Going Feral: Questions hunters, fishermen, and public lands users need to ask political candidates. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

Going Feral: Questions hunters, fishermen, and public lands use...: Something similar was mentioned on a companion blog to this one just the other day, that being that it was never the intent to make this a p...

Questions hunters, fishermen, and public lands users need to ask political candidates. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

Something similar was mentioned on a companion blog to this one just the other day, that being that it was never the intent to make this a political topic blog.

But these are not ordinary times in Wyoming, or anywhere else.

Most real outdoorsmen, and by that I mean the sort of outdoorsmen who have the world out look that those who post here do, not guys with excess cash who are petty princes like Eric Trump, would rather be hunting or fishing, or reading about hunting and fishing, than thinking about politics.  But just like duck hunter (seriously) Leon Trotsky once stated; “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you,” and that applies to politics as well as war.

Trotsky.  Bad man, but he was a hunter and fisherman.

You might not be interested in politics, but politics is very interested in you.

And frankly, given the assault on everything hunters, fishermen, and the users of public lands hold dear, you don't really have the luxury, and that is what it is, of ignoring politics.

Nor do you have the luxury of ignoring your politicians.

Donald Trump was embarrassing his first term in office, but in his second unrestrained term in office, he and the Republican Party have been a disaster for outdoorsmen, nature, and the environment.  Last year there was a diehard effort by Deseret Mike Lee to basically sell off massive parts of the public domain. That effort was supported by all three of  Wyoming's Congressional delegation in spite of massive public opposition to it.  This year a Freedom Caucus member, Rep. Wasserburger, is trying the same thing in the state with state lands.  None of this should be any surprise as Freedom Caucuser Bob Ide, who campaigned on less government, more freedom, but who is a big landlord depending on the government to protect his property rights, sponsored an effort to grab the public lands the legislative session before that.

When put right to it, the Freedom Caucus hates government ownership of anything, and by extension, just flat out isn't really very concerned about the collective good on anything at all.  They're an alien carpetbagging force in the country, but the sort of dimwitted views they have on nature and land are being expressed all across the country.  Hunters, fishermen, farmers, ranchers, campers, hikers and other users of the land who had reflexively voted for one party or another based on some belief on what those parties held can absolutely no longer afford to do that.

Part of this is because politicians just flat out lie.  People who naively thought that Donald Trump was a supporter of the Second Amendment, and therefore supported "gun rights" are finding out right now that he never believed any of that. Why would he?  He's an old, fat, wealthy, New Yorker.  It's not like you saw him at the range, now is it?

But chances are, you haven't seen California Chuck Gray there either, have you?

So, some questions that you, dear feral reader, really need to ask your politicians.

1.  Do you have a hunting or fishing license right now, and if you do, can you pull it out of your wallet so we can see it?

It used to be standard in Wyoming and Colorado, and I bet other Western states, to see a politician dragged out in front of a camera for an advertising campaign wearing brand new hunting clothing and carrying a shotgun (interestingly, never a rifle).  It was a little fraud that we all participated in. We knew that the politicians would probably wet his pants if he had to fire the gun, but we took that as a symbol of support.

Don't.

Find out if they really share your values. Do they hunt, or fish? What's the proof?

And if they answer yes, find out what that means.  Does it mean the politician goes sage grouse hunting every year or does it mean that he waddles on to a pheasant farm once a year to shoot some POW pheasants?  Worse yet, does it mean that he went on a catered "hunt" in Texas with fat cats.  

How often does he go, where does he go, does he use public land to hunt?

Same thing with fishing.

If he doesn't do either, and regularly, don't vote for him easily.  Chances are he cares as much about hunting as Elon Musk does about marital fidelity.

2.  Do you use public land for anything, and if so, what?

Nearly every feral person worth his salt uses public land.  Does your Pol?  And I mean for anything. Hunting, fishing, camping, running cattle, photography, running nude through the daisies.  Anything.

And ask for proof.

If that proof is a photograph of a cleanly shaved pol with brand new clothing, it's proof he doesn't use it, or that she doesn't use it.

And if the answer is the typical "I love Yellowstone National Park", be very careful  National Parks are great, but a lot of them aren't really very wild until you get off the beaten path.  Going on an auto tour of Yellowstone and seeing all the geysers is great, but that's not proof of much.  And quite a few of the "I support public lands" political class limits that support to parks. Everything is fair game for development in their view.

