In 1972, I arrived in Singapore to attend the Singapore American School and soon after was introduced to a documentary film, called Future Shock, based on a book by Alvin Toffler and narrated by Orson Welles which was taking the US by storm. As a child, it totally freaked me out….perhaps one of the reasons I avoided computers until I could avoid them no longer. At that time there was also a large movement to get back to basics.

It revealed itself in the very large “Ecology” movement of the 1970s (remember the riff on the American flag, in green with the Greek letter ‘Theta’ where the stars and blue background would have been?), and publications like The Foxfire Books, a collection of stories detailing life in Southern Appalachia. I still have my father’s copies that he picked up on visits back to the States. It’s full of information on woodcraft and pre-supermarket self-reliance. They even showed how to properly scald a pig, which I used in this episode of Cork’s Outdoor TV on roasting a pig.

I’m reminded greatly of the back-to-basics movement of the 1970s, by these latest “slow food” and “green food” movements recorded by Michael Pollan and Paul Bertolli. What could be better than eating food that led to a slower and more relaxed society? But, so much information has been lost due to the increasing lack of family histories and traditions being handed down through live practice, i.e. on a farm or ranch. So many generations have moved off the land and into cities. Nowadays, most slow food information is that carried into the US by new immigrants from Asia and Latin America.

This is a pity as there was a lot of slow food information held in the family lines that came here from Northern Europe. In March of this year, I had the opportunity to complete a phone interview for Cork’s Outdoors Radio with one such food authority on her latest book on getting back to the basics (be sure to listen to the audio and watch the show below).

Darina Allen is noted as the “Julia Child of Ireland” and has been entertaining and educating on the subject of cooking in Ireland and the United Kingdom through her TV show and a collection of books. Her latest book, Forgotten Skills of Cooking: The Time Honored Ways are The Best – Over 700 Recipes Show You Why, is that treasure trove of not only Irish, British, and foods from other parts of the world, like Italian slow food recipes, but also articles and remedies for raising your own chickens for meat and eggs, how to properly butcher large farm animals like pigs, cattle and lambs.

It’s a gorgeous book, with photos that took all the seasons to create, evidenced by plants in bloom, and the foods in season. It’s all about being seasonal, Allen says, something clear in how she describes not only those foods that are collected on the farm, but also on a day’s walk in the woods gathering such morsels for the kitchen as nettles, mushrooms and a number of herbs, leafy greens, and berries.

Both land and water are covered, with foraging rewards, like limpets that are easily found in the Americas, and are cooked in a number of dishes that incorporate the bounty of the farm and field.

Though spending a lot of time reading through the scrumptious recipes that anyone would easily take a few years preparing all the scrumptious family meals using organic ingredients (either purchased or foraged): pies, breads, puddings, roasts and grilled fishes, I was keen on the game and fish sections.

Hare, venison, duck and goose are covered well, both as farm offerings and from the marsh, and of course the obligatory pheasant, but I’d done enough pheasant recipes lately, so I quickly focused on the basil cream rabbit recipe. It was the very cottontail taken with a .22 pellet rifle from Crosman. Who would have thought the hardest part for this recipe was to get the caul fat: Thank God for Dittmer’s in Mountain View, CA!

Watch the preparation and presentation on Cork’s Outdoors and return for the recipe below:

SADDLE OF RABBIT WITH CREAM, BASIL, AND CARAMELIZED SHALLOTS

 reprinted with permission from the publisher, KYLE BOOKS

SERVES 6

6 saddle of rabbit (use the legs for confit)

4oz pork caul fat

salt and freshly ground pepper

extra virgin olive oil

2⁄3 cup dry white wine

2⁄3 cup Chicken Stock

2⁄3 cup cream

2oz basil leaves

Caramelized Shallots (see below)

 Steps:

1. Trim the flap of each saddle, if necessary (use in stock or pâté).
2. Remove the membrane and sinews from the back of the saddles
3. with a small knife.
4. Wrap each saddle loosely in pork caul fat.
5. Season well with salt and freshly ground pepper.
6. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Place the rabbit pieces in a stainless steel or heavy roasting pan and roast for 8–12 minutes, depending on size.
7. Remove from the oven, cover, and allow to rest.
8. Degrease the pan if necessary, and put the wine to reduce in the roasting pan.
9. Reduce by half over medium heat, add the chicken stock, and continue to reduce.
10. Add the cream.
11. Bring to a boil, season with salt and freshly ground pepper, and add lots of snipped basil.
12. Serve the rabbit with the basil sauce, caramelized shallots, boiled new potatoes, and a good green salad.

CARAMELIZED SHALLOTS

1lb shallots, peeled

4 tablespoons butter

1⁄2 cup water

1–2 tablespoons sugar

salt and freshly ground pepper

 Steps:

1. Put all the ingredients in a small saucepan, and add the peeled shallots.
2. Cover and cook on a gentle heat for about 10–15 minutes or until the shallots are soft and juicy.
3. Remove the lid, increase the heat to medium, and cook, stirring occasionally.
4. Allow the juices to evaporate and caramelize. Be careful not to let them burn.

For more information on Darina Allen’s cooking school in Ireland, check out her school’s website: Ballymaloe Cookery School

For your daily commute on your MP3 player – Download and Enjoy Darina Allen’s interview on Cork’s Outdoors Radio:

You may be asking what a review on a sniper instructional book is doing in an outdoors magazine dedicated to effective wildlife conservation practices and game and fish cooking. What you might be missing is how the path of hunter to sniper has returned to hunter in the last ten years. It’s evident in the camouflage and even the equipment being used in the hunting community.               

Hunter, Sniper, Hunter 

Major Plaster uses the phrase “Close to the Earth” to describe that quality about the best snipers from around the world. This refers to the fact that almost all the best snipers, certainly the most recognized, had younger years based in the country, with a solid hunting background. Whether Russian snipers who hunted wolves in Siberia, or Austrailians who shot kangaroos, or American snipers who were raised hunting elk, deer and squirrels, all the highly regarded snipers had a solid background learning woodcraft in their youth.              

How does this pertain to you, the hunter, just trying to do better in field? A lot!               

In the last twenty years, the hunting community has benefited greatly by the equipment that has been developed for the sniping community. Previously, it was the sniping community that benefited most from what the hunting community provided. There’s this cycle that seems to have come completely around, where techniques and equipment gained through hunting were brought to the sniper schools of past: and now, the equipment and knowledge that is used in sniping has come full circle back to hunting…and anything you can do to be that more efficient in taking your game, lessening the chances of crippling or loss, is a level of effectiveness to reach for–good wildlife management and conservation practices demand it.              

One of the easiest ties to recognize are the camouflage improvements to hunting clothing, advances in the military that were picked up and improved upon in the hunting community. There are also the improvements in rifles that make it almost a foregone conclusion that if you’re purchasing a new bolt-action rifle from a reputable manufacturer, you can pretty much expect it to shoot under 1 MOA.               

A review of writings by Jack O’Connor would quickly tell you that in the 1930s and before WWII a rifle that shot 1.5 MOA was pretty good. And we’re not even talking yet about shooting technique and optics, of which the improvements in binoculars and laser rangefinders has been amazing! Sometimes snipers can even make good optical equipment purchases  through the civilian hunting market because the advances have come so fast in this hunter focused market—driven by a market that wants the best and has the money to pay for it.               

And let’s not forget those skills taught snipers that every hunter can benefit from knowing and practicing: attention to detail, personal and environmental awareness; and  rifle, optics, and cartridge knowledge, and finally, but never least important–marksmanship.               

The Ultimate Sniper

Of all the books out there, that takes a reader from the most basic skills to the most advanced, the latest updated and expanded the 2006 release of The Ultimate Sniper rises to the top. A large book with 573 pages, everyone of them worthwhile. It was written and compiled by sniper instructor and lecturer Major John L. Plaster, USAR (ret.), whose prior experience with MACV SOG in Indochina and starting a number of highly regarded sniper schools, are well-known.               

Even though the sniper’s instructional tome is directed toward military and law enforcement snipers, there is so much information that applies to your hunting improvement. Here are just  few of what  The Ultimate Sniper covers.               

Basic and Advanced Marksmanship

If only these sections were taught to everyone who picks up a rifle. In the basic section, Plaster writes about sniper attitude, proper sight picture, shooting positions and breath control, and one shot sighting in. With the advent of the Caldwell Lead Sled, I’ve found this to be one of the easiest to perform.               

When Plaster gets to the advanced marksmanship techniques, there’s information in there that will improve your shooting skills immensely.               

Get Support

I’ve lost count of how many hunters I’ve seen miss because they just brought their rifles up and fired off-hand. How much more venison would have ended up in a hunter’s meatlocker had they used a better shooting rest?               

