If ever a town could be called a tourist trap Estes Park would be the poster child of any marketing class. Nevertheless it does have its attractions. Watch, and enjoy this thrilling piece dealing with the elk rut. Many other very good videos are located HERE as well. Managing wildlife encounters has become a way of life for the people of Colorado, as well as the DOW.
Archive for October, 2009
Living with Wildlife: Elk Rut in Estes Park
October 9, 2009America’s Top 20 Trophy Elk Counties
October 9, 2009I’ve been blessed living in Colorado and Wyoming in many ways. Not the least of which would be the excellent hunting offered in both states. What of the history involving what is my favorite big game species? As in big racks, not the spiritual connection with nature when one is out in the wilds.
Read on
MISSOULA, Mont.—America’s top 20 trophy elk counties have produced a combined 602 record-book bulls, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has invested millions to keep habitat in those counties in top condition.
Elk Foundation projects in trophy counties have included prescribed burns, treating noxious weeds and thinning overgrown forests to enhance forage for elk and other wildlife, restoring riparian zones, constructing wildlife drinkers, brokering land deals that improve public access, many kinds of research, public and youth education, and more “all funded primarily through our network of volunteers and system of fundraising events,” said David Allen, RMEF president and CEO.
Of course, RMEF funds identical projects all across elk country, not just top trophy counties. Nationwide, at a cost of over $448 million, RMEF has completed 6,371 projects that have protected or enhanced more than 5.6 million acres. The effort has helped U.S. elk populations grow by over 40 percent since 1984.
Trophy statistics below were compiled from Boone and Crockett Club (B&C) records. The club recognizes four categories of elk records. Those categories, along with their respective minimum scores for inclusion in B&C all-time records, are: American typical elk—375, American non-typical elk—385, Roosevelt’s elk—290, and tule elk—285.
Here are America’s top 20 trophy elk counties with RMEF conservation activities*:
Shoot Straight & Be Safe!
Second Amendment March Newsletter
October 9, 2009What a perfect day for a protest! The weather was not too cold, not too hot and overcast most of the day but it did not rain on our parade. I heard estimates throughout the day of numbers in attendance ranging from 1.5 to 2.5 million. Our local news reported thousands on one channel and tens of thousands on another. I was told that MSNBC reported 2 million!
Joe Arpaio: American hero
October 8, 2009People do what they are driven to do. Some address general issues within society, other times they are more specific, and still others sort of work along a general line but still focused within a parameter. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is one of those types. An equal opportunity Sheriff, he will arrest any law-breaker, and house them accordingly.
How to deal with such an upstart? By golly! Use the race card! It’s always worked in the past after all! So, what do the people in the obamanure administration do? They try and brand him a racist, and attempt to pull his authority that’s what they do to those that don’t fit with their political correctness agenda. Judgment Day is coming next year progressives, and when that day comes your amnesty dream plan, along with many others will be heading straight into the toilet. Where it belongs…
Hat tip to a relatively new blogger for what follows.
And that folks,was followed up by the sycophants here…
The issue is not about racism. Not at all. It is about enforcing our laws, and national security. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Butter or Guns?
October 7, 2009Butter or guns? That question is a classic when you study economics. It involves just about everything, not just guns and butter though. It is about choices, called Opportunity Cost that you and I make everyday, and all of the time. However, when it strays into the realm of Political Economics? Strange things happen.
All too often we allow others to make personal judgments on our behalf when we should be doing the hard lifting ourselves.
Read on…
In the 1856 case Dred Scott v. Sandford, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the idea that Africans and their descendants in the United States could be “entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens.” To emphasize how absurd that notion was, Chief Justice Roger Taney noted that, among other things, those “privileges and immunities” would allow members of “the unhappy black race” to “keep and carry arms wherever they went.”
The 14th Amendment, approved in the wake of the Civil War, repudiated Taney’s view of the Constitution, declaring that “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens,” who include “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” Just four years after the amendment was ratified, however, the Supreme Court interpreted the Privileges or Immunities Clause so narrowly that a dissenting justice said it had been transformed into a “vain and idle enactment.” The Court now has a chance to rectify that mistake—fittingly enough, in a case involving the right to arms.
Last week the Court agreed to hear a Second Amendment challenge to Chicago’s handgun ban. Since that law is very similar to the Washington, D.C., ordinance that the Court declared unconstitutional last year, it is bound to be overturned, assuming the Court concludes that the Second Amendment applies not just to the federal government (which oversees the District of Columbia) but also to states and their subsidiaries.
That seems like a pretty safe assumption, since over the years the Court has said the 14th Amendment’s “incorporates” nearly all of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights. But the Court’s reasoning in applying the Second Amendment to the states could have implications far beyond the right to arms. If it cites the Privileges or Immunities Clause instead of (or in addition to) the usual rationale for incorporation, the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause, it can prepare the ground for a renaissance of economic liberty.
Directly related to the above…
The website for all the Chicago case filings is here. For 19th century history, Stephen Halbrook is by far the most important scholar. His articles include: The Freedmen’s Bureau Act and the Conundrum Over Whether the Fourteenth Amendment Incorporates the Second Amendment, Northern Kentucky Law Review (2002); Personal Security, Personal Liberty, and The Constitutional Right to Bear Arms: Visions of the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, Seton Hall Constitutional Journal (1995); The Right of Workers to Assemble and to Bear Arms: Presser v. Illinois, One of the Last Holdouts Against Application of the Bill of Rights to the States, University of Detroit Mercy Law Review (1999); and (co-authored with Cynthia Leonardatos and me), Miller versus Texas: Plice Violence, Race Relations, Capital Punishment, and Gun-Toting in Texas in the Nineteenth Century–and Today, Journal of Law and Policy (2001).The lead attorney in the Supreme Court case of McDonald v. Chicago is Alan Gura. He did an excellent job in District of Columbia v. Heller, so the new case is in very good hands.
