Rembrant

Two words: BACK PACK. Mike

You are absolutely right Bill!!!! It seems to be a natural polarization, and I fall into it all the time as well. Either someone has a fish symbol on their truck, or a fish symbol with feet, or a big fish eating the footed fish symbol. Who started the war? Actually, the church did. Back when Newton was figurin' gravity, the church saw it as a problem and threatened him! Schroeder's "The Science of God" is subtitled, "The Convergence of Science and Religion". The opening chapter discusses this polarization and its history. The early church felt threatened by science and tried to repress it. Darwinians take scientific evidence and try to cram it into the evolutionary model to make it work. Why? Because there is something here that's bigger than the science. There are athiestic scientists that would like nothing more than to prove there is no God. Looks like the believers are afraid they could be wrong. Looks like the non-believers are afraid they themselves could be wrong. Looks like a lot of fear on both sides of the polarization. Must be why, in the Bible, when man encounters an angel or God Himself, these words are always spoken; "Fear not." It's the biggest question we face as humans, Who is Jesus? Fabrication? A really good man? A prophet? a Liar? A lunatic? Or God Himself! If we were evolving, we would figure out the war problem. And the polution, and over population. We haven't. We won't. We are not about a humanist society that will go on and on and on. Jesus says we are being sifted like wheat, and sorted like fish, and goats and sheep. I'm with the Shepard. Thanks again Bill, Mike

Bill, Not sure what you mean about the standards/proof He exists statement. I am not afraid of evolution, but I used to be. I grew up hanging around biologists. They were all athiests, and the science they put thier faith in was very convincing, yet I had always had a sense about God - the simple belief in my heart, but could never even begin to defend it in the circles in which I ran. Decades later, when I came out of the cloud of substance abuse (with God's help), I went back to church, considered it school, and began soaking up more information about the God I have always simply believed in. The above mentioned books are wonderful compilations of research; both Schroeder and McDowell. There are others as well, but I like these because they are factual. I wrote the above in this string because I know that even life-long believers still have doubts. It's not always easy to believe in a God you cannot see! The deciples walked and talked with Christ - He told them exactly what would happen - and when it did, they doubted, ran, and hid in the upper room! They pulled some real bone-head moves, just like we do. I don't like it when scientists talk of evolution as if it were law. It is not. I don't like the idea that believers, like me, may be caused to doubt because the thoery of evolution is so convincing. I do like the fact that the more we learn about science, the more that God, and His Word, are substantiated - if people will only dig in and take a look. And if we don't? Then we can SIMPLY believe in anything we want to, science or God. Thanks Bill, Mike

Jack, It takes a real man to type the kind of words that you did above. God disciplines the ones He loves, Jack. He loves you! Heard this preached once: Imagine an empty goblet and a whole bunch of small balls and one big ball. As you place all the small balls into the cup it fills and there is no room now for the big one. When you place it on top it just rolls off. Change your strategy. This time put the one big ball in the cup first. Now start placing in the small balls. Even after you fill the cup, you are still able to stack the remaining balls over the top of the brim until all are used. The goblet is your life. The big ball is God. The smaller balls are all the needs and wants (stuff) in your life. Put God first; the rest of your life will be blessed because of it. "But rather seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you." Luke 12:31 God bless you Jack!! Mike

