New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division for the Win

Spotted ten days ago at the Black Hills Powwow in Rapid City. Would Colorado's fussier Department of Motor Vehicles approve it? Don't think so.

(More about mescal/mezcal. Or was the owner thinking of the bean?)

Various Thoughts on Bigfoot

I am not a Bigfoot hunter. Invisible partridge are challenge enough. So I am about two years late to the party when it comes to the Lumpkin County, Georgia (northeast of Atlanta) alleged Bigfoot sighting, captured by a deputy sheriff's dashboard video camera (YouTube) and witnessed by the deputy and his civilian passenger.

This video has been supplemented by analysis of the creature's apparent speed, reference to the terrain — the embedded GPS reading helps — and so, making for eight interesting minutes. (The Discovery Channel could get a hour-length program out of that, repeating everything six or eight times.)

I read about it in a recent issue of the venerable Fate magazine, "Bigfoot in Georgia," by Daniel Perez. (Georgia has some active hunters of "the Big Guy.")

Hmm, what about Colorado?

Back in the late 1980s, as a newspaper reporter, I interviewed a man who said two "creatures" had walked past his house and left footprints in the snow, which he photographed and showed me. The large tracks just ended abruptly in the fresh powder. Odd.

Having blogged once on the mystery of "Monkey Creek," with some trepidation I now typed "Colorado Bigfoot" into YouTube's search box. Here are the results.

The "Yellow Top Bigfoot" seems to move like a hunched-over human, if you ask me. So does this one. Several others all look like the same gorilla suit. One video's makers frankly call it a "mockumentary."

Meanwhile, in Central Asia

Central Asia and Siberia have a long history of big, shaggy bipeds. In fact, the same May-June 2011 issue of Fate that carried Daniel Perez's article mentioned above also reprinted one from its May 1961 issue, "Russia Seeks the Snowman," about a Dr. Alexander G. Pronin of the "Geographic Scientific Institute of Leningrad University" (no Google hits on that name, but there could be translation issues) seeing a "snowman" while on an International Geophysical Year expedition in the Pamir Mountains.

Fifty years later, we read of a new joint American-Russian expedition to look for Bigfoot in Siberia.

The hypothesis of a surviving population of Neanderthals, which has been explored in fiction, is brought out again:

Igor Burtsev, head of the International Center of Hominology in Moscow -- which investigates so-called snowmen -- told The Voice of Russia radio that "when Homo sapiens started populating the world, it viciously exterminated its closest relative in the hominid family, Homo neanderthalensis."

"Some of the Neanderthals, however, may have survived to this day in some mountainous wooded habitats that are more or less off limits to their arch foes. No clothing on them, no tools in hands and no fire in the household. Only round-the-clock watchfulness for a Homo sapiens around."

Hitting the Wall

One thing I notice with Bigfoot investigations (as with UFO investigations—and some say they are related) is that people get evidence and think that they are on the verge of the big discovery — and then it all stops. Nothing seems to be repeatable in a scientific way.

I have to say that sometimes I think that Bigfoot exists—but not in our world. Rather he/she/they are in a world that sometimes intersects with ours. Yep, like fairies, etc.

The late Grover Krantz, a physical anthropologist at Washington State University, published a book arguing for a physical Bigfoot that inhabited an ecological niche sort of like a nocturnal black bear—at least in the Pacific Northwest. Rather than Neanderthal, he suggested a surviving Gigantopithecus as a possibility.

But unless it had learned to hibernate, I do not see how such a creature could live in the Pamirs—or the Rockies. Black bears do not forage for food in the winter, and neither could an ape-man.

Cars Eat More Corn than do Animals

Corn production for ethanol has surpassed production for livestock feed and other food and non-food uses.

All along Interstate 90 in eastern North Dakota, the billboards tell you that burning ethanol is the patriotic thing to do. Maybe Tharaldson Ethanol, just down the road, paid for them.

Wildlife Viewing Workshop, Southern Colorado

From the news release...

8 a.m.–noon, Saturday, October 22nd., in the Brush Hollow Reservoir and Arkansas River areas, near Florence and Penrose, Colorado.

Learn about binoculars and spotting scopes to enhance wildlife-viewing skills. Bring binoculars and field guides if you have them.  Families welcome.

Meet for breakfast (on your own) at 8 a.m. at Coyote's Coffee Den, Colorado 115 at 6th Street, Penrose.

Please RSVP to Jena Sanchez, Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife, jena.sanchez@state.co.us or (719) 227-5204.

"We have all these dead trees, but nobody's buying"

Forest Service tackles beetle-killed spruce in the San Juans, trying to at least clear dead trees that might fall on campers.

But as I mentioned earlier, the little sawmills that once might have cut them are mostly all gone.

Heat, Ducks, and Dogs

Cookie, a hard-working German wirehaired pointer.

Before I left for North Dakota on October 1st, Galen told me to expect cooler weather than on our previous years' September grouse hunts. Luckily I checked the forecast too, which predicted warmer weather.

Oh yeah. Like stiff breezes from the south and temperatures into the 80s F. Most un-North Dakota, but good for drying out the corn, beans, and sunflowers for harvest, I suppose. Somehow I ended up with both sets of waterfowling gear—the heavy neoprene waders and the light unlined hip boots, the insulated parka and the lightweight jacket, etc. Plus long underwear, wool pants . . . I am notorious for over-packing, but this was ridiculous.

