Sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you. The guys at Reedy Creek got the bear. They cooked it up and invited me to try some.
I thought I had tasted bear before, but since I could not remember anything about it maybe it is a synthetic memory. Anyway, this time I have it documented.
For the record, bear tastes a lot like beef, maybe with a touch of pork. Of course, a lot depends on how it is prepared. They slow cooked it. I enjoyed the meat and even more ambiance. Alex got to come too. It was good to have him back and the hunt club is the center of a real community. I sold them six acres for their clubhouse, so I feel that I had some part in, was at least present at the creation.
Besides learning what bear tastes like, I learned a few things about soybean and tobacco farming. One distressing development is that fire ants have evidently arrive in Virginia. There are multiple theories as to how they arrived. Most popular and plausible are the they arrived on harvesting equipment or that they are following pipeline construction, also carried on equipment.
Speaking of theories, there was some discussion about how there got to be so many bears around Brunswick County. Until about ten years ago, nobody could remember ever seeing a bear in Brunswick. They suddenly are ubiquitous. Some people think that bears are being captured in other places and released to the “wilds” of southern Virginia.
Natural increase and migration could explain it too. Bears have long been common in the mountains. They are legendary along the Appalachian Trails. Power lines and pipelines create corridors. Wildlife in general can wander along these and cover significant distances. Once established, they are experience something like exponential growth. In these cases, you sometimes do not notice something until they become “suddenly” ubiquitous.
There is an old children’s story about lily pads covering a pond. Their numbers grow exponentially for 30 days until they completely cover the pond, but nobody notices until day 28, when they cover about a quarter of the pond.
My first picture shows the bear ribs cooking. Next is Exit 104, with my new go to gas station, Flying J. Gas has dropped down to $1.85. I think this is the lowest I have seen at Exit 105. After that is tree planting. Took advantage of being on the farms to plant some trees. It was a big advantage having Alex too. He planted many more than I did. The penultimate picture is the plug planting tool and last is last light looking at our trees from the hunt club.