Lex Anteinternet: Live by the sword. Some legislators propose to take us back to 1889 once again.

Lex Anteinternet: Live by the sword. Some legislators propose to ta...: 

Live by the sword. Some legislators propose to take us back to 1889 once again.

Then Jesus saith to him: Put up again thy sword into its place: for all that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

Douay-Rheims Bible, Matthew 26:52.

The Invaders.  Back again after 130 years.

It would seem that some old wars which seemingly were behind us are not.  

Once again, the forces of "property" wish to exclude. . . violently.

And once again, they have the legislature behind them.

We recently posted on this item:

 HOUSE BILL NO. HB0126

Trespass-removal of trespasser.

Sponsored by: Representative(s) Crago and Washut and Senator(s) Kinskey and Landen

A BILL

for

AN ACT relating to crimes and offenses; providing for the use of physical force against a trespasser as specified; and providing for an effective date.

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:

Section 1.  W.S. 6‑3‑303 by creating new subsections (d) and (e) is amended to read:

6‑3‑303.  Criminal trespass; penalties; justification.

(d)  A person who is the owner or legal occupant of land or a premises upon which a criminal trespass is occurring, or their agent, is justified in using reasonable and appropriate physical force upon another person when and to the extent that it is reasonably necessary to terminate what the owner, occupant or agent reasonably believes to be the commission of a criminal trespass by the other person in or upon the land or premises.

(e)  Section (d) of this section does not supersede or add to the responsibilities applicable to the defense of self or another as provided by law. 

Section 2.  This act is effective July 1, 2023.

Frankly, as this bill is based on what one “reasonably believes”, basically authorizes murder, or could, and probably will be, read that way.

I know Washut who due to his prior career as a policeman ought to know better.  I don't know the remainder of them.

This bill, if passed, will get somebody killed.

Let's start with this. What is criminal trespass?

Well, under Wyoming's law, it's the following:

TITLE 6 - CRIMES AND OFFENSES

CHAPTER 3 - OFFENSES AGAINST PROPERTY

6-3-303. Criminal trespass; penalties.

(a) A person is guilty of criminal trespass if he enters or remains on or in the land or premises of another person, knowing he is not authorized to do so, or after being notified to depart or to not trespass. For purposes of this section, notice is given by:

(i) Personal communication to the person by the owner or occupant, or his agent, or by a peace officer; or

(ii) Posting of signs reasonably likely to come to the attention of intruders.

(b) Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than six (6) months, a fine of not more than seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), or both.

(c) This section does not supersede W.S. 1-21-1003.

So, under Wyoming's law, if a person comes up to you, and says "you are trespassing", and you remain, and you really are trespassing, you are guilty of criminal trespass. 

And, under the proposed amendment to the law, this would be added to it:

(d)  A person who is the owner or legal occupant of land or a premises upon which a criminal trespass is occurring, or their agent, is justified in using reasonable and appropriate physical force upon another person when and to the extent that it is reasonably necessary to terminate what the owner, occupant or agent reasonably believes to be the commission of a criminal trespass by the other person in or upon the land or premises.

(e)  Section (d) of this section does not supersede or add to the responsibilities applicable to the defense of self or another as provided by law. 

So the new law would be such that Landowner or Landowner's agent could come up to you and say, "get off", and if they didn't, they could use "reasonable and appropriate physical force" to remove you when they "reasonably believe" that you are criminally trespassing.

Seriously, "reasonably believed"?

What if their reasonable belief was wrong?

Several years ago I was on public lands when a couple of goons for a large Natrona County landowner approached me and informed me that I had to leave as I was trespassing.  I had a GPS, and I knew I wasn't.

I was also deer hunting and carrying a rifle and a handgun.

Did the goons believe that I was trespassing?  I don't know.  It's hard to penetrate the minds of saps who take jobs as regulators.  Their belief may have been based on what their employer told them.  Mine was based on the United States Geological Survey.  

I didn't want to bother with it, and I cleared off.

I frankly wouldn't now.  Now, I would have told them to pound sand, particularly as they warned me it was a $10,000 fine is I stayed, which was bullshit.

I got my revenge, I guess, by voting against the guy, a long with a lot of other locals, when he stood for reelection for a local office he was also holding.

But back to the scenario.  I'm armed.  If they were too, and they believed I was "criminally trespassing", and had invoked the element by telling me I was, could they then draw down on me?  Would that be reasonable force, as I was armed?

And if I did, would I have been justified in blowing them away in self defense?  I wasn't trespassing, and now I'm in danger of my life.

I probably wouldn't. . . but if I were with my son, wife, or daughter and felt they actually might use the weapons?  A scared person resorts to violence quickly, and men protecting their families do as well.  

And if that happened, would I be found to have acted in self-defense?

This scenario, if this bill passes, will play out just this way.

