--Chad Love

Are too many deer in the woods hurting biodiversity? That's the thought-provoking argument set out in this New York Times op/ed piece, which argues there are so many deer in the United States today that they are literally eating critical migratory bird habitat into oblivion.

From this story in the New York Times:
"...But one of the biggest contributors to the decline in migratory bird populations has gone largely unnoticed: white-tailed deer. By 1900, deforestation and unregulated hunting had reduced deer populations in the Eastern United States to tiny remnant clusters surviving in remote sanctuaries. But subsequent protective laws and aggressive habitat management allowed deer to bounce back. To this day, wildlife managers slice intact forests into sunny woodlots that maximize the number of deer and the frequency of encounters between deer and hunters. Private landowners are encouraged by wildlife agencies to crisscross their forest acreage with tasty plantings of clover and wheat in support of what is now a burgeoning population of perhaps 50 million white-tailed deer — in some places as many as 75 deer per square mile. 

by T. Edward Nickens

A little bit here and a little bit there. You keep your eyes open. That’s how you learn. You pick up a new knot from a new fishing buddy, or try a decoy trick you saw in a magazine. You make mistakes. And if you’re lucky, like I was, there will be a mentor along the way. An unselfish someone who cares enough about you that he wants you to know everything he’s ever learned.

That’s the good thing about hunting and fishing and camping: You can never know it all, and you’re never as good as you could be.

Over the years, I’ve learned from the best—mentors, buddies, guides, story subjects, and some of the most dedicated outdoor-skills competitors this world has ever seen. Put them together, and they’ve got a half dozen different ways to shoot a double or cast a fly rod. Here’s the best of what I’ve learned from them, and on my own, in 35 years of hunting and fishing. And this is what all sportsmen should do with such knowledge: Pass it on.

by David Draper

As obsessed with (and frankly, terrified of) a nuclear disaster as I was when I was young, the whole doomsday madness going on today has pretty much passed me by. Maybe living within sight of an ICBM bunker, one gets used to having an ever-present harbinger of the End Times in your backyard. That, or I’m just too busy to care. Still, there is one thing Wild Chef readers and doomsday preppers have in common: a perhaps unhealthy obsession with food.

The real problem I have with the preppers is the kinds of food they’re putting up. I’m not sure I want to live in a world where I have to eat white rice and something called textured soy protein every day. And what about working your way through a three-month supply of Rice-a-Roni? That thought alone is enough to make me hope my house takes a direct hit from the first Russian SCARP (which, considering the Minuteman missile buried across the road, is not that unlikely).

--Chad Love

I'm willing to bet that (for the male readers, anyway) whatever knowledge you may have of the "Twilight" books and/or movies was gained through the reluctant and incidental osmosis of a wife, girlfriend, sister or daughter. It's about clowns, right?

At any rate, it seems the release of whichever film is next up on the schedule has been delayed because the director had to re-shoot some important hunting scenes, apparently because he wanted to get the scenes of deer-hunting vampires as close to reality as possible.