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~

Town Hall: The Sky is Falling

Image by Adam Zubek-Nizol

Remember this: Things have a way of coming back to haunt you. 

Where is the knee jerk reaction that dog hunting in South Carolina is under attack coming from? Is it fear of law enforcement?

I am in your comment section looking for clues. My best sniffer states that supposedly there is no pending legislation and they are just gathering feedback. There is no proposal. Changes to the states hunting laws must be made by the South Carolina General Assembly. So the recipe is: 

Public Input + Point of Conflicts = Potential Solutions

Are these hunters dramatic? Why are you scared? Knees are jerking everywhere.

I am looking at the town hall videos and sipping my Replenish Zero thinking, WTF?

I see this one post where someone named Greenswamp is telling another person he is in NC and "they not finna stop us we goin dump them damn dogs anywhere anytime they not taking my shit away."  

Just in one statement you can see the reason why. I was watching one well-meaning man pleading for them not to take it away from the kids. No one said they were. The SCDNR has plenty of programs for teens and kids.

If anything is threatening the future of dog hunting it is the steady spread of infrastructure, housing, and businesses. It eats away at the forest and runs the creatures further and further away from their breeding grounds. Myrtle Beach is gone in the way of hunting. You have to go on the outskirts of town and that is landlock.

Lets hits some points on the function of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resource in these shenanigans. 

They are not your surrogate mother or father. It is a Law Enforcement Agency that enforces hunting, fishing, and boating laws, taxes and registration. They enforce laws over wildlife such as alligators, bears, manatees, and sea turtles. Did I mention crime? They help other agencies with missing persons, drown victims or body recovery.

Anyone not securing a privilege and abiding within those laws and regulations will be cited per offense and go before a judge for a verdict and pay a fine. Each generation of the public is a target recruitment to funnel financing back into the Agency as either a law-abiding citizen or a criminal of sorts based on what services you get rendered.

The SCDNR is asking for input to help make an informed decision that will be advised to the legislatures so they can amended existing regulations, add or delete. 

The South Carolina General Assembly is the department that handles the actual law-making the SCDNR executes. You need to speak to your legislator and directly ask them what is being built as regulations and put before the Assembly to be transitioned over into a law or regulation. 

You can travel here: 

To look up legislation  https://www.scstatehouse.gov/

To look up your legislator:  https://www.scstatehouse.gov/legislatorssearch.php

It follows this:

1. State Legislature: The South Carolina General Assembly, which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate, is responsible for enacting laws that govern natural resources and environmental regulations. 
2. Committees: Specific committees within the legislature, such as the Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs Committee, focus on issues related to natural resources and can influence legislation affecting the SCDNR.
3. Regulatory Authority: The SCDNR itself has the authority to propose regulations based on laws passed by the legislature, which are then subject to public comment and legislative approval before becoming effective.

With all this being said, I think the South Carolina dog hunting knows that given the growth of human habitation and the dwindling landscape that shrinks smaller and smaller every year.

If you cannot get satisfaction from the SCDNR or your legislature, then maybe the dog hunters can form a coalition that will buy land and turn it into a hunting property that is shared by members and put in Trust or something like a trust to manage the upkeep and continual use of its members and their heirs. Talk to a lawyer about the particulars. 

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Renegade Hunting Dogs: Wanted Dead or Alive

Remember this: A bad apple on the ground and a good apple in the hand soon rots away. 

This is a potential sad tell of woe from the lowlands to the highlands. A particular version of Man's Best friend and its owner/hunter and how both finally feel the pressure exerted on them by "what is to come."

How foreboding.

I am sure by now you have seen the social media blitz around the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources calling town halls to give the public a voice to speak on the following for dog hunting:

Requiring dog registration and microchipping

Mandate year-round humane care

Require appropriate veterinary care

Accountability for loose or lost dogs

Meaningful penalties

Clear rules for trespass and dog recovery

Two town halls have been held in Florence SC and Orangeburg, SC.  The next townhall will be on Monday, August 10, 2025 between 6:30 pm and 8:00 pm on Hampton Street Auditorium, 494 Hampton Street Walterboro.