A sniper is always aware of the best shooting position, always on the lookout for the rifle rest. This can be as simple as shucking a backpack and dropping it down the ground to lay the rifle over (one of my favorites if the ground permits) or dropping to a sitting position—many drop to a knee, when a sitting position is much more stable…              

Bring shooting sticks with you. Plaster shows you how to make your own. You can make them long or short. I carry a foot-long tripod made with wooden dowels in my hunting pack, and also carry a set of Predator-styx slung across my shoulder with a thin bungee cord. At a moments notice, you’ll have a much better shooting rest than an offhand shot could ever be.               

That’s not to say I won’t take a quick shot at something close in the brush, or even running from an offhand position. But, it takes a lot of practice to do what is called “snap shooting.” Major Plaster co-produced and hosted an excellent video called The Ultimate Rifleman, which was directed specifically toward the hunter, and where he taught how best to prepare for a running shot on big-game. If you happen to find an old copy, snatch it up—you can find quite a bit of that type of information in the The Ultimate Sniper DVD that Major Plaster still produces.               

Excellent skills deteriorate rapidly…if you come away from these sections on marksmanship with only one thought, it should at least be: practice, practice, practice!               

Breath and Squeeze

The art of marksmanship is covered in great detail and every hunter will be well-served by rereading the sections dedicated to the integrated act of shooting. Using a chart and graph, Plaster reveals major components of excellent marksmanship: breathing, and trigger control, integrated with good body position and scope picture.               

Like in archery, shooting a rifle requires follow through. If we all had to hunt with flintlocks like our ancestors, the importance of follow-through would be that much more apparent to the average shooter. Keep your eye on the target, sights on the desired bullet impact point, and a solid stockweld.               

Know Your Round

One of the best things you can do toward improving your shooting skills is knowing what your bullet does in flight. I do this two ways, actually going to the range and shooting at 25 yard increments out to 600 yards with my hunting loads. Also, I use my ballistic software (I have copy of the Nightforce Ballistic Program that has a collection of factory rounds cataloged and the ability to type in values from a chronograph) to get a pretty good idea of travel of my bullets in their arch. I sight most of my rifles in at 1.5 inches high at 100 yards. If I run across a really close buck and want to shoot it in the neck, I aim a bit lower…little adjustments that can make a great difference when you know what your bullet’s doing in its travel.               

BLACKHAWK!®'s Pro Marksman Folding Ammo Pouch with two windows for checking your dope before your shot, along with the sliderule style Mildot Master.

Expanded Awareness 

Kim’s is a game that was first described in the story Kim, written by Rudyard Kipling. It’s a game that was taught to Kim when he was being trained to spy. It’s a game in a variety of forms that’s taught to spies and snipers and anyone involved in intelligence gathering. Its purpose is to improve memory skills. Attention to detail is also covered in it, which to a hunter is very useful.               

Plaster has included a sniper’s version of the Where’s Waldo visual puzzle. I suggest using the Where’s Ivan as an example and sketch a herd of deer with a small buck and medium-sized buck and monster buck scattered within the herd. Then, give time limits to you and your friends to pick out bucks, and then try remembering where exactly they are in relation to the rest of the deer in the group.               

Then, when you’re out in the field, scan for deer and remember what qualities there are in deer, or whatever your prey–what makes them stand out against the landscape? During archery season, and early rifle seasons, in the West, this is easy, as the red-brown and light brown hides of deer really stand out on green grass and foliage. Against the snows of winter, or the dry brown grass, a deer’s darker winter hide really stands out.               

Train your subconscious to pick out inconsistencies. One of the best sighting techniques I was taught as a teen was to look for horizontal lines. Aside from the horizon, Nature normally stretches out in vertical lines, tree trunks rising to the sun, and hillsides washing downhill. When you see horizontal lines on a hillside, like the back of a deer, cougar, pig, elk, bear, or cow, it’s very apparent when you’re looking for it!  And how many of us have looked at a group of rocks, suddenly seen one of them shapeshift into a wild boar on the hoof, before running off? Pay attention…and use your optics!             

Wind and Range

One of the most confusing for many hunters is estimating for wind and range. There are so many things in the environment that because of size, position, and distance can drastically effect a hunter’s ability to estimate distance: inclines, declines, objects much larger than your target. They’re all covered in this section of the The Ultimate Sniper.               

And you might be surprised how much wind can effect your bullet even at ranges under 400 yards…but I’ll leave that to the reading.               

Close to the Earth

One of the most important points to take is that about how the best snipers had a connection to the earth that went way back to their childhoods. From all parts of the world that has turned out some of the most impressive snipers (Australia, Scotland, Russia and the US) most of them had a hunting and woodcraft background that started in childhood. Close to the earth has relevance in a number ways. It’s the background of snipers, like Vasili Zaitsev (hunted wolves and wild boar in Siberia), Chuck Mawhinney (hunted elk and deer back in Oregon) and Carlos Hathcock (hunted squirrels and other game for the table), all well-grounded in a youth of hunting and learning wood craft. It’s the deep inner knowledge of how we are related to the earth, how we standout, and how we can blend in with this earth.               

It’s also the level of awareness that almost seems psychic in its ability to detect and enable a sniper to be two or three moves ahead of the target. It’s almost innate in someone who was introduced to firearms as a hunter, as compared to just a competition shooter. Remember that the German sniping instructor sent by Hitler to hunt down Zaitsev was better equipped, but Zaitsev relied on his “cunning” as the Germans liked to comment, and is carried in the Soviet sniper’s motto: “While invisible, I see and destroy.”               

Major Plaster puts forward a hypothesis that the reason there were hardly any well-trained snipers in the Iraqi Army during what would have been a great environment for snipers, the trench warfare during the Iraq-Iran War, goes out without a blip because an Arab society that historically had a reputation for longrange shots, was by modern times devoid of them because of an enmasse move of the hinterland population into urban areas–like in so many other parts of the world. They basically lost cultural skills instilled and developed through years of pre-service experience in the country.               

By improving your woodcraft as a hunter, you will increase the number of successes while hunting. Every hunter would be best aided by reading the chapter on stalking and movement. Addressing “The Wall of Green” as the author calls it, is most often hard for new and experienced hunters: much like a stream fisherman who fishes an ocean coast for the first time and doesn’t know how to read the coastline for fish. It’s overcoming this, using the scanning tactics described by Plaster, that has led me to shoot a number of deer and feral pigs in their beds. You can see an example of this, when I’m picking out a wild boar that is only 10 yards away from me in deep brush in this episode of Cork’s Outdoor TV.               

If you’ve ever had failures sneaking up on those open-land antelope in Wyoming and Arizona, the section on stalking will be very helpful.               

Get The Ultimate Sniper, read it, apply the techniques, read it again and see how you might improve or modify the information for your own environment…no matter your present level, I’d be surprised if your skills didn’t improve—and get out there and practice, practice, practice!               

Get your copy here: 

• Ultimate Sniper 
• Palladin Press

Tips and Techniques directly from the Master

Major John Plaster is well represented on two websites. As an advisor at Millet Sights, he has written a number of articles to help the shooter. He has his own http://ultimatesniper.com, where he offers his books and has a shipload of information, not the least of which are pdf scans of historical books going back to mid-1800 printings about sniping. In the following broadcast of Cork’s Outdoor Radio we talk about some of the tips. This one would be helpful to a lot of hunters by helping undersand what your bullet can and can’t do—even if you can shoot that far, depending on what cartridge you’re using, you might not want to based on the information in this brief: TERMINAL BALLISTICS               

For your daily commute on your MP3 player – Download and Enjoy MAJ John L.  Plaster’s interview on Cork’s Outdoors Radio:

Few books really get me emotionally anymore, especially non-fiction. But, when I began reading Lierre Keith’s personal account of a strict vegan diet on her body over 20 years I was floored with one question: how in the world?

How in the world could people put themselves through such a lifestyle? How could we have arrived at such a point in our lives that those who profess a close relationship to the Earth, the morally anti-hunting/anti-animal protein driven vegan, are a great part of it’s destruction? How in the world as Western humanity gotten so far away its understanding of how the world works, how life and death are in separable?

Pain

Both Keith and I were born in the same year. That means when we were 16, she started on the vegan diet…and I was beginning to wonder why no matter the amount of high school PE and football and soccer, I couldn’t seem to get into excellent shape, even though both sides of my parental lines were in great shape from their childhood until their mid-30s. And no matter how much cereal I had for breakfast, I was hungry long before lunch, and I could never stay awake in class. The only difference between my parents and me was that my parents had an animal protein-based breakfast.

What Lierre Keith’s diet left her with after 20 years on the diet, was a degenerative bone disease, weak musculature, and nervous system of pain, that presently it can’t even support her for more than 15 minutes of standing. Not to mention all the other effects on a malnutritioned body during its most important growth years. And it was even worse ten years ago, BEFORE she began to see some slight improvements from finally getting the nutrients animal proteins provide all omnivores and carnivores.

