Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Author: michaelmccurry

  • Thinking About Venezuela

    I’m no expert on international politics or Venezuela – but I have been there once (Hugo Chavez was in charge then, and I was a college professor working with the departments of State and Defense – I was just as happy to be confined to the airplane as the Venezuelans were to order all people with US passports not to be allowed off the plane). At the same time, I had a student who was dual citizenship (Venezuelan father and mother re-married) whose father was trying to convince her that moving to Venezuela would be better than staying in the US. How things have changed since 2008.

    My father was in Venezuela before the second World War – the US Navy had contracted with Standard Oil to provide survey work, and Dad was paid at ‘Venezuelan Exchange’. If I recall correctly, he was making $93 per month instead of the regular sailor’s pay of $21 per month. I guess I was raised knowing that there was a lot of money in Venezuelan oil, and the girl’s father confirmed it when we visited at her graduation.

    As near as I can tell, we have 3 destroyers, a cruiser, and 3 amphibious assault ships cruising off Venezuela (Navy Times) and the other day they sunk an open boat – apparently loaded with drugs and 11 Tren de Aragua gang members. The deal is, the boat was in international water – so the legality of the strike may well be questionable. Ah, well, John Paul Jones was called a pirate when the Ranger raided Whitehaven.

    Apparently, our President put a 50 million dollar bounty on Venezuela’s President Madero – while that’s twice what the bounty was on Osama bin Laden, the inflation calculator shows that it takes $1.83 today to buy what a single dollar bought in 2001. 82 percent inflation in those 24 years. Venezuela’s navy has 42 ships – and may not be particularly capable on blue water.

    If we are getting close to qualifying as piracy it is probably a good idea to change from a department of defense to a department of war

  • Mencken – A Century Ago

  • Alumni Magazines

    I regularly get two alumni magazines. Montana State and South Dakota State. I didn’t pay much attention to MSU’s Collegian until 2005 – Barbra Hunter Mullen had been the contact who kept in contact with most of the folks I knew as an undergraduate, and that year an aneurism moved her into the majority – the first to go from ‘natural causes.’ I guess Barb kept me from looking it over to stay informed about the promotions and new jobs people were getting. She kept people connected, and in a much more complete manner than the magazines did.

    SDSU’s alumni magazine wasn’t particularly informative until I retired and left campus – hell, I was there, and didn’t need the alumni office to tell me what my friends and colleagues were doing. After I retired and left Brookings, the magazine did show me occasionally what former students and colleagues were doing.

    There are still occasions when I see what former students are doing – and college athletics never was a great interest. I half-heartedly root for the Bobcats and Jackrabbits, and I suppose there’s some vestigial support for any team that’s playing the Grizzlies, but in general, college sports just aren’t that interesting. It’s pretty much inevitable that when two groups of ogres move a ball in different directions, one group will move it further than the other.

    But I still read the alumni magazines – but my colleagues and friends are showing up more and more frequently for their last mention on the pages in the back of the magazine marked ‘in memory of’. I never expected to read alumni magazines primarily for the obituaries.

  • Smoke

    As I wake and head for the antihistamines, I remember Wylie Osler’s story about Dr. Schroeder writing a prescription for him to go to Spokane and spend the weekend in an airconditioned motel. I was never sure whether the prescription was for health insurance, or just to qualify the trip as a medical expense – but Wylie’s asthma was a lot worse than mine. I’m not sure the smoke was any worse than I saw in Kalispell yesterday, when I went in to visit my surgeon. I couldn’t see the mountains from the hospital complex. The problem with smoke from forest fires is that you can’t hope for winds that will blow the smoke away – we can only wait for rain. The 10 day forecast doesn’t look great. At least I had an airconditioned car for the trip – back in the sixties, when Forrest Schroeder ordered Wylie to leave the valley for a couple of smoke-free days we joked about 4-60 air conditioning – four windows down, sixty miles an hour.

    t

  • Use Enough Gun

    I think it was Robert Ruark who coined that phrase. Most occasions where I needed to follow that advice, I’ve had a 22 – which the experts do not classify as enough gun. Whether it’s defense against bears, or against human predators, the experts generally start with a recommendation of using a caliber that starts with 4.

