The Need of Wildness

Zealous parents raising the children

I spent last week working in China, and although one can see plenty of trees in modern Chinese metropolis like Shanghai it is very hard to accept them as natural, and even harder to associate them with being wild. Those trees form man-made parks, and the wildest creatures that I saw during last week were a sparrow and a magpie, defiant symbols against absolute compliance.

Upon arriving back in Michigan my wife and I drove from Detroit to Traverse City, and yesterday night down to Novi, and in these few days I was able to, at least partially, satiate my need of wildness.

On the road between Kalkaska and Traverse City my wife had to vigorously brake my truck in order to avoid taking "on the wing" a big tom turkey that flew across the road. He glided to the nearby woods like a pterodactyl, and after landing calmly strolled away. We were so close that i could see in detail his coppery breast feathers.

While at our home we could see and hear birds galore, cardinals, cow birds, woodpeckers, crows, seagulls, sand plovers, mallards, and my personal favorites for the wild music they bring to our ears, Canada geese and loons. Of course there were also the neighborhood rabbits and squirrels, for my desperation of those trying to keep tame flowers.

We stayed Sunday afternoon until the sun was about to set over the West Arm of Grand Traverse Bay and behing the Leelanau Peninsula. And the drive home was really exciting. All the way on M-72 and on I-75 down to West Branch we saw countless whitetail deer. It was almost as if the whole Northern Lower Peninsula deer herd decided to have a great spring celebration under cloudless skies. We estimate that yesterday night we saw between two and three hundred deer.

And the final celebration of spring came this noon when I went out for lunch at Alexandria, a great Middle-Eastern restaurant in Novi. We have been observing a goose nest for some time. Of all "wild" places around the suburbs, this couple chose a barrel just besides the restaurant. Mother goose sitting on and in the barrel, and father goose guarding the perimeter  Today we were able to finally see their rewards, as their goslings (I could count six of them) were enjoying the warm spring sun by their mother, while the always vigilant father came to investigate my business.

I understand that wildness is not wilderness, but at least around here our expanding wildlife (please, read "Nature Wars" by Jim Sterba) help maintain an ideal of having nature nearby. As Aldo Leopold said "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

So, at least for now, I believe that Michigan is righter than the parts that I know of China.

My Hubertus Knife

Hubertus & Roe Buck

Several years ago while attending the IAA Truck Show in Hannover, Germany, I was able to take a couple hours out on a beautiful fall morning to walk around the old downtown area and visit local cutleries and a particularly refined "sportsman" shop that housed one of the best assortments of fine rifles that I ever saw, Waffen Will-Apel.

I generally stayed at the Maritim Hotel, in Friedrischwall Strasse, right in front of the fantastic Neues Rathaus or New Town Hall, and from there every evening I would visit the  ruins of  the Aegidienkirche (Aegidien Church) which was destroyed during one of the eighty eight bombing raids that hit Hannover during WWII. Its charred walls stand as a memorial so we can remember the horrors of war and hope for peace among men.

From there I would visit Marktkirche which impressed me particularly for its description of Nazi-era horrors carved in its huge bronze main doors. An eternal remembrance for an evil that cannot be forgotten for the too great risk of repeating it.

Another two hundred meters or so, at Schmiedestrasse 11 is located Waffen Will-Apel!

Being a foreigner I could not buy any of the fantastic high grade rifles and shotguns, but nothing prevented me to engage in great conversation with the gentleman that either managed or owned the store, which soon evolved to cutlery, and I asked him to show me, within the realms of "affordability" his best knives.

Almost without blinking he brought up the Hubertus Jagdmesser (Hunter Knife) that you see in the photo above. Hubertus has been making knifes in Solingen, the heart and soul of Germany's cutlery industry, since the 1930's, and the name is clearly linked with Saint Hubertus, the saint patron of hunters, and their quality is second to none.

My particular knife has three blades. An eleven centimeter (just over four inches) drop point lock back blade, a very robust bone saw of the same length, which also have a bottle opener at the base, and carefully designed gutting blade which has a heavy blunt end to prevent perforating the intestines. At the back there is a very functional corkscrew. The handles are made of top grade stag antler, the bolsters are German silver and the liners are brass. Polishing, fit and finish are nothing but perfection.

This is a heavy knife, but its balance is so exquisite that once in the hand you would not fill it.

