failed rubber worm on my line. On the very first cast with this lure I nailed a 15 inch largemouth, which was dinner. On my second cast I hooked up with a 14 incher, which I released. There was no third cast because I was worried I'd keep catching fish and I already had dinner under control.

I've had many 'very first cast' stories with Jitterbugs. A strong runner-up is the Hula Popper, also made by Arbogast. Both the Jitterbug and the Hula Popper come in different colors and versions. The ones I have linked to are the classics that have worked very well for me.

2. Hank Shaw's book, 'Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast' will make even an advanced hunter or fisherman look good. Hank has recipes for things that you probably didn't even know that you could eat. If the deer aren't around or the fish aren't biting you'll still know some wild plants and mushrooms that you can bring home for dinner.

3. The Butt-Out tool. It says what it does and does what it says. I won't get too graphic in my description of this thing, but suffice to say that it makes a very unpleasant step in gutting any medium to large animal easier and faster than it would otherwise be. I own one and have used it on hogs, whitetail deer and fallow deer and it has always worked well. Just remember to put it in the dishwasher when you're done.

4. Thorlo hiking socks. I know they're socks. For Christmas. Shut up. They're comfortable and warm. When you're hunting deer from an ambush, your feet get cold while you're waiting around. Serious socks are the answer and Thorlos are the best. My fraternal twin brother hiked the Appalachian Trail with a guy named Mud Elephant who supposedly invented the things and sold the design to a company with the deal being that they'd give him free socks for life. Then they got sold or something to some other company that told him to get lost and now Mud Elephant doesn't get free socks anymore. He has to pay for them, just like you'll have to. But its still not very much money considering the 'oh yeah, the Thorlos are up!' feeling that you get when they come out of the dryer.

5. I hear that the Beginner's Guide to Hunting Deer for Food is a pretty good book...

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers]

Take a Beginner Hunting

2011-12-03T13:00:00.003-05:00

To all of the experienced hunters who are reading this, I have a favor to ask. Right now, assuming that you use Facebook, post a status update with an open invitation to take an adult beginner out on their first hunt.

We've still got plenty of hunting season left. In Virginia the season goes all the way through the end of December. Plus there's turkeys, geese, squirrels, etc. Whatever you are hunting next weekend, offer to take a beginner out with you. I guarantee that you will be glad that you did it.

As hunters, we tend to lament the gradual loss of hunting in American culture and the diminished numbers of people buying licenses year after year. You can do something about this right now. You don't need to make a donation anywhere. You don't need to show up at a rally or write a letter to your Congressman. Just go hunting and take somebody new with you. Post that status update on Facebook and find out who wants to learn how to hunt.

[Photo copyright 2010 by Douglas Ghizzoni. That's me on the left in the gray shirt at the end of a butchering demonstration, with John Durant in the red shirt]

The Gully Doe

2011-12-01T11:39:00.003-05:00

Late yesterday afternoon I bagged my first wild deer of this season.

We set up on a hillside looking down towards the stream bed at the bottom of a steep wooded gully about 200 yards across. I had documentary filmmaker Helenah Swedberg along. Her process of trying to make the shot was every bit as challenging as mine.

I prefer to use natural concealment when I hunt. Pricey tree stands or box blinds are not my style. A large fallen tree provided an ideal natural blind to sit behind with a steady rest for my rifle. We dropped a couple of towels on the damp ground to sit on. A bit of new brush and some fallen dead branches obstructed my line of sight. I walked along the expected path of my bullet to clip branches and push aside dead wood.

The terrain would steer a deer towards us sooner or later. A pair of long ponds flanked us on either end of the gully and the stream connecting them. The steepness of most of my side of the gully made it unlikely that whitetails would cross at any point other than the shallowest crossing of the stream where footprints in the mud gave it all away. For this reason both my rifle and Helenah's camera were pointed right at the crossing.

Within an hour of dusk the woods came alive. Squirrels came down from their trees to feed and fight with each other. A great blue heron flew low and smooth from one pond to the other and I watched it from above, so close that I could have hit it with a rock.

The deer first appeared about 200 yards away at the edge of the woods. I wasn't clear on where the property line was over there, and besides that Helenah still had her camera set up pointing the other way. I looked at it through the scope and passed up a pretty simple shot hoping that something else would come along. We tried to keep track of where it was but it disappeared behind a thick tangle of brush.

The sun had dipped below the Blue Ridge Mountains. Official sunset was rapidly approaching. Here in the shade of the woods I started to worry about how much longer I would be able to see anything through my scope and whether Helenah's Canon 5D would pick anything up either.

And then there it was. Probably the same deer reappeared on the other side of the gully with less than five minutes of shooting light remaining. I contemplated waiting. It seemed to be headed in the general direction of the crossing that we were ambushing. If we did nothing and waited then it was very likely that it would walk right down into the open to the point where Helenah had pointed her tripod and camera at. But by then the light would be gone.

I whispered, 'deer, right there!' to Helenah. I looked back behind my shoulder and she seemed to recognize where I was looking at. The rifle came to my shoulder and I leveled off the crosshairs of the scope onto the deer.

The doe was about 130 yards away. She was standing almost broadside, quartering slightly towards me. Because she was within fifty yards of the property line I decided that I had better try for a spine shot in order to avoid any sort of legal problems with retrieving my deer. I didn't want her taking a single step before dying. The crosshairs centered right above and slightly behind the shoulder.

Then the gun spoke and the doe dropped like the proverbial ton of bricks and rolled a ways down the hill. Behind a fallen tree! I couldn't see her very well. I saw the white of her tail sticking out and inferred where the body was.

As always with anything that looks like a spine shot, I jacked another cartridge into the chamber and kept my eye on the scope and my finger hovering over the trigger ready to take another shot at a seconds notice if she started to get up. For at least a full minute, maybe more, I stayed ready for a follow-up shot.

I did this because a slightly flubbed spine shot looks exactly like the real thing. At first, anyway. If you look at an individual vertebrae on a deer or most other animals you will find a sort of dorsal projection of bone which is called the spinous process. If your bullet clips the spinous process without hitting the actual spinal cord then the deer will be shocked and knocked out instantly. The lights go out right away, exactly like a real spine shot. No struggling or kicking. But a minute or so later the deer will suddenly get to its feet and run away (unless something more vital has also been hit). A deer wounded in this way can be expected to recover completely but its still a hell of an awful thing to put an animal through for nothing.

Because of this risk, when you think you have a spine shot then you should proceed with caution and keep the gun ready to put another shot in the deer if it starts to get up. Do not be that guy who was high-fiving his buddy and whipping out the cell phone when the deer jumped up and ran off while the rifle was leaned up against a tree.

As it happened, the deer turned out to be dead four or five different ways. My spine shot had angled back after entering and done a full-on Grassy Knoll job on the doe. One single 180 grain bullet had knocked out the spine and then changed direction inside of the deer's body, traversing nearly the whole length of the body, ripping apart the very backs of the lungs, the liver and the digestive system before exiting right in front of a hindquarter, re-entering into the top of that hindquarter (perhaps the deer was twisting around from the force of the bullet?), smashing through the femur and then exiting again.

This sort of thing is why I hunt so often with a .30-'06. It keeps things interesting.

The only bad news on the human side of this transaction was that Helenah didn't quite get the shot on camera. But that's hunting for you. Wildlife photography of this type seems to really be almost identical to hunting. We're both trying to stay hidden and quiet and figure out where an animal is going to be in order to point a lens at it and push a button at just the right moment. It takes practice to get it right. In retrospect, I had enough time before dark that I should have waited at least a few more seconds until I had a clear signal from Helenah that she had the camera on the deer and was ready to go. Live and learn. We'll get it right on the next deer.

[Photograph copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. This photo does not depict the deer that I shot during the hunt described. The doe in this photo is one that I photographed in Texas a few weeks earlier.]

December Deer Hunting Class

2011-11-29T20:19:00.005-05:00

We still have spots open for the December deer class -- which will probably be the last one before the deer farm closes and we can't get any more fresh deer for students to work on.

The December deer hunting class will take place on the weekend of December 10th. This two-day class covers everything that a complete beginner needs to know to learn how to hunt deer for food. From natural history to anatomy to a trip to a rifle range, culminating with the hands-on skinning, gutting, and butchering of a freshly-killed deer.

As covered by the New York Times and reviewed in depth by We Love DC.

The cost is $380, which includes several meals and all materials including rifles, ammunition, etc. No experience is necessary and all types of people are welcome. The class is held in Charlottesville, Virginia. Amtrak can take you straight into the center of Charlottesville without changing trains from DC, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, etc.

Interested persons should email me at Jack.Landers@gmail.com.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers]

Hunting Pigs on Foot with a Knife

2011-11-29T14:04:00.006-05:00

When hunting with projectiles there are a few standard things that one learns to keep in mind at all times. The distance between the hunter and the prey; the direction of the wind; and the concealment of the hunter (not getting skylined, etc.). When I was hunting pigs on foot with a knife I found that an additional element became very important. Hills.

The slope of the land is a major factor in hunting with only a knife. The hot pursuit of the pig will usually only last about 30 seconds at the most. The herd will be heading straight for thick cover where they will lose you quickly. During that very short chase the hunter needs every possible advantage in order to close the deal and using the slope of the terrain is essential.

I learned the hard way, repeatedly, that it is nigh impossible to gain ground on a pig while sprinting up a hill. The pig is simply more efficient at running uphill than a human is, at least over short distances. A better runner than I might be able to gain ground on level terrain. Bounding downhill, I found that I could really use my long legs as an advantage over the pig's short legs.

The ideal set-up would be to find a food source in an open field (baiting would be a smart idea) and set yourself up in ambush along the shortest route between the food source and the nearest cover or the edge of the woods, up-hill from the food source. Alternatively, it is possible to spot-and-stalk to such a position.

Spot-and-stalk works best on smaller groups of pigs. The larger the herd, the more eyes and ears are keeping watch and the less likely it is that you will succeed in approaching unnoticed. Keeping down-wind of the pigs throughout the approach is absolutely critical. If the wind is favorable for this, it is good to creep along the edge of a meadow at dusk with the woods behind you to hide your silhouette. When you reach the point where you are closest to the pigs, begin to move in. If the pigs are looking the other way and the wind is in your favor then you might be able to walk very close before they notice you. Move silently. Ideally, you want to sneak in within no more than about 25 yards before they start running. Every step that you can take unseen is one less step that the pigs can run away from you once the chase begins.

A variation on this could work very well when hunting in a two person team. One hunter positions himself at the edge of the woods at the point nearest to the pigs in the open field. The other hunter circles around and deliberately makes some noise to frighten the pigs into trotting off into the woods. The first hunter pounces on a pig as they move past him, placing a long, sharp knife into the heart.

The knife should be longer than a typical hunting knife used for quartering a deer. You will need a blade that can reach well into the vitals of a hog. Use a sheath knife and don't even consider a folder for this job. I used this Buck knife with a six inch blade because it was what I had that seemed to fit the bill. Something with a longer blade would probably be a better idea, such as this Buck Hoodlum survival knife. Carry an extra knife as well, since a blade can be accidentally dropped during the chase.

Do not choose the largest pig among the herd as your target. Look for a smaller pig of less than 100 pounds. Wild boar can grow to over 300 pounds and they have sharp, dangerous tusks. When cornered (which is what you are trying to do here), a wild boar can do some very serious, possibly life-threatening, damage to you. Stay away from the big ones. Look for a smaller pig at the back of the pack. Also stay away from the really small piglets. They have large mothers that will protect them at all costs.

Don't try to fight the pig. Just kill it immediately when you get close enough. If the pig is cornered then do not hesitate. Do not give it the time or opportunity to turn around into a position where it can use its teeth. A plunging stab from above and behind, through the lower shoulder, into the heart.

Practicing on armadillos is a good way of developing the instinct to kill instantly right up close. This isn't like hunting with a rifle, where you can take a few seconds to collect yourself before pulling the trigger. Hesitating for a second at the moment when the kill needs to happen will result in your prey either escaping or doing something nasty to you with its teeth. You've got to be absolutely ruthless and quick at the culmination of the chase. It is best to acquire that trait while practicing with something that doesn't bite back.

To summarize, here is what you need to remember: Mind the wind, never chase uphill, use a long knife, and stick with medium to small pigs. And just in case, maybe you'd better keep something handy for a tourniquet.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers]

Invasive Species as Bioterror Agents?

2011-11-22T18:35:00.004-05:00

There is a little thing going around the internet today about the danger of invasive species being used as bio-terror agents.

Um, no. This makes no sense at all. While invasive species could be introduced as a form of ecological vandalism, none of the examples offered would even remotely meet the definition of 'terrorism.'

Terrorism is the commission of acts of violence against civilian targets for the purpose of promoting an atmosphere of fear among civilians, in order to achieve other political aims. Nobody is going to be hiding in their closets because of wheat rust.

This gentleman who is trying to sound the alarm, Lawrence Roberge, said the following:

"In the hands of a rogue nation, terrorists, or an individual bent on destruction, an invasive species could have an affect similar to better known potential biological weapons such as smallpox or anthrax."

No. None of the examples given would do this. There is a world of difference between a fatal or potentially fatal disease killing human beings when people can clearly see that this was imposed on them by an enemy through something like the anthrax mailings of 2001, versus some virus that is killing deer or a parasite that reduces the wheat crop over a period of successive years. Invasive species can produce substantial economic damage but that is not the same thing as terrorism.

What Roberge is describing is a form of asymmetrical warfare. But its not really terrorism. Terrorism is a form of asymmetrical warfare, but all asymmetrical warfare is not terrorism.

Roberge recently completed a study on invasive species and naturally his conclusion here is that we need to spend more money on studies. Frankly, I'm fed up with studies on invasive species (although I have not looked at the specifics of Roberge's research and am not prepared to say that it isn't worthwhile). Usually the studies go on and on for years and the conclusion always seems to be that we need more studies. Personally, I think that at least half of every public dollar spent on dealing with invasive species should be spent specifically on eradication instead of year after year of research while the problem gets worse. Research is good but it seems to have often come at the cost of real action.

All of that said, invasive species could very easily be used for asymmetrical warfare. The trouble is that many applications could eventually backfire on the saboteur. It would be very easy to go tit for tat with something like this, and even without it being done deliberately, the species in question could end up being accidentally introduced to crops or habitat of the saboteur's country or allies.

Frankly, I think that so many species are being constantly introduced and moved around the United States on their own already that the deliberate introduction of harmful invasives might just be a drop in the bucket.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers]

December Class Spots Available

2011-11-21T15:30:00.004-05:00

What looks to be the last deer hunting class on the weekend of December 10th still has plenty of spots open. More sign-ups would be very welcome.

Meanwhile, the fully-booked November class for this coming weekend just had one spot open back up unexpectedly due to a cancellation. If anyone wants to get in on that at the last minute, the class will be here in Charlottesville, Virginia for the price of $380. All materials, use of rifles, ammunition for the class rifles and a few meals are included.

You will learn the natural history, ecology, anatomy and evolutionary history of deer. You will learn from a staff of expert instructors how to safely and accurately shoot a rifle and have the opportunity to test out a variety of weapons to see what is a good fit for you. While working with a freshly killed deer, you will learn how to gut, skin, quarter, butcher and cook a deer using only a knife. You will go home with knowledge and skills that enable you to feed yourself and your family on free-range wild food.

To register for a class or to inquire about details, please send me an email at Jack.Landers@gmail.com

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers.]

Why I Hunt Pigs Dangerously

2011-11-21T14:16:00.005-05:00

A thoughtful commenter on one of my recent blog entries asked why exactly I have been setting about packs of wild boar on foot with nothing more than a knife in hand. This is a reasonable question.

There are two reasons.

First, I have become very much interested in very primitive hunting methods. Persistence hunting has been one of those primitive methods that I've blogged about before, but I'm not really cut out for long-distance running at the moment. I'm in decent shape but I haven't been training for marathon-type distances and with several old injuries to my feet and knees (broken bones which were not properly dealt with at the time) I doubt that I am physically capable of running for that long.

Yet persistence hunting is only the first of humankind's early hunting techniques. Ambushing prey on foot with a simple blade must surely have followed closely on the heels of persistence hunting.

This is what I have been attempting with these wild pigs. Indeed, I do not think that it would be possible to use persistence hunting methods to take a wild pig. Swine tend to head straight for very thick cover that they know very well and a runner would be lost quickly in it. Pigs create a maze of tunnels roughly three feet high through thorns and scrub which they can run through but which a human pursuer would have to drop to hands and knees to pass through. Trust me, I have tried.

Taking wild pigs on foot requires either something that holds the pig in place (as when hunting with trained dogs) or closing with the animal very rapidly and either overtaking or cornering it in order to kill it with a knife or spear.

I have made a habit of hunting armadillos this way, which has been good practice for running down pigs. Only a few days ago I used a steep cliff to corner an armadillo and took it on foot alone, butchering it for food. The idea is to scale up these tactics against more dangerous prey. Eventually I would like to amass enough experience hunting a variety of prey this way to be able to produce a book or a documentary film about it. As a survival tactic, it would be a valuable skill. All that you need is a sharp thing and good health. Nobody else seems to be researching this so it seems like something I ought to be doing.

I think that actually attempting these primitive techniques can help me to understand some very old aspects of being human in a way that mere research cannot.

The other reason, which I find difficult to explain, is that once I had the idea I cannot bear the thought of failing to follow through with it.

I realize that what I am doing is extremely dangerous and arguably stupid. If I keep it up then eventually I am going to find myself up against a large, aggressive boar and I will be badly injured. I know this. A subsistence hunter 20,000 years ago had the advantage of growing up in a society where these things were taught from a young age and he or she learned tactics from stories and examples that I have to learn for myself, the hard way.

Yet I live in an age of penicillin, plaster casts and expert stitching. The odds of me actually being killed by a wild boar are very low. Worst case scenario, I get torn up and bitten and lose some blood and maybe suffer some nerve damage and broken bones. I can deal with that. The real problem is that I have had the idea and now that I have been presented with the opportunity to follow through with it, I would never be able to forgive myself for not making the attempt. At heart, I suspect that this is the same thought process that goes through the mind of any American football quarterback. He knows that its only a matter of time until he receives the big injury, but he goes back into the game again and again because he must.

My whole approach to the way that I live my life has changed very much over the last few years. I have a philosophy of living -- which I apply only to myself and hold up as a standard for nobody else -- which demands that I constantly seek out and choose a better story to live. This is approximately what Teddy Roosevelt referred to as "choosing the strenuous life." I am well aware of the fact that I am burning the candle at both ends and that sooner or later there will be a toll to pay.

On Holy Cows

2011-11-21T12:39:00.006-05:00

It has been necessary for our society to create holy cows. When an animal becomes critically endangered, we usually need to transform the way that we think about that animal in order to muster enough support to save it.

Grey wolves, American alligators and bison are all animals that were once either despised or taken for granted. They were all brought back from immediate danger of extinction in part because of citizen action and people's changing attitudes toward them. People need to think of an animal as being special or iconic or lovable in order to rally behind the idea of saving the species.

I support the creation of holy cows insofar as it is necessary to save something from extinction. My own rock-bottom ecological value, which forms the basis for all of my judgments about land management and conservation policy, is the prevention of extinctions. If we need to crank out some plush toys to get boaters to stop slicing up manatees, then so be it.

However, our love of holy cows must eventually become the victim of our own successes. When alligators bounced back enough to become nearly as ubiquitous as squirrels, they needed to be kept in check to prevent quite so many people and dogs from being eaten. The magnificent giant Canada goose, once thought extinct, is now being culled by the hundreds of thousands at the request of the same federal government that formerly protected it.

None of these holy cows are really, in their own nature, what we pretend that they are. Grey wolves are not gentle souls that always cooperate and feed only on field mice (Farley Mowatt lied). It is doubtful that alligators have any personal sense of their prehistoric charm and dinosaur-like appearance. And the only sense in which bison are iconic images of a tough, wild America full of history and adventure is in our minds.

There is a proposal being considered by the management of Yellowstone National Park to start hunting bison from the park. A lot of people are really upset about this and understandably so. They've been taught for a long time that bison are holy cows and its not easy to switch gears. Yet this will almost always be the result of success at restoring a population. We have as many bison as can possibly survive in Yellowstone without seasonal starvation. Unless more habitat is secured for them, bison need to be removed. Hunting them for meat is the most effective means of doing this.

Bison are special animals in many ways. But all animals are. A rat or a pig wants to live just as much as a bison does. Every mammal probably experiences pain, joy and wonder in a similar way. We don't think of the Norwegian rat as special because we take it for granted and because it is a pest that can be a problem even in urban or suburban habitats. To the lovers of holy cows, bison are distant emblems of abstract ideas and their love of the animals probably has very little to do with the animal's real nature.

I spent much of the last two weeks on a bison ranch in the hill country of Texas. The animals were pretty much wild. They get fed a little snack now and then in order to maintain the ability to lure them back onto the ranch when they wander off, but for the most part the bison are completely independent and unmanageable. As the herd's numbers have gradually increased on this ranch they require more food. They have started to break out into two separate groups under the charge of two different bulls much of the time. If they keep reproducing then they will have to move farther and farther for food and pretty soon the amount of habitat that they require will be beyond what is available.

Nothing out there is regularly eating the bison except for humans. Remember that North America lost most of its megafauna and large predators around 11,000 years ago. Smilodon, the short-faced bear, the American cheetah, and the dire wolf are all gone. This situation we had a few hundred years ago of herds of bison numbering in the millions was probably not part of a very good or sustainable ecology. Grey wolves will hunt bison, but in order to specialize in hunting bison the wolves need the bison numbers to hit a critical population level of around 10,000 bison in the area. Otherwise there aren't enough young, old, sick and weak animals regularly available to justify the very dangerous task of even learning how to hunt such big and dangerous prey.

So long as those wild places like Yellowstone (or Ted Turner's ranch) are as limited as they are, we're going to have to hunt animals like bison when our efforts to restore them are successful.