Ducks were not yet migrating, so we ended up jump-shooting some of the abundant sloughs. Finally the last evening we did a "proper" decoy set and killed our last three ducks (one mallard, two teal) in the final seconds of legal shooting light.

Grouse should be eating the white buffalo berries.

Cry Damnit and Release the Dogs of Corn

As for the sharp-tailed grouse, this past severe winter and wet spring and summer might have hurt reproduction. I had one shot at one and missed it. The funny thing was that the grouse we were seeing were flying above and into standing corn, not in the prairie grass where we had found them before.

You are not supposed to hunt standing crops without the owner's permission, so we did not. Certain dogs might have been encouraged to run down the rows, however.

But the dogs did not want to go more than about three rows in. Perhaps they find the cornfields to be disorienting and spooky.

Invisible Species of North Dakota

This was my fourth North Dakota bird hunt, and I coming to believe that the presence of Hungarian partridge is advertised in order to sell licenses to gullible out-of-staters, but that they do not actually exist.

Likewise, I have seen ungulate-type droppings and large rounded hoof prints and am informed with seeming sincerity that they are made by moose.

No doubt the shelter belts and abandoned farmsteads are swarming with them, but I always happen to be looking in another direction. Perhaps they are snoozing moosily in the sunflower fields.

But I will be happy with my duck dinners.

It's All About the Dogs

Cookie, rear, and Fisher, front, in Galen's well-dogged GMC Suburban.

One dog hogs the camera, the food, and the digital ink. One dog can find a wounded duck in the thickest of cattails. One dog would rather run madly on the prairie. I will let you guess which dog is which.

Where Was I?

I have been on the road the past week, so I thought that I would throw in my first-ever puzzler. Be the first commenter to tell me in what region this photo was taken, and I will send you some little outdoor trinket or other. Precision counts. Don't just say, "Montana," for example. (Family members and people whom I visited on this trip are not eligible.)

The Answer (Oct. 14):  The photo was taken along the Niobrara River's "national scenic river" corridor east of Valentine, Nebraska. I know that I have one reader in Nebraska who should have gotten it. Oh well.

Convicts of the Corn

Sex offender being transported leaps from a prison van, allegedly upset with the poor quality of his vegetarian meals. (You can't make this up.)

He runs into a cornfield — bad move.

It's harvest time here in North Dakota. Mostly they are cutting soy and pinto beans. But when it's convict-hunting time, you change to your corn "head" and go.

The massive manhunt took a turn around noon today as the combines started to roll in to the Smith farmstead. Law enforcement officers hopped on board, fully armed and took off on a tear to find Megna.

"We decided that at the last minute, that if the corn was ready to take off, that this was the thing to do. We went after it and we did it."

 Watch the video at the 1:10 point.

Better than bloodhounds.

A Cow-ntercultural Mural

 

. . . in La Veta, Colorado.

Big Ag Strikes Back

It's not enough that we eat their products, but we are supposed to love them too.

Worried, apparently, by bloggers, book authors, and documentary-film makers, "Big Ag" organizations like the National Milk Producers Federation ("Got Milk?") and the American Egg Board, have formed the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance in "a bid to 'reshape the dialogue' about the American food supply." 

Conspicuously absent: organic farmers.

The battle is over more than labels. Also at stake is the $25 billion annual budget for discretionary spending by the Agriculture Department, and crop subsidies worth even more. Bob Stallman, chairman of the Alliance, is also president of the American Farm Bureau, the farmers’ main lobbying group in Washington. 

In his column in the current issue of Colorado Central magazine—not yet available online—Colorado food writer Hal Walter suggests, "Eating may be more effective than voting."

"Start by voting with your fork," he continues. "Every dollar you don't spend with big food is one dollar that doesn't feed the beast, and instead nutures both your community and yourself."

I have been picking up copies of his free publication about independent, mostly organic farmers and ranchers in Colorado's Arkansas Valley this summer.

Call The Farm Beet, it is also available from his web site.

Pueblo, A City of Readers (?)

Some survey claims that Pueblo, Colorado, is the seventh-best city in the country for book lovers, not so much for bookstores and literary events but for its library system.
(Portland, Oregon, was number one.)

Yes, the library is popular with all types. I was at the main (Rawlings) library yesterday and was approached inside by two panhandlers and one girl selling fund-raising candies for some school thing.

No, You Can't Eat That, Says the Judge

Wisconsin judge says that there is no "right to eat" food that you yourself produce.

According to Wisconsin Judge Patrick J. Fiedler, you do not have a fundamental right to consume the food you grow or own or raise. The Farm To Consumer Legal Defense Fund, the pioneers in defending food sovereignty and freedom, recently argued before Judge Fiedler that you and I have a constitutional right to consume the foods of our choice. Judge Fiedler saw no merit to the argument and ruled against the FTCLDF. When they asked him to clarify his statement, these were his words:

“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;”
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;”
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice…”
(source)

 Read the rest.

Boulder News: Yoga, Accupuncture . . . and Dog-Walking

But if Joan Zalk's accupuncture technique is similar to her "dog-walking" technique, I would look for a different practitioner.

When officers arrived and spoke to Zalk, she admitted to telling the women she had a gun, but said she only did it because she felt threatened and trapped, the report said. She said she doesn't own a gun, and there wasn't a gun in the car.

Just as well. She may not be too clear on the difference between legitimate self-defense and felony menacing either.

John Fayhee's Tribute to the Gila Wilderness

Where external-frame backpacks, thrift-shop hiking clothes, and cigars are still acceptable.

His personal website is here.