Pygmy

Yeah, it probably would have been pretty funny if somebody took a video of me and the porky swordfighting in the blind... The scary part..I did not REALIZE that I had about 50 quills on the butt of my rifle until I left the blind.. If a deer had come by and I had mounted the rifle to shoot, I would have had a painful surprise...I might not have killed the deer, either...<<grin>>...

I'm still finding quills here and there in my clothes...Next Time I go up there I'll carry a .22 handgun, and if he's in the blind again, he's history.. I couldn't quite see blasting him the blind with the deer rifle and then having to sit there in the mess.. Sitting with a few "porcupine pellets" isn't to bad, because they are dry and hard and don't seem to smell too bad....<<smile>>...

This morning, due to the windy, snowy, weather, I decided to hunt an elevated, enclosed blind on the property.. I climbed up to the blind and opened the door, and there was a porcupine sitting on my chair, looking at me.. I pushed him off the chair with the muzzle of my rifle ( unloaded, of course) and he went around the back of the chair..I needed to get him out of the blind, so I crowded him and pushed him with the toe of my boot and my rifle butt, and finally persuaded him to leave the blind via the door...There was fresh snow and I planned to wait until after my hunt , track him up and shoot him.... I hunted the blind for a few hours and saw nothing....When I left the blind, the new and blowing snow had covered his tracks so I could not track him up and shoot his sorry ass.. It was then that I discovered about 30 quills stuck on the toe of my Muck boots...I also had a whole bunch of quills stuck in the rubber recoil pad of my rifle and the elastic cartridge holder on the butt stock... I'm looking forward to my next meeting with the little prick ( pun fully intended)...

I have an 11-87 and have had several 1100s...I have noticed the same thing, especially with turkey loads that may have been loaded and unloaded from the guns numerous times...I have never experienced any malfunctions from the dents..I just ignore them.

One day many years ago on a long tracking job for a wounded ( not by me) doe, I started with 10 slugs for my 20 gauge 1100... When the dust settled I had shot 9 and dropped one in the snow... The deer was down but needed finishing and I kept it covered with my .22 revolver until my buddy got there to finish it with his shotgun... I still usually carry 10 because that is what my cordura ammo wallet holds.

Yeah, about 1/2 hour before legal shooting time, as usual...I probably heard between 20 and 30 shots by the time shooting time rolled around. Normal opening day...

You have done well, Pilgrim !! Great buck...You sure earned it.. You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din....<<smile>>...

I always wear some orange during gun season...However, I'm 66 and would like to live at least unitl I'm 67.. If you don't care about such things, wear anything that you want..

I'll bet you guys thought that TF stands for " Turkeyfeathers".. What it REALLY stands for is " Terminal Flatulence".....hehehehe................

I just walked out back to put some gear in my truck... The boys are blasting away at the Fish& Game Club range about a mile down the road...hehehehe....

TF sounds like a buck grunting when he farts....

It is illegal to shoot pheasants with a rifle or pistol. With a rabbit, you better make a head shot or you will just waste the animal. Back in shotgun only days my Uncle used to carry a few shotshells in case he wanted to shoot a rabbit or a grouse. You are probably better off just sticking to deer hunting. With my luck if I decided to pop a bunny rabbit, I'd spook the big buck that was heading my way just out of sight. The only critters other than deer that I shoot while deer hunting are coyotes.

Congrats, Joe....Great to see your son and his bull...Another young man on the right track.... I had a similar experience hunting Colorado a few years back...Spent the first couple of days HIGH as we had been recommended and saw more hunters than elk...Then we moved lower and went 2 for 3 with muzzleloaders, a big 5x6, a nice 6x6 and the third guy passed several bulls waiting for a bigger one...All on easily accessible National Forest Land..

Yeah..I remember before I was old enough to hunt, going overtown from school on my lunch hour in Addison on opening day of deer season just to see the deer on cars along Main Street....The street was lined with them...Seems like very few people drove pickups back then except the farmers...Of course they would take the deer home and hang them in their barns/sheds.. Mostly the "townies" and the flatlanders draped them on their cars and parked them on the street... Good times, nonetheless...

Reminds me of a story.....I have nearly always had a pickup and my sister was often borrowing it for one reason or another.. One time during bow season she needed my truck, so she borrowed it and left me her little Jap rice rocket sportscar, I think it was a Toyota..Kinda looked like a corvette, only smaller.. Sure enough, the day I was driving her car I killed a buck...No way could I bring it home in or ON her car..I could barely fit my compound bow in the stupid thing.. Fortunately, I had good neighbors...I stopped at a friend's house ( non-hunter) and he and I drove his pickup down, picked up the deer and hung it up... I made sure he got a few packages of meat for his assistance.....He wasn't a hunter, but he had NO prejudice against eating venison...

REAL men drive pickup trucks....<<grin>>.....

Cool stuff..I have been using the plywood thing for a number of years now, except I just set up the ramp, get the deer started and then then pull it up the ramp by hand, standing in the bed of the truck...I think I need to use the ideas here for a little more mechanical advantage.. I like the idea of holding it fast with a ratchet strap or whatever, and then just picking up the rear of the plywood and sliding it in...

The weekend before the Monday opener was a real "holiday" weekend here in the southern tier.. On Friday, the trucks would come rolling in, the camps would fill up, the motels would be full, and the bars, restaurants and supermarkets would do a land office business... For many years, on the Sunday before opening day, I would host a party for as many as 50 people. on my property..Food, beer, the wives would bring dishes to pass.. many stories were told and much anticipation was in the air... It just ain't the same now....

Damn Amish and crossbow hunters killed 'em all.....The ones the coyotes and the DEC stocked pumacougars didn't eat...

We usually wear it out every year, Steve, along with the .243.....

If you never shoot over 100 yards it makes good sense to sight in at 100.... Where I hunt a 200 to 300 yard shot is a definite possibility, so why waste the inherant trajectory potential by sighting in at 100 ..?..

YFK.....No.....A 30-06 sighted dead on at 50 would be perhaps 1/2" high or low at 100, depending on your s sights or scope mounting. Buckmaster...Many years ago, in a galaxy far away, a guy named Jack O'Connor wrote an article for Outdoor Life magazine entitled " Sight in at 25 Yards".... The point of the article was that most commonly used scoped rifles in the .243- 270- 308- 30-06 7mm mag range, with a scope mounted appx. 1 .5 inches over the bore, if sighted in dead on at 25 yards, would shoot 2-3 inches high at 100, a couple inches high at 200 and pretty much dead on at 250, and a few inches low at 300... So you could sight in dead at 25 and be PBR out to near 300 yards....I have tried it and it holds pretty true...However, one should of course shoot groups to confirm that, because it can vary due to scope height and other factors. At the ranges most of us shoot at game animals, it ain't exactly rocket science..

Private land...30-06 with handloads... IF I get lucky and kill something early with the 06, I have 3 other rifles that are begging to go hunting also...

I have always sighted MPBR also...I don't get too scientific about it, however... Most modern high intensity cartridges with a muzzle velocity of from 2600 fps to 3000 fos, if you sight on from 2" to 4" high at 100 you are good holding mid-ribcage out to 300, or farther with the higher velocity numbers..

Tremendous bucks, Eric....CONGRATS !! Yours is beautiful, but your brother's is a real TOAD !! In my fifty-some years of hunting, I have never seen a buck that big alive...I saw a 168 (net) buck killed my my neighbor once, but the body was considerably smaller than your brother's buck.