Snorkeling with Manatees: Chomp, Chomp, Chomp

Remember this: Imagine going on a hunt without a weapon. Just a snorkel and mask.

In August, I had a bucket list item. It was more a strong pull towards something. It happened to be a giant sea potato. I am a Celt, Magyar, and Irish among other things. Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes.

Let me go ahead and get the information that the Manatee is a threatened species under the  U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The manatee is not considered endangered but are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. You are not suppose to touch them. No touchy-touchy!

I do feel like our current Potus is trying to destroy all things good in life with whoever these poison Wormwood advisors are. Lets move on.

Conservation groups are trying to return them to endangered status. When you watch videos of boaters not paying attention, that run the manatees over, and how the water substrate manatees live in is being polluted up, it makes one wonder what is going on in people's heads. 

The rate at which hunters and outdoor sport people are radicalizing me is epic.  I am going to make this one about the manatee habitat. 

So we begin this new tale of the underwater meadow in the bay. 

Would not be an adventure if there wasn't some foreshadowing and a dire warning. Lewis and Clark are up in heaven saying, "Everyone has to die sometime."

My progeny tells me, "Don't go in the Florida water."

I say, "I am going in the Florida water."

My progeny says, "but there are brain eating amoebas."

I took what he said into consideration and decided that adventurers of old probably went into the Florida waters and ate the bear meat, which got them killed. Upward and onward. 

I booked a room right on the Florida water and went about securing a boat out to the center of the location where the year round population of manatees made their home. 

I am going to tell you now that I took a person that is afraid of dogs, horses, and a boulder shaped potato. He couldn't swim either.  The guide was told this because I was gonna need help with him. Difficulty level now went up to a 8.5 on the scale. I wasn't sure if this was going to end well, or with me being embarrassed.  

Weather is important in planning your excursion. You need to know when the tide is, if there is going to be lightning or rain, and what the temperature of the water is. The area we were in is King's Bay in Florida. It is 600-acres at the headwaters of Crystal River. Of course, in the 1950-80s there was a re-imagining of the shoreline around the area that had an impact on its natural attributes at the time. As humans go, there always has to be a re-imagining. UGH! I read there was a substantial agricultural and urban land use conversion that contributed to nitrate entering the springshed and there was mystery invasive aquatic vegetation introduced in the 1960s. That is the lore in short.

The King's Bay, a fresh spring waterway, is a first-magnitude spring system that feeds seventy individual limestone springs and pumps out hundreds of millions of gallons of water daily from a Florida Aquifer. It stays at a constant temperature of 72 degrees year-round. The King's Bay connects to Crystal River. Crystal River flows into the Gulf of Mexico, or is it the Gulf of America. I am not going to learn new land mass names or water routes so for me its the Gulf of Mexico. Adios mio!

This makes the area tidally influenced and slightly brackish in the outer sections. These springs act as the largest natural warm-water refuge for wintering West Indian manatees. 

The first guide we booked rained us out and wasn't trying to work around the weather. The next day, we secured another guide that worked around the weather for a three hour private guided tour. We went down to the meet site and drove over to where the captain is docked. We got aboard and cruised around the waterway. We cruised into the area of Hunter's Spring Park. There is a lot of people in the water and the amount of congestion from the water vehicles and toys looked like chaos. The water was clear and you could see the fish. 

The guide pointed out that the manatees were not in this area due to the amount of people but in one area there is a metal grate that has eelgrass growing in it. She said the manatees loved this grass and eventually used the weight of their bodies to bend and get under it to get to the grass. The submerged grass she mentioned is eelgrass (Vallisneria americana) but it is called tapegrass or wild celery.

