cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Also there was anal sex Yesterday I had to go over to my parents ' place to put their new mailbox post in. Rather than just getting a post and a sack of concrete, my mother decided it would be a good idea to get this retarded auger thing that screw into the ground with a piece of rebar, and then it has a sort of Simpson bracket on top that the wooden post attaches to. Digging a hole and putting some concrete in it would have been pretty simple for me, but instead I had to screw in this auger while keeping it perfectly lever. This was hell on the damaged tendons in my elbow. Then of course it ended up not level, so I had to take it out and do the whole thing all over again in the baking hot sun. Followed by a whole thing with removing a 'L' shaped metal rod in the ground that the old post had been supported by, which meant beating it with a sledgehammer and ruining my tendons even farther. But it was all worth it because, uh... No wait, it wasn't worth it at all. The whole thing, including cutting down the post and drilling to holes to bolt it to the bracket, took so long that I didn't even get to do any fishing while I was over there. My left arm had been hurting much worse than my right, but the repeated swinging of the sledgehammer tortured the frayed tendon in my right elbow so badly that I can feel it throbbing in my arm right now. It hurts like fuck. The upside of this is that my left arm doesn't feel so bad now by comparison. Also there was anal sex last night. Now for more on those deer that came around the other day. Ok, this was extremely interesting to me because I've seen all 3 of these deer before, but never all of them together at once. They have formed a classic clan of bucks from 3 different generations. This is deer behavior that is supposed to be normal but in much of the US you don't see it anymore, because most hunters were conditioned for generations to only shoot bucks and pass on any doe. The result was very high populations of deer overall, but very few mature bucks. A clan of bucks is dependant on having at least one really experienced, mature buck. He is kind of the whole point of the group because he is teaching the younger bucks how to be proper bucks and how to find certain kinds of food, etc. When everything with antlers gets shot within a year, bucks don't become fully mature and clans of bucks do not develop. Point is that that I have a clan of 3 really, really nice bucks visiting my property regularly. The eldest one is about 4 years old, which is very much a mature buck. He has 10 points on his broad antlers, which are tremendous things. The next one is probably his offspring based on the resemblance of the antlers. I would guess that he is about 2 years old, maybe 3. An 8 pointer with amazingly long main beams. And then there is a 7 point little yearling who still has legs like a colt and antlers that are long and promising but unrefined. If he lives then he will develop very nicely. The bumps on his main beam that only hint at another point will turn into properly developed tines This whole thing is very exciting to me because this is exactly what I set out to make happen 3 years ago. I passed up shots on anything with antlers and harvested as many does as I could. Gradually, I brought the population back towards its natural balance. Fewer deer on the land, meaning more food for those that remain, so that they become very healthy and large. And closer to a 50/50 ratio of bucks to does, so that they would form the sort of proper deer society that I had only read about in books. It is much more interesting to watch a clan of bucks than it is to watch a bunch of does. The bucks do more stuff, like rub their antlers on things and scrape at the ground and generally play and interact with each other. I have a decision to make this fall. Do I shoot that eldest buck? I think I might be entitled to a dividend here. I would only be taking one, and at that point the other one would be at least 2.5 years old and it is no fool. I think it could do an adequate job of being the group leader in late December when the bucks start getting back together. He and that yearling will meet up again and will probably be joined within a matter of months by one or 2 of this year's fawns. So long as I keep it to just the one buck and take 3 or 4 does as well, I think it would be ok. 11:54 a.m. - 2009-08-10 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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