From the earliest days, from the time when wolves slunk into the circle around the fire and made a compact with primitive Man, there has been an understanding. We give them food and scratch their ears. They warn us of danger.
Hank takes his job very seriously......
I especially appreciate the bit at the end where he looks to me for approval after defending me from Frosty the Snow Man....
I've called it a year for deer hunting. Oh, unless I get antsy and decide to try the "second chance" season in early December. I've spent a lot of time up in trees looking at....other trees. Deer numbers apparently are way down this year. We had a nasty late winter storm that was hard on the critters so this is not a big surprise.
The woods have been quiet most of the time. Oh, I've heard some gunshots but not as many as most years. Some afternoon to early evening sits I have not heard a single report. But I have heard other interesting things.
My first morning out for instance. I was creeping to my stand in the pre-dawn darkness. The woods were still and mysterious. Until I touched the ladder of my stand. At that point the flock of turkeys that was roosting in the tree took off in all directions while making prehistoric sort of squackings and screeches. I'm not saying that's why I have not seen a deer from that stand all season, but turkeys are basically Mother Nature's Car Alarms.
Eventually the standard hunting spots were abandoned in favor of backup sites. On yet another predawn mission I crept along a river bank with an elaborate climbing stand strapped to my back. I'd never actually set one of these up alone, much less in the dark, so when the sun rose and gave me a pleasing vista I was happy. Until about 7:30 am when rock music started blasting from somewhere over the hill. 7:30....c'mon people!
As it happens the site was across the river from the headquarters for "Birkie". This is a ski race but they use the course for other things. Evidently this includes a day after Thanksgiving "Birkie Turkey" bike and running race. The music must have been the Warm Up before the race started. It was close enough to be annoying - and who knows what the deer thought of it - but not close enough to make it out. I think it was some kind of generic 70's "RAWK". Scrawny exercise fanatics really like their fifty year old rock 'n roll.
Oh well.
Monday evening in the woods. My son toting a Climbing Stand for grandpa to use. Then he and my grandson were off to sit in a double stand we have at another site. I had a pleasant evening watching a river. They wrapped it up early having only seen one deer at a range too far for a first time youth hunter to consider....
A strange Opener. We made elaborate plans....only to have them go out the window. One hunter had to bow out due to family obligations. Another, although feeling ok, had been recently ill and had a positive Covid test. This was a deal breaker for yet another hunter with a new baby at home.
Also, the weather was weird and warm. And....deer numbers are down due to a late winter storm in April. Do these sound like excuses? Perhaps offered by someone who had not even seen a deer?*
Yes.
There are more hunters in our little patch of the woods. On Opening Morning a kid had a stand set up just up the deer trail from my favorite spot. Not a problem really, its public land. But he shot two deer (this is legal, one buck one doe) that should have been strolling down the path to my stand. Various other minor set backs cropped up later in the weekend. A glitchy gps. A solitary hunter who for some reason decided to park himself directly in the shooting lane from my favorite stand. (I let him have the area, public land again, but when I went past hours later I noted he had moved again. He just seems to be wandering around scaring the deer to no purpose).
Ah well. My oldest son got a deer. We will have another go at them tomorrow. But definitely a sub par hunting year for us.
View from a tree stand number one. The shadows make it look like I was thirty feet up!
A positive Covid test poses a few challenges for a host. The young couple had their dinner and beverage out on the screen porch. They seemed pretty happy.
Guess that sounds like another excuse.
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* Technically I have seen deer. But either outside of legal hours or in places I can't shoot 'em. They are out there....my grand daughter noticed four of them loitering outside the cabin and banged on the window to get them to move along. Sigh.
Opening Morning of Deer Hunting awaits. The other hunters and support staff are all in route, but at present its just me and the dog as the sun sets on Friday evening.
I've been up for a few days already. It has been nice and quiet but there are a few things to attend to before the official opening of Deer Camp.
Trail cams need to be consulted....
Dog loves it Up North. He sniffs at, I presume, coyote dribbles. He barks at squirrels. He rolls around on his back and then stretches out in a pose I call SuperDog.
I've developed a degree of interest in vintage movie theaters. Once commonplace they are becoming rara avis. On a trip to Ashland Wisconsin a few weeks back I ran across this gem.