We cruise over to the middle of the bay where the captain docked and we started to offload. My friend, who is 5'8" in a scuba suit, gets off and stands in the water. Reality sets in and he realizes that he is up to his chest in water standing with with a pool noodle. He can't see into the water because it has been disturbed so it is not clear. I am coming down the ladder and he decides he wants to go up the ladder. Much like Gandalf, my behind is letting him know he can not pass. I knew he was going to do that. The captain seen him making his move and distracted him to walk off toward the guide by letting him know he is standing in the water and not dying. It was long enough for me to get in. I begin to drive him toward the guide. 

For someone who had never snorkeled before, once he got away from the boat, started using the snorkel and tube then put his face in the water, he was okay. He is one of these people that never got the chance to let his brain grow from worldly interaction. He has come a long way. It is about experiencing life. 

We got out there snorkeling around and my mask wasn't fitting. It is leaking water into my nose area. I had to go back to the boat and get another one before I swallowed the Florida water. I didn't want to accepted the alien amoeba inside of me. I wondered if I was going to get a flesh-eating disease in my lungs. 

I get my mask changed out. The group has moved along following the manatees. I am swimming around. I decided to do as the giant potatoes do; sit still on top of the water.  I am pretty sure I looked like a bloated dead body out there waiting for the next CSI episode to happen. It wasn't long before my ears could hear the chomp, chomp, chomp of the boulder that had now come to rest underneath me. At this point, I was channeling alligator energy. 

We know not to touch them. It was amazing floating over it, watching and listening. One of them had a baby with her.

That chomping sound is like a loud earworm. I am thinking that is me at a Hotpot buffet eating octopus. Chomp, chomp, chomp. 

Image by Ovidiu Timplaru

Let us insert the science. 

I am over a bed of eelgrass, which is long and ribbon like with green leaves and can grow up to six foot long. This area looked like an underwater meadow due to the denseness of the plants. The sediment it grows on is soft and mushy but not completely without solidity. This grass is considered a foundational species. The manatee is considered an indicator and keystone species in the aquatic ecosystem. 

What is a foundational species?

A foundation species is a dominant organism that shapes, defines, and structures the bay by creating habitats and modulating the availability of resources. The role eelgrass plays is in stabilizing the sediment, improving the water clarity, producing oxygen, and sequestering carbon. If you have ever had a fish tank, it provides for food and nursery habitats for waterway creatures.

This eelgrass is actively modifying the environment by acting as an ecosystem engineer by constructing shelter, food, and safety from bad weather and predators. 

If you think about water, there is movement and flow brought on by underwater currents and airflow above that shuttles energy and nutrients around a given area. 

Given this knowledge, one can understand what would happen in the reverse of this situation. One of the problems with a reverse is it can cause the eelgrass to die. This die-off causes the manatee to starve if there is not another food source available. Manatees do migrate but not all. 

Water quality can be poor due to these factors:

• Nutrient pollution
• Eutrophication
• Increased turbidity
• Chemical toxins

These scenarios cause a murky, toxic condition where sunlight is not able to get to the plant and the plant suffocates then dies. 

Poor water quality can bring excess nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizers or sewage. High nutrient levels that trigger microalgae blooms, phytoplankton, and epiphytic algae contribute to poor water quality. This can cause light starvation. The murky water and thick layers of algae on top can block out the sunlight obstructing photosynthesis for plants to grow.  Increased turbidity suspends the sediment and dense algae makes the water cloudy and dark. Heavy metals, pesticides, and oil build up in the local sediment and water can contribute to poor water quality from chemical toxins. These toxins can be absorbed by the eelgrass and make it fragile and prone to disease. 

As the eelgrass dies, it stops trapping sediment. This release of dirt goes back into the water and makes the area even worse for future growth.

What has been going on with the restoration of eelgrass (Vallisneria americana) in the great state of Florida 2026?

There have been several previous locations that have planted large amounts of eelgrass over a substantial acreage of shoreline. These are East Lake Tohopekaliga, Crystal River, Weeki Wachee River, and Indian River Lagoon. Specialized teams clear nuisance algae, plant new eelgrass, and install protective steel mesh cages over plants to revive springs and feed the manatees. The amount ranges around 150 cages per acre. The cages are cleaned monthly to allow sunlight to reach the plant. These cages stay in place for twelve months then they are removed. The process is simple: remove, replant, and maintain.

