November 18, 2012
Hello to any that still have this blog in a reader or some such as that. I have decided to jump back into outdoor blogging, but will not be doing it here as I feel a new start is in order. If you feel like following along, I will be putting down some thoughts at :
Hope to see you there.
Casey
September 28, 2011
God’s first language is Silence. Everything else is a translation.
–Thomas Keating
And I have tried to translate and present over the past couple of years what I feel and hear. But now I am done – publicly. It’s to my journals I turn.
I will stay in touch with you through your blogs, or you can e-mail me at cjharn@gmail.com or harncasey@yahoo.com.
Thank you all for everything.
September 11, 2011
It’s been my experience that grey squirrels rise from their evening slumber earlier than fox squirrels. Being in the woods as the morning sun has yet to crest the northeast Iowa hills (and if I’ve scouted out good stands of mast trees; i.e. oak, hickory and walnut) greatly improves my chances at harvesting some.
I especially mention grey squirrels for those who have not tried them as table fare. They are more suited for the table than fox squirrels, in my opinion. They are more tender no matter how prepared. Now, I’m no chef or connoisseur, but I’ll bring a couple of squirrel recipes to these pages as I’m able to fix them, and sadly, the first outing of the season brought none to the bag. My son and I had done things right, and spotted a few, but they were out of range and evaded our attempts to sneak up on them.
Not that the morning was uneventful, mind you! Listening to the early morning woods is a celebration I’ll never tire of. On the ridge to the north of us, turkeys were talking back and forth to each other in what I’m guessing was a “round-up” call after coming down from roost, and slowly moved off. But there still seemed to be hundreds of other chirpers, tweeters and whistlers in the canopy around us. One in particular took interest in the two humans perched on a fallen paper birch. In the spindly branches of a maple sapling, it would flit back and forth, always facing us, calling “wrrp? wrrp?” It really did sound like it was asking what we were up to!
As the sun rose higher, the crows and blue jays, in all their raspy loudness, seemed to take over the woods. A pair of whitetail does passed within fifty yards of us also. I did take a shot at one grey squirrel, but it zigged when I thought it might zag, and in the end, that was just fine. I would rather take home none than one. If it’s not at least a brace of them, taking one just doesn’t sit right with me.
Until the next time, take care!
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P.S. What the hell – seein’s this post ain’t much (mostly because a tie rod broke on my car as I was heading to the trout stream yesterday), here’s a couple of throwback photos…
I did find a few photos of Otis. This one shows him best. He ran off on me soon after this pic was taken. It was like a kick in the chest when I asked a farmer if he had seen a golden retriever running loose and he told me to look in the ditch up on the highway not far from his house -
And here’s some proof that we used to be fishers around here!
10-lb pike taken in the Lake Minnetaki area in Ontario, Canada. Back when I was skinny and could afford to go places.
My three oldest with a stringer of bluegills taken about 10 years ago.
I better include my youngest! With his first trout caught just last year -
Okay. Peace! Take care -
Casey
September 4, 2011
Let me apologize for not having an enchanting outdoor piece this week. Other facets of life have taken center stage, like work, a family reunion and a baptism. And today is my wife and I’s 18th anniversary, so with her is where I’ll be found. Also, the heat and humidity pushed their way up into the Midwest, again, which is not to my liking at all, at all.
But there are a couple of bloggers out there that have posted things that I would like to share, if you don’t already follow them. Please visit :
Bill at Fall Road Archer has posted a video recap of his early season trout fishing. He captures the essence of an outdoorsman’s lifestyle better than just about anybody. The pursuit and the environment he’s enveloped in is magic.
And, at Gordon Setter Crossing, write-ups are starting to be posted about their grouse season in the mountains of Montana. Dogs, and the pursuit of game birds among scenery such as that…Again, it’s awesome.
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How about some old pics of the golden retrievers that have been in my wife and I’s life? There’s something to share!
First, Tessa -
Tessa as a pup with my dad.
Then Tessa as an older girl after a hard mornings hunting.
Then there is Floyd. He never turned into a hunter and was a terrible swimmer. It was the funniest and saddest thing to watch him try to swim. He made his mark on our household, though. Thirteen years of being a family dog, turning himself into one of my wife’s favorites, so much so that she is planning to write a children’s book about him. The hardest thing I’ve had to do so far in this life was to drive him to the vet to be put down. Worst trip I’ve made yet.
Wow, that was a long time ago. Wish I was in that kind of shape again.
There were Amber and Otis, too, as far as golden retrievers go. On my wife’s side of the family, we have a few older photos of the goldens that were in her life as a kid. I’ll post photos of all those dogs another day. We have also had three American Cocker Spaniels. And of course, right now, I’ve got this ding-dong :
Trapper
The weather is supposed to cool down real good over the next couple of days, so the boy and I are planning on getting out and harvesting some squirrels. Should put some more trout in the freezer, too. Hopefully, something outdoorsy will grace the pages of this little blog for next week. Until then – take care!
August 28, 2011
The flora of the forest floor are starting to lose their deep green hues and shrinking as late summer’s meager rains are farther and fewer between.
