Pygmy

He used to clean up the mess when some misguided young fellow would shoot himself with a .300 Weatherby..

Wasn't kinda HANDY that those Sears catalogs were in the OUTHOUSE, Dom ?....<<grin>>...

Yeah, I'm still going through them. Some of the pages are getting kinda sticky.. THANKS, 302 !!

I remember when they first showed pubic hair...That was pretty racy in the late 60s.. Now they shave it all off.. I still remember a lot of the jokes..Often they had limericks.. Here's one that many of the younger folks won't get.. A hillbilly farmer named Hollis Used possums and snakes for his solace. The children had scales, and prehensible tails And voted for Governor Wallace. Here's another.. The new cinematic emporium Is not just a supersensorium. But a highly effectual, heterosexual Mutual Masturbatorium.

I still remember my very first pheasant.. I was hunting with a friend on my Dad's property ( he had 178 acres) down behind the barn. Our dog was my beagle George..Stupidest beagle I ever hunted with, but he could do a halfway decent job of running a rabbit once he found the track. I usually had to kick the rabbit out for him, because he was too damn dumb to find one by himself. George DID, however, like pheasants, and when he stumbled across a pheasant track he would give a different bark than when on a rabbit, and he trailed them slow enough so that I , a mere wisp of a lad at that time could keep fairly close to him and perhaps be in range when the bird got in the air. My buddy and I were working a hedgerow when the rooster got up between us. he flushed out my side..I was using my Eastern Arms Co. 16 gauge single shot, and my buddy had his Dad's 20 gauge single shot. The bird presented a perfect shot, and BOTH of us missed him clean..Rooster fever, I guess. However, I marked the bird's line of flight and we followed him.. A couple hundred yards further, Dumb Old George struck a track, and I hurried behind him to keep up. Just as we reached Dad's upper cow pasture, the bird got into the air, and presented me with a nearly straightaway shot. I didn't choke that time and dropped the rooster..I can still see him flopping his last in the cropped grass of the pasture.. IIRC, that was around 1963..

When I first started hunting small game in the early 1960s, the soil bank was still in effect, and there were still enough wild pheasants here in southern Steuben County so that a hunter who did his homework could shoot a limit now and then. Hunting was MUCH better just a few miles north around the Finger Lakes.. By the late 60s, in order to find GOOD pheasant hunting, you had to go further north, but there was some pretty damn good hunting to be had. I hunted opening day 1968, and 1969 with some friends around Gasport. One of those opening days ( I can't remember which) I counted 42 Cockbirds flushing...We sure did not kill them all, and some were no doubt re-flushes, but I did see rooster pheasants getting into the air 42 times in one day. I know I had no problem killing my limit both days with my 28 gauge side/side that my parents had given me for my high school graduation present. By the time I got out of the service, in the early 70s, there was still pretty good hunting from the thruway north. We had good hunting north of Batavia around Elba, although it was nowhere near as good as we had around Gasport 10 years prior. Around the end of the 70s, the pheasant population plummeted... The only really GOOD pheasant hunting I have had since then was a 3 year period when I hunted around Bellevue Iowa...That was great..Lots of beautiful wild birds..I probably killed more pheasants in those 3 years out there than I have killed in NY in my entire life.

I know guys who shoot 100 straight at skeet with a .410. It's disadvantage is its light shot charge thins out quickly and limits the effective range. However it works well on small game and birds at ranges of 15 to perhaps 30 yards. Over the years I've shot a lot more upland game at under 30 yards than over.

I'd say just plain old sodium chloride..Get the cheapest non-iodized table salt you can buy. If it were ME, I'd use a good cooler and dry ice. You would probably be happier with the end product. Ever had salt cod or salt cured herring ? It has it's uses but is still a far cry from fresh/frozen fish.

It would be best if you could shoot at 300-400 yards to avoid any surprises. I was lucky for many years when I was doing out of state hunting trips every couple of years, because a friend of mine had a 300 yard range behind his barn, complete with a marble table for a benchrest, and he allowed me to use it anytime I wanted. Unfortunately, he sold the place a few months ago. My local club has a 200 yard range, and that suffices for my needs these days. If I really wanted to shoot at ranges up to 400 yards I have several friends with hayfields where I could set up long range targets. Back when I was hunting out west, Northern Canada and Alaska, I sighted my .280 4 inches high at 100..That put me +4" at 200, -4" at 300 and -12" at 400. These figures were obtained from shooting actual groups at these ranges, not trajectory tables.