In the first half of the 20th Century the not particularly large town of Ashland had four movie theaters of which The Bay, built in 1937, is the only survivor. Here's what it looked like in 1963. A fancy, substantial front paired with a rather more workaday main section. The wall of the latter currently has a nice mural of area military service men and women.
Once a single 650 seat theater it has now been split up into six screens. That allows them to show a variety of features. When I walked past on a drizzly afternoon there were parents bringing small children in for a matinee.
I hope they read the signs carefully before selecting which room to enter......
Barely controlled chaos with middle school kids driving little sumo style pushing robots. My elaborate three on three format went out the window when we had both equipment failures and a last minute scratch. Hey, the equipment is twenty years old, so not surprising.
But two on two or three on two matches both worked quite well. Kids found that having one less robot getting in the way actually kind of hindered them. There was some good driving and some of the matches were pretty exciting. When they can carom that big green 5 point ball in at the last minute that's really fun....
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"Vintage" robot T shirts as prizes.
It's been a long time. Too long.
A couple of decades back I started a DIY robotics class at the middle school. "Machines Behaving Badly" involved 24 kids in 6th - 8th grades each building a 3 pound combat robot out of scrap materials and unrealistic expectations. It was immensely popular. When the modern age came along and sign up was on the internet it once filled in 90 seconds.
The rules were the essence of simplicity. No flame throwers, no hand grenades, and no live animals. Two minute matches, double elimination with the Final having a degree of Finality as there usually would be a waiving of event rules. No time clock. No judges to rule on performance. Thunderdome Rules. Two Bots enter, One Bot leaves.
Ah, good times. The degree of enthusiasm and creativity it generated were the foundation of the high school FIRST team. The proposed 20th anniversary Machines Behaving Badly Smash it All Grand Finale Event was supposed to happen in 2020. It was done in by Covid lockdown and post Covid my robotics energies have since been directed in other directions.
But this year the Robot School students finished their major project a bit early so I decided to give them a treat. Lets revive Machines Behaving Badly.
Oh, not in its most exuberant form. No weapons, this will be a pushing match only and held on a table top instead of our enclosed arena. But it is an opportunity to merge the Old Ways with a bit of FIRST format. So, three versus three, red versus blue and with a complicated bit of gameplay that requires both individual driving skill and thoughtful cooperation.
We started out with just a few robots pushing things around on a small table...
Fairchild Wisconsin is one of many little communities that got off to a good start but never really hit a "boom". It's a sleepy little place in 2023. But it has a nice cemetery and must have had a Woodman's lodge of one variety or another.
Here's an oddity. You see these "Book and Tree" variants pretty often. But this one appeared to be leaning out at a weird angle...
I'm always trying to figure out stories. The style seen here with a forked branch is often a married couple. Commonly there will be one branch on each fork reaching out for all eternity towards its mate. But here....one name and one branch....
Dog has things he likes. Dog chow, sniffs, walkies, me. I'm not sure how he'd rank those things but they are all well behind his favorite snack food Pup Peroni. Hell, they smell so good even I've been tempted but the one time I tried a tasty snack at Dog University I regretted it.
I think the titular Pup even looks a little like Hank.
In the interest of not being an Old Grump I'm going to say something positive about the modern world. Man, we get lots more fun packages. Makes sense of course. Its the internet and Amazon and the decline of in person shopping. See it, click on it, money you never actually touch flies away somewhere else and minions show up to leave things on your porch.
Sometimes they are real surprises. Hmmm, this one is heavy. I didn't order anything like that.
Lets peek inside.....
Of course it is because I was a primary care physician quite a few years ago. They hope I'll hand the coupons out to my elderly patients. Who gets the actual bottles of stuff I'm not sure. Interesting the things that still turn up 16 years after I left primary care and 7 since I retired from medicine entirely.
Or is this not random at all? Does some devious computer program keep track of retired physicians and send them boxes of Geezer Juice every once in a while?
Hunting season approaches. This actually means I'm taking Dog out to some promising locations less often. I'm not sure to what extent the canine habit of marking everything that stands might influence skittish deer, but a few weeks does seem plausible. So these photos are from last month.
Something was scraping and scratching here....