Acting 101: political propaganda
October 7, 2009This looks so staged it has to be from the mind of a script writer. It is also, clearly, an act that involves a straw purchase or the attempt to do so.
The Felon Mayor Bloomberg, is above the law, at least that is what a Federal Judge ruled. If it were a common citizen pulling these shenanigans? Can you say prison..?
Onward Hopolophobe soldiers! We are onto your games.
Is the Bill of Rights toilet tissue?
October 7, 2009The Bill of Rights places restrictions on what government may, and may not do. A pretty simple concept really. However, big government types and lawyers over the years sound a lot like economist’s do. As in making something that is fairly simple to understand into something utterly unfathomable. It’s understandable, after all. Lawyers need to make a living, as do bureaucrats. Politicians for the most part are driven by inner forces and recognition needs, that are for the most part noted by Maslow.
That’s all well and good as far as understanding what drives people to do what they do. In fact, I think that a lot of the people who I mentioned above are well intentioned. However, a well intentioned rogue is still a rogue, and unintended consequences may not be all that unintended.
By example, we are more than aware that the current administration is filled with people who are not only hostile to the Constitution but also are outspoken enemies of the Bill of Rights.
Across this nation the States are taking on the Federal Government over the usurpation of States Rights in numbers not seen since the War of Northern aggression.
Just short of secession many states are telling the Federal Government to just plain back off. Enough is enough if you will. Perhaps if the Supreme Court had issued a blanket ruling that incorporation of the Bill of Rights applied to all of the states, all the way down to the smallest level of government this would not be happening. But, they didn’t, and things are getting a bit dicey as a result.
Montana is leading the charge, and the people that brought you Ruby Ridge and the American Holocaust are, like good little serfs fighting back.
Don’t fall into the trap that this is about gun control even if that is in fact the direct issue at hand. It is about your freedom and liberty.
Failed States: No not Somalia
October 7, 2009California, the golden state, the land of American dreams, the place where I was born. What was once a land of milk and honey in the eyes of many is taking a hard dive into reality. I left there in 1978 after the passing of Proposition 13 made two classes of citizens a matter of law. It sealed me and so many others into a group of never will haves. It was big government mob rule democracy at it’s worst.
People are saying that unemployment is the worst it has been in sixty years. I beg to differ. During the Carter fiasco real unemployment in San Diego County was in reality well over twenty percent among the non government sector. I had people with advanced degrees pumping gas along side me at University City Arco.
The answer, at the time, was more socialism, and higher taxes. At least that was the solution offered up by Governor Moonbat and crew. New laws on Gun Control were being passed faster than most Californians could keep up with. New laws on vehicle emissions made it all but impossible to keep your vehicle running. At least legally.
The police concentrated on those dope smoking hippies and anyone that didn’t wear a crew cut while allowing white collar criminals the run of the state. The elites, when they were prosecuted, were given a slap on the wrist, or allowed to post bail and run across a border like Polanski did.
While at the same time a friend came home and found two thugs raping his wife. They then beat him to a pulp, until he was able to get to his 357, and put an end to their nefarious ways. The California response to that home invasion and sexual assault was to imprison him. He died there, and his wife later committed suicide. So much for the California dream, and that was many, many years gone by.
Lead by a RINO California is still in trouble up to it’s nose, and may very well be going down for the third time. I blame the people for the states demise. They keep on electing big government authoritarians. People who believe that others are too stupid for their own good. People who believe that government has the answer to every problem. People who are better than thou, and that will show you the error of your ways.
The Guardian wrote a really swell piece about all this. The grammar and spelling are magnificent. Worthy of superior marks in English Composition. But, the article misses the point completely even as they do such an eloquent job of describing the situation unfolding in California.
I started this blog a few years ago, and, as I stated in one of the earliest pieces. Government most often creates problems, or makes them worse. While Freedom, and Liberty find solutions. My thoughts have not changed.
Warfighter 101: The Taliban lamentations
October 6, 2009“Information, the first principle of warfare. Know thine enemy, but first you must know yourself.” Was that Sun Tzu? A later strategist? Who cares really, it is fundamental knowledge, and GWB blew it. The other day I started reading a rather long article. One that should be required reading for every Officer and NCO in our entire Armed Forces as well as the Commander in Chief.
In war, it is, and has been for some time a well understood tactic that winning the brain game can ensure a victory. Sometimes even without bloodshed, or minimized actual violence. Destroy the enemy’s will to fight; demoralize him, make him believe in his heart and soul that he cannot be victorious. Target any leaders that will spring up among them, and destroy them, utterly. To drive the point home. Let them hear the lamentations of not only their women, as Conan would say, but of their fellow warriors as well. Make them believe that even their God has forsaken them… Victory will be assured.
We, as in the allied forces were about to make history. The Taliban were on the ropes and a real win, by outsiders, had never before been done in Afghanistan.
But then, we took our eye off the target. It was as if we were at a Trap Shoot and shifted from singles to doubles without taking out the first clay first…
Doubt my words? Read this, in it’s entirety. Yes, it is a long read. Nothing of true value is ever easy though. This is however invaluable , if you are to understand the psychology of warfare. Of victory, and war-fighting.
Conservative Libertarian Outpost 