Suilleabhain

This thread has longer legs than Megan Fox.

I haven't seen a bullfrog in years, lotsa pickerel frogs

I don't shoot "spikes" Doc, I let these walk by. Skillet that cracked me up.

Gotta come up with some new stuff. If anyone is interested and hasn't heard yet..MRAC meeting, looks like NY fluke regs will be 4 fish at 19.5 inches May 1st to Sept I believe. Yup Sept 30th

Kalamazoo Straight To You The house my father's friend had, farm actually, in East Chatam was actually just outside of East Nassau in Rennsalear. It consisted of the house a barn, chicken coop, duck coop, Canada Geese coop, father, mother, two kids, two pigs, two Airedales, a Beagle and a goat named Suzie. The pigs, chickens and ducks didn't get names because you don't get too friendly with dinner. Sitting on Dusenberry Hill Road, Mrs MIller's cows across the road and you went to the crossroads for milk...unless you milked Suzie. The house itself, the main building only consisted of the kitchen, a bedroom and the stone basement, more like a cold cellar than a basement. That part of the house was from the 1700's and had rifle ports in the stones basement walls for fighting indians. The 'new' addition was a centerhall colonial, big dining room, huge den, huge fireplace and four bedrooms upstairs. There was no heat upstairs, just vents in the floor so the heat rose from the downstairs. At night in winter you'ld get undressed fast and hop under the heavy quilts and when your feet hit the floor in the morning you woke up fast. The upstairs hallway was racked with old Winchesters hung on the wall. Octogon barrels, they may have been other than Winchester for all I knew. The beams in the den were also full of antique rifles and pistols. It was like the gun room at the old Abacrombie & Fitch. Since the husband was a surveyor the den was decorated with Inuit walrus tusk carvings from Alaska, Canada and Greenland. The kitchen stove was a 4-hole wood stove but the wife could cook and bake on it like no tomorrow. Always fresh bread at night for a munch. That's where I had my first moose meat, wild boar, helped slaughter my first pig, and shot the Colt Python in 357 magnum, that was the misses gun. We once put a big coffee can out in snow in the field behind the house, 100 yards away. I was about 10 or 12 at the time. My father says see if you can hit it. I knelt down, used a railing to rest my hand on and pulled the trigger. Damn if that can didn't jump. When we walked down, my windage was perfect but the bullet hit 1/8 of an inch under the can and the snow made it jump.The only thing that place lacked was a front walkway. Why a colonial was built with a huge front door but no walk to it mystified me. In summer I discovered catfish in their pond and being a fish nut wanted them for dinner. So I was sent down the road to Mrs Miller's farm to learn how to skin catfish. She was a widow but remembered her husband doing it. Cut behind the head, nail the head to the barn door and pull the meat down. In no time we had enough skinned catfish for a fry. Again me and the kid rambled around, not like you can do what we did today. We went to a friend's place to camp out in the woods once. Not backyard camping, at 10 years old, three of us hopped in a canoe with some blankets and a cast iron frying pan and rowed down a lake for a mile and just set up on the ground in the woods. No food, no water, we speared frogs and had frogs legs fried over a wood fire and lake water for dinner. Didn't do much sleeping that night with the critter noises around us all night. Picked eggs from the hens for breakfast, duck eggs are good but stronger than chicken I'll tell you. Vegtables were home canned from the previous fall, pork was fresh, bacon was slab cut, eating was good. The airedales were bred so there was a bushel of puppies to play with every couple of years. One summer crows were a nuisance so my brother asked teh misses if he could take a gun and shoot them. She said sure, grab a double from the bedromm. The bedroom was like the den only with doubles. So he picks a good one and a fist full of 12 ga shells and off we go. We get to the corn and he drops two shells in and they rattle in the breach. We look at each other perplexed, DOH! he had picked up a 10 gauge. What an elephant gun that was. They got divorced when I was a teen, the husband passed away some time later and the guns disappeared into the ether. A few years later one of my uncles bought a house in Cobleskill. They had an old hand pump well for kitchen water and another 4-hole stove. The name on the stove said Kalamazoo Stove Company "Kalamazoo Straight To You" I found the house on Dusenberry Hill Road on aerial photos. The barn, pond, chicken coops, duck coops are all gone. Mrs Miller's farm has houses built on it but, it still doesn't have a walkway to the front door.