Holy cows must eventually become victims of their own success. Perhaps some of the Yellowstone bison can be moved to Native American reservations that want them, but this doesn't dodge the issue of needing to hunt them. It only delays it.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers.]

Cool Hand Jack

2011-11-15T15:50:00.004-05:00

Last night I stepped outside of my cottage here in the Texas Hill Country and saw the unmistakable black outlines of a group of around half dozen or so wild hogs. Right there in the front yard, grazing on the grass. Instinctively I ran straight at them.

After about a week of hunting wild boar on foot and armed only with a knife I have learned a few tricks. Among them is the fact that hesitation means defeat. Many other things can also easily result in defeat, but hesitation is right up there.

This time, as I rocketed across the grass and over mounds of bison dung, the sensation of thorns cutting into my bare feet prompted the reflection that perhaps hesitation sufficient at least to notice that I'd forgotten my shoes might have been wise.

A smallish pig lagged towards the back of the terrified pack of surprised swine. I chose this pig as my target and summoned the reserves for a final push. As I closed to within a few paces of my prey I reached to my hip for the familiar shape of my knife and realized that it was not there.

The absurdity of the situation suddenly dawned on me. I was running barefoot and completely unarmed straight for a pack of pissed-off wild boar, the largest of which was something over 200 pounds. I had forgotten shoes, knife and common sense.

I laughed out loud at my situation and continued to chase the pigs a little farther. I didn't close the deal, lacking a weapon. But nor did the pigs realize that they had the upper hand in every sense, so I escaped unharmed.

Sometimes nothing is a pretty cool hand.

Meanwhile, the November deer class is fully booked. We have a winner for the scholarship spot and then another applicant who was just so darn good that we've given him a scholarship spot for the December class. There are plenty of spots still open for the December deer class, so please sign up! As always, it is a two day class. This will be on December 10th and 11th in Charlottesville, Virginia. The cost is $380. In order to sign up, send me an email at Jack.Landers@gmail.com. A 25% deposit ($95) is due in order to reserve a space and that deposit can be paid via Paypal to the same email address.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. Yeah, I know this is a buck whitetail, not a pig. But every time I see a wild pig I start running after it and forget to take pictures. I really like this photo of a buck that I took yesterday, so here you go.]

Hill Country Hogs, the Hard Way

2011-11-09T16:54:00.005-05:00

The black shapes looked out of place on the grassy slope in the Texas Hill Country. Smaller than the bushes, too dark to be deer. They had to be pigs for sure.

I brought the car to a stop and snapped a few photos from the car window. A pair of llamas stood staring at me in the same field. The typical sort of random misfit animals that seem to pop up on ranches around here. A band of whitetails flicked their tails farther away.

The ranch owners who had invited me out for a few weeks had insisted that I wait until after an upcoming hunting class was over before shooting any hogs. They didn't want the noise to spook them. But there is more than one way to kill a pig.

I opened the car door. After a few steps I checked the wind and found it in my favor, blowing slightly crosswise but more or less from the pigs toward me. They were about three hundred yards out.

Mounds of bison dung dotted the field. I stepped around them and kept an eye out for the herd, which fortunately was somewhere else on the ranch right then.

The llamas took a few steps towards me and looked suspicious. A few sentinels among the whitetails looked troubled.

Two hundred yards. I turned my camera on and snapped a picture in the fading light. The pigs oinked and snorted but none had seen me. I kept walking, silently, legs apart and stepping high.

The whitetails bolted for the woods all together. The llamas continued to disapprove.

One hundred yards. I looked for the smallest of the pigs that wasn't too close to a big one. The herd numbered no more than about eight. The biggest of them looked to be about three hundred pounds. I didn't want to end up in a fight with him.

At seventy yards the first of the pigs looked right at me. It did nothing at first. Here was a man, sure. But a man who did not carry a long black stick in his hands. No gun. A man with nothing but his empty hands, and yet walking closer.

Fifty yards. The whole herd was staring at me. It was now or never.

I drew my long steel knife from the sheath on my belt and ran hard and fast for the pig I'd picked out. Blade in hand, I came straight at the herd. For a moment they stood stupidly looking at me and I thought that I might make it all the way in among them. They saw that this strange man did not carry a gun, yet it rapidly become very clear that the strange man was completely out of his mind.

The herd suddenly bolted. I ran hard and chased them across the grass while the disapproving llamas took a few steps back. Yet I fell short. With the nearest pig only a few dozen yards away the herd made it into the thick brush and melted into the shadows and out of sight.

I walked back to my idling car with the knife still in my hand.

Next time.

Deer Class Scholarship Deadline

2011-11-04T23:20:00.004-04:00

Fergus Clare pointed out to me yesterday that we need to establish a clear deadline for applications for the scholarship spot for the November deer class.

Oops.

So the deadline is this coming Wednesday, November 9th. Anyone who wants to apply for the free spot in the deer hunting class happening on the weekend of November 26th needs to send Fergus an email before the 9th. That email should explain who you are and why you would like to take the class. Fergus, who blogs as The Anthohemian and co-teaches skinning and primitive skills for our deer hunting classes, will be reviewing the emails and choosing the winner. His email address is fergusclare@gmail.com.

We'll probably do this again for the December class, but I'm not making any promises right now.

Meanwhile, I'm on the road headed to Texas where I'll be working on my next book (Beginner's Guide to Hunting Canada Geese) at the Madrono ranch in Medina. Tonight I'm holed up in the Saint Vincent Guest House in New Orleans, Louisiana. I'm spending tomorrow wandering around NOLA and seeing the sights and then after one more night at the St. Vincent I'll hit the road again and drive the rest of the way to Medina. If any readers in NOLA want to say hi on Saturday night, shoot me an email at jack.landers@gmail.com.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. Ok, actually I took this photo in Florida a few months ago but I'm in Louisiana and the blog entry needed a photo so an alligator just seemed logical.]

November Deer Hunting Scholarship

2011-11-01T14:33:00.004-04:00

Ok, I know that $380 is a lot of money for most people to pay to come and take one of my two-day deer hunting classes. I certainly couldn't afford to pay for one of my own classes. I know that there are a lot of people who would really benefit from this course but cannot possible afford it.

That is why I'm giving away one place in the November class for free.

To apply, write a brief email explaining why you want to take the class. Tell us a little bit about yourself. One applicant will be chosen for a free spot in the class happening the weekend of November 26th.

The winner will be chosen not by me but by Fergus Clare. Fergus is a primitive skills expert and is one of the co-instructors whom I regularly bring in for the class. Fergus teaches skinning and hide preparation during the deer classes and has also recently started blogging as The Anthrohemian. Email him at fergusclare@gmail.com to apply for the scholarship.

Meanwhile, we still have a bunch of other spots open in the November class. I also intend to offer another class on the second weekend of December if the interest is there. Whatever classes we offer this weekend will almost certainly be the last of the deer hunting classes in Virginia because the deer farm is closing. I've reserved a few deer to use for field dressing and butchering demonstrations and then that is the end of them.

To sign up for the November class without applying for the scholarship, send me an email at jack.landers@gmail.com.

[Photos copyright 2010 by John Athayde]

A Response to Kelly Oliver

2011-11-01T13:09:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I read a bizarre op-ed piece in the New York Times, written by Kelly Oliver. The op-ed, entitled, 'Pet Lovers. Pathologized,' posits that loving an animal is socially unacceptable. Oliver builds her case in part by saying that politicians go hunting primarily in order to project a macho image.

I disagree with much of what Oliver writes in this piece (I don't really sense or encounter much discrimination against people who really love their cats and dogs, but perhaps I don't travel in the same circles as Ms. Oliver). Naturally the item I want to start off with is her characterization of why political candidates are seen hunting.

The political value is not in "channeling Joe Six-Pack," or in demonstrating 'bloodlust.' The value is communicating to the millions of American hunters the idea that this candidate understands you. The act sends a message to hunters that the candidate is one of us. For decades, American hunters have felt derided and attacked and constantly threatened with rules and legislation that seemed to be trying to end hunting one step at a time. When a life-long hunter sees someone running for office, he or she naturally wonders if this is going to be one of the people who puts up more literal and figurative 'no hunting' signs. A photo op during a hunt is a good way for a candidate to send a very clear message to the millions of American hunters and their families that he or she is on their side.

Whether or not the candidate really is much of a hunter or truly intends to be a friend to hunters is another question entirely.

As for Oliver's statement about bloodlust, I really don't think that she understands the psychology or culture of mainstream American hunters at all. A hunter who demonstrates a real bloodlust is an odd duck, usually mistrusted by other hunters in the US. The attitude may be tolerated for a time in a new hunter who is still learning their way, but when an experienced hunter seems to take real joy in the act of killing for its own sake or craves the pain of a living animal then we tend to find that just as creepy as she does.

Oliver's lead-off statement about Presidential candidates eating meat is also a little bit suspect, in my opinion. She asks whether a head of state "could gain office by declaring himself or herself a vegetarian." Could a candidate win by declaring him or herself to be a vegetarian? Of course not. Only about 1% of Americans are vegetarians at any given time. You might as well ask whether a candidate could win office by declaring herself to be a model train collector or a fan of Robert Browning. These aren't things that you can really run on.

Could a candidate who happens to be a vegetarian become President? Yes, I think so. But not by being a vegetarian. There is no one thing that a candidate can declare about him or herself that will cinch the election.

Oliver says that the legal landscape only approves of dependence on non-food animals in cases of "illness, handicap or severe need." Really? Because I'm pretty sure that I can walk into the County Office building and get a dog license without a prescription from my doctor. There are many government-funded shelters for abandoned pets, some of them being no-kill shelters. Many cities and towns have government-maintained parks set up for people to take their pets to. We have laws on the books against some types of cruelty to animals.

The service animal category that she leans her arguments on so heavily is a weak argument for her point. The service animal designation is mostly something that prevents a business from preventing an animal (usually, though not necessarily, a dog) from accompanying a human. Most dogs are not especially well-trained and if a grocery store had to allow every dog in the neighborhood to wander the aisles then there would be feces and urine everywhere, not to mention a lot of eaten food.

This very practical designation given only to animals that are helping humans with disabilities is not the sole or even the primary recognition of animals in our legal landscape. It is one of many ways in which law and government address non-food animals. Oliver is cherry-picking this one role of animals in order to try to prove the specious point that society finds the love of animals to be inherently a sickness.

All of that said, I admire the fact that Oliver is trying to go to bat for people who love animals. I think that her motives are good even if her argument is unconvincing to me.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved.]

Last Call for the October Class

2011-10-27T01:14:00.006-04:00

Following a cancellation, a misunderstanding, and someone who needed to move to the November deer class, I suddenly find myself down from what was a fully booked class to several openings in this weekend's deer hunting class. This is the two day version of the class covered by the New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, etc.

Anyone who was on the fence or couldn't get in before when it was briefly full, here's your chance. Drop me an email at jack.landers@gmail.com

Sorry to regular readers for the steady stream of posts here about the deer classes. Next week I'm leaving for a two week trip to Texas to hunt some very unusual invasive species (the market for emu meat collapsed and it seems that some ranchers just opened the pens) and that will start a steady stream of the gonzo hunting journalism that everyone seems to love.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers]

Autumn's First Success Story

2011-10-26T04:22:00.005-04:00

I don't usually post dead animal pictures here, but I can't resist in this case. A past student of mine (who wishes to remain anonymous) just got his first deer on his own with an ideal shot to the heart with his bow. Based on what he told me, I'm going to guess that the deer was quartering towards him and that the blood on the abdomen in the photo is where the arrow exited.

This same student came out with me for a day of one-on-one tutoring last fall on the opening day of rifle season and dropped a deer that day with a perfect spine shot after successfully stopping the deer for a shot. Now he did it again on his own with a bow.

And he did it on public land! This hunter read the terrain and found a funnel almost exactly the same as the one which we'd used to get his deer last fall. Then he butchered his kill himself. The best part of all is that he took a new hunter along with him on an apprentice license.

I love getting photos and stories like these from class alumni, students and new hunters who read my book. Send me more, please.

Spots Left for October Deer Class

2011-10-20T02:39:00.003-04:00

We've got a few spots that have opened up again for the deer hunting class on October 29-30th. Time is running out. If anyone wants in, shoot me an email at jack.landers@gmail.com

Only two more classes, possibly one in December, and then that is the end when the deer farm that supplies us closes. This is still, as far as I know, the only deer hunting class in the world that supplies a freshly killed deer for students to learn hands-on how to gut, skin, quarter and butcher. When this is over I don't know how long it will be until I can find a way to make a similar program happen somewhere else.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved.]

Africa in 2012?

2011-10-19T17:00:00.008-04:00

I have plans for 2012. In addition to the long-awaited launch of 'Eating Aliens' and hopefully of my goose book, I've decided that its time to get my butt over to Africa.

There are several projects in Africa that I am considering but the most likely option is to spend at least a month hunting and learning from indigenous hunter-gatherers (preferably the San or the Mbuti). Many anthropologists have spent time with the San or with other tribes but I think that doing this from the perspective of an American hunter learning techniques and tactics from indigenous hunters would be something novel and useful enough to be worthwhile.

Part two of the same trip would be to spend time hunting with the staff or biologists of a large park where some type of culling is necessary. I'd like to learn more about how professional hunters in Africa go about their work and see what happens to all of that meat.

Right now my best leads seem to be in either Gabon or Sierra Leone but I'm open to other countries.

The plan is for this expedition to result in a book, several magazine articles and a documentary film. The major factor in deciding which country to visit will be one of financial support. I have no money at all with which to finance this. The book and the film will be able to help promote eco-tourism in the country that is chosen, so support from a state's government is important. We're going to need help getting around the back country, places to pitch a tent, and some type of air travel for myself and a two-person film crew.

Got a private jet that makes regular stops in Africa? Perhaps you own a cargo ship that we can hop across the Atlantic on? I'm open to novel means of transportation. If any of my readers are in a position to help make this project happen then I would love to hear from you.

I can be reached at jack.landers@gmail.com

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved.]

There's Nothing Good about Shooting Exotic Pets

2011-10-19T15:23:00.005-04:00

People keep asking me for my two cents on the story today about the escaped exotic animals in Ohio that were killed by law enforcement agents.

This really isn't my idea of hunting invasive species. I don't think that there was much chance of any of these lions or tigers surviving and reproducing in Ohio. The ideal resolution of the situation would have been for the animals to be captured live and placed in zoos, or possibly reintroduced into the wild if appropriate.

That wasn't a realistic option here. I think that the Sheriff made the right decision given the fact that he had no time or specialized resources for live capture. It is easy for people on the sidelines to complain and criticize. Its very easy to just say 'they should have tranquilizer darts and capture the animals alive,' if the critic doesn't know anything about how this is done.

Dangerous, hungry animals were running around in the dark. Animals which probably had minimal fear of humans due to having been fed in cages by a human for a long time. Something had to be done immediately. It would have been impossible to obtain enough tranquilizer guns quickly enough, let alone appropriate darts. Then there is the need for proper training in how to use these specialized tools.

What the Sheriff and his deputies had to work with were firearms. It was an ugly business but I can't blame them. The loss of at least one cheetah is particularly disappointing, given the critically endangered status of that species.

I am surprised that none of these deputies were harmed. Taking on a grown tiger (it is referred to in the media as a Bengal, but I really doubt that any of these journalists or law enforcement agents have the slightest idea exactly what it was) with a service pistol is scary stuff. Professional hunters would not even consider going after a predator like that with such light armament. Then consider that few of these people are likely to have really understood the anatomy of a lion or tiger and probably didn't even know exactly what part to aim at.

For example, if a grown male African lion is running straight at you, what part of the thing would you shoot at? The head seems like a good choice but that is a really big head coming right at you. The mane over the face tends to throw people off. The skull actually slopes backward right away over the eyes, but the bulk of the mane makes the head look taller than it really is. Many hunters have made the mistake of thinking that they were gunning right for the brain when in fact their bullets were only hitting hair or creasing the hide.

Try to keep this little bit of trivia in mind the next time there is an escaped lion running around your neighborhood. Little mistakes like that have cost many African hunters their lives and its really remarkable that these deputies managed to get through the night without human losses.

If there is a lesson to be learned here it is that someone with a long history of animal abuse and neglect charges should not be allowed to continue keeping exotic, dangerous animals around like this.

[Photo copyright 2010 by Helenah Swedberg. All rights reserved.]

'Lives of the Hunted,' by Ernest Thomspon Seton

2011-10-18T16:22:00.004-04:00

'Lives of the Hunted,' by Ernest Thompson Seton.

Ernest Seton (1860-1946) is my favorite naturalist. I first came across his work at the age of around seven years old when I paid the enormous sum of $15 at a flea market for an antique set of natural history volumes that included his work on mammals. $15 was a hell of a lot of money for a seven year old in 1985.

I am not a fan of wildly anthropomorphic stories about animals. Yet a strictly dry, scientific account of how an animal lives is not a very useful means for most people (children in particular) to understand a species. Seton walks this line well in 'Lives of the Hunted.' This is a collection of stories about animals' lives that hews very closely to Seton's serious understanding of them.

Seton ascribes motives and emotions to these animals that cannot possibly be proven. He received a lot of criticism from other scientists at the time for this but I consider Seton's characterizations to be fair literary license taken in the interest of greater popular understanding of animals. When I think about coyotes I still inevitably recall Seton's tale of 'Tito', a coyote who represents a shift that really did take place in terms of how western coyotes respond to human hunting pressure. 'Krag' the bighorn sheep is still my basic idea of what a wild American ram is and how it behaves. If I even hunt bighorn and find any success then half of the credit will be owed to Seton's story. A little bit of literary license goes a long way in helping the information to stick with the reader.

These stories were written in the late 1800's and first published as a single collection in 1901. Popular taste in writing styles have changed but the stories and the animals remain relevant. I come back to this and other similar books by Ernest Thompson Seton every few years and his work remains just as entertaining and informative as it ever was.

As a hunter, an outdoor writer, and a hunting instructor my philosophy is that the first duty of a new hunter (or an experienced hunter pursuing new prey) is to become a student of the animal. Don't start out studying tactics. Study the animal and understand how its motives and needs change throughout the year and in response to different environmental conditions. The world needs more writing like Seton's to help us to do this.

Amazon carries an e-book version for the Kindle which is absolutely free, though it does not appear to contain every story from the original edition of the book. A reprint edition of the entire book is also available. My own first edition in nearly perfect condition is not going anywhere for love or money.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved]

Jump-Shooting Canada Geese

2011-10-13T11:21:00.005-04:00

Jackson Landers hunts Canada Geese from Helenah Swedberg on Vimeo.

Lately a documentary filmmaker, Helenah Swedberg, has been filming a movie about me and my work. The filming will continue for a few more months and then she'll be editing for a long time after that. Meanwhile she has edited and posted a few clips from what she's captured so far.

A couple of days ago she posted this great little three minute thing showing the goose hunt that I was on recently with Michael Macfarlan of Glass House Winery.

We started out trying to pass-shoot a medium-sized flock that didn't quite come within range. After that flock left we figured we'd try fishing for a while until some more geese showed up. Very quickly we heard a few geese flying nearby so I started calling them in while rapidly switching from rod to gun.

Yes, I know that I sound completely ridiculous when I'm making goose sounds but the fact remains that it worked and the three geese came right in to me. I was too slow to make the shot as they passed overhead so it became necessary to go in and get them off of the other side of the pond where they had landed.

This type of hunting for waterfowl is called 'jump-shooting.' Michael and I used a little bit of planning to take advantage of working in a pair. Geese usually take off facing into the wind in order to generate lift, just like an airplane does. By checking the direction of the wind relative to where the geese were, I could predict the path they would have to take once spooked. Michael took up a position directly along that route and remained visible. This way their attention would be focused on Michael while I started to sneak around to the other side of the pond where I could jump them from behind.

I stalked in through the trees and emerged about twenty five yards away from the geese before they spooked away from me and started to take off. I dropped two of them right there while the third goose behaved exactly as expected. Michael took the third goose with a perfect shot as it flew straight at him.

The lesson here for new hunters is that you don't need a lot of gear and money to hunt Canada geese. We used no decoys, no factory-made calls, no dogs, no blind. Even the boat that was used to retrieve the dead geese wasn't necessary. A fishing rod with a snag hook works quite well. We didn't even have to wake up especially early. All it took was a shotgun, hunting license, and ammunition. My battered old Mossberg 500 cost me around $150 used and has paid for its self many times over in geese, turkeys, and doves.

As for the goose burgers, all I did was butcher and grind the meat. Daniel Klein (host of 'The Perennial Plate', which was also filming that day) deserves the credit for cooking what I really think was the best hamburger I have ever eaten.

The Accidental Goose Evangelist

2011-10-10T15:41:00.006-04:00

I never intended to allow the giant Canada goose to become a fixture in my life. The very fact of finding myself writing that last sentence is almost absurd.

For a long time I was known as 'the deer guy' but over the past year or so I've probably become more known for my advocacy of using nuisance geese as food than I am for teaching people to hunt deer for food. Through events with various Slow Food chapters, articles on my blog, and most recently an appearance filmed for 'The Perennial Plate' I've become very involved with the promotion of goose hunting for both ecological and culinary reasons.

A little over a week ago I had the pleasure of appearing as a guest on The Perennial Plate with host Daniel Klein for an episode that probably won't be ready for broadcast for another month or two. Daniel was a pleasure to work with both during the hunt and after. He stalked in on the geese with me (we were jump-shooting) without spooking them off and later he deftly carved off the meat from one goose in less time that it would take me to remove a single drumstick. The man is a real professional.

I suggested to Daniel that we grind all of the meat from two of the three geese we bagged into goose burgers. What better way to prove the concept of geese as simple, fast cuisine?