I was perusing these videos and taking note of what each person was saying. From the list above, its birthed from news stories that came out last year about inhumane cruelty in hunting kennels, or inappropriate treatment on hunts to hunting dogs. The other parts are animal care accountability. 

If you have a working dog that you claim is a family member you would expect it to be in good health. These stipulations appear to be good judgement because humane and veterinary care brings less disease spread to other working dogs and common decency to the animal. 

If a person can't take care of his/her hunting dog, how does that reflect on the person in the field? 

I have seen a hunter with his favorite hunting dog that he artificial inseminated have eighteen puppies and take them home only for them to die because he didn't want to bottle feed them because the momma dog couldn't. In the good old days, I can't believe I am saying that, hunting dogs were only tools to run animals and tree. If the dog was lost or died, they were a dime a dozen and could be replaced. Hopefully, the respect to a hunting dog has been elevated. 

Cooch deserves better because Cooch is the one doing the hunting. You just laying in wait like an assassin.

Its an organizational tactic in the field to outline guidelines so hunters don't take advantage of the law and their privileges, be accountable for their actions, act cruelly upon a working animal, or fain ignorance. Hunters at times cannot manage themselves in polite society or in private. Some are quite nefarious and spiteful. There are some that are straight up entitled on all fronts.

When a game warden is called down to private property where the landowner has Uncle Buck's prize hunting dog kidnapped in the tool shed, it would make it easier to identify the canine and return it to the owner without altercation. The officer can assess whether a clear trespass happened or if a law or regulations was not adhered to. 

If you are saying your dog is like your family then Cooch needs to get cited for trespass if Cooch is sporting. They could make an app for dog identification like the night hunting they offer property owners. At this point, this is new so maybe give Cooch a pass. I think they should have a APB of the dog that has the most trespasses so we know who the hardened criminals are. 

When you look at this where is the knee jerk reaction that dog hunting in South Carolina is under attack? It looks like the SCDNR is trying to refine it and set it up not to fail by removing potential legal hazards and angering the public. Safety first!

Other people's bad behavior brings the rule: if one breaks the law then punish the rest. You have to think that, well, someone didn't want to  be a responsible hunter and take care of his/her situation so he/she didn't bring attention to themselves or his/her fellow road riders. Shoutout to pronouns. Pronouns matter.

Lets talk about the road riders. The road rider that is the trouble source is the one that rides the two lane and parks on the side of the road, or rides around a property knowing there is hunting stands with people in a location. These road riders intentionally stops in the road, releases dogs across the adjoining properties to flush the deer out on the other side and it pisses the person that isn't doing all that moving around in the stand. I know. I have picked beagles and coon dogs up from under my stand or out my yard and drove them home like I was on a mystery date. I am talking to this hapless dog. Who are you? Where did you come from? Who is your daddy? Have you eaten yet? Why do you smell? I tend to buy them a hot dog with bottled water because sitting under the stand looking sad in 110 degree evening heat is diabolical.

To be honest with you, most of the time you probably know who these people are because they circle your area a lot. There is a way to undercut them but I am not putting that here. Eyes are everywhere and so is the Green Jeans.

Once a year, I watch people line the roads inside of a residential community and sit in front of people's houses trying to flush animals out that are near the houses. The pressure has driven them out the woods by people being in the woods, or dogs and people walking/running through the woods. This is a trap for murder. You have people on the other side in the road wielding guns and they are a car link apart. Someone in a tizzy to shoot a deer could accidently blast someone. What do they call them in England, a batter?  You have people walking to flush the deer though the woods and they walk up on someone that has beef with them and shoots them in the back. They swear that person stepped out from behind a tree. 

These are the same people that run stop signs. Oh, I didn't see it.

It appears to be true that in the top five, you are likely to be shot by someone that you go hunting with. Chose your hunting partners well.