The Book

The Vegetarian Myth is divided into three sections and in a very appropriate way. First is the moral philosophy of the vegetarian, then the political and finally the nutritional reasons spouted by the anti-hunting and anti-meat religion…and yes, I call it a religion: it what’s so dastard in how something that was a way of life has become a movement and personal identity…you should have seen the reaction I got from a guest to a party, who considered her book an insult to him personally—as if by her describing the effects of the vegetarian movement and diet actually doing what those who go on the diet are trying to stop: the destruction of the environment….I thought he was going to come at me swinging: and all I did was ask him if he had read her book!

It’s also one of the reasons that so many “dyed in the wool”, and even militant (more on that later) vegetarians will say how much Keith’s book is a fabrication twisting of lies. And how many of these same people say they’ve actually read the book when pushed: almost none!

Vegetarian Hunger Destroying Topsoil

In her thesis, Keith does bring up the fact of loss of topsoil. If you’ve studied the history of Iraq (old Mesopotamia), or other ancient nations bordering the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf, you’ll be keen to know why what were lush, tree-covered lands came to be the lands that we see on the news everyday—barren, rocky islands and sand. Their agricultural societies basically tilled the topsoil into the ocean.

Now, this is where it really gets depressing. We’ve been an agricultural society for easily 12,000 years. Our major cultural makeup and politics revolves around agriculture. Most especially, our money and way of doing business revolves around agriculture. The worst examples of it are mega-corporation animal factories with chickens and pigs sitting in cages unable to move, drugged up on antibiotics, cranking out eggs and piglets for market.

If anyone doesn’t think that effects you personally as a consumer, then you’ve never eaten meat from animals that have been properly raised, in a chicken yard, or large pig pen, even left out to graze on other food types other than grain. Previously, I thought grain-feeding livestock was the way to go: more bang for the buck. Yes, more cost effective cash wise, but health wise, I’m not sure. One of the examples I know of is eating meat raised in the US on these factory farms, contrasted to eating steak in places like Vietnam, Thailand and South Korea, where they refuse to raise livestock the way we do in the US, not specifically for the animal’s interest, but more for taste and sustenance—meat is a very precious commodity in those places.

On the bright side, if you’ve tasted free-range beef and chicken here in the US, you know what I’m talking about. If you hunt and tasted the power of venison, elk and bison, you definitely know what I’m talking about. Chickens are omnivores, needing that freedom to throw in a bug, worm, or lizard in with the occasional weekly toss of grain and grazing of wild seeds. Beef, sheep, and pigs are fortified by the calm relaxation of feeding beyond grain, filling up on grasses and whatever attracts their tastes in a pasture. If you don’t think pigs need free-roam, too, then you don’t know how the Spanish make the best prosciutto, called Serrano ham: they let their pigs free to graze on fresh-fallen acorns in September, just before the butchering season.

Keith’s answer to the loss of topsoil could be considered very extreme, basically removing ourselves from an agriculturally based society, and returning to hunter-gatherers. As one who lived in Alaska for a year as hunting-gathering subsistence hunter and angler, let me tell you it’s not easy work. It was a great way to get myself back on track with regards to understanding money, and culture and healthy ways of living. But, practically, if every human being on the planet suddenly became a hunter-gatherer, because the human population is SO massive now, every wild living thing with fins, wings and legs would be decimated within a year, two at the most. Our population has turned us into a major predator; our technology has turned us into THE mega-predator.

The question Keith brings up is whether the present agricultural economy is sustainable. At the present rate of growth of the human population across the planet, especially in places where there’s already a population supported only by imports, like India, Africa and China, it’s not—the wildlife in those places are barely hanging on! The question is whether our agricultural society suddenly implodes within 20 years, somehow struggles for another hundred at its same rate of production and the dramatic effects on the topsoil: and collapses…I’ll leave that part of the thesis to your own mental machinations.

Countering Past Inaccuracies

What I’m most keen about in the solid information provided in The Vegetarian Myth, is that Keith, unlike so many new and old vegetarians, did her homework. She even went past what we’ve been spoon-fed by the government for the last 60 years about food triangle (when you read the history of those studies and how lies can have such longevity, you’ll probably say the same I did—what in the world?): wide and heavy on bread and grains, thin on meats, cheese and fish…even that demonized, but so important cholesterol. Actually there’s a metaphor if you’ve got a weight problem or dealing with hypoglycemia. I know personally from my own prior experiences, as a past believer that nutrition pyramid, when I should have flipped it: more meat and fish, much less bread and grain…but I’ve jumped ahead to the last section of the book.

The Hypoglycemic and Diabetic's Food Pyramid

The first section on the moral attitudes of the vegetarian is priceless. For those who have studied any type of ancient religions, everything has life and life survives because of the death another living being. Somehow strict vegetarians believe that if it doesn’t have a face or mother it’s somehow not killing: remind of those who fish, but hate hunters? Oh, but fish and lobster have different nervous systems…they don’t feel pain—how in the world do you know?! I stopped flyfishing for entertainment, now when I fish it’s to catch one or two and put them in frying pan, leaving the rest to stay unmolested and healthy, get big, and possibly end up as an enjoyed meal for a bigger fish, after a good life of swimming and eating.

Scientific research has found that plant life also has societies and even reacts to attacks—do you know that the largest living organism on dry land is an aspen grove in Utah? My years apprenticing and training in the Native American healing communities taught me that it’s not whether we kill, we kill by simply stepping blade of grass. It’s whether we do that killing with respect for that which dies. The joke often shared in the community, especially when “the light eye” hippies, and “Wannabe Indians”, searching for meaning to their lives were appalled that the “shaman” actually the proper term “healer” (“shaman” is a Siberian native term), wasn’t a vegetarian—lesson one to the truth seeker: you live because something dies—respect that animal or plant’s death and enjoy your food…say a prayer of thanks, if you’d like!

Vegan Politics

In the second section the author takes on the political component of vegetarianism. This is where she describes how wars and battles for possession of land, and wealth are the results of an agricultural society. Yes, wars have always been fought for religion, food, money and land. She does acquiesce to the fact that hunter-gatherers did fight, also, and definitely for the same reasons of land, except for hunting grounds that provided food, as compared to land for planting that offered food. And there is definitely a much too idealistic view, even naïve attitude that comes across in her writing, and much evidenced in her surprise that militant vegetarians would throw pies at her during an anarchist book fair.

First, she was at an anarchist’s book fair when it happened after all. Secondly, every strict vegetarian, especially one whose personal identity is labeled “Vegetarian” has always had an angry quality about them: either aggressively so, as those who attacked and continue to attack her, and those passive aggressive who get in their little circles, complaining about how horrible the world is how the US Government is the leader in atrocities against the world. It’s all about how the world isn’t how they personally want it to be. Often, they’re also the same kinds of people who spike trees that will send a chainsaw’s broken chain into a logger’s head, a logger who’s just trying to keep his family fed and by doing so also open land for regrowth that enables, young saplings a chance, and an abundance food for deer and other ungulates…These are the same militant vegetarians who come yelling and screaming into hunting areas during hunting season, thinking they’re helping animals.

Did they purchase the hunting licenses and tags that fund all the wildlife areas for not only game species, but also non-game species?

Have they put any money and actual effort toward saving animals, instead of making it look like they’re helping animals?

Remember that the next time you hear the name Wayne Pacelle who also says he has been on a strict vegetarian diet for 20 years—considering all the other lies he spreads, do you think he’s really a strict vegan? When I think of strict vegetarians, I think of flim-flam artists like Pacelle, and most definitely Wiley Brooks (rhymes with Wiley Coyote) and his Breatharian Institute (as he used to say on his website before Keith’s book, about his $1,000,000 his “Immortality Workshop”, “no, that’s not a misprint”) Now he incorporates a diet Coke and McDonald’s quarter-pounder into his scheister sales letter after he was caught publicly enjoying them…there are people out there who actually believe this! No, I wasn’t surprised about the attacks on Lierre Keith by the political vegetarians, and most definitely those at the anarchist book fair.

Her writings on the way the US government, at the behest of major agricultural corporations, is well researched and developed in describing how third world nations are basically enslaved into a diet support almost completely by imports from the United States. And this is where I was lost, even though the research and collection of history is spot on!

The world works in treaties and negotiations, and all of them are based on business. Unlike in the days of old, these days that means corporate negotiations. If we’re lucky, the local populace benefits through democracy and lack of unrest. If we’re not, it means dictatorship and totalitarian rule, and the potential for a mega civil war: something we should recall well from stupid government actions by Nicaragua’s Somoza ruling line and El Salvador’s Juntas.

…It’s Keiths’ proposal that I found so impractical: there is no way humans, unless there’s a major catastrophe that basically takes out 80 percent of the human population, are going to say good bye to the plough and pick up the spear and bow and arrow—you wont have the commerce to support gunpowder production and the bullets.