We plucked the geese (I saved the down for pillows) and had them butchered within about an hour and a half. The meat was sliced off in rich, red strips and run through an inexpensive meat grinder provided by our hosts at the Glass House Winery where we were hunting and cooking. Plenty of the silky-smooth goose fat made it into the grinder as well, along with a single egg and about half a stick of butter.

After producing the raw material I left Daniel to work his magic as a professional chef. He served these large, thick burgers very simply with only a bit of pan-wilted greens, sliced tomato and a touch of mustard.

As you will see when the episode airs, they looked incredible. More importantly, these were probably the best hamburgers I have ever eaten in my entire life. This is literally true. They tasted especially good paired with Glass House's 'Cvillian' red table wine. It is always a special thing to eat goose meat that was fattened on the same grapes of which the wine is made.

Understand that geese consist of red meat. The meat has much more in common with beef than it does with chicken. Imagine beef with a finer-grained texture, less of a beefy taste, with a softer and more flavorful fat.

Every time I have the opportunity to work with another chef on wild geese that I've hunted and shot, I find myself more and more impressed with the value of this ingredient. For this and other reasons, I am now about 90% sure that my next book will be a beginner's guide to hunting geese for food. The book will focus on unconventional methods of hunting geese that are geared towards beginners, urbanites, and people who do not have the time, space or budget to hunt with a huge spread of decoys at dawn with a couple of specially trained dogs.

Meanwhile, I am willing to go anywhere to prove the value of this nuisance species as food. If governments are going to kill them anyway, lets eat them! If you represent a school, civic organization or other group that has an interest in this topic then I would be happy to travel to speak on the subject and perhaps bring a goose along to cook and serve. Being of very modest means I'll need help with transportation, lodging and other expenses, but you can be sure that I'm still cheaper than Michael Pollan.

Interested persons can contact me at jack.landers@gmail.com

[Photo copyright 2011 by Helenah Swedberg]

Autumn Deer Hunting Classes Scheduled

2011-10-06T16:54:00.004-04:00

For several years now I've been known for offering classes to beginners on how to hunt deer for food. Unfortunately, it is looking like this will have to be the last season of classes for people coming in from out of the area.

A critical component of the classes that I teach is the opportunity for students to work on a freshly killed deer to learn how to gut, skin, quarter, butcher and cook their own food. In order to offer this experience at a specified time I have to get the deer from the only remaining deer farm in Virginia.

I recently found out that the only deer farm in Virginia will be shutting down soon. The owner will have to sell off the rest of the herd and that will be that. However, she has offered to save a few deer for me to use for classes this fall and perhaps the winter.

So this is it. I am scheduling the last few deer classes now and I doubt that it will be possible for me to teach any more of these. If you ever wanted to take one of these classes then this probably is your last chance. As covered by the New York Times, reviewed by We Love DC, and many, many other newspapers, magazines and blogs.

The first two-day class will be offered for the weekend of October 29th-30th. Yes, its short notice but I'm trying to get in as many as I can before the farm is closed and the deer are gone. The second class will be the weekend of November 26th-27th. I might be adding one more in December but that is still up in the air.

The cost per person for each of these classes is $380. This price includes all ammunition, use of rifles, a few meals, and other class materials. For a full description of what the class involves, I suggest reading the review on We Love DC.

A 25% deposit is required to reserve a spot in the class. The balance is due by the start of the class. We reserve the right to cancel the class with a full refund provided if low enrollment or cancellations put us in that position (this has only ever happened once in the last 3 years). Deposits are non-refundable if the student cancels seven days or less from the start of the class.

If interested, please send an email to jack.landers@gmail.com. We accept credit cards and bank transfers through Paypal under this email address. Personal checks or cash are also accepted.

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to shoot me an email.

The Three Things Every New Deer Hunter Must Know

2011-09-26T18:57:00.003-04:00

I spent this past weekend giving one presentation after another at the Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs, PA. Around 15,000 people attended the fair and my publisher kept me very busy speaking and performing venison butchering demonstrations. My first book, 'The Beginners Guide to Hunting Deer for Food,' sold out completely (don't worry, its still available on line).

We had a great mixture of aspiring and experienced hunters. My favorite part of the event was hearing from attendees afterward who told me how the approach to hunting deer that I teach would completely change the way that they learned to hunt.

The methods that I teach in my classes and in my book can be boiled down to a very few concepts that open up deer hunting to people who are otherwise unable to start hunting.

1. Learn to quarter and butcher your own deer in the field. Above all else, do this. New hunters don't usually own a pickup truck and don't have a way to transport a whole, gutted deer to a game processor. Instead of dropping ten grand on a pickup truck you can spend $35 on a medium-sized cooler with wheels. Quarter the deer in the field, put the meat in the cooler, put the cooler in your car.

Knowing how to do this also opens up a lot of public land that you wouldn't otherwise hunt. Most hunters don't go more than a mile from where they parked the truck because they know that they will have to drag the deer out later. If you learn how to disassemble the deer right where it died then you can go miles farther out with the much easier task of carrying 40 pounds of compact meat in a pack or cooler rather than 100 pounds of dead deer. This method is taught in the book.

2. Hunt from the ground, assuming that there is no local law requiring you to use tree stands. Tree stands cost a lot of money. You can easily drop $150 for an mid-priced stand, $100 for a ladder to get up to it, $100 for a safety harness and another $50 for a good rope. There you are $400 into it for the ability to hunt from one single spot. What happens if that spot isn't working out and you want to move to another area that day? Moving a tree stand and ladder is sort of a big production so you've got to drop another $250 for another stand and ladder for each additional spot.

That gets pretty expensive pretty fast. Tree stands work and they can be a good idea. But the sheer cost is prohibitively expensive to most aspiring new hunters. Especially given that new hunters are still figuring out where the deer are and will need to try new spots more often than experienced hunters.

Also note that falling out of tree stands accounts for a majority of deer hunting accidents and fatalities.

I'm not opposed to the use of tree stands. Go ahead and use them. But I think that they are better tools for experienced hunters or perhaps for new hunters who have an experienced hunter to show them exactly where to hang it. Learn how to hunt from the ground first and then move up to the trees later.

3. Study the animal, not the catalogs. There is an astounding array of hunting tools and accessories for sale. Most of them really work but few are really necessary to the new hunter just looking to put meat on the table. In sporting goods stores and in some hunting magazines it is too easy to become enamored of pieces of equipment that all seem ready to solve your problems.

You cannot hunt deer with your wallet. You hunt deer with your brain and a weapon. The only tools that you really need are a weapon and a knife. A thorough understanding of what motivates and influences deer throughout the year is the most essential thing to prepare you for the hunt. Understand the natural history and the anatomy and the landscape and then you will be able to predict where deer are likely to be. This, to me, is the essence of hunting deer.

These concepts are the underpinnings of my book and of the approach that I believe is needed to recruit new adult hunters. Telling someone that they need to drop thousands of dollars on equipment in order to hunt is totally counterproductive. People who have been hunting for their whole lives are often willing to make those big purchases but we cannot expect aspiring hunters to spend that kind of money on something they still don't know whether they will enjoy.

$350 for a rifle and scope. $30 for a knife. $17 or less for the book. That is all that you absolutely need to spend money on in order to successfully hunt deer for the rest of your life.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved.]

The Post-Domestic Cougar

2011-09-26T16:22:00.007-04:00

Three years after I wrote a blog entry about wild cougars in Virginia I still get new comments on it regularly and I still get emails from total strangers on the subject about once a week. In fact, Helenah Swedberg, the documentary filmmaker I am working with, found me initially through that entry.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the effects of population bottlenecks and their potential application to cougars in Virginia. I have personally encountered some very strange behavior among invasive species while traveling to work on 'Eating Aliens'. Often the accepted traits of a species as observed in its native habitat do not apply in an introduced habitat and population bottlenecks can sometimes account for that.

For example, the black spiny-tailed iguanas of Gasparilla Island, Florida, are very much omnivorous throughout their lives. I have personally watched adult spiny-tails pouncing on anoles and flying insects. I have examined the droppings and stomach contents of these iguanas and seen fragments of insects. Yet scientists who have studied the iguanas in their native range in Mexico will swear that only the juveniles have any carnivorous habits.

I think that the explanation for this is in the fact that the entire population on Gasparilla Island appears to be descended from a very few pets released by one individual. If one lizard among a population of tens of thousands has an unusual habit caused by genetic mutation then it can go unobserved. Most mutations are probably dead ends. Even the successful ones will take a very long time to propagate among an entire population unless there is some type of upheaval that gives a rapid edge in survival to the animals with that behavior.

That all can change when a small number of animals are introduced to a new area and the genes of those few animals are the template for everything there that follows. Early on in an invasive paradigm an exceptional mutation -- even a disadvantageous one -- can rapidly become the new standard.

Stay with me here because I promise this is going to come back to the wild cougars of Virginia.

Consider also that the bottleneck of two or three lizards came from a captive population from the pet trade. Animals kept as pets for generations are often selected by humans for particular traits. Is it possible that people who owned pet black spiny-tailed iguanas preferred the ones that they could watch eating live food?

A similar example was pointed out to me in a conversation last month with biologist Duane Chapman. Over a meal of silver carp that had literally jumped into my boat that morning, Duane told me that silver carp in their native range in China are not known for violent mass jumping at the approach of a motor boat the way that the invasive silver carp in America are. His explanation for this is the effect of the population bottleneck. Only a small number were initially imported into the US to begin the breeding program. One or two carp who happened to have this strange habit that also happened to be good breeders were able to have their strange genes dispersed among the entire new population as it grew.

Now you are probably wondering how this applies to cougars. We have a very good body of science that has been done on native wild cougars in Florida and out west. These are populations that have been continuously wild for their entire history. While this research is very sound I do not believe that it will necessarily apply to the habits of modern cougars in the eastern United States.

For reasons I have explained in other articles I do not believe that the cougars people are seeing here are the native (and probably extinct) eastern cougar subspecies. I strongly believe that these are primarily the descendants of cougars from the exotic pet trade that have escaped and sometimes been deliberately released.

What we have here is a population bottleneck stemming from cougars that were captive-bred for generations by humans. More aggressive cats were not top choices to use for breeding. Picky eaters that required only their wild diet were probably sorted out of that gene pool very quickly.

A population of wild cougars in the eastern US, descended from former pets, would behave differently than their wild cousins elsewhere in the US. They can get away with what might otherwise be disadvantageous behavior. The native wolves that used to live here are long gone. Aside from a few coyotes, modern eastern cougars do not have much competition for prey.

When we are weighing the veracity of cougar sightings I don't think that anything should be discarded on the basis of unusual behavior. For example, I've heard all sorts of stories about cougars in Virginia seen feeding on roadkill. In the western US, scavenging is something that cougars only seem to do occasionally. One study that has been following 21 cougars for the last three years found that only 13 of 21 have scavenged at all. That behavior was very rare in all but one animal in the study.

Given the small population of cougars here (I'm just guessing about that, figuring that if it was a large population then we'd have more physical evidence), it is easy for a biologist or policymaker to dismiss the frequent claims of roadkill-scavenging behavior. But the cougars here are probably the result of a bottleneck population.

Everything from preferred prey to habitat to the total size of their individual ranges could be completely different from what we have known about cougars until now.

To even begin having this conversation I think that we need a name for this population other than 'eastern cougar,' which already refers to a probably-extinct subspecies. I nominate the 'post-domestic cougar.'

'Feral' isn't quite accurate after the first generation and I wouldn't call them 'invasive' either, since cougars have been here for many thousands of years. Cougars seem to belong here in an ecological sense, though we still don't know how the post-domestic cougar is going to fit in.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. I wish I had a picture of a cougar to use but I've never had the opportunity to take one. This depicts a black spiny-tailed iguana in Florida moments after bagging it with George Cera.]

Five Things I Don't Pay For

2011-09-21T03:15:00.000-04:00

1. Bobbers. I have purchased bobbers exactly once in the last five years, although I use them pretty regularly. If you keep your eyes sharp around public fishing areas you will see that they are all over the place. Why pay for them?

I actually pick up all sorts of tackle this way. When I'm walking around a public fishing lake I'll stop at spots that look heavily fished. Not to fish there but to look for dropped hooks, lures and sinkers. I figure that I'm helping myself and the ecosystem at the same time. All of that lead and hooks can't be good for the wildlife. I usually pick up discarded line at the same time. Rusty hooks go in the trash along with old line but I find a lot of very usable stuff as well. When in a canoe I will paddle close to obvious snags in the water near the same types of spots and pull anywhere from $5- $50 worth of snagged lures out of tree branches.

2. Tree stands. I know that in some parts of the country you cannot legally hunt deer with a rifle from the ground. And in other places the land is flat and houses are everywhere and it isn't considered safe to shoot unless you are in a tree stand. Personally, I don't care for the things. My home state of Virginia does not require their use and my home county of Albemarle is also reasonable enough to allow me to hunt from the ground in the rolling foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains.

I get bored sitting up there, I can't move around enough, they are expensive (you can drop $500 easily on stand, ladder, harness and rope in order to hunt only one spot), and falls from tree stands are the leading cause of deer hunting accidents. Hunting from the ground is free and I've had a lot of success with it. Hunting magazines usually seem focused on tree stand tactics and you'd think from many of those magazines and TV shows that there is no other way to do it. I suppose that the bigger ad money is in tree stands.

3. A pickup truck. Don't get me wrong; I could really use a truck. I've owned one before. But nothing like that is in the budget any time soon. Yet hunting out of a 2 door coupe hasn't held me back one bit. I butcher the big stuff on site and pack out the meat in cooler on wheels. The cooler full of meat fits easily in my back seat. If you can't afford to buy an extra vehicle you don't need to let that stop you from taking up deer hunting. Drop $32 on a wheeled cooler and you're all set.

4. A Tom-Tom or similar GPS device. People are getting to where they don't even know how to read a regular map any more. I don't want to be one of them. I've driven all around the country this past year while working on Eating Aliens, racking up somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand miles. All of it with regular old paper maps from AAA or road-side welcome centers.

5. Fish and meat at the grocery store. For obvious reasons.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. I realize that this picture has nothing to do with anything in the actual blog entry. Ok, I didn't pay for the spider or mushrooms either. How's that for topical?]

The Mother Earth News Fair

2011-09-20T04:10:00.004-04:00

This coming weekend I will be appearing as a speaker at the Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. I'll be demonstrating how to turn a whole venison hindquarter into usable cuts of meat while also explaining how an adult beginner can start hunting for food. I'll also be doing a book signing and participating in other things going on at the fair.

It is very exciting to be invited to speak at this particular event. I've spent the last few years working very hard (read: devoting my entire life) towards legitimizing hunting as a critical component of the local and sustainable food movement. Mother Earth News is arguably the American publication most emblematic of the sustainable food movement. As far as I know, I am the first hunter who has ever been invited to speak about hunting for food at one of their events. The worlds of hunting and sustainable food are finally about to shake hands and formally collide with one another.

While I'm there you might notice some cameras around. Helenah Swedberg, a Swedish filmmaker is producing a documentary film about me. Show up for the book signing or the venison event and you might possibly end up in the movie.

In other news, I found out a few days ago that Cabelas will soon be carrying my first book, 'The Beginner's Guide to Hunting Deer for Food' at 36 stores as well as online and in their print catalog.

My schedules for October and November still have a lot of openings. If your school, business or organization is interested in booking me as a speaker, please feel free to shoot me an email at jack.landers@gmail.com

[Photograph used courtesy of Helenah Swedberg, copyright 2011. Helenah is photographing me while I'm photographing a fairy ring and getting ridiculously excited about finding it].

Five Products I Like Fishing With

2011-09-20T01:38:00.007-04:00

1. Northland Fishing Line. While I was at an outdoor writers' convention I grabbed some samples of Northland's 'Bionic' fishing line. All of the samples have performed well but the one that I like the best is their 5 pound test panfish line in blue camouflage.

Why blue camouflage? Because panfish tend to feed upwards from below their food. I have a native green sunfish in an aquarium in my home library and I feed him bugs several times a day. When he is hungry he sits there about five inches below the surface with his face tilted slightly upwards. The fish in my house is used to me and is practically house-broken. But a wild fish will spook sometimes at the sight of a line attached to what looks like food -- especially if the area has been fished a lot. Panfish can definitely learn, if my green sunfish has anything to say about it. Making the fishing line blue can help it to blend in with the sky and water that the fish expects to see above him on a clear day.

Northland's 5 pound test is actually more of a 6 or 7 pound test line in terms of strength but is rated as a nominal 5 pound line based on the thin diameter of the line. It is sensitive and reasonably strong and makes the smallest bluegill feel like a trophy as you wrangle it in.

Don't use expensive lures with this line around a lot of snags, though. I find that it breaks off pretty quickly when I'm trying to free a snagged lure. This is only to be expected with a 5 pound test line, I supposed.

2. The Jitterbug fishing lure. When I was a kid I remember that my father had one of these in his tackle box. I never had one myself until this summer. This lure is a classic that has been in production for nearly 75 years and experienced bass fishermen are probably already familiar with it. This thing is absolute mayhem on largemouth bass. My second cast with it landed a 17 inch bass. The fifth cast pulled in a nice 13 incher. After that I figured that dinner was pretty well sorted out and so there was no sixth cast.

Yesterday while floating down the Rivanna river in a canoe I handed one of these to my skeptical friend Fergus Clare, who is really a much better fisherman than I am. He prefers weedless hooks with soft Powerbait lures, which I also frequently use. Within a few minutes he had hooked what I could see was definitely an enormous something-or-other. It was big, it fought like holy hell and Fergus had just about landed it when it snapped off his four pound test line and left with my Jitterbug.

Wasn't I just saying something about expensive lures and light test line?

3. Speaking of weedless hooks, they really do work. There are various competing designs out there. These Pro-Strikers have worked very well for me. They only cost around $0.75 each and they make a huge difference when you are fishing in heavy weeds. Literally, at times these guys are the difference between whether I keep fishing or get sick of pulling weeds off the hook after every cast and go home.

I have a rule of thumb for buying fishing tackle when I don't have any other information to go on. The product with the plainest package design that looks like it hasn't been updated in the last thirty years gets my money. Somehow that's usually the stuff that works the best.

4. Bent-shaft canoe paddles are miraculous. I cannot even begin to consider fishing from a motor boat for lack of money for a boat, trailer, truck to haul it with, or gas to feed to the boat. What I have to use, on those occasions when I can even afford the gas to transport it to the water, is a canoe. I'm a big fan of long, multi-day river trips in my canoe. In an age where gasoline regularly creeps up around $4 a gallon I like the fact that the canoe is powered by my body, which in turn is powered by the fish and birds that I kill and eat while on the water that the canoe moves me across.

Its like perpetual motion. With guns.

Anyway, a bent-shaft paddle is much more ergonomically comfortable for long paddles than a standard paddle. I can go for hours longer with this thing in hand. My own paddle is very much like the one in the link here, though not identical. It is one of my most favorite objects that I own. The down-sides to a paddle like this are that they tend to be expensive (bent-shafts start at around $50 or so for a crappy one) and that the fine laminated wood construction of the better-priced paddles tends to discourage their use in serious whitewater. You can find them in more durable carbon fiber construction but expect to pay anywhere from $200-$500 for those.

5. Kill Cliff. My friend, Baker Leavitt, recently sent me a case of a sport drink called 'Kill Cliff'. I started grabbing a can or two when I head out to hunt or fish in hot weather. The idea behind Kill Cliff is to fight inflammation and aid in recovery time after sporting activities. While I'm not an MMA fighter or football player, I have had to do a lot of hiking, fishing and odd hunting on a foot with a torn ligament this past month or so. It hurts and gets inflamed so I think I'm technically within the target market.

I can't say that I know a lot about the science behind Kill Cliff but I do know that I've gotten to like having a can of the stuff mid-way through an afternoon in the field. It has a little bit of caffeine (less than a cup of coffee) but not too much.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. That's my 4 year old with his first sunfish.]

How to Cook Carp & River Chub

2011-09-19T22:48:00.009-04:00

There's an old American joke that I've heard a million times about carp. When a new fisherman asks the older fisherman for a good carp recipe, the older fisherman responds with something to the effect of this:

"Take a nice thick carp filet and place it on a piece of cardboard. Cover it on both sides with melted butter and scatter it with carmelized onions. Sprinkle the carp with plenty of salt and pepper. Bake it in the oven for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove it from the oven, throw away the carp, and eat the cardboard."

Then they both have a chuckle and jointly conclude that nobody should ever bother with eating a carp. The young fisherman will file that little joke away in his mind and pull it out at the first opportunity to lecture another fisherman about the folly of trying to eat carp. At no point will he ever bother trying to actually eat the stuff himself. The story is passed around and a whole society of fishermen comes to despise carp and yet none of them actually have any idea what they are talking about.

I have eaten carp. Grass carp, common carp and silver carp. They're all pretty good. But can you throw them in the bottom of the boat for a few hours, fillet them exactly like a bass or catfish, and expect them to make a good meal? No.

The big problem with carp as food is that they have an unusual set of floating 'Y' shaped bones in the fillets. I have found these bones in every member of the Cyprinidae family that I have eaten. Just this very evening I cooked a couple of large river chub (a type of very large minnow, minnows being closely related to carps) and found a set of tiny floating bones exactly like those of the silver carp. They were simple to deal with. I just picked them out and continued eating. By the way, here is the recipe that I came up with. I've used this for fillets of common and silver carp and now for whole river chub:

Smoked River Chub

Ingredients:

A pair of whole, gutted and scaled river chub.
A quarter cup of salt
2 Tablespoons of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of ground black pepper
1 bay leaf
A quart of water

Place all ingredients except for the fish in a small pot and boil for five minutes. Allow the mixture to cool. Place the whole fish into the brine and allow it to soak for at least two hours.

Build a hardwood fire in a smoker or a Weber-type grill. If you are using a Weber grill rather than a proper smoker then place a can of hot water on top of the grill to produce steam and keep the fish from drying out. If you own a real smoker then you probably already know what you're doing. Apple, hickory or oak all work well for the fire. Don't use any type of pine. Keep the lid on and let the fish smoke at low to medium heat for at least an hour. Check it regularly to make sure that it isn't drying out or burning.