Here is an example that happened this past deer season. I came home. My mother was in a panic and stated two vehicles were on the shoulder of the road in front of the house. One was behind a tree, the other was across the two lane with a dog box in the back. She returned home from the store. She heard a dog chasing something outside and went to look. She sees a deer run out from behind the house past her and follows it to see where it goes. Someone comes from behind the tree and fires a shell in the vicinity of her and the deer. The blue casing is still in the ditch to this day. I could have come home to my mother murdered in the side yard and never knew who did it if they drove off. These were dog hunters from a hunting club. I got pictures of the one vehicle and the plate with the dog box and called the Gamethief line. The girl answering the phone was not going to collect any info from me except my return call information. I had the plates and vehicle description. I told her to take it and put it in CAD because if something comes from it later as a repeat offender, it would be in the notes. Trust me when I say that I can make a whole post on this inability to transcribe information in the commission of a potential crime. If someone has evidence, take it. You never know when that bit of evidence or information could solve a case, either yours or someone else. 

Memory fades but cellphone pictures don't. 

In this particular situation, if a hunter is found to be practicing this as a flush method that could end a life, their license should be taken and they should be forced to retake a hunting safety class and not be allowed to park on roadsides for X amount of time. This smells like Bad Decisions all day and into the night.

Let us go back to the question. 

When you look at this where is the knee jerk reaction that dog hunting in South Carolina is under attack?

Lets ponder on.....

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

A Sin: Killing Man, Killing Beast

Remember this: It is said there is no sin in killing a beast, only in killing a man. But where does one begin and the other end? ~Gwen Conliffe, The Wolfman~

I am going to say out the gate, this was something else. This phrase has nothing to do with animals in the real world but the inner realm of a human being that can present as good, bad, and neutral. Everyday, we can log onto the internet and see men as beasts in their hearts with the destruction of human life, habitat, cultures, and everything under the sun is in constant threat. The Great Mystery did not make this world for that quality of negativity. Yet here we are. 

Do you ever wonder where you learned long held beliefs? Beliefs about sin, separation of man and animal, Man's dominion over the Earth? Superstition that flies by night? How did Man elevate himself above the World with the support of the Spoken Word, or internal thought? Is it true that to realize God one must look inward but the eyes staring back are of a beast? Or is it something else? Sinister or serene? Is it healthy for the collective to acknowledge the concept of Man and his sin, whatever that may be? Is it the albatross around our necks since birth when we are told "you are corrupt"? If it is said that God is within, then what does it bode when what is inside is less than Godly? Or is it less than Godly? 

When you look at the Global stage today, you see a strange sort of creature that walks. It argues over resources and indiscriminately wounds, tortures, and kills for the sake of a lick-back, dominion, or monopoly. Surely, it is better to be a beast in the forest than a man that is a beast in his heart. Maybe we should come up with a better term. Beasts are honest about their motives, some humans are not. 

I am having a problem using the word beast. Animals are what they are but do we expect better from humans? These are deep seated questions.

Upon pondering this question, the answer can be found in a individual's moral and ethical compass. Determinants of morality in any given action must be considered, as one would following any process. Joseph Rickaby gives us a good layout of considerations to take. Let us review them. 

This is an excerpt from his published work, " Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natrual Law, Section II": 

"1. The morality of any given action is determined by three elements, the end in view, the means taken, and the circumstances that accompany the taking of the said means. Whoever knows this principle, does not thereby know the right and wrong of every action, but he knows how to go about the inquiry. It is a rule of diagnosis.

2. In order to know whether what a man does befits him as a man to do, the first thing to examine is that which he mainly desires and wills in his action. Now the end is more willed and desired than the means. He who steals to commit adultery, says Aristotle, is more of an adulterer than a thief. The end in view is what lies nearest to a man's heart as he acts. On that his mind is chiefly bent; on that his main purpose is fixed. Though the end is last in the order of execution, it is first and foremost in the order of intention. Therefore the end in view enters into morality more deeply than any other element of the action. It is not, however, the most obvious determinant, because it is the last point to be gained; and because, while the means are taken openly, the end is often a secret locked in the heart of the doer, the same means leading to many ends, as the road to a city leads to many homes and resting-places. Conversely, one end may be prosecuted by many means, as there are many roads converging upon one goal. 

