What is it with yellow pine?

[Dave Balderstone]

See

;-)

djb

[George E. Cawthon]

Umm... did you note the sarcasm? Keep the ducks, I take a nice T-Bone of bovine or second choice of grain fed elk.

[Silvan]

:)

[Dave Balderstone]

The fun thing is that biillboard's in Greenville South Carolina, and not Saskatoon Saskatchewan.

:-D

djb (in Saskatoon Saskatchewan)

[fredfighter]

Ok, that makes sense. It's not clear why that makes the wood less stable so long as the grain runs vertically up and down the trunk instead of spirally around like curly maple. In fact, I hadn't known that about yellow pine.

Folklore abounds in the woods, just like anywhere else so it wasn't clear if you knew what you were writing about (which clearly you did) or had an _interesting_ notion about how trees grow.

[Charlie Self]

Dave Hall responds:

And Canada geese. One local town--Saltville, I want to say--tried to enact an ordnance allowing consecutive Saturday shotgun hunting of the damned things, but the animal lovers won again. They are lovely birds, but when you get mulstiple thousands flocking to one small town to feed and nest, it does get messy.

Deer are a problem throughout the parts of Virginia that don't border on Bullshit City (DC, for those not in the know). That's most of the parts. I don't know what the figures are, but I do know I'd get at least 10,000 more miles per set of tires if we had the same number now as we had 30 years.

I recall years ago having to come to a stop for a flock of wild turkeys: my mother, a native Virginian, was with me, and told me that they'd been almost extinct within the state when she left home for nursing school in '28. But in '88, the flocks on back roads were large enough to stop traffic--not that there was, or is, much to stop.

Charlie Self "They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program." George W. Bush, St. Charles, Missouri, November 2,

2000

[G.E.R.R.Y.]

Isn't PETA "People Eating Tasty Animals"?

Gerry

[J. Clarke]

Don't know what the current situation is but back 20 years or so when I was taking some classes at UCONN, there was a pretty little pond on the campus that had a resident flock of geese. The vicinity looked like the dog population of midtown Manhattan had been using it for a dog-walk, and the geese were known to chase students. The consensus was that there should be one big goose dinner for the student body, but the animal-rights twits and the Bambi Appreciation Society and the rest of the Politically Active Banana-Brains held rallies and raised consciousness and great clouds of Marijuana smoke every time it was proposed so nothing ever got done. I hope sanity won, but suspect that either (a) the geese are still there, or (b) they were captured and transported at great expense to some other locale, probably a reservoir, from which they no doubt promptly flew back.

[Jaime]

That is how I think of it. Meat is a good thing.

Barbequed meat is even better. :-)

[Silvan]

You can say that again. They're scary critters. I must see an average of five dead ones on every trip. At least. I don't envy the people who hit them, or the people who have to clean up their bloated carcasses either.

The way I hear it, trees were almost extinct in the state in '28 too. They seem to have bounced back pretty well also.

[Silvan]

Now that you mention it, I've seen ads for that place. I don't think I have seen that particular billboard, but I'll watch for it. (I travel through Greenville regularly.)

[Silvan]

Damn right it is! Pass the cow.

[d.kessell]

David

think we owe the animals we kill and eat more respect and decency than they get on those industrial feed and slaughter operations.

As to the explosion of deer and geese populations, widely noted across the U.S., I would put money on it being a result of the loss of other species less adaptable to human-dominated environments. In other words, we have more deer/geese because we have fewer of any number of other critters that used to live in the same locale, eating the same things, but less able to survive close to people. This does not bode well for the future--it means the overall livability of our world is in decline.

Hunting more of these animals is not the answer--in Missouri the kills during deer season have risen steadily for years, but we still have "too many" (read this as "too many, too close to too many people"). The answer has more to do with other factors--urban sprawl, road construction, pressure on habitat of less adaptable species. Think of deer (geese/squirrel/oppossum/raccoon) "over-population" as a symptom--in a truely healthy environment they would be kept in check by competition; in an environment evermore skewed toward urban/industrial humans (you 'n' me) they are a kind of pre-cancerous growth--the "canary-in-the-mine".

This probably has something to do with woodworking, and with my op about yp, but I'm too tired to find it now .

Dan

[George]

You would lose your money.

Bag the environmentalist cant (rant?) and think. Other than ungulates, what is there that can eat grass for a living? It's the neighborhood that counts. Where chow is abundant, the population expands to consume it. Same-o 'coons, geese and such. Until they reach the carrying capacity of the neighborhood, that is. Then they have to move or starve. Same thing for those predators the folks who preach more "humane" killing of livestock keep talking about. They'll expand to the chow available, when available, then move or crash.

To return, somewhat, to woodworking, one way of reducing the deer population is to allow climax forest to predominate. It's poor deer forage, which is why it can grow past their predations. Yes, he said "predations," because to a clump of brome an encounter with a deer can be a deadly experience. Other ways in current vogue are to allow the population to thin itself by disease - CWD, brainworm in moose, and so forth. Disease is rarely a problem in a small population - paths of infection make it difficult to build an epidemic, especially when the infectious agent which preys (there, he said it again) on the target causes death of the host before it can find another victim.

Your canary is singing the wrong song. He should sing a song of plenty, not of lack.

Oh yes, in spite of overpopulation, we still have only limited doe hunting here. Kill a buck - reduces the population by one. Kill a doe, usually by three. We could use some doe liberation.

[Duane Bozarth]

[e-mail] wrote: ...

...

Are you willing to pay higher prices for it is the key question...or buy from US producers who do over cheaper importers who don't? The answer to those questions has always been "yes" on the tongue, "no" from the pocketbook... :(

[mel]

[jaime]

Most of the animals we kill and eat would not exist if it were not for agricultural practises period!

Humans were a hunter-gatherer society to begin with until agricultural practises came along.

[Scott Lurndal]

Can you articulate why you think this way? On what basis have you come to this conclusion?

Ah. 4-legs good, 2-legs bad.

scott

[Dave Hall]

Yeah, that's the one I belong to.

Dave Hall

[no spam]

We need open season on eco-kooks!