By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

From ABC4 News:

“The car in front of us slowed down,” recalled [witness Marchelle] Elmer, “we slowed down. . . .” Then trouble comes around the bend. “This Land Rover came flying past us and started pushing the elk down [the highway]. . . .

Most of the elk ran down the road.  Six. . .  [jumped] over the railing. . . plunging down onto the lanes below.  Those six died. [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

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... [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

2008 is almost in the books, and with it go all those goal-oriented lies I happily deluded myself into stating at this very time last year. I now have a fresh and unsullied set of lies ready to go. All I need is a good hangover cure, a few spoonfuls of black-eyed peas, a short-lived sense of purpose and optimism and a week or two in which to stave off reality.

To be honest I get a little melancholy this time of year because I know that January is the final gasp, the last fading exhalation of the season before the deep freeze of late winter sets in.

But hey, I've still got two weeks of bow season, a couple more weeks of duck season if the water stays open and the quail and pheasant are still out there mocking me. Plus, the good folks at Cabela's just sent me their official February survival kit. They may call it a spring fishing catalog, but that and a warm, cozy bathroom is all I need to make it through those long late-winter days.

Happy New Year's everyone, and may all your hopelessly optimistic and ultimately doomed New Year's resolutions come to fruition for at least... [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

“Coach says it’s OK to bleed from the ears.”—Reggie Ray, in Not Another Teen Movie

For fear the hearts of men are failing,
For these are latter days we know.
The Great Depression now is spreading;
God’s word declared it would be so.
I’m going where there’s no Depression,
To that lovely land that’s free from care.
I’ll leave this world of toil and trouble.
My home’s in Heaven; I’m going there.
—A.P. Carter, from Songs of the Depression, by The New Lost City Ramblers, 1959

Some of the following is already fact. The rest of it will probably be fact before 2009 is out.

On December 18, one day after Washington announced its new “reasonable” gun-ownership laws, MSNBC news bunny Mika Brzezinski was mugged outside her D.C. hotel by a robber who did not carry a gun. Meanwhile, the murderer of Chondra Levy, the intern who was killed in a Washington park in 2001, remains at large.

President Obama will push a new firearms-control law through a Congress that is distracted by a debate over whether to bail out kitty litter manufacturers (unsympathetic reporters label the pro-litter faction “The Pissing Pussy Posse”). It establishes the National Bureau of Gun-Owner... [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

I generally try to refrain from blogging too much on PETA because quite frankly the group's antics don't warrant that much attention. As animal-rights groups go PETA is much less a genuine threat than say, the Fund for Animals or the Humane Society of the United States.

Why? Because given a choice between misguided half-nekkid chicks holding placards on a sidewalk or a team of fully-clothed lawyers in a courtroom I'll take the nekkid chicks. Pranksterism and publicity stunts may make headlines; legal action is what influences policy.

Having said that, did anyone doubt PETA would let Burger King's new "Flame" scent for men slide by without a response?

Of course not. So now I present for your culinary and olfactory pleasure..."Gore" the enticing new scent from PETA.

[ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

From The Dallas Morning News:
A directive that allows Ferris police officers to shoot dangerous feral dogs is drawing criticism from animal welfare advocates.

The policy handed down by City Manager David Chavez last week allows officers to use shotguns to kill the potentially violent dogs. . . [which] breed and form packs that roam the town for food. . . .

"It's not a task anybody relishes down here," [Police Chief Frank Mooney] said. "You have to take care of the situation now or wait until someone's dead."

What do you think? Good policy or not? [ Read Full Post ]