My step-daughter got that one for Xmas, she named it Coco Chanel, I wanted Nanook. Her boyfriend took her litter mate which is a little brown runt even as Chihuahua's go. Thing looks like Gizmo to me.

we have a new hunting dog.......might hunt bargains at the mall but that's about it

I've heard that too, they step on them to break them. My brother had a peice of his graded and seeded with clover and rye, this spring he's putting in berry bushes and pumpkin, not for a food plot, just for kicks. Bet they don't last long. Squirrels like them too. They come up my step and eat holes in them.

Between this and the blind clerk at Cabela's Eddie is making this snowy day pass, thank you

Tommy, pies at..what is it Briermere Farm, can never remember the right spelling but I remember the strawberry/rhubarb. And if you are lucky you might get a loaf of bread. I worked a charterboat at Orient by the Sea Marina for a few years in the spring and fall for blackfish and stripers. Passed those stands every Sat & Sunday. When I was a kid, and as I said Long Island, Suffolk County at least, were all farms or duck farms, we hunted squirrels in Smithtown. On teh way home after a days shoot, we always bought 100 lbs of LI potatoes and it cost like $2.50. One time in Narrowsberg I think it was, stopped at a stand for some corn for dinner. Chatting with the farmer and he asked when we were going to eat them. I said in about an hour when I get back to my place. He responded then you don't want this stuff, I picked it yesterday. Now vegetables are like fish, you are satisfied with what you buy in the store until you get it fersh. He says go out back and pick your own fresh. I can eat corn every day and never get tired of it, just like pizza. But, I never had corn as good as this, Butter& Cream variety right off the stalk. You folks upstate are in corn Nirvana, hope you appreciate it. In the 60's, when they built New 17, after the Exit 96 for Livingston Manor, the highway dept laid in an exit ramp but, left it unfinished just outside of the Manor. This would have been Exit 95 or 96A for Beaverkill and Lew Beach but it never built up enough to warrant an exit. In fact, Beaverkill Campgounds is a ghost of itself. The beach is gone, the ranger station is gone, the general store is gone and the ranger there told us that no one really camps there anymore. We camped there from the 40's thru the 70's. Anyway, I digress. So, every fall on weekends, a guy with a truck load of apples would set up a stand at the unused exit ramp where there was a little pull off and sell apples and cider. This was another of our traditions like hot cross buns from Hoo's bakery at Easter, we'd go up in October and get apples and cider between hunting. By teh time we got there, this guy had been in the hard cider for a few cupfulls. Some days he was plain hammered. Face was lit up like a traffic light but, another good soul with plenty to tell. New cider mill opened on old 17 around Morrston exit 97 if anyone cares. Get yourself a jug of hard, sit back at night and turn on the old radio, if atmospheric conditions are right the only station you'll pick up is WWRL Wheeling West Virginia and get the broadcast of Grand Ole Opry sponsored by Kroger's, that will signify you've been teleported back to Sullivan County in 1965.

Man ..... This little piggy went to the market..............

It is also well known that no one ever sees one in the flesh because they wear a cloak of invisibility that they got as a wedding present when they mated with aliens. That's why people only find footprints

Paula, that's Sasquatch, absolutely no doubt about it.

Will you mount the chubby one??? Wait wait this thread is going way off

Muzzy-- Don't you know that when Friday the 13th falls on Saturday it's even Worse!!! Just check old back issues of Pogo, it's a fact.

Good one!!! Did you craft that yourself???