3. If morality were determined by the end in view, and by that alone, the doctrine would hold that the end justifies the means. That doctrine is false, because the moral character of a human act depends on the thing willed, or object of volition, according as it is or is not a fit object. Now the object of volition is not only the end in view, but is not only the end in view, but likewise the means chosen. Besides the end, the means are likewise willed. Indeed, the means are willed more immediately even than the end, as they have to be taken first.

4. A good action, like any other good thing, must possess a certain requisite fulness of being, proper to itself. As it is not enough for the physical excellence of a man  to have the bare essentials, a body with a soul animating it, but there is needed a certain grace of form, color, agility, and many accidental qualities besides; so for a good act it is not enough that proper means to be taken to a proper end, but they must be taken by a proper person, at a proper place and time, in a proper manner, and with manifold other circumstances of propriety. 

5. The end in view may be either single, as when you forgive an injury solely for the love of Christ: or multiple co-ordinate, as when you forgive both for the love of Christ and for the mediation of a friend, and are disposed to forgive on either ground separately; or multiple subordinate, as when you would not have forgiven on the latter ground alone, but forgive the more easily for its addition, having been ready, however, to forgive the former alone, but forgive the more easily for its addition, having been ready, however, to forgive the former alone; or cumulative, as when you forgive on a number of grounds collectively, on no one of which would you have forgiven apart from the rest.

6. Where there is no outward action, but only an internal act, and the object of that act is some good that is willed for its own sake, there can be no question of means taken, as the end in view is immediately attained. 

7. The means taken and the circumstances of those means enter into the morality of act, formally as they are seen by the intellect, materially as they are in themselves. This explains the difference between formal and material sin. A material sin would be formal also, did the agent know what he was doing. No sin is culpable that is nor formal. But, as has been said, there may be a culpable perversion of the intellect, so that the man is the author of his obliquity or defect of vision. When Saul persecuted the Christians, he probably sinned materially, not formally. When Caiphas spoke the truth without knowing it, he said well materially, but ill formally. 

8. In looking at the means taken and the circumstances that accompany those means, it is important to have a ready rule for pronouncing what particular belongs to the means and what to the circumstances. Thus Clytemnestra deals her husband Agamemnon a deadly stroke with an axe, partly for revenge, partly that she may take to herself another consort; is the deadliness of the blow part of the means taken or only accompanying circumstance? It is part of the means taken. The means taken include every particular that is willed and chosen as making for the end in view. The fatal character of the blow does make to that end; if Agamemnon does not die, the revenge will not be complete, and life with Aegisthus will be impossible. On the other hand, the fact that Clytemnestra is the wife of the man whom she murders, is not a point that her will rests upon as furthering her purpose at all; it is an accompanying circumstance. This method of distinguishing means from circumstance is of great value in casuistry. 

9. It is clear that not every attendant circumstance affects the morality of the means taken. Thus the blow under which Agamemnon sank was neither more not less guiltily struck because it was dealt with an axe, because it was under pretence of giving him a bath, or because his feet were entangled in a long robe. These circumstances are all irrelevant. Those only are relevant which attach some special reasonableness or unreasonableness to the thing done. Thus the provocation that Clytemnestra had from her husband's introduction of Cassandra into her house made her act of vengeance less unreasonable: on the other hand it was rendered more unreasonable by the circumstance of the dear and holy tie that binds wife to husband. The provocation and relationship were tow relevant circumstances in the case. 

