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I've found that almost always, the farther apart the people are in an area, the more pleasant they are to strangers. I have come across some nice folks in big cities, too, but for the most part, the smaller the local populations, the friendlier the people are.

My first trip to western North Dakota was an example. I had researched it as best I could beforehand, back in the days before the internet, and had discovered when I arrived that much of the public ground I had read about and counted on was inaccessible without trespassing on some private to get to it.

After driving around half a day and finding little public ground that actually had road frontage,I stopped by the local pub in the tiny county seat (pop., 39) for a sandwich and a beer. The bartender/cook was the only other person in the place, and we talked a bit. He offered to let me sleep on the couch in his attached home, since he figured it would be cold camping in my van that night (it wasn't, the van was insulated and I had a real good bag and everything I needed to be perfectly comfy). I declined the offer, but thanked him for it.

About then a dusty cowboy came in for a sandwich and a drink, and the bartender told him of my disappointment in finding easily accessed public ground. The cowboy said, "Well, we'd hate to have you come all the way out here and leave the area disappointed. Why don't you come over and hunt on one of my ranches. There's one just a few miles from here. I'll call the foremen and let him know you're coming." That turned out to be the start of a friendship and hunter-landowner relationship that lasted nearly twenty years. That "cowpoke" was one of the bigger ranchers in the county, with three ranches, and you'd never have guessed that he wasn't just another hand working from paycheck to paycheck. The county had 164 residents, total, at the time. I must have met half of them during my years of visiting out there, and darn near all of them were mighty nice people. I miss the people there almost as much as the badlands and the lonesome prairie.

We are hospitable to strangers around here, and tend to be helpful if we can, but the folks out there seem to take it to another level. They make you feel like some long-lost cousin, once you've exchanged a few words. That ranch foreman also extended the offer of his couch in the trailer that served as his family's home on that nearby ranch. I mean, I'd take time to give a stranger directions, advice, maybe a lift if their vehicle was giving them trouble, but I don't know many folks here in friendly Indiana who would offer some stranger their couch in their family home, except maybe under dire need. Two of the first three people I met out there did, and the third let me hunt his ranch.

I respect their intentions and their opinions completely, but they should remove the uniforms before posing.

The difference between free speech and, if not treason, at least an act that can put them in prison, is wearing the uniform while making their protest. The authority and the respect that the uniform commands belong to the nation, and is not the property of the individual to use in adding weight to their political opinions even when we do agree with them.

I have the greatest respect for any and all military personnel. IMO, they are all heroes to a great degree, even if they never deployed in combat. They put their lives on the line when they sign up, subject to the decisions and needs of the military.

I feel that they are quite often misused by political leaders, and I fully support their freedom of expression as individuals.....when out of uniform, and using their names, but not their military titles.

Not sure of the legalities involved there, but that's what seems right to me.

I think it should be pointed out that many in the Amish communities consider it rude to photograph them.

I think the longer shots such as the one in this post are generally accepted as OK, and as being intended as a friendly appreciation of their lifestyle, but closer shots of individuals are more often considered an intrusion and also a crossing of a line regarding the making of a graven image of them that violates some tenets of their beliefs.

A I understand it, photography is not a complete blanket no-no, but anyone wishing to photograph them should be aware of the boundaries of polite behavior in that area to avoid crossing that line, and the guideline may vary from area to area.

All I get is the info that what I sought could not be found.

NSA must have deleted it! Big Bro' IS watching!

Bought a few parts there. Buddy and hunting partner lives a couple miles down the road from there and i drive past the place every time I get down to visit him. Haven't seen the show.

Most laws have exceptions and situations that come up where they can't be applied strictly as written.

As a quick example, swimming is not permitted in the lakes in the nearest state forest. Boating is, with manual or electric power.

So will you be ticketed if your canoe capsizes and you save yourself, or do you have to drown to remain legal?

The best course of action there is obvious and probably would be the unanimous choice....but it's technically illegal.

Probably not the question you had in mind, but it does illustrate that sometimes there is a situation that makes the answer that applies to the usual situation inapplicable.