The result is a couple of smoked fish that can be eaten on their own (its easy to work around the bones with a fork) or you can remove the flesh and serve it on bagels, use it in salads, etc.

At no point is it necessary to eat a piece of cardboard.

Last month I spent a few days in Columbia, Missouri fishing for carp with the help of some good people from the Missouri Department of Conservation. This was for my forthcoming book, 'Eating Aliens.' Biologist Vince Travnichek let me in on a couple of local Missouri secrets for dealing with the bones in carp and buffalo (the fish, not the bovid).

Understand that this is not really a bony fish in the way that, say, shad are bony (I've been experimenting with cooking gizzard shad lately and its not going well). The bones are few but awkwardly placed. With a smaller fish having narrow floating bones, Vince's solution is to score the pieces of fish meat cross-wise against the bones and then fry the breaded fish in hot oil. That hot oil transmits heat so efficiently that the bones are fully dissolved. When I ate carp that had been prepared this way I could not feel a single bone in my mouth.

This method should work well for river chub, too. I have a few fillets from the Rivanna river that will be getting that treatment tomorrow.

Larger carp have thicker bones that are not going to dissolve in the hot oil. The Missouri solution is to embrace the bones instead of fighting them. Vince prepared 'carp ribs.' After cutting the fillets he sliced them into strips along the length of the floating bones, such that each strip contained between one and three ribs. The ends of the ribs were visible. We fried the strips and ate them while holding the ribs like toothpicks. Properly butchered, the ribs turn carp into finger food.

I duplicated this method at a small gathering back home in Virginia with my friend Steve Friedman of Slow Food Virginia acting as chef. I think he used panko for the breading, though I wouldn't swear to it. What I am very certain of is that the peanut sauce that he put out to dip the carp ribs in was absolutely perfect. I will be chasing the recipe down from him to include in 'Eating Aliens.'

Carp meat tastes very much like cod, cusk, flounder or any of several other common types of white fish. Firm, clean, and inoffensive. It isn't as delicious as lionfish but its a perfectly good medium for cooking and a great source of Omega 3 fatty acids.

The things that can make it taste bad (bones aside) are time and inattentive cutting.

Carp tend to spoil very quickly. I had a long conversation with Cliff Rost, a commercial fisherman who nets carp on the Missouri River. He told me that he keeps several very large livewells on the boat and transports them all back to his small processing facility while they are still alive. Anything that is dead before its time is thrown out. Most other fish that we eat can be left dead and ungutted for a little while, especially in cooler weather. American fishermen are used to being able to wait a few hours after killing a fish before processing it. This is risky with carp. They spoil quickly.

An easy solution is to bring a cooler with some ice or cold packs with you when you go fishing. There's no harm in fileting the carp as soon as you've landed it. There is no need to gut the fish at all if you fillet it immediately.

When you are filleting the fish you will notice that most of the meat is white while some is red. Carve off all of the red or darkly colored meat and discard it. That is where the funky, 'fishy' flavor is. The white meat is good stuff and if you keep the red stuff out then it has a very clean taste.

As for how to go about catching carp, I will leave that topic for another article.

[Photograph Copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. That is a silver carp from a tributary of the Missouri river, shortly before being filleted and cooked.]

Hunter-Gatherer Interview

2011-09-12T21:57:00.004-04:00

My friend and former student, John Durant, interviewed me a few days ago for his blog.

John's angle on the hunter-gatherer lifestyle stems from his enthusiasm for the Paleo Diet, which I believe he has a book on the way about this topic coming out some time soon.

That's John in the photo there, eating bone marrow at the end of our class last year or so. Here is John's recipe for venison marrow as best as I can recall it:

Ingredients: one raw deer bone.

Crack bone open with a big rock. Suck out marrow. Serves one.

Hank Shaw in Richmond

2011-09-04T03:12:00.003-04:00

To any of my readers in Central Virginia, I want to give you a heads up that my friend and colleague, Hank Shaw, will be hosting an event as part of his book tour for 'Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast' at The Blue Goat in Richmond on September 14th. Hank writes and speaks about hunting and foraging for wild foods and his work is very much in the same vein and spirit as mine is.

I might be on the road myself on the 14th, but if I'm not on my way somewhere to hunt and eat something odd then I'll probably be at The Blue Goat myself. The Blue Goat specializes in nose-to-tail eating and the menu is sure to be something to remember.

The Essig Approach to Invasive Pigs

2011-08-31T16:42:00.003-04:00

I really shouldn't be spending this much time blogging today when I have a book to finish in the next couple of days. But I saw this piece in the New York Times about feral pigs today and I've got to weigh in on it.

Mark Essig is right about some things and wrong about some others. Or at the very least he has failed to make an adequate argument in support of his points.

Essig is correct about the scope of the feral pig problem. He's also right about the fact that some hunters have trapped pigs and deliberately released them elsewhere in order to create a new huntable population.

Most hunters hate it when this is done. Feral pigs compete with the whitetail deer that are usually a preferred quarry. They eat the eggs and young of ground-nesting birds that hunters want to see survive. Turkeys, quail and pheasant are all put at risk when pigs show up. Mainstream American hunters do not like having pigs in their backyard. Essig is right that more of an effort should be made in the hunting community to stop the people who are peeing in our pool.

I've hunted pigs in several different states and I've observed the USDA approach versus just letting hunters shoot them. Letting the hunters shoot them seemed to work much better. Programs left to the wildlife officers that Essig mentions often (though not always) devolve into decades-long research studies that never seem to get around to serious eradication.

Essig and I probably agree on most points regarding invasive pigs but I think that he's really strayed from logic in his statements against Rick Perry and shooting pigs from helicoptors. I'm not a fan of Governor Perry either but that doesn't excuse me from building a rational case against his policy on pigs. I really have a problem with Essig's statement that:

"However politically advantageous mixing helicopters and guns may be, what we might call the Perry/Barr approach to wild pigs won’t work."

Really? I'm not aware of some huge block of helicopter owning/pig hating voters who are ready to swing New Hampshire or Iowa into Perry's camp. I don't see how Perry's signing of that aerial hunting bill is especially politically advantageous and Essig made no effort to explain it.

Moreover, Essig is arguing against a straw man. When did Rick Perry -- or anyone else -- ever indicate that shooting pigs from helicopters is the whole solution to the pig problem? He didn't. Nobody did. Every invasive pig shot from a helicopter is one less pig. Of course it will help the problem. The question is over how much it will help.

I might as well say that the Essig approach to wild pigs won't work. We can't talk the pigs out of existence. But I suspect that Essig doesn't believe that communication and education is the entire solution any more than Rick Perry thinks that helicopters are the entire solution.

Essig fails to present a single shred of information or proof in support of his thesis that aerial shooting of pigs will not work. The closest that he comes in his piece to taking this head-on is when he states that "...aerial shooting is unnecessarily cruel because it often wounds rather than kills."

Whether it is cruel or not is a separate issue from whether the practice works. Essig is fuzzy about this. If it doesn't work, please cite a study or at least some sort of anecdote. If the practice really is especially cruel then Essig should provide some evidence for this. Is there a study he can point to that shows a dramatically higher percentage of wounded rather than killed pigs resulting from shots from helicopters rather than other types of hunting? Personally, if I was writing this piece in the New York Times and I had any evidence to support my point I probably would have used it.

Don't get me wrong -- maybe the rate of wounded animals really is astoundingly higher. It sounds plausible. 'Truthy', one might even say. But when you are making a case for and against a specific set of wildlife management plans on a platform as big as the New York Times I think that a higher standard than 'sounds plausible' is called for.

I don't want to be too hard on Mr. Essig. Removing invasive species is a very big topic laden with competing ethical conundrums (or is that conundri?) and a vast minefield of technical and ecological issues to sort through. It is very hard to weigh in on the subject of hunting invasives without stepping in metaphorical dog crap if you haven't spent a lot of time studying the topic and hunting the critters in question. I'm sure he'll get better at it.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers.]

A Call for Action Against Invasive Snails

2011-08-31T15:39:00.006-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm putting out a call for action here on a new invasive species in central Virginia. Last October I found a local pond to be infested with Chinese mystery snails, which are a species of Asian aquatic snail that gets up to about three inches long. These things reproduce very quickly and will be serious trouble if left to their own devices.

The pond is on property owned by Monticello. I met with a representative from Monticello who was open to letting someone do something about the situation but wanted to hear from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries before letting me or anyone else have access to the pond to eradicate them.

I got in touch with the district biologist from DGIF, who in turn referred me to a DGIF aquatic specialist with an office here in Albemarle County. That gentleman asked me to bring him a sample so I gathered up a number of live snails, dropped them into sample jars full of alcohol and dropped them off at his office.

Then absolutely nothing happened. My emails were not responded to. I spoke on the phone to a game warden a few weeks ago to see what was going on but never heard anything back.

I have information suggesting that a particular person probably dumped an unwanted aquarium into that pond, leading to the infestation.

Meanwhile I've found another population of the snails. Like the first location this is in water close to a road and handy for illicit aquarium dumping. The spillway and creek beneath Totier Creek Reservoir near Scottsville, Virginia is loaded with these snails. I've been making trips out there and rounding them up personally but more needs to be done.

I have given up on getting DGIF or any other government agency to do anything about this problem. The Totier Creek spillway empties into the James River only a few miles downstream. Time is running out to prevent this infestation from reaching the James and causing untold ecological damage.

The pond at Monticello is at these coordinates. The Totier Creek population is right here. Want to help the environment? Drive to one of these locations with a bucket and start picking up snails. Apparently nobody else is going to do it.

Yes, you can eat them. Keep them in a bucket of water for 12 hours or so, flushing it out and replacing the water a few times to end up with nice, clean, poopless snails. Then boil some water and drop the whole snails in for about three minutes. Then it will be simple to pull the meat out of the shells using tweezers or needle nose pliers. At that point you can do all sorts of things with them. They'd probably good in a nice alfredo sauce. Substitute them for clams in chowder or sauce. I pan-seared them in garlic, butter and onions and ate them on crackers.

Even if you don't want to eat snails, please go kill these things anyway. Gather them up in a bucket and then kill them one way or another. Just don't dump them out any where near water.

We're all concerned about the threat of invasive species and the danger that they often pose to the survival of native wildlife. This concern should not be abstract. Stop waiting for government agencies to do something. Stop waiting for federal grants and studies. If you see an invasive species that is causing a problem then take personal responsibility for it and take action. Here's your opportunity.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. Ask for permission and I'll probably let you use it.]

Invasive Carp in Missouri

2011-08-26T22:27:00.006-04:00

I write this blog entry from my hotel room in Columbia, Missouri. Yesterday I enjoyed one of the most unique and eye-opening fishing experiences of my life. Electro-fishing for carp on a tributary of the Missouri River.

Kids, don't try this one at home. Electro-fishing is illegal in most states unless you happen to be conducting an approved scientific study or if you happen to be a state biologist. I was fortunate enough to be invited out with biologist Vince Travnichek and writer Jim Low, print news coordinator for the Missouri Department of Conservation.

As it happened, we could have still gotten a whole pile of fish without the electro-fishing gear. Silver carp will literally jump straight into your boat. This happened at least a dozen times during roughly two hours on the water. On one occasion a five pound fish landed precisely in the live well. Jim captured that one on camera and I look forward to seeing his photos.

Meanwhile, here are some of my photos. My verdict on carp is that they are perfectly delicious to eat. The secret is that you need to keep them alive as long as possible until you are ready to fillet and refrigerate or freeze them. A dead, ungutted carp suffers fouling of flavor much more quickly than crappie, trout or other fish that American anglers are accustomed to eating.

Back on The Road, Missouri-Bound

2011-08-22T21:20:00.006-04:00

Tomorrow morning I hit the road again. This time its a week-long excursion to Missouri to see their out-of-control carp situation first hand. I'll be fishing for a few days with biologist Vince Travnichek of the Missouri Department of Conservation, and with Jim Low, Print News Coordinator for the Department.

I had hoped to bag feral goats last week on a mountain side in West Virginia but several things conspired against me. First, a check from my publisher arrived late. Second, once the check showed up I suffered an injury while running that made it a moot point.

An osteopathic physician friend tells me that I have a torn ligament of the 5th metatarsal in my left foot. There will be no mountain climbing in my near future. Depressing the clutch pedal of my car for a thousand miles each way will be quite enough. I think that I ought to be able to manage fishing -- even fishing that can supposedly involve baseball bats, hoop nets and shotguns. Perhaps I can smack a few out of the air with my crutches.

Once I get back I've got to bang out the rest of 'Eating Aliens' as quickly as possible, with one more short trip to the Potomac River for snakeheads. If I'm hard to reach for the next week, I apologize. I'll be spending a lot of time driving and riding in boats and it may be a while before I can catch up on email and messages.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. That is my cousin, Patrick McNamara holding an Asian grass carp that he caught in Massachusetts this spring.]

''Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat', Reviewed

2011-08-21T10:45:00.008-04:00

A few weeks ago I received a review copy of Hal Herzog's new book,'Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why it's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals.' In spite of the remarkably long title, Herzog's premise is simple. He is examining the different attitudes that he sees among human beings towards different types of animals.

Personally, I don't find it especially hard to think straight about animals. As someone who became a dedicated meat hunter as an adult after a vegetarian childhood, I have already put quite a lot of thought into the matter and sorted things out pretty well, as I imagine that most other locavore hunters have. But for a reader who is new to all of this and who has just started re-assess their relationship with animals and/or food, this book could be genuinely useful.

Herzog is a research psychologist. This fact shows in his writing, which is full of solid citations. Herzog is very good about backing his assertions up with data and research. I like that habit.

I was surprised to see that hunting isn't covered for more than a page or so in 'Some We Love.' The psychology of hunting, especially among meat-hunters, seems like it should be fertile ground for the types of questions that Herzog enjoys posing. Dr. James Swan has already covered the topic of hunter psychology thoroughly in his book, 'In Defense of Hunting' and readers who are primarily interested in hunting ethics and psychology should seek out Swan's book.

The single anecdote about a hunter involves a woman who had shot a zebra on a hunt in Africa, wound up hitting the wrong animal, and cried over having killed a female rather than a male. Herzog suggests that the fact that the hunter was a woman was what led her to feel about this fact, but he failed to back this up with anything. He was on the edge of understanding something important about the psychology of American hunters but didn't quite get there.

A male hunter would have been just as crestfallen at hitting a mare rather than a stallion. He would simply have hidden his sadness. What is usually misunderstood about hunters is that we do not want the animal to suffer. Sadism plays no part in the activity. The hunter's short-term goal is usually to cause death as instantaneously as possible. Shooting a female (depending on the time of year) leaves open the possibility of an orphaned animal that suffers for a long time, perhaps starving to death. At the same time, most of us are such knee-jerk conservationists that we want to leave the females alone so that they can produce offspring and ensure that the species doesn't disappear. Shoot a male zebra and you have removed only one zebra. Shoot a female and you have removed perhaps half a dozen zebras over the next ten years (this is only strictly true among a species that forms harems or in which males typically breed with many females).

The female zebra hunter's regret was not something that was purely a matter of gender psychology. There are good and practical reasons why male and female hunters traditionally tend to frown on shooting females of the species.

Other topics and key figures also seemed to be missing. I was surprised that Herzog didn't discuss Louis Wain, the Gilded Age artist who arguably bears more responsibility for the anthropomorphication of cats than any other single person.

Herzog's stories about traveling and interviewing people about things that they do with animals are the best parts of the book. Being willing to honestly depict cock fighters as decent human beings took some nerve.

The value of this book, in my opinion, is to generate thought and questions about our relationships with animals. What is missing are conclusions. Herzog wraps the book up by essentially saying 'its all really complicated.' I can't decide whether this is a cop-out or incredibly courageous. Probably more courageous than anything else. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people fail to recognize the fact that 'I don't know' is often the correct answer. Herzog doesn't have a lot of answers, but unlike most of us he is honest about our inconsistencies.

My Deer Book is Shipping!

2011-08-18T21:40:00.003-04:00

Whoa -- my deer books just shipped! Several weeks earlier than I had expected.

My first book, 'The Beginner's Guide to Hunting Deer for Food' is now on sale and ships right away from Amazon, or it might be in stock at your local bookseller.

It is a really neat feeling to be holding a physical copy of this book after spending the last 18 months or so working towards this moment. I had hoped to put on a couple of launch parties for it but as it happens I am completely wrapped up in finishing the work on 'Eating Aliens.' I'm writing roughly 10 hours a day, usually until 3 or 4 am.

Next week I hit the road one more time to catch invasive carp in Missouri with the kind assistance of the Missouri Department of Conservation.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. That's minced Chinese Mystery Snails with butter and garlic that you see in the dish. I cooked them last night for a chapter of 'Eating Aliens.']

Nocturnal Hunting Tools

2011-08-16T13:38:00.019-04:00

One humid night in a Louisiana swamp I heard a sound along the bank of a creek. I flipped on the special flashlight in my left hand and held the beam directly on what proved to be a pair of raccoons looking for crayfish. Only about a dozen yards away, they went about their business completely oblivious to both me and the powerful beam of light illuminating them.

For the last few days I've been writing and re-working the nutria chapters of Eating Aliens. In the course of this I've been putting a lot of thought into what weapons and tools did and didn't work out. The biggest asset that I had out there in terms of tools was a pair of hand-held lasers by Laser Genetics.

Nutria are mostly nocturnal, so you can expect to typically hunt them in low light conditions. The tricky thing with hunting at night is being able to see your target and what is beyond it without scaring off the prey. If you scan constantly with a conventional light then you are going to scare off the nutria in all but the worst of infestations.

You have two options. First would be a night vision scope or sight. Those can work well but are extremely expensive. I've hunted feral pigs at night in Georgia with second generation night vision. It was good but not great. Pretty much you are looking at a 50 to 75 yard range maximum. Those scopes tend to run around $1,000 each. First generation night vision is so bad as to not be worth bothering with. Third generation night vision will set you back more than a decent used car.

The second option is to use a special light with a wavelength that nocturnal animals don't tend to respond to. The lights by Laser Genetics use a special green laser that I can affirm works as advertised.

I tested two different models for close to a week of hunting on the banks and backwater swamps of Lake Caddo in Louisiana. The ND-5 is a large and powerful model that can be adjusted for a very wide beam. It will set you back around $350, which is still way less than a night vision scope. The ND-3 is smaller, weaker and produces a narrow beam. It costs around $250. The ND-5 is much better but the ND-3 is still far better than having nothing at all.

Both models can be used as a hand-held flashlight or can easily be mounted above a rifle scope. When properly aligned with the beam, visibility through a scope is very good and the reticle was clearly visible.

The beauty of using one of these lasers as opposed to a night vision scope is that you aren't forced to buy one of the narrow selection of night vision scopes just because of the night vision feature. You can use whatever scope you prefer to hunt with in the first place. There is no need for compromise.

Night after night I watched many raccoons at very close range that completely ignored the green light I had pasted on them. They went about their business as if I wasn't even there, right up until they got downwind of me. Minks, nutria and snakes all ignored it unless the beam was near its most narrowly concentrated setting.

Nocturnal hunting isn't legal everywhere or for every species. It is legal for pigs in Georgia and in Louisiana I was named on a special permit for control of nuisance animals. With good optics or lights in the right setting I think that it can be perfectly safe. Nutria hunting almost by definition tends to offer a safe backstop. Usually nutria are hunted near the water's edge with a steep bank behind them. Over-travel of the bullet is not going to be an issue.

Nutria are most active at night. Any area where they are a problem will need to make some regulatory accommodations to allow night hunting in order to make a serious effort at reducing or eliminating them. Wild pigs tend to go nocturnal in response to hunting pressure and any effort at halting their ecological depredations is doomed to failure without making some allowance for hunters to intercept them at night.

It was with real regret that I returned that pair of Laser Genetics lights to Michael Beran, a wildlife control specialist from Bossier City who had been kind enough to loan them to me. Sooner or later I intend to pick up an ND-5 for keeps.

[Photo Copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers]

'Karamojo Safari,' Reviewed

2011-08-08T12:28:00.014-04:00

Those who have read anything at all about hunting in Africa have certainly chanced across the name of W.M.D. 'Karamojo' Bell.

Bell was a professional ivory hunter in the days before anyone had any notion of running out of elephants. He arrived in East Africa in 1897 shortly after the age of initial exploration was over and the exploitation phase was really moving along. Africa was pretty well mapped by this time, but there remained massive areas in which no European was known to ever have visited.

Nicknamed 'Karamojo' for his tendency to hunt the Karamojo region of what is now Uganda, Bell is constantly referred to and quoted by modern outdoor writers. In nearly any article or book or conversation about hunting elephants, his name is invoked. The problem is that Karamojo and his legacy are frequently misused and misunderstood. Few people bother to actually read his books, which is understandable since they have spent so much time out of print.

This is a man who personally killed over a thousand elephants, scores of lions, and antelope and cape buffalo probably in the thousands (his safaris included hundreds of people to be fed, clothed and shod for years on end). He amassed a body of experience and knowledge about hunting dangerous prey with rifles which may have been equaled in his own time by other hunters who didn't bother with writing memoirs, but which will certainly never be matched again. He was the great pioneer of hunting very big animals with modern rifles in an age without bag limits or scarcity of prey to limit him.

Bell's book, 'Karamojo Safari,' has been out of print for many years. After some decades it has finally been re-issued in an excellent facsimile edition by Safari Press. I had been looking for an affordable copy of this book for years and I was very grateful to finally receive a copy on the occasion of my 33rd birthday at the end of July.

Every single quote of Bell's that I have ever heard, and every reference to his work that I have seen, turns out to have been pulled out of the first chapter. I really do wonder whether anyone had bothered to actually read the entire book up until now.