Personally, I’d love to see every east-west highway raised ten feet above the ground, and every length of fencing in the Midwest be used to not keep in cattle and livestock, but used to surround homes and cities, keeping the wild animals out. In doing so, we’d create a causeway that would redistribute and open up the land so that bison, deer, and elk populations would have their traditional migration routes. I bet you, within 10 years, the herds would be so large you would have to wait a week for each one to pass, as Lewis and Clark observed when the made their way west. A dream. A fantasy. Can you imagine how much healthy, red meat there’d be for everyone? And all the topsoil that has been lost to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico would instead stay and get thicker, rejuvenated by the stomping of the bison’s hooves…never again would the US run the risk of something like the 1930s Great Dustbowl.

Enjoy That Steak

The section of the book that I most enjoyed was the one on nutritional reasons espoused by vegetarians. Not to mention her descriptions of how a strict vegan diet really effects the brain and brain chemistry in a horrifying manner…there’s a reason vegans lose it when they’re on such an unnatural diet (when humans get a number of extra stomachs and eat our food with side-to-side grinding jaw motions of cows and sheep, instead of the present stomachs and teeth closest to the very carnivorous dog we’ve had since the origins of mankind, I’ll become a vegan)—not the least of the reasons is the hypoglycemic reactions to the diet that turns most vegans into cookies and cakes addicts, to get that immediate, yet never sated, mental stimulation of a sugar rush.

After reading that section, I’m never drinking soymilk again…and even though I have a taste for tofu from being raised in Asia, I’ll definitely cut back on the tofu orders at dim-sum. Tofu increases memory loss. If you’ve ever seen how tofu is made you’ll understand partly why…and the part about soy’s phytoestrogens, that has historically made it attractive to sex abstinent, vegetarian monks, was the last straw!

Now, I could go on and on about what’s in the book, but unless I wrote a length of text that would fit into a book as long as The Vegetarian Myth, it wouldn’t do the subject justice. As Keith says there are no meat eating slogans like the vegetarian’s quaint but hollow, “Meat is Murder”. There’re only facts and research, and that time and pages to read, 276 to be exact.

If you know someone even thinking of going on a vegetarian diet, or especially if you know a mother who wants replace her child’s mother’s milk with soy milk, please save them from a lot of grief by getting them a copy of this book!

For your daily commute on your MP3 player – Download and Enjoy Lierre Keith’s interview on Cork’s Outdoors Radio:

Craig Boddington, and his guide, Cano St. Antonin, with a fine red stag taken on the Huemul Peninsula.

Argentina conjures a variety of images for those who’ve never been there. There’re the gauchos, the Pampas, and tango. For the angler there are the monster-sized trout and salmon in rivers that seem untouched because of the stretch of land that fills the borders of the country as well as its meager population that centers around Buenos Aires. For the hunter, there are the photos and images of ducks and big-game that have graced magazines, and as of late, those through the onslaught of 24-hour outdoors satellite programming.

It wasn’t always like this. Yes, there were the trout, back in the 1970s when South American was truly only a blip on the salmonid fanatic’s radar; but when I first saw the images of red deer antlers grace the pages of hunting magazines in the late 70s and early 80s, they were nowhere near the size and impressiveness they are now.

Much of this has to do with how well they’ve managed the herds that were previously left to roam without any real predation-like bluegills in a pond, they quickly overpopulated and their rack size dwindled in response to the lack of food and nutrients.

Because of the new land and wildlife management practices implemented in Argentina during the last 20 years, Argentina is really giving New Zealand’s Utopian red stag hunting a run for the money. Culling the scrawny genetics, and managing for quality instead of quantity, has created a balance between feed and minerals: showing how good management practices benefit not just game animals but non-game peripherals, adding to the grand beauty of the land  and hospitality for which Argentina has always been known.

What better way to cook meat than in a traditional parrillada?

Big Game Argentina records the results of this improved bounty for the outdoors enthusiast wanting to travel Argentina and is the latest offering from Gen. Craig Boddington USMC (ret.). An outdoor writer, book author, show host I’ve admired and respected for years, a man who offered me words to live by back in 1994 as an newbie outdoor writer for The Times of San Mateo County, Boddington’s credentials speak for themselves with over 30 years in what is one of the harder and becoming more and more the hardest writing profession to create longevity.

In his book and DVD collection about hunting in Argentina, Big Game Argentina, Boddington and the photographer, Guillermo Zorraquin, deliver a plethora of what’s available in striking detail (what we in the business call “NGC”, National Geographic Color). From the province of Patagonia, north to Chaco and Santiago Del Estero, west to La Pampa and finally east to the province of Buenos Aires, Boddington and the publishers John John Reynal  and Juan Pablo Reynal took on an enviable, yet sobering project that took two years to complete.

In the offering, they delivered what I consider the most informative and beautifully illustrated book in years on Argentina and hunting red stag, white-lipped javelina (peccary), ducks, doves, water buffalo, puma, blackbuck, capybara, brocket deer, and feral sheep, goats and hogs.

Boddington's fine example of a white-lipped peccary

In a world in which text is not enough, and as a result traditional printed magazines are going the way of the dinosaurs, and multimedia is king (explaining why Cork’s Outdoors gets 11,000 hits a day) Big Game Argentina is nicely matched with a DVD that fills in the dialogue and action that can’t really be captured in text, and yet video doesn’t try to replace the informative quality of text delivered by Boddington’s honed skills as a writer.

A quick mention of the charcoal artwork by Esteban Diaz Mathé must be made: the work is superb and really adds to the quality of those images not captured in photographs, making the book anyone would be proud to have sitting on their coffee table for friends to enjoy.

Often, many of those traveling think that hunting Argentina only involves staying at estancias and hunting open Pampas. Big Game Argentina lays that stereotype to rest with text and photos covering with dramatic flare the many options of hunting Argentina: like French Alps-like mountains and New Zealand’s Fjordland-like lake and sea area to the south on horseback, or the low brush options further north, reminiscent of eastern Colorado, and the flat brush of Texas, to name a few.

A sampling of the dramatic views the hunting lands of Argentina offer

As for capturing the adventure and drama a place like Argentina on the DVD, one of the most striking scenes is one in which Boddington, while on stand, waiting for dogs to drive out a collared peccary, sees a brocket deer break from the brushline. Swinging on the brocket with a shotgun, he dramatically takes a nice deer that reminds me of the dik-dik of Africa. In another scene he makes an amazing shot on a capybara, also on a full run. Kudos to the videographer for his skill catching all the action over Boddington’s shoulder.

In contrast to the native species, and aside from the more famous red deer, there are the fallow deer, feral hogs and water buffalo. Raised in Southeast Asia, I was always amazed that the animal I always saw as a child pulling a plow across a rice field had become such a prized game animal in places such as a Australia and Argentina. While the ones from Australia have a much larger sweep and are originally from the wild strain. The ones in South America descend from the farmed water buffalo that were originally brought to what would become Italy by the Ancient Romans, for their milk and the best mozzarella resulting from that water buffalo milk.

Through centuries of genetic selection, much in the same way Herefords are these days chosen over the original Spanish Texas Longhorn as cattle type, the farmed water buffalo has a much smaller horn, with a much less ominous wide curve of its originally wild cousin in Southeast Asia and Australia, which ironically makes it look more African cape buffalo and trophy in its own right in the feral and very wild form covered in Big Game Argentina.

If you’re planning on hunting or even just traveling or Argentina, or prefer the armchair traveler’s voyage to South America, I’d highly recommend adding the book and DVD pairing of Big Game Argentina by Craig Boddington to your collection.

Books are available through www.craigboddington.com

Book and DVD are available through www.patagoniapublishing.com

For your daily commute on your MP3 player – Download and Enjoy Craig Boddington’s interview on Cork’s Outdoors Radio:

 Topics: Hunting Argentina, helpful advice for neophyte outdoor writers, hunting Africa and Boddington’s two shows broadcast on The Sportman’s Channel and Outdoor Channel, and finally what’s new with Boddington’s writing and adventures in the coming weeks and months.

Spice-rubbed wild boar ready to become Babi Guling!

No matter how you cut it, there is a reason that vegetarians suffer from a number of ailments, not the least of which is a deficiency in vitamin B12: humans have developed over thousands of years to be omnivores, not herbivores! Our diets developed over years of evolution to make sure that humans could survive in any environment, something necessary to a species that evolved as a nomadic group, a group who by necessity has had to survive on an opportunistic diet.

The only species more nomadic than humans are the world’s carnivores. Yet what are the most successful species? Always it’s the omnivores: humans, pigs and bears. These are the most successful populations of any large mammals.

But what’s an omnivore to do when disconnected societal vegetarian fads spring up during every generation, either because of religious or cultural fads inspired by powerful advertising? Get in informed…

Such is the important information I found in the masterpiece The River Cottage MEAT Book by UK food personality Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall…it was as though someone from PETA, but someone who actually did their research instead of just offering a knee-jerk emotional response to eating meat so far from reality it’s a crime, wrote a book on cooking healthy, following ecologically sound farming practices.

Meat is good, and good for you! But, as the author says, there’s good meat and there’s bad meat. Or, as Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755 -1826), “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”

If you get meat from a meat factory that holds its cattle in boxes that prevent movement and they’ve never even had the opportunity to graze in an open field and under a sky light by sunlight and moonlight, you’re going to get an animal full of body chemicals resulting from stress, not to mention the antibiotics and other manmade materials that bring into question their residual effects in our bodies.