Northeast Iowa is starting to see goldenrod come into bloom at the same time the leaves of walnut, birch and aspen leaves start to turn yellow, also. Faint scarlets can be seen in a couple of clematis leaves, and staghorn sumac is just beginning to reveal it’s brilliant reds. This man-of-the-earth’s thoughts are again starting to gear up for the autumn harvest of the woods and streams of the countryside ’round. I know summer is necessary, but it is a cinch I am glad it is coming to a close.
Summer loving folk may say that “all will soon be done”. We folk who spend free time observing our surroundings know that that is not true. Some things that live on this planet are just coming into fruition as the trees shed their leaves. My favorite case in point would be the fungus of fall. Most species of mushrooms spend their summers nearly dormant, then coming into fruit as the days get shorter and the nights get colder.
I am no expert in the world of fungi, but just merely beginning to be fascinated at their beauty and workings. From dainty pinwheels to 30-pound sulpher shelfs, to me, their beauty can only be rivaled by butterflies, birds, and fishes of the oceans, in the natural world.
A short lesson about mushrooms, then, as you peruse the few photos of the fruiting bodies I stumbled across on my wanderings today. From my Peterson Field Guide to Mushrooms:
“Lacking chlorophyll, mushrooms must obtain their food by absorption from the surrounding medium (usually soil or decaying wood) in which they grow. The body of a mushroom is made up of slender filaments, collectively known as mycelium. Many of these filaments are adapted for absorbing nutrients. The individual filaments, or hyphae, penetrate the substrate, which may be soil, wood, bodies of other plants, or wastes such as dung, fallen leaves, twigs, and so on. Compact masses of hyphae remain vegetative underground, like roots, until the fruiting season for the species, which may last only a few weeks, or may extend from early spring through late fall.
The hyphae of the mushrooms that grow in fairy rings may expand outward each year to reach new nutrients, so that ring becomes larger each year. When a mushroom is actively growing during it’s fruiting season, the hyphae form organs that will produce and eventually disperse spores – the familiar mushroom fruiting body, which may be in the form of a cup, a cap and stalk, a bracket, a coral-like head, or a puffball. This fruiting body is not the entire mushroom, but merely a reproductive part, in a way roughly comparable to the flowers or cones of more familiar plants.”
Well, now. If you didn’t know a thing about mushrooms, you do now. And to think with much practice and help from a REAL mushroom expert, edible ones can be harvested. Ah, the earthy taste of mushrooms…
Alas, I am NOT AN EXPERT, and have not even tried to make a spore print of the mushrooms that I’m sure are edible. Therefore, they have gone uneaten, and unharvested, to supply the areas I walk through with specimens that will hopefully reproduce until the day has come that I feel confident on my identifications.
And I am thankful that they have a certain hold on me. I love to walk the trails anyway, but the fungi are more more excuse to do so. They are one of my favorite subjects to find along the trails. They hold still for the camera…! Unlike them damn chipmunks, birds, deer and turkeys -
Until the next time – cheers!
August 21, 2011
The vibrancy of color at the marsh is fading slightly. Amid the blooming water lilies, goldenrod, maple and river birch, the eye can see that the surroundings are starting to deflate a bit. There are ripe seed heads and dried grasses. Late summer in these neck of the woods means little rain. The sun is rising later, and setting earlier. Fall flights of blue-wing teal and wood ducks will soon be starting to filter through the Mississippi flyway. The anticipation has Trapper and I giddy. We will be making more walks through the marsh until about the first week of December. Here is what it looks like today -
Until the next time! Cheers!
August 14, 2011
I have never had much luck fishing for trout in high summer. Being on the water before sun-up is really the way to go right now, but I usually save the “up before the crack of dawn” mornings for duck season. The water is crystal clear and low during July and August, making even the “planted” trout spooky. It doesn’t help matters that I don’t pay full attention to the stream, either. My head is on a swivel most times trying not to miss a single detail along the bank or in the woods.
The creek closest to me that holds trout is water you can jump across in most places – with the exception of a couple areas where beaver have made small impoundments for themselves. The kind of trickle where you need to be adept at pitching a 1/16 oz. jig or small inline spinner into a hole 20 or 25 feet upstream. This is one reason why I haven’t invested in a flyrod yet. It doesn’t seem anywhere close to the trout rivers I read about out west or even out east. But there are naturally reproducing fish showing up in most of our trout streams now, so really, I feel good about where I’m at.
Rainbow Trout
But today, I must have done something right. As stealthily as I could manage, I crept through the shadows below small beaver-made pools, casting a Panther Martin past likely looking spots. In a trance I watched the silver blade flash beneath the sun dappled surface, shadows dart at the offering. This scene was repeated several times as rainbow after rainbow came to hand. That is a rarity for this man of the earth during the summer moons. Maybe it’s getting figured out. And here are a few more photos taken along the creek -
I am particularly proud of this one.
Rainbow Trout
A spring falling out the side of a hill.
Until the next time, take care -