'Karamojo Safari' turns out to be a very good book. Bell's conversational prose steers us on a ten month safari through very rough, often hostile country. But it is not only the journey through the African landscape that makes the book worthwhile; it is also the emotional and ethical challenges that the reader has to find his way through.

Elephants have become the sacred cows of the modern western world. The African elephant has been sadly reduced in numbers and range by hunting and loss of habitat. We have all learned a great deal about the lives and social structure of elephant herds and we naturally have a great deal of sympathy for them. In order to encourage people to protect African elephants from extinction, we had to anthropomorphize them. This change of elephants' status could not possibly have been predicted by the author, given the world and the time that produced him. Yet this change in status becomes an unintended major theme of the book to the modern reader.

As a hunter I often cheered for Bell in some encounters with elephants, while in other instances I found myself rooting for the elephants. I really had to stop and think about why I felt differently about it in different pages and chapters. When Bell was only a few yards from a massive lone bull elephant, I wanted him to succeed. But when there was a description of the elephants being nice to each other I wanted them to escape. In one case a large bull was off on its own with a very young calf, which is unusual. I found myself hoping that something would go wrong and that Bell wouldn't get the bull, simply because I didn't want the calf to be sad (the calf's mother turned out to be nearby and neither mother nor child was harmed, though the bull was killed instantly).

There are various things that Bell got flatly wrong, like the age of elephants. It was a common misconception at the time that elephants could live to be hundreds of years old. He also says some things about ballistics that don't make much sense now, such as the odd notion that a .275 Rigby bullet (aka 7mm Mauser) is inherently less accurate than a .318 is.

The descriptions of race and of the indigenous Africans are more liberal than I expected from a man born in 1880. Bell does not hesitate to describe the very real differences, both cultural and physical, between his own race and the various African races that he worked with or encountered. But he never equates any of these distinctions to a moral or intellectual superiority. He seems to be completely honest about race in a way that would be difficult for modern writers after the racial history of the twentieth century in America and Africa (Bell is Scottish, incidentally).

If anything, Bell tends to regard the native Africans as essentially superior and better-adapted to life in Africa than he was. He regularly marvels at their mental abilities, such as long-distance navigation through dense bush and a talent for sensing small details that he could not.

Bell is arguably an important figure in African history because of the weapons that he began employing for the hunting of elephants.

Up until Bell's time it was very difficult to kill an elephant. These are massive animals with extremely thick hides, large bones, and long distances of flesh to traverse in order to reach a vital organ. Reaching the heart or brain for a swift kill was an improbable feat with the technology available prior to the late 19th century. To attempt to kill an elephant and then to fail can easily be a fatal mistake to the hunter. Throughout most of mankind's history in Africa, we mostly tried to stay the hell away from elephants.

The cuisine in local villages described by Bell is surprisingly low in meat (his fellow Scotsman, Mungo Park, describes a similar situation in West Africa 100 years prior). These people were farming and eating a lot of grain and flour and when crops failed they pretty much just starved. They were desperate for meat. It seems so odd that people could go hungry while surrounded by these literal mountains of meat that elephants represented, but technologically speaking they knew no way of killing the animals.

Then along came the invention of smokeless gunpowder and the metallurgical advances that allowed rifles to be built that could fire higher-velocity loads than ever before without the risk of exploding in the shooter's face. Guns had been used in Africa long before Bell's time but they were only marginally effective on really large prey. Black powder weapons did not fire bullets with enough velocity to reliably reach the heart or brain of an elephant. With the velocity limitations of black powder, the only way to punch right through the animal was to fire a larger piece of lead.

How big? Oh, about a quarter pound of lead. The 'four-bore' gun was your basic edition elephant gun in Africa for many years. It is not very pleasant to shoot. The four-bore was reckoned insufficient by some people who moved up to the two-bore that fired a half of pound of lead with every shot. I've experienced recoil from guns that bruised my shoulder for a few days (solid slugs from a 12 gauge come to mind). A two-bore elephant gun makes bruises from a twelve gauge look like a Swedish massage. We're talking about nose bleeds in some people after a few shots. Accuracy is pretty difficult under such circumstances. And exactly how many pounds of lead are you likely to carry around on your person through miles and miles of African bush on the trail of elephants?

Guns capable of killing elephants reliably were rare, expensive, inaccurate (in practice, anyway) and difficult for very many people to use properly. Many native Africans had long since dismissed firearms as showy gimmicks with no real place hunting big game.

As the global demand for ivory picked up, people in East Africa saw a good opportunity to make some quick money. Bell describes this economic transition and the cultural changes that came with it. At first the tusks were traded for beads and trinkets. Later the price began to soar and some ivory could be traded for a heifer or two. This could be a life-changing event. Possession of a cow meant a steady supply of milk, increased social standing, and the ability to take a wife. The locals in East Africa started going nuts for ivory.

The way that they got a hold of it was mostly just going out and looking for it. That whole area of the continent was awash in elephants and had been for a very long time. Bones were scattered everywhere and the tusks with them. Ivory didn't seem to have any enormous value to them previously, so there were decades worth of teeth laying around in the bush. Most bones don't last too long out in the open in Africa. Ivory is tougher stuff, being very dense, partially covered with protective enamel, and not having any marrow for scavengers to break it apart for.

As the pick-up ivory disappeared there was some small amount coming in from elephants trapped in pits or snares by natives. This didn't amount to very much.

Enter Karamojo Bell. Having fought in the Boer War he knew a good bit about the differences between the old black powder guns and modern military bolt action rifles. Bell used mostly bolt action Enfield and Mauser type actions, usually chambered for either the .303 or 7mm Mauser (known to Bell and the UK in general as the .275 Rigby). He came to prefer solid, nickel-coated, round-nosed bullets for use on big game. Soft-pointed bullets made wholly of lead tend to deform and fall to pieces when traveling through a large target -- particularly so when the bullet is of a small diameter in the first place.

There is a myth in the shooting and hunting world that Bell refused to use soft-pointed bullets for anything whatsoever. It even says so on his Wikipedia page. This is not exactly true. Bell used soft-pointed bullets on other game quite regularly -- he just didn't like them for elephants.

Bell writes on page 20:

"In the course of time I acquired a long-barrelled .256 Mannlicher, stocked and sighted (iron sights, but extremely refined) by Gibbs of Bristol. I did not use this rifle on elephant; I don't know why unless it was that I had only soft-pointed bullets. It was not until later that I got a .256 Mannlicher-Schonauer and used it on elephant. I used the long Gibbs -- a most beautiful rifle -- entirely for meat-getting. And what a deadly weapon it was! I have known it lay out a score of antelope from one anthill stance in the cool air of morning or evening."

Various other references throughout the book are made to using soft-points on prey other than elephants. Let us lay to rest this myth that Karamojo Bell never hunted with soft-point bullets.

When summing up books about hunting in Africa there is a pretty clear line that emerges: was it before or after Hemingway wrote 'Green Hills of Africa'? Hemingway's novels and short stories came to define the way that westerners tend to look at and write about African hunting. The semi-fictional professional hunting guide, Jackson Phillips (mostly based on the real-life Philip Percival) became thoroughly our idea of what a professional hunter is supposed to be like and this archetype has made its way into nearly all of the depictions of African hunting since.

The tricky thing about fitting 'Karamojo Safari' into that scheme of things is that it was written in the 1940's after the 1935 publication of 'Green Hills of Africa,' yet the book is about a safari undertaken decades earlier. I wonder whether W.D.M. Bell ever read Hemingway? He states in Karamojo Safari that the only thing from civilization that he really cared for was Charles Dickens' 'Pickwick Papers,' which he had read over a hundred times.

Before I'd read Bell I had always assumed that Peter Hathaway Capstick's work was primarily influenced by Hemingway. We certainly see him presenting himself in a decidedly Philips/Percival light -- which is not to say that Capstick was a phony. He may have really been just like that as a professional hunter, with Hemingway's characters to influence and inspire his own career and life as a professional hunter in Africa.

Capstick's best book is 'Death in the Long Grass,' which belongs in any top five list of the best books on hunting in Africa. In hindsight, I see as much of Bell's influence on Capstick's style as I do of Hemingway. This bit from page 213 of 'Karamojo Safari' reads like it could have come straight out of Capstick's mouth:

"The reek from the already somewhat ripe offal and the abundant man-smell all about seemed not to ruffle [the elephant's] serenity one little bit. What did upset it though was a .275 between the ribs. With a squirm and a bellow of rage that split the welkin he tucked his stern under him and began diminishing in size in the weirdest way. Simultaneously with the roar something flashed by me with a whimper of fear. Every animal in that gathering had experienced vicariously a full-dress rehearsal of being blown to hell by dynamite. The scene lay still and lifeless beneath me in the cold silver light of the gigantic moon."

I honestly had no idea what a 'welkin' was until looking it up a moment ago.

Having previously read Capstick, Wally Johnson, and Brian Herne's 'White Hunters' helped me to appreciate how remarkable Bell is. Bell tends to down-play the physical danger posed to an elephant hunter. The obituaries of many of his colleagues suggest that Bell was either extraordinarily lucky or highly skilled.

When an elephant decides that it doesn't like you, it is in a position to do something about the fact with an astonishing repertoire of techniques. It can step on you. It can sit down on you. It can kick you. Knock you down with its trunk and gore its tusks straight through your body and on into the soil. Pick you up with the trunk and throw you over the trees. There are credible accounts of elephants throwing people and then running to catch them on the other end by spearing the moving body on a tusk. They surely don't lack for imagination.

You can't run away. The length of an elephant's gait is incredible and a brisk stroll on their part would probably beat any Olympic sprinter. Even in thick cover an elephant can push right through trees and brush that you or I would have to walk around. Climb a tree and the elephant will either pluck you out of it or knock it down. If you make it to your car then your spouse will only have to make an auto claim in addition to the life insurance paperwork.

Bell took on groups of bull elephant (he avoided shooting females and calves unless he was facing a direct charge and had to act in self-defense) that sometimes numbered in the dozens. To do this successfully for the 25 years that he spent as an ivory hunter, he had to be both brave and intelligent.

It is easy for modern western readers to look at Bell as a sort of caricature; a slob hunter blasting away at thousands of helpless endangered animals with a gun that guaranteed his own safety and success. The imperialist, racist white man traveling with hundreds of servants. But that is just not who Bell was. He seems to have genuinely cared about the people who worked for him and doesn't appear to have looked down on people on account of their color. Nearly every day he risked a sudden, violent death. He did things in order to survive that most of us would not contemplate.

When Bell was far from water and in danger of dying from thirst he would shoot an elephant and place a spear through the dead torso at exactly the right point in order to send the animal's internal reserve of water gushing out the hole. Supposedly after letting the first few gallons spill away with their initial mixture of blood, the remainder was fairly drinkable.

Bell and his core safari staff ate, drank and wore elephant. Shoes and sandals were cut from elephant hide. When it rained they sought shelter under severed elephant ears. They ate massive amounts of elephant meat. Some of his people craved the stuff so much that they would literally drink entire pints of melted elephant fat after a long hike. Their lives were every bit as much defined by elephants as the lives of some plains Indians (as well as the white buffalo hunters) in the mid-1800's were defined by the herds of bison they followed around, living off of the meat while selling the hides and tongues.

It was a completely unsustainable way of life, of course. Sooner or later the world was going to run out of elephants (and bison). First there were the professional ivory hunters like Bell, who at least limited themselves to bulls. Then as Africans worked to feed themselves more reliably they cleared, fenced and cultivated more land. Having a herd of elephants show up and eat months of work in a matter of hours wasn't helping things, so that even cows and calves were shot frequently to protect crops. Elephants were pushed farther and farther back into shrinking habitats. Reduced and isolated, they became vulnerable.

What condition would African elephants be in today, as a species, if Bell and the rest of the ivory hunters of his day had never existed? I don't think that one can read Bell's book without asking that question.

I think elephants would be in better genetic shape as a species. There has been tremendous natural selection against elephants with decent tusks to the extent that some parks contain a majority of tusk-less animals. But in terms of overall numbers and their odds for long-term survival, I suspect that without the old ivory trade things would still be almost as bad. The biggest threat to elephants' survival in the wild is now arguably loss of habitat. Farming and development are their biggest threat. That was going to happen with or without the big ivory safaris.

If today we could magically resurrect every single elephant from the dead which Bell shot, odds are that it would be a complete disaster. As it stands, perfectly healthy elephants are having to be culled in the wild because there isn't enough food to support all of them.

If you divide food sufficient for 50 elephants among 100 elephants, you get 100 dead elephants within a year or two. But if you kill half of them straight off then at least you still end up with 50 live elephants in the long run. The other problem with letting too many elephants compete for too little food is that they strip the bark off of trees for food as a matter of routine. It is a major part of their diet, though this kills the trees. With limited, isolated habitat, this habit leads to deforestation and desertification when there are too many elephants in one place. That, in turn, leads to the extirpation and perhaps extinction of the other animals depending on that habitat.

I rather like elephants and I personally do not want to kill one, but I don't think that Bell and his kind were the demons that some people might want to make them out as. It was a brutal life that Karamojo Bell led, both for himself and for the animals that he killed. Altogether I'm pleased that he wrote a book about it.

[Photo used courtesy of The Safari Press]

Snakehead Lures Suck

2011-08-07T23:20:00.003-04:00

Here is the big problem with snakehead lures: they are all really designed for bass.

What everyone is using on snakeheads is top-water weedless frog lures. Snakeheads prefer weedy areas with thick cover to lunge from. This demands lures that don't get loaded with weeds right away. Snakeheads eat a lot of frogs so the design sort of makes sense.

The problem is with the location of the hooks. Bass swallow their prey whole so it doesn't much matter where on the lure you have the hooks placed. But snakeheads usually don't swallow things whole. They tend to grab the tail end of their prey with their sharp teeth, give it a good twist and pull off a chunk to eat. Then they come back and tear off additional chunks.

That tendency to grab the back end is key here. You know what's at the back end of these top-water frog lures? Fake plastic frog legs with no hooks in them.

I have experienced strike after strike by invasive northern snakeheads on various weedless top-water frog lures and again and again I lost the fish. The reason was that they were never hooked at all. The fish was merely grabbing on to the back of the lure and holding on for a while. After a few seconds they just let go.

No doubt, these lures can catch snakeheads. Given enough strikes, sooner or later you'll get one. But the ratio of strikes to hooks is abysmal compared to what it should be.

What we need to really clean out invasive snakeheads is weedless lures that have the hooks set up at the back of the lure. Frog and duckling lures with the hooks in the legs.

Is there a lure manufacturer ready to step up to the plate?

Snakeheads: Part Two

2011-08-06T20:54:00.004-04:00

Last week I started my mission on the Potomac River to catch, kill and eat the invasive snakehead fish. The first trip was mostly intelligence-gathering. Hanging out on boat landings and asking around to find out who had the good word on where to bag a bad fish.

From the intelligence standpoint that trip was a success. I found a sub-tidal pond connected to the river by only a few yards of tidal stream that is loaded with snakeheads. I also learned a little bit about what tackle to use and what habits could bring me success.

I spent this past week obsessing over snakeheads. I ordered a new Shimano Sonora 2500 reel and found the right weight rod to pair with it (A Daiwa Samurai from a combo that I bought solely for the purpose of cannibalizing the rod). I spent hours watching videos on Youtube of snakeheads in aquariums striking food. I felt ready.

Mason Neck State Park is about a three hour drive from my home in Albemarle County, given the typical traffic in Northern Virginia. I left on Friday afternoon in time to make camp for the night at Pohick Bay Regional Park, which is only a few miles down the road from Mason Neck. The fishing at Pohick Bay is terrible from the shore and not worth even trying, but they do happen to have a campground while Mason Neck closes at 8:30 pm. Early on Saturday morning after a fitful night of humidity and raccoons, I broke camp and went fishing.

8:30 am - I begin fishing. The maiden cast from my new rig feels good. The Daiwa rod doesn't have much sensitivity but I shouldn't need a sensitive for catching a fish that either ignores the lure or hammers it instantly like Cookie Monster on a box of Samoas. What I need is accuracy on the cast and strength with the 16 lb test line, and that I have.

I bought a lot of top water lures to try out. Mostly frogs, but a few fish and unidentifiable floaty things. The Scumfrog looks especially promising. This pond is full of weeds and algae and bucking that stuff is of the first importance. Hopefully this will be like last week and I'll have a strike on my first cast. This time I'm ready, with 16 lb test line and a steel leader.

Crap. Ok, no first-cast fish. But my gear is good and the fish are here. Keep casting and I'll get one.

11 am: Still no fish caught, although I've been seeing feeding activity around the edges. Nothing else is moving in the pond except for tadpoles, snakes, and turtles. I'll put down the rod for a few minutes and take some photos of the turtles.

12:00 - Funny thing about the frogs here that I'm noticing. Usually when I approach to within a few paces of a bullfrog in the daylight he'll jump right into the water before I even realize he's there. The frogs here don't do that. They just sit there and stare at me. They don't want to go in the water -- what they know is down there is a lot scarier than I am.

1 pm - All of these other lures suck. Every single cast comes back full of weeds. No Jitterbugs for me today. Its just me and Scumfrog. Scumfrog goes out on cast after cast after cast free of weeds.

Good thing that Scumfrog looks like a frog, because that is literally the only thing in this pond for the snakeheads to eat. Everything else is gone. I threw the cast net a bunch of times to check for sure and there is nothing else swimming in this pond.

How many damn pictures of turtles do I really need, anyway?

2 pm - Holy effing shit I just saw the craziest thing that ever was. A goldfinch sat on a low branch of a tree that had fallen in the water, only a few inches above the surface. Mere seconds after I took a picture of the bird a snakehead jumped part way out of the water and gulped it down. Not so much as a feather remained. Only a slight set of ripples and a hole in the algae.

Scumfrog. You buck weeds nicely but you're shaped wrong. Why couldn't you be a Scumgoldfinch?

2:30 pm - Again and again I cast Scumfrog into a particular corner where I periodically see a moderate snakehead gulping air and splashing out of the water.

'Scumfrog, you're my only real friend out here. Without you I couldn't cast a single lure.'

As I reflected on Scumfrog, I finally manged to cast him out into what looked like the exact perfect sweet spot. Right into the grasses lining the shore, where I could pull back through the pocket of thick weeds and fallen branches. The sort of snarl of snags that only Scumfrog could make it through. And as dear Scumfrog (my only friend in the whole wide world) plopped onto the water I thought that this was it. The most perfect presentation and if there is indeed a snakehead in this pocket as I believe there to be then he must see and pursue and bite Scumfrog.

Bite he did! The snakehead lunged after Scumfrog; appearing as a torpedo sending up a broad wake of water and algae. He struck onto the lure and the fight was on. I cranked the reel and brought him gradually towards me. His long dark body with its distinctive fin running the length of the back breached out of the water for a moment, like a tarpon trying to throw a hook. I fought him closer and then suddenly he was just gone.

I stared at the still water and felt the limp line beneath my fingers.

'Scumfrog?! Is Scumfrog ok?'

With haste I reeled the line in and examined Scumfrog. Scumfrog was intact, though partially torn around the base of the legs. All of the parts were there, but for the rest of the day Scumfrog was not quite himself any longer. The legs had to be constantly readjusted. The hooks began to dig into and tear the body, which twisted around.

3 pm - The fuss caused by the failed strike has stirred up the pond too much and spooked them. I need to take a break from fishing by going fishing. I walked over to the river side of the walkway and began throwing my cast net in to see about some live bait.

Fathead minnows! And they might have worked but for the fact of the weeds, which the minnows swam through and got everything all tangled up. Live bait just isn't going to work here.

4 pm - Scumfrog keeps getting twisted up now. Nothing else bucks the weeds, and yet the fish refuse to bite and eat Scumfrog. Scumfrog. I find myself unable to comprehend any other words. I am sunburned and my right arm hurts terribly. It is physically painful to reel in my line with Scumfrog on the other end. Scumfrog Scumfrog Scumfrog.

WHY WON'T YOU EAT SCUMFROG?!

5 pm: Sometimes the snakeheads lunge at Scumfrog but don't quite make it. Why not hungry? Hell, I'm hungry. I haven't eaten since the oatmeal and coffee I cooked up at 7 am. Nor have I sat down. Or done anything except for fish.

6 pm: I will stand out here from dawn til dusk for as many days as I have to to kill a damned snakehead. I'll be like the goddamned Zax on the Prairie of Prax. I don't need food. I don't need water. I don't need other people. I don't need anything or anyone except for Scumfrog.

Scumfrog understands me.

6:30 pm. They were feeding in the middle of the branches of the fallen tree, you understand. That was where the snakeheads were. I could see them jumping, right by where they'd murdered the little goldfinch. That was where they were and so that was where I had to cast. And Scumfrog. Scumfrog. He wrapped all around a branch, three or four times. And when I tugged and tugged the line broke off and Scumfrog sank into the hoary depths.

Without my only really useful lure, there was nothing else to do. I had to leave the park and find more weed-bucking lures. By the time I'd gotten anywhere the park was closing and it was time to stop for the night.

I write this blog entry from a cheap Super 8 Motel near Fredericksburg. I stopped on the way at Dick's Sporting Goods and made a bee-line for the fishing section where I asked the guy at the gun counter to point me towards the Scumfrogs.

THEY DO NOT CARRY SCUMFROG.

My head almost exploded. I picked up a few other competing brands of weed-bucking top-water frog lures. Tomorrow I'll put them to the ultimate test and see how they hold up. There's a Gander Mountain nearby where I'll take another look for a Scumfrog in the morning. I'm exhausted and sore and sunburned and hungry but I need to sleep and fish again tomorrow. I did the math and figure that I made about 1,000 casts yesterday.

People who hear what I do for a job are so often jealous. It sounds like the easiest job in the world - I hunt and fish for a living. This is actually a really hard job and it is physically painful more often than not. Most people can decide at any point during the day that they have had enough and they are ready to go home and have a beer. I don't have that luxury. No matter what hurts and how many mosquito bites I have, I have to keep going until I bag the species that I need to complete that chapter of 'Eating Aliens.' People talk about the 'blood, sweat and tears' required to produce a good book, but I think that its only us outdoor writers who have to take that literally.

