Finally, some genius has come up with a bacon-scented perfume. Read all about it:

Time article on bacon-scented perfume

I wrap my appetizers in bacon; why not wrap my loving wife in that scintillating scent?

Unfortunately, because of the aforementioned story, I also discovered the bacon gun, the bacon bikini, and the bacon apple pie.  God bless America! I have now lost the better part of an evening to my obsession with bacon.  I may have to visit a facility to deal with my bacon addiction soon.  I hope they have a breakfast bar.

As a shooter and former firearms trainer, it really irks me to see stories in the news that indicate guns firing by themselves, as if they suddenly come to life.  Case in point — headline from the Associated Press: Two Wounded at Los Angeles School When Gun in Backpack Fires.  Now, the story seems to be that the gun fired when the backpack was dropped.  There is no mention of the make and model of gun, so it is hard to speculate how that might happen.  My point is that it probably had help.  Most modern guns need a very deliberate sequence of action to fire.  Yet the press continues to report these incidents as if guns are magical, self-operating devices with murderous urges.  

The other genre of guns-firing-by-themselves stories involves the classic “the gun fired when I was cleaning it” variety.  A similar theme was reported in a news story I read yesterday in my own region of the country.  The introductory sentence of the article goes something like this: “A Grand Forks resident was cited this morning for discharging his firearm within city limits after he accidentally shot himself in his home while attempting to move his handgun.”  The story goes that the man was cleaning his apartment in the wee hours of the morning and when he moved his handgun, it fired, striking him in the hand.  The story reports the man’s first name was Darwin.

GUNS DO NOT FIRE THEMSELVES.  Accidental discharges are certainly (remotely) possible, but are mostly due to negligence.  I have heard a story, for instance, in which a man shot himself in the leg with a single action revolver because he had it stored in the console of his pickup in a sock.  Evidently, in the process of things moving around with the gun in the console, the single action hammer was cocked back, and when the man moved some other things around in the console, he caught the trigger in the fabric of the sock and fired it.  Knowing the full context in that story, it is somewhat believable, but the person who shot himself was certainly negligent in how he was storing a loaded gun, as was the high school kid in Los Angeles.  

Stories I generally approach with suspicion are the ones where police officers and/or security guards cleaning their weapons at home experience accidental discharges.  Those people have obviously been trained to know better, and what I usually envision behind those stories is either boredom or drunkenness leading to quick-draw practice or other unsafe stunts that lead to the discharge.

I hope for a day when the mainstream media writes gun stories with factual information and avoids personifying and/or demonizing mechanical objects.

I always read about sightings of the Chupacabra with interest,  since Mythology is one of the courses I teach.  This latest story from Kentucky is particularly interesting, because the man who discovered the animal shot it.  The comments following the news story have some debate about whether he should have shot the animal, but I generally feel he did the right thing. If it’s a dog or other feral animal that was incredibly sick (the last suspected Chupacabra was a coyote with a bad infection from parasites), I think I would want the threat removed from my neighborhood.  And of course, if it’s a previously undocumented species (I vote for calling it chupacabra!), then a specimen is captured for analysis.  We’ll have to see what the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources says.

This video, starring  my brother-in-law Matt and made by his friend Erik, will answer that question!  I wonder how they would do with an ice fishing video?

It’s good to bring a little levity to the same canyon in which Aron Ralston had to amputate his own arm to free himself from fallen boulders.

Who needs Photoshop?  Since finding this web-app, I’ve gone on a binge of placing my head on such diverse figures as Augusto Pinochet and Lindsay Lohan. 

I’m wondering if I’ll have the nerve to post my most brilliant work: Obama and Biden as the creepy twins from “The Shining.”

The Buster boys are having a discussion about getting rid of the “trout bum” marketing stereotype. Good. It’s about time someone put that away. I’m guessing Gierach, who may or may not have coined the term, is probably pretty flippin’ tired of it himself. It’s probably kind of like being a musician and writing a semi-crappy song that becomes wildly popular, forcing you to listen to it over and over.  And the man left behind his bumminess about the time he published his first book (not a judgement of the fine man–just an observation that as soon as an artist creates something, it takes on new life and flees its original form).  