After all these years, I haven't had the heart to take my Hubertus Jagdmesser out yet. It will handle almost any shore, but for some reason I don't yet want to risk to damage the mirror polishing of the blades.

But one day it will see use. Of course it will be a very special hunt with my son or maybe my soon to be born grandson. And that, I hope, will be a great story.

A Healthy Sunday Lunch

Lunch is almost ready!

Yesterday I arrived in Detroit at 8:30 AM from a week long trip to Brazil, and by early afternoon my wife and I arrived at our home at Old Mission Peninsula. Our goal was to open all the boxes that were crowding the first and second floors, "organize" as possible, and then get all the cardboard to the nearby recycling center.

Well, WE DID IT, and to recover from the brutal work we decided that we needed to have a good lunch.

A couple weeks ago I got a Big Green Egg and it is just natural that I should use it every opportunity I have, and today was a perfect one, even if I have to push snow out of our deck.

Healthy eating is very important, so we decided to do it in style. We had some venison ribs from a dear that I shot with bow in October 2011 (I know it because I could see the triangular shaped broad head mark between two ribs), a small venison tenderloin from a doe that I shot just before Christmas 2010 (so far the only deer I had processed, so I also could identify it), very lean (and terribly well done) beef for my wife, bratwursts and Portobello mushrooms.

To complete this feast my wife cooked some fresh white rice, the Brazilian way. You start by sautéing onion and garlic, and then you add the rice, pour the water and add the salt.

The lunch was washed down by part of the content of a bottle of Grignolino red wine, a 2009 Duchessa Lia, from Asti. Although a much lighter wine than my favorite Piemontese wines, Nebbiolo and Barolo, it went vey well with the venison loin and portobellos.

Dessert was good Belgian dark chocolate and off course a couple hours of sleep. Nobody can say that I don't have a hard life!

Young at Heart in the Old South

Gentleman Bob

Back in January friends Bruce and Steve took me quail hunting for the first time at Pine Wing Preserve (www.pinewingpreserve.org), in Wetumpka, Alabama. That was a great experience and my introduction to hunting "partridge" in the Old South.

At the end of the hunt, after good food and beer and better conversation, George Long, the soft spoken gentleman that runs Pine Wing, gave a beautiful quail picture that is now decorating my office wall.

Following such a great experience I had to come back, and that I did on March 8th & 9th, this time with my great friends Bill Berghuis and Jim Weber, from the Kalamazoo, MI, area. We go back a long time, and have hunted perdiz (Nothura maculosa) in Uruguay several times together.

While I took advantage of being in Alabama, Bill and Jim flew down from Michigan especially or the hunt, and according to them it was absolutely worth it, starting with the great Southern BBQ at Jim-n-Nicks in Prattville, then continuing with he great dog work and good flying birds, and finishing with another fantastic, and now famous, quail and pasta dinner.

But if there was a star in those couple days it was our guide Melvin. And we almost had no problem to keep on pace with the 84 years young Melvin! And what a class act was Melvin.

He grew up during the "Hoover Days", and from a very young and tender age he had to use a flip, which is a type of slingshot without a handle, to bring home food, especially in the form of squirrels and rabbits. And I have no doubt that he must have been very effective at that since I saw him smack clay targets floating in the air and from almost thirty yards on the ground. Since he repeated the feat I can't say that it was beginners luck. One of these days when I am not traveling and I can get my hands on a good piece of discarded inner tube I will try to make myself a flip, and maybe, just maybe in about forty years I could be half as good as Melvin is.

Late in WWII Melvin served in the US Navy. I don't know what he did specifically, but I would take him to be an anti-aircraft gunner any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Melvin told us how he got a ten point white-tail buck with his 82 last season. That off course was his 1982 Chevy pick-up, which had a very large dent on the side where that buck T-boned him.

Among his cars Melvin has a 1954 Mercedes-Benz sedan and another truck, a 1957 Ford that his dad bought for US$ 701. And he has the bill of sale to prove it.

I don't think it would be politically correct to describe Melvin's feelings on his one-time trip to California. Not to create much problem, let's just say that he repeats a lot that "that was not right."

But some of Melvin's most fascinating stories are about when he guided Bob-white quail hunting for President Jimmy Carter. His main remarks were that it was very hard and unnerving to do his work with all the Secret Service agents around and that these same agents would always say after the shot "this is your bird, Mr. President", even if Mr. President had not shot. I guess "it is good to be president!"