Now it'll be incumbent upon anyone going afield to pack heat, least some hired moron tries to drive them off land they believe they have a right to be on.  And sooner or later some asshole, probably a landowner on public land, or some out of state landowner's hired flunky, will challenge a fisherman, hunter, or hiker and get gunned down, dying for a moronic belief in the absolute nature of property rights that are, in fact, not absolute, never have been, and never will be.

What about the corner crossing case?  Even the Game Warden couldn't tell if it was a trespass or not.  The landowner's hired traitor to the state believed it was.  Would he have drawn down on them?

Those guys were gentlemen in the whole affair.  Most people are.  I've known of at least one friend of mine who was confronted in such a fashion and kept a rifle on the jerk confronting him, as he was armed.  The armed jerk didn't realize that he was about to meet the business end of a .30-30 if he went too far.

Life preserved by a clam reactant.

Not everyone is calm, and not everyone cares either.   Some asshat is going to tell somebody to get off some land, and that person is going to stand their ground. Somebody will probably get killed, and it'll probably be the person yelling "get off my land".

Lots of people now days imagine themselves to be Matt Quigly in the final scene of Quigly Down Under, gunning down the baddy. Some have even taken up carrying all the time so that they can affect the visage of Pistol Pete or maybe Yoesimite Sam.  Take our recent wholly unqualified interim Secretary of State, Karl Allred, who packed heat on to the UW campus as he wanted to make a point.

Direct link to WyoFile, "Uinta County committeeman Karl Allred reviews documents at a Wyoming Republican Party Central Committee meeting in Riverton in September 2022. Gov. Mark Gordon appointed Allred as secretary of state. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)"

Mr. Allred, seen packing here complete with a handgun that has an extra magazine, may imagine himself freedom's brave sentinel. but if he had to draw that, let's be honest, he'd be lucky to get it around his gut.

Being fat is no crime, but frankly not one person in fifty knows how to use a handgun in combat, and a lot of those are people who would have the high side of the fight if confronted by a good.  Pistol Packing Regulators may imagine that they can draw down on a whole passel of criminal trespasser, but the result is far from certain, particularly if they aren't trespassing.

Think that guy can outdraw and gun down a 20-year-old carrying a .357?  I don't think it bloody likely.

And FWIW, there's a whole lot of people now who are packing for self-defense, including a lot of young, agile, men, and women, who actually don't have enormous waste lines to clear, and who the goons aren't going to know are packing.

What the crap has gotten into people?

Wyoming was built on go where you want, when you want.  The last time somebody tried to change this, it went badly.

But we're right back at that point once again. Property rights, real or imagined, enforced at the barrel of a gun.  Indeed, when we fought that battle before, the legislature was on the wrong side of it then as well.

Moreover, any property, including your very own house, that you own, you are merely renting for, at most, the extraordinary short period of your life.  You don't really have a moral right to go around bullying trespassers on the open range or fishing stream. Yes, you can call law enforcement, but do that.  That's their job in a civil society.

And let's be honest, if we're returning to that day, equitably, turnabout can be argued to be fair play.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. The Legislat...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. The Legislat...: Senate Bill 60 failed, which read as follows:

SENATE FILE NO. SF0060

Nonresident hunting license application fees.

Sponsored by: Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife & Cultural Resources Interim Committee

A BILL

for

AN ACT relating to game and fish; modifying the provisions of elk, deer and antelope hunting licenses issued to nonresident applicants; increasing nonresident license fees to hunt elk, deer and antelope; and providing for an effective date.

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:

Section 1.  W.S. 23‑2‑101(f)(i) through (iii) is amended to read:

23‑2‑101.  Fees; restrictions; nonresident application fee; nonresident licenses; verification of residency required; donation of refunded application fees.

(f)  Forty percent (40%) of available nonresident elk licenses, forty percent (40%) of available nonresident deer licenses and forty percent (40%) of available nonresident antelope licenses for any one (1) calendar year shall as established by the commission, be offered to nonresident applicants upon receipt of the fee prescribed by this subsection.  Seventy‑five (75) of the nonresident deer licenses set aside pursuant to this subsection shall be used for a national bow hunt for deer. The licenses authorized by this subsection shall be offered by drawing to nonresident applicants prior to the drawing for the remaining nonresident licenses issued. The licenses offered under this subsection shall be issued in a manner prescribed by rules and regulations promulgated by the commission. Nothing in this subsection shall prohibit any unsuccessful applicant for a nonresident license pursuant to this subsection from submitting an application for any licenses remaining after the drawing during the calendar year in which the application under this subsection was submitted. The following fees shall be collected by the department and are in addition to the nonresident license fee for the appropriate big game species imposed under subsection (j) of this section and the application fee imposed under subsection (e) of this section:

(i)  Nonresident elk license ...... $576.00 $1,258.00 in addition to the license fee imposed under paragraph (j)(xix) of this section;

(ii)  Nonresident deer license .... $288.00 $826.00 in addition to the license fee imposed under paragraph (j)(xv) of this section;

(iii)  Nonresident antelope license ..... $288.00 $874.00 in addition to the license fee imposed under paragraph (j)(xxxi) of this section.