And there can be conflicting regulations that are difficult to find the answers to. I noticed last fall that all the parking areas at the sign-in boxes down near Monroe Reservoir were posted against camping "in this area". No definition of "area" was given. The word is normally used to designate the entire large sections of land being visited, but primitive camping has always been done in those "areas" and still is presented as one of the activities to be enjoyed there in the brochures at the manager's office.

Oh, and one of my pet peeves for several years regarding that general area is the requirement to sign in and take a visitor's card with you. The regulation clearly states that you should take a card for only that day's visit, and not take extras. Now, canoeing and camping are allowed. But the only way to stay technically legal in having the card in your possession that is made out for the day of your visit, would be to paddle and hike out in the middle of the night each night of your stay and pick up fresh cards at midnight! I asked the property manager how to comply with that regulation and he pondered it for a while, and finally said to go ahead and take enough cards to cover each day of my intended stay and fill out a fresh one each morning to retain in my immediate possession, then turn them all in upon my return. Made sense, in terms of being the most sensible solution, but it was clearly against the stated regulations.

Almost all regulations have some situations that arise or can be imagined where they can not reasonably be applied. These areas are where the discretion and judgment of the LE officer is needed. Of course, being human, they have varying levels of expertise and varying levels of ability to understand even well explained situations that might represent an exception to the "book". And in dealing with all the regulations that they are called upon to enforce, with sometimes overlapping or indistinct regulatory boundaries, they would need encyclopedic memories to answer all imaginable variations.

IMO, most of the confusion stems from the over-regulation of all aspects of our lives. The person charged with enforcing or explaining them is often at as much of a loss as we are in understanding them, but they usually do their best.

I agree that Officer Morrison has definitely improved the quality of responses to the questions on this site, but even he can't cover all imaginable variations and situations in a response that be contained in reasonable length for reading online, and could be typed in a reasonable portion of his day.

There is always the option of calling up the regulations online, and exploring them for yourself. That's an interesting exercise in attempting to decode legalese into regular English. Kinda fun as a puzzle on a cold winter day, but not very handy if you need the answer tomorrow, and quite often not exactly in agreement with the law as decided in court, even after you decode the legalese.

Can it be a problem? Sure. Has been since the first laws were passed, probably. That's life. Might not be the perfect system, but it will have to do until someone invents a better one.

Seems that the sales of GPS units are dropping because many outdoors enthusiasts are now using their phone app's instead of carrying the handhelds.

I just replaced my dead Magellan with a new basic Garmin a couple days ago. I was going to upgrade to little better mapping unit, but after reading up about it on the 'net, decided to just get the basic one and look into going with the app when I eventually join the crowd and get a smart phone, too.

Not so much one particular bow for me, but definitely "the bow" as a collective category.

I think my first bow as a kid predated my first BB gun. I know I had my glasses when I got the BB gun, and I remember being amazed at my bow sending arrows "completely out of sight"....for me, anyway. That was my parents' first inkling that I couldn't see all that well, but I didn't get checked and get glasses until a while later when the traveling nurse visited our 3-room school with and eye chart, and I flunked badly.

I enjoyed hunting with both, but when one season came along as a young married man with too many expenses and too little income and I had to choose between a bow license and a gun license for deer hunting that year, I bought the bow license with little hesitation and no regrets. First deer with any weapon came years later, with a 68# Jennings two-wheeler, but I was hooked on archery and had owned several adult bows by that time, beginning with a Bear Kodiak.

You're certainly in my thoughts, Woody.

My brother had a similar experience several years back and recovered completely, although he was sure it was the end at the time. He passed out in a gas station restroom from the blood loss and was lucky to have family with him, and be across the street from an ER at the time.

He turned out to have some ruptured polyps that needed removal, and IIRC followup checks found some more without the dramatic evidence a few years later and some more removals took care of the problem with no recurrences. His were invisible until the colonoscopy as well, despite his being thoroughly studied from head to foot for years with other medical conditions. Little or no warning with some of these things.

Sounds like the scariest possibilities have already been checked for and pretty much eliminated, so I fully expect the outcome to be complete recovery.