3.  Do you shoot?

I don't expect every outdoor users to be a shooter, although in the West, if you are a user of wildlands and don't have a gun, you are a complete and utter fool.  Having said that, I'll be frank that I have known fishermen who had one gun, probably a revolver, that they carried in some places.  They probably went years between shooting it.  I don't regard owning a gun as a precursor to all feral uses of land, particularly by people who don't hunt, but who do fish, or camp, or hike (but if you do any of these things, please get a handgun and learn how to use it).  

A lot of people in the West vote for pols based solely on "I support the Second Amendment type statements".  Lots of people allowed themselves to be duped into voting for Donald Trump that way, although we never believed his claims to be a Second Amendment supporter.  We're sorry that we were so right.  Anyhow, ask them if they have a gun and if they shoot.

No matter what they really believe, they're going to say yes.

I'll note I've seen this question asked just once, and when I did the female candidate, a native Wyomingite with a rural background, went on to qualify that she was just familiar with .22s.  Okay, that's an honest answer. 

She was, I'd note, a Democrat.

You do need to follow up on the question.

Right now, if you asked this question of Chuck Gray or John Barrasso, they'd both undoubtedly say yes.  I don't know if either of them owns a firearm, but my guess is that if they do they own it in the way of people who have bought or been given a handgun that's gone in a drawer, and that's where it stays.  Ask for proof.  What do they own, where do they shoot, how often, and are there photos.  And not photos from a gun show, like Reid Rasner posted the other day.

Take them to the range and have them shoot a box of .375 H&H.  If they run to the SUV crying, they're out.

If they can't back this stuff up, I'd assume they really don't care about the Second Amendment. There are people who don't shoot at all who do care about the Second Amendment, but they're are rare as people who are interested in stock cars but don't follow NASCAR (this would describe me).  Not too many.

4.  Do they believe in man made climate change?

This gets to the land ethic. Educated people, and most politicians, are educated who say no really don't give a rats ass about the planet or they're engaging in diehard self delusion. They're comfortable with everything being destroyed as long as they're dead before it happens or they just can't face the hard task of addressing, correcting, and reversing it.  They're not worth voting for.

Aldo Leopold.

5. Do they have a land ethic?

I've known a lot of people who have a very strong land ethic. Absolutely none of them didn't make use of wilderness in some ways.

That's a big clue.

Anyhow, more than anything else, do they have a land ethic?  That is;

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

Aldo Leopold.

Do they support that?

A huge pile of Western politicians really don't.  Some, however, who would surprise you do.  This is a hard question to really explore, because an existential question isn't necessarily easy to question on.  In a collegiate debate, you'd just state the proposition and ask if they agreed, or didn't and follow up with examples.  That may be the best way to do it.

Nobody should vote for a politician who doesn't support the Land Ethic.

Last edition:

Addressing politicians in desperate times. A series.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing thread

World’s Oldest Harpoons Show Whaling Much Older than We Thought

World’s Oldest Harpoons Show Whaling Much Older than We Thought: Several harpoons and the remains of whales on the south coast of Brazil show that people 5,000 years ago were able to hunt the big cetaceans.

Older than we thought?  Well of course it is. 

Monday, January 14, 1946. Wartime and Post War foodstuffs.

 

I"m putting up this interesting Out Our Way cartoon from this day in 1946 as it refers to something we've discussed here before, and its a bit surprising.

What we've discussed here before is hunting during World War Two.

Here's where we looked at it earlier:

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...So what about World War Two?

Labels: 1940s, Food, hunting, Rationing, World War Two

I've always thought this was one of the more interesting threads on this blog, and it's one of the many ones I post and wonder why there's never any comments on it.  But that's common for blogs.  Usually, they don't get posts.

Anyhow, this cartoon by J. R. Williams sort of confirms what I'd suspected.  Some people supplemented their table fare during the war by hunting.

Williams was, as we've discussed before, a Canadian cartoonist who moved to the U.S. with his family at age 15, locating in Detroit.  He soon dropped out of school and became an apprentice machinist, providing topics for his cartoons which frequently depicted machine shops.  He drifted after that, something not uncommon in that era, and worked as a cowboy in the West, as well as serving a three year stint on the U.S. Army as a cavalryman.  All of that experience likewise reflected itself in his cartoons.  Family life, in spite of his being a bit short (again, not all that uncommon for the time) also featured frequently.  

He became a professional cartoonist in 1922 and remained one until his death in 1957 at age 69.  He'd used the proceeds of his cartoons to buy a ranch in Arizona, before relocating later on to Pasadena, California.  His cartoons carried on to some extent after his death in the hands of other artists.

Anyhow, one of the things about his cartoons is that depict fairly accurate slices of life, and this running gag from 1945-46 no doubt did.  The father has taken an elk and a deer, and the family is keeping it in the ice box.  The part that surprises me is that I really like venison, and these cartoons suggest that this venison was bad, which may be explained in an earlier cartoon I'm not familiar with.

