LOGGING, DEER HUNTING, AND WEASELS

Friday, 8:30 AM.  32 degrees F, up from 28 degrees earlier. Wind at ground level W, calm; but at higher elevation clouds are moving slowly from the east.  The sky is partly  cloudy with mixed gray and white clouds.  The barometer is trending down but it should be a decent day.
    Yesterday turned out to be a bright, seasonally warm day, good for many things.  We got the prairie seed put down on the Brownstone Trail first off, before breakfast, then went to visit my deer hunting haunts, much changed by the loggers that are wrapping things up now. 
    The whole scene is visually more open but since it was selectively logged it retains most of its pre-logging character and according to the tracks in the sand at least, the deer are frequenting their usual runs.  They were still loading logs late yesterday afternoon, so I hope they are done today, but in any case they won’t be in the woods much if at all during deer season, which starts tomorrow. 
    I also got to the town rifle range and did enough shooting to know the rifle is still sighted in.  In between things, D & J logging delivered two face cords of wood in the driveway, most of which is still sitting there to be put into the shed after breakfast this morning.  It is good, dry, mixed hardwoods (sugar maple, red oak, yellow birch and a few odds and ends of ironwood and elm) most of it split small enough to burn in the fireplace without further hand splitting.  I was down to my last stick of wood so I was happy to get it, $150 delivered. 
    Don, who delivered the wood, got an eight point buck last Saturday with his bow, which is totally amazing to me since he is badly crippled from a logging accident that occurred many years ago and can barely walk with the aid of two arm crutches.  His truck has a bumper sticker which says, “I am a pro-logging, pro-hunting environmentalist.”  Got to get one of those.
    Commentary on politicians that applies to both parties: the way to never be caught in a lie (or even the truth for that matter), is to have a spokesperson.  That way you can always weasel out of whatever it was you said, by saying, “I didn’t say that, my spokesperson said it.”  And the spokesperson can say, “I only repeated the information various sources gave me, as I understood it at the time.”  That scenario is pretty foolproof, unless the spokesperson is your girlfriend, and then things may become problematical.
    Last evening was crisp, clear, moonless and starlit, and I saw a shooting star streak across Orion as I was out with the dog.
     Blogs will be sporadic for a few days to accommodate deer hunting.