THE WHEEL GUN - SNUFFY SR.

Smith &Wesson
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Model 27, N-frame, 4" barrel in .357 Magnum, matching serial number: S-129924,
stamped with ".357 CTG ~ Highway Patrolman" on the right side of the barrel.

A couple of months ago over at http://www.sondrak.com/ The Kisp'ers had a somewhat heated debate over a pic of Tammy Bruce and her lil' wheel gun, "Snuffy"...in which the stunning Ms. Bruce holds onto the pistol in a seemingly cavalier fashion with her index finger neatly wrapped around the trigger.

Not A Good Thing! ...according to most "experts".

However, it did prompt me to put these thoughts together concerning my favorite pistol, the S&W .357 Mag. pictured above. The frame has been refinished, bead blasted and Parkerized and fit with Pachmyr grips. The double action pulls at about seven pounds when uncocked and about two pounds when cocked with absolutely no creep and as crisp as a new two-dollar bill.

This is my favorite sidearm while hiking, fishing and hunting. It also resides next to the bedstead while Deb and I sleep at home. Its big and somewhat heavy. Which is actually a good thing, given that I have it stoked with hand loads which are brutally powerful. I stuff a maximum load of powder into clean and primed Win. cases (ask me, maybe I'll share) that are topped with Hornady's 158gr, HP/XTP bullets.

Just its presence is sufficient to scare most folks. And those who aren't scared would do well not to test its authority in close quarters.

- October on the Eastern Plains of Colorado, the hunt for pronghorm antelope begins

The Hunt, The Kill.


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This is not about chasin' Bambi to practice "Catch'an'Release!





PLEASE NOTE:


- This is not safe for those who are offended by the pursuit, slaughter and butcher of game.


- Each photo can be "clicked" and it will give you a larger, better resolution pic.





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A post on my favorite front porch Blog, http://sondrak.com/, has prompted me to revisit this issue.

I grew up in the Western United States. Both my parents families were farmers, ranchers or knew the cycle of birth and death and re-birth in domesitcated and/or game animals.

Growing up, I ate deer, elk, beef, buffalo, antelope, wild and domestic goat, sheep and pig, peccary, horse, mountain lion, and birds of every description. We ate what was provided us.

We all know that meat is a very dense, powerful protein. Our not-so-distant ancestors relied upon meat to sustain them and their families. They knew it so well that they began to domesticate animals for their consumption.

They knew it so well that, even after the domestication of certain animals, they chose to hunt. They trapped fowl and beasts. They shot birds, wild beasts and they fished for all manner of marine and fresh water animals.

We do the same today. It is deeply rooted in our genetic makeup. We have vestigal canine teeth which help us rip flesh. Our guts are well suited to the digestion of meat, along with fruits and vegetables and grains.

Those who think otherwise are welcome to believe as they wish.

However, they are not welcome to define my way of life and how I choose to provide food for myself and my family.

I do not agree with them and will fight till the end of my life to preserve my heritage, those ancestors who have hunted game and those who have raised, slaughtered and butchered domesticated animals.




- An abandoned farmhouse on the Plains of Eastern Colorado

I choose to hunt because of my love of the outdoors, the quiet rhythm of land and sky and weather. I enjoy the chase and all of it's nuance. It is work. It is joy. It is frustrating mayhem. It is sorrow.

I enjoy all of the fine and subtle ambiance that changes each day I walk in the field. I appreciate the patina of seasons laid upon seasons and the hand of man, as husband and lover of the land.

The use of a well tuned weapon to bring down a game animal has always fascinated me. The use of the same weapon to make a quick, clean and humane kill has always been my desire. That is what I was taught.

I enjoy the wide, wide open spaces of the plains. It is an environment that is at once overwhelming and intimidating in the powerful expanse, both of sky and land. It is also very intimate, requiring a gentle, humble acceptance of its wild nature, its gentle and fragile life.

This land will kill you. It has no conscience, nor does it care a whit as to man's frailties.

This land will sustain you. It is a land that loves those who know it and know how to respond to it with humility and caution.

- Sandhill country, the truck is a speck in the upper center.

