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I think you hang all the chicks on a line and the ones that are better hung are the males..

i have 2 tenants that are on section 8, they both get help with the rent. my one tenant takes full advantage of every program that she can. She gets help with her rge from heap, she gets help with her co pays on her meds. she also now has a free cell phone some how that she doesn't pay for. plus she has one of her own already. she is a smoker and a drinker. 2 yrs ago she was able to get a new car and now she is talking about buying the house because she is getting some kind of settlement. she will be "poor" after buying house so there are programs that will help with work on the house. like siding and fix garage for her so she says. I know i should be grateful that my mortgage is being paid for but hell, i would love to have a free cell phone and help with my bills. seems like welfare is backwards, it should be for the hard working people who help themselves not the other way. we should be rewarded someway. but i also don't see anything wrong with getting help if its needed for a short period not years, i think that hurts them in the long run they only become lazy and will only fight for their place in line to hand in the paper work not fight for a job and be proud of what they have earned on their own.

In way of introduction, since I don’t remember if I did when I did, so I’ll end this year with some and start the New Year with some more Where to begin, I’ll begin in the middle and give the younger folks some color on what it was like downstate back in time. Then I’ll get into how our club was formed and the risks my father’s city-folk generation took to be able to hunt their own land. This is back before the Thruway and the Quick way (New Rt 17) were built, there was no Verrazano Bridge and part of the Belt Parkway were not yet completed. I grew up just off the water in Jamaica Bay. Back then Howard Beach was a lot of weeded lots and sparse houses. Behind what we called Rockwood Park, now New Howard Beach, was nothing but weeds and cattails as far as the eye could see. It became Spring Creek Preserve and then part of Gateway National Park. We crabbed and fluked in summer, selling softshells crabs to the restaurants. It was neo-Huck Finn childhood living. No one knew where we were, we walked to the North Channel Bridge to fish, chased rabbits with bow & arrow, caught sea gulls by hand: we just rambled about all over the place without a care. Got into plenty of trouble, got banged up and bruised more than once but, every woman was your mother and every man was your father so we had plenty of eyes on us even if we didn’t know it. The rain puddles at Aquaduct Race Track held tadpoles so, we would catch them and raise them into frogs and let them go. Garter snakes were easy to catch and my neighbors raised ducks and chickens. Crossbay Blvd was a string of clam bars, Sonny’s the best, Big Bow Wow drive-in, Trampoline World, archery range, go carts and rides. The drive to Rockaway Beach was always ended with a stop at Weiss’ for hot dogs in Broad Channel. My father was a big duck hunter in the Bay back then and had a friend who lived in a house in the back in now Gateway. Now his friend’s father-in-law was a Russian immigrant. How he came to Queens I don’t know but, in any event as the story was told, he built this house out in the weeds and a small farm around it. The husband Frank would hunt right around the property. As told, he knew his hunting days there were over when he shot his last pheasant and it landed on the Belt Parkway. Anyway, one day a guy knocks on the door and tells them they are living on government land. They lived there for years, had regular mail delivery but, no one knew the old man just picked an empty patch of land and built on it without any say-so. So they got tossed off and moved up outside East Chatam. Frank was a gov’t surveyor. So he worked places like Pt Barrow, Alaska in summer and had the winter off. I spent two weeks in summer at their farm helping with chores as he was away. Cutting weeds, fixing wire fences, feeding the stock, catching catfish and so on. In fall we would go up for a few days and help slaughter and butcher the pigs. In the early sixties, Long Island being a network of duck farms and potato fields, we used to go hunt squirrels in what is now Smithtown. After the war, and before I was born, my father and his friends hunted wherever they could without getting thrown off. Having no land, they started on state land but it was too crowded and too dangerous with the population of idiots all over the land. They decided that the only way they could hunt was to get their own land. In 1946 a dozen of them got together with a lawyer and incorporated a rod & gun club. But, they still needed land and this took brass balls. Twelve guys with young families, scraping by after the war are about to mortgage themselves for a hunting club. Imagine telling your wife this.

I know I am, cant wait to get out there !!!!

As a christian it pains me to see what welfare is doing to a whole segment of society. And it makes me mad as hell that people think that they are being compationate by being an enabler. Did any of you left leaners ever raise a child. You don't give without expectations of people. That produces dependence and un-greatfulness. Even Jesus who gave his life so that we could spend eternity with Him asked us to do something for this free gift. Believe in Him and Repent. The liberal policies of the past 60yrs. have created a whole society of people enslaved to them and their views. At first it was embarrassing to except the assistance, then it was excepted under the compation montra, and now it has been perfected by this generation as a way of life and a right as a citizen. How sad that all these children growing up in this way of life will never know the joy of accomplishing great things. The joy of making and producing something with their brains and bare hands, or of giving back to people in need because they now have more than they need. Liberal welfare in the form we know today is nothing short of criminal in what it has done to these people. I am sad when i think of what their lives could have been like had liberalism simply been made illegal or classified publicly for what it truelly is.. A clinical mental disorder..