Bill, I like that (leaving the door of your mind open for the possibility of a God), yet there is no PROOF for evolution. There is evidence, but it is circumstancial, or it would be a law and not a theory, right? Life on earth came in stages per the fossil record. Life on earth came in stages per the Biblical account in Genesis. The fossil record lacks the periods in between the explosions of the stages of developed life. The mechanism of development between the stages is what we debate. The Bible says, "God spoke". The fossil record is silent. The Bible says that God is eternal. Scientists believed that the universe was eternal until a few decades ago when they realized the universe is measurably expanding and therefore the thoery of the "Big Bang". The first three words in the Bible are, "IN THE BEGINNING...God made the heavens and the earth". What an incredible book! Keith, The Bible has been translated from language to language but it has lost nothing in these translations. The original manuscripts exist and they are qualified by the dead sea scrolls. The King James version was the first english translation in the 16th or 17th century. Modern translations are not translated from that, they are translated from that, AND the original manuscripts of hebrew and greek by modern folk who know what they are doing. So, the contemporary versions are MORE accurate that the King James Version. We can debate till kingdom come about men, not God having written the Bible. This book is full of examples like the one given above - something written 8-10 thousand years ago that modern science just recently proved is absolutley accurate! A very dear friend of mine who is a chief prosecuting attorney here in Arizona took me fishing one day on Roosevelt. He asked me why I believe in Jesus. Had to think about it, then said I thought it was because of an early exposure that my parents gave me through the Catholic church, and that I have seen answer to prayer, plus the fact that God's power helped me kick alcohol and substance abuse problems. In short, simple faith. I fired the same question back to him. His answer astonished me. The answer that the prosecuter gave me was, " The evidence, Mike. The overwhelming evidence." The evidence he is talking about can be found in these books, "More Than a Carpenter", "The Case for Christ", "Evidence That Demands a Verdict", "More Evidence That Demands a Verdict". Most or all of these books were written by Josh McDowell. When Josh was a college student he was greatly irritated by Christian students so he set out to study the Bible to prove it wrong, and wound up accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior! Now he writes books to share all of the evidence he found that is scientific and also the legal means by which literature is proved or disproved in our courts of law. Again, to be a believer, one does not have to check his brain at the door. Missedagain, Darwinians most certainly do lean heavily on RANDOM mutations, but you are correct in that these changes are a result of invironmental impact causing these changes - theoretically. So, organisms/animals change as they need to, or be eliminated. This is natural selection. Theoretically, CHANGES COME AS A RESULT OF A NEED FOR SURVIVAL. Have you ever heard that Einstien, as smart as he was only utilized only 5% of his grey matter? I don't know how anybody figured that, but the point is that we have more brains than we could ever use. So, if changes come as a result of an invironmentaly caused need, why/how did we get the brains? Not from evolution, I assure you. Mike

One day I was in the Barns and Noble book store and paused at the SCIENCE shelf to look at the various publications of all the Darwin stuff, thinking to myself, "Man, the folks that read this stuff aren't getting the full picture". Then a couple of books caught my eye. I leafed through them and realized that I needed to read them. One is "The Science of God", and the other is "The Hidden face of God". They are written by the same author, Gerald L. Schroeder, who has Ph.D and undergraduate degrees in physics and molecular biology from MIT. AND is considered an "applied theologian." These books will tick-off the scientist and the theologian alike; the scientist because he criticises the Darwinians, and the theologians because he theorizes about the great flood being regional and not global, and thinks that God breathed a soul into Cro-Magnon man, thus creating Adam. Lots and lots of Christians believe like my wife does (pure unadulterated faith) - "God said it, I believe it, that settles it". She has no need to read theories and work her mind around science and religion. I also believe what God has had recorded in the Bible is the truth, but man, what fun it is to look into the mysteries that surround us! These books help us take a trip through creation, scientifically, and then point out that this incredible existance could never have happened by "chance". One chapter in "Science of God" is intitled, "The Age of Our Universe: Six Days and Fifteen Billion Years". Incredible reading!! And another, "Evolution: Statistics Versus Random Mutations". This guy painstakingly describes the chromosome helix and the endless possiblilities of variations of the match-ups with protiens, and amino acids, and then provides models and statistical compulations that describe the mathematical impossibilities of evolution by random chance. Here is a qoute from "The Hidden Face of God". After describing what a miracle each and every one of us is in three chapters, "The Orderly Cells of Life", "Mieosis and the Making of a Human", and "Nerves; Nature's Information Network", Schroeder says this, "Knowing the complexity of the processes involved, when we see a diagram showing how simple evolution is, how one organ can change into another mearly by adding a feature here and there, we must realize that those demonstrations are a farce. As long as the intricate workings of the cell are disregarded, there's no problem for a Steven Pinker, or a Stephen Jay Gould, or Richard Dawkins to talk of random reactions producing the goods of life. It is hard not to be fooled by the foolish arguments when they originate from intelligent foolers. Abraham Lincoln is qouted as having said that while you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, you can not fool all of the people all of the time. The more knowledge one has, the harder it becomes to be fooled. Those diagrams that in ten steps evolve from a random spread of lines into people-like outlines, and in a few hundred steps simulate a light sensitive patch on skin evolving into an eye, once had me fooled. They are so impressivly convincing. Then I studied molecular biology." I write this because there is probably someone, a Christian and/or scientist, who will be as tickled to read this stuff as I am. I thank God that there are people like Dr. Schroeder in the world. He shows us that to be a believer, one does not have to check his brains at the door. Mike

