…appears to be a worldwide phenomenon…  a nice wiki article also indicates that it is referred to as lamping in some areas of the world, and a typical crew can consist of two or three people…  makes it sound almost legal and humane… but I think the point of our story here is that it is VERY BAD and that BIG MIKE is a VERY BAD PERSON who has surrounded himself with VERY BAD PEOPLE and engages with VERY VAIN AND INSECURE CLIENTS…

Without a shred of compunction, with nary a second thought as to motive or potential impact, these two baddies are quite pleased with themselves… the object of their evil plan finds itself locked in a trance seemingly unaware of the threat that has befallen him!  Oh the injustice!  The hairs on the back of Mark’s smooth, Lilly-White neck must be bristling, but he can’t know why, only that there is no-good happening in his universe…

And since when to rifles go WHAM?!?  I thought they went BLAM, unless, the animal was actually RUN OVER…  and the rifle in the hands of Bad Guy #1 (played by Keanu Reeves) is just for show or to shoot humans who might happen upon their misdeeds…

It would seem not…  Apparently he will be able to gaze upon his trophy, perched above the hearth in his study for years to come, knowing that he did not pull the trigger…  He might as well just go to a thrift store or find one in someone else’s attic…

And then there’s that irritating ¾ profile close-up of “Big Mike” in panel two…  What- is this guy so difficult to draw that we have to one again copy/ paste?  And as “Sideburns McGreavy” gives Big Mike the Big thumbs-up in panel three, little does he know that he is about to meet up with his fate- the Fists-o-Justice- from one Mark Trail…  If these guys aren’t worth a punch, I don’t know who is!  So c’mon, Elrod, no open field tackles this time, let Mark’s sharpened knuckles do their job!

Big Mike has it down to a science… Fueling expectations, dealing with disappointment, playing off vanity and insecurity, and then delivering the Coup de grâce… “Let me put you out of your apparent misery, Mr. Baker, but it’s going to cost you…”  You can tell how upset Baker is in the first panel as he stands there, arms akimbo, looking terribly hurt and angry…  C’mon Baker, lighten up… can’t you tell when you are being played??  Why don’t you pour yourself a bracer, and take the ridiculous green outfit off.  Who told you that green hunting caps with tie-up earflaps were all the rage?

Looks like Big Mike has his arsenal of gray guns at the ready…  paramilitary, that stuff is…

Did I call that or what?  Playing on the vanity and ego of the “Powerful American Male…”  Bathed in insecurity, “Baker,” bedecked in Kelly Green, declares that he made certain promises, bordering on boasts, to his “friends” back at the club…  How can he dare show his face unless he has lusty tales of giant racks conquered?? Back in the city he probably trades credit default swaps, bringing down entire economies is a single stroke…  but out here, where men are men, he is feeling less than complete…  the hook is set!

Of course, secrets revealed, below, of how we generate near perfect opposite profiles of our evil character Big Mike!  Copy from yesterday’s close up/ paste/ flip/ pan in and you get what’s in panel three above… I don’t know…  I guess a little of the old magic just went out of this for me.  And what is that in his ear?  Italy? Japan? What could the meaning of that be??

That bear in panel two looks angry…

“What?  You haven’t seen a thing?  Come a little closer my mealy mouthed friend, a little closer and you will be caught in my snare…  I will hit you with my ‘for a little more dough, I will show you where the big boys hunt,’ line.”  It has been pointed out that Rod Bassy and Mike Morrison bear a resemblance, and you can certainly see it in panel three…  look at the profile!  Certainly Bassy couldn’t have been his given name, I am guessing now it was Morrison!

I love the bright green blazer that the sucker (I mean client) is wearing… unless he is hunting on a well-manicured gold course, he’s not exactly likely to blend into his surroundings…  And by the way Baker, ever take a gun safety course?  That not exactly the SAFEST way to be transporting your firearm…

…is apparently a Big Irishman who enjoys his whiskey neat and takes care of people who don’t “want to cooperate…” at the business end of a gun wielded by one of his many henchmen…  That’s quite a payroll, you have there, Big Mike…  not to mention the overhead of the lodge… You must have to get a lot of “Big City Boss” types to answer your ads…  Wall Street Journal?  Barron’s?  USA Today?  Certainly not in “Forest and Stream” or “Field and Forest” or  “Woods and Wildlife” or whatever Editor Bill Ellis/ Benefactor Wes Chapman’s Trail-rag is called…