Instead, imagine a cow, pig, or lamb enjoying life in a beautiful pasture, feeding well on all the natural grasses and herbs and brush that bring not only incredible flavor to the animal’s meat, but also bring up a healthy offering for the table that makes you feel so sated and happy when you’re done eating. That (aside from some innovative and interesting spins on more traditional British and international recipes) is what Fearnley-Whittingstall brings to the conversation about eating meat that has long been overdue.

We live in a society in the major cities of the US and UK that is so far removed from its roots in the country, that even adults are shocked to find themselves responding strictly emotionally to become strict vegetarians, and trying to legitimize their decision through questionable science.

If you’ve ever ridden on public transportation in Thailand and India, where meat consumption is very low, and seen natives fast asleep with their heads banging against the window as the bus rattles along, you might have noticed a few of the symptoms of long-term vegetarianism: sluggishness, anemia. And, if only eating vegetables is so good for you why do vegetarians so often need vitamin supplements and why do we no longer have more than one stomach, like so many real herbivores—ever wonder what your appendix used to be?

That’s right! It is used to help us digest foliage, as true vegetarians, when we used to move across the great savannahs of prehistoric Africa.

What happened?

We advanced and learned how to make tools. And by learning to make tools we made weapons for killing to eat meat as a main part of our meals instead of just an infrequent lucky addition.

Our brain size development from what we were as a prehistoric man to what we are now resulted from our more regular consumption of meat proteins. Now, I’m not saying that every meal should have a meat protein, but mixed with a full offering of colors and varieties of vegetables, fruits and nuts and I think you’ll notice a not only a more calming, but reaffirming experience, and definitely less-stressed, daily experience.

Personally, I’ve tried a vegetarian diet. As an effort toward spiritual, mental and physiological cleansing as a form of fasting from meat, seafood and birds, it’s very effective. But any longer than that, have you also noticed how weak and sluggish you feel after the initial cleansing has occurred? That’s your body telling you something!

Meat gives you strength. And when you eat a bit much of beef, it does seem to deliver a bit of an aggressive attitude to a person’s personality. This is an observation that goes to at least as far back as Dickens and Oliver Twist:

‘It’s not Madness, ma’am,’ replied Mr. Bumble, after a few moments of deep meditation. ‘It’s Meat.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry.

‘Meat, ma’am, meat,’ replied Bumble, with stern emphasis.

‘You’ve over-fed him, ma’am. You’ve raised a artificial soul and spirit in him, ma’am unbecoming a person of his condition: as the board, Mrs. Sowerberry, who are practical philosophers, will tell you. What have paupers to do with soul or spirit? It’s quite enough that we let ‘em have live bodies. If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma’am, this would never have happened.’

‘Dear, dear!’ ejaculated Mrs. Sowerberry, piously raising her eyes to the kitchen ceiling: ‘this comes of being liberal!’

Heaven forbid the peasants get fed meat!

I do notice that I too can get a little pointed in my comments and hot under the collar when I’ve eaten beef more than four or five days straight, and not had it as part of a well-balanced meal that includes some grains, vegetables and fruit. I must also add that I’ve never had any type of aggressive response with the other red meat: venison.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall makes a great case that there’s nothing as satisfying as a well-prepared and cooked slab of meat that came from a farm animal living a good life on a farm, instead of a prison-like slaughter yard. And yet, he doesn’t shield the reader for the realities of eating-and why should he? Cellophane-wrapped meat that makes children think that our food comes neat and clean from a machine is why we’re having the drastic disconnect problem we’re in now!

The photos of slaughtering and butchering, which reminded me of police photos I’ve seen of crime scenes and scenes in the city morgue on CSI were a bit shocking…but perhaps because even with my field experiences killing and butchering wild game, even doing something as close farm animal slaughtering as killing a farm-raised goat with .22 and butchering it in a woods glen in Alaska, I’d never done my basic butchering in a slaughter house, i.e., the animal is still whole, in an antiseptic, white-walled room.

Kind of gave me the creeps, seeing that steer’s live eyes as a pneumatic piston gun is put to its head. Then, the next frame is the dead eye as he lies on his side…but, like the vegemite-sundaes like to say, if you can’t deal with the honesty of the death of the animal, can you really condone the eating of meat?

Yes, I accept the honesty of the fact that something died so that I can live. And there’s something contrary, to that which the vegemite-sundaes like to think of selectively: they don’t respect, or really are afraid to accept, that EVERYTHING lives because something dies. Is the only reason that vegetarians condone the killing of vegetables and fruits is that they can’t hear them scream—and who are they to think that all living things don’t feel their death and scream…that it’s only that humans don’t normally speak the language of carrots?

Many aboriginal societies revered and respected that fact that all living things, and in their thinking, inanimate objects are alive, and die and scream when their killing is brought about with little respect: that includes carrots that are just ripped out of the ground without first being asked to offer themselves to the upcoming meal.

Are vegemite-sundaes only vegetarians because they can’t deal with death being a fact of life in all its forms?

I leave that up for you to decide…all I know is that when I’ve dealt with strict vegetarians their avoidance of Nature’s facts are often deplorable: they come off as seeming to think that only the furry and cute creatures on this planet deserve to live, and everything else that can’t be heard to scream, or doesn’t run away when you try to eat it, is okay to eat, in other words, kill.

I don’t have time for vegemite-sundaes because everyone of them comes off as a hypocrite when you really get to know their beliefs and understandings about what the Earth so graciously provides—to them, it’s all about avoidance of that cycle of death that Nature has put all on living creatures….and it seems…nature is the very one to remind vegemite-sundaes that their diet isn’t what we’ve evolved towards over thousands of years of eating meat, with vegetarians setting themselves up for osteoporosis and B12 deficiency, making itself known through the following symptoms: confusion or change in mental status in severe or advanced cases, decreased sense of vibration, diarrhea, fatigue, loss of appetite, numbness and tingling of hands and feet, pallor, shortness of breath, sore mouth and tongue, weakness.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall still seems to offer an olive branch to the PETA folks, though I think anyone who considers themselves a “true” vegetarian will never accept that branch other than to further their agenda, as organizations like PETA and HSUS continue to do right now, saying that they just want to improve conditions for animals, when all their directors just want more money (if you’ve ever dealt with an unscrupulous animal rights ‘non-profit’ you really know where the money and how being ‘non-profit’ doesn’t mean being poor) and to stop all hunting: they’d have all native tribes in cities living on canned vegetarian foods if they had their dithers…

…Yet again they perpetuate what the urbanization of humans has done all along: a total disconnect between humans and our origins…and no, a quick hike through the woods is really as disconnected as the average PETA true believer, stuck in an apartment with their only sense of wildlife a pet cat or their Chihuahua, heavily modified through thousands of years of breeding for Aztec and Mayan dining halls. Hikers in the woods are like sex voyeurs, titillated by what they see, but not willing, and often afraid, to get down and dirty with its realities.

We’ve gotten so far away from what enabled us to survive in a real world that I sometimes wonder if this very modern and violent cult following in PETA/HSUS-related vegetarianism isn’t just a human form of lemmings running off cliffs…

Don’t get me wrong, I respect and enjoy my greens, too—it’s just I have a problem with healthy habits that become fanatic movements trying to keep themselves aloft through unsound science and actions that actually go against their professed reasons: smaller hunter numbers have actually led to lower amounts of revenues that would have gone to the support of all animals through the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 (In contrast, if you want to know where PETA funds really go, READ HERE; they sure aren’t putting those millions of dollars into helping animal populations like hunters do…)

Whenever I come across an author that seems to be more on an even keel, and in the UK no less, the historic origins of the present PETA/HSUS madness, I jump up and down in joy that there might be hope. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is just such a man, who takes the reader through the different options for getting that organic success that leads to a healthy and great-tasting meal with meat as the centerpiece: whether a beef roast, roast chicken, or game collected in the field.

There are a number of game recipes that I’m looking forward to cooking, and will in the future with game he mentions, like pheasant, rabbit and hare. Taking to heart the axiom of using everything the animal offers, the Fearnley-Whittingstall also delivers a great chapter the use of offal gathered from a slaughtered animal. And I’d be remiss in not mention a great dissertation on the practice of aging meat: in his research he really pushed the limits of time! If you live in a warmer/drier climate like I do in California, remember that the variance in temperature, i.e. wamers, will shorten your aging times.

But, it was the roast pig that really got me excited!

…Instead of a traditional roasting spit, beautifully described in a photo story on page 390 and pages 392 to 394 in The River Cottage MEAT Book, I wanted to roast a true organic meat (If it’s been touched by human hands, or fed by humans hands, something that didn’t grow naturally, feeding on whatever it could find on its travels, without human direction or intention, how can you call it true organic?) a wild boar in a La Caja China that I had done a bang-up job with on a farm pig.

