LIFE IS GOOD

Thursday, 7:45 AM.  34 degrees F, wind WSW, calm at ground level, with mottled clouds moving slowly at higher elevation into a dusky orange dawn. The barometer is trending up and it should be a decent day.
    We had a great trip to Wausau and got back yesterday evening.  We were all tired but happy.  I with an excellent forestry meeting, the subject of which I will delve into when I have more time, as right now I have to take advantage of a break in the weather and get the seeding done on the Brownstone trail this morning; buddy with a good run, and all of us with a couple of excellent Wisconsin restaurant meals (Buddy makes out well also) and a break in routine.
    On Tuesday morning there were hundreds of tundra swans on the Chequamegon Bay in Ashland, they are migrating in great numbers now.  And we did, despite all the driving and the meeting, get an opportunity to visit the McMillan Wildlife Area outside of Marshfield.  It is a large, mostly wetland, preserve and public hunting area with a large population of sandhill cranes that we had the opportunity to see and certainly to hear as they bedded down Tuesday night.  The area also has ample room to roam around looking for pheasants, and we  put in a hour or so doing that Yesterday afternoon after my meeting.  We found none, but Buddy worked marvelously well and came to one absolutely classic point but no bird flushed when I stepped in front of him.  Maybe strong scent left by an earlier bird.  I will find out more about the area and maybe make a stop on another trip later. There are few pheasants outside of private hunting preserves in Wisconsin these days, but that is another story also.
    Yesterday afternoon we had lunch in the nice little city of Mosinee on the Wisconsin River.  It is a classic Wisconsin small town, and very nice to visit as long as you are not downwind from the paper plant and its sulfurous odors which,  years ago at least,  was called “the smell of money” in northern Wisconsin.
    Buddy wore himself out and slept all the way home yesterday, when he wasn’t licking a cut or two from the sharp stubble.   
    It will be a busy day, as I also need to get to the shooting range and take a few shots at targets before deer season.  Life is good.