For 2026 restoration projects, spearheaded by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) with conservation partners Conservation Florida and Sea & Shoreline, are restoring these areas:

East Lake Toho

Installation of 250,000 native eelgrass plants across 50 acres of the Northshore, funded by a $2.6 million state legislative appropriation administered through the FWC.

Lake George

41 fenced enclosures overing over 155 acres with an additional 1 million eelgrass plants installed. There is a subsequent St. Johns River eelgrass revegetation solicitation closing in Oct 2026.

Lake Poinsett

This site is used by researchers to test 864 experimental plots to determine the most effective plant sizing and densities for long term statewide propagation. 

In closing, when you consider all the ways in which weather, human habitation, and the shifting landscape cause damage to core habitats, it is great to know that there are plans being executed to rebuild and help the natural world flourish. 

What about the manatee's role in this as an indicator and a keystone species?  What about that lazy spud?

Image by Hamim Fadillah 

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Developmental Waste: They are still here!

Image by A.Larrimore

Remember this: Never build more structures than you need or will use.

 

"Out-of-door life takes the child afield and keeps him in the open air, which not only helps him physically and occupies his mind with sane subjects, but keeps him out of mischief. It is not only during childhood that this is true, for love of nature counts much for sanity in later life. This is an age of nerve tension, and the relaxation which comes from the comfortable companionship found in woods and fields is, without doubt, the best remedy for this condition." (Comstock 2)

Every so often I will walk to the local park. There sometimes I will find a covered picnic area occupied by several older black men that come to sit and shoot the breeze. Okay, they gossip. About drunks, dysfunctional families, accidents, and any other thing that runs down a grapevine. Yes, Angelia gets an education on everyone's business: even my dad's.

Who is out at the club? Who is cheating in the woods? It's a buffet of useless information unless I plan to blackmail someone.

One little old black man that has got to be 80 yrs old rides his Schwinn in middle of the day heat with a chicken sandwich from the local eatery. He doesn't have teeth but must have been in the war. He yells what he is saying so you have to listen close. The other is a 56 yr old man who has a car like a teenager and diamonds in both his ears. The last is an old married man that drives a truck carrying the mail. He looks like a Afro-American Colonel Sanders moved up from Cajun country with a serious southern accent. Nicest people you could ever meet. Someone still needs to come get their Unc.

Truth be told. I don't remember their names. Shame on me. I can remember a lot but not short term sometimes.

The mail driver was sitting out in the heat, so I decided to stop by and say hi while drinking a coke. We got to talking about waste or maybe I should call it development.

By development, I mean any area that was once wildlife habitat that someone bought then slapped a concrete building on it and mowed down all the green followed by a parking lot. I include subdivions, abandoned golf courses, and any other thing just 'sitting there on the landscape' racking up back taxes. You'll know it. It is screaming eyesore.

There is an old elementary school right there. My son told me they closed it because of black mold. I told the Mail driver that the building had been there when my dad went to high school. Now they wanted $165,000 for it. He told me by the time they brought it up to code the monetary figure would be well up there. I told him you could drive anywhere and there is land with abandoned buildings on it; unused that could be converted back to untouched land. If the building is going to be unuseable it's better to tear it down. Let the forest take over or at least keep a good clean field. Either way, you'll be stuck with a moneypit or have to start over. Money in is money in. It's not coming back to you. That is not counting on whether you have to turn enough profit to make up for the loss you put into it just opening it. Businesses love it when they finally see it on paper that they have made a profit.

Abandoned buildings everywhere. Just taking up space and someone is paying the taxes on them.
It's like I've always heard. A house unused falls to rack and ruin.