10. But it happens sometimes that a circumstance only affects the reasonableness of an action on the supposition of some previous circumstance so affecting it. Thus to carry off a thing in large or small quantities does not affect the reasonableness of the carrying, unless there be already some other circumstance attached that renders the act good or evil; as for instance, if the goods that are being removed are stolen property. Circumstances of this sort are called aggravating—or, as the case may be, extenuating—circumstances. Circumstances that of themselves, and apart from any previous supposition, make the thing done peculiarly reasonable or unreasonable, are called specifying circumstances. They are so called, because they place the action in some species of virtue or vice; whereas aggravating or extenuating circumstances add to, or take off from, the good or evil of the action in that species of virtue or vice to which it already belongs.  

11. A variety of specifying circumstances may place one and the same action in many various species of virtue or vice. Thus a religious robbing his parents would sin at once against justice, piety, and religion. A nun preferring death to dishonor practices three virtues, chastity, fortitude, and religion.

12. The means chosen may be of four several characters:—(a) A thing evil of itself and inexcusable under all conceivable circumstances; for instance, blasphemy, idolatry, lying.(b) Needing excuse, as the killing of a man, the looking at an indecent object. Such things are not to be done except under certain circumstances and with a grave reason. Thus indecent sights may be met in the discharge of professional duty. In that case indeed they cease to be indecent. They are then only indecent when they are viewed without cause. The absence of a good motive in a case like this commonly implies the presence of a bad one.(c) Indifferent, as walking or sitting down.(d) Good of itself, but liable to be vitiated by circumstances, as prayer and almsgiving; the good of such actions may be destroyed wholly or in part by their being done out of a vain motive, or unseasonably, or indiscreetly

13. It is said, "If thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be lightsome." (St. Matt., vi., 22.) The eye is the intention contemplating the end in view. Whoever has placed a good end before him, and regards it steadily with a well-ordered love, never swerving in his affection from the way that reason would have him love, must needs take towards his end those means, and those only, which are in themselves reasonable and just: as it is written: "Thou shalt follow justly after that which is just." (Deut. xvi., 20.) Thus I am building a church to the glory of God; money runs short: I perceive that by signing a certain contract that must mean grievous oppression of the poor, I shall save considerable expense, whereas, if I refuse, the works will have to be abandoned for want of funds. If I have purely the glory of God before my eyes, I certainly shall not sign that contract: for injustice I know can bear no fruit of Divine glory. But if I am bent upon having the building up in any case, of course I shall sign: but then my love for the end in view is no longer pure and regulated by reason: it is not God but myself that I am seeking in the work. Thus an end entirely just, holy, and pure, purifies and sanctifies the means, not formally, by investing with a character of justice means in themselves unjust, for that is impossible,—the leopard cannot change his spots,—but by way of elimination, removing unjust means as ineligible to my purpose, and leaving me only those means to choose from which are in themselves just

14. With means in themselves indifferent, the case is otherwise. A holy and pious end does formally sanctify those means, while a wicked end vitiates them. I beg the reader to observe what sort of means are here in question. There is no question of means in themselves or in their circumstances unjust, as theft, lying, murder, but of such indifferent things as reading, writing, painting, singing, travelling. Whoever travels to commit sin at the end of his journey, his very travelling, so far as it is referred to that end, is part of his sin: it is a wicked journey that he takes. And he who travels to worship at some shrine or place of pilgrimage, includes his journey in his devotion. The end in view there sanctifies means in themselves indifferent.

15. As a great part of the things that we do are indifferent as well in themselves as in the circumstances of the doing of them, the moral character of our lives depends largely on the ends that we habitually propose to ourselves. One man's great thought is how to make money; what he reads, writes, says, where he goes, where he elects to reside, his very eating, drinking and personal expenditure, all turns on what he calls making his fortune. It is all to gain money—quocunque modo rem. Another is active for bettering the condition of the laboring classes: a third for the suppression of vice. These three men go some way together in a common orbit of small actions, alike to the eye, but morally unlike, because of the various guiding purposes for which they are done. Hence, when we consider such pregnant final ends as the service of God and the glory of a world to come, it appears how vast is the alteration in the moral line and coloring of a man's life, according to his practical taking up or setting aside of these great ends

