Outdoors Outdoorsman

A grassroots movement is a powerful force. (See: the Obama campaign, American Revolution and the "Napoleon Dynamite" fanbase). And put the local food crowd in that category, too. Unless, of course, your source of local food is living next door to a Cheetos factory. As the mantra of "know what you eat" catches on, it's great to see the public rediscovering farms just outside the city limits.

But, the local food movement is falling short in one category: meat. The idea of knowing the foostuff's source is important and something us huntin' folk have been appreciating for centuries. Looking at a fine cut of steak is mouthwatering. Seeing the cow's head or a full side of beef is inspiring. As a hunter, butchering a whole deer is a humbling reminder of what it takes to fulfill our gastrointestinal system. Respecting the food source is the most important part of eating well.

My thinking about this was spurred by watching "A Christmas Story" on endless repeat over the last week. You know the final scene in the Chinese restaurant? Not the singing, but instead, the reaction when the peking duck is served with the head still intact. Imagine the same drama playing out today. Our food culture is more sanitized than church camp film festival.

I'm not arguing for a total breakdown of cleanliness. Washing hands and scrubbing kitchen pots are fine, but shrink-wrapped meat is not. Seeing an animal intact is a great start, but compromise is the mark of civility so I'm willing to concede a couple of points. Perhaps leaving the feet on the chicken legs (they're great fried) or a head on the pig will give the average consumer the same reverence for flesh that hunters have when they shoot a deer or boar or goose. Also, those extra parts that we discard make a fine meal, too. I'd say along with eating local, we should start eating whole. So, step one: go buy your hunting license.

A moment for personal pride. See that hefty striped bass on the right and the goofy goober holding it? That's me. (The person, not the fish, natch.) I caught that 50-inch cow in the Chesapeake Bay from my kayak. Had I flipped I would encourage you to nominate me for the Darwin Awards. It was 25 degrees with flurries and we were fishing at night. Not an Einstein moment, but those huge stripers are in the Bay for only one month a year and the fishing, like most pleasures in life, is better when the sun goes down.

After a solid fight and a couple of photographs, I released her back into the black waters. Ten years ago I would have drug her to the shore and fileted the meat for a proper fish fry. And the fellow anglers that were out there with me seemed shocked that I wasn't prepping the grill. On the drive home a toll booth operator asked if I had caught anything. I said yes and showed him a picture.

"Did you keep?" he asked. "Heck no," I said. The expression on my face must have been especially foul like when you order a sturgeon caviar and a clumsy waiter brings you salmon roe instead. I'm sure you understand. The toll booth man seemed equally horrified with my apparent soft spine. Note to self: get an EZ Pass.

His reaction got me thinking though about releasing versus eating.

The weather outside is frightful. Actually, it's worse than that. It's nastier than the septic tank at a Mexican restaurant. As the first real jolt of winter goes trotting across our fair continent, most of us are agonizing over holiday travel plans. Snow can certainly disrupt flights and drives, but it also poses a dire threat to outdoorsmen.

Hunting seasons are winding down, but there are still the die-hard who look at a cold front in late December as a great last chance to find a trophy or meat for the freezer. For deer hunters stalking a set of tracks in fresh snow is one of life's great thrills. Of course when tracking a deer like Sherlock Holmes it's possible to get disoriented. If the sun starts to sink and you're lost the best thing to do is dig in. Buiid a new home in the snow. And the upside? You don't even need 20% for a down payment. A brand new home for the price of a cold night of sleep. Living in luxury, I say.

So in the distant land of the next page I'll list out three basic snow shelters and how to build them. And there's bonus footage: I dug up a Canadian short film from 1949 showing two First People (that's Canadian for Native American) constructing a bona fide (that's Latin for wowee) igloo.

Football players used to get Omega brands on their biceps. Hell's Angels cruised the streets with large patches on their vests. And L.A. gangs flashed hand symbols to show allegiance. Every tough guy group out there has a mark. But, hey, us gun guys want an identifying mark, too.

