The Dumb Forester

[thedumbforester]

Oak Tree

Preparing to have an old oak tree in the front yard trimmed:

And then saw this on two sides of the bole and wondered:

But, according to my friendly ISA Certified Arborist, it’s just “Smooth Patch of Oak” which is nothing to worry about.

I also saw what I thought was excessive twig abscission (versus ordinary leaf fall):

But I was assured this is not unusual and perhaps partially due to squirrels pissed-off with the poor acorn crop :>). Actually there is research on this as well pointing to a resource allocation issue (Can. J. For. Res. 9:345-348: thanks again, friendly arborist). Note that the twig is pliable and has a healthy cambium.

[traphuntsurvive]

Wolf released from foothold. Notice that he runs away completely unharmed. 

[traphuntsurvive]

DP Bait Recipe

I recently came across a good DP bait that a lot of guys are swearing by and I actually made a batch of it last night that I’ll be testing out. It’s mostly used in DPs, although can be used on other sets specific for coon. I figured I’d post the recipe for my followers.

Save up all your bacon grease in a tin can or cool whip container. It doesn’t have to be all bacon grease. I used the fat from the pork/beef stews my family makes weekly. It has a nice smell to it. Keep it all in the fridge when collecting. 

Get peanut butter!

Mix equal parts peanut butter and melted down fat together in a mixing bowl. The peanut butter will get soupy as you mix. It will look like one hell of a mess but it will all come together in the end. 

Bring out your maple syrup now. Mix  quite a bit in, but not to the same amount as your fat and peanut butter was. It will be one wet, soupy, sticky mess. It will smell nice though, it will have a strong mapley bacony smell. 

Put it in the fridge after you move it into a jar(s). The fat and peanut butter will harden up and stay as such. You’ll need to take a spoon with you when you trap to scoop out chunks into the DPs. The smell seems to stay strong (I’m still experimenting with this), so should call in coon real well. 

You can also mix dog food bits in with this if you want to, to give the coon something to grab around in the trap or make it more chunky.

I’ll keep everyone posted if this really works or not. It should, but we’ll see :) 

[thinkupapp]

Over on Quora, a user asks, “Why doesn’t Chrome have an option to put tabs on the bottom?” Chrome developer Evan Martin answers:

Broadly, “why doesn’t Chrome do [x]” can almost always be answered by “because [y] and [z] were considered more important and we don’t have time to do everything.”

[traphuntsurvive]

Setting a conibear with rope.

These are like big rat traps, so they kill your catches really fast. Be careful where you set them! The last thing we need are idiots setting them too close to people’s homes. Set these far away from settlements and trails and preferably, set them in water.

These can break your fingers and the larger ones, 330s, can break your arms. Set them carefully and use them responsibly. 

The rope method can also get your arm out if you’re ever caught in one. 110s usually just hurt you pretty bad but they can break your finger, and anything bigger is going to mess you up pretty bad.

Conibears work like rat traps. They hit with such force they kill on impact. An animal steps through, the head bumps the triggers and bam. You got you’re catch. They don’t know what hit them.

Again, I will stress. SET THEM RESPONSIBLY AND USE THEM IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING.

People have bought these for shits n giggles to kill their backyard squirrels and get the neighbor’s cat. Do not use them where there are houses and pets around unless these are submerged in water.

[thedumbforester]

Fleshing Board Stand

Earlier this summer I purchased a nice, 48-inch hardwood fleshing board from Mill Creek Trap Supply at the Fur Takers of America National Convention held in Marshfield, WI. I searched the web for good instructions for building a support system (stand) for the board. I needed a stand that would be stable for both inside and outside use, with or without the aid of a backing wall. While there were lots of examples on the web of how people setup their fleshing boards (the collection of examples at http://jayme220.proboards.com/thread/185 is frequently cited), I sought more specific instructions on sizes and angles. I didn’t find much. Most advice pointed to establishing an approximate 45 degree angle for the board and having the working end of the board end up a distance off the ground approximately equal to the lower belly area of the user. One writer indicated a raised lower end for the stand would lessen back pain issues.

After some prototyping, here’s what I ended up with. I’m six foot tall so you’d need to adjust the height accordingly. I built the stand using a purchased eight foot 2x6 and some scrap 2x6 and 2x4 materials I had laying around. I assembled the stand with 2 1/2- and 3-inch deck screws. I ended up settling on a 40 degree angle for the board.

The pieces were:

29 7/8” front vertical with 40 degree angled end

9 7/8” rear vertical with 40 degree angled end

32 3/4” diagonal piece with 40 degree cuts at both ends

21” upper cross piece

1” ‘stopper piece’ with 40 degree cut

all these cut from the the purchased eight foot 2x6. The remaining pieces cut from scrap were:

12 1/4” 2x6 brace piece with 45 degree cuts at both ends

18” 2x6 lower cross piece

3, 22” 2x4s for legs

2, 8 1/4” 2x4s for rear leg fillers

The steps were:

1. Attach the lower 18” 2x6 cross piece centered on two, 22” 2x4s to form the base of the stand:

2. Add the rear and front 2x6 verticals, again centered:

3. Add the upper 21” 2x6 cross piece:

4. Add the 2x6 45 degree brace piece to further support the front vertical:

5. Add the fleshing board support piece, being sure at least the rear is flush:

6. Add the extra 2x4 feet pieces to the base. Note the pieces at the rear of the stand are added so the entire rear is one flush piece:

7. Add the ‘stopper piece’:

8. Bolt the fleshing board to the stand. I used two, 3 1/2-inch carriage bolts, the front bolt slightly below the working portion of the fleshing board:

I countersunk holes for the bolt ends prior to drilling through the fleshing and support board. The stand I ended up with is solid and extremely stable, even absent a rear support wall. Looking forward to trying it out this season.

