Doc

And it's a convertible no less ..... lol. That's a pretty funny picture.

I'm not familiar with the program you are talking about. Can you explain a bit if what it was about?

There are a lot of fruit growers that are super nervous tonight. They run the risk of losing everything, or at least having their crop harvest severely slashed. In fact some of the farmers that I have seen interviewed on the TV are already resigned to the fact that they are going to have a losing year. That includes fruit trees and grapes and I don't know what all. The health of the trees and plants/vines should be uneffected, but the fruit production will be screwed with this situation. My question is: is the acorn crop effected by frosts at this stage? Anybody know?

I've got an idea ......... have them wear rubber gloves. That way they don't have to touch the pork.

Lol .... it never hurts to leave a proper impression.

Ha-ha .... like I once heard someone ask, "When is the last time you were hired by a poor person?"

There is just plain nuthin better than rabbit!!!! Wine? ..... well, not so much. By the way that's a heck of a nice present he's giving you. Wait til he tells you that the cost you have to pay is to mow his lawn with it ..... lol.

It sure has been nice to be able to get out in short-sleeves and get work done early this year. I even was able to get that man-killer tiller out on the garden and get dragged around for a couple hours. I never realized just how bad a person's body can get beat up by such a small machine .... lol. Also, I noted that the weather guys around Rochester had a low temperature prediction of 22 degrees for next week. Isn't that nice? Now that the weird hot weather finally tempted the buds and blossoms out on the fruit trees, they're going to get slammed with a super-killing frost. Well, maybe the weather guys will be as screwed up on that prediction as they usually are on others.

I'm still waiting for the fire-storm of protest from the mainstream media on this distruction of the 1st amendment. Basically this is the only place where I have heard mention of it.

Not wanting to stray too far off topic, but I have to say, what bothers me the most is that I wonder if the DEC even has the resources to do a proper study. And if they do, do they have the resources to do anything about what they find? I know the department has been heavily stripped of their budget. Has the state government finally gone to the point where the DEC couldn't respond to a species emergency if they had to? It's these little situations that hide in the background while everyone focuses on the deer herd that makes you wonder if they have been stripped beyond the point of performing their full mandates.

The best quote from the article was the questions asked at the end of it. I wonder how each of us would answer that. My wife is from the old-school and still puts up food every year from the garden and other sources. We do have a pantry, and it is stuffed with all kinds of things. She keeps the freezer filled. So I guess my answer to the author's questions would be measured more in months than days or weeks. If we had to be very careful about consumption, I am confident that we could go at least a half a year without going to a store. Let's hope that we never have to put that to a test, but it is an interesting question.

When we were first married, my wife used to run the trapline for me during the week. I was working some heavy overtime back then, and couldn't handle a line that size during the week. This involved about a 2 mile walk some of which was a pretty steep climb, and then some mucking around over in the swamp. Rather than seeing me shut down the line, she volunteered to help during the week. To me that was going way above the call of duty.

Sometimes these people are the best advocates for gun ownership when they continue to spout ridiculous things as this lady does. Is there any way that anyone could confuse this congresswoman with a rational, thinking, person? I never heard such ridiculous, disjointed, babbling in all my life ..... lol.

Actually, you never will know that the deer died of the wound from your shot. I'm sure that in the weeks that followed, he came in front of a lot of other hunters and maybe even a car or two. Last year, I finished off a buck that I know would not have made it through the winter, and I don't believe that his misery had anything to do with hunting. His hind quarters were chewed up and missing a lot of meat. There are a lot of nasty ways for a deer (or any critter) to meet his end and they are not always the result of things that we do. I wouldn't be too quick to accept blame for this guy's end. Your assumption may very well be correct, but you will never know for sure.

And yet I have watched some bucks with rather impressive racks, flat-out run crosswise to the rows of a vinyard and never once get snagged up in the wires or the vines. How the heck do they do that, and then pull some of these bonehead stunts with "spikey" fences and american wire fences and forked branches in trees?

As far as me being a psychologist or a psychiatrist, I never have claimed to be one and your whole discussion of those careers makes absolutely no sense and has no relevancy other than just a random pointless attack. But, I will point out that at least I do know how to spell those terms as opposed to some that claim to be loosely related to those fields ..... lol. My reaction to the use of a shotgun, is because I have seen the mess that is made with a shotgun. It is extreme! As far as how deficient the pistol permitting system is in terms of keeping guns out of the hands of the insane, this case points that out very nicely. In fact it would appear that the insane get a free pass from any kind of special attention in terms of gun control legislation. And yet let a post office worker go berserk or some deranged person camp out in a university tower sniping at people, or let someone step into a McDonalds and start spraying bullets around, and yes ..... let a mentally disturbed mother blow away her child and a house-guest with multiple shots from a shotgun, and you can expect another round of renewed calls for more gun ownership restrictions, generally aimed at the average Joe Gunowner. Now, whether you like it or not, when these things happen, these are the natural kinds of thoughts that come to mind with anybody that has any kind of inquisitive mind. I simply stated what I was thinking. So if you feel that posting those opinions is reason enough to go on the attack mode ..... knock your socks off. Maybe you have a reason for taking those kinds of thoughts so personally....lol.