We discussed the landfill and how New Jersey doesn't want to be responsible for their trash so they haul it down here and put it in our ground. No wonder the river is full of contaminated fish?

Development can be great but when you look at the long term of it, it's not. Businesses fail and then they do nothing with the property the building sits on. It's like dead space.

People are taking up more space everyday but people don't want to stop breeding. That means more area is put up for development while areas that have been developed just sit there like ghost towns. It doesn't make sense.

I see it online all the time. The government wants to make public areas available to sale to private owners so they can develop. No, we don't need another empty building in a year or two. Not to mention whatever waste or pollutant was left behind.

I wonder why something is not done with post-developed areas so other places that are untouched stay that way. It's like a hunter that can't be still in one area of forest while he hunts. He has got to move and move and move until he's screwed himself looking for a better spot.

I decided I needed to go home. I told the mail driver we as humans should be ashamed. There are insects that only have lifespans of 14 days. They travel a distance, lay eggs, the babies hatch and go the next distance. When they finally get to another country the generation that lives turns around then every generations after that makes it back to the original spot. Neverending biological ping pong. Some insects only have hours or a day to get everything they need to do finished. Here, we as humans, have been outdone by a mere fly.

Maybe people are just meatbags walking around like the empty buildings that no one occupies.

Written By: Angelia Y. Larrimore

Sylvia Plath: A Queen Bee's World

Image by Andre Ramos

 

Remember this: The queen bee's world is one moment of terrible limited splendor circumscribed by sacrifice.

As I had previously mentioned, there was a swarm of bees nestled on a t-post beside an old chicken coop on the property. They were very loud. Surrounding the property were several fields planted in wheat and canola. The canola grew out with bright yellow flowers atop the plant much like a wild mustard. Since this crop has been planted, I have seen all manner of bird and beast. I decided to help these bees out because the birds were flying above the field picking them and anything else off. I left them alone then went about the business of getting myself a wooden bee hive. A local man, who raised bees but didn't have any, sold me a used box in good condition for ten dollars. Which used, the box hives are eighty seven dollars. I cleaned the cedar box with disinfectant, dried the box then varnished the outside to keep the rot off the wood. I could already see there were remnants from bugs past. I didn't want to spread a disease. I wasn't sure if the bees would like this as their home because they seemed pretty annoyed when someone with white went near them. I thought it was funny how beekeepers look like the government when extraterrestrial clean-up in movies are required. That's right. Fox Mulder has the four one one on the guys in white; stealing the honey. Two episodes of the X-Files were Zero Sum and Herrenvolk with the virus-carrying bees. I pondered on when bees attack.

I bought some black netting from the grocery store and covered my head and wore cattle gloves. I picked up this yellow jug off the ground they migrated into and put it inside of the cedar bee box. I then did a little research and fixed a sugar board onto one of the cedar racks. I didn't put a sugar board in this new pine wood box I built as of yet, so the bees moved to the one with the sugar board. They were humming along then silence. I thought I had killed them but they were happy as clams in mud. I have never seen a honeycomb produced so fast. It looks like a white fossil. I was amazed. I had never seen bees doing their work before except in a video. After moving the second lot, I wondered after they took up residence in the cedar box if the queen could be found. I was worried I had done her in. I read you can shock bees by over-handling them which I wasn't doing.

This morning I went out while it was cool. I picked up the top box which is a cardboard box with hole handles in it. I looked inside and spied on them. Not one of them attacked me. I looked down and there she was right in the middle with her back-end into the amber colored gel doing her business. I laughed, took a photo for a happy moment then covered them back up to eat, drink, and be merry. I figured I would just leave them alone and keep water close by. The waterer I used is a chick waterer with pea stones around the outside. I looked at the online versions but after peeling pears outside and having honey bees, wasps, and yellow jacks suck the juice off my hands, I decided it would be easier for them to land on rocks then suck up the water. You just don't want them to drown. These bees had also got between some tobacco barns. I put the box hives up on a table then covered them with an huge beach umbrella so they would not be in direct sunlight. I was jealous and wished someone would care for me like that. I love bugs.

