zander

Evidently there are confirmed sightings of Russian boar and wild hogs around Chadwick in the Mark Twain National Forest. Here's the link: http://www.ky3.com/news/local/61293217.html I can remember sitting on pipelines in college popping pigs to have food to eat after I ran out of money on my meal card down in Louisiana. In these tough times, this may not be a bad idea. If I had more time, I'd be out there until I got the freezer full. Free chitlins.

From what we can see with our eyes only, then there is not anything (other than size) that would give this away as being a triploid rainbow trout.

I am not familiar with which ferns can go from diploid to triploid and that would make a new species All plants (at least at some point) go through alternation of generations where one generation is haploid and the next diploid. Remember though that in some stages of oogenesis the cell is actually 4n for a period of time, so I doubt that would make a new species I know you are talking somatic cells but still. The difference between saugeye and the triploid rainbow is a matter of hybrid vs triploid, I feel they are two different things even though the usual result of this pairing or condition is sterility.

Right. It looks as if I should have typed "could not" but didn't. But I am glad that inspite of me not typing what I meant to, you still got what I was aiming for.

I think part of the reason they may be taking this stance is because then they would have their record keeping thrown into disarray. Records entered before the fish could be sampled for ploidy levels would be under a different degree of examination then fish caught after, then you have the fact that a lot of people think there can only be 1 world record for any species and line class. This is not based on science it is based on sport. It might have been more agreeable if they were able to include this from the beginning, but it would be changing the rules and criteria mid-stream (or is it mid-lake?)

Being a biologist, I can tell you that speciation (the act of one new species forming from a subset of an ancestral species) is a continuum and can not be sliced and diced into neat little organized pieces. Is it a species or a subspecies, blah blah blah.... Sometimes it is easy to tell yes these are two different species and other times it may be quite a bit harder. Ploidy levels are something that CAN be put into nice little pieces. Haploid (gametes), diploid (natural state of most animals), and triploid (engineered organism or natural for some tissues in plants). Ploidy simply refers to the number of chromosomes present (n) where we all have diploid or 2n. I think it (the record) needs an asterisk.

I heard that if you rub stink bait on them you won't be bothered by the itching anymore and your family won't bother you anymore either. Seriously I don't know of any cure for chiggers other than time. Wish I did too though.

Are you allowed to use dogs to track dead deer like that in Missouri?

I think that those bacteria can move freely anyway from tick to host, but I'm sure less is better than more. With tweezers I always managed to cut the tick in two which became a real pain then trying to get the tick's head out. I think I'll try to remember to spray myself EVERY time from now on, and if I still get them, I'll trust my caveman multipurpose tools (fingers).

I went to the vet a couple of months ago and while we were looking at the dog, my wife noticed some ticks on it. She pointed them out to the vet and the vet said the best way to pull them off is to twist them counter-clockwise. I made a joke about righty-tighty, lefty-loosy and he said that was exactly right. Last weekend I went out to Lake Springfield to work on training my bird dog and forgot to spray myself with DEET and of course I was loaded with ticks. I think over the next two days I found 7 ticks on me. I had always been bad about pulling ticks off, it seemed I always left their heads in and then it gets itchy and red. I used the tick trick the vet showed me and it worked perfect. No head left in and easy as pie. I even discovered that righty-tighty takes them just as well as lefty-loosy. Just grab the tick with your fingers, you needn't squeeze too hard, and just twist your wrist and they come right on out. Then you can dispose of the tick anyway you see fit, flush it down the toilet, smash it between your fingernails, or put it in your annoying coworkers chair while he's on break. As deer season approaches, there are bound to be a lot more unwelcome hitchhikers so try it the next time you get one.

If hoglaw feels he did the right thing then he did the right thing for him. I have had many dogs, but I never loved any of them anywhere near as much as I do my son, which before I had a child seemed impossible to me. Of course when they are hurt bad, it makes you hurt too, but I have never wished my dog's pain on myself like I do for my son.

well moving right along I think it is a great idea, especially since a lot of us were sure the next world record brown would be caught out of Taney. That record should belong to the Ozarks.

well, he may not be legal at all, but at least he is all the way honest. Fly Guy you may want to delete your post. The "limit" is aptly named since it is the "limit" of fish that you can catch in a day and the "limit" for browns is 1 over 20 inches. I'm surprised no one called you on it actually. please take the time to read the regs. Most everyone else has and abides by them, you should too. I can almost understand the ignorance of the soft plastics, even though there are signs everywhere. not good not good at all.

wow. I am not the best writer or literary critic. I can say that I liked the realization that you came to at the end of the story. The whole time reading the story I was thinking I was going to read about a car wreck you or one of your fmaily would be involved on on Lewis, so when the end of the story came, it was a surprise for me. Good story, and obviously very personal as well. It takes guts to write about painful stuff like that.