Section 2.  This act is effective January 1, 2024.

As can be seen, it would have raised the price of out of state big game hunting licenses.

I would have been in favor of this because, as a subsistence hunter, I favor locals getting tags first and this would have sort of helped that, maybe.  I can also see the point of not pricing things to the rich playground level as well. 

Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. The Legislat...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. The Legislat...: A proposed joint resolution regarding wild horses and burros has been introduced, reading:

HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. HJ0003

Wild horses and burros-best management practices.

Sponsored by: Representative(s) Winter, Banks, Davis, Neiman and Sommers and Senator(s) Driskill and Laursen, D

A JOINT RESOLUTION

for

A JOINT RESOLUTION requesting the United States Congress to enact legislation and make other necessary policy changes to allow federal land management agencies and agency partners to implement best management practices for wild horses and burros by allowing for equine slaughter and processing for shipment to accommodating markets inside or outside the United States.

WHEREAS, the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 (the Act), as amended, protects wild horses and burros from harassment or death and declares that wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; and

WHEREAS, under the Act, wild horses and burros are managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the United States Forest Service (USFS) in their respective jurisdictions and within the areas where these animals were found roaming in 1971; and

WHEREAS, the BLM manages public lands for multiple use and a sustained yield, as mandated by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA); and

WHEREAS, when considering the Act and the FLPMA together, the BLM is required to protect wild horses and burros in balance with other public resources and uses, including other wildlife and fish, recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed and natural scenic, scientific and historical values; and

WHEREAS, responsible management of wild horse and burro populations is critical to protect scarce and fragile resources in the arid West and ensure healthy wildlife and livestock; and

WHEREAS, without responsible management, the resources in the arid West cannot be managed for multiple use because wild horses unduly infringe upon other uses by damaging riverbeds and overgrazing on limited forage, while using and often damaging the infrastructure of other public land users; and

WHEREAS, with virtually no natural predators, wild horse and burro populations can double every four (4) to five (5) years if left unchecked; and

WHEREAS, due to their protected status, if a wild horse or burro strays onto privately owned lands, the private landowners have no recourse for the infringement of their private property rights other than to inform their local BLM or USFS field office to seek removal of the animal; and

WHEREAS, under the Act, the BLM and USFS must inventory wild horse and burro populations periodically to determine appropriate management levels (AMLs) to maintain a thriving natural ecological balance and preserve the multiple-use relationship on public lands; and

WHEREAS, under the Act, the BLM and USFS are authorized to remove wild horses and burros to achieve AMLs upon the respective agency's determination that an overpopulation exists; and

WHEREAS, upon that determination, the Act requires the agency first to order old, sick, or lame animals to be destroyed in the most humane manner possible, second to cause excess wild horses and burros to be humanely captured for private adoption and third, to cause excess animals to be destroyed in the most humane and cost-efficient manner possible; and

WHEREAS, the BLM and USFS are increasingly unable to adequately manage wild horse and burro populations due to exponential increases in the number of wild horses and burros on the range, difficulties in adopting or selling wild horses and burros, lack of effective fertility control measures, lawsuits prohibiting or stalling gathers and removals, insufficient availability of holding facilities and increasing management costs; and

WHEREAS, of the one hundred seventy-seven (177) herd management areas across ten (10) western states under the jurisdiction of the BLM, comprising almost twenty-seven million (27,000,000) acres, only approximately twenty percent (20%) fall within their attendant AML; and

WHEREAS, the BLM recognizes the need for decisive action to reverse the harm to western landscapes and the wild horses and burros occupying them, as demonstrated by the agency's "2020 Report to Congress: An Analysis of Achieving a Sustainable Wild Horse and Burro Program;" and

WHEREAS, off-range holding of gathered animals accomplishes neither free-ranging of the animals nor population control and amounts to great expense, as demonstrated by the BLM fiscal year 2021 off-range holding expenditures of seventy-seven million seven hundred thousand dollars ($77,700,000.00); and

WHEREAS, under the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906, United States Department of Agriculture inspection is mandatory to sell meat in interstate or foreign commerce; and

WHEREAS, the United States Congress has effectively banned horse slaughter in the United States for human consumption since 2007 by denying funding for the inspection of equine slaughter facilities throughout the food production process. Federal appropriations laws since 1988 have contained similar prohibitions; and

WHEREAS, the fiscal year 2022 Department of Interior appropriations law prohibited the use of funds for destruction of healthy animals or for sales of animals that result in processing into commercial products; and

WHEREAS, the Act, combined with the effect of the United States Congress' effective ban on equine slaughter facilities, has created an unsustainable issue where wild horse and burro populations continue to expand exponentially; and

WHEREAS, the United States has benefitted from the ability of neighboring countries to provide equine slaughter services.  The capacity of those neighboring countries to provide these services is limited, however, and has been degraded by the closure of facilities as well as the challenges associated with transporting animals long distances.  Effective and humane management of wild horses and burros can be best accomplished by facilitating the United States' own capacity to transport and process wild horses and burros; and