My plans right now are to keep the bees happy and let them reproduce because a lot of bees die from misadventure. This was one of my goals in life. I wanted some bees and here they came swarming near the sweet potatoes. Its a sign....or a swarm. Who cares? I got bees that are free to go at any time. I am not holding them captive.

I thought what could I offer up as some interesting reading aside from the how-to books. Before the bees came I checked out some reading material from the library. This one particular work was based on Plath's poems on beekeeping. 

We all know Plath commits suicide. She was a very troubled woman. Plath was very adept at using situations of the female to impress upon females thoughts, insights and ideas in her confessional style of poetry. She takes a condition that exists in nature then applies this condition to her life; she is a form of queen bee who seeks release in eventual death after laboring under the watchful eyes of others to some end. If Plath could have transcended past the confines of the intangible boundaries she and other people put around her, she might have lived but when others are holding you down at their whim with little care for the damage they are doing you it is no wonder she killed herself. People are cruel and feel justified in their cruelty because they are looking down or controlling another while they would not want that done to them. Cruelty aside, there are people that just do not question the way things just are. It is accepted much like a man going to his beheading without hope of rescue. Worse yet, with troubled souls the thoughts they think kill them just as fast without anyone's help.

Sylvia Plath wrote about five or six poems on the keeping of bees. Each one is an evaluation of self contained governance inside of a hive, the behavior and thoughts of the speaker where the inner drama is going on.

Plath explores the power order inside the hive. When comparing psychologist David Holbrook's claim about Plath: “Be(e)ing seems a threat to one who doesn't know how to be.”

I would wonder if he believed that Plath was so controlled by constant brainwashing of her role as a female in society that when she butted up against the real her, she was beside herself with confusion and frustration for not being able to move to the plane of existence that was meant for her; instead of the one dictated to her by the era she lived in. She had already superseded in her mind and severed herself away from the mundane life she dwelled in but her mind couldn't consolidate the fact the mind was freer than the actual physical body.

Much like the queen; pregnant with offspring's ideas and these products being put in small circular cells for safekeeping until ready. Yet she is isolated between births as its a never-ending cycle of giving life while she slowly dies. Plath could have been trapped in her own attic while she held a key. She could be locked inside her own mind with the key within reach but yet stares off blankly into an unknown distance; still incarcerated by her own unwillingness to push open the lower door and walk out. This could be the problem with Plath.

The queen must suffer a unique regal motherhood. Plath's motherhood was her poetry and her suffering stemmed from the isolation of the workings of her mind and the constraints put upon it; she should have just let go of dogma.

Image by Gerardo Giuseppe

Let us consider the shrewd queen bee.

“The controlling force of the poem is the shrewd queen bee, powerful in her very evasiveness. She proves her cleverness by refusing to show herself, whether to avoid a duel with the younger virgins or to escape some random fate from the villagers. To her, power is an attitude, a matter of perceiving life and death, the familiar and the terrible, simultaneously. She manipulates the visible from her vantage point of isolation. Physically, her fate is in others' hands. Mentally she remains untouched, undetected, her mind as well as her body “sealed in wax.” Likewise, the inducted speaker—exhausted from the tedium of ignorance, fear, and unanswered questions—chooses immobility. Despite her outward conformity, she remains “a gullible head untouched by their {the bees} animosity.” (Broe 100)

I thought this very interesting as I delved into my antics and shenanigans with the honey bees. I hope that my little part to play with the propagation of pollinators is rewarding as well as functional. The world needs more pollinators.

If you would like to read Plath's work online, I found a blogspot that has it available because this work is hard to find online so you would have to use a library card or buy a book with the work published inside.
Enjoy.

http://strongverse.blogspot.com/2013/01/sylvia-plaths-bee-poems.html

 

Written by: Angelia Y Larrimore

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Enjoy Sylvia Plath!