Ate some liver with bacon and onions last night. Life is good. I'm a road warrior, I love to drive..more like wander in my car than drive actually. I'm the type that gets behind the wheel and goes where I've never been before. I never get lost, just arrive at unintended locations. I love reading maps and charts, looking at roads and wondering what's there. Latest was going to Atlantic City with the bride this summer. We always cit-chat too much and miss exits. Same thing this time, down the Jersey Tpke and I see next exit Cape May. Damn! Did it again. So I get off at May's Landing, turn on the car's compass and hit the side roads, I ain't going back up the Tpke. We're not in a hurry so we tour farmland and small towns on the east side of the state. May's Landing and then we see Vineland. My uncle Gene & Aunt May had a farm in Vineland after he was crushed by a stampeding horse in Coney Island when he was an NYC cop. They had to sell the farm after Gene died in'40. So we continue tooling along past America and stop at a gas station where I get confirmation from the attendent that I was on the right track. See I never get lost. Stop at a farm stand for tomatoes, can't pass up fresh produce, and we chat with the lady while her little son and Jack Russell play around. She's like mid-40's, friendly as all farm people seem to be. A man pulls up and drops off more vegetables and starts talking with the woman, my bride, who thinks Brooklyn is on the edge of civilization, the great beyond being wilderness, says "Is that your father". I had told hold on to stop from blacking out, I could feel the hair raise on the back of my neck and my eyes roll up in my head. Like asking a fat woman if she's pregnant! From the look in my eyes she knew she just plain F'd Up and jumped into a quick save, "Your son is beautiful" and dodged the bullet. Once back in teh car I said E-JIT! Of course that's her husband, the man works out in the sun 18 hours a day busting his balls. And for all his work, he's rewarded with looking 10 years older than he really is. Up at the club me and the ex loved just getting on the back roads and driving. She had the map and was a good navigator. Stop here and there to shop or eat or gawk. Went back through Lew Beach once to Turnwood, Tannersville, Big Indian and she says as I'm going over Panther Mountain, get ready for a hairpin turn. Damn those maps are accurate, I came downhill into a hairpin that spun 180 degrees in the lengh of my car. Ended up around Haines Falls on that trip. If you ever get over there, look up North Lake campground. Walk up to the escarpment. You can see the Hudson from there and fall about 300' down if you aren't careful. Back in the 60's and early 70's, every corner in Manhattan had something going on. Street performers, saw a guy juggle chainsaws on wall and Broad downtown. Or there were the abti-establishment radicals on soap boxes trying to start civil war. Or, there were the Hare Krishna's. Shaved heads, long gold robes, walking sticks with cymbols on top and what looked like bird-sh*t on their foreheads. They were harmless and just trying to save people from wandering between the winds for eternity...like very other religion..but they were just strange. I'm on a corner one day waiting for teh light and ka-ching ka-ching ka-ching on the cymbols means Hare Krishna is here. Hare' Krishna Hare' Krishna Hare' Hoopnah Hare' Hare' That's the chant. One step s up to me and says "Man, try this" and he holds out his hand for me to taste regurgitated oatmeal or something. Gee thanks but no. They disappeared in the early 80's, most likely to California, or back to the mother ship but, in any event they were gone. Believe me, this is going somewhere. One day me and teh ex leave the cabin after breakfast and some mandatory target shooting, she shot ( I in an act of stupidity gave to her) my Remington Nylon 11 .22. She won't give it back after the dee-vorse. So we pick Old 17 and start heading northwest. Break off here and there, Narrowsberg, Hancock, Callicoon, wherever, we're wandering. Anyway we roll into a town called Horton. Freight rail, freight rail warehouse, A&P. That's all I remember and as I recall I can't be forgetting much. So I strecth my legs and go get snacks. As we are sitting in the car munching don't you know............... Ka-ching Ka-ching Ka-ching Hare' Krishna Hare' Krishna Hare' Hoopnah Hare' Hare' They're going shopping in A&P, walking single file following the stick with the cymbol doing this ceremonial skip-hop step, chanting away safe in the knowledge that they won't wander between the winds for eternity. On the way home from AC, I missed the exit again and wound up with the choice of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge to Philly or turning around in Camden, neither of which was a pleasing thought.

Fletch, I'll go you one better than farms and deer, turkey.....would you believe that if you take the LIE to the end and Rt 58 into the Riverhead traffic cirle, then go north out of teh circle you will see Buffalo? Live buffalo, not the plastic one like on Rt 20A around Varysburg.

