by David Draper

Not too many years ago, there used to be a guy in town who made his rounds to the mechanic shops and construction sites selling burritos out of a tiny little Igloo cooler. He didn’t say a lot and most of it was in broken English, but in exchange for a buck, he would dip into the cooler and trade you a tinfoil-wrapped tortilla filled with eggs and potatoes. Throw in a second buck and you could get one of his chorizo and egg burritos—if there were any left. They were always the first to go.

I was a cubicle jockey, so I only saw Burrito Guy when they were remodeling our offices, which, luckily for me and the Burrito Guy, was practically never-ending. Lucky for me because I loved the creamy, spicy mix of scrambled eggs and sausage. Lucky for Burrito Guy because I spent a chunk of change with him every week.

by Chad Love

One of the really cool things about attending a gundog-centric event like Pheasant Fest is that you get the chance to see so many different gundog breeds under one roof. It really is a unique opportunity, and I can't think of any other venue where you can see such a diversity of working gundog breeds from, literally, all over the world. Some of them look familiar enough to where you can at least take a guess at what they are, and some of them you simply don't have a clue.

Here are two of the many breeds represented at this year's show. I'd like to do something a little different from the usual caption contest, so what you have to do is figure out what they are. One of them might be an easy guess for some of you, as the breed -- while still very much a novelty -- is gaining in popularity. The other one will be a little more difficult to identify, and even harder to pronounce correctly.

--Chad Love

Trains aren't generally what first come to mind when listing potential threats to hunters in the woods, but that's exactly what happened this week to a New York state hunter who was tragically struck and killed by a train while rabbit hunting with a group of friends.

From this story in the Jamestown (NY) Post-Journal:

A hunter was killed by a train Tuesday morning in the town of Portland. The Chautauqua County Sheriff's Office was called to East Forest Avenue at 9:20 a.m. after a train hit a person walking on the tracks. According to Sheriff Joseph Gerace, Giovanni Faso, 68, of 206 Heat St., Tonawanda, was hit by the train while hunting. The collision threw Faso almost 30 feet from the tracks. Gerace said five hunters from the Tonawanda area were rabbit hunting near the Norfolk and Southern train tracks at the time of the accident.

--Chad Love

With the advent of small, sophisticated, easy to use, high-quality video cameras, hunters and anglers are increasingly using the medium to record their outdoor activities; everything from fishing trips and hunting trips to dog training sessions to simple walks in the woods.

And, of course, you want to share these experiences with others, so you post your videos to YouTube, right? But you better be careful with what you post, because that meadowlark or bobwhite quail singing in the background? Yeah, that might be "copyrighted material," at least according to some company called Rumblefish.

From this story on Boingboing:

Rumblefish, a company notorious for sending copyright takedown notices to YouTube alleging copyright violations in videos' soundtracks, demanded removal of a video whose audio consists entirely of ambient birdsong recorded during a walk in the woods. When the video's creator objected, Rumblefish repeated its accusation, and Google added the notation "These content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content: Entity: rumblefish Content Type: Sound Recording."