Bill's Blog: Hunter's Moon
FAYETTEVILLE — Officially, tonight is the Hunter’s Moon. That’s the first full moon after the Harvest Moon during the fall. It comes at a very key moment in the Razorbacks’ season.
A very hungry Hog takes the field early Saturday morning at 11:21 a.m. for the SEC Network televised game with Ole Miss. A reminder: Coach Bobby Petrino has asked you all to get up early and get to the game early. Tongue in cheek at his radio show Wednesday he suggested 4 a.m. I’ll just say the gates open at 9:20 a.m. and let’s rustle up some breakfast tailgates.
After last week’s game at Auburn, the Razorbacks are highly focused and pretty clear about what lies in front of them. Again, a Petrino quote from Monday that the team has ripped the rear view mirror off and looking ahead.
That would be at a bunch of Rebel Black Bears crossing the Mississippi River with similar intent.
How appropriate that one of the brightest full moons of the year accompany the campouts of the students waiting for the front row seats tonight along Stadium Drive? The Hunter’s Moon getting its label from the olden days when after the harvest was in, the bright, high moon in the autumn sky leading the way for hunters pursuing prey.
With the change at Ole Miss announced this fall, it’s not man versus beast anymore — it’s wild boar after black bear. Now the Tusks have ruled as Arkansas’ mascot with a kinder, gentler demeanor. We don’t have to go back far to recall the Razorback mascots that have broken lose from pens and gone on marauding rampages across the north Arkansas country side. Doesn’t take a lot for one to imagine Ragnar’s tirade — reportedly a coyote, a 450-pound domestic pig and seven rattlesnakes — to have included another Arkansas native, a small black bear. Ragnar died in 1978 of unknown causes.
Keep in mind that early Saturday morning, rustling in his pen and then driving north in his trailer, Tusk will be traveling under that Hunter’s Moon. He’ll be ready along with the Razorbacks for that 11:21 start — not many hours after the moon set at sunrise.
We’re counting on you, too.
FALL MEANS BALL: While both teams started practice earlier in October, when the leaves begin to turn it’s time to start thinking about basketball. Both men’s and women’s teams are on the court tonight for the annual Red-White Game at 7:30 p.m. at Walton Arena. Fans are encouraged to get a preview of the squads and admission is free. If you can’t be there, we will have an interactive blog tonight provided by our respective hoop contacts, Jeri Thorpe and Phil Pierce.
TWITTIX TONIGHT AT RED-WHITE: The two seats for Ole Miss football are up on the Twitter feed @ArkRazorbacks today. One lucky fan wins them if they have retweeted our Follow Friday message, gotten at least one friend to become a new follower of @ArkRazorbacks and then brought the evidence of your work on your mobile to the game at Bud Walton Arena tonight. Look for me near the south entrance around 7:30 p.m. Tiebreaker tonight — how many friends did you get to follow us today?
LIVE BLOG TOMORROW: Early start at around 9:30 a.m.
STREAMING, TV HEADS-UP: We will stream halftime and the band performance live on ArkansasRazorbacks.com for the first time, and it will be free as we are testing the ability to do so in advance of next Saturday’s Homecoming game. TV for the game is SEC Network — that means you need to check your local listings for availability. It is down for ESPN3 to stream. Next week we are on Fox Sports, and sorry if the conflict is still on-going for Dish Network users. Fox and Dish as of this week were still at odds over renewal of channels. That’s not UA or SEC — it is between the two providers.
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE: Thursday night at the soccer senior night, I noticed the full moon was poised for the weekend, and our photographer Wesley Hitt got the image that is attached to the page here. Wesley does a great job for us, and you may have noticed a lot of his shots are available on the website through the photo store. A great holiday gift — I might add. So I had something in mind for today’s blog about a full moon and the weekend events, but today our campus NPR station, KUAF, had a nice Earth and Sky piece in with the daily Ozarks At Large segment. It was all about — yep — Hunter’s Moon, and it explained why last night, tonight and Saturday’s full moon is so bright and illuminating (this is one of the highest apogee full moons of the year in north America for all you science geeks like myself). I bring that up (full disclosure, I do some historical pieces for Ozarks) because KUAF does a really great job with its local programing like Ozarks and this is THAT time of year for KUAF’s fund drive. Least I could do for a fellow campus group that helped this week’s blog than to give them a quick mention as well.
Download: OleMiss-Arkansas Flip Card.pdf