16. We must beware however of an exaggeration here. The final end of action is often latent, not explicitly considered. A fervent worshipper of God wishes to refer his whole self with all that he does to the Divine glory and service. Yet such a one will eat, drink, and be merry with his friends, not thinking of God at the time. Still, supposing him to keep within the bounds of temperance, he is serving God and doing good actions. But what of a man who has entirely broken away from God, what of his eating, drinking, and other actions that are of their kind indifferent? We cannot call them sins: there is nothing wrong about them, neither in the thing done, nor in the circumstances of the doing, nor in the intention. Pius V. condemned the proposition: "All the works of infidels are sins." Neither must we call such actions indifferent in the individual who does them, supposing them to be true human acts, according to the definition, and not done merely mechanically. They are not indifferent, because they receive a certain measure of natural goodness from the good natural purpose which they serve, namely, the conservation and well-being of the agent. Every human act is either good or evil in him who does it. I speak of natural goodness only.

17. The effect consequent upon an action is distinguishable from the action itself, from which it is not unfrequently separated by a considerable interval of time, as the death of a man from poison administered a month before. The effect consequent enters into morality only in so far as it is either chosen as a means or intended as an end, or is annexed as a relevant circumstance to the means chosen. Once the act is done, it matters nothing to morality whether the effect consequent actually ensues or not, provided no new act be elicited thereupon, whether of commission or of culpable omission to prevent. It matters not to morality, but it does matter to the agent's claim to reward or liability to punishment at the hands of human legislators civil and ecclesiastical.

18. As soul and body make one man, so the inward and outward act—as the will to strike and the actual blow struck—are one human act. The outward act gives a certain physical completeness to the inward. Moreover the inward act is no thorough-going thing, if it stops short of outward action where the opportunity offers. Otherwise, the inward act may be as good or as bad morally as inward and outward act together. The mere wish to kill, where the deed is impossible, may be as wicked as wish and deed conjoined. It may be, but commonly it will not, for this reason, that the outward execution of the deed reacts upon the will and calls it forth with greater intensity; the will as it were expands where it finds outward vent. There is no one who has not felt the relative mildness of inward feelings of impatience or indignation, compared with those engendered by speaking out one's mind. Often also the outward act entails a long course of preparation, all during which the inward will is sustained and frequently renewed, as in a carefully planned burglary." ( Rickaby 31-40)

Is this true?

When you consider the relationship between Man and beast of the wilderness, the difference is humans are held to a higher standard with a ethical, spiritual and moral dilemma. The animal are perceived to be held without moral perception and act on instinct and are undeserving. 

Here the beast is that inner world of the human that is not equal or has similarities with animals. This gets into the realm of the human soul and being made in the image of divinity, making murder a sin while consuming animals for sustenance. So thereby, the animal is not the beast in this moniker. The moniker for the darker part of the soul could be referenced as a beast. The line begins with moral accountability, rational thought, and prohibition but when you turn the mirror onto the eyes of the Man and he sees the beast within him, there under the surface could be brewing a creature that is terrifying, boundless, and unreliable. 

Here you could use the phrase, "the punishment should fit the crime". So when asked, "It is said there is no sin in killing a beast, only in killing a man. But where does one begin and the other end?", it really depends. What did the beast within the human do? What standards do we hold against the beast within to measure its wake? Do we judge and pass sentence on a human creature that when over the bounds of its moral and ethical compass? If so, do we leave the door open for it to fail and do more damage? After seeing the outcome of its horrible endeavors, should we let it live?

After, in biblical passages humans are the only creation that is rebellious. Does this mean that God's nature is rebellious? 

I think we should go dig around in the Jungian World for an expansion plan on this. The answer to this question is in the duality of man and the beast within. Let's go! 

Photography by Ps. Studio21

Just reflect. Grab some snacks.

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

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