I grew up fishing for bass and panfish for the most part like most people in the Midwest who fish. When I was in middle school my dad got way into bass fishing and was part of the semi-pro bass tournament circuit in the Midwest so I used to get dragged all over the place to fish. We mostly threw plastic worms, spinners and crank baits but at times I would fly fish for them. When I moved to Des Moines after college I got serious about fly fishing for bass and spent many days on the Middle Fork of the Raccoon fishing for smallmouth or out at a lake fishing for largemouth.
Camping in the pandemic
Last week we finally broke out the NOBO and headed over to the Teanaway Forest, one of the closest places to home where campgrounds were now open after COVID related closures followed by a 23-day manhunt for a murderer who was holed up in the area. Turns out I was turkey hunting on a day when the guy who killed another turkey hunter was on the loose and Catherine and I were foraging another day, they just hadn’t announced it and started the closure yet,.
Hunting & Fishing in the time of COVID
They re-opened the outdoors in Washington on May 5th and after a week of letting the crowds thin out I decided to start getting back out there. Lira and I have been hitting the lakes early in the morning to avoid the crowds and the boat ramp backups. It has been fun getting out on the water but our freezer isn’t filling up too fast, I’m in a streak of losing fish and bringing home one per day out when I hook two or three more. I need about 8-10 trout to get the trout supply in decent shape for the rest of the year so I’ll keep at it while I can over the next few weeks.
Yesterday I went turkey hunting for the day over in the Teanaway. Tough to do in a day trip with no scouting but it was great getting out into the woods for a full day. I covered a range of spots in the DNR land over there and put in about 8 miles of walking with a lot of calling and sitting in good looking spots. The highlight of the day was when a mule deer walked out into one of my spots. The deer knew something was up but wasn’t quite sure what to make of me and it finally just walked off after looking in my direction a few times but not really spooking. Of course the only turkey I saw was walking across Red Bridge Road as I was driving back home. I may try to get in one more day before the season ends just because it was so nice being outside all day and not having to deal with running into other people at all.
I have no idea what this is all going to mean for fall so I’m hoping to take advantage of as many local opportunities as possible to get a deer in the freezer and do a bunch of bird hunting. All I know is that I’m glad we have a fairly well stocked freezer at the moment from last year and between that, our garden and CSA we don’t even need to go to the grocery store too often.
2019 in Review
Another year gone by already and what a year it was. I spent a lot of this year dealing with a relapse of SIBO and some other health issues but still managed to get outside every single day, got in a lot of hunting and fishing and had quite a few good trips locally, to the LA area and to British Columbia. So much, in fact, I couldn’t even really get it all in the picture grid.
Continue readingMontana Whitetail Hunting
After last season being a bust in the big-game department I decided that I would try and get out of state for a hunt at least once a year to better insure a freezer full of meat. I knew if we rationed I would get to October so we cut back on venison consumption and ate more fish and birds. I started looking for a trip and contacted Backcountry Montana Adventures who were listed as a RMEF supporter and began discussing options. Originally this trip was going to be Catherine and I doing a bit of whitetail doe hunting and looking in the mountains outside of Dillon for a mule deer buck. After planning the rest of our year Catherine decided against leaving Lira for a week so I switched the trip to be a whitetail only hunt and invited Christian along since he now had an empty freezer and had never been on a big game hunt before.
Atrantil, another round of treatment…
After failing to knock out the SIBO relapse with a month of herbals I decided to try something new – Atrantil. Atrantil was designed by a GI doctor in Texas specifically for methane dominant SIBO. It is a combination of three herbs that is reported to block the ability of methanogens to actually create methane thus give relief from symptoms. Studies show it works about 80% of the time in tough to treat cases but it is unclear whether it just stops symptoms or actually kills off the bacteria.
SIBO is back, with a vengeance
About a two months ago I started having some symptoms that reminded me of when I first started getting SIBO back in 2013 – a dull full feeling under my right rib-cage, bloating, burping, etc… After a few weeks of it I decided to just start treating it in hopes of knocking it out quickly so did a month of AlliMed/Neem/Berberine. I had my ups and downs over the month and settled into a strict Paleo diet and felt better thinking that maybe I had licked it. I decide to test and see where I was actually at and was stunned at the results:
Worst test result I’ve had to date, high of 62 when my previous high had been in the 49 and that took nearly two years to clear out. My baseline was off the charts high so it makes me think my system is simply full of m.smithii again.
Frustrating and depressing to say the least especially on top of this whole hormone mess I’m dealing with at the moment and I’m sure the two are somewhat related. I’m not sure what direction to go with this. I can:
- Hit it hard with 2-3 months of herbal antibiotics again, maybe even increasing the dosage
- Hit it with prokinetics at the same time
- Try Atrantil
- See if I can get into the SYN-010 clinical trial at Cedars
I’ll sync up with my ND in a week or so, summer vacations, and try to come up with a plan of attack to see if I can get these numbers back down and not feel like crap again. Until then I know I’m sticking to a lower FODMAP Paleo diet since I definitely feel better eating that way than the expanded gluten-free diet I had been on.
Tough Washington turkeys
After a successful Rio hunt in Oregon I was looking forward to getting back over to Eastern Washington to hunt Merriam’s turkeys in May with Joe from Double Barrel Ranch again. We loaded up the new trailer on the 5th and did the long drive across the state and set up camp in Riverside State Park along the Spokane River. The plan was to hunt one and a half days, if needed, then drive back home while Catherine did some foraging in the park. The campground and park were amazing, probably the best state park we’ve visited and we will be back. Tons of trail, an amazing stretch of the Spokane River and a nice quiet campground made for a great spot.
Big K Blast & Cast
My friend Mark and I had tried to get together for a turkey trip last season but didn’t pull it off so this year we set one up in Oregon so I could go after my first Rio Grande and he could go after his first turkey ever. He got us booked into the Big K Guest Ranch outside of Elkton on the Umpqua River for one day of turkey hunting and one day of fishing. I decided to fly down to Eugene instead of doing the 7 hour drive down and back and it worked pretty well since the ranch had a shuttle and I knew I could pack light for a two day trip.
A lack of spots – Texas Axis deer hunt
After a failure to see elk in Oregon back in August, a blown mule deer buck in September and then a follow up elk trip moved by the outfitter then taken out by winter storms I was onto Plan C in order to avoid a meat crisis in a few months. I started looking into Axis deer hunts in Hawaii or Texas and ended up finding a special being run from Southern Buck Outfitters for Axis does and figured. It was a free-range hunt instead of a high-fence hunt which I liked and also semi-guided which meant we’d be hunting more or less on our own but dropped off by the outfitter. I put the trip together with my nephew Dalton and hunting partner Lisa in a matter of days and then quickly I found myself on an Alaska flight to San Antonio.