Two Guns, you are absolutely right that thoeries don't affect our salvation, people living under the promises of the Bible have nothing to worry about. But there are a lot of people who's belief system is based on Darwinism; this belief being that we came from a cosmic accident that mutated over and over, increasing in complexity as it went and resulted in human beings. People that refuse to consider there could be Creator prefer to accept this other belief system, and call it hard scientific fact. The thoery of evolution is not scientific fact, but in fact, a thoery; hardly something to trust your eternal whereabouts on. Please don't confuse the wonderful ability of nature to adapt to different conditions with evolution. Micro evolution is this ability, built within the genetic make-up of all living things, to adapt to changing conditions. Take the coues whitetail for example. This animal lives in elevations ranging from 2000 ft (or even less) to 8 or even 10,000 ft. on mount Grahm and the San Fransisco Peaks. Some Coues deer live where there is a lot of water, some live where the only water they get is after a rain storm. Some Coues deer have small tight racks, and some have gigantic racks. Some deer have red tails, and some deer have grey tails - and there are other variations, Don't the high counrty deer tend to have larger bodies and longer hair? Don't the desert deer tend to have larger ears? These are all the same kind of deer! But wait! It gets even better. The Coues deer is a sub-species. It is still the same deer (species) as the Northern Whitetail, and the Southern, and the Western, and the Florida Keys Deer. If it is the same species, it can produce off-spring. A Coues Whitetail can make a baby with a Northern Whitetail. Knowing this, NOW look at the variations and adaptabilty within the same species of animal! This adaptability is what bill is talking about. This is "micro-evolution", not evolution at all. Macro-evolution is the theoretical concept of a known species turning into another species; one-celled organisms eventually turning into fish, then into amphibians, then to some kind of land animals like reptiles, birds, or some kind of mammal, then throw in a few billion years and you get primates and finally humans. When you breed a horse with a donkey you get a mule - and it ends there because the mule is sterile. Same thing happens with cross-breeds of mule deer with whitetails. Different species are not allowed to mix according to the laws of nature, there is not one example of macro-evolution, The transitional fossils that Darwin predicted would be found, have not been discoverd in over 120 years, yet evolutionists insist that this is how we came to be. Preposterous! Mike