you see I haven't figured out spell check

Chapter 3: The Road Back in the day, into the early 60's in fact the road was just plain dirt. It wasn't a long stretch from end to end with not many people living on it. For more than half its length, a small stream ran along it about 100 yeards in the woods, gradually getting closer until it crossed under the road by our property and ran along it about a mile or so. Anbout 6 feet wide, 12 inches deep in teh deep spots and in a ravine about 12 feet down. The residents, just us, Chuck's log house right across from our driveway built on the stream, Sam's place next door. They were an Orthodox Jewish family from Brooklyn who came up during the summer. (See Dirty Dancing for this period when Sullivan County was the Jewish Alps, East Durham- the Irish Alps and Ellenville was the Ukrainian Alps) Past Sam's were the locals who settled here ages ago. One of them years back got into a bar fight in town, tore the bar loose from the floor and someone wound up getting killed. So, after he did his time, his probation stiplulated that he could not set foot on pavement, he was confined to that little stretch of dirt road. He's stand with his toes touching the pavement at the intersection, waiting for someone to come up and bring him a plug of Red Man to 'chaw". If you didn't have Red Man, he'd have no problem chewing Camels, paper and all. He was a big man, big enough that he bounced the rear end of my father's car out of a ditch when he got stuck. He passed on some time ago and the memories from when i was little was me wanting to go pet his bull that was always tied under the big tree and the corner of his field. Later I found out it was a pig. Sam decided to dig a pond where the stream crossed his property. He had a fine one built, big enough for a small dock and an island. He had the presence of mind to add a storm gate so he could drop thewater level if the pillway couldn't handle the flow. Brook trout took hold naturally and I fly fished the pond as well as the lower campsites at Beaverkill. A funny thing about these trout, all they wanted was Light Cahills. We had Dark Cahills, Light and Dark Adams, they all look like mosquitos to me but the trout wanted Light. So me and my cousin wiped out every Light Cahill Bob Darbee had in the shop, one eye warily on the rattlesnake skin. The pond was so nice that the beavers took a shine to it for a few years and blocked up the spillway so the pond flooded the surround. They chewed all the birch trees about a foot of the ground so it was like walking thru a Burmese Tiger Trap. Fall and you would be impaled. Then the beavers were gone. One year I went up in February with my ex and her cousins. He cousin was a limo driver and he brought the limo. I had a VW Beetle. Couldn't get up to the house with the snow so we parked on the road. The neighbors saw the cars and thought the mafia was having a pow-wow at the club. In teh morning the cinder truck came thru so the cousins beat a hasty retreat as the road had iced slick. I came down later, sat in the VW and it slip down the road for 50 yards, nothing I could do but hang on. The cinder truck cam back and we beat feet. Sam sold the place, a few more trailers dotted the stream, the new owners let the flood gate fall into disrepair. Then came that rainstorm a few years back. The storm from hell. Well, the rain came and the stream flowed and the pond filled and the spillway couldn't handle it and the pond gave way. The water came down with such force that the bridge was racked some, the bend in the stream widened to 30 feet. Chuck's waterview log house, became waterfront and then just water in rapid succession. The stream carved the road and roadbed off the side of the mountain and took out the lower bridge. Next year, if you drove to the club via the back way, the road just ended in front of our place in a chasm that once was a road. Chuck's living room was hanging cantalevered over the now 20 foot wide stream in a 40 foot wide stream bed. It was condemned and bulldozed. Surveyors came a year later and damn if they didn't bring in rock and wire mesh baskets filled with rock and fill and gravel and we have a new road much nicer than before with the same little stream along side it. A true marvel of engineering how they built the shelf back on the mountain and made it look like nothing happened. The pond is smaller, I think the owner got spanked by the town. Sam's place is posted now..as is everything else. The pig is gone but the tree and the houses are still there. And just like our club, the first and second generationsof those pioneers are gone, their thrid generation is my age and the fourth is coming into their own. But they'll never know the age of carrying water from a spring, wood stoves, axes and splittin mauls, wool clothes, true woodsmen and pigs as big as bulls.