WHEREAS, the wild horse and burro population's continued exponential growth and the federal agencies' continued inability to adequately manage these populations to attain AMLs presents an urgent concern for management policy and practice; and

WHEREAS, a pragmatic shift in United States' wild horse and burro management policy is prudent and necessary to help address this crisis and achieve protection of wild horses and burros in manageable numbers; and

WHEREAS, policy tools must be implemented to authorize equine domestic slaughter, to allow horse and burro meat inspection and sale and to facilitate the humane transport of wild horses and burros both domestically and to other countries or sovereigns for slaughter.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WYOMING:

Section 1.  That the Legislature of the State of Wyoming requests the United States Congress to enact legislation and make other necessary policy changes to allow federal land management agencies and agency partners to implement best management practices for wild horses and burros by allowing for equine slaughter and processing for shipment to accommodating markets within or outside the United States.

Section 2.  That the Legislature of the State of Wyoming requests the United States Congress to enact legislation and make other necessary policy changes to allow federal land management agencies and agency partners to work with states and Indian tribes with respect to the management, gathering and disposition of wild horses and burros.

Section 3.  That the Legislature of the State of Wyoming requests the United States Congress to enact legislation and make other necessary policy changes to remove impediments to the disposition of gathered wild horses and burros, including equine slaughter and processing.

Section 4.  That the Secretary of State of Wyoming transmit copies of this resolution to the President of the United States, to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress, to the Secretary of the Interior and to the Wyoming Congressional Delegation.

 

Lex Anteinternet: The Blizzard

Lex Anteinternet: The Blizzard: 

The Blizzard

We went waterfowl hunting.

By we, I mean my son, his girlfriend, and the dog.  We loaded up in the Dodge D3500, and we went waterfowl hunting

The highways were all closed, so I got there by going through a small farm belt here, hitting a rural road, and taking it to the river, the back way. We were the only vehicles on it.

Yes, this can be argued, and probably correctly driving out in a blizzard was not smart.  But people wanted to go, and it looked like good waterfowl hunting weather, which in fact it was.

Out on the river, in fact, the weather wasn't nearly as bad as it was in town.  It snowed lightly off and on, but it wasn't a blizzard.  At some point, it had been, as the snow was quite deep.

And we had the river all to ourselves.

And has we headed back into town, the snowstorm cranked up again.

And yes, there were some spots on the road that were really bad.  Only the fact that I was driving a very heavy, and powerful, diesel 4x4 allowed us to get there.  Frankly, a 1/2 ton gasser probably wouldn't have.  And yes, you ought to stay off the road in weather like that.

We were going to do this on Sunday, New Year's Day, but the blizzard made that impossible in town.  It was also rendered impossible by the fact that the batteries on the diesel had given out the week prior, and I'd only learned that on Saturday when I was heading out, in advance of the storm, to hunt geese near Torrington.  I changed, the batteries, in the blizzard, on Sunday after Mass, but only after nearly wrecking my very lightweight Jeep going to get the batteries.

The point.

Well, as follows.  

I have a new neighbor across the street that I spoke to, two snowstorms ago.  He's from Maryland and asked about the snow.  I told him that it snowed all the way through April, as it does.

He apparently didn't believe me, as his next door neighbor, who was out while I was snow blowing when I got home yesterday, was stating that the same neighbor had asked him, that day, about the snow.  He got the same information.

My prediction is that the new neighbor will leave.

Late last night, I got a text from a coworker. Should we close the office, today?

In fairness, the county has closed, and the school districts.

This is of interest as it's become, all of a sudden, a really common event.  A couple of snowstorms ago, all of a sudden a coworker was asking if we should send people home early.  It caught me completely off guard.  It was very cold, and slightly snowy, but why would we do that?  I vetoed it as I had stuff I had to go out, but this came after another similar event.  Light snow, and we're sending people home.  And we're not the only ones.

This is just an observation, really.  Maybe it's a good thing that these events are taken more into consideration than they used to be.  Or maybe we're really unprepared for them.  Probably both.  I'm glad they close the highways more than they used to, as they used to leave them open in horrible conditions.  But I don't quite know what to make of the situation where people choose to move outside of town on a windblown flat, and then can't make it to work.  It makes sense to me to close when weather is genuinely bad, but for regular in town operations, closing everything as a few folks might have trouble getting there, who should be given consideration for that, seems odd.

Lex Anteinternet: "If this is a time to rest and recover, then be su...

Lex Anteinternet: "If this is a time to rest and recover, then be su...: 

"If this is a time to rest and recover, then be sure and do so without guilt."

If this is a time to rest and recover, then be sure and do so without guilt. God made rest a part of His commands to us.  Enjoy the joy and remember that He made us human beings, not human doings. 

Fr. Joseph Krupp.

Fr. Krupp's Facebook post here was synchronicitous for me.