INTERESTING!!!! You mean THEORETICALLY these tusks are an "evolutionary hold-over." "Through evolution the tusks gradually got smaller as the antlers got larger." Stephanocemas, and Dicrocerus were discovered in the Tung Gur formation of Mongolia; that being China. Funny isn't it, that Bill says there are still 12 species of deer in Asia that still have tusks? Looks like they forgot to evolve. I think the theory of evolution is a fantastic concept. I like reading the Colbert papers. His taxonomic decipherings are incredible! But to tie them together to fit Darwins theory is a reach. Evolution is a theory. There's a reson for that. Darwin predicted that over time, all the transitional species fossils will be discovered. That was over 120 years ago. Some will argue that there have been no transitional fossils found. And debatable are the ones classified as such. To prove something scientifically, it must be recreated, observed and recorded - in comparrison to control models. Anybody got 16 billion years? It is unlikely that the theory of evolution will ever be proven, yet it is taught in all our schools, at all levels, as the SCIENTIFIC truth. Could it be, that somewhere in the genetic make-up of a North American deer, there is a rare possibility that canines will show up, and that it is not directly connected to the macro-evolutionary theory that has never been proven? I would be disrespecting the inteligence that God gave me to reason, if I were to swallow this ill-proven theory everytime, nope - sorry, anytime it shows up. Not pickin a fight with anybody, just pointing out that once again the word - theoretically - was left out of the conversation. Mike

I don't know how all the land deals work either but I do know that there is a ton of state land - everything we hunt on that ain't forest, and that from time to time the state trades/swaps/sells some off and the proceeds usually go to education. When ever you see a proposition that says they're gonna set some aside for preservation, it usually means the rest of it will be up for grabs - which it is anyway. 700,000 acres would be a gigantic forest fire, but not even a drop in the bucket campared to the lands we stand to - and eventually will - lose. How do we save it? Beats me, but we should always be concerned about any proposition concerning state land, even the ones that sound good. Mike

First amendment My Eye! This is just plain common sense. The rest of us have constitutional rights enough to speak freely and complain about vulgarity. If you don't hear from them, follow up on it, or tell me and I will. Political correctness doesn't trump moral correctness. Mike

Did you complain to the Dept. Office? Mike

The people of the great state of Calizona have spoken. We have established that the comfort of pigs is more important that the sanctity of marraige. And we pass propositions that prevent illegals from sueing anybody, make it hard for them to get out of jail, and dissallow them benifits, and then back the governor and a representitive that have a "whatever" attitude about illegal immegration, so more and more and more will be coming over. Weird. The pig thing was just plain wrong. We have one pig farm in the state, and now it will probably shut down. Way to be Calizona! Question: What is to stop a proposition that would identify hunting as cruel, and call for its ban? All the anti's gotta do is get a petition signed, get it on the ballot and let the people of the great state of Calizona impose their will? Like WE did to Farmer John? Mike

Thanks Amanda for steering Jim our way. Thanks Jim for taking the time to educate us. We need to keep track of this info in the archives so we can refer to it when cornballs like me start up with our off-the-cuff theories! Mike PS I gotta have that book! Mike

Hey Bigelkhunter, That ain't a big elk or a whitetail! If I want a serving of CARP, I'll go down to the fish market and load up on buffalo fish. All them deer in a row just proves that killing a CARP ain't no challenge at all. How'd you get 'em, in a gill net? Dang it, when I opened this up I was expecting to see one of those monster unit 8 whitetails. What a disapointment. Well at least you cleaned out the pond a little, so's there'll be more food for the few whitetail that are left in that unit. Thanks, Mike

Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks:for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18

You guys are hard core! Yet I tend to agree. I have all the bells and whistles if I'm in someone else's camp and they are puttin on the spread, or if I'm camp/fishin. I do a lot of backpackin type huntin, or out of the truck stuff like you say, TAM. It's about the hunting not the camping. All I really gotta do is sleep dry and comfortable, eat enough to stay alive, and stay hydrated. When I saw this string I thought the subject was gonna be about campfire smoke in remote areas and if that may tip the deer off to the presence of man. Something that has always made me wonder... but I usually backpack with my brother who HAS to have a fire, and we always find deer. Mike

Enjoy your fire and fellowship; eat your grilled steak with garlic and onions; fart when you need to, and be a smart hunter and play the wind. OR, you can forsake the fire; eat like a vegan; keep your hunting clothes stored in pinon bows (be sure to buy the charchol lined material); take a sponge bath daily, and be a smart hunter and play the wind. You choose. Mike

