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That is pretty much true of the current lineup that is being aired these days, I have tried to watch them but they just can't hold my interest and are just plain crap for the most part to me. The best outdoor shows ever produced were the old American Sportsman Show on ABC hosted by Curt Gowdy. ESPN Outdoors had several shows which aired on the weekends that were very well done. Of course when one of the biggest animal rights outfits on the planet ("Disney") purchased ABC and ESPN that was the end of the line those shows. The Nashville Network ("TNN") had some really good shows on the weekend also, everything went downhill there when taken over and renamed "Spike". The Old Outdoor Life channel aired my all time favorite show "Hunting With Hank" is long gone. Unlike "animal rights Disney" which will not release any of the American Sportsman Shows on DVD I got to purchase all the old Hunting With Hank Shows. Comparing what is shown today as a hunting show and what was shown on those old classics listed above, well there is no comparison! Al

While I can certainly could get by with just one knife from woods to freezer I prefer knives to suit the situation at hand. For field dressing deer I want fairly compact and light, my favorite for many years has been an old American made 2 blade "Western" folding pocket knife with clip-toothpick type blades, I use the same blade style in a smaller version knives for small game that many may call a muskrat, skinned out many a coon in the woods with those and the bird hook style for birds in the field. They all have the same blade shape as a common denominator and I have have found it to be one of those blade designs that is about perfect for that type of work. There are plenty of makers and sources at fairly modest prices for those types and choosing a good USA made model you should not go wrong. For butchering I have been using one of those reasonable priced and decent quality wise "Outdoor Edge" sets that do a very good job as long as they are kept sharp same as with any knife. Al Old Western Pocket Knife

Over the summer I helped a buddy customize his new S&W Victory 22 pistol, I also did a build up on a Ruger 10/22. On both firearms I went with a custom parts outfit named Tandemkross for parts upgrades, they produce a myriad parts for various rimfire firearms that increase reliability and accuracy. When doing gun work as the old saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words making disassembly and assembly of gun so much easier and in this era of you-tube videos doing work on your own firearms has never been easier to accomplish. Tandemkross has made thing great for installation of their parts by producing their own videos and recruiting the Collier Gun Girls to show how installations are done. Faith and Jenna Collier are two young competitive shooters from Texas who not only do Tandemkross videos but other shooting videos on their own you tube channel. These two gals are not even in their teens yet but have amazed me with their knowledge and I am not easily impressed but these little girls have blown me away. Watching their videos have made parts installations a snap and the Tandemkross parts make some significant improvements on the firearms they were installed on. So if anyone is looking to do some in home custom work on their Ruger or S&W rimfires checkout the Tandemkross outfit along with the Collier Gun Girls and make it easy on yourself. Check out the example below. Al

This kind of crap is completely predictable, you will have media, animal rights activists and anti hunters coming out of the woodwork on a deal like this, they relish and use the opportunity to punish all hunters because of the actions of one. How about by just making Tonka's Law a law against shooting dogs while hunting and "EMPHASIZE" that law in both hunter's education classes and in all state regulation books as so there is "NO DOUBT" about it. Make the penalty for someone that defies that law so severe that it will never be worth any hunter's while to ever shoot a dog because of the consequences! Those hunters that are dumb enough to shoot someone's pet or hunting dog should face the full music of that law! Al

A worthwhile investment for sure, I invested in a generator after a two day power outage about 15 years ago in the winter. I have not had to use it a whole lot but this summer the power has been down more that usual and it has been fired up four different times. This last storm did not cause any loss of power for me but it did bring down the biggest white pine in my front yard, about a seventy five footer, and of course it had to fall on my pasture fence, a big time mess. I now get to use some of my other good investments like my tractor and loader, dump trailer and chains saws. Al

It was the "hot core" Speer 105 gr spitzer which is probably not even being produced today, I am an old goat and loaded those bullets back in the late 60s early 70s. Al