But wait a minute…  How did this story begin?  Oh, yes… Rusty with a CAMERA (familiar territory) taking pictures of OTTERS… So who was setting the traps?  Was it Ol’ Eddie?  I can’t see Big Mike having much interest in THAT… if his real interest is in BIG GAME…  the otters were mere pawns in the game that took mark to the sound of gun shots (meant to silence Ol’ Eddie) which did not do a very good job, since OE was still able to call the Newspaperman JASON instead of LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT, with Jason able to arrive at the scene faster than Mark could sprint through the woods…  But yet again I overthink these things…  is continuity of plot really that important?  Apparently it is to me…

You can’t run that story!  Ever hear of corroborating evidence?  Make a habit of capturing hearsay and running with it?  Good Lord, Man, where did you learn your craft??  The look on Jason Smith’s face can only be described as “I really hate my work… I really wish I could go full time with my worm farm and leave all this chasing around to the younger set…”

The shocked look on Ol’ Eddie the Small Time Poacher’s face is great, as Mark HOLDS HIS HAND in a display of genuine care and concern…  OK, this is weird.  Mark doesn’t have an empathetic bone in his body, yet here he is comforting a Craggy Faced Codger… 

A Deputy Sheriff on Big Mike’s payroll!! What these Baddies won’t do to ensure that their little money making schemes pan out!  Well, that means, as usual, that Mark will have to take the law into his own hands (again) since he can’t be sure who Big Mike is paying or not- how far up the chain does the corruption go?  Maybe there’s a United States Senator involved!  There is obviously SO MUCH MONEY involved in a high stakes poaching ring the possibilities are endless!

The deer in the first panel are obviously very concerned with the outcome of this story, since it is they who are being “spotlighted” and taken out…  Good Heavens.  Just how big IS Lost Forest anyway?  It seems as though its fingers reach into every nook and cranny of civilization…  Rather than the city encroaching on protected lands it would seem to be the other way around!

Oh. My. Goodness.  That is the ugliest man I have ever seen in my life.  “I am not an animal, I am a human being!”  This is almost more than I can take…  three strips at once…  so much of the plot unfolding before my eyes that I can barely take it all in!

So that is “Ol’ Eddie…”  And it’s suddenly clear why he don’t want no coppers involved… Hospital bed confessions are the best kind, although I don’t know that he is in imminent danger of shuffling off this mortal coil, but still, he starts “his story” with the admission that he has “done a little poaching,” as Mark “knows (yes he does, for Mark sees and knows all…)  I guess this is what amounts to a capital offense in the Trail-verse.  Apparently, though, Eddie has done more than a “little” poaching otherwise how could he have become “Ol’?”

REAL Poachers, from OUT OF STATE!  KILLED a RANGER!!  BIG MIKE!!!  But already the logic escapes me.  So they have hunted their own preserve to extinction, and therefore have moved onto other grounds, found a virtual Valhalla in Lost Forest, and would now have Eddie gunning down anything with four legs…  What, so they can drag it back to their preserve and dupe a client into thinking that he shot it?  That’s not giving the big game hunter very much credit for intelligence.  Sort of like suggesting that a farm raised bass could pass for one that came to trophy size on its own in the wild…  You suppose that Rod Bassy and Big Mike work for the same conglomerate??

Ah, the O’l Bait-n-Switch…  counting on the fact that no big game hunter worth his salt would ever want to return empty handed…  The stakes are raised and the fleece is on!  An additional $1,000?  Hah!  Chump change!  Let’s go get that Buck!  Male vanity is a terrible force, one that can be turned to advantage by one who knows how to pull that string (or would it be push that button??) “Quick Jason, get Eddie a glass of water, we don’t want him expiring on us, and oh by the way, I don’t share by-lines…  so you will just have to go get your own story.  This one is unfolding on my father-in-law’s land, so I have dibs, even though Eddie called you first!”