Thanks Steve. When I was 10 my parents shipped me off to Florida for two weeks with my 14 y/o brother and my 65 y/o aunts and uncles. This was hell. While my brother got to go out at night and maybe hook up, I was too young and stayed home learning to play Canasta with my aunts and their old bat friends. I could have been up at East Chatam slopping pigs and feeding chickens or at the gun club doing whatever but, no I'm here in sunny Fort Lauderdale in like 1963. This is the equivalent of the boarding area for the flight to the pearly gates. They did live on a canal so I found a fishing rod but had no bait. My Uncle Rudy was from Sweden and still had his Norse accent. To him fish "ver scavangers, filty tings" so he gave me a strip of bacon and I went out side catching whatever until I fell in the crik. That put the kibosh on fishing, gators were about. We did go pier fishing for bait with my Uncle Joe and the next day we went on a driftboat to the Gulf Stream. By the way, its August in Ft Lauderdale. Uncle Joe was a neat freak. In his basement, all his reels were mounted in sequence in reelseats that he put on dowels. All his reels were all lined up like soldiers ready for inspection. His rods were all racked nice. Our stuff got tossed in the basement and probably never saw freshwater or grease in their lives. Uncle Joe put us right ine the bow of this driftboat, out in the blazing sun, next to three regulars who target sailfish every Sunday. Mate baits us up and I look at this rig and bait and know this is going to suck. The three idiots let all the line off their reels to get the baits away from the boat and then take up 5 cranks. Captain blows the horn to move and we have to wait for the three stooges to fill their reels every time. So I've had enough, I go to sleep in the shade. Uncle Joe puts on a sinker and catches a nice mutton snapper and some other assorted colorful crap and thank God we are heading for home!!. Now, I cut my teeth in Sheepshead Bay where everyone did for themself and an operation like this would be burned to the waterline. All I want to do is get home and play Canasta with the girls...like 3 A.M. 10 drink minimums they were starting to look good by the second week. Hit the dock and teh mate starts pulling teh fish out of teh barrel "Who's number 10, who has number 4" WTF!! I'm going to wait until this jerk finds our fish!!! I can see teh mutton floating on top. So in good SHB form I just dive in both hands grab Uncle Joe's fish and say now let's get outta here. Mate was much upset, I broke the rules. Having the club, we got started early. Reason my father had no qualms about giving me a Winchester while he slept was I started with an M1 carbine at 6 y/o. Well, I didn't really shoot it, he held the gun while I wrapped around it best I could and blazed thru boxes of surplus ammo. To hear my brother John's side, he says it was his job to catch the hot brass for reloading and is mentally scarred for life from the experience. We were all shooting 30 caliber on our own by 10. In fact, Mauser Broomhandle, Colt Python, Colt 1911 auto, 6.5 Mannlicher I shot all of them by 10 or 12. Shoot a box, by then the sun is up enough so we can swim. Over to Beaverkill and jump in the frigid water under the covered bridge, swim to Flat Rock and dive off. Back to the club for lunch, shoot a box. Off antiquing, my father was pissed because my mother never bought anything, she just looked and made emm-hmm noises. Truth be told she took care of the finances and knew how tight they were. Short story, coming home on old 17 you passed the Red Apple Rest. Great hot dogs and it broke up that long drive. Dad says lets stop, mom says no lets just get home, I'm tired. So we get home, reason she wouldn't stop is all she had left was 45 cents in her pocket. After antiquing we go to Mud Pond and catch perch and sunnies or go black berry picking and after dark sit on the porch and listn to teh night sounds. No TV, radio picked up Grand Ole Opry and a station in Wheeling, West Virginia. Who needs Florida or Disney when I got Livingston Manor and East Chatam.

Don't know if anyone posted this before but, I know some guys that try to save money by buying cheap foreign ammo. A guy came had a S&W 629 (.44 Mag) that he wanted to dispose of after a mishap at the range. He said there was a loud bang when he tested his new ammo (Chinese made), and the gun smacked him in the forehead. Leaving a nice gash. When the tweety birds cleared from around His head, the pictures show what he saw. Bet he never uses Chinese made ammo again! Looks like when the round in the chamber went off, It also set off at least two other rounds in adjacent cylinders.

Boy I'll bet the precincts uptown and in Brooklyn will be super busy with all the Uzi's and AK's that the gang bangers will be turning in. Police better hire a load of extra staff to handle the load. Maybe I'll get Bloomberg to fund me opening a gunsmithing store in Bed Stuy or Brownsville to handle all that modification work, may be a gold mine. On second thought, never mind.

I know someone who gets a doe tag on his Super Sportsman in an MU he doesn't hunt and never intends to use it. Just his own screwed up thought process that he's saving does by taking someone elses tag.

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.