Johnsfolly

JohnP - love the photos particularly the yella dog! Congrats on a successful hunt!

From the discussions that I had with Sean (the guy up in Maryland), he told me that the hand reared birds tend to be more aggressive to the handler. It seems that if they imprint on humans then they believe the human being to be another bird. Raptors are very aggressive to each other particularly if their is a kill involved. I believe that most falconers often only hold a bird for a few seasons and then release them back into the wild.

Congrats on a good day on the water! Good luck on the next trip.

I agree that there is a decent selection of Zigjigs at the old Harps on business 62 in Mountain Home. Also the gas and convenience store at the Rt 5 and Rt 177 intersection heading to Norfork Dam in Salesville does sell them as well. Good luck☺!

That's awesome. Ever since I read "My side of the Mountain" I have been fascinated by falconry. Over the years found that it is a lot more work than I am willing to do (so far). One of the guys at our Maryland facility is a falconer and he just caught a female peregrine this November and is currently working with her. I hope that I can see her hunt sometime. I only know one guy in Missouri that is a falconer. He was in Columbia for work a couple of years ago, I thought that he was now living out near St Louis. Was the guy you were hunting with named Larry?

Congrats on a nice cooler of crappie!

BH we never had those types of battles. I did build a lot of warship and airplane models when I was a teen. After about 6 to 9 months I would get bored or want to build a new one, but didn't have a place to display the new one. So I would load up an old model with sterno or firecrackers. If it was a boat, I would light it up and drift the boat out onto a local pond and watch it burn and then get blown to bits. Airplanes would get a similar treatment, except that I would string them up and "fly" them before they would blow up. We also would fill nylon stocking eggs with sterno and CO2 cartridges. They would burn, blow up, and put out the fire with the CO2. A lot of fun at the time, but likely an environmental hazard.

I use the adhesive chemical toe warmers and place them on my hips above my femoral arteries. That keeps my legs warm. Since I do most of my winter fishing while wading, I do stay heated while fishing. I typically don't wear gloves, but a couple of hand warmers in my coat pockets are used just to get them warmed up again.

Congrats Mitch on a personal best spotted bass! That is a pig!

Dan- it's still a walleye even though it's not that much bigger than your spoon.

It may look like bacon, but does not smell like it. Don't think that I could stand a bacon scented orchid. I would be drooling on myself all of the time while it was blooming. Fortunately this is a flower that gives off it's scent in the evening/night. Might get overpowering if it gave of its scent all day and night.

I am sitting watching television and periodically get wafts of the perfume from one of our blooming orchids. This one is a chocolate scented Oncidium or a dancing lady variety orchid. Not a commonly found orchid here in Missouri, but I picked this one up locally about a year ago. The scent is reminiscent of chocolate.

Keeping up with the wild game theme, I made a modified version of beef and broccoli using venison. I thinly sliced some venison steak meat, added It to a bowl along with about two tablespoons of sambal chili sauce, two tablespoons of cornstarch, some powdered ginger, and enough soy sauce to wet and coat the meat. I let the meat sit while I sliced the broccoli, yellow onion, and about a cup and a half of sugar peas (halved) and minced garlic. I mixed two tablespoons of cornstarch with two thirds cup of soy sauce and a third cup of beef stock. I cooked the meat over high heat. Once browned, I removed the meat to a plate and added a bit more oil and the remaining goose fat from the fridge then began cooking the broccoli. Once the broccoli cooked a bit, I added the peas, followed by the onion and minced garlic. Once the onions were translucent, I added the meat back in to the pan. Added ground pepper and a little Chinese five spice then the soy sauce/stock/corn starch mixture. Cooked everything until the sauce thickened and served with white rice cooked with a little beef stock and some powdered ginger.

Another awesome winter smallie from the Meramec! Congrats HW and to your best friend! that is a beast!

Now I got a preview of this meal but kept thinking that the Landry boys had visited Billetheadville and brought some gator and crawfish for the sauce piquante☺! Sounds like venison worked as well. Still would love to hear "Choot em Marty! Choot em!"

Looks like a great trip! Congrats on catching some nice stripers!

I know a spot or two that I had a trout surprise. Like you, I think about and want find out how they got there. Glad to hear that there are more such places where there are naturalized trout. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to find one or wo more. They tend to be fiesty fighters ☺ and that makes finding them special.

I will let my Betterhalf know where I will be hunting or fishing "most" of the time. On hunting trips it is all the time and only about 80% of my fishing trips. As Wrench mentioned, my Betterhalf may have never been fishing these spots with me. Since I wade fish most of the time, if they know the access should be able to find me with two people.

Congrats Dan! Glad that you were getting fish in the boat! Also great that you got to spend time with a good friend.

Everyone on OAF knows about that guy ☺!

I have a friend that he and his family will shoot squirrels out the windows with their bows. I wonder what the neighbors would think as they see the squirrels in the yard and then an arrow comes out of the window and sticks them to the ground.

That's a beautiful fish!

Thanks Chief. I should have thrown out that question to the larger audience.

Does anyone on this thread know if smallmouth bass are more susceptible than spotted bass to intersex development (development of both testicular and ovarian tissues within the same gonad; also know as ovatestis) due to endocrine active substances or endocrine disruptive compounds (EDC's)? I have not done a whole lot of research and the only thing that I could quickly find was this statement in a recent study in Maryland by the US Fish and Wildlife. These statements seem to suggest that their may be potential differences between smallmouth and largemouth in terms of their susceptibility for male fish to develop intersexuality. "The Results We found female germ cells (oocytes) in the testes of 82% to 100% of the male smallmouth bass and in 23% of the males from the single largemouth bass collection near the Blue Plains Wastewater Plant in Washington, DC. The baseline prevalence of testicular oocytes in male smallmouth is uncertain but may be in the range of 14% to 22%; baseline for male largemouth may be closer to 0%." With spotted and smallmouth bass considered by taxonomists to be more closely related to each other than in comparison to the largemouth wasn't sure if anything is really know about whether the two species respond differently to the presence of EDC's in the environment. It is likely for EDC's to increase due to urbanization (i.e., introduction of herbicides, pesticides, birth control hormones, etc.). Al - what is the differences in growth rate or better yet maturation rate between smallmouth and spotted bass. One could theorize that if smallmouth reach sexual maturity at a later age, then they would be more likely to be affected by EDC's due to the length of their exposure. The higher incidence of intersex in the population will likely cause a decline in viable reproduction.

What ratio do you prefer? When I make sausage I prefer to use 25% fatty pork to 75% venison. For straight up burger, I use 15% ground beef fat to 85% venison.