A mystery oak at Paint Rock has flummoxed taxonomists, so the nation’s top oak genome researchers have agreed to help out. But how to get leaves out of a tree 90 feet tall? Bill had to shoot the samples down with a pheasant load in his 20 gauge. And yes, he shoots almost straight up. He can hit the small branches, but often it takes a bit of rattling or a fortunate wind when the sample gets hung in lower limbs. They’re being packaged up for Amanda Wu, who will do the testing for us in her lab in St. Louis, MO.
