Field Notes

I've been writing (poorly, some would argue) for pay (way too little, I would argue) since about 1996, during which I have shamelessly pursued every little bit of swag, bling and/or complimentary product and service I could attach my greedy velcro fingers to.

To date I have managed to score exactly two expenses-paid trips to cover bass tournaments (both taken well over 10 years ago) and - way back when they first came out -  a sample pack of Terminator spinnerbaits.

And if you want to know how successful I've become as a bling-collecting outdoors writer since then, consider this: Earlier this year I wrapped one of those by-now tattered Terminators around a submerged log. Rather than simply snapping the line and tying on a new one from my well-stocked bag full of complimentary tackle, I went wading because A. my tackle box is neither well-stocked nor complimentary, and B. A five-dollar spinnerbait is still a five-dollar spinnerbait even if it's older than my first child.

The point is, writing - of any kind -  is a hard, lonely gig. You pay your dues by toiling in obscurity and poverty for years, patiently perfecting your craft and hoping that somewhere, someone will recognize your hard work and give you a shot. Because when you're a nobody in this business nothing is given: you earn it.

At least that's what I used to believe. Now I realize, of course, that I was a naive dumbass. 

Joe the Plumber to become war correspondent

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Joe The Plumber is putting down his wrenches and picking up a reporter's notebook. The Ohio man who became a household name during the presidential campaign says he is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for the conservative Web site pjtv.com. Samuel J. Wurzelbacher (WUR'-zuhl-bah-kur) says he'll spend 10 days covering the fighting. He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants to let Israel's "'Average Joes' share their story." Wurzelbacher gained attention during the final weeks of the campaign when he asked Barack Obama about his tax plan. He later joined Republican John McCain on the campaign trail. At one stop, he agreed with a McCain supporter who asked if he believed a vote for Obama was a vote for the death of Israel.

That's right, Joe the Plumber is now Joe the Journalist, and he's getting a break that literally thousands of real journalists would gladly give half a reproductive organ for. Now I'm not bagging on Joe: he may be the next Ernie Pyle for all I know, but maybe he should get his feet wet by covering a city commission meeting or two before he heads into a war zone. It's ridiculous, it's a blatant publicity stunt and it's patently unfair to ink-stained wretches everywhere, but gimmickry is what modern America thrives on and Joe will probably end up parlaying this fraud into a regular column for Time or Newsweek and his own cable talk show.

I'm just worried that Joe also likes to hunt and fish. He's the shizzle right now now and provided he makes it back from Israel alive the editors of a certain outdoors magazine may want to capitalize on that fame by sending him on one of those plum destination assignments I've been fruitlessly begging and pleading for. Joe the Plumber flyfishes Patagonia. Joe the Plumber bags a record kudu on safari. Joe the Plumber shoots grouse over the Queen's dogs in England. Joe the Plumber gets three thousand words in the feature well every month to write whatever he wants while Chad the Blogger makes news by drowning while attempting to recover his last freebie spinnerbait... 

My primary deer hunting spot is an extremely popular and heavily-utilized public hunting area. Beginning in October bowhunters swarm this place, followed by legions of blackpowder hunters, who are in turn followed by division-strength hordes of orange-swaddled, cell phone-talking, cannon-toting sniper wannabes whose primary woodcraft skills involve walking around loudly and aimlessly, leaving truly prodigious amounts of trash strewn across the landscape and then gathering around their RV to bitch about not being allowed to drive ATVs on the area.

Ultra-deadly super predators they're not.

But according to a recent Newsweek article featured on Stephen Bodio's excellent Querencia blog, the modern hunter is so efficient and so effective that he is single-handedly responsible for no less than the wholesale reversal of the evolutionary process.

From the story:

It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny :Researchers see 'evolution in reverse' as hunters kill off prized animals with the biggest antlers and pelts.

"Researchers describe what's happening as none other than the selection process that Darwin made famous: the fittest of a species survive to reproduce and pass along their traits to succeeding generations, while the traits of the unfit gradually disappear. Selective hunting—picking out individuals with the best horns or antlers, or the largest piece of hide—works in reverse: the evolutionary loser is not the small and defenseless, but the biggest and best-equipped to win mates or fend off attackers."

