NDR- cool stuff in the woods, etc.

R

Rob_F

Active member
Two posts got me thinking about this.
1) black bears, et al showing up in unanticipated places

2) biology professionals on the forum

One thing that seems to be bemoaned is the current MS/PHD recruits are long on biology but short on field time. Something similar to say, a 2nd lieutenant in charge of a First Sergeant.

To the "experienced observer" nature looks different than to a spread sheet and map lines... or at least that's the argument. I'm not hear to start any debate about that, but the two topics made me ponder: what cool things have I seen in the great outdoors that might not be that normal, what insights gained from experience rather than my books?

I think the only mammal of any significance I haven't seen in MN is the Lynx. I've been chasing woods and creeks and rivers and sloughs and swamps for as long as I can remember. Fisher, pine marten, grey wolf, moose, elk and the assortment of children's book characters like deer, raccoons, bear, fox, etc. I cut a feline track in snow, deep in a swamp one deer season.... that freaked me out for awhile.

I had an opportunity to "ride a wave" in a 14' v-hull on Lake of the Woods in October. A great hunt that afternoon, but after that ride in, I needed a drink :)

I've seen poplar leaves shimmer gold so bright they lit the woods floor at sunset as if from The Glasir Tree (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasir)

Have seen the Common Loon mating dance. Watched a Great Black Wasp "harvest" a Cicada. A Cooper's hawk take a bird at my feeder. The chickadees on the bill of my cap or barrel of my gun, an owl under a moon, a turtle laying eggs.

Somehow this all seems normal to me, as if that's what you're supposed to see. But it seems not that many ever see anything like those things.....

Sometimes I don't mind being excepted by peers.
 
Good morning, Rob~

Your thoughts got me thinking....

Over my career, I had the pleasure of working with many fine colleagues - with a wide variety of degrees, titles, and responsibilities. One of the great things was working with others from whom I could learn. And, the ones I enjoyed (and still enjoy) most are those who had a deep appreciation and knowledge of the resource itself, borne of a "lifetime learning" approach to everything. They did not leave their profession at the workplace. Their curiosity led them to spend the time - afield or in books (and the web), on the job and off - to dig deeper, learn more, and gain experience and understanding. For these friends, the ever-growing knowledge provided sufficient reason and reward.

It sounds like you've had some great times in the natural world - I am sure you carry with you a rich storehouse of memories. Someday I will tell my story of the Two-headed Fisher.....

All the best,

SJS
 
This is a great topic Rob. I would think most, if not all that come on here, have had experiences along the lines that you describe. When you experience a unique event or moment in the field, you get to see something in a way that few others do, something that is not set up, the way things really happen. I believe that fish and game departments are better run when they have people on staff that actually do the things that are regulated. It allows for a real understanding of the activity in a way that doesn't always translate from a written report. And you never know what you will see.

One of my best experiences happened about 25 years ago in the south Jersey Pine Barrens. There are a few grouse there, not many, but a friend and I had taken an afternoon to tromp around and see if we could find one. The area was full of scrub pine with giant nests of pricker bushes scattered around. We had been separated for a while, and at one point I am tramping through one of these thickets, stop for a minute, and realize that I have no idea how I am going to get out that particular tangle, so I sit down on a fallen pine tree to enjoy the moment and decide which way I am going to bust my way out of there. Then I hear this scurrying sound, I look down to the end of the tree, and a bobcat hops up on it and starts walking toward me on it. It gets about 10 feet away, suddenly sees me, and takes off in the direction it came from. Of course, there are no bobcats in New Jersey.

And I am sure that there aren't many, but there was at least one. And I got to see it.
 
Would love to hear the two headed fisher story!

I've had great fortune in my life to work with, meet and chat with some of the best professionals in many lines of work. Whether conservation, business, government... I'm always humbled. But this is the few.

Reflecting on what gives me the "rub" is, perhaps, that at some point all knowledge and experience becomes institutionalized, rationalized, in a way that discourages further learning. You can get a Phd in Entrepreneurship and have never started a business or had to make payroll. But how do you learn about Entrepreneurship without taking risk?

An ex-girlfriend's field work consisted of harvesting digestive samples from crappies. She didn't have to catch the fish, only survey anglers at the landing and take samples from what they caught. Granted, different work from Leopold, but I wonder if Leopold could be successful today in the field he created. A man who claims to have formed his first ornithological hypothesis at the age of 12 in "Red Legs Kicking".

Add to it the disregard for knowledge, facts and science by judges and governors and any other set of parties involved in regulation, direction, vision... and we turn our biologists into sociologists and economists.

The longer in the tooth I get the more I'm often disappointed by the larger quantity of group think created by the march toward sameness. The hegemony of knowledge. The ability to dismiss new information as it doesn't fit into the current standard. The idea that a Standard is fact, and what doesn't meet the standard doesn't exist, or that the information wasn't generated by the right source is somehow less valid.

