On the Road

I have been on the road more or less non-stop for over two weeks now with very little time in front of a computer or even with a cell phone signal. Catching carp in Massachusetts, European green crabs in Connecticut, stopping in New York City for a publishing convention and then bagging some very hard-won nutria down in the swamps of Louisiana. All of this for my new book, 'Eating Aliens.'

Right now I'm stopped for the night in Alabama on my way home. This will be the first night in about a week that I will get to sleep for more than about 3 or 4 hours. There might have been one six hour night in there somewhere but I've lost all track of time. After resting for a day or so, I have a ton of writing to do, including writing up some useful blog entries about what I've learned on the road lately.

A few lessons learned:

1. Nutria don't always float when you kill them. Don't assume that it isn't dead if you can't see the body.

2. It would be a really stupid idea to go wading into the water to retrieve a dead, bloody, recently thrashing nutria in the middle of the night in alligator country. Sometimes you just have to let those ones go if you don't have a boat.

3. It is a very good idea for serious hunting rifles to have both open sights and a scope mounted with quick-detaching rings. I've always been an advocate for using QD rings whenever possible and it paid off in low light with a steady rain when my fogged scope could have ended the hunt.

On this trip I finally had the pleasure of meeting, cooking, and hunting with the great Philippe Parola in Baton Rouge. Philippe's work with nutria a few years ago was nothing short of stunning and what he is trying to do now with carp is even more promising. He will be contributing a nutria recipe for my new book and I'm going to do everything I can to support his work to get invasive carp out of American rivers and to save the Great Lakes from them.

I realize that this blog entry is totally scatter-shot and doesn't come anywhere near to forming the sort of cohesive article-type writing that I prefer to post here. Sorry about that. I just need a few days of rest and I'll be back in proper form with some real articles.

Ever watch that TV show, 'Supernatural?' That's pretty much my life right now, only with invasive animals instead of demons. Trunk full of guns, cheap motels, late nights in places that nobody should really go. Never really sure what state I'm going to be headed to the next day. I have a really weird job.

[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. Just ask and I'll probably let you use it.]