Fish Chowdah On Ice

The trick with cooking any meal in the wilds is preparation. The more food tasks you can complete at home, the fewer you will have to carry out in less than optimal conditions and the higher your chances of success. This is especially important ice fishing, when low temperatures, high winds and a variety of other factors can make fixing even a simple meal impossible. Below is a fun recipe that is easy and delicious on a freezing cold day.

Fish Chowdah
The night before your big trip to the frozen wastelands, at home combine in a large soup pot:

• One Large Vidalia (Sweet) Onion
• Six Large Peeled Russet Potatoes
• An Ample Sprinkling of Old Bay
• Three Teaspoons of Salt
• One Teaspoon of Cracked Black Pepper
• Splash of Olive Oil
• Fry and Add 5-6 Strips of Finely Chopped Bacon

Add enough water to these ingredients, to just cover everything. Bring the entire mix to a boil and continue to simmer until the potatoes are soft. Set aside and wait for everything to cool. After cooling add cover and duct tape it in place around the entire outside of the lid. This will keep everything from accidentally spilling and running your meal.

A half-hour before you plan to eat, start up the stove and add:

• Water if necessary
• One Small Can of Minced Clams
• One Small Can of Small Shrimp
• Two Cans of Evaporated Milk
• 4-5 Fillets of Perch, Pike, Bass or other Fish You Catch

Let this entire mix come up to a boil STIRRING CONSTANTLY and that is it! This amount should feed 6 hungry ice fishermen with room to spare. Just make sure you bring bowls, spoons, a ladle and a small Ziploc bag containing extra salt (for people to individually season to taste)!

Mint Chocolate Acetylene Appetizers
While everyone is standing around enjoying the mouth watering smells of the simmering fish chowdah, I usually pull out this concoction, which is ALWAYS a crowd pleasing favorite. Using enough “acquired” Dunkin Doughnut coffee cups and lids for everyone, fill each with two heaping spoonfuls of powdered hot coco mix. To this, add enough hot water from a thermos to fill the cups half to three quarters full. Fill the remainder of the cups with Dr. McGillicuddy’s Peppermint Schnapps. Be careful, if this is not drunk fast enough, it will eventually eat through the bottom of the cup!

Take care all and enjoy the final weeks of ice fishing!

More Ice Fishing:
Ice Fish Like a Kid Again
Ice Fish In a Canoe
Great Catch - VIDEO
Ice Fishing For Perch
I am A Fire Starter
Simple Circumstances Resurrect Outdoor Memories

Statewide Ban of all Tree Harvesting on Sunday

Got Wood?

THIS IS PURE FICTION, FICTION, FICTION! 

Thanks to all for writing in with comments concerning this fictitious satire. This post was written to take a poke at the Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine (SWOAM), one of the opponents to opening hunting in Maine on Sunday. In the last legislative session, they worked tirelessly with other small interest groups, to kill the bill that would have allowed Sunday hunting in Maine. In the process, they sealed Maine’s fate, ensuring it stay the absolute worst state in the nation for small business. Guide companies, ATV dealerships, L.L.Bean, Cabelas, gas stations, Ma and Pa Groceries, hotels, motels, inns (the list goes on and on) all suffer because of a outdated blue law we are apparently to ignorant to correct. Does it make sense to ban cutting wood on Sunday? Hell no! Does it make sense to continue to ban hunting on Sunday . . . sorry to cut this explanation short but I am off to New Hampshire to hunt coyotes and spend my money outta state! Bye!

FYI, if you don't want to comment specifically below and would like another avenue unto which to beat me up, call me names or horse whip me in any fashion related to my creation of this elaborate hoax please see: 
http://www.asmainegoes.com/content/statewide-ban-all-tree-harvesting-sunday
http://www.huntingchat.net/forum/showthread.php?t=33213
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Please join in supporting Proposed Public Law 182.b, “A Statewide Ban of all Tree Harvesting on Sunday”. This law would effectively ban all logging, transport of logs, cutting, felling, de-limbing, tipping and chainsaw activity within the state of Maine boundaries on Sunday. The laws main focus and purpose is to protect Maine’s forests and woodland animals from the current continued and uninterrupted abuse put forth by both large enterprise level log harvesting companies, self employed pseudo-independent harvesting firms and small independent wood lot owners. It is critical for the health and well being of Maine’s ecosystem and its people that at least one day a week exists when the woods are not molested by these intrusive and destructive logging operations. Providing one day a week, devoid of tree harvesting, will allow a break in the continued cycle of assault put forth against Mother Nature, allowing displaced woodland animals a chance to reunite with broken family groups, nesting birds an opportunity to relocate and stressed rare insects, annelids and avifauna ample time to recover from the excessively raucous tree cutting operations and practices.

The basic tenants of the law would not only provide support for Maine’s ecology but also economy. Currently, these operations pose a significant and dangerous threat to hikers, backpackers, fishermen and bird watchers. Careless loggers are often intoxicated and pay little if any attention to where the trees are falling and have been know on occasion to injure people with their reckless conduct. Having a special day of the week when one could walk through the Maine woods without having to worry about being killed by a logging truck or hearing the ear damaging and disturbing sounds of chainsaws, skidders, cutter/fellers, etc. would allow Maine to be unique among the other states. The tourism industry would be provided with a significant boost, as our place as a national leader in ecotourism would be heightened by our progressive measures to support the natural balance of our state.

To re-state the above tenants, banning logging on Sunday will enrich Maine’s tourism industry, eliminate a potentially dangerous and threatening environment from our woodlands, provide critical support for native animals and allow wellbeing to return to our dying forests and depressed populations of woodland animals.

Please join me in taking the fight to Augusta as PL182.b is presented to the joint legislative inland fisheries and wildlife committee next month!!

The Gun Is Civilization

by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it. In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion.

Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some. When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society.

A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser wins confrontations. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it weren’t both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.