Leasing an Egg-laying Space.

       Photography by Anton Winaryo   
Remember this: If it is not on paper in this day and age, a hand-shake will not cut it. 

Don't worry, I did not forget about my jaunt into Jungian thought. Also, I am irritable becausemy yellow crock was pierced by a thorn from a Bartlett pear tree. The petty princess has been wounded. 
My wee fingers are typing away trying to give birth to a hunting lease for the 2026-27 migratory fowl season. It would seem that for some reason the hunter wants to get that locked down so far in advance. 
As I was hitting the keystrokes, I was reading over the indicated dates for the hunting seasonto fill in the would be blank spaces.  I  was taken aback. Why you ask? Well, it would appearthat this area this person wants to lease is at the duckpond compound. 
I thought, these people are hunting right into egg-laying season. I see less and less migratoryfowl inland. After they navigate obstacles of hunters everywhere, when they finally do landthey have to tough it out, lay some eggs and hope they make it back to the nest. Jesus! the ducks are living in a wore torn pond. Lets just focus on the wood duck. 
Current Day: Little did I know that when I started to write this that a mighty Asshat would appear just in time for deer hunting season. 
~Courtesy of the AOFH~

 

Guy on a Gator: The New Predator

Image by A. Larrimore

Remember this: It is always a good idea to have your bases covered before planting a foot on foreign terrain.

I had to sit with this one a while. By the time you finish reading this you are gonna have to sit with it a while as well. 

(This is information to remember: a dark SUV found trespassing onto unsuspecting property owners' land to place cameras to track deer as caught on another device without trespasser knowing it.)

As people who hunt, fish, or do the outdoor sports, we should be well aware that the Grim Reaper is patiently waiting in the wings for our turn to punch the old time clock and get in his boat to darker, greener, pastures. There are also others that are not from the spiritual realm that lay-in-wait.

While we are waiting, lets talk about the new predator. 

This predator I speak of comes in the form of other hunters, land brokers, real estate agents, and anyone else that is looking to capitalize on some elderly person's mental deterioration or impending poverty be it a scam or not. Sometimes this poverty or homelessness is imposed by unscrupulous people that trick these elderly people into signing away their rights and security for a fast payday, or to steal a slice of a landlocked area that is in great demand. Calling such people vultures doesn't give it justice. 

There are the real estate agents, including those that claim they can put your land up as a hunting preserve to sale. They send workers out to the local land and deeds office to see who is about to die and whether they can be approached to sell. The other tactic they use is somehow getting a cell phone number to text message or cold call and sending things to e-mails when no one has not requested solicitation.

Have you ever received e-mails where you thought you might have requested or involved yourself in something only to find out that you didn't do anything but there it is....waiting on your panic and lightning fast response to figure it out. This is what the elderly are subjected to and what their caretakers have to stay vigilant on lest the poor old dying soul be left to the caprice of the world because of dementia and a cruel soulless person(s). 

One could ponder that this is their Karma. Maybe they did bad things in their life, treated people cruelly, or kicks small dogs and cats. 

Wait until you uncover a parent has been ripped off in the amount of $20,000 or more by some person getting Lyft rides in Canada. The elderly victim has to take out a loan to cover their debt and simultaneously hide this while going into denial and blaming someone else for the money being taken/given away. 

Have you asked your Nanna which K-pop singer she is married to? Is she sending him money because his management is holding him hostage? Wait until she pulls out the marriage certificate stamped by some anonymous lawyer's office in a foreign country. 

Or maybe its an aunt that has been seduced into signing a purchasing contract on a million dollar mansion where the K-pop star claims she can live in her old age while he travels the world singing to the masses?

You better go right now and check on your people. There might be 120 Kneau Reeves love bombing the death and money out of your beloved relative on Tiktok. Imposter Kneau is broke. The Matrix really took a toll on him.