Eighteen nations entered into an Agreement on Reparation from Germany.

The USSR ratified its August 16, 1945 treat with Poland stealing the eastern portions of the country, and giving parts of Prussia to Poland.

"Southern Resorts Fashions" were on the cover of Life.

Last edition:

Sunday, January 13, 1946. The relentless advance of malevolent technology.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Cartoons, Chinese Civil War, Japan, Marshall, Newspapers, Smoking, technology, Technology is ruining everything, tobacco

Going Feral: Found: The World’s Oldest Poisoned Arrows

Going Feral: Found: The World’s Oldest Poisoned Arrows: 

Found: The World’s Oldest Poisoned Arrows

Found: The World’s Oldest Poisoned Arrows: Scientists have found the oldest known poisoned arrows, dating back 60,000 years. These small quartz arrowheads unearthed in South Africa are laced with plant toxins. This means the use of poison for hunting started tens of thousands of years earlier than we thought.   The arrow tips came from the Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal Province, […]

Saturday, January 2, 1926.

Last edition:

Friday, January 1, 1926.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, Art

Going Feral: Go Ask Alice. A thread on hunting and fishing rucksacks.

Going Feral: Go Ask Alice. A thread on hunting and fishing ruc...: Going out the door, elk hunting, with my medium sized Alice Pack.  You can see a comealong, an Australian fanny pack for additional storage,...

Go Ask Alice. A thread on hunting and fishing rucksacks.

Going out the door, elk hunting, with my medium sized Alice Pack.  You can see a comealong, an Australian fanny pack for additional storage, a Wyoming Saw, a small carrier for a gmrs radio, a first aid kid, and two canteen covers.  No, I don't pack all this stuff around with me while I'm hunting.  I'm pack this to the truck.

I used to date teenage queen

Now I carry an M16

I used to drive a Cadillac

Now I carry an Alice pack

1980s (and maybe earlier) Jody Call.

I have a long history with backpacks.  In spite of that, I'm very clearly not up on the latest and greatest backpack.

Indeed, in this category, I find myself in the same situation as other people who sometimes baffle enthusiasts, in that I use them, but I don't know that much about a topic for which there's a lot to know.  I'm that way, for instance, when I meet a hunter who doesn't know anything about firearms, really.  I meet these people semi regularly, they enjoy hunting a lot, but their rifle or shotgun is a mere tool, and often a cheap one.  

Fishing, upon which I'm frankly less knowledgeable, equipment wise, is the same way.  I'm not up on the latest and greatest fly rod, for example, but I do know a little about them.  Occasionally I'll meet somebody, however, who brings up fishing, but actually knows nothing at all about their equipment. 

They almost always only use a spinning rod.

Anyhow, I'm sort of that way on backpacks.

Enlisted man in he U.S. Army just before World War Two, wearing denim fatigues in the field so as to not dirty the service uniform.  He's equipped with a M1910 Haversack.

The very first backpack of any kind that I had was a M1910 Haversack, the Army issued backpack introduced in 1910, as the name would indicate.  That piece of equipment, shown fully packed above, was adopted that year and soldiered on into World War Two. 

What a miserable piece of equipment it is.

They were, in my assessment, an awful pack, or at least they had no ability to be used outside of the service.  The reason for my dim opinion of it is probably demonstrated by this video:

The Army must have had a similar opinion as they introduced a new set of backpacks during World War Two, none of which I'm going into, as this isn't a history of military backpacks.

Anyhow, as a kid I obtained a M1910 Haversack.  Without knowing for sure, my recollection is that an uncle of mine had purchased it right after World War Two, probably just as a thing to play with, and I got it from him.  That's a long time ago, and I could be wrong.  Since that time, as an adult, somebody gave me a second, completely unused, M1910 Haversack which was made during the Second World War.

That one remains unused, but the first one I did try to figure out as a boy.  It was pretty much hopeless.

Because I have always been really outdoorsy and wanted camping gear, my parents gave me a backpack of the full blown backwoods type when I was in my very early teens, or nearly a teen.  I don't know if its the correct term or not, but we called that sort of backpack a "frame pack", as they had, at that time, a lightweight aluminum frame.  I no longer have the pack, I think (although I might somewhere) and I feel a little tinge of guilt when I think of it.  My father, though  an outdoorsman, was not a backpacker and he didn't have much to go buy when looking for a pack for me.  And it was the early 1970s when everything was bicentennial themed.  It was a nice lightweight pack, but it had a really prominent flag motif to it  and I found that a little embarrassing.  I'm embarrassed now to admit that.