Not only that, I wanted to try a recipe I enjoyed as a child in Southeast Asia, on a trip to Indonesia, specifically Bali, called babi guling. Click on the photo of Babi Guling below to watch how we prepared him!

 RELATED LINKS

1. La Caja China

2. Blackhawk!

3. Winchester

4. Remington

5. Native Hunt

COMING UP

1. Surmounting the Cultural Conflict of Tactical Clothing and Equipment in the Outdoors

2. Wild Lifers vs. Game Farmers

Click on the Roast Babi Guling to watch how to make it!

 

Having graduated to outdoor writing in the new and burgeoning form of multimedia, I’m still leery of labeling a new author in the same manner as I had been so early in my career, not because of that boost to one’s career (Knowing how hard it is to succeed, I wish every writer the best in their career!), but because of how much it’s also an incredible weight and responsibility, and even for some, can be like a TV or film actor’s typecasting that is almost impossible to get out from under. Yet, when I read Fat of the Land by Langdon Cook, I couldn’t help but think how much, in relation to the urbanized society we’ve largely become in the United States, Cook, 42, is the Henry David Thoreau of his generation.

When I review a book, I’m in search of a number of offerings in that writing: education, entertainment and escape. Few authors can offer all that consistently and keeping it going throughout a book. When they do, it’s a great book!

Cork Graham subsistence hunting moose and Dall sheep on the Kenai Peninsula, 1990

As someone who lived in Alaska as a subsistence hunter, angler and forager, I’m always impressed with a writer who can take me back to the only place in the world, that I’ve lived in that I can say I’m truly homesick for, much less in a book that isn’t even about Alaska. With nice touches of a personal history reaching back to the East Coast, and often simply because of his beautiful poetic form of honesty, Cook was able to transport me to all the places I love through the window of Oregon and Washington.

Through Cook’s writing, that never once takes the reader over that sickeningly sappy poetic license that amateur writers often attempt, my voyage of escape from the flu I was fighting last week, was amazingly easy. At the open of “Honey, Get the Gun”, I was back on the shores of Clam Gulch, Alaska, in the middle of December, with my then girlfriend, a longtime resident, digging up razor clams. Some would be fried. Others would end up in my favorite “Razor Scampi”. Many were smoked and canned, enjoyed later as boat lunches during commercial salmon season.

For those who may be wondering if Fat of the Land will only appeal to someone who has “gone and done it”, worry not. I was never a fungi fan (but because of his “Confessions of an Amanita Eater”, I am now), nor have I been “Fiddling Around” for fiddleheads; yet, I was still with Cook, rooting for him and his gang when they succeeded, though appalled when he did something that just made me cringe. Yet, through his eyes, I saw what’s really happening for those now starting out in the world of hunting, even underwater, and even when he brought up a controversy in the arena of wildlife conservation that at times seems clichéd: from chapter one to its end, I was still completely vested in the book!

That heart and mind investment started with the hunt for the wild dangerous creature known to many a forager who prowls the shores of Puget Sound, (my great uncle would regal us with how many there were when he was a salmon fisherman out of Seattle just after WWII). If you think I’m being factious, try going after clams with your hands, like the new-to-Alaska, Cheechako I was. All it takes is a finger or hand split to the bone on the sharp edge of the shell to appreciate the common name for siliqua patula, and the practicality of an elongated clam shovel or a tube gun.

Cook talks with authority on the subject of clams, their history, and sadly, their possible future, a topic that can easily be spread throughout other flora and fauna speared, hooked or gathered in Fat of the Land, and which has put me in a quandary as someone who not only enjoys hunting, foraging and fishing, but also teaches others how to do it for themselves—can the wild flora and fauna populations support this, especially as a a human population sees that same wild bounty as an opportunity to overcome ever-increasing prices of food, or draw an income through foraging, in this horrible economy?

Moving deeper into the water, albeit still connected to land by the deck of a pier, was a lesson not only in how to fish for squid, but also how to start learning from those more experienced, and why it behooves everyone to learn an extra language—this hit home when I was eighteen, unlucky, and under harsh interrogations in a Communist Vietnamese prison, unable to string more than three words together from the Vietnamese I spoke fluently as the result of having been an American expat’s young child trying to survive in a Vietnamese-dominated French Catholic kindergarten in Saigon.

Surprisingly, or maybe it’s not, because of the multitude of immigrants who now ply the waters, streams and mountains for game and fish; being fluent in Spanish, French and Korean and having the ability to at least ask someone how and where to do something in Russian, Mandarin, Lao, Thai and Vietnamese, have offered me new techniques and secret places for putting meat, fish and forage on the table. It’s also kept me from getting a bullet in my head as I quickly removed myself from a illegal and dangerous farming venture, because I heard and understood them before they had a chance to know I was there while deer hunting: the amount of wild game that the pot growers (most often kidnapped and coerced by the murderous Mexican drug cartel to sneak illegally into this country) slaughtered and left to rot that was later found by CAMP, was atrocious—Is it any wonder how hypocritical it appears when someone staunchly says they’re environmentalists and ecologists, and yet they light up a joint or bong loaded with marijuana likely grown on illegal pot farms in the national forests and other public lands, turning them into free-fire zones where every living thing is killed through boobytraps and shooting to protect those fields?

The multinational flavor of the foraging community described in Fat of the Land carried to a chapter on shad fishing, notorious for its numbers and fight. If you haven’t caught them before, by the time you’re at that moment in your life where a flyrod and the meditative quality of flycasting calls out to you, you quickly realize it’s time to use “Shad Darts at Dawn”. The stringers become long and heavy with the American shad, immigrants from the waterways of the East Coast, and a boon to those who like to fill their larder, yet not impact the indigenous; but for my tastes, the much better fight on the line and fare for the table, lower-numbered steelhead and salmon.

Langdon Cook and a full stringer of American shad.

When I cringed it wasn’t the Christmas tree formed of a number of shad on a stringer; nor was it the catching and releasing of steelhead. Hatchery or wild, it really doesn’t matter to me as fish is good to eat from either and money aside (made from an industry that thrives only because of catch and release) when more and more research says that practice of catch and release leads to up to 63 percent accidental kill, and it becomes more and more as salmon farming increases and  the wild strains follow the way of the California condor.

No. It was when Cook and his mentor were becoming “The Inhuman”. I know a bit of what I talk about when it comes to spearfishing. I’ve been a spearo since the early-1980s spearing great seafood meals in the Caribbean, and Pacific. Repeatedly did so until my buddy, Randy Fry, lost his life to a great white shark at Kibbesillah Rock, just off Fort Bragg. The event put a stop to my spearfishing and ab-diving, until right after I returned from a teaching sabbatical in South Korea: I’ve seen people killed in combat, in some very horrific ways, but let me tell you, just imagining a good friend diving into a shark’s mouth and being bit clean through from shoulder to shoulder bring the mind back to its most primordial fears of teeth and claws—It led to a four year hiatus from entering the waters off Northern California as a freediver.

As one who tries my best to make as quick and efficient a kill as possible, and with the least amount of waste, when I read how not only Cook had gone after a lingcod with a traditional pole spear (Though Cooks calls his setup a Hawaiian Sling, a Hawaiian sling is actually a set up with a handle system, that has a hole through which a free-shooting spear is shot, almost like a slingshot), but that his “mentor” Dave, the professor, often hunted lingcod with not just a pole spear, but with the tri-pronged spearhead that pole spears normally come with—I found that atrocious!

It’s one thing, to not know. When someone who is a teacher, a professor no less, doesn’t investigate further, it’s a shame . The problem wasn’t the use of a pole spear: Master Spearo “Shark Man” Manny Puig, is well-known for his environmental work and being a spearfisherman, and especially for efficiently using a pole spear for putting fish on the table—it’s actually more efficient than a speargun, as you don’t lose time reeling in line to get your fish off your spear and on the stringer. The difference is that Puig uses a Hawaiian style barb, which flips open to hold the fish on the spear: for halibut and lingcod, even this isn’t enough.

Lingcod and halibut rank up there as the most easy to lose with a pole spear or a speargun. That’s why those who go after them use either the detachable spear tip, or 5-prong Trident spear. Mentor Dave knew about the best wetsuits to use, and Cook detailed well how it’s more comfortable and efficient to use a 4 mm suit, as compared to 5 mm, to descend, but when he didn’t tell Cook to replace a speartip infamous for losing fish, that just brought me back to how important is for this new generation of hunters, anglers and foragers to get the right tutelage, or else yet another generation will needlessly become fodder for the “antis” movement.

If this new generation does “do the job right”, the benefits to the ecosystem will be multitude: waste will be kept down; populations of hunters and anglers will increase enough that the funds collected through fishing and hunting licensing will once again provide more habitat to support and improve numbers of game and fish on public land.