Well, perhaps the best candidate is a snake bite scar. A snake bite is the cut we get over the eye when a combination of factors (usually culminating with the recoil from a high-powered rifle) jams the scope back into your forehead. Yes, it hurts. Yes, grown men also cry.

It doesn't happen much, but it is bound to happen if you shoot a lot and shoot a lot of big guns. It could be because the scope is improperly mounted or because the gun is too powerful or because of human error (read: you did something really dumb). But it's a reality of the gun range. Eventually the recoil of a rifle and an ill-placed forehead will result in a gash in the vicinity of your shooting eye. From this day forth, I'm considering it the brand of a marksman.

David Petzal, the legendary gun writer for Field and Stream, wrote up an account of some of the best scope cuts he's seen on his blog, The Gun Nut. I've pasted them on the next page for your enjoyment. Consider it an early Christmas gift.

So what do you do when skiing doesn't give you enough of an adrenaline high? You ski off cliffs with a parachute on your back. And what happens when that doesn't quite twist the screw enough? You jump off a cliff with a wingsuit on for a few minutes of flying then pop the 'chute. Wait, there's more. When that doesn't do it for you, what's next?

Well, at this point I'd start thinking about illegal substances or checking out a leather club. But not a group of thrill-seeking (and possibly insane) Norwegians. For them, a normal athletic activity is to dress up in wingsuits and leap off some of the tallest cliffs in the world. That's called base jumping and has been around for awhile. It doesn't stop there, though. Most base jumpers try to navigate away from the cliff wall, you know, so you don't get splattered across the jagged rocks.

Not these dudes. Oh no, it wouldn't be fun unless you tried to buzz the mountainside only a few feet from the cliff surface at a tame 100 mph. Watching these guys in action I'm reminded of the wise words of Stinger addressing one, Maverick: "Your ego is writing checks your body can't cash."

The most incredible video you will watch today is on the next page. It's these hombres in action. Check it out.

I wish headlines like this were just shock tactics meant to get you to read. I plead not-guilty, I swear. And as evidence to back up the severity of claims like, "never eat anything that comes from the water ever again," check out the map to the right. That's the Chesapeake Bay. Now, I'm not a psychologist or an advertising executive, but I can tell you that the color red is generally not a good sign.

In this case I'm right. The red area, which is the entire Bay in the grand Commonwealth of Virginia, is a fish consumption advisory zone. The culprit? PCBs. Granted the use of PCBs was banned in 1977, they seeped into the soil and ground water and bind to organic materials that gamefish might ingest. It's been 30 years, but it will take a lot longer before they're flushed out of the ecosytem.

Other problems are fertilizer and pesticides. Agricultural run-off has flooded our waters along both coastlines with nasty compounds that make their way into the fish food chain. For now most commercial species are safe enough. But for me, that doesn't cut it. When I read that I should limit myself to a mere two servings of any number of fish types per month from the Chesapeake, that's basically a big, waving red (oooh, there's that color again) flag that I shouldn't get anywhere near a filet.

Why stop with two? The list of toxins goes on and on.

Screw the recession. For the world's high-rolling fishermen, 2009 won't be a year to penny pinch, but rather to spend big bucks to tango with the largest, toughest game fish in the ocean at a series of private fishing clubs. The buy-in for this Hemingway experience is a slick $100,000. (Hold on, let me check under the couch cushions, I think I can wrangle up a down payment.)

Here's the scheme, and it's a good one if you have the cash: Angler Clubs International is building several luxury vacation homes near the top saltwater fishing holes off the coasts of Mexico, Central American and the Caribbean islands. After your $100,000 buy-in, you pay $5,000 annually for the right to use any of the houses. Membership is capped at 400 people, so if you haven't bought a Christmas gift for your fishing buddy, now's the chance.

The company's aim is to give the elite business set access to the elite fish set. It's CEO meets 1,000-pound blue marlin. The two tops of the food chain then duke it out from the back of a fishing boat. And the spots where Angler Clubs International is setting up are world-famous for bonefish, tarpon, marlin, sailfish, tuna...are you drooling yet?