It's one of the simple ways to make some of us Greeks sound more intelligent.

yes this area in 4r and 4g where I hunt looks very squachtee. No wonder theres no deer! I saw that episode because they said was the catskills- it wasnt. The next time I have someone encroach on me in public land before light Im gonna smack a tree acouple times and then howl like a baboon.

Sounds like a great morning! Glad someone is hunting!

Been on ancestry again, traced the Sinclair side of the family back to the 1600's with help from a third cousin's family tree site. Anyway I am descended from James Sinclair, the third Earl of Murkle, Scotland. You may address me as Your Highness, the 42nd Earl of Murkle from now on. When I was 11, my father took me deer hunting or the first time. He could never get off for opening week because he worked as a dispatcher for an oil company, wrong carreer for a deer hunter. My brothers were tinsmiths so they got up every opening week and killed regularly, believe it or not, my father never shot a deer in 25 years! Thruth be told, you don't have a chance when 1) you work 6 days a week and night jobs off the books fixing burners and are so tired you fall asleep as soon as you sit down & 2) you have a string of 12 year-olds that tag along all the time. So when I was 11, he took me & my brother John who was 15 up Thanksgiving weekend 1964. The club was still two rooms and an outhouse so we made out as best we could with guys sleeping on the floor and all. As the new kid on the block the 1st generation all took good care of me. I got books to read and extra clothes and best of all they let me sleep in one of the 4 bunks. Breakfast was tough, some of teh guys went down to the Robin Hood but as New 17 wasn't built, they would line up 33 deep behind a stool at the counter. Forget getting a table. Hunting was cold and wet but I saw my first deer in season close up. I was sitting against a tree facing uphill with my brother Pat facing downhill. Bored to tears I'm studying the nuances of the tips of my boots. As I brought my eyes up. there were eight hoofs about 30 feet in front of me. I couldn't believe it, two does had snuck in on me, they were the best thing I'd ever seen. Someone pushed them and they were out of breath and steaming when they exhaled in the cold. I nudged Pat & he turned around slowly with binoculars and got the shock of his life! All he saw was deer face they were so close. That year we went to the Parksville Diner for dinner. A tin WWII surplus quanset hut fitted with a kitchen and tables. Across from the Mobil station, next to the ice cream stand and the foot-long hotdog place. Food was good as always, interesting reading taped to the walls. Trapping regulations, photographs and newspaper clippings from the 40's. '65 we went up and my brother John was now 16 and had taken a button buck opening week. So John was off on his own trying to fill his buck tag and me & the old man went to take a sit. Over by the old bridge that we would later use to frame the bathroom, we sat side by side under a pine tree and he slid the Winchester 94 onto my lap and said " make sure it has horns and kick me before you pull the trigger" and he was out like a light. On the drive to the club, passed Kings on Old 17, turn onto Beaverkill Road at Deckertown and you passed or had to stop at Bob Darbee's Sport Shop. Bob had the shop and his brother had Darbee's Fly Shop in Roscoe. The best hand tied trout flies on the east coast .Bob was an interesting guy, WWII or Korea vet who had been shot in the shoulder so, he used a 257 Roberts because of the light recoil. An avid reader, his house was a library, actually like a library with floor to ceiling books. The shop consisted of the bait shed out front and the main store in the back. If any of you were ever in the bait shed, on the wall above the counter was a rattlesnake skin mount that was about 6' long. One day we were in there and someone asked Bob if that snake was taken locally, Bob said yes and that there were plenty of rattlers around. Never one to be chatty, Bob only really spoke when spoken to. A real nice quite gentlemen but full of knowledge. Another time we were in and showing interest in the snake and Bob said Oh, take a look at these. He's got a box full of small and average sized snake skins. We all got the creeps. Bad enough we heard of one huge snake but now they must be everywhere. Sure I'd seen tons of snakes around the property but never a rattle snake. Finally, it comes out, the 800 pound gorilla in the room, it had to be asked...Bob, where do they get these snakes around here? And you could here a pin drop at the answer. Bob says: Well you know the rock and shale ledges on your property, well every spring we go up there and catch the snakes sunning on the rocks. WTF!!!!!! We sit on those ledges and hunt, we pick Princess Pine on those ledges for gardens!!! Its a freakin' snake den. Needless to say, I never went to the ledges in spring, never want to see a snake, would be happy to be ingnorant of the whole situation.............just like the rest of the members of the club ...........because we never told them! LMAO!!! Someone's gonna sh*t themselves in turkey season.