I didn't take much time off last year.  And my not taking "much", what I mean is that I took three days really off, just off, because I had surgery and was laying in the hospital.

That's not really good.

I'd like to claim that it was for one reason or another, but truth be known, i'ts something I imposed upon myself.  And I do this every year.

Indeed, I'm much worse about it than I used to be.

All the things you hear about not taking time off are 100% true, if not 200%.  You become less efficient, for one thing.  And if you work extra hours, sooner or later, you'll acclimate yourself to working the extra hours to the point where you need to. That's become your work life.

Christmas in my work place essentially always works the same way.  We work, normally, the day before Christmas, December 24, until noon. At noon, we dismiss the staff and all go to a collective lawyer's lunch.  That institution is, I think, a remnant of an earlier era in our society in general, when it could be expected that most professional institutions would remain a certain size and everyone who worked there would have a sort of collegiality.  It sort of recalls, in a way, the conditions described by Scrooge's original employer in A Christmas Carrol, in the shop run by Mr. Fezziwig.

This use to really prevail in firms when I was first practicing.  I recall being at lunch on December 24 at a local club restaurant in which other firms would also be there.  Everyone was doing the same thing.  I haven't seen another firm at one now, however, for years.  Maybe they just go somewhere else, but I sort of suspect that they're not doing it.

Well, good for us. It's hard not to have a certain feeling of sadness about it, however, as three of the lawyers who once were part of that are now dead.  Others have moved on long ago.  New faces have come, of course.

Anyhow, that institution sort of ties up the afternoon of December 24, but it's an afternoon off.   If you are a Catholic with a family, it's always been a bit tight, as we normally go to Mass on Christmas Eve and then gather after that. Christmas is obviously a day off, as is Boxing Day, December 26, although most Americans don't refer to Boxing Day by that name.

This year Christmas came on a Sunday, which was nice as it made December 23 the day of the lunch and effectively an extra day off.  We took, of course, Boxing Day off.

Sometime in there, I began to wonder why I hadn't taken the whole week off.  With just three days off, beyond Sundays, and having worked most of the 52 Saturdays of the year, I should have.  I had the things done, pretty much, that I needed to get done.

What was I thinking?

If this is a time to rest and recover, then be sure and do so without guilt. God made rest a part of His commands to us.  Enjoy the joy and remember that He made us human beings, not human doings. 

Well, I'm actually at the point, in spite of myself, that I'm so acclimated to going to the work that I feel guilty if I take time off.  And frankly, the Internet hasn't helped much.  On the afternoon of the 23d, I received a text message asking me if I was working that afternoon.  I wasn't, and they were gracious about it, but this is how things tend to be. It's hard to actually escape the office.

On Boxing Day I went goose and duck hunting.  Conditiond were great.

I should have had my limit of geese and ducks, but I shot like crap.  It'll be part of an upcoming post, maybe, but my hunting season has been messed up due to surgery.

I was going to go with my son, but events conspired against it, so it was just me and the dog.  

Earlier this year, my wife had us buy a bigger smoker. We had not had one until fairly recently, when we won one at a Duck's Unlimited banquet.  That one is a little traveling one, sort of a tailgating smoker, and can work from a car's battery system.  You can plug it in, and we've enjoyed it, but due to its size, we decided to get a bigger one and did.  It's been great.

This was my first occasion actually using it, something necessitated by the fact that our oven is more or less out due to some sort of weird oven thing that happened to it which will not get addressed until sometime this week.  Besides, I'd been wanting to try smoked waterfowl.

It turned out great.  I should have taken a picture of the finished bird, but I didn't.  Maybe one of the top two roasted geese I've ever had.

Anyhow, I should have taken this whole week off, but didn't.  I may take some time later this week, however.  

It's been a really long year.

Italy expand wild boar hunting.

Italy is going to expand the hunting of wild boars in the country, including allowing the culling of the animals in urban and protected areas.  The wild pig is a common animal throughout Europe and Asia and, like all pigs, is destructive.

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror. Today's Document: John Joseph Mathew...

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror. Today's Document: John Joseph Mathew...:   

Blog Mirror. Today's Document: John Joseph Mathews, Osage Council Member, author, historian, and Rhodes Scholar, seated at home in front of his fireplace, Oklahoma, 12/16/1937.

 

John Joseph Mathews, Osage Council Member, author, historian, and Rhodes Scholar, seated at home in front of his fireplace, Oklahoma, 12/16/1937. 

Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs

Series: General Photographs of Indians

Image description: Mr. Mathews sits in an armchair in front of a fireplace, with a dog at his feet. The fireplace and walls are made of stone. Next to the fireplace is a table with smoking pipes on it, and a filing cabinet; on the wall is a framed cover of Mathews’ book SUNDOWN. The mantelpiece has candles, framed photos and certificates, and taxidermied animals. The mantel bears the Latin words VENARI LAVARI LUDERE RIDERE OCCAST VIVERE (To hunt, to bathe, to play, to laugh, is to live).

