ness

Ouch. That's a pretty long trip for nothing. I don't know a thing about SD, but in KS -- WIHA can be hit or miss wherever they are. Some of them you look at and wonder what they were thinking (or, who they are related to!) Google Earth can be somewhat helpful, but nothing like boots on the ground. Haven't heard boo about NE, but NW KS was sposta be less sh*tty than the rest. Might be a good year to take up waterfowl hunting.

We just happen to be heading down tomorrow -- I'll swing by and pick it up

Thanks -- that all makes sense. I can't picture the exact spot, but I know upstream at Forest Cut, it's extremely steep and rocky in the valley, so maybe the loose soil is less (whatever less is). We were out there in August, and it was heartbreaking to see the amount of dead standing timber. The west side was even worse. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw Grand Lake Lodge and it's surroundings.

Big money, big money..... Is it a 5-weight?

That last pic looks really sweet, but it's the first one in post #3 that gets my predator instinct going. I hope you fished that spot. Do you have an idea of how rapidly the ground stabilizes and the siltation slows? I remember seeing pics of the Poudre right after the fire and then a month or so later. It was clearing, but had a way to go. And, I have no idea what rains or next-years snow melt will mean for it.

The beetle damage is so bad out there that it is inevitable that these fires will continue. Either way, fire or dead trees, this won't get fixed in my lifetime, which is what *I* consider long term. Maybe not even during my children's lifetimes. There's a piece of me that wants it to go ahead and burn -- get it over with and let it start to heal. I remember a few years back there was a fire in the north part of the park, and the scientists determined there hadn't been a fire in that particular section since the 1400s. (Fact check me, but I think that's right). I find that amazing, and think it puts some perspective on where we are in all this.

Yeah, it looks like the Fern Lake Trail cuts through the middle of it, and it follows the Big Thompson. Man, that would be tough going for the firefighters.

Nothing wrong with Walk-In Hunting, IMO. Sure, it's not the same as having your own estate to hunt on, but it gets you access to thousands and thousands of acres. Which makes it kinda overwhelming.... But, you can download a Google Earth file at the KDWP web site, load it in and do research from where you're sitting right now. You can't tell CRP from pasture, but you can tell a lot of other things. If you've got the time to scout, that can be pretty productive time. Sure, a lot of the best WIHAs get hammered, but if you're willing to walk a little farther or hunt a little smarter you'll improve your odds. Waiting a few weeks after opening day will greatly reduce the number of folks out there. The forecast is pretty gloomy for pheasants, but not so bad for quail. Didn't even go to western KS last year, and likely won't this year either. There are some areas closer to home I'm gonna focus on this year for quail. And, NW MO has been pretty good to me on pheasant the last two years.

Nice!

Pretty cool, Gilly.

I've got access to 4-5 farms up in SD but have never made the trek up. Just too hard to get a block of days big enough to make it worthwhile, and my hunting buddies are too cheap to make a trip like that anyway. I was reading a post on another forum and a guy that was out prairie chicken hunting in KS saw a lot of pheasants on WIHAs. Don't know where it was, but it was CRP and there were chalk hills in the photos -- like you'd see in Gove/Trego counties. So, I suppose that's a positive sign. Something else came up too. My older Brittany (12) has been showing her age the last year or so, but I figured she'd still have another year, maybe two left to hunt. The last couple months she has gone mostly blind though. She can get around if it's in bright light, but I'm afraid her time has come. I'm gonna get her out to hunt a preserve near here soon, and that'll probably be it for her this year.

Yeah -- I'd say check out Yakima too. They're not cheap, but they are built right.

Sweet! I like that shot of your rod/line. Makes my predator neurons start to fire. Looked it up -- I've got a niece that lives over in Hickory

I always wanted a squirrel smoking a cigarette while standing on a duck avatar -- but F&F beat me to it. Kind of a limited audience for Maynard G. Krebs. A lot of these young pups wouldn't even get Gilligan. I'm fresh outta ideas. Maybe Google Mad Magazine images?

Wayne, Jack: I really have a hard time taking you serious with those silly avatars

Mitch f mentioned it on the other thread -- about Hannity and Matthews -- and how nasty all this is. Well, on February 22 (I think -- whenever Lent started) I 'gave up' cable news. I'm talking all the majors. There is just tooo much of it that's opinion, quoting other (crappy) sources, and very little true reporting. And they seem to have formally adopted the 'simply make stuff up' approach as routine. It's often presented in a format that is little more than argument -- with the loudest talker or the one who gets their point in before the break 'winning'. It's like watching reality TV -- you know it's wrong, you know they're all misbehaving, you wouldn't hang with these folks if you were stuck on a deserted island, but you sorta want to watch anyway because there might be a pretty good zinger or a shot of Kim in a bikini. I've expanded my boycott into all political punditry. And, what I've found is that all this kinda clears my head. Not so much BS floating around in there, and I'm less worked up about stuff. There are fools all cross the spectrum, but the biggest ones are at the two extremes. No sense even giving them my time. The truth usually falls somewhere in middle anyway. And if all you can do is repeat what a fool said, well... I did watch the debate -- turned it on right before, and turned it off right after. I know how I feel about it, and it helped me understand a little more about the plans and/or philosophies of the two. Then I watched a Leave it to Beaver episode to see life as I'd like it to be.

I really don't know the ins-and-outs of the part time/full time thing and the healthcare act. But big business making the rules? Feels more like business adjusting to rules that have been put in place. If government could look a couple moves ahead, they might be able to avoid some of this stuff. To your second point: honestly, how can you find fault with Romney for making decisions that donors don't like? Are you suggesting a little old-fashioned palm greasing is a better way? Man, I wish we had a lot more people thinking like Romney on that. Of course, as always, it's a lot easier to say it than to do it.

You really need to justify every expense, every year. They used to call it 'Zero-Based Budgeting'. Every year, every department starts with zero and asks for money. But, it was more theoretical than anything at the federal level. I know a lot of states manage to balance their budgets. Not sure if that's because they're constitutionally bound, or just good stewards. But the federal government needs a major overhaul, far beyond anything that's been proposed by either side. How hard can it be? Kevin Kline did it in less that two hours in 'Dave'.

Heck, if it won't jack up my stellar internet record, I'll click on every ad I see to help the cause.

Nooooo. Not CRP! Yeah, that one kinda stings, personally. But it's well on the way to being eliminated in corn-producing country, due to the subsidies, and other places due to high commodity prices. Justin -- I'd love to have infrastructure improvements too. But I just feel like we've got to quit trying to spend/borrow our way to prosperity. Fed announced 'QE3' a couple weeks ago. For those that don't follow those things -- it's the Federal Reserve stepping into the markets and buying massive quantities of long-term bonds though a program of 'Quantitative Easing' -- it's round 3 of that, so QE3. Supply and demand tells you the buying will make the price of bonds go up, and there's an inverse relationship between bond prices and interest rates, so rates will go down. The long-term bonds they're buying are mortgage-related, so they're driving down mortgage rates even more. This is literally 'printing money', not the old government borrowing kind of printing money -- but creating money. $40 billion a month, for 3 years. Besides the ridiculous debt and deficits, we've got these phantom liabilities too. Of course there's social security, medicare and medicaid. But then there's the banking backstops, Fannie/Freddie/Ginnie guaranties, money market fund guaranties, you name it -- we've made trillions and trillions in promises since the markets went in the crapper -- both Bush and Obama. We could NEVER meet those obligations. Our president said we've been repaid on the bailouts, and have even made a profit. That's simply a falsehood. Not taking sides here -- BS is BS -- and that's a whopper. We've been repaid on some, with interest, but there's a ton still outstanding. Look at GM, Ally Bank ownership and the TARP funds still outstanding. It's gonna sound like I'm taking sides again, but I'm really not. Romney talked about the guy who added up all the taxes he paid and it was about 50%. Well, I've done that calculation myself several years in a row and that's about where I land -- without even taking a stab at the sales tax I pay. Last year my kids could get a couple pieces of pizza for lunch at school for about $3. Now it's $6, because the guvmint doesn't want my kids eating pizza for lunch. It never freakin' ends. I've haven't been this pessimistic about the future since I was a kid and thought the chance of nuclear war was pretty high.

That's true to an extent JD, but I think there's more going than just that. I have definitely searched or shopped for something and then see ads here and elsewhere with the product or web site. But I've also seen a sketchy one here. It was only once, and it wasn't graphic -- more along the lines of "Meet Shawnee women", or something like that. It was several months ago. I would have tipped Phil off if it was way outta bounds or happening frequently. Back when we were discussing concealed carry, there were a lot of ads relating to that. I didn't search anything like that, and I wonder if anyone else was seeing the same ads.

This whole thing goes to a point that I think is overlooked. Everybody loves it when the guvmint comes in and does something that benefits them. But when you get right down to it, it's plain greed and selfishness. And it's an abdication of our obligation to support the right thing. It's the epitome of being unpatriotic! Throw your philosophy aside for a minute. Forget those talking points that you've been subjected to ad nauseum, and think with your own brain for a minute. When taxes are high, and economic activity is stagnant, and unemployment is high, and the deficit is at record levels, and it makes more economic sense to set up shop overseas, and folks are getting unemployment for 2+ years, and food stamp participation has doubled, and new regulations on business are coming so fast they can't even meet their legislated enactment dates, and banks are discouraged from lending, and major 'shovel ready' projects are launched, and the Post Office figures out a way to lose $5 billion in a QUARTER, and 12 million illegal aliens came here and fill jobs 'we' wouldn't take, and healthcare costs are sky-rocketing, and hospitals are closing and being torn down and newer, beautiful ones built in 'better' neighborhoods, and drug companies can shrug off multi-billion dollar penalties... Stuff is jacked up, bad.

Wait a minute -- you've got DSL thanks to the guvmint? Sh*t -- it's even worse that I thought. How can you sleep at night knowing you're suckin' at the teet while we're spending a trillion a year more than we take in? And don't think for a minute you're $1,400 ahead in the end thanks to a $400 refund and avoidance of a $1,000 presumed increase in insurance. Ever stop to think where that's coming from? It's two major problems disguised as a windfall for you. If you give a mouse a cookie...

Everything you need to know is right here in this book by economist Laura Numeroff:

I believe I speak on behalf of all fly fishermen, nay, all humankind, when I say: Huh?