SilentButDeadly

For anyone who is interested - the research group I am affiliated with has been putting together a Landscape-scale fire management framework for the Coronado National Forest for the last 5 years. The project is called FireScape, and the intention is to move fire management from the scales we are used to seeing on Forests (10-1,000 acre projects) out to landscape scale (100,000-1,000,000 acres). http://www.azfirescape.org/home - I encourage you all to check it out and give your feedback to the scoping documents posted there. As with all things Gov't there are many hurdles (NEPA, Environmental Impact Statements, etc) to get over even before you get to possibly go to court against the Environmental groups. A critical point is that the cost of suppression in still less than the cost of treatment: the Horseshoe 2 has already cost 51 million dollars (before infrastructure repair and BAER treatment), it burned 223,000 acres - that works out to $229.00 an acre, the Wallow $103.3 million / 538,049 acres = $192 acre. Mechanical treatments can cost up to $1000 an acre; Wildfire-Use or Prescribed fires typically cost ~$50 an acre. The trick to getting to landscape scale fire is making local infrastructure bomb-proof so you can let a fire go and do its thing - trying to do this in the Urban Interface makes managing fires for both resource protection (homes) and resource benefit (elk) a wicked problem. For you guys in the debate about catching running crown fires with airplanes or helicopters - here is a video of the Las Conchas fire (that wiped out WFGin's cabin) less than 4 hours after it started - displaying a horizontal vortex roll (like a Tornado!), it likely released more energy than the A-bombs they build up the street in Los Alamos that afternoon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LJihgiPBSs&NR=1

Our fellow member Bill 'WFGin', has a cabin inside the huge Las Conchas fire that is burning in Jemez NM. He's updated on FB and sounds like his family is safe - but I just wanted him to know the Coues' bros are thinking about him and his. I've got my fingers crossed that his cabin survived the night, as well as some other friends that live out on the Mesa. Los Alamos is being evacuated right now - hope all goes well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mju9oYwI36c

An old wise man told me: 'Look for antler where deer lost his,' - unless you know where the deer have been recently it could be a waste of your time walking it - but how will you know? It is at least easy to learn a new area: if you see scat you're hot on their trail, if you haven't seen any sign in a while you now know where not to look. I'd say for picking up sheds my old average was like 10:1, but now a days it seems like 15:1. That is to say that I walk on average 10 miles for every antler I find. Cool stuff on the other hand, expect at least 3 random events/things on any given hike - like finding an artifact or ruin, seeing a rare animal (right before you step on it and hear its rattle), spotting a monster buck as he runs over the ridge away from you, locating a bedding/feeding area with a ton of sign. Keep on looking - you can't win if you don't play. Keep your eye's n ears open! Here are three random things I saw on a recent hike and a horn I picked up a few days later:

Not only is he riding an elk, he is riding an elk with only 3 legs!

I wish there were deer that big living below that skyline....

The Stoddard's live a couple houses away on my street. I talked with Dorwin and Mavy a couple of times while I was out walking our dog. He was a good man. He died doing something so heroic - covering his childhood love with his own body, it takes my breath away. My wife heard some of their family speak at our HOA meeting last night, their church and the local community has been very gracious to Mavy and is seeing she is well taken care of.

100+

This cartoon explains it way better than I can type: http://darryl-cunningham.blogspot.com/2010...ate-change.html Also, I'd be more concerned with 2.3 billion Chinese and Indians wanting cars like we do, driving up the price of oil, rather than greedy misguided politicians taxing it. The money to be made in alternative USA made energy is real - Global Warming or not. T

my dog Briggs - bored to death on a lately deer hunting adventure...

Choice!

I'm totally down for walking the land and talking some Aldo Leopold type stuff! As to seeing change on the landscape as 'Damage', I think the most important thing to remember is - there is no 'normal' or 'historical' setting that the land wants to be -- it is always changing, the only thing we can do is gently ease it toward some desired destination - I think the Australian aboriginal mindset is really an awesome example of this ideal: http://vimeo.com/4166007. There have been people in North America screwing up the way plants and animals are distributed for nearly 12,000 years now - to me, making the most of the land for what I want it for (which since I picked up a stick and string has been for big game!) is what matters most. Hopefully we can tie in one of these spring seasons - I haven't forgotten your invitation from last year. T

The USFS does ask for input from NGO's regarding its fire policy which is set into its Fire Management Plan (ex of Coronado NF's plan here: http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/coronado/forest/fire/documents/2009_Coronado_Fire_Management_Plan.pdf ://http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/coronado/fo...ement_Plan.pdf ) Many of the prescribed burns on the Coronado are done in cooperation with Game and Fish to enhance habitat for Coues whitetailed deer. In the last couple of years the USFS and Game and Fish have really opened up their information management systems with websites - the validation for virtually all of their decision making is online for you to look at - if you take the time. Fires that burn through the winter are more common in northerly forests, but would be unlikely in the Southwest unless it was in some kind of peat-bog meadow. Here is a recent headline from Russia concerning fires over-wintering in the peat: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67A3H120100811

...every time I go hiking and don't find any sheds, I wonder 'has he been here already?'