I like Ruger 77s myself especially the older tang safety models, the old tang safety Ultra Light is a fine handling easy carry rifle. I think both Ruger rifles you mention would work well at moderate ranges in the woods. I have zero experience with the 260 Rem but I do believe it to be a top notch medium game cartridge. As for the 243 I have owned several and also one 6 mm Remington which is pretty much the same. I killed more woodchucks and crows than anything with those rifles but did take a half dozen or so Deer and can tell you none went very far especially when I went to the 95 gr Nosler Partitions. I did take one with a 105 gr Speer and while it pretty much dropped where it stood I did not like the fact that the bullet shed the jacket. So to be honest I do not think a Deer would notice too much the difference from being shot by the 16.5 inch barreled 260 Remington or your current 20 inch 243 Winchester as long as you are firing well made bullets at moderate ranges, they both are time proven cartridges that are able to do the job. Now when you start talking a possible 300 yard shot personally I leave the short barreled rifles home and carry a more all around firearm. I know under the right condition even a handgun can make a long shot but I try to match my firearm to be best suited to the cover and all the possible range tasks at hand I may be faced with. Light bolt action sporters with 22 inch barrels weighing under 7 pounds handle pretty darn good and chambered in something like 280 Remington or 270 Winchester they will easily make long shots with good ammo and a confident and competent shooter pulling the trigger. Al

69 years next month and glad to have lived in the time period I have been on this earth. Al

Camo wetsuit will keep you dry and warm and ought to be quiet too LOL! Al

Hey Dan I have noticed we have had quite a few things in common. No I do not eat Chipmunks, normally that is! I say that because I did go on a Squirrel hunt one time with a bunch of friends and we decided to take not only Grey Squirrels but also Reds and Chipmunks just see see if they were edible. If I remember right everything was par boiled and then soaked in buttermilk and breaded then deep fried. Some stew was also made. I have to say the Chipmunks and Red Squirrels were every bit as tasty as the Greys and really the only way I could tell the difference in what type of animal I was eating was the size. Below is the Savage model 24 Noah used, an older side button model I picked up at the Syracuse Gun Show some years ago, I had the barrels dura-coated and I refinished the walnut stock and installed some sling studs. Because of the versatility and ability to handle different hunting situations it is one of my favorite small game firearms to take a walk with. Al

Ultimately it is always about shot placement and when you have a gun you shoot well and have confidence in that is a tough combo to beat. Many moons ago I killed my first Buck with a 222 Remington, you do your part and I am sure those Noslers will do theirs. Al

Took my really pumped up grandson Noah out for his first squirrel hunt this morning using my old Savage 24 combo 22-410 loaded up with 2 1/2 6s. Saw a squirrel right off that got up in the top of an oak full of leaves and could not get a shot. Had a chipmunk present a shot and I let him take that to get his feet wet. Noah then spotted a squirrel run up a large oak tree and we tried to get close for a shot. As we closed in the squirrel came down and made a break for it and Noah took him on the run with a well placed shot for his first squirrel.

I have to disagree, I have shot a few arrows in my day and while that wound as pictured makes one wonder how it possibly could have be caused by an arrow I would not be so quick to say it was absolutely not caused by an arrow. There is way to many unknowns in this story for me personally to draw that conclusion. We should let the investigation play out and hopefully see what the truth is. Al

Well I have three more for the collection that came in this week. The first is a Chinese made Tomahawk, it is made in the typical bird hunter's folding pocket style with with walnut handle material, it is of decent quality, not expensive and it is the only one I have ever seen so I picked it up on ebay. One of my hunting partners whom I do some gun work for surprised me with a little Remington fixed blade bird & trout knife made by Bear & Son using 870 scrap walnut stocks for the handle material, a nice little knife and my first fixed blade bird knife, USA made to boot. The last one I received is from HuntingNY.com stalwart "Pygmy" whom I consider to be one of the good guys here on this board and a friend. Anyhow he read this thread and shot me a message that he had a bird hunter's knife stashed away doing nothing and offered it up for my collection and I accepted. It is a high quality knife made in Japan with a Buck 110 design handle, a drop point blade along with the gut hook and designated as a turkey hunter's model. I have never seen one and am very happy to have it in the collection, a big thank you to Dan it is a good one. Al

My question is why she would make the statement the dog was shot right in front of her? One of two things, she is either an outright liar or it happened like she said. One thing for sure something sharp sliced that dog's hide and I do not think it was barbed wire.

I would be in the "Pygmy" camp for this one.