On an early October day, Mark, my hunting/fishing partner and I began glassing the endless, rolling prairie of Southeast Colorado for signs of Pronghorm antelope..."white butts" as we like to call them.

Pronghorn are a perfect example of Darwin's theory of Evolution. They fit this country, just as it fits them. They have 270 degree vision that has been equated to a man with 8X power binoculars. Their hearts are massive pumps, nearly twice the size of a human of the same mass. They have incredible lung capacity and enjoy loping at sustained speeds near 20/30 MPH. They can, with little effort, run at the blistering pace of 60 MPH and disappear in a heartbeat...which is why many call them "Prairie Ghosts."

On this particular day, Mark and I scoped a small herd about four miles out. We made our decision to follow a shallow wash from the north which would bring us within shooting distance, maybe 200 to 300 yards.

I came up on a slight rise to find myself looking at what I thought was a 400 yard shot...that is a full four football field's distance. I dropped to a sitting stance, took one more look in the binoculars, clicked my bi-pod open and drew a bead on a satellite animal. Heat waves danced in the scope. A frisky breeze blew crossways.

I took a long breath, released about halfway and the world stood still. I could feel and see the blood thumping, moving my scope. I squeezed the trigger on my .270 Win. It roared and a millisecond later I heard a wet "Twump." Mark yelled...."YOU GOT'IM"

- Myself and an average antelope of maybe 90 pounds.

I paced off steps from where I shot to the dead goat. Three hundred fifty and some odd long steps and I found that my shot had hit dead on, blowing the top off of the animal's heart. It dropped in its tracks, dead.

I made that shot after two days of hunting. Mark and I drove and glassed and hiked and fought wind and heat waves and more wind.

He shot his animal at a little after 08:00 hours on our first morning out, a nice, older buck. He was lucky.

It took me a bit longer to do what I had come to do. Put clean, wild meat on my table.

- Skinning and dressing the goats at our friends ranch

- Myself, my backside as I skin the front legs.

A good butcher (like myself) will be able to package up between 30 to 50 pounds of meat from an antelope. This is meat with minimal fat, no growth hormones, no antibiotics. It is meat that tastes like the wild wind. It is good. And I would rather eat of it than any fancy-schmancy hundred dollar steak.

Period.

I can ususally draw one tag for antelope in Colorado every year or so. Wyoming normally has leftover tags and, if I am feeling rich, can harvest two or more animals in the Cowboy state.

That weighs in at only 150 to 200 lbs of meat...if I am successful.

It is a sobering thought, how much it requires to provide such a bounty. And, I would not change it for the world, nor any fool who does not understand.

It is my life and my heritage.

Fishing the Middle Fork of the South Platte
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- Setting up the "Cabin", a 20ft. hunting/fishing trailer.


On Thursday, 5 July, 2007 Mark and I headed out of the 90 plus degree Denver heat. Mark is one of my oldest friends, a stout man and an ethical hunter and fisherman. Just before sunrise, we loaded his truck with flyfishing gear, food for a week, adult beverages and my .357 S&W "Black Bear Repellent"pistol. We left Mark's house at 06:00. Two hours later, we arrived at his land in South Park.

Mark purchased his two parcels of land, a total of 5 acres, about eight years ago. The land sits on a wide ridge top which, more or less, runs east to west. His parcels set on the North facing slope. The year after the purchase, he bought an older, twenty foot travel trailer and placed it on a leveled flat facing almost due West.


It is simple, almost rustic. There is no inside toilet and the water system no longer functions. The convenant controlled land association provides a "public" outhouse for the use of the recreational landowners, like Mark. There is a year round spring at the base of the ridge which provides clean, cold water at some five gallons a minute. Mark carries four, two and a half gallon water jugs which are filled at the spring used as a water source at the "Cabin." The only truly modern convenience to which Mark has aquiesed, is the installation of a small electrical generator. It provides light and allows the heater to be run on cold autumn nights.


- View from the "Cabin" facing West by Northwest, across Buffalo Valley.


Mark's land is located near the center of South Park, just North of the legendary fishing reservoirs of Antero, Spinney and Eleven-Mile, impoundments which breech the main channel of the South Platte River.

