Rated LB

Aside from 90% of the SNRE seminars that I was required to attend, I had yet to give any actual class here at UF an LB (lethally boring) rating. And now I am in a class truly worthy of the LB rating: Land tenure/administration. I was expecting so much more considering it is in the geomatics department, but alas, the only superlative it's earned so far is the LB rating. I'll handle thousands of fruit flies and ether any day over this class. I'm even much more willing to dissect formaldehyde-preserved cadavers than have to take a re-run of this class. Unfortunately, it is also probably the least painful of the dreaded humanities requirement required in my program because it doesn't have the indentured servant portion. Oh well, there's worse things than the ultimate lethally boring class. Maybe it'll get better once the class gets to the really cool stuff like natural disasters and carbon emissions.

Still My 'Mate

I've gotten my hands on some really awesome bows in the last several months, especially Sparrowhawk and a yet-to-be-named short recurve from River's Edge Recurves... but nothing is quite as comfortable as Sorondil-Telcontar, my little Chek-Mate Hunter I. Even with wooden arrows in fairly sad shape and not quite spined right, I can still hit the target or at least within a reasonably tight confidence interval.

And here's some gratuitous pictures from the field, including some weird part on a Serenoa repens and the vehicle from hell I have to drive to and from the parking lot. Thank goodness I haven't had to drive it to Austin Cary Forest!

Rangers and Knights

After a week from hell at UF involving writing up a mock grant proposal, grading lots of papers, baby-sitting undergrads and sitting through a certain class that must've been designed by a true sadist, I decided that I needed a weekend away from all things that require more than two or three brain cells.

First was the Traditional Bowhunters of FL (TBoF) Charity shoot. I completely forgot that to compete in the Longbow division, I had to shoot wooden arrows. I took Sparrowhawk and aluminum arrows. I shot Sparrowhawk remarkably well -- 8 misses out of 40, nearly all were me shooting over the target but with a perfect (or near-perfect) line. All in all, I couldn't complain about a 240/400 -- it was cold, rainy early on, and I barely shot at all for a week. Had this little oversight not been there, I would've taken a 1st in the women's longbow division, but I'm just as happy with a 5th-6th in the recurve division -- the top three were well in the high 300s and 4th was mid 300s. It was just a blast being with my buddies, enjoying time in the woods, and shooting well for the given conditions. Here's a few "highlights" -- the rest of the pictures are posted here.





We also went to the Hogtowne Faire, which is pretty much a huge SCA/Renaissance Fair type gathering. It was a real blast seeing friends there too and just watching fun stuff like jousts and medieval combat. After running around there, we just decided to hide out at Gator Bowmen to tinker around with some really sweet little short recurves. Here's the highlights (ie, the ones my camera didn't barf up too badly):

Long Shots, Semi-Unknown Yardage

This was probably about 35-40 yards based on pacing and a-priori data from the markers on the ground (ie, "I'm standing about halfway in between the two yellow stones").

This was around 40-45 yards, again from pacing and a-priori data (ie, "I'm somewhere between the red and white stones")

This was a 15 yard shot but I also managed to break another nock. Thank goodness the nocks for the Easton Legacy are relatively cheap and easy to replace! Unfortunately I did damage both arrows but I guess it's better than shattering one or both like I would've with the Equalizer in that kind of collision!

Random Bite-lings

Is it me, or am I just TA'ing a class that's inherently got a lot of terms that invoke heavy snickering? Think about it. The class I'm TA'ing is called Forest Mensuration. Cruising -- strip and line-plot. There's a vest specifically designed for this kind of work called a cruising vest. Truth is though, cruising vests are some of the best pieces of clothing ever designed -- I know I love fishing vests, but the cruising vest is a step up from the already wonderful fishing vest. Then there's DBH (diameter @ breast-height, ie, 4.5 ft or 1.37 m from the ground on the uphill side of the tree). I could probably go on and on about all the things in forest mensuration (or measurements if you can't see that term without laughing hard enough to cause a stroke) that cracks people up.

