Salty: An admirable Darwinistic approach. Many y ears ago I proposed a higher use for our National Parks; we’d stock them heavily with predators, and then enforce a mandatory two-week “vacation” for every citizen (armed with only a knife and a flint for starting fires).

A 33-year-old Redding man who was running on the Davis Gulch Trail, from Brandy Creek Marina to the Whiskeytown Dam, says a mountain lion almost pounced on him about 4 p.m. Sunday. The trail will be closed for “a few weeks, likely longer,” while Whiskeytown officials monitor mountain lions in the area and assess any danger, said Barbara Alberti, the recreation area’s natural resources chief.

While Curtis Ulleseit — who said he felt lucky to survive his meeting with the lion — said he thinks the animal should be found and shot, Alberti said the cougar’s actions don’t warrant its killing.

“The behavior was not such that we want to do anything that drastic,” she said.

Read the whole story, and let me know if you think you’d want the lion shot if you were the jogger. Is he really lucky to be alive? Or is he overreacting to a chance encounter with a mountain lion? Assuming the lion “almost pounced on him” is amusing given that the thing probably noticed him halfway down the slope and put on the brakes.

I wasn’t there, so I won’t comment further on this specific instance, but it sometimes feels like people seek out the solitude of wilderness, but want the “wild” animals to act like Disney characters.

I can imagine no better nor more noble end than to grace the jaws of a Maneater, and feed her Cubs. Amen and Amen.

Let Nature have her due and don’t put me in a box like mummified dog shit in those “doggie” bags laying encapsulated forever
in our landfills. I am not a pearl…I am not a golden icon…I am not priceless and to be preserved forever… I am a primate who learned to fish and make weapons and iPods. Treat my butt likewise.

Bon Appetite!

The more “terrified” the “powers” keep Americans, the easier it is to wrench their prized fishing and rafting rivers, the mountains, valleys and timbered forests out of our ignorant hands. It seems also that our dear friends “the National Park Service” is so broke it will close public lands rather than risk “injury” of unsupervised patrons. What absolute bull shit! Like I need FEDERAL protection from a stream or cliff? What am I… a priceless URN?

… and as to TURKEYS… well, never underestimate the berserker turkey. My good and dear (and dead) friend Mickey Chips was hunting around Red Bluff once, with shotgun in hand, (almost bigger than 5′2″ Mickey) he would trod off up some canyon to be alone and hunt… anyway, I met him once as he saw my car at the River and stopped to say hi and haggle me. (Mickey could spout Chaucer or the latest 49er gossip with equal passion and ease.) All white and pale he shouted me back to shore with the following story:

While hunting around Red Bluff, CA, Mick saw a big turkey dodge behind a clump of Blackberries. Stealthily he crept up on the bird and began working around one side… the bird mean while in a yin yang dance keeping exactly opposite Mickey and his Double Barrel.

Tiring of the dance, Mick picked up a big rock and hucked it at the Bird… with the results that the Turkey launched a precision directed guided turkey attack on Mick, knocking him to the ground and discharging his gun in the process! His eye was black and blue, and he had assorted turkey feathers in his hat. A more forlorn hunter could not be imagined… “22 pounds at least, it was like being hit by Joe Frasher” he kept saying.

Mick was by his own admission and reputation on the Lower Sacramento “the best god damned single egg fisherman in california… and you can ask anybody”….and bless him…he was. He explored alone all throughout the steelhead streams and bird hunting grounds for his whole life, and died of a fucking ulcer. Go figure.

Brian

Oddly, it’s the kind of thing I tend to avoid in my daily life; random events throw me off my schedule and I don’t get my work done, but the outdoors aren’t much of a paradise for people who don’t delight in the happy coincidence or the random encounter.

There’s also the element of control. Big chunks of our daily lives are under the influence of others (bosses, spouses, kids, pets, clients) while outdoor adventures are far more serendipitous.

At least, that’s what I’m thinking today.

Out in the wilderness with the last thing to go through your mind being a flock of turkeys large enough to kill a man. We should all be so lucky.

Speaking of which, last weekend was the trout opener in Wisconsin, and I saw a flock of turkeys that must have been 100 strong. Never seen anything like it. If there was ever a flock that could kill a man, that was it.

hawgdaddy

While driving around Roseville one day waiting to visit my daughter, I chanced upon a turkey hen that I recognized as such. She was running back and forth next to the chain link fence, and I could tell she was upset. I stopped my car, got out, and began walking toward her. This increased her anxiety, until she recalled something I was trying to remined her of; she could fly! She finally flew over the fence and went running toward the flock that I finally saw as she ran toward them. It was a fearsome experience, and I was lucky to escape alive, but felt better for the encounter.

So, Tom, I’ll bite. How many turkeys does it take to kill a fly fisherman?

As for the growing disconnection the general public has with the outdoors, as someone said above in a previous post, it is funny and sad at the same time. We go up to the Smokies several times a year – I always find it amazing to see the people flock to the tourist traps in Gatlinburg…these people probably battle traffic every day going to and from work, and what do they do on their vacation? They head for the main drag in town, where they…battle traffic. I don’t understand it. I’ve heard some real jewels, like people go there, not realizing there is a NATIONAL PARK just beyond town. Or, that a majority of the visitors to GSMNP never leave their cars. The best ones I’ve heard go along the lines of these:

“Why don’t the rangers release more water for the streams so we can swim?”

“Where are the cages for the animals at night?”