Right now, because the wealthy pay great fees for prime hunting, the only place with abundant game and fish are  lands that are privately owned. It wasn’t always this way. Before, there were more than enough people who went fishing and hunting, so much so that the departments of fish and game catered more to this group, by improving habitat and stocking. In the process, all other non-game creatures also benefited. If there’s enough good habitat, and stewarding of the land, game and fish populations can be prolific on their own.

It’s for this very reason that I’m in favor of having all coastal dams removed from Baja California to Canada. There are so many other forms of electrical power, and would free up the waterways so that the salmon and steelhead would come back on the their own. Not many know that the largest salmon run in the world was not some river up in Alaska, like the Kenai: the Sacramento River held the largest run, with salmon up to 100 pound netted on the McCloud River. In the 1856, Hutching’s California Magazine actually complained that you couldn’t navigate across the upper Delta and lower Sacramento without being overcome by the stench of hundreds of thousands of spawned out salmon carcasses. Lake Shasta and all the later dammed up rivers, like the Mokelumme and Stanislaus to name a few, ended that.

A wild, healthy salmon on the Rogue River for Langdon Cook

Aside from the ill-advised suggestion to use inadequate equipment, what are my thoughts? As I mentioned earlier, I’m in a quandary. When I started hunting, I was a thirteen-year-old, fresh from a previous life as an American expat in Southeast Asia. The hunting and fishing opportunities my father enjoyed at that same age in Spokane, Seattle, and the Midwest, during the early 1940s and the glory days of great opportunity resulting from hunters and anglers going off to WWII that provided a six-year break for game and fish populations, were long gone by the time I blindly searched for the guidance of those who knew what they were talking about and weren’t arrogantly talking through the romance of hunting and fishing were few.

When I found them, I cherished and kept in good friendship with them even as they aged and died. That generation that had to hunt and fish to provide for the table, and had not been barraged by divisive advertising campaigns to separate the hunter from the environmentalist, is quickly disappearing.

Chantarelle success!

Cook has the writing skills, that’re beyond evident. And, he’s honest. He shows what life and death is about in nature, and how humankind was never meant to be removed and simply an observer in the most intimate of all settings: the cycle of life. Where his honesty comes from, is where I hope as he ventures into hunting on land, as he has mentioned on his Fat of the Land (FATL) blog, will spur him to search out the most experienced, and not just rely on those most easily accessible, wrong, and frankly lazy in their own edification (or worse, just disrespectful to the very prey that gives them nourishment), in the assessment of efficiency, as Professor Dave: 200 hundred days a year in the water, according to Cook, but evidently not interacting with those who could have taught him better.

In a nutshell, Fat of the Land is a great telling of a newbie’s entry into the world of West Coast spearfishing, fishing and foraging. It’s unlike so many books that try to romanticize the wilds, something that almost seems a crime, especially when I remember Christopher McCandless’ stupidity in Alaska, only a year after I came back to California. That honesty about Cook’s activities and those around him is what informs, educates and entertains (the humorous anecdotes are priceless and many of you who have ventured forth in your own rite, might easily recognize similar funny experiences). Through this writing, readers don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Through his writing, readers have an opportunity see if the world of living off the fat of the land is feasible or desired.

If you were stuck in bed like me last two week, you’ll feel fortunate to enjoy the escape to the wilds that a writer of Langdon Cook’s artistic ability brings to the page, making it so easy to “be there”, keeping your attention even through the blurred fog of a flu. Once I regain my sense of smell and taste, I can’t wait to try the recipes at the end of each chapter, related to the subject of that chapter, one of which I’ve enjoyed greatly in the past: oyster po’boys! Cook is so on the money, making sandwiches with those big as steaks North Pacific oysters.

As I said at the beginning, I see a new Thoreau in Langdon Cook, and with that amazing skill of capturing natures beauty like a photo, I look forward to him coming easily to the challenge of those ensuing responsibilities in his future books.

For you to enjoy your own copy of Fat of the Land!

Reviewing Justin’s site, http://www.black-bear-hunting.com/, you can tell that his knowledge of hunting and woodcraft is solid. There’s no question in that, and I had looked forward to seeing that information transferred, and not only the words through which I had aleady read about such subjects as bear, elk, deer, moose hunting on his site.

But as with many I’ve met who have vast bush craft knowledge, but haven’t put in the time learning the technical video and editing skills that many who go into the profession of being a “camera operator” do, the images came out blurred, and jumpy…when I feel like I’m getting seasick, I’m reminded that the onslaught of mini-cams wasn’t so great of an idea: it’s wonderful nowadays not having to carry a full-sized Betacam, like I had to during the war in Central America, when I’d freelanced as a cameraman and soundman for CNN and others, but that weight sure helped getting pretty good images even when you’re huffing and puffing from a prior run.

It’s also one of the reasons I wasn’t so excited by the onslaught of ultra-light “mountain rifles” during the 1980s, and why many consider my long-range rifles heavy—they maybe heavy to carry in, but when the rifles supposed to do what’s it’s supposed to do, all that weight sure aids countering all the incidental movement.

Tip 1: If you want to shoot near professional quality video, shoot all your content off a tripod with a sandbag for stability. Or, if you need to run with it and can’t afford, or don’t want to put the thousands of dollars into a steadycam, simply fold up the tripod, swivel the head up so that the camera is now in line with the folded tripod. Carrying the legs cradled in your arm, like a bundle of wood, using the LCD view screen, you now have a very steady camera. Never shoot with just a handheld minicam by itself; your breathing and heartbeat have too much of an effect on the captured images.

Tip 2: When teaching through video, don’t rely on being the talking head. Whatever the talking head offers, is most often offered through just text in a  book. As in TV broadcasts, you want the talking head’s dialogue, but you should be looking at exactly what the host/commentator is talking about. Inserts cannot be underused. If I’m being told that bear are partial to berries and certain types of forbs, I want to see a close-up of that exact berry, and what type of environment it may be found, and the same for the other items being talked about, so that when I’m out in the field I can recall what it looked like in the video and identify it.

Tip 3: The best way to become a good videographer is to first become good still photographer. It’s like the axiom about it only taking one shot to do the job when comparing a bolt-action rifle to an M16 on full-auto. Shooting stills trains the eye to pick out what’s really important in a frame, through aiming and cropping through the use of the zoom lens. When you’ve got your skills of telling a story through still photos, you can easily transfer that to shooting subjects with a video or film camera. On this subject, reading a bio on Gordon Parks is a great idea.

Tip 4: Don’t chase the story—set the frame and let it happen. Very few can do a proper pan, and if there’s no need for a pan, don’t move the camera around trying to keep the subject in the middle, i.e. chasing. Action is captured effectively by setting the frame and letting the subjects move around within frame, even moving on and off screen. Two things happen, you don’t have a jumpy frame (the moving frame, “journalistic” style of jumpy frame so enjoyed by MTV is so overused and distracting from, and has no place, in a how-to), and the audience has the opportunity to process what the commentator is saying.

Tip 5: Never let panoramas go un-described. There are a multitude of them in the scouting and stalking sections of the DVD. It would have been nice to actually hear Justin tell me what I’m looking at, while having inserts to see up close what I’m hearing about. I’m not from Western Canada and outside of having lived and hunted in Alaska, Idaho, and California for bear, I’ve never hunted Canada. I would have liked to have heard what I should be looking for while I’m in a plane scouting out terrain, i.e. what’s likely to be around the lake that I saw; in the open meadows that are rimmed timber, what am I supposed to look for? More specifically what times should I most likely see bear in those large landscapes.

Though a DVD can’t really do what a 300-page book on the subject can, video can do many things that books can’t—they can offer a person the opportunity to have a one-on-one tutelage. Now capturing sound can be a real headache with the sound of an engine in a plane, that’s why audio tracks are laid over video with a microphone in the editing room, and the tutorial experience can be replicated in video. The experience should be just like being right next to teacher, looking exactly at what the teacher is pointing out and listening to the teacher’s specific explanations.Explanations of terrian were too sweeping in description when looking at terrain.

These items item aside, a hunter who has never hunted black bears, hunted black bear in Canada or used all types of legal forms of techniques for bear, will benefit from watching this video. You’ll also see what types of firearms and archery equipment Justin and his friends use to go after black bear in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Pistols are illegal to use for hunting in Canadian, so this topic isn’t touched on. Here in all the western US, with and without dogs, depending on the state rules, we use everything from .357 magnum and .45 ACP, up to larger calibers used in Alaska and the Rocky Mountain States, such as the .500 Linebaugh, for possible accidental run ins with grizzlies.

Commenting on closeups again, there were some when looking at scat that would have been a great opportunity to go further into eating habits of bear, but they often seemed as an afterthought as they were shot dizzyingly fast. It would have been nice if the videographer had setup a tripod and shot for the required ten seconds, extreme minimum. Also, comment was made about the many other bear signs that can be found in the woods, such as scratchings made into the bark of trees that unmistakable, but the only view I had of trees much less a scratching was a way too quick wide pan through stands of timber. Maybe I missed it, but I couldn’t seen anything but wide pan through a stand of trees.

Considering there were such good close-ups of Justin’s Bowtech compound bow and especially Montec broadhead, I thought the same due diligence would have been given to subjects not so easily referenced through comment or written up on the screen to be checked on line at G5 and Bowtechs’ websites.

As this is only a first-time effort, it’s not so bad. And since Justin is evidently well-versed in hunting, I look forward to his next instructional DVD installment with the lessons learned from The Black Bear Hunting Encyclopedia.

You can order your copy, which includes a small booklet that works well as a notebook to carry on your hunt to remind you of all that has been mentioned in the DVD, for $47 US at http://www.black-bear-hunting.com

At the site, you’ll also be able to read the wealth of information that makes me say that Justin is a good outdoor journalist, who once his teams gets the technical kinks out of their productions will turn out phenomenal DVDs—can’t wait to see them!

And for the rest of you who’d like to improve your own videos, or shoot quality video for the market checkout Tom Ang’s book. It’s short and sweet, but covers everything from shooting to editing to production:

I first met Col. John H. Roush ten years ago, during a hunt that I thought would require my past skills as a corpsman. These thoughts often run through my mind when I see anyone close to my grandfather’s age climbing the ridiculously steep hills of California. What I came away with instead was a deep respect and admiration for a man who had lived the life of ten (well described in the accompanying volume Memoirs of an Interesting Life) and who could climb those hills like a billy goat even though well into his 80s.

Every year after when we’d reconnect at what was like a deer hunting family’s reunion in the hills near San Francisco, I’d relish the stories Roush told of his previous year’s exploits hunting the many regions of the world: New Zealand, Africa, Mexico, and of course all the big-game states in the US and Canada. 

Now, everyone can enjoy and learn from his stories in his latest hunting volume, Hunting Elk and Antelope in the Western States. As a fellow California hunter, I especially delight in Roush’s descriptions of blacktail deer. Like him, I was forever reading about the elite qualities of whitetail: ghosts of the forests, and so many other descriptions making it look as though whitetailed deer found everywhere but California (yes, some say there are a few in the very northeast corner of California, but we’re talking maybe two or three a year sighted) were the hardest deer to hunt for their wiliness.

Yet, when going after the real “ghosts” nothing really beats the much harder to hunt blacktail deer that Roush so well describes. Roush has hunted both and comparing his take numbers for whitetail and blacktail he’s put together over the years, it’s easy to see why he considers the whitetail a much easier quarry.

The style of writing is very much in the narrative style you’d find around a campfire, informative stories spanning nearly 70 years of hunting experience.

$30 for soft cover and $40 for hardcover, autographed, postage and mailing included.  Please send checks to Col. John H. Roush, Jr (RET) at 600 Deer Valley Road, # 2E, San Rafaeal, CA 94903, or FAX  415-499-5112

Can also be ordered through Amazon.com but with out the autograph, of course.

When I first arrived in California, I would have given my eye-teeth to get my hands on the information Haugen

Scott Haugen and a trophy blacktail

delivers in this masterpiece. Perhaps it’s because he was a biology teacher for years in Alaska and Indonesia, or has a phenomenal understanding of how to use a map from his university days in cartography-the major he took up for his bachelors he concedes was for improving his deer hunting-but he really teaches the reader how to not only recognize what makes blacktail deer special, but how to effectively hunt them as a blacktail deer hunter and not a misplaced whitetail or mule deer hunter.

Starting with a foreword by another well-proven hunting writer, Bob Robb, Trophy Blacktails’ chapter one covers the deer itself, taking you through physical characteristics and average blacktail life-cycle and then moving to diet. What caught me off guard was the information on Deer Hair Loss Syndrome (DHLS)!

I’d never even heard of it down here in California, but up in Oregon and Washington this is one big bad dude! DHLS is a caused by a louse that came to Washington from either the African or Asian continent, latin name Damalinia Cervicola. DHLS results from the horrendous skin biting from the louse.

As the hair is lost, the deer’s own biting and rubbing against the irritation leads to intense stress, and that added to chill of early fall and definitely during winter, deer loses too much weight and dies. Haugen describes two events of young deer standing near the wall of their house to hide from wind, only to see them within three days, dead.

It’s just in the last few years that DHLS has been seen in the most northern reaches of California. Who knows how long before it reaches down the rest of the coast and ventures further into mule populations, too? Perhaps the more benign temperatures south of San Francisco might help in keeping DHLS at bay, though just as likely not Damalinia Cervicola itself. Stay tuned!

Haugen carries on with record books classifications and trophy judging. He then delves into a very important aspect of hunting overall and in hunting blacktails specifically: The Mental and Physical Game. This book is a book for trophy blacktail deer hunter, in contrast to the recreational, though all deer hunters will benefit greatly from reading Trophy Blacktails. It’s not as hard to get an average blacktail as compared to one that has lived more than two or three years. Most deer taken are in the two three-year range. To get the buck that has survived longer than five years that’s when you’re getting to the bucks that anyone would unbegrudgingly call, trophy, and that’s the range logged in the books. That takes a mental and physical conditioning most are not prepared to follow through with, but if you do, Haugen suggestions will be that much easier to follow toward your own wall-hangers.

Chapter two takes the reader through the strategies and planning taking into consideration blacktail behavior and scouting tactics, along with the best times and places to hunt for antler sheds. Fullfilling the rest of the strategies includes map research, locating does, and most controversial especially in California where the DFG frown and actually makes it illegal to implement: food plots.

Personally, considering how poorly the California DFG has managed its deer herds and major predators as the result of insane political pressures that have nothing to do with actually improving wildlife populations, I’m all for food plots. If I had my way, I’d have every hiker going into national forests and parks to plant foods that are most beneficial to deer, but also collaterally turkey, squirrels, quail and a number of non-game species.

I’ve always held to the belief that if you take care of the habitat the populations will follow. Is it any wonder that in the Eastern United States they’re complaining that hunters aren’t taking enough deer? Or that here in California our salmon populations have hit near rock bottom? Blow a few more dams and salmon populations will skyrocket back to what they were-how many people know that before the dam was put in to form Lake Shasta, the largest salmon run in America was the Sacramento River run? Yes, even larger than Kenai in Alaska!

How many more blacktail deer would we have in California if we allowed landowners to legally plant property to draw and feed blacktail deer with strategically placed food plots? Probably the same large healthy population of deer they have back east.

As for predators, they’ve needed a proper management program in this state for years. And no, contrary to what the Mountain Lion Foundation and other groups that make money off keeping the cougar on the no-hunt list, predator populations don’t drop along with the prey. They keep growing, eating everything until it’s gone, simply moving to find more prey, i.e. your dogs and cats in lower altitude areas as we’ve seen this drought year.

If you want to help deer populations, like I do: shoot two to three predators for every deer that you take and you might just make a small enough dent in bobcat and coyote population, and mountain lion population if the DFG’d actually get on the ball on this like they do in Washington, Idaho and California: isn’t it ironic that since mountain lions have been on the no-hunt list, there have been more mountain lions killed on depredations permits than there would ever have been on a hunting license/tag system? Right attitude: keep a healthy mountain lion population in California. Wrong implementation!

Now implementing the tactics described in Haugen’s Trophy Blacktails will bring you much more success than DFG strategies have brought to the improvement of California deer populations. Haugen shares these with you in a seasonal format that goes into the Early Season, Mid-Season, and Late Season.

As I hunt in California’s A Zone, I was most intrigued by what an Oregonian had to say about the early season as we start one to two months before the northern states. During the first half of the archery season that starts in July, most of the bucks are in velvet so it’s much easier to find deer in the open as they’re trying to keep them from breaking off on a tree or branch. Once the velvet gets rubbed off, they deer get real spooky and often become nocturnal, especially on public land with heavy hunting pressure.

By rifle season the bucks are deep during the day, offering a slight opportunity in the last one to two hours of daylight morning and evening. Because of this and the overgrown brush that has just gotten worse because of overzealous fire protection foregoing widespread controlled burning, with a tradition of use that goes back to the Spanish, we’re allowed to use dogs to basically drive deer out of that deep manzanita, low oak and chemise, though even those dogs don’t guarantee success as described in an article I wrote for Hunting the West magazine a few years back.

Cork's Blacktail taken with ELK, Inc. "Deer Talk Call"

Haugen really shines in his description of using calls, blinds and stands. Also of note is using spotting scopes for checking out the feeding habits of the targeted bucks. As one who called in a nice 3X2 in 2005, I’m a true believer in using deer calls. When used during the rut, which in the A Zone can occur during the last two weeks of the season, fawn calls can be very effective. The buck in question came in following a doe that was responding to the bleat I made with an ELK, Inc. “Deer Talk Call”.

There is one last caveat about Trophy Blacktails. I wish publisher had included an index for speedier referencing, something I do when riding up to a hunt or preparing a plan. I’m confident considering the excellent quality photos and content on this first run by Haugen Enterprises that the following publications will have that much needed index.

You can order your own copy here: http://www.scotthaugen.com/books/trophyblacktails.html