Maggie's Farm

An email from a buddy:

I came across a Japanese Type 14 Nambu pistol.  These were reasonably well made Japanese semi-autos, used from mid-1920's until end of WWII.  The ammo is available for around $25/box of 50.  I had planned on using it for a project that didn't work out
 
If interested, I can email photos.  I'd like just what I paid for it - $300.

I don't need one and do not want one, but it's an interesting firearm from an historical point of view.

Everything about the Type 14 here.

It's time to plan hunting trips. I know of two guide services that host Cape Cod duck hunting - mostly, but not only, sea ducks. November-January:

Cape Cod Sportsmen and East Coast Guide Service.

The latter even offers an Eider recipe: Eider Cape Cod. If you aren't planning to eat 'em, you shouldn't shoot 'em.

Here's one of Capt. Perez' Eider hunts in Cape Cod. These guys are good shots, and make it look far easier than it is even though Eiders decoy readily:

Five or six more months until duck season. A friend sent me these photos of a splendid, if surrealistically overblown, duck blind. It has to be in Arkansas.

A dear huntin and fishin pal of mine lucked out bowing a turkey this month. How happy does he look? I am impressed that he persuaded the Mrs. to take the photo. Blood and guts are not her thing. Not at all. She likes Gucci.

Currier and Ives' The Trout Pool. The guy is fishing for Brookies. That's all there were in the East, back then. Browns are a European import, and Rainbows are an import from the Western US.

This is a re-post from guest author Skook:

Glaciers and mountain-building have created many distinct species of trout throughout the Pacific drainage.  To find them, fish a mountain river, take a boat out on the Pacific, or hike to a desert lake.

Rainbow (above) – Silver with black spots and a reddish band along the side.  Their native range is the West Coast mountains, though they have been introduced elsewhere in North America and beyond.   Redbands are a variant found in the Great Basin, where they have adapted to high summer temperatures.  Steelheads are anadromous rainbows that spend parts of their lives in the North Pacific from Kamchatka down to Malibu Creek near Los Angeles.  In the Northwest, rainbows and steelhead are the premier game trout of the rivers and coast.

(While Rainbows are to be found in the East, these are all transplants or hatchery fish. The native stream trout in the East is the Brook Trout - which is a char.)

Cutthroat – Meriwether Lewis stopped at a Philadelphia tackle shop before setting out and his purchases served his expedition well, like on the Great Falls of the Missouri in June 1805.  Private Silas Goodrich fished the river as Lewis described events.  Goodrich caught a trout “with specks of a deep black…and a small dash of red on each side behind the front ventral fins… the flesh, when in good order, of a rose red.”  There are at least 14 types, often unique to particular river systems.  Cutthroats are the classic trout of the inland American West, and they sometimes interbreed with Rainbows.


Dolly Varden  - These are char (as is the eastern Brook Trout), like trout but with different teeth and coloration.  Dollys are olive or gray-green with yellow to pink spots and light gray bellies.  A character from a Dickens novel, Dolly Varden became the name of a patterned dress and in the 1870’s the name was given to the char found in California’s McCloud River. Dolly Varden are similar to Bull Trout, another char, and at one time they were thought to be the same species. They spend time in the ocean as do Cutthroats.     

There are a few other species found in isolated areas that exist today only due to the hard work of folks like Trout Unlimited.  Here are two examples:     

Apache Trout - Jump in your car and drive to the Ft. Apache Indian Reservation about three hours northeast of Phoenix.  There in the White River is the gold, red, and black Apache.  It has been a long struggle due to loss of habitat and interbreeding with rainbows.  But now things look good enough to move it from the endangered list to merely “threatened” so you may legally try your luck at catch and release.

Gila Trout – Another modestly reviving species in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, it too had been pushed to the brink by development and competition with non-native trout introduced decades ago.  Gilas have black spots on gold and copper bodies and grow to over a foot. Long term restoration has brought them back enough to permit limited fishing in a few beautiful mountain streams.  Bring your hiking boots.

