Your Pic of the Day

LI_dec31-10.jpeg

One of my dad’s last hunts with me (right) and my younger brother (left) in 2010. Pops will be 87 on July 4th. He’s still kicking, but he’s not “here” enough to hunt anymore. He remembers the old days, and can recount stories from years past. That’s enough to keep me hugging the old guy! Hug your parents if you have them. They aren’t around forever!
 
I think it is just the angle of his head, Bud. Picture not the best; he's looking away from camera. The dark is just his ruff and I think what looks like something in his mouth is just his nose. This particular cat lives near a water hole and I have called him multiple times. He's easy;):ROFLMAO:. He often follows the same route to water so I place the call in front of same tree on his path to water.
1783280599403.jpeg
1783280642166.jpeg
1783280710247.jpeg

Same cat en route to & from water hole, summertime, no coat/grass/foliage^^^
Springtime, cat still has winter coat and grass high. VVVV


1783281329612.jpeg
1783280902277.jpeg
1783281472899.jpeg

Center picture shows call in front of same tree.
 
Just sharing some sad news... The area where many of these mule deer pics I've been posting were taken, is no more. The whole area is burned down. And still going. The fire is currently at over 90,000 acres and 0% containment. Sad day. But a familiar story for my favorite places. Many of them have been wiped off the map by wildfire these last ten years. The desert sage areas, will never come back. Ever. Some of the forest areas might, but, they might not. With such dry conditions and so much fuel, the fires are burning so hot that the forests can't regenerate afterward and even re-seeding has failed miserably.

- DAA
 
We had a fire called the Soda Fire in 2015. It was literally out my front door. We watched it burn for weeks on end. The fire was started by a lighting strike and was contained to a 50 acre area, but the BLM got involved and allowed it to morph into almost 300,000 acres.
Fortunately, there was a reseeding campaign of both grasses and sagebrush. Today, you'd be hard pressed to know that there was a massive fire out there.
So, hopefully they can do a restoration on your area and in ten or so years get back to being a nice place.
 
I sure hope so. It won't be in my lifetime, but, hopefully, it comes back.

I remember the Soda fire. It stopped a bit short of my stomping grounds. But... There were other fires south of there. Two years in a row. Total contiguous area burned, about 1.3 million acres. It was the most pristine sage habitat I've ever experienced. There was scant reseeding effort, which has yielded some native grasses in a few very small areas. But no sage has come back. I'm not exaggerating, what was over a million acres of pristine sage habitat a dozen years ago, is a million acres of nothing but cheat grass now. That is NEVER coming back. Ever. They have no method of reclaiming large tracts from the takeover of cheat grass. Which is the most useless and hated plant I can think of.

Cheat grass seed is very heat tolerant. It comes back on it's own after fire rapidly. Sage seed is not very heat tolerant. It needs time to come back. But when the cheat grass has already taken over, the sage has no chance. And, just for bonus points, cheat grass is bone dry every summer and burns at the drop of a hat. Keeping the cycle of burn/cheat grass self perpetuating. I hate that stuff...

- DAA
 
Back
Top