Eideard

We’ve all said something this dumb one time or another:

I don’t think our extended family has a single Chevy pickup anymore. Most of the pickups are Dodges, preferably diesel. But, the commercial makes me chuckle everytime I see it.

Not today, deer

Maryland has become the first state to approve the use of Gonacon, a deer birth control product, but the state’s director of wildlife said Friday he can’t imagine it ever being used in what he termed the open landscape.

“This is the only immuno-contraceptive for deer that has federal approval,” said Paul Peditto, director of the Wildlife and Heritage Service. “It was developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and is registered with the Environmental Protection Agency…

Peditto said the manpower and expense of applying the birth control chemical will limit its use.

“It will cost up to $1,000 to apply it to a deer,” Peditto said. The deer must first be shot via dart gun to tranquilize it before Gonacon can be injected. EPA requires that the deer be tagged so that it can be identified as having been treated. Another tag will state that the meat of the animal should not be consumed by humans…

Peditto said authority to sedate, inject and tag deer won’t simply be turned over to a home owners association and its maintenance crew. Who btw are the only likely candidates for using this method.

Applicators must jump through several hoops, including registration, testing and association with a licensed veterinarian.

Stephanie Boyles, a wildlife scientist with the Humane Society of the United States, said…“There is a demand for nonlethal options and now that Maryland has stepped forward we believe the DNR will start hearing from those who want to use that option.”

Reading through Maryland newspaper, blogs, Letters to the Editor – locations often infested with religious nutballs and Kool Aid Party foot soldiers – have been hilarious. Some sensible comments here and there about the DNR continuing existing relationships with outfits like Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry. Folks don’t seem to understand this alternative is only that – an alternative for a very limited number of occasions.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

My Christmas dinner was up in one of those trees. It was snowing lightly on a minus-two-degree dawn, and I was lying on my belly bundled in white camo, pointing the muzzle of a Benelli 12-gauge through a cluster of fireweed.

The cold hurt my hands in a way I wondered if I should worry about. In front of me, a snow-coated field stretched for 500 yards to a line of bare trees silhouetted against a blush of sunrise. The trees’ branches were dotted with roosting turkeys, and their occasional gobbles carried back across the field to where I waited, breathing into my face mask.

Next to me, rising on his knees to better see the birds, was Brent Lawrence, a friend who worked for the National Wild Turkey Federation, a nonprofit conservation group. We were hunting together outside the town of Kearney, Nebraska, for three days in December — one of which had already passed.

Now he tapped my shoulder and pointed: The dots had started flapping to the ground, and single-file lines of birds were bobbing into the field, their chatter echoing in the cold air. I took a deep breath and adjusted my grip on the gun.

I’d started hunting a few years before, shocking everyone who knew me…My reformative logic went like this: For every turkey wrap or club sandwich I’d ever eaten, something had been killed for my benefit — I’d just never done the killing myself. The deer hunt invitation seemed an opportunity, a challenge even, to reclaim my place in the food chain by assuming responsibility for the meat on my plate…

Gradually the turkeys spread out, and one wandered a little closer to us. It pecked at the ground, then raised its head and stood perfectly still for one moment. I squeezed the trigger.

The blast of the gun is always a bit of a surprise — more like something that happens to me than something I initiate. All at once, my ears were ringing, the turkey was thrashing in the snow, and Brent and I were racing down the hill toward it.

“Don’t worry; it’s dead,” he shouted. Though its wings were flapping, its head was limp on the ground. I wanted to look away but didn’t — this was part of my responsibility.

RTFA. Read the whole article.

Enjoyable writing and reading from someone worth reading.

One of science’s most puzzling mysteries – the disappearance of the Neanderthals – may have been solved. Modern humans ate them, says a leading fossil expert.

The controversial suggestion follows publication of a study in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences about a Neanderthal jawbone apparently butchered by modern humans. Now the leader of the research team says he believes the flesh had been eaten by humans, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace.

Fernando Rozzi, of Paris’s Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique, said the jawbone had probably been cut into to remove flesh, including the tongue. Crucially, the butchery was similar to that used by humans to cut up deer carcass in the early Stone Age. “Neanderthals met a violent end at our hands and in some cases we ate them,” Rozzi said.

The idea will provoke considerable opposition from scientists who believe Neanderthals disappeared for reasons that did not involve violence. Neanderthals were a sturdy species who evolved in Europe 300,000 years ago, made complex stone tools and survived several ice ages before they disappeared 30,000 years ago – just as modern human beings arrived in Europe from Africa.

Still nothing more than a minority report. “One set of cut marks does not make a complete case for cannibalism”.

Is it believable, though? You betcha.

This new finding might do Barry White proud — deeper voices can help male deer get it on.

Scientists investigated male fallow deer, which regularly groan 60 mating calls per minute during breeding season to attract females — although they can groan up to 90 times per minute right after sex.

“They must be the most vocal deer species in the world,” said researcher Alan McElligott, a behavioral ecologist now at the University of Nottingham in England.

After tracking a herd of the deer from dawn until dusk for a month in Ireland, sometimes in heavy rain, the researchers discovered the males with the deepest groans were typically luckiest at love. These bucks were not just the best lovers — they also were the best fighters in contests for dominance among the males (though they were not the always biggest in terms of body size)…

The link between how dominant these bucks are and how deep their groans are might be hormones such as testosterone, suggested researcher Elisabetta Vannoni, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

I just think the horniest males – also were the noisiest. Bragging about it.