- The Mediterranean population of the Bluefin Tuna - "Tonno" - the King of Fish, is headed for extinction due to overfishing. Their vulnerability is that they all congregate in one place for breeding, and helos direct the netting. EU politics will permit that extinction to occur. A damn shame. Of course, the regular Atlantic population is headed for the same fate.

- And Bottlenose Dolphins aren't really fish, but the Japanese in Taji kill 23,000 of them each year. This is not stewardship.

- Another fish tale: An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World.

A re-post. We'll do the Western species later in the week -

It's getting near Opening Day around here, so here's an update on the Salmonidae. For our other pieces on fishing, enter "fishing" in our search space - you will catch some good stuff - along with some random entries.

Taxonomy: The family Salmonidae includes a number of cool-water fish subfamilies: trout, salmon, char, grayling, Lake Whitefish, and other less well-known fish. The Brook Trout and Lake Trout are technically members of the Char subfamily of the Salmonidae.

Heritage: The aggressive, young-trout-killing Brown Trout is a transplant from Eurasia. The fast-water Rainbow Trout is a transplant from the Pacific watershed. The splendid Brook Trout and the big Lake Trout are the common native game species of the Eastern US, and both are technically Char, not trout per se. At this point, the wonderful game "trout" have been transplanted world-wide, and some have established viable wild populations, as with the trout in Patagonia, where you can even catch New England's Brook Trout today.

Anadromy: Most Salmonidae have the capacity, or the preference, to be anadromous - to migrate to salt water until maturity - when they have the opportunity. The Arctic Char, of culinary and cold water fame (anti-freeze in the blood), is anadromous. So is the Steelhead - actually a migratory Rainbow. Salmon are, of course. Sea-going fish grow larger on the rich variety of big-water foods. Interestingly, many land-locked Salmonidae imitate anadromy by entering streams to spawn, and then return to their home fresh-water lakes or just stay put in the streams, if there is enough to eat.

The Great Lakes and other large lakes have their own Salmonidae species, such as Lake Whitefish, and Lake Trout which are not found in trout streams.

Hatchery fish:  When you fish for trout in the East, you are, in all likelihood, catching hatchery fish, not wild, born-in-nature fish. Too many anglers, and not enough habitat, so we pretend we are catching wild fish. Catch-and-release gives your fellow angler a chance, and saves your state government, or your fishing club, money on their hatchery budgets. Still, some wild breeding populations do exist, and fly-fishing with barbless hooks gives every fish a sporting chance to avoid the crushing humiliation of the sportman's net. But I still wonder what would happen if we banned all fresh-water stream fishing for five years. What would we find in our streams? Nothing?  Or big, mature breeding trout hunkering under stream banks and fallen logs? We will never know, but I suspect that many of our streams would not support wild trout populations.

Other details:

 - Superb taxonomy website: ITIS
 - Good Eastern trout summary, Pennsylvania Fishes
 - An example of how eastern states manage their fresh-water recreational fisheries, from Connecticut
 - An example of what fish hatcheries do, from New York State

 Image: Brook Trout, by Denton

Scuppers and Harley on a grouse hunting trip in Maine 7 or 8 years ago, hanging out by the lake that President Eisenhower liked to fish:

We know that a Scottie won the Westminster Show, and everybody loves Scotties. I was partial to the Coonhound. My cuz emailed me that he had a show favorite: The Kuvasz. Never heard of them. Big dogs, bred in Hungary to protect livestock. Look kinda like a wolf in sheep's clothing:

Who knew? The restoration of Elk to Kentucky has been a huge success. (Thanks, reader.) Now they need their hunting season, since the predators haven't found them yet. No Cougars or wolves seen in KY lately, alas. Wildcats, yes! A wonderful state, but too far from salt water for me.

There used to be forest-dwelling buffalo ("Bison" for purists) throughout Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Illinois, Ohio, too. How about trying a restoration of them? I do know that they bust through fences...

This is an annual re-post.

With hunting season coming to a close, it's time to get cooking what we have in the freezer. It all begins with the sauce:

Uncle Bill's Jus de Gibier (mixed game) sauce, aka Brown Game Stock, aka Clean out the Freezer Sauce

This will be the tastiest sauce base, or sauce, you have ever had in your life, for chicken, game birds, turkey, venison, pork, veal, pasta, ravioli, etc. It's an ideal base for pheasant, chicken, venison or goose bourguignon. It has an earthy richness to it which is remarkable. We like to make a woodcock ravioli with black truffle, and this sauce is essential for that.