I cannot speak to this particular decision to ignite that burn, but I do know that fire managers who initiate prescribed burns are under tremendous pressure from both a safety stand point (based on the potential of losing containment) and by budgetary constraints (ordering crews to support a prescribed burn is expensive and there are no refunds for bad weather days). Prescribed burning is no joke, and I doubt the Burn Boss on this particular burn was messing around - it can cost a person their job if they set a fire that does property damage when they know the weather could turn bad. These folks are trying to do good by the land, and by their local communities. I'd do a little more research before accusing USFS or any land managers of incompetence. Here is a good website for starters that has details about daily ignitions in AZ and NM and keeps up the national fire status situation: Southwest Regional Coordination Center Also, '$$' is not something I would accuse the USFS of wasting - take a look at their operating budgets and the fact that >50% goes to putting out fires that threaten communities around the US - money that should be going to maintaining infrastructure (like the 380,000 miles of roads hunters drive) and funding research: http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/director/presentations/future.html

holla!

as good as it gets...

Some of the glues the manufacturers use comes right off if you pull on the vane right without it ripping. I use a razor blade knife, first holding the blade almost flat to the shaft I slice through the plastic leaving a fraction of the plastic and glue on; then I hold the blade perpendicular to the shaft and run it back and forth scoring and tearing the rest of the glue and plastic off. You could try acetone too if there is still residue left. Buy wraps! I wrap the shaft then refletch - the next time you need to replace the vanes you just pull the wrapping off and it is as good as new, no knives or glue reside on the carbon.

So, this whole idea sort of popped into my head the other day as I was headed back to Tucson from Flagstaff and decided to make a stop off at the Cabela's in Glendale. I walked straight back into the 'Hall of Records' or whatever they call it and was looking at some of the amazing animals they have displayed. In the very back of the Coue's deer section sits (in my opinion) the ugliest of the full-body Coue's mounts; a (reproduction?) of the World Record Typical Boone and Crockett Coue's - now being in the back it is kind of hard to get a good look at, and the off angles are hard to see, but one thing struck me right away - (in my experience - which is limited) that buck has a Non-Typical "Typical" frame. The G3s blast off the main beam at an odd angle, and where they erupt they increase the mass measurement substantially. Now, the only pictures I've ever found online of the buck are on CW.com and on B&C's website Link to best picture is here on CW: http://www.coueswhitetail.com/BC_Coues_top...c_top_5_typ.htm In my opinion that buck is a Non-Typical with a "Typical" frame - how is it that B&C still consider it a "Typical"? Is it because they don't measure that many Coue's bucks? Somehow a point that goes up semi vertically from the main beam and has a matching point on the other side makes it a Typical? If anyone else has a better photo of the buck - please post it. Also, while I'm at it: that buck from Hidalgo County NM,( Current #2, 186 1/8) is a mule deer freakazoid.

Apache7mm just posted pics of a Non-Typical buck that has a very similar tine configuration to what I saw on the WR - http://forums.coueswhitetail.com/forums/in...c=21556&hl= In Dan's post do you consider the G3 on the buck's right side to be a typical point? It comes off the inside edge of the main beam at a narrower angle - compare that point to the G2 and G3 typical points on the left side of that buck. The similarity is that the WR buck has matching G3's on the inside of its beams - but its G3s are even tighter inside than the buck in Dan's post. Take a look at the picture of the WR buck above - tell me which point on his right side is his G2 and which is his G3 (the taller point is his G2) ... because of that tight angle the main beam looks like it runs in front of the G3. Again - if only there was a better picture of the WR buck - you all might see what I'm saying.

I've got a bird dog (Vizsla) - but I don't bird hunt. Being a bird dog though means high energy - and he needs exercise every day. He is my constant companion while hiking. In the last 5 years he's turned up 4 lion killed deer (2 fresh ones, one old one was a Coues buck ~90 and >16 inches wide!), and two dead elk - none of which i'd have found without him. Also, however, he's found a horde of nasty things (dead skunks, javelina, coyotes, foxes, if its stinks he'll find it - and roll in it). He's tracked us into a shot buck in under 5 minutes - would have taken us hours to find in the tall grass of a palo verde flat. He's found a couple of elk sheds, one muley, and two coues sheds on his own - although most of the time I have to tell him to look for them before he'll pick them up. As much as I cuss him for being a little whiner in the truck on the way out to the field - he is always excited to be there, pulls out his own cactus spines and burrs, and if I'd pay more attention to his body language would see twice as much!

Poor guy, I can't imagine an animal like that crossing the desert to get there - must have come down the Bill Williams River corridor... Havasu has got to be some of the most blasted barren landscape not just in the US but the world!

Where is the proposed location?

Men who sew: http://backpackrepair.com/