Disney Sucks

Well, not always, he made a few good movies like "The Great Locomotive Chase" and the Davy Crockett series, but he also made some subversive commie pinko anti-hunting stuff, with "Bambi" probably being the worst. Indeed, among the semi literate gun nut crowd, "Bambi-ism" has long been a synonym for anthropomorphism. I understand that his Mickey Mouse character was loosely based on a real mouse that shared Disney's living quarters in his younger days. What kind of guy tolerates mice in his house anyway? Didn't he ever hear of D-Con? Then there was Elmer Fudd, that ridiculous character who was a slanderous insult to both hunters and gardeners. If Disney had made fun of colored people like that, the politically correct crowd would have burned him at the stake. Disney made a lot of money peddling fantasy, not unlike Hugh Heffner, except that Heffner's fantasies were a noble, if unattainable, inspiration to us all. Like that famous guy said, "Man's reach must always be beyond his grasp. Else what's a Heaven for?"

I heat my blind with one of those radiant catalytic heaters that you screw into a 20 pound propane tank. Although they don't require a chimney, you're not supposed to use them indoors, as if anybody would want to heat the outdoors. The window in my blind doesn't have any glass in it, it just stays open all the time, so I guess that doesn't count as indoors. All I know is that I've been using it for about 20 years and I haven't been asphyxiated yet. I don't keep it all that warm in there, it's kind of like sitting in the sunshine on a calm 40 degree day. I wear the same clothes that you saw in that picture of me plowing snow last winter, but I don't tie the hood because I have to be able to pull it back when I put on my sonic ear muffs before shooting. If I were to shoot in that confined space without ear protection, it would blow out my ear drums for sure. Some heat does go out the window, but the deer don't get close enough to feel it. The heater makes a soft hissing sound when it's running, but that doesn't seem to bother the deer. Deer are not spooked by steady continuous sound, only by sudden changes of sound. It probably sounds like the wind or the traffic noise from the nearest highway to them. You can drive right up to a deer in a tractor or other motor vehicle if you keep your speed steady, which is why they don't let you shoot from a motor vehicle. If you rev the engine up or shut it off, that will spook them.

Rabbits and hares are notorious for going through periodic boom and bust cycles. It usually takes about ten years for them to come full circle, but these guys have been down for at least 20 years now. According to what I have read, only the snowshoe hares in the Lower Peninsula have been affected. In the border habitats, the cottontails have somewhat filled in for the snowshoes, but we never had a lot of cottontails around here, and they don't seem to have benefitted by the decline of the hares. There are a few theories about the cause, but I have not heard of any scientific studies being done. According to articles I have read, small game has been generally declining all over the country for decades, while the deer have been proliferating to the point of becoming a nuisance in many areas. The decline of small game may be attributed to an increase in predators, since there's little money to be made in fur trapping anymore, and birds of prey have been protected for a long time now. Predators seldom totally wipe out a species anyway. When the prey gets scarce, the predators switch to whatever is more available, move to better hunting grounds, or go into decline themselves. Wildlife populations have been ebbing and flowing like this since forever, it seems to be part of The Plan. We predators just have to adapt to it the best way we can.