I can't see close enough to tell whether these have thorns on them or not. But from the general shape and color of them I would say it is something we call thornapple (hawthorne I believe). If that's what it is they should have thorns on them that are about 1 to 2 inches long and sharp as needles.

And yet the proponents of pistol permits always point to the insane obtaining firearms as a good reason to expand the restrictions of the permitting system. I agree, there is no way to exclude the insane unless they are actively being treated for violent mental episodes or have some documented history of violent incidents. And yet gun control advocates use the insanity style killings as fuel for further gun controls. This incident shows that the permits will not deter gun murders by those who are wacko. That was my point.

Just a couple of comments First of all, what kind of a wacked out maniac does it take to use a shotgun on another person, especially family members? We all know what a messy and grotesque wound a shotgun makes, and pretty much represents a form of excessive, intentional, "overkill". Second, it is interesting to know what a wonderful job the NYS pistol permitting system does as far as denying these kinds of wackos permits to carry a pistol. They stated that both had received pistol permits this past September. If the permit system does not detect this kind of mentally deficient applicant, then what good is the system. Yes, it was a shotgun used, and there is no permitting system for long-guns, but my point is that requiring extensive background checks and jumping through hoops to obtain a pistol permit is supposed to weed out the insane. Worked pretty well in this case didn't it?

When you mention a 5' tiller, I am picturing a unit mounted on a three-point hitch on a small ag tractor. Those things can churn up some ground pretty fast and pretty thoroughly. However it does depend on the ground being worked. Is it ground that has previously been worked or is it something you have hacked out of a brush-lot or woods. Stumps? Rocks? standing water? That all makes a difference as to what you should be using. Hand tiller? - one acre?.....forget it.

Ok, so if you insist, I am shooting the messenger .... lol. I have to say that socialists are not my favorite people and I am not one that is known to hang around their web-site. And just like communists, I have a natural distrust of those people who affiliate themselves with that particular idealogy. So if all that boils down to "shooting the messenger" ....... well, guilty as charged. As far as the actual impact of this law on the 1st amendment, I suppose we can make as much of it as we want and inflate the importance of it to whatever level satisfies us. I just can't get all that excited over it. It may just be that some of these wandering shreds of human debris (to borrow a Limbaugh term .....lol) may be a bit inconvenienced occasionally. I know it's real tough on them, but let's face it, even the first amendment has historically had some legal boundaries. That is one amendment that has been stretched beyond all recognition by the leftists and yet even today, it is not without limits.

I will not say that occasionally the Socialists don't stumble on to the truth when it suits them, but I do say that it is probably not my favorite source of info and always comes with the red flag of required special scrutiny. I guess I have a personal bias against spending a lot of time on their sites since these people have a political leaning that is about as far left as you can get. I don't shoot the messenger ... I simply choose a different, more reliable messenger. However, I think I have a sense of what is bothering people and I still have to say that it sounds like a tempest in a teapot. When I consider all the real serious incursions of government on our lives, this one is simply a small blip on the radar. There are a lot of changes that we are seeing in the name of "homeland security". Some we may agree with and some we may not. Some we may accept and most that we wish were not necessary. One thing we have to acknowledge is that this has become a dangerous world with our legislators wearing a sizeable target on their backs ..... literally. And while a lot of time has passed, and we may be already forgetting the resolve of our enemies (external and internal) that are constantly looking to upset our way of life, I think there may be something that all those legislators saw (except for 3 of them) that may make this legislation a lot more reasonable than some would paint it. Had the vote been a lot closer, perhaps I would be a bit more concerned ...... but it wasn't.

So how did your hunt come out? ......any luck?

Hunting report please.

Sure, there is hypocracy all around us. Along with that hypocracy is the illusion that some have that such views make them somehow superior to the un-evolved masses. I guess that all kind of goes along with having a society, and the natural behavior of those that live within that society. I generally try to simply shrug that sort of silly behavior and mentality off, and write it all off as merely "whatever gets them through the day". When these people begin to feel the need to become aggressive or militant about those kinds of views, that's when I get a bit excited and involved.