Dancing

Dancing
Click Here for, DANCING WITH THE WILD BEAST, diary among friends of the Mozambique Bush

Hard Nosed Big Game Hounds

Hard Nosed Big Game Hounds
Click the pic for "The hard Nosed Pack"

Luwire Photographic Safaris

Luwire Photographic Safaris
Looking across the Lugenda from one of the camps

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Coon Hound Mummified in tree

I ran across this a while back, very sad but also so interesting. Here's the gist. Coon Hound runs inside a standing hollow tree where he or she gets stuck and dies there. Timber cutters discovered the dog and donated it to a museum still inside the tree. They estimate the event took place sometime during the 60s. I imagine the hunter couldn't hear the hound from inside the tree from very far and I don't know but I don't think tracking collars, (GPS) were around then, maybe telemetry but signal probably wouldn't get out if it it was.


Rather than decaying, the dog became a natural mummy due to the conditions of its "coffin." First, all scent of the dead dog went up the inside of the tree like a chimney. Predators and insects never got wind of the hound dog. Second, the dog's body was well protected (and well-ventilated) in the hollow trunk. Finally, resins from the core of the tree may have helped in the dog's preservation. 

Sometime in the 1980s, loggers were cutting trees in the forest. Without knowing it, they cut down the dog's tree and placed it on a logging truck. Then they looked inside and saw the mummified dog. Rather than send him to the sawmill, the loggers donated the dog and its tree coffin to the Southern Forest World Museum in Waycross.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

George Jones

Got to meet him several times around here, a song writing Texan and a Troubadour of the South,


Rip possum!

Monday, April 15, 2013

Great Read!






Been reading, "Okefinokee Album," by Francis Harper and Delma E. Presley thought I would post a little. Francis Harper spent years starting in 1912 interviewing the Old Swamp Folk that called the place their home. Loads of good stories, folk lore and photographs from a time long gone. Harper died in 72 before he had everything assembled for printing then Mrs. Presley carried on and got it published


Here's a bit about a Tuff Dog!


As told by Ezekiel S. Henderson . 1857-1952
"Reckon I better give you the name of the hunting party to start with. The party was J. W. Mixon, Dump Griffin, Jim Henderson, and myself. And we came to where a bear had killed a hog. We was starting to hunting on Rowell Island. And we had the best ever bear dog and deer dog combined I ever saw. And his name was "Dog." He was half Bull and half Cur -- a big old red eyed dog. Weighed about a hundred and twenty-five pound. Biggest dog I ever see in my life.
"The bear had eat a square mess of the hog and was laying nearby where he'd killed the hog. And the dog run to him. And it was right close to the edge of the swamp about a hundred yards and he went up a Cypress.
"At the root of the cypress grew up those bamboo vines [Smilax] profusely--made a big bulk around it. Just as we got in sight of the cypress, we saw the bear going through the bamboo briar, up the cypress. We discovered he was carrying a dog with him. The dog had him by the ham, and he carried the dog up the tree about forty foot high. We couldn't shoot the bear for hitting the dog. Everybody was looking and hating for the dog to get killed. He was the best dog we had on the hunt.  
"He'd hold the bear's ham and he'd swing off from the tree, trying to jerk the bear off. And after a while his jaw give way, and he had to turn the bear loose.
"And he struck in the bamboo-briar bed and scrambled through it to get to the ground and he never got hurt one bit. But we proceeded to kill the bear. Everybody wouldn't believe a bear story like that unless they'd been through it just like I have.
"Such a tremendous big bear, and such a tremendous dog!
"It was about eighteen hundred an'eighty eight. I don't care if you publish it. It's so. I'm the only eye-witness living to the bear carrying the dog up the tree. The worst looking dog you ever saw in your life. Look like he could whip a lion. Aw, he was severe!"

Friday, April 12, 2013

Inspiration from over at "Querencia," Stephen Bodio's awesome Blog, a little story and thought for consideration!



After reading one of the latest posts from the "Querencia Blog" last night I couldn't get the moody dark, surreal image I imagined out of my head. Good thing is I might reproduce it for a painting or large scale print, hopefully. Stephens's post on his "possible new manuscript idea" surrounding the coming and going, "into extinction" of the Passenger Pigeon was both intriguing and sad, the little tidbit that may become part of an intro to the book just put me in a funk no matter how creative I felt. I was kicking myself as I went to bed for not knowing more about this sorrowful true story so today I started a bit of research both for the Art that I might create and to feed my spasm of need to know more, more or less so I could go off somewhere and grieve a wonderful thing I missed experiencing. The truth about the numbers and the questions of how and why add to my mourning the insult this little bird endured at the hands of progress. Sometimes I just hate to be associated with the rise of the Homo-sapien.