What the…  What is Doogie Howser doing in the Trail-verse???  At least he has hair, unlike that poor chap in panel two…  Random as that is- again what does an extra get paid to fill in the blanks of the story line- but at least he is a real person, not just a picture on a nightstand…

What continues to strike me as funny, comical almost, is that this is clearly a crime scene- one man shot, two men leaving the scene of the crime, and not a police car, not a sheriff, just Mark and Jason, to brothers in the bonds of ink stained fingers, carrying (presumably) Ol’ Eddie like a bag of Portland cement out to the waiting vehicle and to the hospital…

“So you’re Mark Trail…” of course you have heard of him, “Jason,” but please Mark, spare me the lies… you aren’t home enough to even know what the local paper looks like…

Whatever could THAT mean?  Like so much scat on the trail, we look at each daily strip and try to interpret its meaning, blind to what might befall us around the next bend!

Name Sir?  “Uh, Jason…Smith… uh that’s right… I’m with the … uh… local paper… yeah, that’s it…”  I don’t believe him for a minute, but of course Trail does, since he, possessing a great Generosity of Spirit, always believes in his fellow man…

But did he call the paper AFTER getting shot?  Or before?  What shack out in the middle of a game preserve would have phone service?  Is that Ol’ Eddie sitting on something or leanin’ against a wall (damn the dialogue, it obliterates a clue!) Why does Smith need help?  Isn’t he the one with the vehicle (truck parked outside shack)  Or was he content to let the victim bleed out, not wanting to soil his upholstery?

And what of the fact that Mark is the only guy in the shack with a full head of Hair?  Facial hair can be a tip-off to evil (says the Trail brain) but the newspaper guy seem legit… perhaps Mark should ask him for his press card (or do they even carry those anymore…) Wait- this guy might not even be “from the local paper…” he probably got laid off and is still pretending to be employed while blogging for peanuts… so sad…

…to find a cabin on the grounds…  And of course it’s “Ol’ Eddie…” not Ed, not Edward.  An’ Ol’ Eddie has been known to do a little (not a lot, mind you) poachin’ an’-a fishin’ an’-a drinkin’ an’-a who knows WHAT all-else… a little meth-cookin’ perhaps?!?

Watching the Trail-brain work is fascinating, though, as he picks up on visual clues and links them together to deduce that “someone must be here!”  Uh, no, Mark, let’s not be so hasty in our conclusions…  could be that the owner of said truck might be AWAY?  But, cupping his hands to create a megaphone effect (does this really even work, does this just give the reader a visual clue that Mark is calling out rather than vocalizing another private thought?) Mark calls out to make sure that whoever is in there, armed and dangerous, is fully aware that he has a visitor!

…for a Nature Writer and his Large Breed Dog… Andy looks terribly excited in panel three to be going off to the slaughter… and in panel two Mark is demonstrating that, along with possessing superior virtues, he can also detect, merely by human ear, that which usually takes an array of well-placed microphones to determine- the exact point and direction from which a gunshot emanates…  for it is reasonably well known that “ear-witness accounts” of gun shots are unreliable in determining location and direction.

Also notice in panel one where Mark’s usually perfectly slicked and coiffured hair is getting a bit excited- is this like hackles going up at the sight of danger?  What or who exactly is this Trail-beast?  Would we see a vestigial tail if Mark were to give us a full moon shot?  OK, this is getting a little creepy…

Ohhh… OK, then.  A GAME PRESERVE.  Maintaining and preserving a stock of wild animals in order that they be hunted “legally.”  By a “chosen few?”  How elitist!  And such a long history:  in 1389 King Richard II passed a law bringing in the Qualification law, which only allows men who own more than a certain value of land to hunt game.

And how does one get to declare one’s own land as such?  Are there tax advantages?  Has the IRS looked into this?  Hmmm…  I wonder.  It’s all becoming clearer now.  This whole “Lost Forest” thing is nothing but a dodge to cheat our governmental taxing authorities out of their fair share!

In the second double panel (Bonus Fry?) we see two fine examples of the “kept class of animal” seemingly free to go about their rutting business without a care, not knowing that their racks are the object of desire for the landed class of men who prefer to spend their days “making calls and dressing for dinner…” What does that make you, then, Trail?  The freeloading son in law of the wizened gamekeeper?  The husband of the only-made-honest-recently gamekeeper’s daughter??