Source: catalog.archives.gov

Too good not to repost in its entirety.  

And a great motto!

Lex Anteinternet: A Nature Party and a question. Does this comport with nature?

Lex Anteinternet: A Nature Party and a question. Does this comport w...:   

 

Altered from imagine done by Di (they-them) - This SVG flag includes elements that have been taken or adapted from this flag:, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114863039

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.

The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac.  Aldo Leopold

I wish there was a political party whose first principal was a question; "does this comport with nature?"

And asked that question, as its first principal, honestly.  Not seeking to ask it in some preconceived of manner in which the answer to the question is known before the question is posed.

And not in a way that always aligns with the questioners personal interest and economics.

One that posed it honestly, and went from there.

Such a party would make nearly every political pundit and national politician today squirm.

Senators who come on Fox News every other week, or on Twitter every week, who are from the State of Extraction would disappear behind the dour looking Mitch McConnell rather than answer the question first, and go on honestly from there.

So would left wing politicians who take to the floor in Big Green Rectangle to proclaim allegiance with "gender care", having undergone "gender care" themselves, without answering this question first.

It'd be a step towards sanity in a major way.

Indeed, the very fact that such a question is not the first posed is responsible, in no small measure, for why American politics are as stupid as they currently are.  The rational middle is gone, with the irrational agenda driven extremes in control.

This is why discussions on economics and production are totally divorced from reality on the right and the left.

And this is why discussions on existential biological issues devolve into anti-scientific diatribes that are linked with ill-informed world views rather than reality.

And this is also why those same issues become attached to extremist whose world view is ground not in science, but in ideologies of all type that are of their own fantastical creations, or those whose fantastical creations match a world the way they wish to see it, causing it to become impossible to debate or discuss any issue, as all issues all end up lashed to the philosophy, rather than the science, and reality.

Primum non nocere, first do no harm, we are told, is the first and most ancient rule of medicine.  Perhaps for politics, that branch of philosophy which is applied in the same way that engineering is applied physics, should consider  An hoc pertinet ad naturam?, does this comport with nature. This should be added be added to philosophy of all types, applied and not, as the first principal.

Related Threads:

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us

The Aerodrome: Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. The Waking Up Edition (Vol 1).

The Aerodrome: Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Ses...: And here's one that pertains to manned aircraft.

SENATE FILE NO. SF0033

 

 

Defining aircraft for purposes of hunting prohibitions.

 

Sponsored by: Joint Judiciary Interim Committee

 

 

A BILL

 

for

 

AN ACT relating to game and fish; providing a definition of "aircraft" for purposes of the prohibition on the use of aircraft for hunting and other purposes as specified; and providing for an effective date.

 

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:

 

Section 1.  W.S. 23‑3‑306(a) is amended to read:

 

23‑3‑306.  Use of aircraft, automobiles, motorized and snow vehicles and artificial light for hunting or fishing prohibited; exceptions; penalties.

 

(a)  No person shall harass, pursue, hunt, shoot, or kill any Wyoming wildlife except predatory animals with, from, or by use of any aircraft, automotive vehicle, trailer, motor‑propelled wheeled vehicle, or vehicle designed for travel over snow. No person shall use any aircraft, to aid in the taking of any Wyoming wildlife, except predatory animals, whether by spotting or locating the wildlife, communicating with any person attempting to take the wildlife, or by providing other aid to any person taking the wildlife. Nothing in this subsection shall apply to the use of any aircraft by governmental agencies, their employees, contractors or designees performing any lawful duties. The commission may exempt handicapped hunters from any provision of this subsection. For purposes of this section "aircraft" means any machine or device capable of atmospheric flight including but not limited to an airplane, helicopter, glider, dirigible or unmanned aerial vehicle.

 

Section 2.  This act is effective July 1, 2023.

 

(END)

Dirigible?

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: How a Popular Hunting App and a Conservation Group...

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: How a Popular Hunting App and a Conservation Group...: Sample OnX map. An article on "corner-cutting," public access, and whether landowners own airpace over property corners makes it t...

Lex Anteinternet: Rights of Nature

Lex Anteinternet: Rights of Nature: 

Rights of Nature

I support reintroducing grizzly bears.

To the Cheesman Park neighborhood of Denver, more specifically.  And nobody can talk me out of it.

Saturday, December 2, 1922. Kuwait gets axed.

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, December 2, 1922. Kuwait gets axed.: 

Saturday, December 2, 1922. Kuwait gets axed.

Lex Anteinternet: Some feral threads in the fabric.

Lex Anteinternet: Some feral threads in the fabric.: 

Some feral threads in the fabric.

I'm not going to take this too far, and you definitely could, but a couple of odds and ends I've run across recently.