South Park is a huge glacial valley encircled by great mountain ranges on three sides; East, West and North. All of these ranges dump their valley facing snow-melt into the South Platte, making it a grand and powerful river before it exits the valley through Eleven-Mile Canyon, turning Northeast towards Denver.

The South Fork, Middle Fork, Tarryall, Jefferson, Michgan are main tributaries which feed into the central river at various points in the valley.

In most years, it is a lush and fertile valley. Still, there are the years when snowpack is low and the summer rains are driven North or South, or are simply non-existant. Those years are reminders to us all that Colorado is mostly a semi-arid desert.

The following pics were taken on the Middle Fork within the Tomahawk State Wildlife lease. Mark and I fished this beautiful, glacial valley for three days.




- Gear at the ready, streamside.

I fished my favorite set up:

An old, eight foot, five weight Orvis rod; Battenkill reel with weight-forward line and a seven foot tapered leader with two feet (more or less) of 4X tippet.

The first day we threw every fly in our arsenal at the water. Dries, Wets, Nymphs...specific imitations and attractors of every size and color were tied on and cast in every possible style. I had only three strikes and one hook up in three hours.

Mark did about the same. Neither of us brought a fish to hand, much less to the frying pan. It was a frustrating, yet gorgeous and restful day.



- The Middle Fork, facing north to its headwaters.

Where we fish, the Middle Fork runs cold (never over forty degrees,) even in the middle of Summer. The Tomahawk State Wildlife lease is only forty-some odd miles downstream from its headwaters at the base of Mount Democrat (14,148 ft.). It becomes quite a formidable river in those forty miles, carrying snow melt down from five of Colorado's fifty-one (or fifty-two, depending on who you believe) peaks reaching over forteen thousand feet in altitude.

The Middle Fork, like the main river and all of its tributaries in South Park, is rich with native species of aquatic insects. There are multiple, overlapping hatches of major insect groups during the seasons when the waters are open. The Caddis (Trichoptera) was the hatch that Mark and I hoped to be lucky enough to catch. Six years ago we experienced the full Caddis hatch. The two of us spent two days catching and releasing at least twenty-five fish of nine inches or better during each day. We were sore, sunburned and smiling from ear to ear for weeks after.




- The Middle Fork athe mouth of the the glacial valley, facing South.

The drainages of all Colorado streams and rivers are formed by one of two geological phenomenon; glacial activity or water errosion. The Middle Fork, as is moves through the Tomahawk State Wildlife lease, twists and turns, creating oxbows in a gentle "U" shaped glacial valley. Over thousands of years, the river has carried silt, rock and rubble down during the wild Spring run-off and depositing it in this valley. The ox-bows which twist and turn, sometimes turning into woven side channels, allow the run-off to slow, and the deposits fill the channels creating pools and estuaries which eventually fill with the silt creating peatbogs, and rich soil and finally, this rich subalpine hay and grazing land we call South Park.


- Willow breaks surrounding the main channel.

The willow and the beaver helped create the riparian envrionment of the Middle Fork, just as they have done for all the rivers in the Central Rocky Mountains. Since the arrival of European man in the early 19th Century, the beaver are no longer a major influence. However, the willows remain. And since there are few beaver to harvest them, they can become thick, entangled forests, prohibiting access to the rivers. European man has introduced their cattle, which can, under their watchful eye of the rancher, create breaks opening flats and access to the rivers.

Cattle do not, however, build dams. It is up to man to either reintroduce the beaver or replicate his work if the historic nature of these amazing watersheds.




- Dark storm clouds build over the Middle Fork Valley.

Mark and I fished that first day until about 13:00 hours when the storm clouds, thunderheads and winds drove us from the river. Cold rain pelted us as we reached the truck. The Mourning and Eurasian doves poured into the Ponderosa as we stripped off waders and boots and vests and jumped into the cab. Cloud to cloud and ground to cloud lightning struck all about us as we drove over the alluvial ridge down into the main channel valley south of Hartsel. Mark asked me if I wanted to check out the legendary "Dream Stream" that stretch of water between Spinney and Eleven-Mile. It is mostly public water and being the tailwater of a dam, open to fishing year'round.