Thanks Amanda. I was hoping you would jump in here. I think I know what I'm talking about, but in reality I'm just winging it. I would be very interested in what, if anything, Jim can say about moon phase/breeding behavior. Mike

Yep, light. Captive does aren't kept in caves. Think about it. What triggers the elk rut in Sept? Cold weather? what if we don't get a storm and we have hot weather? Real common in Arizona. What about the elk at lower elevations? They still rut don't they? It's all a timing thing. The amount of light in a day is connected to the time of year. Gestation periods are consistant. The deer fawns must drop at a time of year when the does will have good forage and water to be able to provide for the newborn. When do they drop? Early July? Just prior to the summer rains! Mike

There is NOT a moon per month. It's more like 13 full moons a year, so the full moon does not occur the same time every month. The gravitational pull of the moon controls the tides and other things like estrus cycles of ungulates. The cold weather may encourage movement of anxious bucks, but the moon controls the female ovulation cycle - in combination with the decreased photoperiod of the later months. The MAIN reason for the rut is the decreased photoperiod (shorter days). This is all part of the grand design. Northern states have an earlier whitetail rut - Nov - Dec.. Our whitetail rut here in Arizona is later - Jan. These are peak periods, as the total rut may span over several months - if does miss being bred and recycle on a later moon phase. Clear as mud? Mike

Deer and elk females will come into estrus with the full moon. If they don't get bred, they will cycle on the next full moon. That is why you can see a velvet antlered buck standing next to a hard antlered buck in the early fall. One was either a late birth or an early birth, which also means that one was a late conception or an early conception, i.e., one month or the next. The rutting activity of the males will be crazy as the full moon aproaches, pecking order fighting etc. The obvious rutting activity decreases when the does are actually in heat because the good bucks are "tending" a doe until she gives in. Not much movement. If we take notes, some of it will make sense and some of it won't. There is a lot of early activity by young bucks around the does, because they are young, excited, and stupid. The bigger bucks are saving their energy until the time is right. This is just like a big bull elk letting the younger bulls herd up the cows until they come into estrus and then he shows up, kicks butt and breeds the cows. This is a good subject. I believe the moon is really important. So, according to the moon phase chart shown above, the end of Dec. is when the first full moon of the rutting period approaches and the end of the late rifle hunt this year will be hot. But the main Whitetail estrus period in Arizona for whitetails is in January and again the last two weeks (as the full moon approaches) is gonna be hotter. Just remember that when the moon is FULL and the does are accepting, the deer seem to dissapear. They're busy making babies! No I can't reference this info; probably read it in a hunting magazine once upon a time and believed it. I still think it's true. Mike

Mogollon Taxidermy in Payson. Not the best work for the price, but the best work AND the best price. This guy knows Coues Deer. Killed the #9 non-typical. Mike

Cliff Carp!! Mike

It is incorrect to call a mule deer a black tail because there is another deer called a blacktail in the Northwest. The proper name for a mule deer is CARP. Names are often discriptions of what the animal does. A carp is a bottom feeder, right? The whitetail on the other hand is one of the most beautiful sights in the world as it raises its flag and runs across the elevated mountainscapes which rise above the dust and smog of the desert floor. The reason you N.M. fellas are confused about how to count points is because of your proximity to Texas. Texans tend to exagerate, everything is bigger there, blah, blah, blah. Heck, in Texas they think a point is legitimate if you "can hang a ring on it". Of course they're gonna count all the points, that way you get a bigger number. Ever play cards with a Texan? I have. Caught 'em cheatin at Uno!! You guys should be more like the Arizonans; We are secure enough in our masculinity to only count one side and leave the brow tine of to boot! That's all I'm gonna say about that. Mike

Hey Shortpants, when push comes to a shove, you'd better remind Jim who carried the water and who didn't. I'm already feeling bad for him; having dinner and hitting the sack dehydrated is miserable! Mike