One is this Agrarian blog I recently located:

Foothill Agrarian

There are only handful of really worthwhile agrarian blogs around.  That's at least better than the situation with the distributist situation, where there's nothing worthwhile whatsoever.  Of the handful that are out there, the two best ones are linked in here.  A third one that is also worthwhile (which is a successor to two prior blogs, just as this blog also is), is also linked in, but it's not quite as good.  I'll do a thread on them some other time, or on all of these together. A fourth one would get a link for its actual agrarian posts, but it descends into "Southern Agrarianism" of the Lost Cause variety, and we're not going there.  Nope, no way.

Anyhow, I thought that this entry by an agrarian California sheep rancher, who is an adult entrant into hunting, really interesting.  He's also a self professed agrarian.

Persistence

We've posted a lot about hunting here, from the prospective of the nearly feral agrarian who has been a hunter his entire life.  It's interesting to see some similar views come about from the thoughtful agrarian adult who came to it late.

I haven't made it all the way through the back entries on Foothill Agrarian. Not by a long shot, but I was also struck by this entry:

Coming to Terms with Being Part-Time

This is a little like reading my own thoughts.  Indeed, this guy is just about the same age as me (I'm a little older), and he's a rancher, not a "homesteader", which anymore conveys something else, and frankly something less serious, or perhaps less realistic.  I'll be looking forward to perusing his prior entries.

I'm glad I found his blog.

Here's the other thing that caught my eye.

Helsinki says no meat will be served, single-use cutlery used at its events

This quite frankly is a deceptive headline, but that's how it generally reads, even in English language editions of Finnish newspapers.  What it really means is that the City of Helsinki will be changing what it serves at official state and municipal functions, and venues it owns, and it actually still will be serving meat.

What it will serve is local fish and also local game.  We don't see wild game as a restaurant item much in the US, and indeed its subject to very strict statutory provisions everywhere.  Why peole make the distinction between fish and "meat" baffles me, but they have here.

This is being done, maybe, by Helsinki (its drawing a lot of criticism) to reduce, it claims, its carbon footprint.  There's a certain "m'eh" quality to this as frankly the concept that bovines are farting the plant into a climate crisis is not really well thought out.  Humans are omnivores and meat is part of our diet, including meat that is raised by farmers and ranchers.

Having said that, I've long been an advocate for getting your own meat directly, and therefore I'm somewhat applauding Helsinki here, probably surprisingly to those who might know me. They're emphasizing local fish, which is something that people of that city probably mostly subsisted on until the mid 20th Century. And hunting wild game has always been a big part of Finnish culture, and still is.

Now, I'm not advocating for what Helsinki did, and I suspect that the Woke city counsel of the city, or whatever its administering body is, won't have this in place long.  I'm a stockman and I'm hugely skeptical of the cow fart accusations on the climate.  Depending upon how cattle are fed, this is not the problem its made out to be, and so to the extent its a problem, and there's always been ungulates around all over, it can be addressed.  But I find it really surprising that in 2021 I'll occasionally find even ranchers and farmers who don't hunt.

People should get their meat locally if they can, and included in that, is getting it directly from the field.  Its healthy, and honest, and connects you with reality in a way that going to the stocked shelves at Sam's Club doesn't.

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PR...

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PR...:   

Blog Mirror: KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PROTECTOR

 

KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PROTECTOR

Lex Anteinternet: BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new st...

Lex Anteinternet: BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new st...:  

BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new stretch of North Platte near Casper

 This major public access story hit the news here Thursday.

BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new stretch of North Platte near Casper

I'm quite familiar with this stretch of property. As a kid, before the recent owners who owned transferred it, I used to hunt part of it.  I never asked for permission, even though I'm sure I should have.  In those days, in the 70s, we asked for permission a lot less, and it was granted by fiat a lot more.

This is a real boon to sportsmen.  It'll open up miles of river to fishing, and miles and miles to hunting.  I've passed by deer and doves in this area a lot as I didn't have permission to go where they were.  Now I'll be able to, although I hope the BLM makes as much of this roadless as possible.

I hope they also lease it out for grazing.

Indeed, I have some mixed feelings about this as I really hate to see a local ranch go out of production.  The family that owned it had started off as sheepmen in Johnson County and moved down to Natrona County when their land was bought for coal production.  Now they'll just be out of agriculture entirely, and I really hate to see that, even though I'm glad to see this didn't go to out of state interest.  Indeed, what occurred is more in keeping with the purpose of the original Federal land programs, including the Homestead Act, than what often does occur with land sales now days.

I will note that, of course, in the age of the internet this of course resulted in moronic comments, including the blisteringly ignorant comment that its somehow unconstitutional for the Federal Government to own land. That comment is so dense that it should disqualify a person from going onto land in general until some education occurs.

Lex Anteinternet: Yellowstone. A really radical idea.

Lex Anteinternet: Yellowstone. A really radical idea.: 

Yellowstone. A really radical idea.

A really radical idea that won't happen, but maybe should.

