Pygmy

Yes !!..She calls me HAAAANsel....She also keeps plucking at my arm to see if I am fattening up...Silly goose !!

We have a rhubarb patch about the size of a Volkswagon...Much of it goes to waste every year...Better too much than too little, however.. I also raise about three times as much garlic as I need.....However, The Mermaid has a Filipino daughter-in -law who will always take any excess garlic that we have..

The Mermaid made me a strawberry shortcake last night and a rhubarb pie tonite... Must be she plans to keep me.....<<smile>>...

Bobwhite quail are the most delicious upland game birds I have ever eaten.... The only game birds that taste better ( to me) are teal .....Mallards and blacks that have been on a vegetarian diet are a close second... I like pheasant and grouse, but in my opinion they pale in comparison to quail...

One of the things I miss the most about living in the country...I love chickens as well as other types of poultry and gamebirds.. A friend gave me a bunch of bobwhite eggs once and I put them under a setting banty hen.. She hatched a bunch of them and I had them in coop with a run and a lift up cover...The wind blew off the lid on the coop and the quail scattered..I saw and heard several of them around the house through that summer, but come fall they were gone..

VERY cool...looks like you are having fun...Are those fish good eating ? I know that snappers are delicious, but what about the other species ? I am envious...I love to catch species of fish that I have never caught before, regardless of the species...Your son must be having a ball..

My buddy in Juneau calls them " Mother-in Law" fish...

Don't worry Larry....it's those WEST Siberian Crotch Crickets you have to look out for...They're the BAD ones.. Not that I've ever had 'em of course.....<<ahem>>....Dum de dum....

Looks like an East Siberian Crotch Cricket to me......

She is a beautiful little girl...Your smile says it all..Congrats, you old fart !!..<<grin>>...

Hehehehehe...Good shooting....Kill 'em all...Let Allah sort 'em out...

YUM !!....Never ate a walleye I didn't like... Nice catch, Stoney !

Things were slow for us on Keuka today.....Only caught about a dozen smallies, mostly small. Perch and panfish were not on hot either...Kept enough for a couple of meals, between perch, sunfish and some big rockies...I did catch 4 pickerel, and every one of the snaggle-toothed slimey pricks ruined one of my slider grubs......Oh, and one more thing...My electric motor s**t the bed today....Time to go shopping for another one... It didn't owe me anything tho....Had it ten years and it had a lot of hours on it..

Thanks, Jeff...My old buddy Mort ( Bob Mourhess) is going with me....The guys who have been fishing this week have done real well on both bass and panfish..The perch are running big this year, as they did last year...We'll be C&R on the bass but I have an ice chest full of ice for the perch and panfish..

Going to be on Keuka in the morning....Light spinning gear for smallies and perch....

That is what dogs DO, Bill.....I have had dogs all my life..Had several that would never be aggressive toward a human or another domestic animal, but you put a woodchuck or a coon or a squirrel in front of them and were savage beasts... I think what it boils down to is that dogs are predators and they instinctively know what animals are PREY animals, so they react aggressively toward them.

1971......Divorced in 2006.... Spent 35 years together, but it didn't seem like a day more than 50.........

I went back up later to reset my trap....This time I took my HR Handi rifle in .17 Mach II... Silly woodchuck was peeking out of the den again....BINGO !! It was an adult female, so I reset the trap in anticipation of catching another kit or two.... One nice thing about the .17 cals...You don't have to worry much about pass throughs...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Ya Big Chooch !!!

Well, let me tell you this morning's story.. I went up to the property to see if the chuck den under the shed was still active after catching the one there yesterday.. I carried my K-22 revolver...Sure enough, the den had been dug back out again, and lo and behold, there was a woodchuck peering out from the den entrance.. Using my John Deere compact tractor for cover, I snuck up on the den...Chuckie's head was still sticking out of his den, so I rested the revolver on one of the arms of the front end loader on the JD and squeezed one off..I heard a funny ZING noise, and the woodchuck withdrew into the den, obviously unhit.. I looked at the other arm of the front end loader and found where my bullet had barely grazed it, taking off a chip of paint about the size of my thumbnail....Then I looked the door of my utility shed...The bullet had deflected and keyholed through the door of the shed, about three feet over the woodchuck's head...I have not yet found what damage it may have caused inside the shed....<<cringe>>...

Nope, I only tried that once, Moogie... The Mermaid gave me hell for leaving skidmarks on my good jeans...

In my youth I roamed around my Dad's farm and surrounding properties hunting woodchucks...I remember the year I was 16 I killed 75 of them, mostly with the .22 LR. I owned a .222 rem at the the time, but ammo for it cost $3.15 for 20 rounds and I could get a box of 50 .22LRHP for 85 cents. I learned early that .22LR solids would not anchor a woodchuck unless you got a CNS ( brain or spine) hit.. LR hollow points, however would stop a chuck in his tracks as long as you got a solid hit in the forward half of his body. A gut shot would still allow the critter to get to his den.. I recovered a few of those hollowpoints from under the skin on the far side of the chuck. They were usually perfect little mushrooms.

Twenty THREE ?? Holy crap, Val, I've got JOCKEY SHORTS older than that !!.......<<grin>>.....

I had a problem chuck undermining my utility shed...I solved the problem with a # 1 1/2 coil spring... I had my S+W K-22, but I was worried about collateral damage from a pass through, so I I used my go-to tool for any difficult job, a BFH ( Big ******* Hammer)..... Did the job very efficiently...<<grin>>....

Thanks, Moog....Unfortunately, I'm not that smaaat, or I would be rich, which I am NOT...<<grin>>.. I have, however, seen a few bobcats, perhaps 8 or 10...The tails vary quite a bit in length...The pictured cat has a very short stubby tail, but some bobcats have tails that may be a foot or longer...