Post by spence on Oct 25, 2020 17:31:11 GMT -7
I'm thinking about doing a turkey hunt one day this week if the weather holds. Since I sold my farm it's always a tossup whether I can get into my old hunting places, depending on the status of the crops. Large areas of the farm have been scraped clean, all interior fences and fence rows bulldozed into piles in order to convert all the old fields into one very big one. All interior roads are gone. All those many, many small areas I always left growing for the game have been plowed under....cropped. All that means I frequently can not drive anywhere near where I want to hunt, and depending on what crops are growing, and whether they have been harvested, I may only be able to walk to them by going around the periphery. That's a long hike for an old man, especially loaded down with, say, all the meat from a butchered deer. Hiking to and from several times loaded down with meat, a half-mile each way, well, I'll take a pass, thank you.
Such sights as this little cluster of persimmon trees, a perineal food supply for deer and small game, have been disappeared so the combine can travel in a straight line, not strain the driver.
Trying to plan out my hunt I queued up Google Earth and took a look at the place. The areal view has been updated. I was looking for clues as to what I might find when I go out. What I saw was downright painful. I see 65 trunks of trees piled for transport. Farmer Flint is logging the entire place. I can also see what are probably the tops of all those trees lying where they dropped, all over every little woods lot on the place.
I don't have many hunts left to me, and it makes me very depressed to think my hunting ground will fade away before I get those last few in. Farmers are like all the rest of us, they come in a great number of varieties. Farmer Flint, as described by Thoreau, is not one of my favorites.
The world is changing faster than I can adapt.That is what happens to people as they age. I've understood that for a long time, but experiencing it first hand is more destructive than I could have imagined. Unbelievable politics, president cum dictator, rampant bigotry and hatred, torrents of misinformation from all directions, science denial, "anti-mask" rallies in the midst of a deadly pandemic for God's sake, systemic anti-intellectualism, worldwide religious conflict....and Farmer Flint. It's not a world I recognize, not one I want to be a part of. I've been not-so-slowly losing my faith in my fellow man for quite a few years. It's going much faster now.
Spence
Such sights as this little cluster of persimmon trees, a perineal food supply for deer and small game, have been disappeared so the combine can travel in a straight line, not strain the driver.
Trying to plan out my hunt I queued up Google Earth and took a look at the place. The areal view has been updated. I was looking for clues as to what I might find when I go out. What I saw was downright painful. I see 65 trunks of trees piled for transport. Farmer Flint is logging the entire place. I can also see what are probably the tops of all those trees lying where they dropped, all over every little woods lot on the place.
I don't have many hunts left to me, and it makes me very depressed to think my hunting ground will fade away before I get those last few in. Farmers are like all the rest of us, they come in a great number of varieties. Farmer Flint, as described by Thoreau, is not one of my favorites.
The world is changing faster than I can adapt.That is what happens to people as they age. I've understood that for a long time, but experiencing it first hand is more destructive than I could have imagined. Unbelievable politics, president cum dictator, rampant bigotry and hatred, torrents of misinformation from all directions, science denial, "anti-mask" rallies in the midst of a deadly pandemic for God's sake, systemic anti-intellectualism, worldwide religious conflict....and Farmer Flint. It's not a world I recognize, not one I want to be a part of. I've been not-so-slowly losing my faith in my fellow man for quite a few years. It's going much faster now.
Spence