The "Dream Stream" http://www.coloradotrouthunters.com/dreamstream.html , (the only hotlink in this little essay), is an amazing yet exasperating.... beautiful, glorious and very technical; or ugly, nasty, wind driven and completely unfishable five mile stretch of the main channel of the South Platte River.

The storm proceeded us. Driving wind blew the rain, rattled the truck and created an amusement park ride for us as we hauled our way across South Park. It was clear, or not so, that the "Dream Stream" was in one of her nasty and unfishable moods.

We headed back to the "Cabin" to dry out, share libations and lies, food and a short poker game. We each turned in to sleep a night of sleep in the rain-washed, Aspen spiced air of South Park.

At some late point, I woke to answer Nature's call, stepped outside to find a sky filled with dripping bright stars. The storm clouds were gone. I relieved my bladder, and bearing a grand smile, returned to dream of rivers filled with monster trout and endless plains filled with elk and antelope.



- A transitional ox-bow on the Middle Fork. (Mark is a tiny figure on the upper left
hand stretch.)

Day Two:
Mark and I returned to the Middle Fork on the Tomahawk State Wildlife lease. We spent the early morning drive discussing what had worked for us, at least to a minor extent, on the previous day. Mark tied on a #14 pheasant tail nymph with a strike indicator. I began with a #14, Blonde St. Vrain Caddis dry fly. We hiked down, heading North into the interwoven channels.

Mark headed upstream, I headed down. It was, after all, a "fishing" trip...not a "catching" trip.


- Mark fishing a short leader, nymph set-up.


An hour or so later, I walked upstream to find Mark.

Neither of us had caught anything.

Narry a strike.

Nothing.

I told him I was going to try a dry fly which had drawn one good strike early yesterday. I tied on what I could only describe as a strange and abberant mutation of an Olive Stimuator. It had a bright, lime green thorax and the rest of the body looked like a traditional Stimulator. (NO....not that kind of stimulator!!!) I walked back to a promising hole, tied the #12 monster on the line and flipped it over a ragged snag into the flow above the deep hole.

Faster than thought, a black shape flashed up from the deep, hit the fly and I raised my rod tip.

The fight was on. The fish dove, bending the light tip of my rod to the water...It had to be a Brown trout, heavy and thrashing... Less than two minutes later, a tired and gasping eleven inch Brown lay in the grass bank and I stood, smiling ear to ear.





- The dark line of the Middle Fork as it flows out to meet the main channel in South Park.

I told Mark what had happened as I handed him a clone of the mutant Stimulator.

As he re-rigged his line, I returned downstream. For the rest of the day, we worked the deep holes, riffles and snags all along the Middle Fork in the Tomahawk State Wildlife lease. Between the two of us, we caught and released twelve or so fish of notable size and a number of fingerlings.

Those fingerlings defined the future of this watershed. The Colorado Division of Wildlife no longer stocks what are called "put'n'take" clones in rivers. They stock the major lakes, ponds and reservoirs with what they call "catchable" size trout, seven to ten inches. They also monitor and maintain sub-alpine and alpine lakes with remnant spawn of native cutthroats.

Mark took two fish home for his daughter. I took none.

It is my way.

We fished a bit more, then returned to the "Cabin" for celebratory drinks and dinner. We woke more later than early the next morning, ate breakfast, closed up the trailer and headed down to the valley floor.

07 July 2007.....07-07-07, the Birthday of Robert Anson Heinlein and TUA.

We stopped here and there, visited old friends, talked of the passing of parents and friends taken too young, too soon. At some point near mid-day, we turned our heavy hearts homeward, eastward, back to the heat of the high plains and this new Los Angeles, the megalopolis of Denver.

Thanks be to God.

Memorial Day ~ 28 May 2007

Aaron Boggs Anthony - Captain, U.S. Army Air Corp, 13th Air Force – 5th Heavy Bomber Group in the Pacific Theatre during WWII. Bob and his crew, members of the 31st Bomber Squadron, flew their Consolidated B-24 Liberators on 51 missions in and around the Philipine Islands.

