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Yesterday afternoon, while I was out in our new yard, wondering what to do with two acres of oak leaves, I heard a sound I hadn't heard in along time. Someone was shooting at something, a ways off through the woods. It was a sound I hadn't heard in many years. My grandparents lived in rural upstate NY where, in the cold months, those long-echoing rifle shots were as frequent as the cars on the gravel road past the house - and nearly as deadly to their dogs. A brown lab running through the woods in the winter is certain to attract the psychopathic liars who will later claim they couldn't tell the difference between a deer and a dog. Their black and yellow labs were liable to pass for deer sometimes, too.
Luckily, we don't have any dogs.
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For the leaves, I got my 50' extension cord and my leaf blower, and blew the first 50' of leaves into a low cardioid berm all surrounding the house. I'm sure it's all filled in with new leaves today. But it was nice to be out in the woods anyway. It beats staring at the maze of unpacked boxes that we have inside.
We hear shooting some weekends (yes, some people in England do have guns). I think there is a pheasant shoot not too far away. On rare occasions we can hear artillery from Salisbury Plain, which sounds like distant thunder. It beats listening to trains rumble past (our last house was close to a main railway line).
Any word on TV/Internet access? :)
no word whatsoever. sigh.
we’re eating in the dining room and watching DVDs of old Looney Tunes.
Mrs has a 20G/mo hotspot plan on her phone. so she can do some things. i’m trying to get all the heavy internet stuff done at work. luckily, it’s a slow time of year for my (almost dead) business, so i haven’t had to post any new binaries for download, etc..
Do you have any sense of whether folks respect the property lines there when it comes to hunting?
I ask because it’s my experience in the rural midwest that the “locals” (for lack of a better term) will do their deer hunting wherever they please, absent some incentive – mild or significant, depending on the circumstances – to not do so.
It was kind of shocking to me to realize that, yes, people will come onto your property and start shooting things, and think nothing of it.
not sure about NC’s etiquette, but i assume it’s the same. in NY, it wasn’t strange to see people wandering around on my grandparents’ property – no fences, no clear boundaries, so it wasn’t like anyone could tell where the lines were if they didn’t grow up knowing the landmarks. nobody seemed to mind – if you come up on a house, just turn around. “Posted” signs are discouraging, but you can always pretend you didn’t see them.
the only time i’ve ever been arrested was for wandering into a state park on a hunting trip with a buddy. parked on the side of a country road, started walking out into a random corn field, through some woods, crossed a ridge, and into a group of picnic tables. the sheriff was waiting. but i was a minor, so my record’s clean now.
I guess what I’m thinking of was more deliberate. Sort of a “yeah, there’s a fence there, but we know there’s nothing but woods on the other side for a few acres, plus there’s no lock on the gate, so we’ll keep hunting” sort of thing.
The fact that they figured the property owner was absent most of the time probably factored in.