Recent Events

Note: this is an excerpt from my woods journal.

Monday and Tuesday, both days happily consumed by Nature. Yesterday was gray and wet but it did not dissuade me from going to the Tinker Brook Natural Area in Plymouth. This area is a small ravine dominated by a splendid brook that crashes over stones as it finds its way down the mountain. The rocky slopes around this brook contain some rare old growth trees, mainly red spruce and hemlock. Some of these trees are older than this state or country, and somehow survived the desolation inflicted upon Vermont in the years of development. These grand old trees are not the giant redwoods, etc., one finds in the West, but are nonetheless large and beautiful. They impress me with the power of Nature-for I am so small and short-lived in comparison to these trees. The ground here is carpeted with fine wildflowers: trilliums, bellworts, etc. Moose are abundant here, if their sign is any hint. The stormy weather has kept the mosquitoes at bay, but not the beautiful singing birds, all singing their thanks to their Creator, for to them this day is not bad but good.

Tuesday finds me at Birdseye again. The land is green and lush here, and the birds are singing loudly. The rain has let up and now and then the sun shines through the cloudy sky. The air is sweet with pine, courtesy of the young pine trees abundant here. The mosquitoes are out in full force seeking their life-giving blood, though they do not stop me.

Nature puts me at rest, granting peace- and yet I can't shake the pain of the human world from my heart. There is such tragedy unfolding. In Indiana, their supreme court has declared the right to resist LEO's acting unlawfully, dating back to the Magna Carta, extinct. Now there is no effective limit to the abuses of thugs, for even refusing consent to search, under this broadly written ruling, could be construed as resistance and unlawful.

In Arizona, a SWAT team in Tucson murdered a man in his own home. Sleeping after a graveyard shift, he was awoken by his wife, who saw men outside attempting to enter-without announcing themselves as police-and he grabbed a rifle to investigate. He was shot-over 70 rounds were fired by police-and then medical help was blocked for over an hour while he died, killing the most important witness. They initially lied that he had fired at them-he never even took the safety off his gun-and then admitted that was false. All of this in name of the War on Drugs, an attempt to control people that has failed as miserably as Prohibition did, and, no drugs were even found in his home. The great irony here is that this man was a veteran of Iraq, a soldier who inflicted this vile government's will on others, and was then killed by his own local government.

In Philadelphia, a man was open carrying a sidearm for protection, and was stopped by cops-who threatened to shoot him-claiming he was illegally carrying, to which the victim responded that it was legal as he had the required license. he was held, and blasted with expletive-filled verbal attacks by the cops before they released him when the supervisors eventually figured out the law. Now, after he posted a recording on the internet of the incident, they decided to charge him with disorderly conduct.

This country has become a police state. It is inevitable that every government will devolve into tyranny, for government by its nature is the creation of a means of controlling one group of people by another, and yet this is blatant enslavement of the people by the government.

A Couple Interesting Experiences

In the week I've had two "interesting" experiences while out hunting at two different Wildlife Management Areas (WMA's). In the first incident, when I parked I noted there was one other vehicle, as SUV plastered in animal rights and environmentalist bumper stickers (bad sign, huh?). Well, on the way up the trail up to where I'd seen coyotes before, I heard someone coming down ahead of me (couldn't see them with the trees and a bend in the trail). More importantly, I heard and then saw two big dogs coming at me aggressively. They weren't friendly, one was trying to bite me, but I kept him off me and chambered a round in my rifle. When the two hikers were in view they said "they just don't like guns, don't worry." Really? Did you train them to attack hunters or something? I kept my mouth shut because I was pretty ticked off. And I was one dog bite away from shooting their mutts.

Now, fast forward exactly one week. I'm out in another WMA, where I've seen signs of bobcats before (and yotes too for that matter). I perhaps should have turned around when I saw how many cars were parked there (primarily out of state plates I might add, mostly CT plates) including one with a trailer taking up 1/3 the parking area (I should add there are some VAST snowmobile trails out there so trailers for them aren't so odd there, but this fellow decided to park at such an angle as to take up way too much space). Now, I head out to an area without the snowmobiles around (the trails were off limits and gated). A good ways into the woods I bump into some crosscountry skiers. Two of them. Now, one, a guy, was friendly enough and asked what I was hunting. The woman with him, however, wasn't. She said you "shouldn't be shooting things out here. this is a ski trail." Really? This is a WMA, controlled by the Fish and Wildlife Department, for the primary purpose of protecting wildlife habitat and hunting access. It's not a "ski trail," it's a trail used by hunters rather frequently and ends, if you follow it far enough, at a beaver pond (at which I also did some trapping in the Fall).

I swear, the next Greenpeace activist with trained hunter attack dogs or the next person telling me not to hunt on lands paid for with my hunting license fees and ammo taxes I run into, I should just take a picture of them and report them to a game warden, for interference. There's getting to be way too many antis and other fruits and nuts in this part of the state.

I was going to comment the other day on the shooting in Tucson, but I think the following will suffice: the shooter disgusts me, but the left-wing lunatic politicians disgust me too and proved what slime they truly are. That political hack of a sheriff who had refused to press charges against the killer for death threats in the past tried to lay blame on the tea party, etc., Sanders used it to try to fundraise for campaigns, Obama filled the memorial service with his new campaign slogan (incl. T-shirts, and putting it on all the seats), the usual anti-gun crazies in Congress proposed yet another ban on full cap magazines, and the nuttiest of all things, one stupid Republican from NY proposed a bill banning carry of firearms within 1,000 feet of any elected official, and another proposed banning any symbols or speech that could be perceived as a threat to Congress. Some real statist trash came out of the woodwork this time. They always try to use a tragedy to push their agenda.