Nothing quite compares to having my freezer filled up with little packages of venison from a deer I killed. My friend was finally able to catch the butcher (who also doubles as a preacher and is thus almost impossible to catch) and put the meat where it belongs -- in my freezer and eventually my stomach.


Sparrowhawk, 22 yards while tired:

Dummy of the Day

I'll let you guess what happened. Suffice to say, I'm glad I have a large supply of compound arrows.

What's the Probability of This Happening?

How likely is it for someone to hit 4 clusters of 2 arrows like that from 20 yards away?

Forest Mensuration Fun in the Woods

More writing later when my brain is actually functioning.

Then and Now Part 1 of n

So I'm sitting up later than I should be staying up with some indigestion -- maybe snacking on those jalapenos wasn't such a brilliant idea after all, although they did seem to be a good idea at the time to relieve some allergies. I was doing a bit of hard drive cleanup and dug up some random pictures and I also looked at various pictures of me shooting the Equalizer. Is it me, or do I just seem to have a growing expression of what a really good friend of mine refers to as the "sealed-shut colon" look with the more as I use a progressively more "accurate and precise" release? I have to admit though, that Evolution release certainly took enough effort to use to make me not want to shoot it after a meal of jalapenos!

Figure: Leftmost panel -- Scott Sabertooth caliper release. Center panel -- Carter Evolution. Right panel -- TRU Ball Sweet-Spot 4.

I also dug up an old field-work picture from the controlled burn at Goethe last year. I think the wrong person's on the ground considering how well cooked my duct-tape crawl traps were!


I also dug up a picture that makes me wonder what I look like when I do follow-through with a back-tension release of any sort. Do I make funny faces too? Now I'm really curious. This was from October 2006 when I first learned how to shoot a compound and was getting my first lessons. That felt like a lifetime ago!


Coming next time (maybe): something very similar to this for traditional archery... if I'm motivated. Or maybe I'll have more pictures of forest mensuration textbooks or random interesting critters I see roaming around. Who knows. Right now my brain is feeling like a TIN model and I'm trying to capture the terrain as best as I can. Now if I can only make more progress in losing my gut, going beyond 1-2 full push-ups per sitting and moving forward in my research and in the Dunheasa series. I'm still standing next to one of our heroes in the enchanted forest that was once Gainesville, FL and trying to make heads or tails of the mysterious creature who looks like a typical compound shooter but casts a radically different shadow...

In Case You Doubted Me...

I kid you not about one of the supplementary textbooks for the class I'm TA'ing for this semester:


I'll let you guess what the plaque on the bottom is about. Hint: I was uncontested in women's traditional at yesterday's 3D at Gator Bowmen.

Can You Figure Out This One?

I took 1st in women's traditional at a 3D shoot at Gator Bowmen today. Granted, I was uncontested, but heck, I still had one of my best scores at this usually very difficult range where I struggle to get more than 40% of the points. As always, if you want the full picture collection, click on the title.

I'll let you guess how on earth I got this shot. Suffice to say, I still got the 5 points on this shot!



We took this shot at 40 yards (white stake, for Open+) because we had this nice big Quercus nigra (or was it Q. laurifolia?) as a backstop.

KT-44 Magnum Recurve

I got to try out one of these bows with a friend of mine today. These little bows shoot really well. Not exactly the fastest by any stretch of the imagination, but far more comfortable than I would expect from a 44" AMO bow. I'll post a bit more later on, friend seems to be looking for food and I need to get ready for what will most likely be my last hunting trip before academic reality (ie, grant proposals, TA duties, research, and what feels like a humanities class from hell with too many readings) crushes the life out of me.

