Saturday, May 22, 2004

Just took Maggie and Frank and the two kids next door fishing at Lake Nokomis.  I spent the whole time untangling lines and freeing snagged lures.  I got to cast once.  Everyone took their shoes off and waded and Maggie eventually fell over and got wet.  She immediately turned blue and started shivering, so it was time to leave.  It was the first fishing adventure of the season and I was totally unprepared and disorganized.  2 out of the 4 fishing rods aren't working right and I didn't have half the stuff we needed. So, for me and for anyone planning to take kids fishing, here is what you need: 5-gallon bucket folding chairs vest with pockets for tackle plastic cutting board a bunch of hooks with the barbs filed off. change of clothing snacks sandals that can go in the water. tools:  pliers, scissors, knife one working fishing pole for each kid one lure or hook per pole already tied on bait you don't mind getting wasted sunscreen bug repellant drinking water 9:45:54 PM    comment []

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

DNR Trout Stream Easement GIS Layer My cube neighbor is creating a database of all the easements owned by the state along trout streams.  It will soon be available in GIS format.  That is, you can download the data and make pictures like this, which is the new data layed over arial photos.  This particular selection is Lower Gavin Brook in Stockton, MN:  4:23:59 PM    comment []

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

For some reason, the ever so humble blog reduces my blood pressure whenever I read it.  I think it is the pictures of  the birds at her bird feeder.  Or maybe the picture of boots at the top.    Discovered it via true life 5:52:18 PM    comment []

Friday, April 02, 2004

Trapping Turtles This is a turtle tag.  If you are a turtle seller or recreational turtle trapper, all of your traps require one.   The DNR sells about 50 turtle licenses each year.   Three people here have told me they taste like chicken.  If not prepared properly they can be very high in contaminants because their fatty tissues store contaminants from their scavenger diet.  To prepare a snapping turtle, you chop the head off and let it bleed out for 24 hours because the involuntary movements last that long.  If you don't hang them up while they are bleeding, they can crawl away without a head and get lost.  Turtle is a popular item on the menu of area restaurants west of St. Cloud.  I want to find out where I can try some.     11:13:33 PM    comment []

Thursday, April 01, 2004

Roland just came by the office. He is always interesting  to talk to.  His work is organizing fishing education events. He is putting together a kids fishing training event outside the Twins game on May 10.  The DNR puts on lots of great family events like this.  The schedule for all of these is on the DNR events calendar .   He also told me about two blogs by friends of his: True Life and David Anderson's Lost City. 4:02:37 PM    comment []

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Woodland Mayhem Cold and windy morning.  Took my kids plus the kids next door to Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield.   On a long path through the woods,  I got far ahead of the gang and while waiting,  I picked up a stick and started whacking dead branches off of a tree.  Whack whack whack. I started remembering how I used to do this all the time as a kid.  Whack whack whack. When I returned to the present, I noticed that all four kids were gathered around in mute astonishment.   The responsible adult was whacking the crap out of a tree.  And with each whack, they felt a constraint on their own behavior fall.  Once they recovered their wits, they all started searching around for sticks of their own.  There were lots of fallen trees around that needed whacking.  Were they ever tired when we got home. 3:44:47 PM    comment []

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

New Minnesota weblog.  All about canoe racing.  A Radio weblog. He works at the DNR, in fisheries no less. 11:16:55 PM    comment []

Monday, March 15, 2004

How to use an outhouse. On the first day of Boy Scout camp, scoutmaster Bob Marshall, who wore a scoutmaster's hat and a whistle around his neck, gathered the troop around the outhouse to tell us how to use it.  He said, among other things, to never put toilet paper in the urinal.  On my first sit in the outhouse, I pondered this rule and came to the conclusion that the thing I am sitting on must be the urinal because there sure wasn't anything else in that room that resembled a urinal.  I therefore decided to throw my toilet paper into the convenient metal receptical on the wall of the outhouse.  It looked kind of like a trash can. The next day, scoutmaster Bob gathered us around the outhouse for another lecture.  He pointed to the metal receptical.  "Someone stuffed toilet paper into here.  Don't ever do that again, or we are going to have real problems"  I must point out that he never gave clear instructions on what, exactly, to do with the toilet paper. So, on my next sit, I had to come up with some method of disposal of my used toilet paper.  I carried it out to a pile of boulders about 10 feet away from the outhouse and carefully stuffed it down there as far as I could. The next day, scoutmaster Bob called us back up to the outhouse for a lecture.  He pointed to my toilet paper wedged down into the rocks.  "Who put that there?", he asked  No one said a word.  I didn't know much about outhouses, but I knew not to admit guilt by asking where to put the toilet paper. So, on my next sit I decided I was just going to toss it down the crapper because it would soon become unrecognizable anyway.   8:54:07 PM    comment []