Gibier refers to mixed game, but we do it with mixed meat too, but not beef, which would overpower the subtler flavors. It is the best use of freezer-burned game and other stuff in the freezer. It's fun to make (but it takes a while), and you can clean out the freezer and the fridge at the same time. I freeze the used carcasses of Thanksgiving turkey, ducks, goose, random deer bones, etc. to use when I make this, once or twice a year, along with freezer-burned chicken, pheasant, etc. You could do this with entirely store-bought stuff if you lack a hunter in the family. The more stuff, the better.

You need a 10-12 (or larger) quart stovepot to make this, if you have a lot of stuff to use, but it freezes fine when made. It's good for a few months, at least.

Bake in oven until browned (not necessarily cooked-though) your saved carcasses and freezer-burned game meat and meat, especially pork and pork bones are good, and veal bones, (even if they have already been cooked). Yes, you bake the bones too. Do not burn them in the oven. I tend to use freezer-burned venison, pork chops, all my game bird carcasses, venison bones (cracked with a mallet), a bunch of veal bones and veal scraps if I can get them nowadays (it doesn't hurt to hit up the butcher for some stuff for this), turkey carcass, woodcock carcasses, and a pile of chicken wings. Chop this stuff roughly with a cleaver into 3-6" chunks and toss in the pot. Try to crack the bones.

Got any Woodock in the freezer?

The USA is unusual because wild game meat can not be sold in stores. All "game" meat sold in the US is farm-raised, whether venison, quail, pheasant, duck, or whatever.

That is the correct and righteous legacy of the devastating, 12 month/year market hunting of the past which devastated the seemingly endlessly abundant American wildlife populations.

There is no bird as special for the table as Woodcock, but you have to shoot them yourself. One way to do justice to this diminutive bird (smaller than the European Woodcock) is a ravioli dish I learned from my Cordon Bleu chef friend.

Take a few Woodcock, and cut all of the meat off them - breast, thighs, etc. Chop the meat into roughly 1/2" pieces. Throw in a bowl and mix with a bit of sauteed very finely-chopped shallots and carrots, salt, pepper, a bit of fresh thyme and parsley and a little bit of truffle oil.

Take some wonton squares and brush some whisked egg on the edges as glue. Put a teaspoon or two of the mixture inside, then seal the squares tightly to eliminate any air inside, and place carefully into gently boiling water until done. It only takes a few minutes.

Serve the raviolis drizzled with somewhat reduced gibier sauce, with a few shavings of black truffle on top.

Can't be beat.

That's a Savage Model 99 chambered for .308. There is always a good selection of Savage 99s at reasonable prices at Gun Broker.com. It's good to be able to purchase firearms through them: it's an online gun show.

A 100 year-old lever action hammerless design, still going strong although the manufacturing of this rifle ended in the 1990s. Jon Wolfe says:

For hunting North American game, the Savage 99 is still one of the finest hunting rifles of all time. In fact, it was a solid performer well into the later part of the last century, nearly one hundred years after its creation. It was manufactured for nearly a century with over a million rifles produced before the Savage 99 was discontinued due to decrepit machinery and increased cost.

Here's the Savage 99 website

The Wiki entry has lots of info.

Here's a useful short article: GOOD FIRST BIG GAME RIFLES

Here's Hawks on A Dozen Top Deer Rifles (he does not include the Model 99 on his list)

Long Island duck or duckling, or any farm duck, is not the same thing as wild duck. Farm ducks, which are basically the Chinese Pekin duck, are much larger and fatter than wild duck. Being grain-fed, they are also less gamey in flavor. (The gaminess and fishiness of wild duck, for me, are wonderful and rare treats.)

I am always happy to eat either sort of duck, as long as the meat is red in the middle, the skin is crispy, and there is no darn orange sauce or maraschino cherries anywhere near the food.

