tjm

So do you just buy a half gallon at a time, or do you pour out the excess? where? There are weeks when my car doesn't use over a gallon or two of gas, so what should I do with all that is left over that week because I was stupid and bought a tankful? As far as additives being detrimental, I'd have to guess that must depend on the exact additive in question, because all pump gas gets a dose of additives before it comes out of the hose.

No, because once you set it you can go do interesting things. Unless you can teach me how to take them regularly on a fly?

I would have guessed Trotline.

The easy way might be to drop the lake level to the point that trucks and heavy equipment could work on it. Think what another 6" rain in Ks. would do with it ... And in comparison to the bridge span that looks longer than a mere 600' to me

I said I thought Feds would get involved because to me it looks like a hazard to transportation, it's pushing on that US Highway bridge in a direction that it's not designed for just like the container ship that took out that other bridge. I have no idea how much force is involved but it would be something like the speed of the current times the weight of the log jam. And it has the potential to move itself on down to the railroad bridge. GRDA doesn't own the bridges and from their viewpoint the log raft is posing no problem. Not a problem for me either, but it is interesting. Think that would be safe to do in the 10-50(?) mph current? The lower end is holding all of that, so would be like taking out a key that turns the rest loose to run down stream after the engineers? Toward the trestle.

Wonder what the twisted under currents caused by that are doing to the bridge foundations? No surprise that none of the agencies want to be first to say "we'll fix it". The key log that caught all that must be under enormous pressure and must be exerting pressure on the bridge structure as well. Large removal job and the cost won't be small, does Kansas pay? it's their debris and their rainwater. I'm guessing that the Feds get involved in the funding as a disaster?

Had quite a number of liberties in Palma in 1971-'73, but I don't recall noticing the ducks.

Praise the Lord!!! I can still get out.

Decades of watching my farm and roads erode. I can pretty much guess which roads will be passable by looking in a bucket left in the yard. Plow three days after a 10" rain and turn up dry dirt because it ran off.

Well that explains a lot, there never has been hook size standard except within a brand; but most are of somewhat similar size for a given number, although I think most modern hooks are much larger in the smaller dry fly sizes than they were 50 years ago. But then I have lot of #12 1/80oz jigs (unknown make) that I bought years ago that are just about the size of my #14 Mustad 94800. Kinda crazy. I've wondered many time how those "Hackle Gauges" are sized, what brand and model hook they fit?

that surprised me I would have guessed #8 or larger.

Anything more than about 2" will just run off anyway without wetting the dirt and if the 2" comes down hard and fast most of it will just run off. Run off might fill the ponds but it won't refill the karst that keeps the streams flowing. One week after a torrential food and the hills will be in drought again. #becarefulwhatyouwishfor

So far no one has reported prion disease in chickens or pigs, but after 3 months of working the loading dock at a chicken plant back in '68 it was 7 or 8 years before I could eat store bought chicken, no matter how good the gravy.

It works with beef or pasta too, gravy is the key to good food.

use more gravy

Actually I can't. I kinda expect to be in a testing zone this year. I haven't a clue whether I'll hunt or not. The few pounds of good meat on deer are pretty costly in effort for a fat lazy fellow and I may just opt to buy chicken. Given the proximity of last year's positives, I suppose my herd should be considered as infected and so I will consider each one as having tested positive. For how can we assume that any deer taken from a known infected herd is not infected regardless of testing, when it's known that some false negatives happen? I haven't had the opportunity to actually make such a decision. No one can say what they would do in a circumstance that they haven't already been in. Although if I refused to eat one based on the current knowledge, it would be hypocritical wouldn't it?

Still don't get it? I encourage testing even in herds where CWD hasn't shown up yet, after all it is the only method we have of tracking the spread of this disease. Because of cost the agencies probably won't test until a fatal case is confirmed as CWD, but they should. I think mandatory testing should be state wide and that a facility should be provided for poachers to have their deer tested too. It's our best attempt at tracking and possible control. I'm just saying that the test is not meant to confirm the meat fit or unfit to eat. Science will say that until a connection between CWD and a confirmed case of vCJD (not CJD) happens the meat is all equally fit or unfit for consumption. So far that has never happened. But I understand that it's just science. For all forms of CJD an EU study showed "that "87% of cases were sporadic, 8% genetic, 5% iatrogenic and less than 1% variant." (iatrogenic means a friendly doctor infected people with contaminated instruments) The 1% variant is the kind we are concerned with, that lot that was from a zoonotic source; so far all from cows with BSE.

Nope I can see that you don't get anything that I've said and that's okay. More bluntly; if you have any concerns don't hunt- because as soon as you touch that animal you are at risk. Your gutting knife is contaminated and must be soaked in lye or autoclaved before you use it again. Your clothing should be treated with lye and then incinerated. This is serous stuff,if you actually believe. On the other hand if you deliberately hunt in a diseased herd, you proclaim that you don't really believe at all and you ain't a bit scared, so why be the hypocrite and refuse to eat what you sought? Seriously, if you hunt diseased animals you must expect to kill diseased animals even if one of them has a negative test result. I don't get why people act like a test after exposure is going to reverse their already done exposure and contamination.