Forest Mensuration

I don't know how many snickers and giggles I've invoked when people ask me about the class I'm TA'ing for or when they see me with the textbook for the class. So far, it's been a pleasant class to TA for, particularly the outdoor lab section, but then again, I haven't had to drive the dreaded 15 passenger van yet. I like handling trees and the gadgets associated with measuring them and trying to quantify a forest. It was also cool learning how to use a few less familiar gadgets including Biltmore sticks for measuring dbh and tree height, although I think there's certainly a bit of discrimination against shorter people. Thankfully my arms are just long enough to use a standard set of Biltmore sticks -- the standard length of one of those sticks is the same as my compound draw length (25") but I could certainly use a peep sight to help line things up with it! I also got to familiarize with myself with the height pole, another device where being a bit taller than 5'2" really helps. Lectures are painfully early in the morning -- 0830 hrs but at least they're short and sweet and the professor has a way of being entertaining, even if it's inadvertent from his thick accent and occasional absent-mindedness. All I have to do is come up with a euphemism for this class for when I chat with my more... gutter-minded... friends or for when my accent (or lack thereof) is going to make it hard to catch. Forest measurements might be a good nickname for the class. All in all, though, it's a class I wish I had taken but TA'ing for it is nearly as good!

Now if the classes I'm actually taking were this much fun! So far, the grant proposal writing class is masochism mixed with a good dose of Machiavelli and the land tenure/administration looks like pure self-abuse with its lack of cool gadgets, being outdoors, and non-quantitativeness.

Can You See The Critters?

See if you can find the hunter...



Look for the doe(s) in the picture..




See if you can find the sniper... ;)

Tidewater Trail, Blue Trail

It was a 5.5 mi trail at Goethe State Forest that I took. Originally, I was going to stay on the short yellow trail, a 2.5 mi walk, and give myself more time at Forest Archers, but curiosity of what lay deeper in the woods got the better of me. Honestly, I would've enjoyed the full yellow trail, but I had a late start and I didn't have enough water on me to survive all 15.5 miles, although I did have enough food, if my mixture of all-bran cereal and high fiber/protein granola bars count as food. I also didn't have any toilet paper or a spade on me, so I decided to play it safe and stick with the short 5.5 mi walk. These trails are actually more for equestrians, but they also make for great walking and it was really cool seeing the gradient of different ecosystems, ranging from pine flatwoods to hardwood hammocks to pine savannas to what I like to call the death-by-saw palmetto gauntlets. Of course, it's in these deadly saw palmetto/heavy undergrowth patches that a lot of game animals, particularly hogs, like to lurk. I didn't see any game animals, even if I did see some signs, typically hoof-prints and scat. I also saw what I suspect was coyote scat -- I knew it wasn't horse or deer for sure, and seeing a lot of fur made me know right away that it was a predator of sorts. I'm glad someone's eating those gosh-darned rabbits and squirrels!

Speaking of rabbits and squirrels, I came close to shooting one of those censored rabbits at Forest Archers just because it presented itself to me. I decided against it because anyone caught hunting, even if it's a vermin species, can get the range nailed and it's hard to find somewhere reasonably close to shoot 3D. I'm not sure what I dislike more at this point -- the over-rated coprophagous lagomorphs or the outright annoying little rodents.

Mini-Treebeard

Or if you want the higher quality pictures, go here:

New Years' Eve was a real blast although my camera and all 3 spare sets of batteries decided to take the night off on me. I still got off a few good shots of the wickerman, affectionately known as Treebeard. I was a bit disappointed that nobody put a sock or similar object somewhere inappropriate, but probably for the better given the large number of small children at the party. Last year, someone decided to stick something both in front and in the back, providing Treebeard with a nice... tail... and something else best left to the imagination. This year Treebeard was a lot smaller because my friend is having a really nifty house being built where the party normally would take place. There was also plenty of awesome food, including a hog someone shot, deep fried (domesticated) turkeys, and some really, really good chili. There was also the usual assortment of sweet things, including some red bean jelly candy and seaweed biscuits my hunting mentor and I contributed to add a touch of the exotic.

Maybe next year I can get some better pictures of Treebeard ;)