For every elderly person, the scammer finds out their weakness. Some scammers aren't on the internet. They sit in small country eateries checking pulses and looking up obituaries trying to find out if there is an heir or two that could block their evil plans. 

What has brought all this own? The recent story out of Conway of some dastardly healthcare worker, in the absence of the out-of-state relative, somehow got title and monies signed over to her, and thieved away with the patient's livelihood without telling the relative her parent is dead for three days. This perpetrator worked through a healthcare business. 

I already ran into this with a senior living rehabilitation center. The facility wanted an audit of Patient Zero's financials even though his insurance was paying for the two week stay.  The facility was suppose to admit Patient Zero for two weeks for physical therapy and tried to diaper-lock him in a wheelchair, not let him walk, or let him leave his room due to a contagious cold going through the facility. This place said he could leave when he wanted to and when the two weeks were up they were trying to hold onto him. It became a potential confrontation. 

What the hell does this have to do with hunting? Okay, you ask. 

A day ago I am out in a property cutting grass. This property has hunting leases on it. It is a small place but a nice place especially if you want peace and quiet to meander to sit in the woods. I turn toward the soy bean field with the mower when I see something moving over the six acre field on that side. I realize it is a person. They have wandered over onto the property, heading for the deer.  The deer are standing out in the field like a herd of dumb cattle. I am unaware someone has put a deer stand in a tree there.  

I begin to yell across the six acre field that I see him and ask if he has permission. At this point, the person squats down in the soy beans so he can hide himself. He must have called the person on the zippity-doo gator because the ATV comes back.

The guy on the Gator pulls up on me. He tells me who he is. My name is Zippity-Doo from the S-curve area.

I asked him did he know the guy in the field? Yes.

I ask did he have a hunting lease or pay for land rental? No, I have not signed or paid anything yet. 

When are you going to do that? Cricket sounds.

Here he is telling me that he has no instruction on what he can and cannot do in this location. If I was an officer an asked him to present evidence it would not appear. 

Zippity-Doo doesn't have anything on paper or a receipt that he has done any of the things to secure his argument. Yet he is out there with friends with guns walking all over the place. He places his right for himself to hunt on a verbal agreement with a person that has health problems. He states  he is unaware of this, or so he says. This verbal agreement has no witness or verification. It doesn't stipulate any other person that is brought to the location to take part in hunting activities. He claimed to know the property owner. He tells me that he saw the property owner at this local eating place, where no doubt he started his campaign on how to access the property because he is desperate to get into that area by hook or crook. 

When a man tells me he will come back and pick up rocks, that tells me he has absolutely no standard on his behavior and is willing to sell himself out to get what he thinks he wants, or lie his way into getting the instant gratification of killing a deer when the memory of it is now sullied. All this just to access a property.

There is a lot of ways to do things. This isn't one of them. 

I realized he is potentially the same guy setting up game camera pre-hunt season. All I hear i the flapping of gums trying to convince me that he is a noble hunter when he was out in these dirt roads trespassing to place cameras to monitor a herd of deer on other people's land without the property owners knowing it. I just happened to be the one seeing him do it with evidence.

Where is the honor in that? Who raised this guy? Better yet, who is he emulating because someone failed and failed epically.

I excused myself to go get the elderly property owner. The property owner came out and I asked the guy in front of the property owner about him hunting. Property owner said that he said he could but also told him he wasn't going to be liable for the hunter, or anyone else doing themselves harm while out in the field. The property owner tells him that he is going to let me handle it. Zippity-Doo doesn't internalize this.

This is the intersection where this turns South. When a elderly property owner gives a verbal okay from another era to a hunter for them to hunt in a time where verbal agreements aren't the best foundation to stand on. This verbal agreement takes a turn because instructions and specifics are not documented. The verbal yes to one becomes a verbal yes to anyone that wasn't there for the conversation. The friends of the hunter are the people you have no idea what caliber of person they are and if they will honor the original verbal agreement. You have no idea of a person's criminal past either if they have one, or what they have been into. You are just going on the word of the one you know and not the one you don't.

