Tuesday, January 01, 2008

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.

No comments: