airedale

What makes Squirrel hunting so great is that it can provide all the opportunity required to hone essential hunting skills. Still hunting, concealment, spot and stalk, stand hunting, calling, using dogs and precision marksmanship, it is all there. Get good at the skills above and you will be good at hunting just about anything. Add the long season and liberal bag limits and man it does not get any better in my opinion. Al

Wool pants, wool shirts and Bean Maine hunting boots, still works great today. Al

In a few more days Squirrel season will be opening, probably my favorite kind of small game hunting, outlook does seem to be better this year as I have been seeing quite a few Squirrels. Been getting the barrels hot on my Squirrel guns zeroing them in, can't wait. Al

Now that I have my range back up in operation I plan on giving this Fly Swatter Challenge a shot. I will be trying all of my Rimfire rifles and it will be interesting to see which one is the most accurate of the lot. All but one of my rimfires are set up for hunting first and with moderate powered scopes which will be a disadvantage for this particular game. The Flies are pretty darn small at 50 yards. My one true target rifle is a Winchester model 52B with a Redfield 3200 20X target scope, it is basically vintage dating back to the early fifties but can still lay them in there pretty good. It's fine accuracy is capable of clearing the Target with the right ammo. I have a couple of small things I want to do to get it to be at it's best. Have been dabbling a little bit with some of my rifles with different ammo to see what gives them the best performance and I can say that this game is humbling. Watching the plethora of you tube videos of folks taking the challenge it looks like nailing a fly total in the mid teens will be doing good. It is going to be fun. Al

Way to go! Al

I was out with my long bow again yesterday, I am finding she is shooting best with some cedar, feather fletched arrows out of what I have on hand. Al

Hey, you are to be commended for your efforts, unfortunately sport hunting is and has been on a decline for years for a whole lot of reasons. Hope you have a great Deer camp this season. Al

I am just going to say that second one is pretty darn big. Al

Spent a fun Sunday afternoon with an old shootin Buddy Tim Findlay breaking in the refurbed range. Tim brought over two new firearms to test and sight, a Sig Sauer 938 9mm and an absolutely gorgeous Winchester Low Wall Single Shot 223. I was shooting my old Winchester Model 52 bench gun 22 and the Christensen Arms Ranger 22 that I have just upgraded the trigger on with a Timney Hit Trigger and man it is nice. After working my ass off around here all summer it sure was great to have some fun. Al Some pics below, Tim with his Winchester Low Wall , the Sig 938, the Model 52 and the Ranger.

Not so far but I believe reloading supplies will be in their sights before too long, I buy what I can now, it stores and keeps well long term. Al

Not many acorns on the trees around here, the Oaks are still suffering the effects of the Gypsy moth infestation, my black walnut tree is having a bumper crop. Al

What is Ironic is after having spent a lifetime training hunting dogs, one of the very first things I get done is breaking them from messing with and running Deer and here I am training for the opposite. LOL!. Al

Go for it Doc, makes for more interest and fun, I am always looking for ways to jack things up. I looked into range wind flags for doping the wind, commercial stuff was priced ridiculously. I picked up some high viz light weight nylon ribbon for a song, cut it into strips and stapled it to the target frames and it will work good enough. Al

Par for the course, it is plain to see they are going after ammo in any way they can, have control of ammo you control guns. The fools just keep voting for democrats! Al

He looks good, congrats. Al

Had a little extra time and so I worked on the backyard range this morning, some plywood had to be replaced, the reactive targets repainted and set up the completely new hundred yard target. Ready for some big time blasting. I am really psyched to give the Fly Swatter Challenge rimfire shoot a go, it has really caught on and there are a bunch of youtube videos of folks giving a shot. Working on a couple of my rifles to get them ready. Al

Never said anything about you belonging to another site, my beef is with the cheap shots they do not belong on any site as far as I am concerned. And you are no innocent angel in all of this horseshit Mr Chopsuey, you are and have been one of the main culprits in starting these blowups and it needs to stop. I have been running a message board for what will be twenty years next month, I will not even allow a thread like this on my forum and I will tell you what I would ban my own mother if she did not abide by the board's rules. Al

Doing some long line leash work with Harleigh, Like I said above she was never leashed trained period and handled for me just fine with voice commands. She is a heck of a track dog and has recovered a couple of varmints for me that so the tracking part for her is like rolling off a log, she has some of the top hunting Airedales in the US in her pedigree. She seems to be coming along a lot better than I expected. When it comes to performance, breeding is everything and a well bred dog can make one look like a good trainer. Like Coon Hound trainer extraordinaire John Wick would say. Al "Every pup is like a lottery ticket, except that you have to feed it for a year before you can scratch it to see what you've got. Sometimes the gamble pays. and sometimes it does not." JW

That is a good deal. Al

And that is what the malcontents can not stand, they were so sure this site was going to fold when they left, I got one message telling me not to forget to turn out the lights after all left. It did not happen because the ones who left were the ones that stirred the pot and this board has been humming along nicely with plenty of traffic. I would like to know if anyone here goes to their wonderful site and fires off cheap shots trashing the place. None of this crap would be started if they would just get it in their head this place is what it is and just stay the Hell away. No, just like when they were regulars here they just keep picking and keep things festering. It about darn time the ban button gets used and all of this malarkey would be gone. Al

Who cares, I don't, this site has 9000 members, this hangup on new members don't mean squat on an open board, Anyone interested can log on to the board and read it's content and that is what hundreds of folks do every day. Get it in your damned heads, this site is what it is and has been this way for years that is the bottom line. My advice to those who do not care for it is to hit the road instead of coming here and bashing with your cheap shots because things are not going to change and personally I like the board the way it is. Al

I totally disagree I think this board is the best it has ever been but I can see why you would make a post like that, seeing you have never made a worthwhile useful hunting-outdoor post here that I can remember. Instead of trying to trash the place while don't post something that a NY hunter would find helpful, my message board philosophy has always been if a reader learns just one tip it was worth the time for me to write it and apparently worth the time for them to read it. Al

Powder Valley has got some of the first inventory I have seen for Alliant powders in a long time. Problem is the size of their containers everything I checked out was 4lbs and up. Al

Bottom line is this board's hunting content, the best by far, there were over 300 readers logged on last evening and usually 100 to 200 logged on at all times, that is pretty fair, so there are plenty of folks that feel this board is worth researching. This board does not need a lot of worthless posts, in my opinion it needs useful information that pertains to hunting for the most part. Who the Hell comes on a hunting board to find out what I ate? The traffic bears out good attendance and that is what makes those ads pay the bills, she is on cruise control. My suggestion is if the board does not suit you, stay away instead of constantly posting cheap shots and nothing else of value. Al

Shot a few more shots today, this time I had my Bushnell rangefinder to measure my distances, I exaggerated on the 30 yards posted above, only 26 according to the Bushnell. Worked on the firearms range later setting up some new targets, when I put them in years ago I just paced them off and that was good enough. Checking distances with the rangefinder I had set them up too far. My 25 yard target measure 27 yards, my 50 yard target measured 59 yards and the old 100 yard target measured 113 yards. Not a big deal but I made sure the new 100 yard target was 100 yards. Al