Maybe this thing ends tomorrow and maybe it doesn't. It took me a solid ten days or so to bag my first nutria in the swamps of Louisiana, in a situation where I was expecting to have it done in two days. Can anyone reading this even understand what its like to spend ten days in a swamp, hunting an invasive giant aquatic rat? Do you understand how I suffer for you, gentle reader?

And by the way, the makers of Scumfrog did not pay me a cent for any of this, though if they would please send me more Scumfrogs right away then I would appreciate it.

Without Scumfrog I am lonely.

Five Cheap Essentials

2011-08-03T16:18:00.002-04:00

Five really cheap things that are always in my pack when I'm out hunting and fishing:

1. Sleeping bag compression straps. I keep a couple of them coiled up and held together by rubber bands. On a few occasions I have actually used these for sleeping bags but more often they get deployed for something unexpected. Lashing a hindquarter of meat onto the top of my pack, for example. They also make dandy rifle slings for guns with the older-style sling loops. Once I used one as a dog leash and collar in a pinch.

2. Duct tape. I literally do not leave the house without it.

3. A small sharpening stone for the various knives that I carry. It doesn't have to be anything special but it should be small enough that you don't end up leaving it at home on account of the weight.

4. Various plastic bags. For meat, fish, birds, or whatever. Even when I have a collapsible foam cooler with me I sometimes want to segregate the contents.

5. A compass. I know that a lot of people feel like they can trust to their iPhones and GPS devices. But these are things that can run out of batteries or be dropped in the water. Its good to carry a map as well. Even if you don't have a good topographical map of the area you are going to be hiking, hunting or fishing in, its a good idea to look at a map in advance and recall which general direction that key roads and rivers are in.

Note that the basic Silva compasses that were such good standbys have dropped in quality. I grew up using a Silva as a Boy Scout and my old one still works well. Yet many of their lower-priced compasses produced more recently do not agree on which way is north.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. This picture depicts four more things that are usually in my backpack, although the bug spray is warm-weather only and the cheap paperbacks rotate.]

Boat US Article, Postscript

2011-08-01T16:58:00.004-04:00

Boat US magazine ran a piece about my work online today, and my understanding is that its running in the print edition that goes out to 600,000 or so subscribers.

Hi, Boat US readers!

Since that interview was conducted a few things have happened that will be of interest to those who read that article and then felt compelled to find this blog. Remember the great Philippe Parola from the same article? A funny thing happened while I was in Louisiana this past June. I was down there on a long trip to hunt nutria, which are a sort of enormous aquatic rodent from South America. While I was in Baton Rouge I met up with Philippe to talk about nutria (which we successfully hunted together) and the talk soon turned to carp.

Long story short, I was instantly convinced of the importance of Philippe's work. On my return home I started looking for investors to put up the money to build Philippe's factory. Right now it looks like we're most of the way there, although it probably won't be until this fall that the major organizational work starts.

Philippe is a very good guy and I'm not sure how to adequately express the value of meeting him. Understand that I have devoted the last year of my life to researching, hunting, and eating invasive species while I and my family have made major sacrifices for this cause. Philippe is one of only a very small handful of people whom I have met that share the same passion that I have for this cause.

As to the lionfish, I left for Eleuthera a few days after my interview with Boat US. The expedition was successful and you can find a brief account of it here. The full-length account will be its own chapter in my next book, 'Eating Aliens,' which will be out with Storey Publishing in 2012.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers and David Roshto. That's Philippe on the left and me on the right]

Snakeheads: Part One

2011-07-30T22:07:00.006-04:00

It was only a matter of time until my attention was turned to snakeheads. Turned, it has. A few days ago I saw some news bulletins about a snakehead having been caught for the first time only a week prior at Mason Neck State Park, on the Potomac River.

I heard about the fish at about 1 am on Thursday morning. Less than 12 hours later I was packed, in the car, and on my way to the Potomac.

The first place I stopped was at another park a few miles away. Pohick Bay Park is also on the Potomac and it offers campsites (unlike Mason Neck, which closes at 9 pm). I pulled in, made camp, and started asking everyone in sight about snakeheads. The guy at the camp store, strangers at boat landings. It turns out that people have been pulling snakeheads out of this stretch of the Potomac river pretty regularly. They just either aren't reporting them to DGIF or the data isn't being posted.

Fishing from the shore at Pohick Bay was pointless and frustrating. Masses of weeds near the shore make every retrieve a chore and every structure that could get someone out into the water has a 'no fishing' sign.

After a rough night in my tent trying to sleep through 100 degree heat I woke to find that raccoons had stolen my crab traps. Wonderful. Crabbing was right out for the rest of the trip.

I moved on to Mason Neck, paid my $4 entry fee and parked. I flagged down the first person I saw to ask about snakeheads. That someone happened to be T.C. Smith, head ranger at the park.

It turned out that I had hit paydirt. Big time. T.C. directed me towards a pond only a few hundred yards away that he promised was loaded with snakeheads. He told me that at least six had been taken out of that one pond so far this year. I was amazed to hear that he'd informed DGIF of the situation and they declined to do anything about it.

Worse, they had put a juvenile snakehead caught from the pond into an aquarium in the park's nature center and had their permit for it declined by DGIF. The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries refused to send someone in to electroshock the invasive fish out of a small pond loaded with them, but when the park wanted to use a single fish to educate the public about the dangers of snakeheads then DGIF decided to stop them. I find this to be completely outrageous. I have long been a fan of DGIF in general but this is really a sad disappointment. Not only are they failing to stop a dangerous invasive species but they appear to be subverting the park's education efforts. If they really think that it is so dangerous to have a single snakehead in an aquarium at an educational facility, then perhaps they should try doing something about the large numbers sitting there in the wild in a pond less than 300 yards away.

T.C. advised me that a top water lure would be a smart idea, given the amount of weeds to deal with in the pond. Taking his advice, I tied on the only really good top water lure that I had with me.

On the very first cast with my regular bass rig (a cheap Water Eagle reel on a six foot Ugly Stik) a fish nailed the lure within a second of it hitting the water. It rose to the surface as I pulled it in and I saw that beyond a doubt this was a big snakehead. It fought harder than any freshwater fish that I have ever hooked in my life. As I hauled it in I began to have doubts about the ability of my straining reel to do the job. Suddenly, the fish turned on the ten pound test line, bit clean through it, and disappeared with the lure.

I stared at the sad broken end of line that waved in the slight breeze and realized that I was outgunned.

Right away I walked back to my car to see what else I had on hand. The only tougher other option was my surf rig, a Shimano 4000 on an eight foot two-piece Ugly Stik (I have to keep my rods short, on account of needing to drive all over the United States with my gear stuffed into a compact Ford ZX2 coupe) loaded up with 18 pound test line.

I had driven out there expecting to be fishing in the river, so I didn't have many weed-busting top water lures on hand. In fact, my only one was currently stuck in a very big fish's mouth somewhere in that pond.

Long story short, I didn't hook any more fish that day, although I did see a lot more snakeheads cruising near the surface.

As I drove home I pondered what might be the ideal rig for pond snakeheads. My thinking right now is that I need a relatively short, medium-action rod coupled with a mid-range reel, loaded with 10 pound test line or better; using steel leaders and top-water lures. Heavy emphasis on the steel leaders.

I spent a lot of time back home watching videos on Youtube of snakeheads feeding in aquariums. The speed with which they usually attack is incredible. After watching a lot of videos and after observing the fish in the wild, I have some observations that will hopefully make it easier to catch them.

1. Snakeheads will attack very large prey, including fish as large as themselves. This is not like a largemouth bass, which sizes up prey on the basis of whether it can swallow it. Largemouths don't have teeth, while snakeheads do. A snakehead will grab onto a target and twist chunks off, almost like an alligator. Usually it tends to start with the back end. Because of this, very large lures could be used. But those lures also need to be very tough in order to hold up to the kind of abuse that these fish are capable of dishing out.

2. These fish are very wary and pay close attention to what is happening above the surface. Cast nets are out of the question (T.C. told me that they had tried them). Stalking is important. Stay quiet and mind where your shadow falls. Your first cast is probably the most important one. Snakeheads get spooked pretty quickly. Fish in one area for ten or fifteen minutes and then hang back for a while before returning.

3. Snakeheads tend to decide instantly whether or not to strike, and then they lunge hard. Their bodies are built to accelerate very rapidly for a short distance. Then they get winded fast.

While most snakeheads in North America are probably caught as a matter of chance by bass fishermen, we must not approach this species as if they were largemouth bass on steroids. Rarely have I seen a pond containing no fish but largemouth bass. Largemouths get along well with other fish and form a sustainable ecosystem with them. This pond, only a few yards from the Potomac River, contained absolutely nothing in the water column that I could divine over a full day of observation but snakeheads and turtles.

I am returning to Mason Neck in a few days with a purpose built snakehead rig and a tackle box loaded with appropriate lures, including a few that I am constructing myself specifically with snakeheads in mind. Come hell or high water, I'm clearing that pond out of as many invaders as I can possibly find and eat.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. Taken on the Potomac at dawn a few days ago.]

How to Move Beyond Sunfish

2011-07-27T00:25:00.008-04:00

My new year's resolution this year was to be a better fisherman. I really feel that I've been meeting that goal, though I still have a long way to go.

I first learned how to catch fish when I was around seven years old. My uncle Mike took my brother and I out after sunfish and bass on Silver Lake in Wilmington, Massachusetts. I caught a sunny and my brother caught a 10 inch bass, which we cooked that afternoon.

After that I could pull in little bullheads on a certain pond while visiting relatives in Massachusetts in the summer time, but otherwise my fishing career was limited to sunfish and bluegills for a very long time. Most people never move beyond catching sunnies off of a dock and I might very well have become one of them. My father would take my brother and I fishing periodically and this usually consisted of tossing out worms on Zebco 202 combos. After a while, the idea of catching anything bigger or different became abstract and foreign. There were only sunfish. Still, I was pretty happy.

As a teenager I learned how to really hunt for largemouth bass in a pond behind our house after we moved to Virginia. However, I had no idea what these fish were even called. They were big silvery things that I had to stalk up to along the bank, keeping my steps light and my shadow off of the water. They were good to eat. I knew nothing about spinning rods or how to select the right lure or hooks. I kept using the same little Mepps soft rubber lures that I had sent $2 off in the mail for when I was 10 years old. I still have one of those lures, by the way.

In retrospect, I lost a lot of big fish because I was using undersized hooks.

Over the last few years I've really tried to up my game and become a real four season fisherman who can bring home many different species to put on the table, using a variety of means of take. This year is when everything finally clicked.

I don't hold myself out to be some type of expert fisherman, by the way. I still have a lot to learn. But when I go out fishing in a spot that I know well, as often as not I come home with dinner. There are a few things that have really helped me out this year that I'm going to share with any new or lapsed fishermen reading this. So many of us started out catching sunnies off of a dock and never moved beyond that and I want you to know that it isn't that hard.

1. Study the fish. Whatever species you want to catch, read about its whole life cycle and what motivates it throughout the year. How does it respond to changes in temperature, barometric pressure, underwater structure and food sources? Yes, equipment is important and the magazines are full of information about gear. But understanding your prey should always come first. Someone who knows the fish can still catch them on $20 worth of tackle, while a guy who didn't know anything except how to plunk down $500 for a state-of-the-art set-up probably won't catch anything.

2. If something isn't working, change it. Don't cast the same lure 100 times in a row if you aren't getting a single bite. Try something different. Sometimes the fish won't touch a spinner but will jump straight on a rubber worm. Other days its the opposite. Carry a variety of lures with you and change them out when things aren't working.

3. Don't be afraid to get snagged. Casting into open, unobstructed water is easy but isn't always where the fish are. In hot weather they want shade, just like you do. Some predators like largemouth bass will sometimes hang out under overhanging trees waiting for insects to fall off and hit the water. Crappie like to hang out in schools around submerged trees. The same stuff that catches your hook and line so easily also tends to attract fish. If you aren't risking snags much when fishing freshwater then you probably aren't doing it right.

4. Get interested in the fish that are there. So maybe you have a lake full of carp that other fishermen aren't interested in. Or a river full of redhorse suckers. Well, as much as I love to catch largemouth bass and as much as many people love to catch muskies, most fish are good to eat and fun to catch once you learn how. There are a lot of fishermen out there who know a lot about how to catch one particular species but their opinions on anything else should be totally ignored. Don't ever let anyone tell you that carp, bullheads, suckers, or any other fish is bad to eat or not worth trying to catch. Nine times out of ten, the guy who tells you that has never actually eaten the species in question. Cook it yourself, and then judge.

By the way, I still love to catch sunfish. This very afternoon I caught three largemouth bass, one of which measured an honest 16 inches. The pair of hand-sized sunnies that I caught and kept for dinner fought almost as well and will taste just as good. I will never be too proud to catch sunfish off of a dock, even if I have moved beyond the old Zebco 202.

__________________________________

In case anyone is wondering, my basic freshwater bass set-up consists of a Shakespeare 'Ugly Stik' rod paired with an Eagle Claw brand 'Water Eagle' reel. The Water Eagle reel is nothing special and probably won't last through another season. But as cheap reels go, the Water Eagle reel has held up better than most others in its price range have for me. Shakespeare's Ugly Stiks are good rods for the money but the reels that come with their combos are junk. Pairing an Ugly Stik rod with another brand of reel is a good way to go on a low budget.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. This is an 18 inch bass caught by my friend Fergus Clare, who is holding it.]

How to Choose and Use a Cast Net

2011-07-22T21:29:00.004-04:00

I just realized that I really should have explained a little bit more about cast nets in those last few blog entries.

A cast net is a net that is thrown, or 'cast' directly on top of the fish you are after. This is different from a dip net and other types of nets with specialized uses.

Cast nets have weights along the edges which serve two purposes. First, the weights help to spread the net out by centripetal force as it is thrown. It is very important that the net spread out and hit the water as wide and flat as possible. Secondly, the weights help the net to sink quickly. If the net takes too long to sink then the fish will have time to swim out from under it.

Once the net sinks on top of any fish underneath it, the weights hold the net down and trap the fish inside. As you pull the net back to the surface the weights pull the net closed and tight so that the fish do not escape.

You can use a cast net either on fish that are visible or in a spot where you think fish are likely to be. It can work quite well even for benthic fishes that hang out on the bottom.

Cast nets come in various sizes starting at around four feet in diameter on up. A smaller net is easier to learn how to throw properly and is a good choice for a beginner. The downside of a smaller net is that a fish has decent odds of swimming out of its path, especially in deeper water. A wider net catches more fish.

Tossing a net tends to make some noise and stir up the water so you usually won't want to throw a net in the same place for long. The fish get spooked off. Throw a few times and then move on, giving it at least twenty minutes or so until hitting the same spot again.

The net I've been using is pretty similar to this four-footer, which costs less than $30. I've grown to appreciate this thing a lot lately, in particular once I realized that the mortality rate among fish that I throw back is probably close to zero. No hooks, no injuries. This isn't something that many people would use for sport, but if you just want to catch dinner in a hurry then a cast net is a smart item to buy.

A Floridian Invasive Safari

2011-07-22T14:40:00.004-04:00

Looking to knock out a few more species as my deadline for completing 'Eating Aliens' approaches, I made a trip back down to Gasparilla Island, Florida, to hunt with my friend George Cera. George specializes in hunting invasive reptiles but this time our quarry was three species of fish, plus muscovy ducks. We ended up running out of time before we could bag any ducks but we went three for three in the fish department. Plecos, armored catfish and tilapia.

This was a little different from most fishing I've done before because we used cast nets almost exclusively. By the end of the trip I felt like I'd gotten to be a fair hand at throwing a four-footer, although I'm awful at using George's eight-foot net.

I stayed in a fantastic cottage at the Gasparilla Innlet. Off-season in the summer the crowds are thin and rooms are easy to get, but the fishing and scenery are still great. If you get down there right now you'll find that the mangoes are still ripe.

On my last day George and I cruised around in his golf cart hunting black spiny-tailed iguanas. I'd already bagged these for the book last year but I really wanted some meat to bring home. Last year George was exclusively using a .177 pellet rifle to shoot iguanas but now he has started using a Henry .22 rifle loaded with CCI birdshot capsules in some situations. The bird shot is less likely to cause property damage to any structures immediately behind the iguana.

[All photos copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved.]

Eating Plecos

2011-07-17T20:58:00.004-04:00

I was really into fresh water aquariums for a few years. I started out with mid-sized community tanks before coming to specialize in 'natural aquariums' that didn't require any pumps or filters. Some of my tanks included Hypostomus plecostomus, more commonly known as a 'pleco,' or as a 'sucker.'

Plecos are great in aquariums because they eat algae off of nearly any surface and help to keep the tank clean. The one problem with them in aquariums is that over a few years they tend to get rather bigger than most people are equipped to deal with. Lengths of two feet are common and four footers are not unheard of.

Of course, few people have ever seen one longer than 12 inches because they put a stop to it right there. Either they trade it in to a pet store, euthanize it, or release it into a handy body of water.

For the love of all that is holy, do not take the third option. People in central Florida did and now the fish have rapidly reproduced and become a serious invasive problem.

I write this from a cottage at the Gasparilla Innlet on an island on the Gulf coast of Florida. I spent the day with my friend, George Cera, stalking invasive fish on the mainland with a cast net and a camera.

The use of a cast net is rarely seen among fresh water fishermen in the US. While casting a net is different from that involved in catching fish with a hook and line, I can attest that it takes practice and skill. Larger nets are harder to throw properly. I rarely managed to throw an eight foot net properly, but I've got the knack of it with my four foot net.

We used nets because the three invasive fish on our list are all herbivores that do not readily take lures or bait. Armored catfish, tilapia and plecos. All native fish caught in the net were released. Having knocked out the armored catfish yesterday (dealing with a lot of alligators along the way, which I won't get into here but it will all be detailed in my next book, 'Eating Aliens') we moved on to plecos and tilapia today.

I confess that it felt strange and a little bit wrong when I untangled the medium-sized pleco from my net and dropped it into the waiting cooler. I'd kept these things as pets and while they didn't exactly carry my slippers around I had come to think of them in a decidedly domestic way.

We cooked the pleco and a wild tilapia at George's house a few hours ago. Most readers have probably eaten tilapia and have some idea of what it tastes like. With that as a baseline we cooked the tilapia and the pleco according to identical recipes for a side-by-side comparison according to the recipe that follows. The only difference in preparation is that the tilapia was gutted, scaled and then cooked whole while the pleco was gutted and then sliced in half with a diagonal cut on account of there being next to no meat in the front half. Plecos have large, tough scutes instead of regular scales and there is no sense in trying to scale them. Better to pull the skin and scutes off after cooking.

Mango Pleco

Ingredients:

1 or more plecos, gutted and sliced along the belly towards the end of the tail.

1 ripe mango

Salt

Pepper

Place the fish on a piece of aluminum foil. Shred the mango and stuff the interior of the fish with the fruit. Drizzle the mango juice all over the fish. Salt and pepper to taste. Wrap and seal the aluminum foil and bake at 350 degrees F until fully cooked. Time will vary depending on the size of the fish. Check it after 25 minutes and then see if it needs to cook longer.

We used mango because George is fortunate enough to have three different varieties of mango growing in his back yard and dropping fruit everywhere. George was deeply skeptical of the whole idea of eating pleco. From the moment I hauled it out of the water he didn't want to even discuss eating it. In fact he required that I prepare the pleco in a separate container from the tilapia because he didn't want the tilapia he intended to eat to be tainted by the vile pleco.

When both fish finally came out of the oven they looked and smelled like food instead of just the weird dead things that they had previously been. I handed George a fork and suggested that he try some.

Slowly, apprehensively, he placed a fork-full of pleco into his mouth. And he liked it. He really liked it. Then I tried some and I liked it, too. And then we ate some of the tilapia, which had been prepared and cooked identically (and was, if anything, slightly fresher having been caught last).

We both liked the taste and texture of the pleco more than we did the tilapia. The pleco had started out looking like dark meat when we'd gutted and prepped it but by the time it came out of the oven it was white and flaky. It had a firmer texture and a cleaner flavor than the tilapia.

Obviously I am an advocate for fishing, killing, and eating tilapia from Florida's waters on account of them being an invasive species there. And the tilpia really tasted very good. But I did not expect in my wildest dreams to enjoy eating plecos more than tilapia. The plecos were, in all honesty, an after-thought. In fact, I didn't even realize that they were here until a few days ago. I came down here to catch tilapia. But the pleco wins, hands down.

Plecos taste very good. They are absolutely an edible fish and are worth pursuing and using as food. This recipe that I tested it with contained no strong-tasting ingredients. No garlic or peppers to mask any off flavors. Just a little mango to wrap around the flavor of the fish. Pleco tastes superb.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. Please ask for permission to use it with attribution and permission will probably be granted]

Hail, Hail, Rock & Roll

2011-07-11T14:29:00.004-04:00

The New York Times has a piece today about eating invasive species. Many people have been emailing me links to this expressing minor outrage at the fact that the article does not mention me or my work.

Well, lets look at it this way; there eventually came a point where it was no longer necessary to mention Chuck Berry in every article about rock and roll. This is a good thing. My goal with the Eating Aliens project, book and perhaps TV show has been to create a cultural shift in favor of hunting and eating invasive species. I don't want the whole movement to be just about me. The fact that so many people are now accepting and practicing this concept means that the goal is succeeding and that there is plenty to say about it without talking about my work.

This is a good thing all around. I just hope they'll come back and talk when the book launches.

[Photograph copyright 2010 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved.]

Utah!

