Site Discussions

I say that bear oil should be clear liquid like yours.  No need to refrigerate or seal it, if properly rendered it will keep for decades. We always have put it in plastic shampoo bottles, as the old timers say it will go through glass, but I don’t know if that’s true.

I use it exclusively as a linament.  It will penetrate sore muscles and joints like nothing else I know.

Bears are still very active in the beechnuts.

Thank you Dave. Thank you for writing this story. I know Hiya.

Great story and thanks for sharing Dave.  The second gun season in our region of Ontario open on Monday with lots of sign evident in the bush…keeping our fingers crossed!

I don’t have an answer to why the fat is staying liquid and not becoming like crisco. I do know, though that you don’t want to keep glass jars in the freezer for long. When they freeze solid, the glass usually breaks. It never hurts to “process” anything you put in jars. For 1/2 pints filled with boiling liquid, I would still process 5 minutes in a boiling bath.
I make my own chicken and turkey broth. It is still boiling when I put it in the jars, but even so, I’ve had a few that have spoiled. I started processing them for 5 minutes for the pints and 10 minutes for the quarts. I haven’t had one go bad since.
Congratulations on your bear. I hope the fat is sealed properly and doesn’t spoil. It would be a shame to waste your good fortune. 

In the summer of 2005 we were living in Fairfax, VT The back acreage of our property and the neighbors on both sides of us was all wooded for at least 35 plus acres which also bordered on forest.

For a series of nights over about a 2 week period in the middle of the night we heard blood curdling screams that ranged from sounding like an extremely loud terrified screams of a woman to almost a maniacal loud almost human like laughing sound.

There were many reports both official and non official of catamount sightings in Franklin county VT.

A friend of mine has a relative who lives on French Hill overlooking the City of St.Albans and Lake Champlain. He and his wife say they have seen a catamount on their property over the years. I do not know what these animals sound like and would welcome any feedback. Some people say we heard a fisher cat but the sounds sure sounded like something much larger than a fisher cat. I was familiar with the sounds of foxes and coyotes or coydogs. It did not sound like them either. Does anyone out there have any idea what catamounts sound like?

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Back in 1996, I shot my first buck at the age of 14.  For a combination of reasons, I didn’t begin hunting again until a couple of years ago. 

At first,  I dipped my toe in, on my father’s 44 wooded acres; only hunting a couple of times.  Last year, I sat in a blind on my back 25 several times, again without any luck (only hunting bucks). 

The older I get, for some reason, the more appealing it is to harvest my own meat.  Add to this my love of being out in nature, and I found myself hunting pretty hard this season.  I have a small parcel of land near the height of NY’s Tug Hill; this is my basecamp.  I tent camp, waking early, to make the short drive down seasonal roads, to hunt the large tracts of state land which adjoin tens of thousands of acres of contiguous forest, protected from development by conservation easements. 

This region isn’t quite as “big woods” as the Adirondacks, but I often found myself to be the only hunter in the woods for miles.  Opening day was a near whiteout at times, with at least 7 inches of snow adding up; as it turned out, there was at least an inch and a half of snow on the ground every time I hunted there this year. 

On my fifth excursion into these woods (Nov 20), on a 10 degree morning, I landed a healthy six pointer, dressing out around 150 lbs. 

Although my hunts were all solitary in nature, I enjoyed reading your camp dispathes.

If bears “can still be active until mid-January”, when is the earliest they can be expected to resume activity? That is to say, the reasonably bear-safe bird-feeding window in a “normal” Winter is from mid-January to ... when?

  Wonderful story. I’ve never been at a deer camp, because I’ve almost always hunted alone surrounded at times by neighbors who hunted in groups. for few years before my twin boys left home we huned when they weren’t working.
  On November I shot a nice yearling doe with my .50 caliber (shooting a patched roundball) Yorktown flintlock made by Cabin Creek Muzzleloading. Shooting does helps lower the deer herd which is at a high level of about 80-120 per square mile in this area.

No luck yet, but I have seen more deer, tracks, and sign in the hills around the house than I have in our nine years here - a good year for them it would seem. Had a nice 6 pointer run in front of the truck yesterday around noon. I tracked him for 2 and half hours, but lost the track due to snow falling from the trees in the wind. Hoping for better luck this weekend.