My gun room-man cave-office-computer room is pretty cramped for space so efficient use of the space it has is paramount. One of the best space savers I have come across is the Frankford Arsenal loading stand, it has a small foot print and can be easily moved around the room for use or to get it out of the way. I have two loading presses mounted on it, whatever press I use can be made available by just spinning the stand around. Fold down leafs can be raised up so components are readily available. One of the presses is a Lee Turret and it is mounted using the quick change Lee bench plate system held by four screws. It is nice because you can switch out and use any type of Lee loading tool along with anything else that has to be mounted firmly using Lee's triangular wooden mounting plates. Today I was setting up some Easton aluminum arrows, some had to be cut to length and I used a little Milwaukee tubing cutter that worked really well and then cleaned up the inside of the cut with a Lyman metallic case mouth chamfer tool so to glue the inserts. I did some new fletching on some of the Eastons going from the old long plastics to the 2 inch Blazers with a Bohning fletching tool mounted on the Frankford Arsenal stand, I kind of have my doubts that they will stabilize the aluminums but I have been told by those that have tried them they will work so we shall see. Al

NO X 5

"Runnings" has 50 lb bags of corn on sale this weekend, $6.25 for whole $6.75 cracked, that is a good deal, picked up a load of cracked last night and will get another load today-should give me enough to feed my chickens and gamebirds till spring. The point being everybody that is buying feed is not baiting deer! Al

I have a couple of recurve Bows one pulling 35lbs the other 50lbs my compounds I like having them setup in the 60lbs area. An exercise item that really helps out for archery is the old 'Bullworker" the older guys here probably remember them well as they were promoted quite a bit back in their day. Don't see much advertising for them these days but they are still available and they work well for exercising the upper body and especially the muscles used in archery. There are two models, the big regular original model and the small steel bow model. I have mine sitting right here in my gun-computer room and use them for a few minutes just about every day and as an old geezer I can tell I have zero problems pulling back any of my bows. The main thing with these and especially with the big version is to start out real easy at first as you can pull some tendons if you are too rambunctious and go at it hard. Al

My archery equipment past and present is all vintage stuff and much simpler in design than the bows I see hanging in the stores today so any tuning and adjustments I have had to do has been easily accomplished. I have a press to change strings and replace any worn parts. For firearms except for machining work I can do most repairs and part upgrades, I believe every firearm I own I have got into in some way or another trying to make them perform better. There are books and online searches and forums with good instructions along with you tube videos that will help you tackle and accomplish just about anything yourself. Al

I have a beautiful girl and she is a hell of a hunter too! LOL Al

White phases in animals happens, like the white squirrel thread on the board now, the white phase animal will just pop up every now and again. It is all about genetics a subject my feeble brain has a hard time understanding. Having a small farm raising all kinds of various livestock and poultry in addition to breeding hunting dogs for many years I have seen some pretty weird stuff happen. In game birds it does happen quite frequently especially when raised domestically, white quail, chukar partridge and pheasants are common. In the wild they are the more than likely first to be picked off by varmints because of lack of natural camouflage and being easily seen Once upon a time I had a flock of Merriam's wild turkeys here on the farm I started from a pure Merriam's pair of adults I purchased. Merriam's look pretty much the same as our native Eastern wild turkeys except their feather tips on their tails and backs are white. Anyhow as the years went by I got a couple birds that hatched out with a bit of white on them, I mated the birds that had white back to each other and started getting birds with a lot of white to the point after several generations they were almost 3/4s white similar to the one in the OP's photo even though they were pure Merriam's. I was told by someone that knows genetics a lot better than me that is how we basically got white chickens cows, horses and turkeys etc. generation after generation of breeding like to like will set the color but the oddball throwback will still turn up from time to time. Al

They are what most call a gut hook and that is what they are literally. They are used to remove entrails of birds and can also be used on Squirrels especially useful if one is out hunting all day on a warm day, helps cooling them down until you get them home and dress them out properly without having a bloody mess in your game bag. Just cut around the butt and ram the hook up and in, give it a twist and pull the mess out. There are many bird hunters that like to hang their birds with feathers on and age them the same way beef and deer are aged. before hanging them they will use the gut hook to remove the entrails. Al

That one is an LLBean bird hunters knife that they imported and no longer sell, it is a good quality knife but not a pocket knife as it is a little on the large side. It has the choke tube wrench and a bird hook along with a big game type gutting hook. A leather belt holster came with it for ease of carry. Al