2011-07-07T20:02:00.004-04:00

This Friday I'm off to Snowbird, Utah to speak at the annual conference of the Outdoor Writer's Association of America on a panel with Hank Shaw. Hank's recent book, 'Hunt Fish Cook', was borne out of much the same spirit as the books, classes, workshops and other events I've been doing over the last few years.

I've never been to Utah before and I'm not quite sure what to expect. Snowbird looks like a nice place, though not quite my style. When I hit the road I'm usually more likely to find myself bivvied in a shack, tent or my pop-up trailer in close proximity to water with good fishing and some kind of hunting. I left that world of resorts, room service and air conditioning behind a long time ago, though it might be nice to re-visit it.

When I return from Utah, I'm trying to manage a quick trip to West Virginia to hunt feral goats followed by a run down to Florida for a few days to bag invasive muscovy ducks and tilapia. Maybe snakeheads as well.

Its crunch time. I have to have 'Eating Aliens' handed in to my publisher by the end of August, and assuming 3 or 4 weeks of straight writing I've got to have all of the travel completed by the first week of August. Is this even physically possible? Especially on a remaining budget of only a few thousand dollars? Time will tell.

Is there anyone out there who can help get me on to some snakehead fish, either in Florida or elsewhere in North America? If so, please shoot me an email at jack.landers@gmail.com

By the way, its prime blackberry season. Go get picking!

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved]

Ontario Interview

2011-06-29T15:14:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I did an hour-long interview with Walter Garrison, host of the 'Locavore!' radio show in Ontario. It is being split up into two parts for broadcast on CFRU 93.3 out of Guelph, Ontario (not far from Toronto).

The whole interview is available streaming right here. While the goose thing is what most interviewers have been asking me about for the last few weeks, Walter's questions covered broader local food hunting issues and my work with invasive species for the 'Eating Aliens' project.

[Photo copyright 2010 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved]

The State Decoded

2011-06-28T20:07:00.004-04:00

My fraternal twin brother, Waldo Landers Jaquith, just got a big grant to finish developing this culture-changing piece of software. He also received an award at the White House a few weeks ago for this same work.

The idea is to make state codes accessible and understandable to ordinary people without having to spend vast sums of money on legal fees.

Conceptually, this builds on his work creating Richmond Sunlight, which makes it simple for regular people to track, understand and critique legislation in Virginia.

[This photograph, copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers, has nothing to do with anything in this blog entry. I don't like posting without a photo, and I have all of these pictures of turtles, so here you go.]

Gathering Wild Chanterelles

2011-06-26T14:42:00.006-04:00

I am not a mushroom expert by any stretch of the imagination. However, there are a few edible species that I can recognize and am really good at finding. This past week I have been obsessively gathering and eating chanterelles.

Chanterelles taste delicious when cooked. Raw, they don't have much flavor although they do exude a fruity aroma. They are very easy to cook with. A few minutes in a frying pan with some butter or oil and they are ready to add to any meal. I've been eating them in omelets and scattered over steak, but also slumming it and using them to improve twenty five cent packets of ramen noodles.

Before eating any wild mushroom it is important to learn not only what your intended meal looks like, but also the finer points of how to distinguish it from any other species with a similar appearance. In the case of chanterelles the deciding factor for their identification is usually the distinctive appearance of the underside.

The mushroom on the right in this photograph that I took a few days ago is a chanterelle. The one on the left is not. Both are yellowish mushrooms with convex caps that looked very similar from above, but note that the one on the left has true gills that are discrete structures attached to the bottom of the cap. The chanterelle features 'false gills', which are really just very deep wrinkles. Also notice how the false gills run down into the stem rather than stopping abruptly.

When chanterelles come up after a rain, they seem to do so in force. You probably won't be able to eat all that you gather before they spoil. I have found that they freeze very well. Spread them out on a baking sheet and put that in the freezer until the mushrooms are solid. Then transfer them to a sealed bag or other container.

Tip of the hat to my friend Abe from Oregon, who identified some of my mushroom pictures on Facebook and started me on a chanterelle obsession.

[Photograph copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved]

Parlez Vous Francais?

2011-06-22T14:00:00.004-04:00

There's an article that discusses my work in Le Point magazine this week, but I have no idea what it says on account of my not speaking much French. I suspect that this is about my deer classes, though I'm not quite certain. If anyone can clue me in then I would appreciate it.

In the photos up top (not the photo shown here with this blog entry) they've got Mark Zuckerberg on the right holding a lobster and then I'm pretty sure that those are my hands and one of my cheaper knives trimming a venison backstrap on the left.

Any minute now I swear that I'll get back to writing about nutria and carp and my conversations with chef Philippe Parola, which is what I was supposed to be doing all this month until the goose situation re-asserted its self.

[Photo composite copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved]

Interview on 'Q'

2011-06-22T11:56:00.004-04:00

This morning I did a live interview with Jian Ghomeshi of 'Q,' which I gather is a popular morning show in Canada on CBC radio. My audio cut out a few times and I couldn't hear anything, but hopefully I didn't end up talking over him during those bits.

Somehow, I'm pretty sure that I ended up promising on the air to take some geese up to Toronto this fall to prove to some skeptics that they are truly worth eating. If they'll have me, I'm prepared to make good on that.

[Photo used courtesy of Melissa McEwen. That's me on the right and Leighton Edmondson on the left. Leighton is the chef I worked with for the Slow Food goose event in Brooklyn last fall.]

Kerner Blue Butterfly in Virginia?

2011-06-20T21:23:00.003-04:00

Entomology has never been my strong suit. The up-side of this is that I can easily get really excited about what must be very mundane beetles and butterflies to anyone who knows what they are looking at.

Today I'm all a-flutter (see what I did there?) about a little blue butterfly that I photographed.

Can someone more knowledgeable than myself weigh in as to whether this is the endangered Karner blue butterfly, or some more common variety of Lycaeides melissa? If it is in fact the Karner blue then I believe this would be the first sighting in Virginia for a very long time.

Click on the photo for a bigger image. I realize that odds are that this is some very dull, common subspecies that is totally not worth paying attention to, but if someone could let me know for certain than I would appreciate it.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved.]

Off to the Printer!

2011-06-20T04:16:00.004-04:00

My editor recently informed me that at long last my deer book was going off to the printer as of last Monday. This was both a major source of stress and a great relief. The stress came from the inevitable round of last-minute changes, mostly to captions of the many illustrations. The relief was my realization that finally they can't possible ask me for any other changes to the text now that the book is going out the door.

It won't hit the book shelves until the launch in September, but it is already available for pre-order on Amazon.

By the way, yes this is a professionally published book. I do not self-publish, blog aside. Both this book and 'Eating Aliens' (which won't launch until 2012) are being produced by Storey Publishing. They pay me book advances and royalties, I write the book, and then they spend months pointing out to me everything that is terribly wrong with it.

In all honesty, 'The Beginners Guide To Hunting Deer for Food' is now a much better book than it was when I first handed in the manuscript. A good editor can make a big difference in the quality of a book. Storey specializes in how-to books and they are very good at figuring out how to express instructions for complicated tasks in clear language and images. This means months of back-and-forth between me and my editor, but the result really was a better quality book than I could have produced on my own. At least in this genre, the traditional publishing system has some really strong benefits.

The first complete draft of 'Eating Aliens' is due in August, which will bring a relief of its own even though months of revisions will surely follow. I've been working mostly full-time on 'Eating Aliens' for close to a year now. I have lived and breathed invasive species issues each and every day during that time and while the topic has become very important to me I look forward to starting other projects. I have the first few chapters of a book on hunting and cooking small game (intended to be branded as a sequel to the deer book), and I expect to have that finished by mid-winter. The big question is what to do for a follow-up to 'Eating Aliens.'

I have three different major projects in mind, only one of which necessarily involves hunting. All three involve adventure travel and weird encounters with wildlife.

Canada on Canada Geese

2011-06-18T13:48:00.004-04:00

The National Post ran a nice piece this morning about our victory on the goose front.

This is really very satisfying. The policy got changed without protests, or naming-calling, or lobbyists, or any money at all. I simply made my case and turned hunting and cooking into a political statement which proved that wild geese aren't trash and that they should be eaten instead of thrown into landfills.

Neat.

According to the National Post, the Canadian Wildlife Service has starting looking into using their culled geese as food as well.

Gail Nyberg, the executive director of Canada's largest food bank doesn't want to serve them on account of two reasons.

First, because the birds need to be plucked. Well, I strongly suspect that all of the other poultry she serves needed to be plucked at some point as well. This can be avoided by skinning, or when they know that they are about to receive a good number of geese they can get a big pot of water heated up and dunk them before plucking. It goes much more quickly. I would also be very happy to try to raise the money to buy them a Whiz-Bang plucking machine. My father-in-law just built one for his chickens and they are very easy to use.

Secondly, she thinks that geese taste bad and are too fatty on account of having tried goose once. She doesn't want to serve something she won't eat. Gail, I've eaten badly cooked chicken before but that doesn't mean that the ingredient can't be good. Promptly gutted and quickly refrigerated, you will love wild goose. I would be very happy to bring a few geese and a chef up to Toronto and prove it.

[Photo used courtesy of Michelle Sanders. That's me in the orange vest gutting and plucking geese with Michael Macfarlan of Glass House Winery]

Invasive Beavers in Nutria Country

2011-06-17T21:30:00.007-04:00

Today the Washington Post has an article about invasive beavers that were introduced to Argentina and have been expanding their range.

According to the Post the beavers probably number about 200,000. The Argentine government still has not given permission for the beavers to be harvested for food, in spite of a good effort having been made by local chefs to work with them.

My opinion is that they do not have a prayer of getting rid of these things. If they are still regulating the hunting of the species to the extent that they only allow them to be killed under particular circumstances and for particular reasons then there is absolutely no hope of removing the beavers.

The way to eliminate a species like this is to simply kill them. Stop studying it, stop regulating it. Create a continuous open season year-round and allow people to hunt them with traps and rifles on all public land and on private land with the owner's permission. No bag limits, no restrictions. Add a viable bounty per head on top of that (at least $10 each, if not more), while also allowing the meat to be eaten and the hides to be sold, and you have the makings of a program that could work.

Argentina doesn't sound prepared to do this.

Meanwhile, back here in the US we have invasive nutria that were brought from Argentina last century to provide for a fur-trapping industry. Ironically, this was the same reason why beavers were introduced to Argentina. Can't we all just be happy with the big furry aquatic rodents that we already have?

I've just spent about a week and a half hunting nutria in Louisiana and my conclusion is that they aren't much farther along in their thinking than Argentina is. They still have a closed season on nutria for much of the year, and they even still have bag limits. In a few areas like Jefferson Parish we find local governments that are seriously doing something about the problem but the state and federal government are both really just giving the problem lip service. They'll do anything to get rid of the nutria, short of actually letting people go out there and kill them.

The interactions between nutria and beavers are interesting and unfortunate in the US. Nutria have a habit of ganging up into large groups to attack and kill beavers in order to take their lodges. I spent several days in the backwaters of Caddo Lake near the Texas border ambushing a group of 'nutes' that had done exactly this. The beaver lodge was occupied by nutria and the beaver were nowhere to be seen. Trees with obvious beaver chewing signs were seen here and there, but all of the weathering suggested that they'd been gone for at least a couple of years.

In Argentina the invasive beavers seem to be moving straight into the native territory of the nutria. Will the nutria provide a check against their advances, just as they have hurt beaver populations in North America? I don't know. There are certainly other factors involved as well, such as a lack of predators in Argentina that specialize them. There may also be diseases and parasites that periodically control beaver numbers in their native range which do not occur in South America.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. That's me holding the nutria. It was delicious]

Cooking with Canada Geese

2011-06-17T13:19:00.004-04:00

Someone asked me for a good recipe for Canada goose, so here it is. This is a recipe put together by my friend Dan Schleifer, who was one of three chefs cooking at a goose event that I put on with Slow Food Virginia last winter. This is not a simple recipe, but then of course the whole point of that event was in fact 'slow' food.

When cooking with wild goose in general, understand that this is nothing like chicken or other poultry. Canada geese are all red meat and that meat is more like lean roast beef than anything else. Keep the meat moist during cooking, and take advantage of the superb fat that lies just under the skin (not marbled within the meat). Too much heat or overcooking will dry out the goose and turn it into shoe leather. If you accidentally find you have done this, the meat can still be salvaged by smoking or slow-cooking it for a very long time.

Goose doesn't need to be all that elaborate. You can carve off the breasts into thin slices and pan-sear them quickly in some olive oil and red wine and pepper and be eating dinner in 15 minutes. You could strip the meat and fat off of the bones and run it all through a meat grinder for goose burgers. This is potentially a very flexible ingredient.

Goose Rillettes with Dried Fruit Mostarda

Goose Rillettes

4 goose hind quarters (leg & thigh)
3 oz kosher salt
8 cloves garlic, crushed
1 T juniper berries, crushed
3 T black pepper, coarsely ground

4 cups rendered goose and/or duck fat

Rub the goose quarters with a mixture of the salt, garlic, juniper and pepper, and allow to sit in the fridge for 24 hours.

Rinse the goose under cold, running water to remove all of the seasonings. Place the goose quarters in a shallow pan, and cover with the rendered fat. Place the goose, covered in foil, in a 200 degree oven for 8 hours, or until the meat is fork tender.

Allow the goose to cool, and remove from the fat. Separate all of the meat from the bones and skin, and set the meat aside. Separate the fat from the drippings using a gravy separator.

Place the goose meat in a standing mixer with the paddle attachment, and mix on low, slowly adding the reserved drippings until the meat takes on a moist, spreadable texture. Add 1/4c of the reserved fat, and salt and pepper to taste, mixing to incorporate.

If preparing in advance, spoon the rillettes in to a clean glass jar, and cover with a 1/2 inch layer of the reserved fat. Refrigerate for up to two weeks. Bring to room temperature before serving.

Dried Fruit Mostarda

1c golden raisins, coarsely chopped
1c dried figs, coarsely chopped

1c dried apricots, coarsely chopped
1T mustard seeds
1/4 sugar
1/2 cider vinegar
1/2 water
1/2t salt

Mix all ingredients in a small sauce pan and bring to a simmer over low heat. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until alll liquid has been absorbed. Add additional sugar or vinegar to taste, to balance sweet/sour. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

To serve:

Spread a tablespoon of room temperature rillette over a toasted slice of baguette, and garnish with 1/2t of cool mostarda.

[Photo used courtesy of Michelle Sanders of Glass House Winery. Left to right, that's me, Jeff Sanders of Glass House, and Dan Schleifer. Those are some of the goose rillettes on the table, along with bowls that are about to receive a smoked goose soup.]

Vindicated on Canada Geese

2011-06-15T21:15:00.005-04:00

At this point I've been banging away on locavore hunting and invasivore issues for a couple of years now. I quit my day job and went full-time last year. Honestly, there have been times when I looked at what I was doing and thought that maybe it was completely hopeless. Sooner or later one hopes to see some substantive change in a society as a result of one's work. In case anyone was wondering, this particular career path doesn't pay especially well.

I've finally turned a corner. The New York Times reports today that the authorities have relented and the geese being culling around NYC-region airports will now be donated to hungry families instead of being dumped in landfills.

Long-time readers will recall that I became incensed at this previous act of wanton waste and that I vowed to do something about it. I immediately backed myself into a corner where I had pledged to put on a wild goose event with Slow Food NYC and had no choice but to follow through or look like a moron. The New York Times reported on it, as did Gothamist and I think the Village Voice as well. The event was a great success and I later repeated it with Slow Food Virginia at the Glass House Winery.

Through these events, I proved to the media and to the public that Canada goose meat tastes really, really good once you know how to cook it. And now that effort seems to have helped to create a meaningful change in policy.

At the same time, I suddenly find myself knee-deep in a project with the great chef Philippe Parola. Philippe and I met in Baton Rougue, Louisiana last week and discovered that each of us has been engaged in work for years that perfectly complements the other. Philippe has spent a lot of his own time and money developing the technology to process invasive Asian grass carp from American waterways into high-quality frozen filets that could be sold at grocery stores all over the US. This brilliant project of his (and the idea is 100% Philippe's -- I take no credit) had run into funding troubles and I'm now doing everything I can to line up investment to get this processing plant built. Long story short, our prospects suddenly look very good. If Philippe's vision for a carp processing plant gets built, this would be the most effective implementation of the 'Eating Aliens' concept that imaginable.

Suddenly its all starting to feel really worthwhile. The last few years of work are starting to pay off and turn into real change that's going to help people and ecosystems. Maybe I'm not crazy after all.

[Photo copyright 2011, Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. Ok, its not the best goose photo ever but I'm trying to move more towards using my own original photos instead of stuff from Creative Commons]

The Guns of 'Eating Aliens'

2011-06-11T13:37:00.006-04:00

This morning I was a guest on my friend George Cera's radio show ('Let's Talk Wildlife,' on 107.5 FM in central Florida) and a caller asked about what weapons I had come to favor for hunting nutria. I get a lot of questions about my gear in general so I thought it would be fun to outline what I bring when I hit the road.

First of all, I don't have a truck or an SUV. I drive a little Ford ZX2 coupe that has plenty of engine but gets great gas mileage. This car doesn't have a whole lot of room and that means that I have to make some tough decisions about what comes and what stays.

When I travel to work on Eating Aliens I always have a specific species that I'm after but I also want to be prepared to take advantage of any other opportunities that might come alone. Anything from one pound iguanas to three hundred pound wild boar could be on the menu, depending on whom I happen to meet and what species they can direct me to.

I've settled out to three long guns and one pistol that always come with me (unless I'm visiting a state or country with gun laws that prevent me).

First, my Marlin 925 bolt action .22 rifle. I carry an extra magazine for it. The Marlin sports a 32mm Pine Ridge scope by Cabela's on quick detaching rings by Burris. The QD rings are essential, in my opinion. I spend a lot of time hunting in some very awkward places at strange hours, often under a deadline. That .22 gets used so much for small game that I cannot risk having it out of commission even for a few hours if the scope takes a hard knock. Just a few days ago I was sitting on a riverbank in Port Vincent, Louisiana hunting nutria close to dusk. Rain began to fall and between the fog on the scope lenses and the low light, I could not make anything out through the crosshairs. It took me less than a minute to pull off the scope and keep hunting with open sights. The following day, the ability to switch to those open sights allowed me to pot a couple of fast-swimming nutria from an airboat. I doubt that I could have made snap shots like those if I'd had to find the targets in a magnified scope.

At some point I will probably upgrade to a stainless and synthetic version of the same rifle. Meanwhile the blued steel and laminated wood of my 925 seem to be accepting the constant abuse of the elements with dignity.

A Mossberg 500 pump action 12 gauge shotgun also lives in the trunk when I'm on the road. There are other brands and action types that are better at specific tasks. My side-by-side 20 gauge Stevens would make a dandy gun for European pigeons, for example. But I don't know if I'm going to be hunting pigeons one day and maybe muscovy ducks the next. I need one gun that does it all reasonably well and that is the Mossberg 500 in 12 gauge. I bring both lead and steel shot (use lead if you're going to use shotguns for nutria, by the way) in the car with me in several different sizes.

Among the things that I like about the 500 is the fact that its not an expensive gun. I can abuse it all I want and its not a big deal. I have literally used this gun as a barge pole at a moment of need and the action cycled just fine afterward. I have pounded stakes into the ground with it. It just won't quit.

The third long gun that comes on the road with me every time is my Remington model 700 XCR, chambered in .30-'06. Yes, there are better tailored deer cartridges. There are lighter, faster varmint cartridges out there. There are bigger cartridges that will put a bigger hole in a feral pig. But if you need one gun that can handle anything in North America (which I do), the .30-'06 is the way to go. I strongly prefer a stainless steel and corrosion resistant finish, because I've had some bad experiences with Remington's blued steel rusting up quickly in rough weather. The lower-priced Model 700s have really suffered in quality over the last ten years or so, but the higher-priced versions such as the XCR remain solid guns.

My 700 wears a Leupold VX-II scope mounted on Leupold rings and a two piece Leupold base. The only thing I don't like about it is the lack of back-up iron sights, which is also the reason why it doesn't have QD rings. The barrel has been cut down and re-crowned to 19 inches, which is unusual for a .30-'06. I like it set up this way because when the gun is slung over my shoulder the barrel doesn't protrude above my head. That helps a lot when I'm moving a long way through thick brush to get to a hunting area. Given the efficiency of modern smokeless powders, the loss of velocity doesn't amount to much more than 75 feet per second, if that.

The .22, 12 gauge and .30'-06 ammunition all offer the advantage of being ubiquitous. If I need to pick up ammo on the road, I can find what I need at any store that sells ammunition. While I'm a big fan of cartridges like the 8mm Mauser, 7mm-08 and .303 British and I hunt with them at home, I won't often take those guns on the road for fear of not being able to find ammunition on the shelf quickly if I need it.

Another gun that usually makes the cut and comes along with me is my Ruger Mk III Hunter. This is a .22 semi-automatic target pistol with a long, fluted bull barrel. The stainless steel finish is nice in bad weather. Sometimes when I'm hunting small game in an out-of-the-way area I like to bring the Ruger for the sake of having less weight and encumbrance as I hike in and out. I'll put a pair of collapsible safari sticks in my pack and use the pistol exactly as I would a rifle. This little pistol of mine has taken everything from squirrels to nutria to turkeys (any firearm is legal for turkey hunting in Virginia).

In my next post I'll outline some of the things other than firearms that always come with me on an expedition.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved.]

An Ambush Still-Life

2011-06-09T01:44:00.003-04:00

Still-life during a daylight ambush. I hunt all sorts of small game with this Ruger mk. III .22 target pistol. Easy to stuff into a pack (yes, I have a concealed weapon permit) and carry a long way out into the woods or swamps with far less weight than a rifle. I carry a set of safari sticks and for ambushes within about 30 yards or less I find that off the sticks the target pistol is every bit as accurate as a rifle.