I’m NOT a Boston liberal, but I’ll pose this question: Why did you shoot and kill the bear in the first place?  For a few pathetic pints of bear lard? That seems to be the gist of your half macho, half folksy report from the frontlines…

Chain saw and an eight pound maul.
I frequently split green hard woods
and burn it for heat. The white oak I split
would laugh at an axe. I often wonder
if kiln dried or even long seasoned wood is
worth the price or storage. I understand I
am not getting max BTU because the wood is
‘wet’ but if it burns and I get it for free
who cares? I sweep the chimney on my insert
annually and never had a problem with creosote.

BEST TIP EVER!
Use an old car tire and fill it with logs.
Split the logs while they stand in the tire.
The tire gives a slight recoil, the wood stays
in a tight bunch and you never bend over to
to stand up or chase the logs,
and I estimate it to be 85% quicker!
It is an old Yankee magic trick, try it!
I can go to the wood pile in my shirt sleeves,
split an armload of wood for the night and be
back inside before the snow even sticks to
my bare feet.

I’ve been working with Mike Dunbar since last March, making a variety of Windsor chairs in his classes. Mike and I have known each other for 35 years, but this is the first time I was able to take one of his classes. Today, I was finishing a high chair and a child’s Windsor sack back. They’re going to be Christmas presents for two of my kids. Mike and I were talking about factory made chairs vs. hand made chairs. He says it’s like buying a Ford and a Lamborghini. Both are good, but the Lamborghini has a certain something that only very few people can afford or appreciate. Working under Mike at http://thewindsorinstitute.com/ has been extremely satisfying!

@Betty - Here in the UK what you’re describing would be referred to as a Pavoirs maul (assuming it’s a four foot handle).  Used when laying stone flagstones, essentially a giant mallet.

I once had a drawing class and we were allowed only one sheet of paper for the entire semester.The idea was that after each session you would have to erase everything you had created.For beginners this was a good lesson in the detachment that is required to be objective about your work.It also teaches you to become confident in your ability to improve.

Whatever is at work in the creative process, it is seldom under as much control as we would wish.Catching lightning can happen anytime. It’s nice to be able to recognize it when it happens, but sometimes we don’t. So, leave off if it’s not working, but if it has any hope of life it can be good to keep it around and possibly see what might be there with a second look later- maybe much later.

I have heard reports of hibernating frogs that actually freeze solid during the winter months.  Obviously this capability would be highly adaptive during long cold winters!  I wonder however, is this capability commonly used by amphibians in the northeast?  Or, is this a capability something that is limited to just a few unusual arctic species. 

Nice article about our frogs friends!

Hello Dave. Excellent article. Why would a tree make a fake nut? Your answer makes perfect sense. While at first glance a natural event may seem unreasonable, a closer look always reveals that there is a method to the madness. Sometimes it only takes us a bit longer to figure it out.

Claudia

We seem to be on a path that bears use to move from one area to another! It is not unusual to see more than one bear a day here, in fact on one day in the summer of 2013 we saw a female with two very young cubs come down one side of our house and through the back yard, then about 5 mins later two larger bears,still smaller than the female came down the other side of our house. We thought perhaps they were the previous cubs of the same female as they appeared to be following her and I guess cubs stay with Mom for about two years, until the next young is born. Needless to say, we have many pictures and video’s of bears. We thought perhaps our geographical closeness to Ben Kilham may have something to do with the population we observe. Thanks for your article, will wait a couple more weeks to put our birdfeeders down lower…on upper side of barn now.

Hello. I have made just a few single headed drums. I do not hunt, I depend upon the kindness of others to give me a hide. Recently I have had a hard time removing the hair from the hide, leaving holes where I do not want them. I never used chemicals in the past. I am wondering if you have used wood ash?

Just a tip I figured out for assembling snap-together chimney sections that get bent out of round (ovaled). I united a couple of hose clamps (long ones) and ratcheted the oval end until it was squeezed round enough to fit into the next section. Amazing what one can think of when they’re a one man band.

Beautifully written! Did you have to throw away your darling before posting this one?