I agree with Alton Brown that pan-seared quarters of brined duck is the best way to cook the bird. He steams his first to extract the delicious fat, but that is for fat farm birds. Do not do that with wild duck. When I want duck fat, I buy it at the store. 

Duck is good with sauteed fresh figs or other fruits and a gibier sauce.

Here's Alton cooking a Long Island duck for his Dad. Interesting, and educational:

From a Maggie's pal, seeking intertube fame and immortality no doubt. Nice dogs, though - including "Maggie":

Went preserve hunting on Saturday in Delaware.  We killed 16 of the 20 pheasants
and 39 of the 40 chukars that were put out for us.  The two best looking
critters in the picture are obviously the German Shorthaired Pointers, Maggie
and Ellie.  Both absolutely broke solid.  So-so retrievers but so-so was good
enough.  The outiftter included his venison chili for lunch as part of the
deal.  An excellent time was had by all.

A pal stopped by for a beer with his pup the other day after work. A sweet, gentle puppy. Can you name the breed?

Re our post yesterday about waxed cotton jackets, I stumbled upon this one which comes with blaze orange patches at L.L. Bean. Darn cheap too. Probably other people also make them.

Showing a bit of blaze isn't just for hunters - it makes good precautionary sense when hiking in the back woods during deer season.

Our rule is to never hike during deer season when wearing brownish clothing and antlers.

I guess this is Part 2 or 3 of our Outerwear Christmas ideas for guys (and gals) mini-series -

The invention of Gore-tex rendered plenty of waterproof and windproof fabrics obsolete - or quaint. For example, rubberized raingear, or waxed cotton or waxed canvas. Gore-tex is much lighter, it breathes, it requires no maintenance, and Gore-tex outerwear is cheaper to produce and can be made with the blaze orange patches which American field hunting (unlike European) requires by law.

Trouble is that waxed cotton jackets, wellies, a dog, and a nice gun look so natural together. It's about fashion to some extent: how many Americans wear their Barbour when brush-busting for grouse or mucking the stall vs. the number that wear theirs to the hardware store, the mall, and their kids' soccer games?

I own a Lewis Creek and an old Browning waxed jacket, but I have plenty of Gore-tex parkas and field gear for various purposes: camo, blaze, parkas, outer-jackets, etc. Gore-tex hunting brush pants, too - insulated and uninsulated (insulated hunting trousers was a waste of $ - all you need is winter underwear of whatever weight you select for the weather of the day).

Despite all the above, I'll just address waxed cotton here despite its impractibility. Gore-tex is great stuff, but it's boring.

Image is the Barbour Beaufort, at Cabelas. Here's the main Barbour site, with all of their stuff.

Orvis has plenty of men's and women's Barbour stuff.

Lewis Creek. Good stuff, distributed from VT but made in Scotland.

LL Bean is doing waxed cotton too.

For true heavy-duty waterproof outerwear, Filson's tin cloth is the ultimate. That waxed canvas is so tough that it stands up by itself after you take it off. In fact, if you died standing in a goose blind or in the woods the tincloth jacket and tincloth trousers would probably still hold you up straight like a scarecrow until a strong winter storm blew you over. Their "shelter cloth" is lighter weight. I have some of the stuff. Its durability:comfort ratio is high. Feels like medieval armor before it warms up and softens a bit.

Remember: Always check Sierra Trading Post first for good deals.

At brunch on Sunday after church, a friend's wife told me how she managed to find a breeder with a fresh litter of prize Clumber Spaniel pups. She sent my pal off to bring one home two weeks ago.

He came home with two.

"I figured the pup would need a playmate." Liar. I know what happened: he couldn't decide which of the ones rushing to lick his hand, so he took both. She told me his little dog-buying trip cost them close to $6000.

Last time I went to look at a litter of pups, I would have bought the whole darn litter of 8 unless wife and daughter had been present to lend some sanity to my puppy-weakened condition and limited me to one. Note to self: Stay away from puppies. Lead me not into temptation.

Here's a Clumber Spaniel site. Yes, they do hunt, but I've never seen one in the field.