The bug spray and granola bars are must-haves. Just remember to open the granola bars right when you first settle in so that you won't have to make noise with the packaging when you get hungry.

As for the book, I always throw some little paperback into my bag when I go hunting. More often than not I end up with some stretches of downtime that can be filled by reading.

On the Road

2011-06-09T01:20:00.004-04:00

I have been on the road more or less non-stop for over two weeks now with very little time in front of a computer or even with a cell phone signal. Catching carp in Massachusetts, European green crabs in Connecticut, stopping in New York City for a publishing convention and then bagging some very hard-won nutria down in the swamps of Louisiana. All of this for my new book, 'Eating Aliens.'

Right now I'm stopped for the night in Alabama on my way home. This will be the first night in about a week that I will get to sleep for more than about 3 or 4 hours. There might have been one six hour night in there somewhere but I've lost all track of time. After resting for a day or so, I have a ton of writing to do, including writing up some useful blog entries about what I've learned on the road lately.

A few lessons learned:

1. Nutria don't always float when you kill them. Don't assume that it isn't dead if you can't see the body.

2. It would be a really stupid idea to go wading into the water to retrieve a dead, bloody, recently thrashing nutria in the middle of the night in alligator country. Sometimes you just have to let those ones go if you don't have a boat.

3. It is a very good idea for serious hunting rifles to have both open sights and a scope mounted with quick-detaching rings. I've always been an advocate for using QD rings whenever possible and it paid off in low light with a steady rain when my fogged scope could have ended the hunt.

On this trip I finally had the pleasure of meeting, cooking, and hunting with the great Philippe Parola in Baton Rouge. Philippe's work with nutria a few years ago was nothing short of stunning and what he is trying to do now with carp is even more promising. He will be contributing a nutria recipe for my new book and I'm going to do everything I can to support his work to get invasive carp out of American rivers and to save the Great Lakes from them.

I realize that this blog entry is totally scatter-shot and doesn't come anywhere near to forming the sort of cohesive article-type writing that I prefer to post here. Sorry about that. I just need a few days of rest and I'll be back in proper form with some real articles.

Ever watch that TV show, 'Supernatural?' That's pretty much my life right now, only with invasive animals instead of demons. Trunk full of guns, cheap motels, late nights in places that nobody should really go. Never really sure what state I'm going to be headed to the next day. I have a really weird job.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. Just ask and I'll probably let you use it.]

One More Reason to Go Fishing

2011-05-27T11:17:00.004-04:00

Up to 25% of fish sold at retail is fraudulently mislabeled, according to a recent DNA study described by the New York Times.

I knew that most Chilean sea bass on the market is the product of poaching and is sold with forged paperwork. And I'd heard about how many 'scallops' are actually skate wings punched out into cylinders. But fraud on this scale, across the board, is surprising.

Because I live a long way from the ocean I almost never buy fish anyway. Its just not going to be especially fresh. I'll buy sardines or kippered herring in a tin, but nothing else. When we eat fish in my house, we catch it ourselves. Its a pretty good means of being 100% certain about both the species and and the freshness.

Catching dinner every now and then is pretty cheap and simple to do. You can get a basic rod and reel combo with hooks and lures and everything for as little as $20. A set-up like that will work fine for catching bluegills, crappie, largemouth bass and smaller catfish. At that price it probably won't last more than a season before breaking but you can at least get started.

A fishing license in most states costs between $10-$18 for a year. Kids under the age of 15 or 16 usually don't need a license at all. Consider the fact that for under $40 you can get a license and all of the equipment and have something to do after work or on the weekends that won't cost you any more money, will get you outside and off of the couch, and might put dinner on the table. In this economy, fishing is a pretty good deal. At least you'll know for sure what you're eating.

I don't consider myself a particularly talented fisherman. I've been fishing since I was around seven years old and I get out as much as possible. I'll never be good enough to enter any tournaments. Every now and then I look at one of those diagrams of bass structure in a large lake in Field & Stream, complete with lunar tables and asterisks for rain and temperature and I honestly have no idea what the hell it all means. Yet I still have a pretty good time every time I go fishing and I still bring home enough fish to keep bothering with it. A cheap spinning rod combo is hands-down the cheapest and easiest way to start putting some of your meat supply into your own hands.

[Photograph copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved]

Green Crabs & Carp

2011-05-26T12:57:00.007-04:00

Wow, what a week. I've just returned from a full seven days of alien-hunting on the road in New England. Driving solo from Charlottesville, Virginia, I made it to New Haven, Connecticut just barely in time to keep a dinner appointment at Miya's Sushi.

Visiting Miya's was important because the primary point of this trip was to find and eat invasive European green crabs (also known as shore crabs, green crabs, and various other local names). Bun Lai, the owner of Miya's, decided to start putting some invasive species on the menu and I had to see how this turned out.

Bun was in San Francisco when I was coming to town, but he was good enough to put me in touch with his supplier of green crabs, Bren Smith. Bren has been everything from an attorney to a long-line fisherman on the Bering Sea. Today he is a sustainable oysterman on Long Island Sound. Within a few hours Bren and a few friends convinced me that the finest and most ecologically sustainable food on the entire planet is oysters. We ate all sorts of interesting sushi, capped by rolls served on a flat rock with whole, seasoned green crabs posed on top.

The simplest thing is to crunch them down whole, shell and all. I was dubious at first but the shells are so thin that they aren't a problem. They really tasted very good. I could see these being sold by the bag and eaten like potato chips.

The next morning, on Bren's advice, I stopped at a state park on Long Island to walk along the beach and pick up crabs in the tide pools. In spite of all of the traps and gadgets that I bought to try out, flipping over rocks in tide pools and picking the crabs up seems to be the easiest way of getting them. Their pincers are too small to hurt, let alone do any damage.

I headed straight from the Sound to the Cabela's store in Hartford, where I bought a new salt-water fishing rig. Based on the excellent advice I got from some readers of this blog, I bought a two-piece Uglystik and a Shimano reel.

Onward to Wilmington, Massachusetts where I knocked on my cousin Patrick's front door and within minutes we were both back in my car headed to his best spot for rainbow trout. We slid down the embankment and got our hooks in the water just about twenty minutes before dark. I cast my line with a faux salmon egg into the smooth water just above a drop, let it drift almost over the edge and then reeled it back in slowly. Ten minutes later we had each caught a nice 14 incher and we brought them home to Patrick's to clean.

My cousin is unable to spend more than an hour at a time not fishing. As soon as the trout were cleaned and refrigerated we were right back in the car to drive over to Silver Lake to fish in the dark with Patrick's friend Justin for catfish and American eels. They pulled up some very creditable bullheads with bait consisting of hotdogs soaked in olive oil and garlic powder. That was the best smelling bait I have ever fished with. We also bagged a few eels, which make for excellent eating.

By the way, rainbow trout, bullheads and eels are all native species. I was fishing for them only for sake of catching and eating them and those species will not appear in my next book, 'Eating Aliens.'

The next afternoon we all drove to Plum Island, MA in Newburyport. We fished late into the cold, rainy night from the beach for striped bass. I searched masses of seaweed for green crabs but only found natives.

We managed to wake up early enough the following day to hit a local river for invasive carp. And boy, did we ever find them. Great monsters of Asian grass carp and a smaller mirror carp with the strangest arrangement of scales I've ever seen. We kept the largest one, which I fileted and brought home with me on ice.

Instead of driving straight home, I decided to make the three hour drive to say hello to my editor at Storey Publishing in North Adams, MA. It was worth the drive even just for the ten wonderful minutes during which I was invited to peruse Storey's library and walk out with whatever books I wanted. Given the bent of their catalog and the range of my personal interests, it was difficult to restrain myself from outrageous greed.

Over lunch, my editor suggested that I stop by New York City on my way home. The Book Expo of America was (and still is) going on and Storey sent a delegation and a large booth. I stayed the night in a cottage on a lake near North Adams, fishing unsuccessfully for bass in an old Gumman rowboat. The next morning I drove to NYC.

The Book Expo was awesome. People were handing me free books everywhere I went. I finally had to stop accepting them, knowing that I'd have to haul all of them back with me through the subway to get to my car, parked on the upper west side.

After another day of driving I finally got home yesterday just ahead of dusk. I'm completely exhausted, but need to immediately start preparing for the expedition to Louisiana with Grant Stoddard of Men's Health magazine. Grant arrives on a train Sunday afternoon and the next morning we're starting the two-day drive to Shreveport for nutria. Then down to New Orleans for a few days to see about some feral chickens in the 9th Ward and maybe over to Mobile, Alabama for a day to visit a spear-hunting museum.

[Photo copyright 2011, Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. The photo depicts a mirror carp caught by my cousin, Patrick McNamara]

Salt Water Fishing Rigs Under $150?

2011-05-18T00:27:00.004-04:00

My publisher has, at long last, paid the first installment of the advance for 'Eating Aliens,' which means I'm getting back on the road as quickly as humanly possible to finish the book.

In just two days I'm driving north to Massachusetts to trap European green crabs, talk to a restaurant owner who is putting invasive invertebrates on the menu, and do some saltwater fishing while I'm in the neighborhood. But I need a new saltwater fishing rig, on account of my cheap reel having flown to pieces all into the water a few days ago while fishing for invasive carp here in Virginia.

I need some advice from readers. I have precious little saltwater fishing experience. I need to buy a new rig for $150 or less. It will need to double up for duty on carp out west that can weigh up to 50 pounds. I need a rod that is either fairly short or which comes apart into two pieces in order to fit into my little Ford ZX2 coupe for the very long road trips that I'm undertaking. I've already snapped off the tips of several rods and ruined them by letting them stick out through the window.

Given these constraints, what do you guys suggest that I buy?

Meanwhile, I just picked up a great new camera for still photography today. At last, a zoom lens. Hopefully the bar is about to be raised for photos on this blog. Also I'm still looking for more people to talk to or hunt with or to help out with land access in Louisiana in just two weeks.

Leprosy is Bad, M'Kay?

2011-04-27T19:44:00.005-04:00

The New York Times today reports on a study showing that a small number of humans in the US probably contract leprosy every year from contact with armadillos. This is absolutely something that locavore and invasivore hunters should be aware of. We tend to eat things that most people don't and need to stay on top of wildlife issues like this.

However, I don't think that this study really changes anything. The fact that armadillos near the Gulf of Mexico carry leprosy has been well-known and studied for decades. It is nice to have some figures about transmission to humans, but informed hunters in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi should have been avoiding contact with armadillos in the first place.

The bacteria that cause leprosy do not survive for long outside of a host. Among humans the disease is normally transmitted through exhaled droplets in the air during close contact with other humans. Armadillos are not particularly social animals, so transmission tends to take place through bacteria on the soil at the entrances to burrows. Soil conditions near the Gulf of Mexico happen to allow the bacteria to survive long enough for regular transmission.

Farther away from the Gulf, it just isn't really much of an issue. Eating armadillos in Georgia, the Carolinas or in Colrado poses no risk presently of contracting leprosy. Good data on this is available from the Journal of Wildlife Diseases. There have been a very few cases of leprosy found farther away from the Gulf, but these instances are probably individuals that originated close to the Gulf and later dispersed a long way inland. Transmission from those relocated individuals to other armadillos probably isn't happening, but the situation needs to be monitored and studied regularly to be certain.

Personally, I will have no qualms about eating armadillos from the mid-Atlantic US for the next few years. Just in case, I'll continue to wear latex gloves while butchering them and I will cook the meat thoroughly. And if I was to somehow contract leprosy, I'd take a course of free antibiotics and that would be that. Worrying right now about a disease among armadillos in North Carolina because of cases over 600 miles away just doesn't make any sense. In ten or twenty years, maybe we could have a problem. For now its not going to stop me from eating them in the right places.

[Photo used courtesy of Lauren Mitchell under Creative Commons License 2.0]

Persistence Hunting: Beyond the Running

2011-04-25T17:18:00.004-04:00

There is a great article by Charles Bethea in Outside magazine about a group of marathoners who tried using persistence hunting to take down a pronghorn recently. I really recommend the piece.

My father, Harry Landers, is a serious competitive marathon runner. He has run Boston three times, New York several times, and he usually places very well for his age group. He's even won some races. A few years ago I showed him some video (from the last episode of David Attenborough's excellent 'Life of Mammals) of a group of Bushmen (or 'San', as they are also called. Some people in Africa consider 'Bushmen' to be a derogatory name but few readers would likely recognize any other term for them) in the Khalahari desert running down a kudu on foot. I was hoping to interest him in getting a pronghorn tag and hitting the badlands, but its just not his cup of tea. I still couldn't get the idea of running prey down on foot out of my head.

Then last fall I had the pleasure of hunting feral pigs with Daniel Gentry in Georgia. I found that the farm we were hunting was also riddled with armadillos and I wanted to add one more invasive species to my list of things hunted and eaten. The pigs in that area tended to disappear for hours at the sound of a gunshot, so we didn't dare to shoot an armadillo for fear of ruining our odds at the main attraction.

Our solution was to run the cute little buggers down on foot. Our second attempt on our second night out was successful. We spotted the pale armored blob in the beam of a flashlight, handed the rifle off to my father-in-law, and took off after it. Flanking it like a pair of wolves after an elk, we worked to simultaneously tire the animal out and to keep it from exiting the field and disappearing into the thick surrounding brush and woods.

It was like a game of soccer with a ball that moves on its own. Absolutely some of the most thrilling hunting I have ever done, probably owing to the fact that I was connecting myself to what was probably the first, aboriginal human hunting experience.

I succeeded on the second night because I had realized what I did wrong on the first chase. On our first chase I hesitated as I closed in. There was that moment of not being sure what exactly to do if I got right onto the armadillo. And in that moment the animal got away. On the second night I had considered that and I approached the chase mentally with the same frame of mind with which I usually hunt deer on my own. That frame of mind being that I have to eat, that my family will go hungry if I do not kill something, and that I must embrace and even crave the act of the kill in order to provide them with food.

This has been literally true many times that I have hunted deer. I had no money for groceries and a family to feed. The instinct that this develops is one that does not hesitate. That is the difference between winning or losing.

With a great leap, I threw myself through the air and landed with one foot on the poor armadillo's tail. In a flash I drew a long knife from the sheath on my belt and stabbed it in hard and quick into the gap in the armor at the base of the armadillo's neck, cutting the spine and killing it instantly. No real hesitation. Figuring out how to butcher it afterward was a whole other problem, but I had a dead armadillo in front of me (thanks also to Daniel's quick reflexes and good instincts for keeping the prey in the cattle field).

This is what most of the marathoners described in Outside's article seem to be missing. The Kenyon, Andrew Musuva, had what it took. He appears to have grown up in a situation where he had to kill or starve. But the others didn't.

Running for a long time and wearing down the prey is a big part of persistence hunting. But that isn't all of it. Successful persistence hunters in America are going to need more than excellent marathon times. Young lions and cheetahs grow up watching hundreds of stalks and chases, mostly unsuccessful, before they need to start succeeding themselves. This gives them a keen understanding of how a given animal will react to varying terrain, weather, wind direction, and the presence of other animals. These marathoners, or those who follow them, need to put in the observation and practice time to develop those instincts.

They describe their hunt as a success, but it wasn't. At 25 yards they got close, but not quite close enough. There is no way that someone who had only held a pistol once before could make a kill shot at 25 yards with open sights and the heaving, shaking body of someone who has just ran so many miles. Nor would a spear or rock thrown from 25 yards have been likely to hit or finish off the pronghorn.

There was no dead antelope, in spite of all of the work and the $985 they spent on the tag for it. That is a failed hunt, though one that they and others can learn from.

What I think that they lacked was the killing instinct. As Bethea wrote:

Now they're within 25 feet of a panting pronghorn buck. It's starting to seem feasible. "For a second, we don't know what to do," Esposito later recalls.

That second, or seconds, is the difference between success and failure when hunting up close with primitive weapons (or a pistol, for that matter). Esposito is a good runner with the right idea about how to go about this, but he lacked that desperate need for the kill that is the difference between hesitation and success.

It is possible to be successful as a hunter without that killing instinct when one is sitting in an ambush shooting the prey from 150 yards away with a scoped rifle. And don't get me wrong -- I practice that type of hunting as well. I have nothing against it. But in that situation at a distance you've usually got time to pull yourself together, establish your resolve and squeeze the trigger. If it takes five seconds to do that then its probably not an issue.

You can't hesitate for five seconds when its time to close the deal on foot, or with a knife, a net or any other up-close tactic on a prey animal.

I am not a serious runner, but if I was helping to coach a group of runners who wanted to succeed at persistence hunting then I would take them way out in the middle of nowhere for a week with little or no food and send them out hunting with .22 rifles for small game. Within a few days I think that the instinct to close the deal would begin to establish its self.

In spite of the fact that they failed, I am still very impressed that these guys went out and tried to do what they did. For a first attempt it was really excellent and I hope that some of them will keep at it.

[Photograph used courtesy of the BBC]

Eating Aliens in New Orleans

2011-04-23T15:59:00.005-04:00

In late May and early June I'm hitting the road again for a week-long trip to New Orleans, a city I've never visited before. Naturally, I'm going there to hunt nutria, muscovy ducks and various other invasive species for my second book, 'Eating Aliens.'

I will be accompanied by Grant Stoddard, who is writing an article about my work for Men's Journal magazine. Grant and I met by chance in Florida last summer when we were both on Gasparilla island to hunt iguanas with George Cera. I had been reading his work in publications like Nerve and the New York Post for years and was really very pleased when he of all people happened to walk into George's living room. I put him in my TV pilot (he's the guy wearing sunglasses, sitting at the table with us drinking a beer and eating iguana tacos at the end) and we kept in touch afterward.

Neither of us seems to know anyone in New Orleans and it would be really great if we could find some locals to meet up with on arrival. Especially anyone who can help us with local knowledge about where to go either in New Orleans or out on the bayou to hunt and fish for invasive species.

[Photo by Robert Leo Smith, Jr. From left to right, that's me, George and Grant]

Thoughts on Turtle Anatomy

2011-04-23T07:02:00.005-04:00

We cooked the snapping turtle yesterday with very good results, which I will detail in a later entry. Meanwhile, I have some thoughts on disassembling the turtle that I want to jot down here. Prepare for extensive amateur zoology geekery.

I just don't understand the animal's nervous system. People like to say that reptiles keep moving after they are dead because 'they have a primitive nervous system,' but that doesn't really explain anything. Nor do I think that that the word 'primitive' is necessarily a useful or accurate term.

How does the turtle manage to maintain so many basic functions for hours after its entire brain has been removed? Perhaps the better question is 'why can't mammals do this?' I suppose that the heart keeps beating because nothing has stopped it from beating. It beats of its own volition without need of instructions from the brain in the first place. Digestive functions probably continue for the same reason. The movement of the limbs is harder for me to understand. Is it possible that some degree of the movement of the turtle's limbs under normal conditions is locally automatic in response to direct stimulus?

The three-chambered heart seemed large in proportion to the overall size of the turtle. The lungs were slight enough in their deflated state to overlook. The animal had surprisingly few muscles overall. Legs, tail, neck. Entire groups of muscles that I have always taken for granted in quadrupeds were simply missing. The liver appeared healthy, was of a rich reddish-brown color, and was partially fused to the stomach.

A tremendous amount of water was contained in the turtle. There was a sort of gel-like membrane beneath the skin and surrounding many organs, which I would estimate was at least 90% water. Perhaps this helps the animal to regulate its buoyancy?

The digestive system was strikingly simple and efficient. The stomach consists of a long white tube which reminded me in appearance of the large intestine of some mammals. The contents included five or six crayfish (the more recent of which had been swallowed whole), one dace of about two inches in length, and several small stones. Along the length of the stomach, which was roughly six inches, the state of the contents varied rapidly. The crayfish at the top was in very good condition while everything at the opposite end was mashed into tiny pieces, well-digested, and only identifiable by the tips of the claws. In only a few inches of tissue the organ appears to do very thorough work.

I wonder whether the stones were swallowed deliberately in order to aid digestion or if those were accidentally scooped up with the crayfish?

Fat content was minimal. I would estimate that the turtle had no more than 1 or 2% fat. What little fat was present was of a yellowish-orange color, very soft, and easily removed. I suppose that this low fat content is probably owed to the fact that it is April and the turtle was only recently out of hibernation.

The skin was tough and strong and difficult to remove. I noticed that my knives dulled very quickly while working on the snapping turtle. There are a number of small, hard scutes on the skin of the upper parts of the limbs. They appear to be hardened, raised scales. I do not understand the purpose of these projections. They are too sparse to work as armor and not sharp enough serve as weapons. They are not positioned in such a way that would aid grip during mating. Maybe these are luxury organs that signal overall health to potential mates?

'Hey look, I'm so good at obtaining food that I can spare all of this protein and calcium to make pointless scutes on my skin that don't even do anything. My DNA is awesome! Come get some!'

The scutes on the top of the tail are also strange, resembling the tail of an alligator. These are thick and numerous enough to possibly function as armor.

Altogether this is a very impressive design. The snapping turtle is basically just a very simple eating machine that can move into almost any water that isn't fast-moving and eat pretty much any small thing that moves. It can root along the bottom and dig up food there, or allow its rock-like appearance to facilitate an ambush. The animal has pared away almost everything that is not essential. During bad stretches in terms of climate and environment, it doesn't take much for these animals to eke out a living. The only excess is perhaps those little scutes on the limbs, which would probably be easily reduced or eliminated in response to change.

Its easy to see why turtles have been around for around 220 million years. The body plan just works through good times and bad times. They pre-date most dinosaurs and all snakes and crocodiles. Snapping turtles (specifically their family, Chelydridae) first appear in the fossil record about 70 million years ago. They survived massive extinction events that wiped out most of the other species in the world. Snappers evolved in a world that they shared with T. Rex, plesiosaurs, and the tiny mammals that would eventually evolve into humans. They are impressive, simple, and fascinating animals.

[Photo used courtesy of BlackburnPhoto under Creative Commons license 2.0]