Site Discussions

I have a pond down the street that is clean and deep, it also is loaded with crayfish.  If I were to havrest some would they be safe to boil up and eat?

I am in the process of creating woodcock habitat on our farm in the Town of East Troy, Walworth County, Wisconsin.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a writer and editor, as well as a transplanted flatlander who has never hunted and never will, but it seems to me the issue revolves around the word “hunting.” That means going after something. Which is not the same as “trapping” or “baiting,” both of which mean luring something in. Active vs. passive; sporting chance vs. blindsiding. Same as in human law, where we have different rules about pursuit of a criminal and entrapment, or “stings.” One size does not fit all. So it’s kind of hard to support a ban that tries to shove everything under one black-and-white umbrella. At the same time, using one word to discuss all the different gray-area scenarios helps them get misunderstood. In my opinion, therefore, the first step in the debate is to stop calling trapping and baiting “methods of hunting.”

Always have let nature do its thing (usually involved putting them up high away from critters) and then used bleach. But I like the have-a-heart idea followed by H2 Peroxide.

I am a major skull collector, along with many other woods artifacts. My wife calls my collection my own personal musuem.

I didn’t invent this idea, but it makes sense to me when creating the proper angle on the bit.  Clamp the axe with the pole on the bench and the edge on top of a piece of wood.  The thickness of the wood determines the angle of the edge being sharpened. Then you only have to keep the file parallel to the workbench.

My nephew has come upon 3 bear in the last few years of woods biking. Not something the bears always appreciate!

Does anyone know what type of weed or grass irritates the eyes, knows, and throat when mowed? My eyes keep earing, my nose runs, and I keep coughing when I mow the lawn.

Your story reminds me of the time my son and I were backpacking in the Pemigewasset Wilderness and we’re kind of lost. We were at a fork in the trail in dense forest. My son went up one fork to see if the trail was marked. I got out a map and was trying to determine our location. I heard footsteps coming down the other fork, and thought, good other hikers, I can ask them. I raised up my head and found myself eyeball to eyeball with a large female moose. She looked at me and I looked at her, no more than 10 feet away. It seemed like forever. Finally, since I wanted to share the experience with my son, I called out his name, and she went off into the forest.

What a great post - you should submit it to a bicycling magazine.

Anyone who has an issue with ordinary citizens hunting deer is insane.  Just like with “free markets”, let hunters naturally hunt and stop trying to impede them with these crazy pseudo-scientific models.  As the article says, cars kill 18,000 deer per year in one state and, a friend of a friend in the insurance business said that 95% of their claims in PA are due to deer strikes.  Hello, people!  It’s reached a point where the deer are killing people!

Let the hunters hunt.

As for what’s happening on the Paglia farm in VT, that’s just horrible.  Same is true in NH, like 5 deer/sq mile.  In my area in MA the deer and yotes are all over the place, 20-30/sq mile in some areas.

Best wishes,
Sam

On this site and elsewhere I read: According to some plate-tectonics geologists, New Hampshire is “exotic terrain”—a former slice of the continental crust that once belonged to what is now Africa. It became stuck to the edge of the North American continent during the creation of Pangaea and, like all immigrants, became modified in the process.

How can a lay person figure out which theory is likely to be correct?

A nest the size of a regular orange with the hole the size of nickel in the side. There is a bird flying in and out but too small to see.  The pictures here are too big . This nest is all enclosed.  Thank you

Judith Harding.

Thank you for helping solve this mystery for me.  I found this plant just yesterday growing near a log in upstate NY in a semi mature forest.  I had no idea what it was but am thrilled to have this information. 

Love your story. Wild blackberry patches surround our cabin and each August I enjoy the bloody sport of picking as many as possible for my wife’s jam making… wading thru the bramble, finding the hidden ones, I emerge with scratched arms and a crop which has ranged from 4 to 20 quarts.  Beetles, blue jays and an occasional bear compete for these jewels. The scratches take some explaining but the jam is delicious.

INSTEAD OF SPRAYING FUNGICIDES ON APPLES, WHICH MAKES THEM UNMARKETABLE TO HEALTH CONSCIOUS, ORGANIC PEOPLE, PLEASE FORCE SUPERFICIAL, AESTHETIC FANATICAL CONSUMERS TO ACCEPT THE HARMLESS SCAB AND BUY YOUR HEALTHY, UNSPRAYED APPLES. Please educate them that the scab is harmless and the apple is perfectly fine to eat with the scab. WE don’t pick good looking fruit because its toxic from spraying!  WHO SAYS SCABBED APPLES ARE UNMARKETABLE? -THE PESTICIDE INDUSTRY?

Dave, I read your piece on skulls with more than average interest.  I wrote an article for Northern Woodlands in the summer 2006 issue titled, “Skull Session”, about this bony subject.  I used to teach a high school biology class in which preparing animal skulls was a lab activity, and the kids absolutely loved it!  Back then, we primarily used the “pick and grin then boil” technique and had great success.  I must admit, though, that most of the odoriferous boiling was done at home in my garage over a Coleman stove.

I have used dermistid beetles for shrews and small birds.  They do a very fine job but the odor is something to get used to or not.  My next colony might just have an air vent system that uses nice active dirt as the filter… Set up a little computer fan that turns on a couple of minutes an hour.

Are the apple seeds toxic for animals? I know they give dogs seizures.

Will green cut canes sprout roots?
Thanks.

My father said when he was a kid (1920s), the old-timers called Swallowtails “piss” butterflies because they were often seen puddling around urine puddles in the pastures.