Some people like to crate their dogs at home, and some do not. Furthermore, some dogs love their crates and some hate to feel confined. We tended to crate our previous dog, but not our current pup. I never minded the look of a dog crate or two in a family room, but Orvis has some that are more functional for people - and which look more like furniture.

Info for the one on the left, and on the right. Each comes in three sizes.

Red-neck Yankees wear lined overshirts (like the one in the photo, from Moose Creek) much of the year. Few things are more comfortable, and you don't care what happens to them. They keep you cozy at 50 degrees and at 20 degrees - and lower if you are working hard and moving around.

These things are made for outdoor work. You often need to buy them one size up for layering underneath, depending on your personal size range. They look better and feel softer with some dirt and grease on them, and a small tear or two.

If you want to go a bit upscale from that sort of thing, these are always acceptable (even though they are from LL Bean). They are also made with quilted linings like this for colder weather.

Variants on the theme of overshirts and "shirt-jacs" is this Woolrich wool classic:

Filson's Wool Cape Coat:

A zippered, Windstopper-lined LL Bean Maine Guide wool jacket:

Carhartt's basic canvas, flannel-lined work shirt:

Lined flannel from Woolrich:

Lastly, Caribou Creek quilt-lined, at Cabelas:

Disclosure: Four dump trucks of wool and cotton overshirts were dumped in our Maggie's Farm driveway, blocking all tractor traffic and causing all sorts of problems with the hogs, in exchange for the above post. Please, everybody - Stop giving us free stuff and money! We don't want it! We have enough money and stuff, and it costs money, time, and effort to get rid of excess stuff. Ever try to take a Filson wool cape shirt off a dirty ole 800 lb. hawg who wants to put on airs? Dang.

A fellow can always use another comfortable jacket. Here are a few outdoor and sporting jackets from the Orvis Hunting catalog. (For full disclosure, Orvis was kind enough to UPS $1 million in US currency to our Cayman banker as our compensation for posting this.)

These fine-looking fancy jackets are obviously not meant for heavy brush-busting, chain-sawing, snow plowing, duck hunting, or ditch-digging.  (Waxed jackets are a separate topic.)

Top one is Beretta's Gun Six Coat. The middle one is Orvis' Waterproof Loden Wool Shooting Coat. The bottom one is Orvis' Estate Tweed Gore-Tex Jacket.

Somewhere in either Tolstoy or Dostoevsky there is a comment about the remorse of the hunter when holding a Woodcock in hand. You have noticed that our head image on Maggie's now is Woodcock hunting.

John Stuart Skinner in his classic 1883 The Dog and the Sportsman put it this way:

I have frequently felt something like remorse, when, on picking up a wounded
one, I have met the forgiving expression of its full and bright, yet soft hazel
orb. How many of the beauties who dazzle and enslave us would be proud of such
an eye.

In the course of our basement water pipe flood this summer, I seem to have lost my couple of pairs of light shooting gloves. I like to shoot with gloves even when it isn't too cold. Most of the hunting I do tends to be in cold weather so I like to get used to the feel of gloves on a trigger.

And I have a mild case of Raynaud's.

Glovemakers vary in what they mean by L,M, S, etc. Here's a great way to determine your numerical glove size when ordering online. Leather, of course, tends to stretch a bit with use.

Sierra Trading Post almost always has nice shooting gloves at a meaningful discount. Those are for cool - not frigid - weather. Not just for shooting either - good cool-weather all-purpose gloves.

The right gloves for hunting grouse in the snow or ducks in the sleet at 10 degrees F is another topic. The perfect gloves for those things do not exist, as best I have been able to determine. Heavy waterproof gloves, obviously, do not fit rapidly and easily inside a trigger guard, and if you are using a double-triggered old s/s, it's really a problem.

Ideas are welcome. I wonder what the Army uses in Afghanistan in the winter. Maybe things like this.

You won't believe these, at Big Government.

Have barf bag ready. Government teachers at government schools, paid for by us.

The Englishman has, as have many of our friends.

Tell us what hunting you have done this fall (not including pen-raised birds or half-trained farm Mallards - that isn't hunting - that is shooting. Not that there is anything wrong with it.)