I did use it, although not anywhere near as much as I had hoped.  In your early teens, you can't drive, and that meant I didn't have that much of an opportunity to go places with it.  The number of years between age 12 and age 16, when you can, are very slight, but at the time they seem endless.  By the time I was 16 it didn't seem that I had much of an opportunity to backpack either.

I'll note here, although I'm taking it out of order, that later on a friend of mine gave me a sued Kelty backpack, which I still have somewhere.  It's like this one:

I have used it, but again, not nearly as much as I'd like, and not recently.

I still have, and will get to that in a moment, the frame from the first frame backpack that I noted in this thread.

The backpack I've carried the longest distances is the LC-1 Field Pack (Medium), or as it is commonly known, the "Alice Pack".

The Alice Pack came into U.S. military use in the late Vietnam War period.  As I haven't researched its history, I'll note that it appears that the Alice Pack was developed from the Tropical Field Rucksack.  The pack it started to replace one that had come in during the 1950s and was really pretty primitive, just being a big pen pouch rucksack about the size of a modern book bag that hooked into a soldiers webgear.

Given the history of Army packs, I guess it isn't too surprising that the Tropical Field Rucksack was regarded as a huge improvement and Alice came along soon thereafter.  I don't remember anyone being hugely fond of Alice Packs, however, when I was in the service.  Having said that, I don't remember anyone being enormously opposed to them either.

The entire time I was in I never saw one being issued with a frame.  Frankly, without a frame, a long march with Alice is a miserable thing.  I've marched as far as 30 miles with one, with no frame, and that didn't cause me to love Alice.

It did cause me to look for another pack, however, and I found a great one in the form of a REI nylon backpack.  

This is the same model of REI backpack that I own.  I'd post a photo of mine, which I still own, but the pack has been appropriated by one of my offspring.

While not a full-blown expedition frame pack, the REI pack is and was great.  It had internal metal stiffens that operate like a frame, and a belt, which makes a big difference.  The side pockets, moreover, are slotted to accommodate skis.  I've used it like crazy.  

As noted in the caption, it's so useful that its been appropriated, probably an a permanent basis, by my son.

At some point while I was at UW, and it may have been when I was in law school, I obtained a "book bag" for the first time.

How everyone carried school books up until at least the 80s.

It's odd to think of, but book bags just weren't a think until then. As I had a lot of books to carry while in law school, it became sort of a necessity as I walked to school and back, probably a distance of about two miles, I needed something to carry them.  I didn't want to buy a book bag dedicated for that purpose, so I bought a surplus German Army rucksack.  It was the same size and nearly the same configuration as the Alice Pack, but without the padded shoulder straps. They were just heavy cotton webbing.  I figured that after my time in lawshool was over, I could repurpose it, which in fact I did. I used it for a game bag, brining home a lot of rabbits with it, but even affixing it to my old frame to haul an elk with.  With hard use like that, it eventually blew out.

Some years ago, a sporting goods store here in town carried some surplus items, including Alice Packs complete with frames.  I bought two.

I wish I'd bought a couple of more.

I wasn't a huge fan of Alice back in the 80s, but with the frame, I am now.  I keep one packed with stuff for big game hunting, and another with stuff for bird hunting.  I've rucked into the mountains with Alice on my back so that if I shot a turkey, I could bring it back without having to carry it via armstrong.  And with the Alice frame, I can take the pack off and use the frame to haul meat, if I don't have equine assistance available.

All of which made me think that I sure wish I'd gotten a couple more of them.

Alice Pack I use for fishing and bird hunting to carry equipment.

Same Alice Pack. This is a later one after the service had adopted the Woodlands Pattern of camouflage.

But that sure isn't a popular opinion.

I have two Alice Packs that I use for outdoor stuff today.  One I use for waterfowl hunting and fishing.  I'll probably start using it for upland birds too.  That's all because, over time, I've found that I'm packing quite a bit of gear around and I need an efficient way to to do it.

This is the first posts I've ever put up on a gear topic.  I'll get into this more later, but basically, what I'm talking about here, is gear I take with me every time I go.  When I'm bird hunting what I take, besides my shotgun and shells, are gmrs radios and a knife.  That's about it unless I"m waterfowl hunting, in which case I often take my waders.  Not a lot of gear, actually.

When I'm big game hunting, however, I take is my gmrs radios, binoculars, some food, water, often some soda (I never take beer hunting, fwiw), game bags, knives, saw, and a come along.  And I need a pack with a frame, in case I have to use the frame to pack something out.  