On to my cultural analysis. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what is sporting, and what makes a sportsman. Is it the look? Is it the Filson jacket? Is it the cost of the shotgun or the flyrod? I think most of us who actually live in contact with the great outdoors (as opposed to buying the costume at Cabela’s) would probably agree that none of those things define sporting. So we can leave image behind for now.

There have been tomes written on the subject of sporting ethics. So is it our ethics that define us? I think so, to a great extent. But that brings up lots of questions. What is fair chase? Do we practice catch-and-release? Is fly-fishing superior to worm-drowning? Do we spot-and-stalk our deer, or do we drive them from tree rows with three generations worth of bushwhackers and have Grandpa gun them down as they flee?  This last was a tad over-the-top, but then I have observed this very thing in Southeastern North Dakota.  The hail of bullets and my sense of self-preservation pushed me out of the regular gun season and right into the archery and muzzleloader seasons.

I once had a very long conversation over the course of several days with a beautiful woman with a quick mind and a vegetarian outlook.  Her feeling about animals was that we should hurt them as little as possible.  While I tend to agree, I also understand that I am at the top of the food chain.  We went back and forth over the issue of catch-and-release fishing.  Her perspective was that it is almost more honest to fish for subsistence, eating what you catch, versus harming the fish for sport and releasing them.  I think our main ideological difference was in the way we look at the resource at hand.  If fish=food, then I know I have the skills to eat, and I think that will always be one reason that I fish.  If fish=sport, then I know that in certain cases I want to practice catch-and-release to maintain the resource for others to experience, not necessarily because it is less harmful to the fish, which I do not believe are sentient beings who feel pain in the same way that humans do.  

Once one is aware of the ramifications of kill vs. release, the next level is to examine the methods, and this is where the sporting image sometimes comes into play, eclipsing the substance of what we do as killers of meat or seekers of sport.  One can see the debates everywhere on pure fishing art–fly vs. baitfishing, artificial vs. livebait, etc.  Some fly-fishermen see themselves as purely sporting, never intending to kill fish.  Some anglers seem to be hell-bent on filling their freezers with meat to last several lifetimes. And most of us are somewhere in between.

Case in point:  snagging.  This is certain to cause a little bit of debate.   My initial impression of snagging will always be what I observed growing up in Montana: bridges lined with cooler-toting dudes slinging treble hooks in an all-out war on salmon runs.  The monofilament left behind on overhead wires and bridge beams from those practices was in and of itself an environmental hazard!

Enter my experience with paddlefish snagging.  The first time I saw paddlefish snagging on TV, a guide from Oklahoma was taking a group out in a boat to find and snag 50+ pound paddlefish.  While I at first recoiled at the idea of snagging, I realized that the reason they were using that method was that paddlefish don’t lend themselves to baitfishing or artificial baits because of their plankton-sucking habit.  So I booked a trip and off went my brother and I to snag these prehistoric creatures at Grand Lake, OK.  Being from North Dakota, I was very surprised at the very liberal limits in OK, since we are only allowed one per season and there is a quota.  

The experience was surreal.  Motor along in a boat, dragging a 12 oz weight with about an 8/0 treble hook tied a couple feet up the line.  When the paddlefish is engaged, prepare for the fight!  

Our paddlefish were butchered by the guide (cleaned seems to be the proper word for a little trout, but these are a little big to slice open with a 4″ blade).   We took the meat, thick steaks mostly, home in coolers to be consumed.  

So do I feel dirty?  Nah.   Do I need to go on a paddlefish snagging binge?  Nah.  As with most experiences, the first time was rather exciting and now I may or may not seek out the opportunity again.  

The real question:  was it sporting?  I’m not real sure.  It’s kind of like catfish grabbling.  If you’re going to eat the sucker, anyway, does it really matter much how you catch it?  

I might also add other methods to the discussion.  Speaking of catfish, is jug fishing sporting?  Is using an automatic reel tied to a tree branch sporting?  Is fishing a wire crappie rig with three hooks sporting?

I will sit back, smoking my pipe, leaning on my elbow patches, and ponder the matter.  As with most things, I think a heavy dose of honest self-awareness will set most of us on the right path.

There is one thing I know for sure.   I sure would like to see one of these Filson types put down his box of slave-labor-tied flies and grab a catfish out from under the cutbank like the ladies on Girls Gone Grabblin‘.  Naw–scratch that.  I’d rather see the girls do it.