There may be hope for you yet...< grin>... Also, we already have a Curmudgeon on this forum, and I wouldn't want him to sue me for copyright infringement, so I would rather be called an OOF.... Opinionated Old Fart...

BTW, Nice picture, Real.. Wooly sent me one of his (always) excellent pictures of a Kestrel the other day. I told him that bird ID is so much easier with a good photo to look at.

What Wingnut said. They eat mostly retiles and amphibians. They do nest here in NY and are usually seen around swampy areas, where they hunt snakes, frogs, etc.

The rifle got a favorable review in " American Rifleman" magazine within the last couple of months. The wood version looks attractive. Like Wildcat, I'd like to handle one.

A 200 yard zero with a .300 mag would be a waste of perfectly good trajectory. I mean if you insist on using the dam thing, at least use those $5 rounds efficiently ! I think it's time for my NAP... Damn Kids, anyway !...<<grin>>...

Thanks for the stuff we exchanged, Bubba..Good trade. Maybe we'll run into each other sometime when I'm up your way..Nice country.

We are talking physics, here, Biz, real world ballistics, not some magical property that happens to come with the WEATHERBY brand name..

Without checking tables Biz, I cannot say for sure, but with EQUAL BULLET WEIGHTS, say 150 grain for the 30-06 and .270 WBY , I'm guessing that the 30-06 would,'t drop more than 5 or 6 inches more, if that..Certainly not 3 feet. This is with the 150 grain 30-06 at 2900-3000 fps and the 150 grain.270 Wby mag at perhaps 3200-3300 fps.

At 400 yards, not enough to make a big difference in hunting situations.. At ranges over 400 yards, the magnums ( with heavy for caliber bullets) have more of an advantage, but at those ranges you get into more complicated range finding/estimation, etc. Shooting at very long ranges ( over 400 yards) becomes an art in itself, requiring more equiptment and skills than Joe Average hunter is likely to possess. At ranges of 400 yards or less where most of us shoot our game animals, the magnums basically just do the same job as standard calibers, with a lot more expense, recoil, meat damage and muzzle blast.

Dinsdale has me pegged...<<grin>>...I'm a pussy... Hey Kid, as long as you don't mind paying $5.00 a round and having your ass kicked every time you squeeze the trigger, have a ball... To each his own.. All I'm saying is that in the REAL world of hunting, I could do 95% of what you are doing with your .300 Mag with a 30-06 with considerably less expense and fuss.

NAAAAW...I ain't gonna say it.... Good luck with your .300 WBY... Hope it makes you happy... No sarcasm intended...I really mean that..

Al... You just mentioned all the RIGHT stuff in your post...You are hereby invited to go out and get drunk and pick up chicks with me, Wildcat, and a few other sensible folks on this forum...I LOVE you, Man...

I don't think mule deer were ever native east of the Mississippi. Mother nature probably had a good reason for that. As far as eating them, it depends...My partner and I killed two adult mule deer bucks in Colorado in 2000 on an early high country ( above treeline) hunt in early September. They were delicious, as good as any venison I have ever eaten. It was probably two months prior to the rut. In November of 2014, another partner and I shot two rutting mule deer bucks in Colorado. I did not eat any of the meat, but my outfitter told me that when they are rutting they are not worth bringing home. We donated the meat to a food bank that makes it into burger and sausage for underpriveledged people, rather than paying the big $$$ to bring it home and then not have it be fit to eat.

Good job, Young Feller ! Good luck on the coyotes.

They put the scope too high for me..Of the many hunters I have seen who had one, I only talked to ONE who had ever used the open sights.. He used them as a hedge against weather..When the weather was crappy, instead of keeping his scope clean, he just used the opens. None of my scope sighted centerfire rifles even have opens..The other two have peep sights.

DAYUM ! I just fell in love with that Faulk's crow call...Do they still make them ? I have a fairly old Quaker Boy wood bell open reed but it has a plastic mouthpiece.. Good call, but I'd prefer all all wood one...At my age I don't get many woodies..