[thedumbforester]

BWCA Winter Camping 2013

For the second year in a row I went to the BWCAW for winter camping and ice fishing. This year the trip was March 1 - March 4. Eight of us went in starting at the end of the Gunflint Trail and hiking/showshoeing about 5 miles to a spot near Munker Island on Saganaga Lake. I'd borrowed an InTouch unit from a friend so have the breadcrumb trail (be sure to turn on Aerial view; you may need to manually navigate to Saganaga Lake as there are several routes on the map) of our travel in. The most unusual part of the trip was how cold it got. The trip was a makeup of President's Day weekend that had been cancelled due to possible low temps. The predictions (for Ely) for March 2 - 3 lows were single digits above zero. Sunday morning we got up to -22F and Monday morning it was a balmy -10F. Pretty hard for normal campers to stay comfortable in a tent (no stove) at -22F. Two of the guys made a quinzhee

and one slept in it Sunday night; reported it was warmer than a tent. A good morning fire, followed by a sunny day, turned things around. One does need to be careful though when de-icing plastic drinking vessels using an open fire.

The fishing was to be for lake trout and the group had good success overall. Here's three caught on the way out.

I, on the other hand, had no fish on all weekend. Same bait, same locations, ,,,: no luck. I did drill more than my share of holes through three feet of ice, so there's that. And I did get to partake in a great fish-stew meal Sunday night plus bring fish home. An interesting finding on the technology side. The In Touch unit can be connected via Bluetooth to an iOS device so that custom messages can be sent and messages can be received. Although the In Touch unit and my iPhone were both seemingly working properly, Bluetooth failed, evidently due to the cold temps. I may have been lucky I didn't damage my phone given the cold; I did keep it on my person at all times.

[thedumbforester]

Burned by a Button

I recently decided to have e-mail that was currently being sent to an older e-mail address "fetched" by my personal GMail account. The steps to set this up are described in several locations; I suggest consulting Hack 8 in Pash and Trapani's "Lifehacker" volume. A glitch arose with this setup using the e-mail client on my iPhone. When displaying a message that had been fetched, from my older e-mail address, by GMail, the usual Delete icon (trash can) was replaced by an Archive icon. My Gmail account had previously been configured on my iPhone. Going to the first screen for the GMail account under Settings I discovered that the Archive Messages option was On. Turning the option Off solved the glitch.

[thedumbforester]

AirPrint (iOS) to a Windows Printer

AirPrint allows you to print over WiFi from an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch). If you have a printer connected to a Windows machine and want to print to that printer from an iOS device, there are detailed setup instructions at http://jaxov.com/2010/11/how-to-enable-airprint-service-on-windows/. The followup comment posts by TadGhostal are particularly enlightening.

Here are some potential gotchas (as in "got me") to pay attention to:

1. Be sure whatever wireless modem/router/access point you are using supports Bonjour. For example, the Actiontec PK5000 that Qwest sold me with my new "High Speed Internet" does not, and they have failed to release an available firmware upgrade (see http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2640695&tstart=0). I have another wireless access point on my home network so have to use that with my iOS devices to use AirPrint.

2. Be sure to include the space after each of the three '=' signs in the commands in step 5. of the setup instructions.

3. If the AirPrint service is created properly (first line in CMD window) you will get the following response in CMD:

[SC] CreateService SUCCESS

If the AirPrint service starts properly (second line in CMD window) you will get a response like the following in CMD:

SERVICE_NAME: AirPrint         TYPE               : 10  WIN32_OWN_PROCESS         STATE              : 4  RUNNING                                 (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, ACCEPTS_SHUTDOWN)         WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0  (0x0)         SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)         CHECKPOINT         : 0x0         WAIT_HINT          : 0x0         PID                : 5560         FLAGS              :

4. It's probable that you will need to manually modify your Firewall (if it's running) to accept connections through the AirPrint service.

5. The first time you attempt to use the printer from an iOS device application you may be asked for a username and password (you will be asked if the printer in question has a padlock icon next to it when you view available printers from the iOS application print option). You should specify the username and password for the Windows machine account that setup sharing the printer.

6. You can always verify that the AirPrint service is running by displaying the Windows services dialog. Type 'services.msc' into a command window to display the dialog. You can also check whether the Bonjour service (coming from iTunes), an AirPrint dependency, is running.

[thedumbforester]

TerraSync Background Image

I've written a "How To" (1.55MB PDF) illustrating one way to place a background raster image onto a mobile device running Trimble TerraSync (v4.13). ESRI ArcGIS (ArcMap v9.3.1) is used to prepare the image. Trimble Pathfinder Office (v4.20) is used to load the image onto the mobile device.