Retired!

Budgetwise, that goes without saying. Only the priciest college and corporate engineering programs deal with the cutting-edge stuff.

My friend Ron prepares squirrel that rivals anything in a fine restaurant. It's that good. He also does a fine job on wild duck, pickled sunfish, smoked lake trout ... and of course, sunfish!

He is also a flaming liberal and doesn't swear hardly any at all.

Cinnamon oil is a great repellent for all of that stuff. The stuff drives off everything for outdoor cleaning and cooking.

That doesn't sound like a good thing. About fishing in western Canada: I've twice been up to Great Slave Lake. We caught lake trout running up to 36 pounds, and I took a flight up to one of the rivers that flows into the Beaufort Sea to catch Arctic charr.

Those was some of the most memorable fishing trips of my life.

Some corporate engineering programs are more bleeding edge than cutting edge: if you can cut a nickle out of cost without screwing up performance too much, do it -- by day after tomorrrow -- but be sure not to miss the mandatory poltical-correctness training.

Been there, done that, got the tee shirt.

When I dissect some consumer electronic stuff I'm amazed that it works at all.

Nothing new about this. Back in the 50s it was said that Mr Muntz kept pulling parts out of a working TV until it quit working, then replace the last part removed and started production. The result: the Muntz TV, first TV to sell for under $100.

I will be stalking salmon in Oregon on the Wilson in November.

Congratulations on retirement.

Ah, that's one I hope to try some day -- or Atlantic salmon in the Canadian Maritimes.

But that may be dreaming. Late today, I'm going after bluefish on the NJ beaches.

Thanks, lurker.

Aha. Well, I can get the bones out that way, although I generally skin the filets first. But it's a little iffy, especially near the head-end, where the bones become a little complex.

We have some saltwater fish that are worse than that (I'm thinking of croakers, particularly). They're delicious but they have a complex bone structure. I've often wished I had some 3D CAD images of fish skeletons so I could see where those bones are.

Yes, I've done that, too. My method these days is to filet right through the rib bones and then just cut the ribs out. I do that with lots of smaller fish, including bass and yellow perch.

Here's another tip you may find useful for sunfish. Lay the fish on its belly, so the dorsal fin is up. Cut straight down behind the head and cut about halfway into the rib cage. Then put your thumbs into the opening between the head and the body, and tear them apart, right through the thin flesh in the belly. If you cut to the right depth, the head comes off with all of the guts attached.

Then it's really easy to filet the fish, without the head or guts.

I've also used Euell Gibbons' (_Stalking the Wild Asparagus_) method for skinning them: Cut through the skin down each side, next to the dorsal fin, head to tail. Make another shallow cut behind the head, just through the skin. Then grab the upper corner of the skin, where the two cuts come together, and tear the skin off. On a big one, a pair of pliers helps.

I do this if I'm going to cook them whole, which I often do if I'm the only one eating them. It's the damned skin that carries the muddy taste.

They seem to be good here. And the squirrels taste like...turkey dark meat! Surprise -- they don't taste like chicken.

I haven't hunted rabbits in NJ. But I did when I was a kid, in PA. I could walk out my back door with a shotgun, before school, and shoot one or two almost any day. We ate a lot of hasenpfeffer. My mother was half Hungarian. d8-)

My kind of cook.

Oh, jeez, I hope you get those stroke effects rehabbed. It looks like it didn't damage the most important part -- the part of your brain that thinks.

Good luck on the rest of it, Steve.

That's a good point. That's basically what I've been telling people. I don't know what I'm going to write yet, but I will continue to write.

And in the immortal words of a fellow writer, Samuel Johnson (1709 -

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

I'll take that to heart.

It sounds good, Leon. Back when Ned was writing for _Pannsylvania Game News_, in the early '60s, I lived in PA and read his columns, which I always enjoyed.

My local libraries don't have it but I've added it to my Christmas list. Thanks!

Not at all surprised that you are familiar with Ned's work. It is laid out by month and goes for not quite two years as I recall. Easy to read some and then set aside, wait for the next month. Can't count how many times he would describe some encounter and my head would nod up and down :)

The real nuggets though are the things to watch or look for while you are out fishing, hunting, bird watching...

So far I've got 80% or so back. Still have issues with fine motor control and a tremor that makes some things a real pain.

BUT, I know folks who have it a lot worse than me after one.

Hey, the luck took 68 years to acquire.

Yeah, they're scary. I had to drive my uncle around for the last couple years of his life, after he had a stroke, because he just couldn't do it.

I also had to maintain his 42-foot boat. Lucky for him, he could still sit in his deck chair and give me instructions. The Caterpillar diesel was a bit over my head without him. d8-)

I always said this about skiing equipment (where I actually know what I'm doing) and tennis rackets (where I don't): if you suck, the equipment doesn't matter, and if you're very good, it doesn't matter either.