Chickens have forever had a place in our hearts and on our tables. Why is that? Well … why not?
And so I’d like you to come with me back to the summer of 1970, ‘way up north of Fairbanks, Alaska, to what was once the thriving gold mining village of Chicken, Alaska. I was on my way, hitchhiking with a canoe, to paddle down a 500-mile stretch of the Yukon River and to see the cabin where Jack London spent the winter once upon a time.
Just as an aside here, hitchhiking with a canoe, or with a sled and 10 dogs, would make a lengthy how-to book all by themselves. It doesn’t sound easy, does it? It isn’t.
“Now that’s the job I want,” said Steve, putting down the paper. “A guy could really sink his teeth into something like that.”
Doc looked up from his coffee. “Didn’t know you were looking for work, Steve. Cowboying not working out for you?”
“It isn’t that,” said the cowboy/farrier, “it’s just that a guy should always keep his eyes open so as not to miss an opportunity to better himself. That’s why I’m so interested in becoming a chicken ranger.”
“A what?”
“He said a chicken ranger, Doc,” said Bert, “but I never heard of one.”
It’s a rare treat to have old Jasper Blankenship come down from the diggins to stock up on supplies. And he favored us with stories at the Mule Barn this bright morning over coffee, too.
“Well, Doc,” Jasper said, “you’re right. I wasn’t always a miner. Back during The War I had a job in the city at one of the big war plants, you know. I was a security guard and watched the gate. In those days, there was this one carpenter who just gave me the fits. He’d come out the gate at the end of the day with a wheelbarrow full of sawdust. I always stopped him and poked around in the sawdust and never found anything, but I just knew he was stealing something.”
“Sure did, Windy, have a seat and join us,” said Doc. We were huddled up in the coolth of the air conditioner blast in that certain part of the dining room at the Mule Barn truck stop. Yes. It was hot.
“Ain’t like Death Valley, howsomever,” Windy said. “Now boys, that there’s HOT!”
“You been to Death Valley, Windy?”
“Shore did, Steve. Wellsir, it was a long time back, ‘bout the time of when I ferget who was president. One of them guys who ain’t president any more. But I was jest percolatin’ ‘round and got me this here wranglin’ job over there at Furnace Crick. Hot? Say, it was so hot it melted your whiskers! But they needed these dudes wrangled and I packed mules for ‘em … until the accident …”
We sure are strange sometimes. Most of the time, we make sense. We’re “sensible” and we do things for a reason. But there are times when we do things that make no sense at all, and we don’t care.
Just take pocketknives, for instance. Most men wouldn’t leave the house without one. I sure wouldn’t. In fact, I’ll bet if you stopped 10 men in business suits on the sidewalk in New York City or London and asked them to turn their pockets out for you, at least eight of them would be carrying a pocketknife. And one of them would be bound to call the police because of your weird request.
Recently we left Emily of the fantastic cheekbones and Dewey the accident prone, happily locked together in a kiss after Dewey stumbled over a root.
“Emily,” Dewey said, “I have a confession to make to you. I don’t have a neurotic fascination with manure.”
“You don’t?”
“No.” He kissed her again and they both smiled. “It’s my business. I supply fertilizer to people’s gardens. That’s what I do. When I told you I was in manure, I meant the manure business. They call me the fertilizer king, actually.”
She smiled. “Wow! That’s wonderful! I was a bit concerned about falling for a guy who had a … thing … for manure. You know. But it’s what you do!”
Maryland hunters harvested a total of 5,094 wild turkeys during the 2026 spring season. This year’s harvest was 5% higher than last year but remained below the record harvest of 5,356 set in 2023.
“Favorable weather helped contribute to another productive spring season for Maryland turkey hunters,” Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Wildlife and Heritage Service Director Karina Stonesifer said. “While populations can fluctuate across regions and from year to year, turkey hunters continue to enjoy quality hunting opportunities across Maryland.”
Garrett County reported the highest harvest with 542 turkeys, followed by Charles County with 452 and Worcester County with 430 turkeys. Allegany and Washington counties also reported over 300 birds each.
Youth hunters started the spring turkey season with the Junior Turkey Hunt, April 11-12. A total of 441 wild turkeys were taken during that weekend, representing 8% of the total. Sunday hunting accounted for 14% of the statewide harvest.
Hunting licenses for the 2026-27 season will be available starting July 1 on the Maryland DNR website. The major fall hunting seasons begin Sept. 1 with mourning dove season, and deer hunting begins with archery season on Sept. 11.
Harvests by county for the past five seasons are below:
June just might be the first month of summer … to most of us. But for some of this planet’s people, it’s the dead of winter. That would be those wonderful folks who live south of the equator, of course. While we are busy cremating some cow or pig on the backyard barbecue, they are still holed up and wondering if they can make it to penguin season without starving.
And I’m just kidding of course because 1. I’m fairly certain no nation has a penguin season, and 2. penguins don’t need any
more problems. Hey, they already live where it’s too cold and they walk funny.
I thought I knew all kinds of things about sleds and dogs. Hadn’t I already won a 100-mile race? Hadn’t I darn near won a 300-mile race? Didn’t I live 12 miles from my car and have to use the team to get to town and to file my columns. Heck yes! Well, in those days I was married to Pam, who ran race headquarters for the Iditarod Race. That was a long, cold 1100-mile camping trip from Anchorage to Nome.
Ran into Doc down at The Mule Barn the other day, so naturally we had to rid the world of about a gallon of coffee and solve the world’s problems for an hour. It is the duty of all true Americans of our age, you know.
Doc said he’d been aching a little bit lately. Joints or something. He’d been out fixing the pasture fence where the mare had been pushing on it. The next morning it made him walk funny.
“I remember when my dad was my age,” he said. “I asked him how it felt to be this old. Well, he looked at me as though I were committing a crime by having brown hair, you know? And then he said, “To be this old? Well, I guess it beats the alternative.”