Seven days to catch a cold, seven days to have a cold, seven days to get over a cold. My nose is running like a faucet The best part of being in a club like this is you were first taught by the original members, then you came of age with the second generation. We all grew up together, saw each other at meetings and work weekends, got or licenses around the same times and are now watching the third and fourth generations take over. The forst of the fourth generation saw his first kill with his grandfather in muzzleloader this year. as kids we would use teh club as our vacation home in summer and when we were old enough the four brothers would go up Easter weekend and get hot cross buns at Hoo's Backery in the Manor. Livingston Manor back then was memorable for Art's Blue Room, the Manor Theater where we saw Bambi one opening weekend and Doctor Zhivago one freezing, snowy opening week. The Cigar Store was a combo ice cream parlor, pharmacy, cigar store that had rifles and ammunition behind the counter. the General Store had everything including saddles that were turn of the century, the hotel was a relic from the 1800's, Hoo's Bakery and a liquor store. That's what was memorable. Oh and the Robin Hood Diner which was a gold mine until new 17 was built and by-passed the town. The four of us hunted small game, deer, fished the lakes and just went up to shoot. Tobbaggoning was done in the neighdor's fields on Lincoln and Washinton's Birthday..when there was a Lincoln and Washington's Birthday.

Sorry for the break, I got side tracked on Ancestry. Found my mother's family back to 1822 in Ireland. My Great Grandfather died in the British army in Flanders in 1914. The interesting thing is that while he was in Flanders, my father's brother lied about his age and enlisted in 1916 and was gassed in the trenches in France. War plays a big part in our lives..and in the life of the gun club. At the end of Korea, the club founders had land but no house. Back in that time, everyone was in a trade and they did things themselves. One of the members being a supply seargant in WWII had connections. In Canarsie, what used to be the site of Canarsie Market, the army still had buildings from the war. They were going to trash them. The club got hold of a 2 room officers quarters building and had it disassembled and trucked upstate. There they put it back together. Before they could set it, they had to fell the trees and set stumps as the supports. The people along the road had been there from the 1800's. Momma and her 6 sons and their families. People were social back then and when they heard the guys were up working they stopped for a visit. They came across a dozen city-folk huffing and puffing on a two-man buck saw left by the loggers. One of the local brothers stepped in and single-handed cut all the trees and set the supports. Hard people they were. But, hunting wasn't much improved. The one room was a kitchen without running water. The junior members job was K.P. and hauling water in a beer keg from the spring about 100 yards to the house. The toilet was an outhouse about 40 yards away. The main room had two sets of bunks and a fold-out double bed. Heat was a pot-belly wood stove. There was no front porch, just steps up to the door. Teh power company set a pole and we got electric and phone service. And it hunted a dozen men and their kids. Later a bunkroom and burner room was added across the back of the house with 18 bunks. A wrap around porch was added. And in about 1963, my father had me & my brother, all of like 9 and 13, pull nails and timbers from a broken down wagon bridge and we salvaged that to frame the base of a bathroom. Other than the framing and siding for the bunkroom, everything was done themselves. They'd commit to weekends of just plain labor for what they wanted. Water was then piped to the house from 2 55 gallon drums sunk in the spring as a cistern with a pump that pushed water thru PVC to the house. In the post war years no one bought their kids new clothes, especially hunting clothes. My brother got my uncle's Woolrich pants, so old they had laces up the calves to tighten them, and an older brother's Woolrich coat. I got my brothers WWII air corp wool flyers pants and someone else's coat. And so it went on. When one kid out-grew something their was always someone in line to take them. I think I was the first person in ages to buy new Woolrich clothes in 1968. We grew up with military surplus. Jap rifles, Mausers, German Helmets, U.S helments, M1 carbines or Garands. Every house had them in Howard Beach. I went to high school in my uncle's Ike Jacket, that was cool back then. And the rifles at the club were all top shelf, Model 70's, Savage 99's, Winchesters and they were all pre-64 because it wasn't even 1964 yet. My brother got his first Savage in a gun shop on 101st Avenue across from what would be John Gottis Social Club. And, he paid the whopping sum of $75.00. And that was bucks for a gun back then.

Hope the picture took