The point that I have been trying to make is that the test makes no difference. There are likely as many false negatives as there are positives. I consider that all deer in an infected area are in fact infected. There is absolutely no reason not to test, but I do think there is any real reason to test other than the authorities tracking spread of the disease. I have not deliberately hunted in a diseased herd and probably won't. I don't feel compelled to eat deer over any other meat to the extent that I care greatly. I have and will kill and eat deer more or less casually, there are dozens on our land, but I won't make any special effort to hunt in diseased area.

I read that as "only soft plastic (unscented) baits (and) (only) natural baits (and) (only) scented baits are permitted. All flies are prohibited (even if natural bait or scent has been added) and (other) artificial lures are prohibited, even if natural bait or scent has been added. I think the idea is to give wormers a (safe) place of their own similar to the prohibition of bait in the "fly only" areas. I think both regulations are ridiculous, as if either group is contagious and needs to quarantined. But by my reading of the rules the area is reserved for just such stuff as Power Bait with all its scent. However if you want the correct answer ask MDC. https://mdc.mo.gov/contact-us

There are also methods of soaking in lye for an hour or two (depending solution) and then heating to ~300F for an hour or more. Not sure how testing is done now, but several years ago I was told they take a piece of spinal cord or brain stem. When you consider that body fluids are how the disease is transmitted within a herd, it might make you leery of touching the head (snot, saliva) or disemboweling them. What about a head shot that scatters brain tissue or a shot through the spine? Or the common gut shot? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/02/21/zombie-deer-disease-what-happened-people-ate-cwd-meat/2926840002/ The follow up study-https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25225155/

But you have already been exposed before testing can take place. Sure testing doesn't hurt, but does it have any value? If you or anyone was truly concerned about CWD being zoonotic you or they would not hunt deer nor handle deer antlers nor use deer hair flies or bucktail jigs. Think how all those state employees are endangering their lives by actually cutting the spinal cord and and collecting the material for the tests. If they had the least concern they would not touch those deer, you'd be doing your own testing.

Did he keep any part of it? What did the authorities there suggest or require he do with the carcass and antlers? Did they attempt to contain or clean the dirt where he left the gut pile? I ask because they have proven the prions can't be easily destroyed and it occurs to me that if the prions are in saliva, mucus, urine, stool etc., that they must also be in the antlers and other body parts? Once you touch any part of a diseased animal there has to be at least a possibility that your hands are contaminated and so will be the next cheeseburger you eat. I think it's been five or six years since I really looked into the causes, transmission, theories, and facts of these diseases; but even then the possibility of becoming infected from so many sources other than eating deer brains was enormous and the proof that even eating raw infected deer brains could infect us was non-existant. I have come to think of testing and culling as CYA action on the part of game agencies; they can always say "we tried" "we did the best we could with the tools we have" even if they know it's all wasted. Those gut piles become a reservoir of future infestation and if any vulture or coyote eats a part of them the prions from that deer can be deposited many miles away from the carcass site. It's easy to speculate that perhaps many deer become carriers and never show symptoms. It would go far in explaining why traffickers in captive cervids transported diseased animals all over the country introducing the disease into valuable antler producing herds in every state and province. (back when CWD was first becoming a concern and for as long as I followed it's spread, every new incidence of it in a state that had never had any before seemed to be in captive herds or very near (just over the fence) captive herds, so it's easy to conclude a connection; but that too is speculation)

Oh I'm sure that CWD as we know it is a new expression of prion disease, almost certainly was the result of confining deer with sheep back in the mid '60s. Sheep and goats are Old World domestic animals and Scrapie an Old World disease as is the genetic/familial form of CJD. CWD was also almost certainly spread by moving (perhaps illegally) confined cervids from state to state for the purpose of farming antlers. But that's all in the past and we are beyond any stopping of the spread of it. Sporadic, as used in the hunter incidents indicate that to the experts there is no clear link between the deer and the CJD, the form of CJD from an animal is ‘variant CJD,’. A few years ago (a report ca 2015 and another case back in Aug 1997) there was some speculation that a patient had contracted CJD from eating squirrel brains, but as far as I am aware no squirrels have as yet been discovered with prion disease. If prions remain indefinitely in the earth, and have been shown to be taken up in some plants, what is to keep us from contracting prion disease from eating vegetables? Perhaps the 87% of all CJD cases that are listed as "sporadic" all have their origins in carrots or broccoli? At this time any connection between CJD and any animal other than cows with BSE is at best speculative. Magazines like Field and Stream or Popular Mechanics (reported the squirrel case) publish these things simply to sell their product, on the internet these articles would be "click bait". As top predators though we must have been designed to eat animals and logically are more apt too prion infection from vegetables, eh? No more lettuce for me.

I tried multiple crawdad patterns back when I subscribed to 6 or 10 fly tying/fishing magazines and they each had a few crawdad patterns each year, very little success so I bought a few that looked especially nice and still no luck; I've done best in crawdad water with either conehead Woolly Buggers or Calcasieu Pig Boats fished kinda like jigs. This one interests me because none of the ones I tried in the past were on a jig hook and none used the pine squirrel strips. It might be interesting to add some silicon feelers at the bend.