Friday, March 05, 2004

Review of Poachers Caught! From Poachers Caught!, a book by a retired Minnesota Conservation Officer: In mid-March, a crust formed on the melting snow overnight, preventing already weakened animals from getting to food sources only 30 feet from the trail.  Deer were slowly starving. Many rural dogs located these weakened populations and their primitive instincts prevailed.  The size and breed of the dog had no bearing on the dog's desire to kill; they were pets transformed into wolves.  The morning was the critical time for the killing sprees.  The snow, still crusty after a cold night, would support the dogs' weight and allow them to take long romps far from home over the frozen surfaces.  A pack of mutts would actually form a hierarchy, the largest and strongest dog assuming leadership.  Just after sunrise, I patrolled the edges of yards known to have "pack dogs" looking intently for fresh canine tracks entering the woods.  The first set of tracks was quite large, ambling ahead of two smaller prints.  The thin crust was unable to hold my weight, forcing me to limit my forward stumbling to the deer trails.  Within five minutes of my grueling march, I spotted the first sign of mutilation: a yearling deer lay half buried 3 feet off the deep path.  It appeared to have hardly struggled while raging teeth had torn it apart.  Dogs on a deer mission seldom eat their prey; they only kill for the primal thrill! Twenty yards farther was another red swirl of devastation.  Two more fawns lay a few feet apart amid a layer of brown and white hair strewn about the otherwise white surface.  Before my morning trek was finished, I witnessed 16 carcasses of deer, all slaughtered and left for the ravens and coyotes to complete the feeding cycle. I appreciate the book.  It gives a real education in natural resource enforcement. I learned: A good way to poach fish at night without attracting attention is to sink a light into the lake and spear the fish as the come to check out the light. Don't tell the conservation officer that all the fish you have cut up and packaged are rock bass.  He won't believe you. Poach in an area without vehicle access or surrounded by private lands. Don't mark the path to your illegal gill netting operation with orange tape If you use booze to control the alchoholic butcher that processes your poached deer, keep the shack were he lives locked. There is a great deal of  "It was a dark and stormy night" writing here. However, the exciting stories and insight into north woods culture make the "forward stumbling" through the flowery prose worth while.   Pretty much a meat and potato storyteller, he wades into the technical detail of his work without a look back.  I find the details interesting.  He has a deep knowledge of the biology of the resource he is trying to protect and great skills at watching and dealing with people.  I read in the Star Tribune that he published the book himself.  He could have used a better editor. Despite the rough writing, he made his poachers come alive.  There are sheepish tourists that know they are breaking the law, drunken, gun toting hard core poachers who physically intimdate the officer.  He nails the descriptions of these people and that in itself is entertaining. 12:02:25 AM    comment []

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

If you are into end-of-the-world scenarios, this one about the pentagon preparing for "Abrupt Climate Change" filled me with dread.  Younger Dryas here we come.  What does the web have to say about it? Doug Carmichael's Roughcut sees a use for it in the upcomming campaign. This British blogger sez the british press sexed it up into a "suppressed secret report" boingboing has a good post about how speculation turned into certainty in the press.  Article in the Oakland Tribune sez:  Left-wing bloggers and conspiracy-minded environmentalists seized on news of the report as a sign that President Bush still is hiding the real threat to America and that Mother Nature must be a Democrat." Me?  I don't want to believe it either.  I like disorder and the concept of mankind punished by the gods as much as the next guy, but climate change doesn't get me there.  I will be really really really sad if the Gulf Stream goes away.  It seems like kind of a hard thing to get going again after it stops.  We can prove that our climate is changing and prove that climate change has happened very abruptly in the geologically recent past.  The report does what good science fiction does; takes true trends and spins a tale around them.  All the screaming doesn't help.  Look how easy it is to point at the hysteria surrounding this report and use that to dismiss all talk of global warming.  12:13:16 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 mcgyver5. Last update: 5/22/2004; 9:46:00 PM.