More important, perhaps, than the fishing access is the accommodations. I've fished in some mystical waters, places that make you fall to your knees in praise of big fish. But after said religious experience I would slink back to a roadside trash pit of a motel where a chilled bottle of champagne, I mean a chilled bottle of Miller High Life, waited in the sink for me to celebrate.

Not so at the Anglers Club. Their set-up is royal. The staff-to-guest ratio is a minimum of 1.5:1 according to an article in the Wall Street Journal's Marketwatch. Private chefs, housemaids, fishing guides, they're all there to make it a fishing fantasy.

It would suck to pay that much, though, and then get skunked, huh?-

It's a sad state of affairs when the best spot for hunting Canada geese is on the 18th green of an exclusive country club.

But that's what is happening across the country as once migratory birds set up shop as residents, taking over parks, fairways and athletic fields. Nuisance complaints are skyrocketing from goose droppings killing lawns to children being harassed by mother geese during the nesting season.

Believe the hype people. Geese are one of our biggest threats. North Korea's missles are like flying teddy bears compared to the waddling, honking, pooping masses of geese. In fact, there's a website addressing this serious concern, canadagoosemanagement.com

Check out the company's masterful slogan:

"Dedicated to solving conflicts between Canada geese and people in a cost effective and efficient manner."

It's like Dr. Phil in animal management form.

Here's an idea: hunters want opportunities to shoot waterfowl and golf course members want geese to stop ruining their fairways. Why not give hunters a sunrise tee time to help manage the population? Everyone is a winner. Man, if only there were another spot for a negotiator in Obama's cabinet, I'd nominate myself.

Hunters are rarely sought as a solution to the problem, but they just might be the most effective. Take a click on to the next page for a list of the population control methods so far (most of which have been marginally effective at best).

I know that photo makes me look like a pharmacy junkie, but I assure you they're from a variety of sources and the street value of the previous occupants in each container was extremely low. I imagine anti-acid meds don't command top dollar on the corner.

So here's a quick tip for fishermen, especially those who wade or fish from canoes and kayaks. Old medicine bottles are the perfect size to hold weights, jig heads, hooks and floats. I prefer them to the standard rectangular plastic tackle boxes. For one, medicine bottles are water tight, so no leaking. Second, each one is about the right size for holding a specific piece of tackle, which helps me stay organized. In the picture I've filled two with 1/4-ounce jig heads for speckled trout and striped bass fishing in the Chesapeake Bay.

And instead of taking entire tackle boxes with you, the bottle system allows you to store them easily in pockets, fanny packs (hot fashion statement) and backpacks. Simple enough, right? A side effect of organizing this way is that it forces me to choose exactly the tackle I'll need for any given scenario. I used to suffer horribly from gear hoarding, heading to the water with everything from crankbaits to harpoons (you know, in case the odd whale or seal showed up).

Of course the drawback is that when you open your tackle bag and pull out a dozen pill bottles, your fishing buddies might give you a sideways glance. Just be sure to have a good comeback prepared.

For a hunter there is nothing worse than being strapped to a desk during the fall. You look out the window and see gray clouds and cold winds rolling in. Everyone else is happy to stay inside, but you know this is prime weather for chasing (white)tail.

So you're stuck in the office. What to do, what to do...I'd suggest feeding your addiction to horn porn. Field and Stream has set up a website of photo galleries to tease any online hunter. Luckily this site is SFW. It's full of user uploaded pictures of deer captured on trail cams. (And there's a million dollar prize if one of the trail cams captures an image of Sasquatch.)

The images even have a seedy, voyeuristic quality about them, hence the pornography reference. Mostly taken at night, the photos are grainy and the deer are unaware, but you get a great look at the animal's rack...the kind of stuff that makes a hunter go weak in the knees. Take a look and try to stay calm.

For those of you unfamiliar with a trail cam, I'll explain what it does on the next page.