Rusty, repairing to the Lost Forest Woodshop (not to be confused with the wood SHED, where Doc takes him to administer his beatings) returns with a box suitable for a convalescing Mother Otter and her pup…  dovetail construction? Box bottom rabbeted into the sides?  Joints sealed and box lined to prevent leaking?  I see Mother Otter has the same basket-weave dressing that Wes had on his foot when he broke his foot crashing his sea-plane into the mountainside…

I see that Mother Otter likes to get in a few crunches while nursing Junior…  never too soon to start working yourself back into shape, right?

And I am sorry, but Doc freaks me out…  he appears to have one expression- face locked in a smile/grimace, regardless of what side we get to see- and the two sides are literally mirror images of each other… spooky- almost as if it weren’t Doc- but someone wearing a “Doc suit…”  Alien presence?  Perhaps…

Hon-es’-te-ly…  I mean Really?  Not a struggle, not a care, they each are in the arms of Trail and his adopted son without so much as a concern?  Reminds me of a couple of hand raised lap-dogs… And Rusty, don’t be in denial, the “rest of the otters” have been flayed and skinned and stretched and scraped as their valuable pelts are on their way to market…  Some Trail version of Cruella DeVille, no doubt, bent on making an otter-skin coat…  but then it appears that there is a lively demand for such items…  So, I mean, what’s the problem here??

The need to make a statement or manufacture some drama is a constant pressure for the creators of the Trail-verse, however…  the concept of harvesting and managing wildlife has no place…  I will try to manufacture concern to match…

What secret powers does Trail possess that he can tell, in an instant, that this is a queen, a “mother otter?”  I am so glad to be living in a palette of blues and greens (compared to Hell on earth at Lake Rhododendron) that I almost gave this a pass… but what, pray tell, is the tip-off??  Their eyes locked and in a moment they felt the connection that has been man-otter over the millennia… communicating in a way that make words obsolete, the Queen shared her deepest most inner thoughts with Trail… “Thank you kind sir, but what of my little one? We can’t leave the pup behind…”

And by the way, Rusty, the customary gesture to declare the presence of something off in the distance is the “finger point,” not the “hand wave…” or do you expect the pup to wave back??

And just in case you are wondering, cutebabyotters.com exists…

You’re in GOOD HANDS NOW…  and JUST IN TIME!! Did you see the white light?  Was the Father of All Otters calling you “home?”  Well, not so fast, little one, you have a date with DOC!  Doc, whose knowledge of animal physiology surpasses even the great Marlin Perkins of Wild Kingdom fame… “Just as the River Otter can find itself hobbled by an injury, so can you… that’s why you need Mutual of Omaha’s Platinum Disability Insurance… you can’t afford to be with out it…”

And oh, by the way…  about Mark’s fancy new ride…  I saw one on the road the other day- A Jeep Wrangler “Rubicon” in WHITE!  I stand Corrected!

…with this forked stick that just happens to be lying about…  Seriously.  If it wasn’t the crutch that Mark Fashioned for Wes out of non-existent tree branches high up on the mountain, Mark manages to find the perfect stick-pole with a notched end to use to keep the Otter from attacking while he frees it from the trap!

The look of terror on the Otter’s face suggests that they are sentient beings with the capacity for abstract thinking and self-awareness… So what must he be thinking while the man is hold his head underwater?  What if the otter is injured? Will “Doc” have to minister to him?  Will we name the otter only to have to return it to the wild?  Why do I care?

With Mark Trail assuming the “Naturalist crouch” position while looking for/ at animal tracks, forearms resting on quadriceps, wrists allowed to hang loose, he wonders aloud (the only way he can wonder) where have all the otters gone (Long time passing) Where have all the otters gone (long time ago…)  OK, arcane and obtuse Pete Seeger references aside, I think Rusty has stumbled onto the next potboiler:  Otters who apparently can’t swim… film at eleven.

The poor little scamp!  The look of panic on his (or her) face.  Coming up for air, gasping for the breath that stands between life and death… Whatever could be pulling him down?  OK, it’s pretty obvious, and I have to just lay out the coming plot for everyone involved:  Trappers, poaching on Lost Forest property, will meet their comeuppance once it is determined that they have picked the wrong Nature Writer to tangle with!

It does give one pause, though to think about how many little woodland creatures meet their demise in this way…  drowning so that a guy earning a subsistence living, selling pelts into the fur trade, can feed his brood back at the shack… But lest I sound critical, I know that this is how my forebears made their living back in the early 1800’s…