    There are few really good studies that provide data that gives a conclusive answer. Weingarten’s data (https://www.ammoland.com/2024/05/bear-defense-with-handguns-update-20-more-cases-98-effective/) includes “162 handgun-only incidents, not counting the three indeterminate cases. Over a dozen incidents are under investigation. Four failures out of the 161 incidents calculate to a 98% success rate. ” One of the failures was a 44 magnum, and another was a 22 pistol on a polar bear. While there were a lot of 44 magnums in Weingarten’s data set, the biggest takeaway I had from his numbers was that carrying a pistol is more important than the caliber.

    To me that makes sense – I know that a 357 didn’t seem adequate when two of us were less than10 feet from a large Grizzly – fortunately the bear felt the same about being outnumbered 2:1. And there’s always the Bella Twin story from 1953 – she not only took the year’s largest bear with a single shot 22, she used 22 long cartridges instead of 22 long rifle.

    Greg Ellifritz did his own data collection on handgun stopping power (https://www.activeresponsetraining.net/handgun-stopping-power-science-vs-40-years-of-experience ) He begins his article with a simple statement: “Most gunwriters are idiots.” He explains why, then shares a link to his own study (https://www.activeresponsetraining.net/an-alternate-look-at-handgun-stopping-power) That study begins with this graph:

    It’s no surprise to me that the 22 scores higher than the 25ACP – heck, 25 ACP is the only caliber he displays that I’ve never owned. Still, look at how close the 22 is to the 60% line – and realize only the 32 surpasses it. Still, Weingarten has a data set with less than 200 incidents, and Ellfritz’ data set is slightly over 1500 incidents covering ten different calibers. Both data sets suggest that the caliber is of less importance than just having the pistol. Ellefritz says “I also believe the data for the .25, .32 and .44 magnum should be viewed with suspicion. I simply don’t have enough data (in comparison to the other calibers) to draw an accurate comparison. I reported the data I have, but I really don’t believe that a .32 ACP incapacitates people at a higher rate than the .45 ACP!”

    I don’t have a recommended caliber for bears. As a kid, I took 10 black bears with either my single shot 22 or my 22 revolver. Never really knew that I wasn’t using enough gun – and bullet placement is a lot easier when you get in close. My most important rule about a gun in bear country is to have a gun. It’s amazing how much better a 22 has made me feel when the alternative was praying.

    I’m no longer young. I’d like to believe in bear spray – but it’s a new tool, and requires practice to develop the skills needed to use it effectively. I may be slowed down – I am slowed down. But the years have included a lot of practice with revolvers and Browning designed pistols.

  • Watching Predators and Prey

    Off and on, I’ve been watching the interplay between predator and prey on this place for 65 year. In 1960, and through the mid-seventies, the hay field had a serious gopher (Columbia Ground Squirrel) population. A lot of the farm activities fell in my realm as I entered the teenage years – I recall poisoning the critters, first with strychnine, then with compound 1080. My most memorable year was the year when I caught a badger in a gopher trap. I saw she was a lactating female, worked the trap loose, cleaned all the traps from the field, and was surprised as hell the next day when she showed up to hunt gophers with me. The partnership lasted maybe six weeks – but is a memory to revisit – she had decided that gopher hunting could be a lot more successful when I assisted with the 22.

    Thirty years later – around 2000 – the gopher population dropped. With less grazing on the field, natural predators – a few weasels – were driving the gophers out. Apparently the gophers were more vulnerable to weasel predation than the voles were. Sam and I shot few ground squirrels in 2004 and 2005 when we visited my parents – the weasels controlled the population well over about 15 acres.

    By 2008, a feral cat population began growing in the trailer court a quarte-mile away. By 2017, I saw my last little weasel – feral cats were now the predator, controlling weasels, ground squirrels, and voles.

    So now, cats – whether feral or housecat – have became the prey species. When we built the house, we had a resident pair of coyotes that caused us no problems. They’re gone now – hopefully painlessly after living lives that caused us no problems. With the resident coyotes gone, three packs are edging into our place – the game cameras show one pack from the west, one from the north, and a third from the southeast. One pack has coyotes that specialize in hunting cats – the game cameras have shown coyotes walking down the trail with a cat in the mouth.

    Over time predators and prey roles can change. But you have to live quite a long life attached to the same piece of ground to notice it.