Even fish from different families can compete for the same niche. It just so happens that these two species, walleye and smallies, don't.

As far as the competitive exclusion principle is concerned, I wouldn't worry about it at all, not even in the future. Walleye and smallmouth are both native to these same waterways, and neither managed to cause the other to be excluded from the system before we showed up. They are then occupied different niches within the same ecosystem.

So Dale needed to get a new milk cow so he gets in his truck and left Joplin and headed on down the road to Miami, OK where he had seen on Craigslist there was a nice looking cow for sale. He gives the farmer a ring and the farmer gives him directions to his place. Dale and the farmer head on back to the barn where he sees the cow. He gives it a nice look over, but decides he needs to see if it is producing milk before he buys it. He reaches underneath the cow, pulls on one of the teats and the cow farted. Dale looks up and the farmer. The farmer is looking backdown at Dale, and Dale decides to try to pull on another teat. He pulls and sure enough, the cow farts. At this point Dale doesn't know what to think so he and the farmer have a nice long talk. Dale ends up buying the cow and brings it back to Joplin. As he is unloading it, one of his buddies passes by and stops to help out. Dale tells his buddy to pull one of the cow's teats. His friend pulls on the teat and the cow let out a great fart. His buddy looks up to Dale and says, "You bought this cow in Oklahoma, didn't you?" "Yes I sure did," he replied. "How on earth would you know that?" "My wife is from Oklahoma too," he answered.

The birch bark is naturally loaded with waxes and oils so it basically does the same thing as far as flame but it also because of the cellular structures allow for embers to form. The river birch tree that grows along streams around here has bark that is constantly shedding off. You can go up and get you a couple of handfuls, doesn't hurt the tree a bit. I used to hate getting fires ready looking for dead greenbriar vines, dry grasses and stuff because inevitably there wouldn't be anything that I could use whenever and where ever I needed it. Birch bark changed all of that. It is as light as paper and easily compressed so it doesn't bog you down or take up lots of space. Whether you want to start a fire like a caveman (bow drill) or not, it is the best. A Bic and Birch Bark is all you need. You can literally (and there are videos on youtobe showing it) dunk it underwater, take a match to it and it lights right up.

Frenzel, I saw your truck up at the Bois D'Arc CA office today. I hope you had a better hunt than I did. Saw more turkey and quail than doves. My dog caught one wounded one that jumped but not high enough to stay out of his mouth. That was it. We jumped a few others but they were flying parallel with the ground so we couldn't shoot at them.

Birch bark is the best fire starting stuff ever period. Soaking wet it will still catch on fire. Howling wind it still burns. When I used to do a lot of super primitive hiking like you are talking about I always carried a good sized zip lock bag of it in the top of my backpack. Go find yourself a river birch tree (Betula nigra) and get some of its bark and that will be one less thing you'll have to worry about.

There was a segment the other day on NPR about different useful survival books. The only one I can remember was the SAS manual, but they said that one is really big and so probably not what you would want to bring along. You might want to look at NPR's website and see if you can find a pod cast about it, it was within the last week.

I have a place we are headed to that has some sunflower fields bordered by some hedgerows. I figure it might get a lot of doves coming that way once all the shooting starts. We will be hunting public land so there is bound to be lots of shots to keep the doves moving around. We are going tmw morning as soon as I get my dog loaded and my son dropped off at school. But what I really can't wait for is the pheasant hunt I have booked for October. So much to do with the bird hunting and the fall brown run, work and school and keeping my wife happy and me out of the dog house, so little time.

I think he was describing how he caught the 4th fish. That is what I got out of it anyway. "T'other" is throwing me off.

My father and I are going Tuesday morning. First time that we have hunted together since 92 I think. I am not worried about the numbers, I am worried about losing birds after they drop. Next year my dog should be good enough to trust getting them but he's so young now all I'd have left from the birds would be a few feathers stuck to his lips after he finished it off. You guys use a full choke or improved up here for dove?

I thought there was a length limit for using sunfish for bait, at least on trot lines. 5 or 6 inches if I remember correctly.