At one time, I carried my radio gear and some binos in an outdoor bag.  But I still took an Alice.  Now I find myself transferring everything to the Alice as I don't want to carry too many things if I can avoid it.  

So I thought it would be handy to have another one.  I posted something on reddit about it and what I found is that Alice's are hugely unpopular with the outdoor community.

Well, I can see why.  It's not a modern camping backpack. . . but I don't want to drop a couple of elk quarters into my nice backpack.

My good backpack.  It  was a gift from a friend who was concerned that I didn't have a good, modern, backpacking pack.

And frankly, with a frame, I'm finding that old Alice isn't so bad.  

Related threads:

The History of the Backpack

Walking

A Blog Mirror Post: Do it yourself, was "How to Grocery Shop on the Cheap Humility, thy name is Aldi."

 

Rockwell's World War Two era illustration of one of Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, this one being Freedom from want.  This came from a March 6, 1943 Saturday Evening Post illustration although it was completed in November, 1943.  Rockwell was inspired by a Thanksgiving dinner in which he photographed his cook serving the same in November, 1942.  The painting has come to symbolize Thanksgiving dinners.   Interesting, compared to the vast fare that is typically associated with the feast, this table is actually fairly spartan.

This is a really good article on grocery shopping.

How to Grocery Shop on the Cheap

Humility, thy name is Aldi.

I'm going to take this in a slightly different direction, but this blog post is, I'll note, really good.

And I love the kitties featured in the article.

Anyhow, it ought to be obvious to anyone living in the US right now that groceries, that odd word discovered by Donald Trump in his dotage, are pretty expensive.  Less obvious, it seems, is why that is true.  Again, not to overly politicize it, but the common Trump Interregnum explanations are largely complete crap. It's not the case, as seemingly suggested, that Joe Biden runs around raising prices in a wicked plan to destroy the American lifestyle for "hard working Americans". Rather, a bunch of things have contributed to that.

To start with, the COVID 19 pandemic really screwed up the economy, and we're still living with the impact of that.  One of the impacts of that is that certain supply chains somewhat broke and have never been repaired.  Added to that, global climatic conditions are impacting crops in what is now a global food distribution system. Weather has additionally impacted meat prices by impacting the Beef Cattle Heard in the last decade, which has been followed up upon by the visitation of cattle diseases, and poultry diseases, that have reduced head counts. That definitely impacts prices.  The Administration, however, believing that the country exists in the economic 1820s, rather than the 2020s, fiddles with inflation causing tariffs on a weekly basis, which raises prices on everything. And finally the ineptly waged Russian war against Ukraine has impacted grain supplies world wide.  It reminds me of, well. . . :

Then I watched while the Lamb broke open the first of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures cry out in a voice like thunder, “Come forward.”

I looked, and there was a white horse, and its rider had a bow. He was given a crown, and he rode forth victorious to further his victories.

When he broke open the second seal, I heard the second living creature cry out, “Come forward.”

Another horse came out, a red one. Its rider was given power to take peace away from the earth, so that people would slaughter one another. And he was given a huge sword.

When he broke open the third seal, I heard the third living creature cry out, “Come forward.” I looked, and there was a black horse, and its rider held a scale in his hand.

I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures. It said, “A ration of wheat costs a day’s pay, and three rations of barley cost a day’s pay. But do not damage the olive oil or the wine.”

When he broke open the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature cry out, “Come forward.”

I looked, and there was a pale green horse. Its rider was named Death, and Hades accompanied him. They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and plague, and by means of the beasts of the earth.

Not that dire, of course. . . 

Anyhow,  this reminded me of an agrarian topic.  How can you, dear agrarian reader, reduce your grocery bill?

Well, do it yourself, of course.

What do I mean?

Well, grow it and kill it yourself.

Assuming, of course, you can. But most people can.

Now, let me be the first to admit that this is more than a little hypocritical on my part now days. The pressures of work and life caused me to give up my very extensive garden some years ago.  I'd frankly cash in my chips and retire life now, but my spouse insists that this cannot be so. So, in my rapidly increasing dotage, I'm working as hard as ever at my town job.

 

The last garden I put in, 2017.

An Agrarian's Lament indeed.

Anyhow, however, let's consider this.  Many people have the means of putting in a garden, and many have the means to take at least part of their meat consumption in by fishing and hunting.  Beyond that, if you have freezer space, or even if a friend has freezer space, you can buy much, maybe all depending upon where you live, of your meat locally sourced.

Given as this is Thanksgiving, let's take a look at how that would look.