There have been really horrific floods, as we all know, in Yellowstone National Park. Roads in the northern part of the park may be closed for the rest of the summer.  Here's a National Park Service item on it:

Updates

• Aerial assessments conducted Monday, June 13, by Yellowstone National Park show major damage to multiple sections of road between the North Entrance (Gardiner, Montana), Mammoth Hot Springs, Lamar Valley and Cooke City, Montana, near the Northeast Entrance.
• Many sections of road in these areas are completely gone and will require substantial time and effort to reconstruct.
• The National Park Service will make every effort to repair these roads as soon as possible; however, it is probable that road sections in northern Yellowstone will not reopen this season due to the time required for repairs.
• To prevent visitors from being stranded in the park if conditions worsen, the park in coordination with Yellowstone National Park Lodges made the decision to have all visitors move out of overnight accommodations (lodging and campgrounds) and exit the park.
• All entrances to Yellowstone National Park remain temporarily CLOSED while the park waits for flood waters to recede and can conduct evaluations on roads, bridges and wastewater treatment facilities to ensure visitor and employee safety.
• There will be no inbound visitor traffic at any of the five entrances into the park, including visitors with lodging and camping reservations, until conditions improve and park infrastructure is evaluated.
• The park’s southern loop appears to be less impacted than the northern roads and teams will assess damage to determine when opening of the southern loop is feasible. This closure will extend minimally through next weekend (June 19).
• Due to the northern loop being unavailable for visitors, the park is analyzing how many visitors can safely visit the southern loop once it’s safe to reopen. This will likely mean implementation of some type of temporary reservation system to prevent gridlock and reduce impacts on park infrastructure.
• At this time, there are no known injuries nor deaths to have occurred in the park as a result of the unprecedented flooding. 
• Effective immediately, Yellowstone’s backcountry is temporarily closed while crews assist campers (five known groups in the northern range) and assess damage to backcountry campsites, trails and bridges.
• The National Park Service, surrounding counties and states of Montana and Wyoming are working with the park’s gateway communities to evaluate flooding impacts and provide immediate support to residents and visitors.
• Water levels are expected to recede today in the afternoon; however, additional flood events are possible through this weekend.

Here's an idea.

Don't rebuild the roads.

For years, there have been complaints about how overcrowded Yellowstone National Park has become.  A combination of a tourist economy and high mobility, and frankly the American inability to grasp that the country has become overpopulated, had contributed to that.  For years there have been suggestions that something needed to be done about that.

Maybe what is needed is. .. nothing.

Well, nothing now, so to speak.

Yellowstone was the nation's first National Park.  It was created at a time when park concepts, quite frankly, were different from they are now.   Created in 1872, its establishment was in fact visionary, and it did grasp in part that the nation's frontier was closing, even though the creation of the park came a fully four years prior to the Battle of Little Big Horn.  There was, at the time of its creation, a sort of lamentation that the end of the Frontier was in sight, and the nation was going to become one of farms and cities.

Nobody saw cities like they exist now, however, and nobody grasped that the day would come when agricultural land would be the province of the rich, and that homesteading would go from a sort of desperate act to something that people would cite to, in the case of their ancestors, as some sort of basis for moral superiority.  Things are much different today than they were then.

Indeed, in some ways, the way the park is viewed is a bit bipolar.  To some, particularly those willing to really rough it, Yellowstone is a sort of giant wilderness area.  To others, it's a sort of theme park. 

The appreciation of the need to preserve wilderness existed then, but what that meant wasn't really understood.  The park was very much wilderness at first, and some things associated with wilderness went on within it, and of course still do.  Early camping parties travelled there.  People fished there, and still do.  Hunting was prohibited early on, which had more to do with the 19th Century decline in wildlife due to market hunting than it did anything else.  This has preserved a sort of bipolarism in and of itself, as fishing is fish-hunting, just as bird hunting is fowling. There's no reason in fact that Yellowstone should have not been opened back up to hunting some time during the last quarter-century, but it is not as just as the park is wilderness to young adventurers from the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, and hearty back country folks of all ages, it's also a big public zoo for people from Newark or Taipei.  

Since 1872, all sorts of additional parks have been created. Some are on the Yellowstone model, such as Yosemite.  Others are historical sites such as Gettysburg or Ft. Laramie.  All, or certainly all that I've seen, are of value.

But they don't all have the same value.

Much of Yellowstone's value is in its rugged wilderness.  Some cite to the geothermal features of the park, but that's only a small portion of it.  And for that reason, much of Yellowstone today would make more sense existing as a Wilderness Area under the Wilderness Act of 1964, the act that helps preserve the west in a very real way, and which western politicians, who often live lives much different than actual westerners, love to hate.

A chance exists here to bring back Yellowstone into that mold, which it was intended in part to be fro the very onset, and which many wish it was, or imagine it to be, today.

Don't rebuilt the roads.

That would in fact mean the northern part of the park would revert to wilderness, truly.  And it means that many fewer people would go to the park in general.  And it would hurt the tourist communities in the northern areas, and even in the southern areas, as the diminished access to the park would mean that the motorized brigade of American and International tourists wouldn't go there, as they wouldn't want to be too far from their air-conditioned vehicles.

But that's exactly what should be done.