This person decided to go ahead and put up deer stands, invite people, and do what he wanted in the absence of anything tangible. Is that not the best way to take advantage? No boundaries. No limits. No specifics. 

He even tried to convince me he was managing something there. I told him he was on someone else's property.  A farmer planted soy beans on the plot and all he did was pull up, put up a stand and shoot a deer off of it. He put no effort in it other than to grunt and groin putting up  a stand that wasn't even that high. The audacity of some people. 

Where is the tribute? 

If someone accidentally shoots a person, gets bite by a rattler, or should fall out a tree or break a leg, then they or someone they know will want to race up to a lawyer's office. They will try to put a claim in and hold the land owner responsible even though that land owner might be cognitively compromised in some way.

I talk to this guy about signing a hunting lease with specifics so the hunter on the other plot isn't menaced. I ask him for a number to call to let him know when the paperwork is ready. He leaves and I go back to mowing. I eventually finish and go back to the house. I sit down and try to change the stipulations for locations and need to talk to this wanker. I call the number he has given me. It goes to some young man that doesn't have a clue what is going on and why he is getting the phone calls. Now I have been mislead and deceived. We got a dodger!

Zippity-Do on the Gator informed me that per the property owner's request for him to talk to the other hunter with an abutting hunting lease. He discussed his presence out on the main farm and he reported the hunter in the back was okay with it. I was not informed and circumvented around by this young man in the stead of the property owner just coming back from a doctor's visit. He was emotional for three days prior and doing things out of the ordinary. The doctor decided to give him treatment and hope it cleared up the problem lest there might be a reoccurring silent stroke. 

Before I could determine the nature of this situation, I have another unknown person(s) running amuck in an area the property owner has been known to watch deer movement from his door and shoot a 308 in that area at deer by the place the young man put a deer stand. In low light that is a recipe for disaster. I don't want to come back and find a body. If it can be avoided, avoid it. 

This is where communication is key. Key, I said. So is safety.

So now I got someone hiding in a soybean field, another one trying to convince me of all the hunting jargon bird-spit-swallow and then to make it worse for himself give me a bogus number to someone else that has no clue what is going on. He still has not signed a hunting lease, submitted payment for a receipt but I got his treestand in the tree. The treestand at this point is trespassing. There is also the fact I have a property owner with questionable discernment skills on overlapping hunters in a small area while making promises his rear end can't cash in the long run. Smirk.

You give a bad hunter an inch and he is gonna take up the whole national park system. 

On top of this, Zippity-Do tells me that he spoke to the hunter in the back and that guy is okay with it. That guy didn't say nothing to me about getting a call so I sent him a voice mail. Guess what? He wasn't okay with what that guy was doing. Now I got another deception and another hunter not saying a word to me when something is amiss. This makes me think long and hard on next year's seasons. 

Hunters will screw the pooch on their self.

Whatever happened to truth, justice, and the American way?  Meh. 

This doesn't make sense to me that a elderly property own would cause that much dissension on his own land. This could cause him legal problems unless he just doesn't grasp it. He doesn't discern the legalities or the danger to self or others.

Does he need a situation where a SCDNR officer now has to investigate a shooting/death on his land that was executed by imbeciles that have nothing in their hands to refute their claims? 

I am thinking this person was doing what he thought was lowkey get-in, shoot the deer, and get-out then tell the property owner he never shot a thing so he could get out of signing an agreement and absconding with a dead deer to never pay for the hunting lease. I wouldn't be surprised if he fabricates a story on the way he epically went out to hunt the deer and post it on some page at Facebook.

My headache is as wide as the Grand Canyon and I haven't even see it yet.

Image by Adam Zubek-Nizol

~Courtesy of the AOFH~