I'll start off with first noting that there's actually more variety in Thanksgiving meals than supposed, as well as less. This time of year in fact, you'll tend to find all sort of weird articles by various people eschewing the traditional turkey dinner in favor of something else, mostly just in an effort to be self serving different.  And then you have the weirdness of something like this:

I suppose that's an effort by our Vice President to be amusing, something he genuinely is not, but frankly, I do like turkey.  I like it a lot.  A lot of people do.  Vance, of course, lives in a house where his wife is a vegetarian for religious reasons, so turkey may not appear there.

Anyhow, what is the traditional Thanksgiving meal?  Most of us have to look back on our own families in order to really determine that.

When I was growing up, we always had Thanksgiving Dinner at one of my uncle's houses.  My father and his only brother were very close, and we went there for Thanksgiving, and they came to our house for Christmas evening dinner.  Both dinners were evening dinners.  We probably went over to my aunt and uncle's house about  4:00 p.m. and came home after 9:00 p.m., but I'll also note that this is now a long time ago and my memory may be off.  This tradition lasted until the year after my father passed away, but even at that, that's now over 30 years ago.

Dinner at my aunt and uncles generally went like this.  

Before dinner it was likely that football was turned on the television, which is a big unfortunate American tradition.  My father and uncle would likely have a couple of beers.  My father hardly drank at all, so this was relatively unusual.  My mother would generally not drink beer and interestingly it was largely a male drink.¹   I don't think I saw women really drink beer until I was in college.²  Anyhow, at dinner there's be some sort of white wine, although I can barely recall it.  Nobody in the family was a wine connoisseur, so there's no way I could remotely give an indication on what it was, except that one of my cousins, when he was old enough to drink, really liked Asti Spumante, which I bet I haven't had in over a decade.³ Dinner itself would be a large roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, bread, salad, and a marshmallow yam dish.  Dinner rolls would also be present.

Desert was pumpkin pie.

Pretty common fare, and frankly, very good fare, for Thanksgiving.

After my father died, Thanksgiving dinner was briefly up to me for a time, as my mother was too ill by that stage in her life to deal with cooking much.⁴ In light of tradition, I'd probably cook a smaller turkey, although if I had wild waterfowl I'd shot, I'd go with that.  Otherwise, mashed potatoes and yams.  To drink, for me, probably beer.

After I started dating my wife, Thanksgiving was at her folk's place.  My mother in law is an excellent cook, and my wife is as well.  Unlike J. D. Vance, I'm not afflicted with vegetarian relatives, and indeed, as my wife is from a ranch family, all dinners very much show that.

On the ranch, Thanksgiving is a noon meal. So is Christmas dinner.  Noon meals are generally odd for me, as I don't usually eat lunch, but that reflects a pretty strong agricultural tradition.  Big meals are often at noon.  Meals associated with big events, such as brandings, always are. So it makes sense.

Thanksgiving there shares a common feature with the ones that were at my aunts and uncles, in that usually somebody offers everyone a drink before dinner, while people are chatting.  Unlike my aunts and uncles, however, somebody will usually offer people some sort of whiskey.

Their Thanksgiving Dinner has a very broad fare.  There's a large roasted turkey, but there's also a brisket.  Both are excellent and everyone has some of both.  There's salad, mashed potatoes and two different types of stuffing, as some of us likey oyster stuffing, and others do not.  Cranberry sauce is handmade by one of my brothers in law, who is an excellent cook.  There are other dishes as well, and there's a variety of desserts.  Homemade dinner rolls are served as well.

So, that leads to this.  If I were cooking a Thanksgiving Day dinner, what would it be.

It's be simple compared to what I've noted for the simple reason that I'm simplistic in my approach to dinner in general.  I had a long period as a bachelor before being married, and I know how to cook, but my cooking reflects that bachelorhood in some ways.

The main entre would be a turkey, or perhaps a goose, which I'll explain below.

Two types of stuffing, for the reasons explained above.

Salad.

Mashed potatoes (but with no gravy, for reasons I'll explain below).

Bread.

Yams.

Pumpkin pie and mincemeat pie.

To drink, I'd probably have beer and some sort of wine.  I'd have whiskey available before dinner.

Okay, if that doesn't meet the Walmart definition of a Thanksgiving dinner, that's because nobody should buy things at Walmart. . . ever.

So, in applying my localist/killetarian suggestions, how much of this could I acquire while avoiding a store entirely?

Almost all of it.

Starting with the meat, I always hunt turkeys each year, but I don't always get one.  If I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner, however, I'd put a more dedicated effort into it.  Turkey hunting for me is sort of opportunistic, and given that I do it in the spring its mostly a chance to try to get a turkey while getting out, usually with the dog (although poor dog died in an automobile accident earlier this year, he only every got to go out for turkeys).  If I put in more hours, which I should, I'd get one.