Dad was born 23 May 1917 and died 21 Sept. 2005.

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Clayton Charles Kemp, Jr - Aviation Antisubmarine Warfare Technician 3rd ClassHS-8, CVSG-59, USS BENNINGTON United States Navy.

09 October 1947 - 12 January 1967 Wheatridge, Colorado

Panel 14E Line 017, Viet Nam Veteran's Memorial, Washington, DC

Chuck died in North Vietnamese waters when the helicopter on which he crewed went down. His body was never recovered.
It was three months and three days after his nineteenth birthday.
He was more than just a friend, he was like a brother.
As long as I draw breath, his memory will not be forgotten.

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Pearl Harbor survivor, Houston James of Dallas, embraced Marine Staff Sargent Mark Graunke Jr. during a Veteran's Day commemoration yesterday. Graunke lost a hand, an eye and a leg while difusing an IED in Iraq last year. - 11 November 2005, Associate Press

Live Oak Canyon Road, Trabuco Canyon - Courtesy of Orangecounty.net

Lady Silence

It was 1969. In the rugged, rolling foothills above Laguna Beach, a canyon snake twisted two lane blacktop slipped back and forth across the creek bed on bridges set perpendicular to the creek. I loved driving there, under the live oaks at night, in the spring, lit by a full moon. It was a road that seemed carefully constructed for British sports cars. Maintaining speed and RPM required constant, delicate, heel to toe braking and accelerating.

As I remember it, in mid-canyon one left turn led up Modjeska Canyon to the state park bird sanctuary. Another right turn later headed south to a quiet overlook, then down into Trabuco Canyon.

It was there, off on a southern facing slope, Bob the Bandit kept a home. It was stone, built in the twenties or thirties by some long-forgotten craftsman who made love to the land with his hands, tools and materials, wood and stone and cement. The tiny house looked as if it had grown slowly up out of the sweep of the sloping meadow.

The house was comfortable there, exactly where it belonged.

Bob had no electricity. He pumped his water by hand, heated and cooked with wood. Kerosene lamps danced in the dark. Baths happened once a week. If he wanted music, he ran a cord to a voltage inverter hooked to his ancient Toyota Land cruiser. Most of the time it was simply silent, deep profound silence that seeped into the soul, feeding an unnamed hunger.

Up in a box canyon behind Bob's house someone had turned the earth and planted a secret crop. So said Bob, and he said little else 'til September when the heavy seed heads drooped, thick with a fragrant resin. Then the crop disappeared.

Bob would lay in his winter stock of foodstuffs soon after those plants vanished. His smile grew wide, he whistled aimlessly and pretty young, longhaired ladies materialized from smoky, early autumn sunsets.

It was late Summer when Renee introduced me to Bob. We spent one long September week with him till the silence permeated every dusty pore and fold of gray matter in our combined heads. At night, the stars slipped low, dripping with diamond light, so low one could almost suckle their magic draughts. Then that fecund stillness slipped into our hearts, left a summer-dried seed, fertile and pulsing.

We woke one morning to deeper silence. Bob was gone. He left us a scribbled note asking that we close up the house and take the key taped to the wrinkled and wine stained note.

He would be back. That's what he wrote. He would come for the key. That's what he wrote.

Bob did not return.

Remember those long haried ladies? Oh beloved, one had been police science major at Cal State Fullerton. She had begged him to set up a drug deal. He refused. She did him, he did the deal and Renee and I were the last to see him at his home, there in the silence, there in the September sun in Trabuco Canyon.

I returned some fifteen years later with a young wife. I wanted to show her Bob's house on the knoll, in the meadow. I wanted her to know the silence. A busy four lane had replaced the twisting two lane. The turn off to south-facing knoll was crowned with ugly, soulless, mindless condominiums. And as to Lady Silence; she had long ago gathered up her Autumn skirts and departed, leaving no trace.

I have yet to find the likes of her, forty years later.

California died that Autumn. And sometimes, when the post-modern noise and the filth of the city withers my soul, I still grieve the passing of those sun dappled innocent days and star laced wicked nights. But most of all, I grieve Lady Silence and her soft, healing touch.