For hunters and anglers the division feels, to me, to grow wider as the active participants are led further down a consumptive path. Not the Grits Gresham's or Gordon MacQuarries, but the Jeff Foiles and Chad Beldings. Their desire to turn our G&F funds into game production organizations is in direct conflict with the morals of fair chase and further conflicts the socio-political nature of wildlife management.

So, on one side, there appears to be a general increase in condescension that comes with the institutionalization of knowledge (as in any field), and a constituency which far too often continues to prove it deserves it by expecting low thresholds to success and shooting swans (in MN, no swan season exists).

In the middle are the few. The biologists that ran trap lines as kids, the outdoorsmen that can identify the song birds in the slough; the Tech that no longer qualifies for his/her own job after 15 years of actually doing it... and can't get promoted; the hunter with the patience to teach a freshly minted conservation officer the difference between a juvenile eclipse drake and hen mallard.

Forums like this are a gathering place for the few. It's the last forum I frequent. There may be getting too few of us, or those that are left are just accepting the tribes on each end can yell louder and are willing to spend more money to prove they're right.

I've never seen a wood duck "jump day". That would be cool. Also, sharp tails or prairie chickens on a leak, or wood cock doing their mating flight. All of it seems to keep me well aware that my time and existence is a blip on rock in an immeasurably vast landscape. It's the feeling I got one time as I held a dead wood cock in hand.

So, I got that going for me.

I started rehabs on Herter's Sunday with a new material. Testing an assumption.... I didn't follow manufacturers directions, will see if I gain any knowledge to share ;-)

Rob
 
Here is an example of the value of field knowledge. I use GIS data and analysis all the time in my work. It can be invaluable. But I also have the advantage of having lived and worked in the same area for 40 years, so I frequently will have the GIS tell me something about a place I am familiar with that I know is not correct.

I was reviewing some GIS mapping of brook trout habitat recently in a watershed where I used to work for the local land trust. A small tributary stream that is teeming with wild brook trout didn't show up in the mapping. Not only do I know that brook because (1) it used to flow just 1/4 mile from my office; and (2) I used to see anglers parked there on a regular basis; and (3) I used to fish it myself. I also, having learned all that, once harangued my local biologist to come out and do an electrofishing survey to get it documented. That was maybe 20 years ago now.

Somehow, in the intervening years, that efishing data either dropped out of the state's GIS data set, or more likely, never made it there in the first place.

This shouldn't be surprising--no data sources are perfect. But understanding the limitations of the underlying GIS data is really important to interpreting it, and analysts who have not spent much time in the field, or who perform GIS analysis of landscapes they don't know well, are prone to forget this.

There is huge value in local field knowledge, and I think we risk losing this as more and more of our work is done on computers. That said, GIS and computer modelling are incredibly powerful tools that can do things that simply could not be done with "old school" analytical methods. It's just important to ground truth the data so you understand where the gray areas are.
 
I think the data vs observation discussion is a valid one- but neither can stand on their own. Measurement and sampling allow you to see the "real" effects of what you anecdotally observe. Observation in the field gives data its context, and can reveal new ways to interpret the data. At the same time, a good researcher will also readily admit the limits of their project

The problem lies in when we stop observing and stop researching. As soon as we stop learning our craft as biologists, managers, etc. we do the resource a true disservice.

As far as cool stuff seen in the field, when I was in grad school I saw a heron fishing along the water's edge after the lake had been drawn down for the winter while a bobcat was belly crawling down on the heron.

Another time I watched a river otter eat a bluegill while i was on the deer stand.
 
I'm a huge advocate for scientific method.

Love the otter and sunfish story. Haven't seen that but watching otters truck through the woods deer hunting is a hoot.
 
Rob, stable isotope analysis has supplanted standard stomach content food habits analysis for a variety of reasons, since this technique yields an integrated "signature" of "on what" and "where" the fish has been feeding over months, rather than days or weeks. Obviously more costly than teasing through stomach contents, but far more definitive. Technology does have its place in science.
 
RL- very cool. I'm all for technology in science.

When I worked at a software development company we determined that a developer that new the problem wrote better code. It didn't matter if they were a "10" or a "7" on a skills scale. What mattered more in their application of technical knowledge was their understanding of the problem to be solved and the environment it existed in.

In my fish-gut analysis example, it wasn't the science, it was the ex-GF that had no more knowledge of fish than the i.d. card she used to determine if it was a black or white crappie.

For me this doesn't negate the science. It was likely done perfectly. However, perfect science does little to determine if the right question was asked and doesn't see a failed hypothesis as an opportunity, rather it's an end.

If she fished for the crappies rather than simply collect creel data my belief is there would have been a realization of better questions.
 
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