If I can't get one, however, by this time of year I definitely can get a goose.

Which, by way of a diversion, brings up J. D. Vance's stupid ass comment above.  If your turkey is dry, that's because you cooked it wrong.  And if wild turkey is dry, that's because the cook tried to cook it like some massive obese Butterball.

Tastewise and texture wise, there's no difference whatsoever between a wild and domestic turkey.  People who say there are say that because one of them, if not both of them, were cooked incorrectly.

Which is true of goose as well. Goose tastes very much like roast beef, unless the cook was afraid of the goose and cooked it like it was something else and ruined it.

Anyhow. . . I can provide the bird myself

So too with the vegetables, mostly.  When I grew a garden, I produced lettuce onions and potatoes.  One year I grew brussels sprouts.  Of these, only the lettuce either doesn't keep on its own or can't be frozen in some fashion.  I  could grow yams, I'm quite confident, even though I never did.

Now, on bread, I can bake my own bread and have, but I can't source the ingredients.  So those I'd have to buy.   I could likely figure out how to make my own stuffing, but I probably wouldn't bother to do so, unless I wanted to have oyster stuffing.  I would have to buy the oysters.

I'll note here that I wouldn't make gravy, as I really don't like it.  My mother in laws gravy is the only gravy that I like.   Otherwise, there's no excuse for gravy. I put butter on mashed potatoes, and I always have.

But I buy the butter.

I'd have to buy marshmallows for the yams too.

That leaves something to drink.  I know that some people will distill their own whiskey as a hobby, but I'm not about to try that, and I"ve never brewed beer.  If I ever lived solely on what I produce myself, mostly, I'd take it up.  I clearly don't have the time to do that now.

Dessert?

I'm fairly good at making pies.  I like pumpkin pie, but I've never grown pumpkins.  I could give that a shot, but I'd still have to buy most of the constituents.  My grandmother (father's mother) used to make mincemeat pies, but I've never attempted that.  The real ingredients for mincemeat pies freak people out, I"d note, those being, according to one granola website I hit and may link in, the following:

Old-Fashioned Mincemeat Pie Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 lb beef (I used ground beef from grass-fed cows) *

¾ teaspoon salt (I like using Real Salt)

1 ½ lbs apple, peeled and chopped (about 3 cups)

⅓ cup suet or tallow or coconut oil, or butter or coconut oil *

¾ cup apple cider

1 Tbs ground mace (or ½ Tbs nutmeg if you don't have mace)

½ Tbs cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

8 Tbs (½) cup raisins (or 1 full cup if not using currants too). I like to use organic raisins when possible

8 Tbs (½ cup) dried currants (or substitute raisins if you choose)

3 Tbs chopped candied citron pieces (optional)

Which brings up a lot of stuff I'd have to buy.  Everything but for the beef, as I too have beef from grass fed cows that I knew personally.

All in all, pretty doable.

Cheaper?  

Well, if you are an efficient agrarian/killetarian, yes.  

Footnotes:

1.  My father normally only bought beer during the middle of the summer, and sometimes to take on a fishing expedition if somebody was going along.  Otherwise, it just didn't appear in your house.  The only whiskey ever bought was Canadian Whiskey, and a bottle of it would last forever. We often didn't have it at all. . . indeed, normally we did not.  He only bought it when I was very young, if we were having guests.  

This is interesting as in this era offering a drink to guests was very common.  A different aunt and uncle liked Scotch and would offer it to guests, but my father hated Scotch.  

When I was young, my parents would occasionally buy wine, but it was almost always Mogan David.  Clearly were were not wine connoisseurs. 

2. This probably seems odd, but it's true.  I saw women drink beer so rarely that it was a shock when I was a kid to see a woman drinking a beer. They just normally didn't.

Indeed, by the time I was a teenager a girl drinking a beer sort of made her a "bad girl", but not in the Good Girls Don't sense.  Rather, that was in the rowdy party girl sense.  Or so we thought. We knew this, but we really didn't know any beer drinking girls as teenagers.

In college things were different, but the reputation that college students have for partying didn't really match the reality, at least for geology students.  As an undergraduate in community college we might very occasionally go out for a beer, and that was almost always the collection of us who had graduated from high school together when everyone was home.  For part of the last year of community college I had a girlfriend and I can remember being in a bar with her exactly once, when she was trying to introduce another National Guardsman to her sister.  Otherwise, that relationship was unconsciously completely dry.