Passenger Pigeon


I hunt wild hogs with my dogs. Feral Hogs are more or less responsible for their own damnation but in the end they are just a wild animal that is out of hand in the land of men much like the Passenger Pigeon. At times I am torn about releasing some of my Man's Best Friends to do what they love more than life, find, chase and catch another animal for me and hold it there while I put a blade to it's heart. I'll be the first to admit that I am going soft in my latter days. I have at one time or another used different wild animals in confinement for the training of different dogs down through my 58 years here quail, ducks, coons, coyotes, and Feral Hogs. I have found and nursed some that were injured back to health, have relocated some that were the victims of loss of habitat and have even bought from trappers animals that I just thought needed to be set free. In the last several years I have had little pleasure with the training part till having accomplished my intended purpose released the animal back to the woods. I can't say I enjoy every aspect of Hog Hunting as I used to. I guess the euphoria of seeing dogs I have raised from pups," some that I sat and watched being born" go on to become some of the best at what they do is more than anything, "The Thing," that sustains my efforts. I can't say for sure but sometimes I feel that I am the instrument of the Hounds in some kind of weird symbiotic relationship where I am simply a means to their satisfaction. I know they hunt for themselves, for their own pleasure no matter how much I would like to think they hunt for me. As a good friend of mine said, "Dogs will brake your heart one way or the other even if they die of old age, hsj ."Another sad state of affairs that my age and my weathered mind has brought to my attention, so on the cuff of my melancholy and before I ramble on and completely miss the point I wanted to make, I will get back to it.

I have read where the weight of migrating PPs would brake the limbs from trees, I would have loved to have seen this sight in real life.





We are all going down the same road together whether we like it or not. For me I have run my course in too many directions to ever break the habit and stay in a steady direction that would accomplish something monumental, in other words I am not up to or capable of making much of a difference about the destination this world of ours will "dock at" someday except to write some mutterings on these unleavened pages that might strike a chord with some. And to those I say, if you are up to it, you must make telling young people things from your heart that will enlighten them about their future, if they know the past they will rightly navigate that future. I will tell my Grandbabys the story of the Passenger Pigeon, and the name of the last one that died on this earth, Martha. She spent her entire life in a zoo, would never mate to any of the remaining males so with her sad passing something was taken from me, you and my Grandbabys. She died at 1 P.M. on September 1, 1914 at the age of 29. You must tell them, the children, the old stories that you know or have heard that puts a little food on the plate for their souls, they are starving for the most part having no idea what was and what will be. Tell them the stories of your family, the stories they told you, the personal stuff. Tell them stories you know that you have discovered, the ones that fed your soul.

Rest in Peace, Martha

I remember words told to me by many as I made barefoot tracks in the dirt, these things are what made me what I am today. You know we learn most of what is stored in our brain by the age of 5 or six they say but I say, more importantly we grow and plant in our spirit and soul what we are and what we can be by that age. Afterwards we begin that downward motion from all the false, fake stimuli slapped into our little faces, we become conditioned to becoming what ever the latest trend flows from the brains of stupid people and this world has more than enough of those folks!
Our world needs people with a soul, if you don't learn that you have a soul at a young age and how to take care of it you are lost forever. And the way kids are being raised these days their souls are the last thing their parents are interested in. If we continue to birth and raise children that have malnourished souls well, we old folks are gonna pass like the Passenger Pigeon. They will eventually put us in zoos like pigeons cause we have become an unnecessary problem, she died in her zoo at 1 P.M. on September 1, 1914 at the age of 29 the very last one on earth!





Mounted Passenger Pigeons were available at auction somewhere






GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN












Wolfhound, Potter Paulus




"At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned"
                                                                Cormac McCarthy 



Thursday, April 11, 2013

Thinking Like a Dog


I am glad that I am a man and that my dogs are dogs, I don't think they would love me as they do if I were a dog, they would see right through me and know all my faults.
apm

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Great Story from Mozambique




Update on New painting





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About Me

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I’m a Southern Boy, just 56 last November, I get around here and there, Central America, Africa, Red Bay. I’m a Father, Grandfather, Husband, Artist and general flunky of sorts. Live in a little historic town in an old building I remodeled. Just wanted to hear myself think I guess, talk about the need of simplification, show some art, express an interest or two, brag on my dogs and see where it goes. That’s it!, That’s the deal, Thanks