The gist of the article is that by selectively harvesting the largest and most impressive specimens hunters are, in essence, altering the natural evolutionary process by allowing smaller, weaker inferior animals to sneak in to breed and propagate their traits. It sounds plausible in theory, especially to a non-hunting public that assumes hunting involves walking into the woods, choosing the animal you want and then shooting it as it placidly chews its cud and gazes at you with its big brown deer eyes. In reality, it's a ludicrous assertion. For example, take a look at the age-class breakdown for any recent state deer season harvest and compare that data to the same harvest data from say, 30 years ago. If the article's basic thesis were true, by now we should be shooting whitetails with the body size of a dik dik, the rack of a pygmy goat and the brain of a TSA airport screener, right?

But here's a serendipitous juxtaposition between agenda and reality.

From the story:

"Elk still range across parts of North America, but every hunting season brings a greater challenge to find the sought-after bull with a towering spread of antlers."  

Field Notes:

"Perhaps the largest elk ever produced in the wild—a Utah bull taken in 2008 by a hunter on public land—has been confirmed as a new World's Record. The official declaration was made today by the Boone and Crockett Club."

And remember my public hunting area, which according to the article's reasoning should by now be thoroughly de-populated of dominant bucks? One evening recently I sat on the side of a hill on that area and watched through binos as one after another buck slowly walked into a small winter wheat field and began feeding. These bucks had been subjected to constant, unending hunting pressure for over three months and survived. I'm fervently hopeful that they all got busy during the rut and passed on their inferior genes to the next generation because I can get into that kind of evolutionary monkey-wrenching...

The reasons we hunt are many and varied, but a big one for me is the feeling that every time I slip into the woods I am connecting with something buried deep within my genome, something that allows me to see and feel - ever so faintly -   the ghostly after-image of an ancient memory seared so powerfully into the consciousness of our ancestors that it survives still, reaching across untold millennia to remind those of us who care to listen of whence we came.

But as it turns out, from whence we came may not be so far as we thought from whence we are... 

From the story:

Last week in Nature, scientists reported major progress in sequencing the genome of woolly mammoths. They reconstructed it from two fossilized hair samples. One was 20,000 years old; the other was 65,000 years old. Now, according to Nicholas Wade of the New York Times, biologists are discussing "how to modify the DNA in an elephant's egg so that after each round of changes it would progressively resemble the DNA in a mammoth egg. The final-stage egg could then be brought to term in an elephant mother.

 That's certainly interesting, but here's where it gets a little personal for us bipedal hominids...

The full genome of the Neanderthal, an ancient human species probably driven to extinction by the first modern humans that entered Europe some 45,000 years ago, is expected to be recovered shortly. If the mammoth can be resurrected, the same would be technically possible for Neanderthals.

Now I'm fully aware of the whole Neanderthal debate and whether they shared a common ancestor or were completely separate from modern humans and if they were too primitive and well, stupid to evolve in the face of  human competition. There's a growing body of evidence to suggest that Neanderthals were in fact highly evolved and adaptable hunters but who knows and really, who cares? Anyone who can bring down a mammoth with a spear is pretty damn advanced in my book and I consider them an ancestor in spirit if not DNA.

Even if cloning a Neanderthal becomes technically possible, I'm sure there are too many thorny bioethical questions for it to occur. However, I have a few suggestions just in case: First, our newly-minted Neanderthal needs to find these guys and whip their asses good. They're giving primitives a bad name. Second, our Neanderthal needs to attend the SHOT show as a living reminder that to be successful as a hunter doesn't require an endless barrage of mostly-useless crap. Third, the F&S Total Outdoorsman Challenge. Who's gonna beat him? You?

And lastly, he needs to hold the short-sighted scientists who created him in his extra-powerful grasp  until they either agree to clone a lady Neanderthal or convince Raquel Welch to break out the fur bikini.