At UW as an undergrad most of my friends were geology students, like me, and the discipline was so hard there really wasn't any partying.  Sometimes a group of guys would go out for a beer, but that was about it.  Early on I recall there being a party of geology students who had all gone to community college together in the freezing apartment that one of us had.  There were some beers, but generally, we just froze.  A girlfriend who was also in the department and I went to a Christmas party the year I graduated, which was a big department affair and there was beer there, but that's about it.

In law school the story wasn't much different, frankly.  Indeed, it wasn't until I got out of law school, and started practicing law, that I encountered people who really drank heavily.

3.  To be honest, as a person always should be, when my mother's illness began to advance dramatically, she began to drink heavily.  It was a problem that my father and I had to deal with.  The oddity of it was that she had never done that when she was well.  

As an added element of that, when she was well she took a wine making class. The wine she made was absolutely awful and she was the only one who would drink it, but because it was so bad, she'd fortify it with vodka to make it tolerable. That acclimated her to drinking.  She gave it up completely as she began to recover just before my father died.

4.  While she recovered a great deal, she never fully recovered. She was also an absolutely awful cook.  As my father's health declined in the last year of his life, I took over cooking from him.

Saturday, November 17, 1945. Charles De Gaulle says Non to the Communists.

Charles de Gaulle made a broadcast to the people of France announcing that he rejecting the position of president of FRance due to the "excessive demands regarding ministerial posts."  He further announced that he would continue serving but would refuse to appoint any  Communist to "any post related to foreign affairs."

Communist had done extremely well in the recent election and were a major component of the coalition government, taking more votes that any other party.  The French Section of the Workers International, a French Socialist Party, had done very well also, coming in third.  Coming in just behind the Communists, however, was the Catholic Popular Republican Movement. All three parties were in coalition that dates back to the election, with the coalition having De Gaulle's support at the time.

France was, quite frankly, on the very verge of becoming a Communist state, given the strong left wing turnout in the election.  If it had, it would have been a disaster of epic proportions for the West.  Most people looking at it objectively would have supposed that France would fall to the Communist.

This helps put in context, to a certain extent, the degree to which French military and political figures were proactive in trying to reestablish French colonialism, which was cast, with some credibility, as a war between Western ideals and Communism, although only imperfectly so. That France didn't go into a civil war is in no small part due to DeGaulle.  DeGaulle would whether the leftist Third Republic, after which France would pull back from the brink. Still, having said that, why France fought it out in Indochina, and Algeria, makes a lot more sense if that history is grasped.

Josef Kramer, Irma Grese, Dr. Fritz Klein and eight others were sentenced to death by a British military court as Nazi war criminals for their roles in the concentration camps.  

Kramer had come up in the concentration camp system, having been in the SS prior to World War Two.He was the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen Belsen.

Grese was 22 years old making her the youngest person to die under British law in the 20th Century. She'd joined the  Bund Deutscher Mädel in 1937 at age 13, causing a rift with her father who did not approve of the Nazi Party. She left home at age 14 and entered the SS at age 18, having already worked for Karl Gelbardt by that time.  In the camps she gained responsibility and became incredibly sadistic as well as extremely perverted perverted sadistic bisexual who had affairs with imprisoned Jewish women, and who is rumored to have a had one with Josef Kramer, until he learned of that. She was a sadist, and clearly an extremely tortured soul mentally. 

Regarding her, inmate Auschwitz Romanian Jewish gynecologist Gisella Perl stated:

She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her body was perfect in every line, her face clear and angelic and her blue eyes the gayest, the most innocent eyes one can imagine. And yet, Irma Greze was the most depraved, cruel, imaginative sexual pervert I ever came across.

Perl relocated to Israel after the war with her daughter, whom she hid from the Naizs, and died there on December 16, 1988, at the age of 81

Kramer and Grese, August 8, 1945.

Frankly, a lot of Nazism was an absolute perversion.

News of Grese's death sentence hit the front pages in the United States. The Sheridan newspaper used one of her two common nicknames, the Beast of Belsen (the Hyena of Belsen was the other), its story on her.

The ongoing investigation on Pearl Harbor also made the front news, as did the French political scene.

A selection of Saturday cartoons from the paper:

The Saturday Evening Post ran a cover with a hunting and puppy theme.

This would be subject to copyright, but we run it here under the fair use exception to note how common hunting themes were at the time.

Last edition:

Friday, November 16, 1945. UNESCO founded. USS Laramie decommissioned.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, boats and ships, Dwight Eisenhower, Iran, Scientific and Cultural Organization, The Cold War, United Nations, United Nations Educational, USSR