Doc

Great video!

To me, hunting is a natural human act that I never apologize for or feel bad about in any fashion. I don't spend a lot of time feeling anything but joy at success. If I begin to humanize the lives of my prey, the whole activity would simply stop. I don't do anything that makes me feel bad or feel remorse or any negative emotions. I guess the lessons that Walt Disney tried to instill into us just didn't take with me. By the way I don't hunt out of hate either, so I have no vendetta against coyotes or foxes or any other predatory wild critter. But if they can supply a challenge (and they definitely do), I will take them out too. My motivations for hunting is my genetic natural instincts as a predator. The thrill of the chase, and yes the finality of the kill are all part of what I do. It is something that I am quite honest about. I do not practice any form of "catch and release" hunting, and I go out with the intention of producing a kill. It is what is expected. It is what is wanted. And I do not become involved with any sort of negative emotions over it either.

I usually take a $20 bill, and bet a max of ten cents per spin, and I can get 2 hours of play with those limitations. Sometimes I win. Most times it is just paying to play their machines. $10/Hr isn't too terrible for recreation these days. The problem is that they are pushing me out by elevating the minimum cost per spin to over my limit of $.10 cents. Yes, they call them penny machines, but they set the lower limit well above that. So the quantity of machines available for me to play gets to be fewer and fewer every time I go.

I have my rifles zeroed in at 100 yards. That's the max distance of my target range where I can set them up off the bags and bench.

Ok, I guess I can see the benefits. It would be a whole lot more important to me if I had one years ago at the beginning of my gun collections. Right now, I pretty much have what I want and need so the most important benefit of caliber change is unimportant to me. But I can see where others might be attracted to the economy of it all.

That is exactly right. When we pay others to do the killing for us, we don't have to confront the fact that something had to die so that we could live. But we suffer all kinds of mental trauma when we actually do the job ourselves. Personally, I don't bother wasting emotions on my food. Yes, I saw that episode of Alaska the Last Frontier where Otto was almost brought to tears because it was time to butcher one of his cows, so he made his kid do it. I guess we can't help but feel whatever it is that we feel when it comes to taking a life. But that whole process is part of life. For those that have tears well up when their deer flops over, just think about the alternative ways that that critter would have surely died. It could have slowly starved to death (the normal eventual end for deer), or been ripped apart by coyotes, one bite at a time over several miles of being chased. There are also some rather nasty diseases that are kind of lingering and torturous. One thing that is pretty certain is that they will not peacefully pass away in their sleep, dying of old age. So if you need to feel something, consider that you are likely providing a rather humane end to their life that they would otherwise never get. A well placed bullet or arrow likely is a kinder end than the alternatives. If you need to feel bad, save that for when you screw up the shot and cause a lingering wound (lethal or not). Now that's something to feel bad about.

I hate to sound ignorant, but I am curious as to what the attraction to the AR style rifle is. I know they have become wildly popular, but I am curious as to what the appeal is. Is it a styling attraction, or are there more practical reasons for the popularity? I am more of a fan of traditional rifles that have the nice wood stocks as far as appearance features, but perhaps there are more useful features of the ARs that I am not aware of.

Red Lobster gets the nod for Valentines Day. No gifts, just a big stuffed and happy belly.

Ha-ha.... When I was a kid I never watched fishing shows. I just grabbed my old taped together rod with the old level-wind reel and went across the road to the creek and fished for creek chubs and horned-daces. We weren't watchers. We were "doers".

Lol..... and yet it doesn't happen very often that we feel any sorrow when we munch into that tasty veal cutlet or those great lamb chops. And how about that 2" thick prime rib at the steak house. It only seems to happen with deer. Why is that?

The great myth about retirement is that you are always free to stay home when bad weather comes. It is almost guaranteed that some important appointment will be scheduled for that day. Yesterday was no exception. Of course I had to meet with my financial advisor. If it hadn't have been that, it would have been a doctor's appointment or some other thing that just had to be taken care of. But actually, this was a piece of cake. Looking back over the years, when I think of some of the days that I drove my 40 miles to work, this "storm" was just a very minor inconvenience. I can remember some very harrowing drives. some where I had to guide myself along by looking above the whiteouts at the tops of the electric poles just to stay on the road.

The thing is that the hunt is not successfully completed until the prey is dead. There is no catch and release in hunting....lol. Yes, the chase or pursuit and preparation and scheming and the experience of the other interactions with nature and wild things that you see while hunting are all positive experiences of hunting. But the finality of the death of the prey is the end game.

You can hunt with just a camera and it doesn't involve killing. Every aspect of hunting can be duplicated without the killing. And yet that isn't the way we do it. The kill does add to the experience in some way. And, I am not just talking about the food motivation either. I have never eaten a woodchuck or a fox or a coyote or a crow or a rat at the dump.

I think if we were all to be honest, we can all remember when as youngsters we did things that clearly demonstrated our lack of maturity. And that irresponsibility multiplied as the number of participating kids increased. I know that I and my two buddies were a holy terror on the woods when we all got together. We only had one rifle between all of us, but we all did plenty of shooting, and it was not always under the most safe conditions or procedures. There always seems to be a feeling of invincibility that goes along with being young.

My daydreaming right now is fixated on sitting along a nice warm stream-bank trying to catch some fish. I've had enough of the cold-weather activities for this year. I'm suffering from a bad case of cabin fever from being locked in the house by the cold weather. A little bow shooting in the basement, but really, I'm ready for summer.

It's interesting that even though the fox was pretty much being bested by the fisher, toward the end when the fisher backed off, it was the fox that aggressively pursued the fisher. That doesn't show a whole lot of intelligence on the fox's part, but he sure does have a lot of heart.....lol.

It's not something that very many people are willing to admit, but man is a natural predator. And that predation is not always motivated by hunger.

Wow! That's hard to watch.

Back when I was a youngster and ran a pretty substantial trapline, it was the latest issue of Fur-Fish-Game that I used to eagerly await every month. I remember all those advertisements for the Harding trapping books that they advertised. At one time I think I had them all. And then of course the ads in the back were always trying to hook people into raising chinchillas for huge profits .... lol. How to raise quail, pheasants, rabbits, etc. And then there was the course that taught you taxidermy .... another get-rich-quick deal. And of course I was always looking for bargains on traps, scents, urine, lure, and all kinds of other trapping accessories. They used to have a lot more trapping articles than they do now. But anyway, that was my wish book back in the early years. I still pick up a copy off the magazine rack when I run into it.

Are spike-strips legal? That does kind of sound like a stupid question, but there are more laws than anyone can ever hope to keep up with these days. And then there is the situation where somebody steps on it and puts a spike through their foot ...... even trespassers. Can you be held liable for personal injury?

Lexi looks exactly the same as our last cat, Raisin. We had to put her down not too long ago, so I know what you are going through. It seems weird not to have her around.

Those guys are good!

What the hell are all these weird words? ROKU and FireStick JailBreak ?...... Huh? All I want to do is turn the damn TV on and watch a program, not start another college education.....lol. Things are getting out of control.

Yeah, I guess I do kind of think that just as the laws controlling the age level and training keeps 99% ( number made up) of the 12 year olds from hopping in the family car and motoring down the road, most laws do work.

What a battle it must have been getting him up through that little hole....lol.