Pygmy

Hey... I think it's JIMMY HOFFA !!...

Alaska is a very unique place. It even has it's own smell. I love it. I have done 5 hunts there, all DIY/unguided. It is indeed a young man's hunt. I hunted there over 20 years ago when I was younger and in much better shape, and it still kicked my ass ! It was worth every blister, though. Alaska requires that you hire a guide to hunt grizzlies/brown bears, and I never was interested in shooting them and couldn't afford a guided hunt anyway. However, I saw my share of them while hunting moose and caribou. They are pretty impressive critters..They even LOOK like they have an attitude. Fortunately we never had any hostile encounters with them. Most of them that I saw ran like hell the moment they saw us or caught wind of us, just like our local black bears do.

I never had the desire to shoot one of those hairy Volkswagons, unless it was to keep him from chewing on me !! Brown bear hunting is big bucks, whether done on Kodiak , the AK Peninsula, or anywhere else in Alaska. However, Sitka blacktail hunts on Kodiak are still fairly reasonable. Last I knew you could get up to five tags, and success rates are very high. The deer don't have big racks ( a 100" buck is a real trophy) but they are, in my opinion, the most beautiful North American deer..The capes are gorgeous, and the venison is reputed to be the very best of any of the deer species. Just stay alert while you are butchering your deer. Ol' Leroy has learned that rifle shots are the same as a dinner bell... It's a good idea to hunt with a partner. One guy butchers while his partner stands guard. Many of the hunts involve sleeping on a boat ( away from the bears) and going ashore on a skiff to hunt each day. Often fishing, sea duck hunting, and putting out pots for crabs and shrimp are included in the hunt.

You're such a TEASE... A certain female member of this forum is probably getting all moist right now picturing you in your fruit of the looms standing over a fresh killed buck while fondling your " Barnett "....

Tough break, Wooly.. I guess we all have our "crosses" to bear....

LOL... What kind of groups do you get with that, ADK ? Being a Clint Eastwood fan, I use my Garand M1 to keep pests off my lawn.. Remember the line in " Gran Torino" ? ...." GET OFF MY LAWN".....

That's nationwide, and I beleive Canada also.

A lot of state land has large areas of planted evergreens, like red pine. Red squirrels are also called pine squirrels, and eat the cones of evergreens such as pine and hemlock.They often live in pine plantations and do well there. Grey squirrels prefer hard mast such as oak, beech and hickory. If the hardwoods are absent, there won't be many grey squirrels. Mature evergreens such as white pine and hemlock DO provide good nesting/denning cover for grey squirrels, but they need food, too. The best squirrel woods have a mix of nut/seed producing trees for feed and large evergreens for cover.

Squirrels..Ruger 10/22 with peep sight, NEF .17 mach II with cheap 4x scope, Browning A-5 20 gauge and Winchester M12 16 gauge. Rabbits and upland birds.. Ithaca SKB M100 20 gauge side x side. Geese and turkeys..Rem 11-87 3" 12 gauge. Ducks...Browning Citori 12 gauge field grade. Deer.. Rem M700 Mountain Rifle in 7mm08 and Winchester M70 lightweight in .280 Rem. Heavy game or anything if there are grizzlies in the area.. CZ 550 in 9.3 x 62. Coyotes..Whatever gun I am carrying when I see one. ML.. TC Hawken .50 cal with tang peep sight.

Culver...Ballistics with monometal vs. lead bullets of the same weight is comparable, as long as the ballistic coefficient is similar. One advantage of the monometals is that , due to the fact that they retain most of thier weight, you can shoot a lighter bullet, thus increasing velocity and flattening trajectory and still get good performance on game. Monometals don't appeal much to the "expend all the energy in the animal" crowd, because more often than not they exit. They DO however wreck a lot of tissue along the way and they kill very well. I have been loading Barnes X type bullets in all of my hunting rifles for several years now . Before that, I shot mostly Nosler Ballistic tips, which are noted for rapid expansion. The critters I shot with ballistic tips didn't expire any quicker than the ones I have shot with barnes X bullets. Getting back to the subject of this thread, even though I personally like the all copper bullets, I would be absolutely opposed to legislation that banned lead bullets. Just another "feel good" law for the Greenies..

Too bad you couldn't get a good shot at the black ! That would be a cool "squirrel slam"... A grey, a black, and a fox in one hunt !

Nice fox squirrel.. Are there many of them in your area ?

I managed 4 this morning, enough for a good meal. I also missed one and saw several that I could not get a clear shot at because of dense foliage. The big draw in the spot I hunted was white oak acorns. Skeeters were not too bad. I'm out of butane for my thermacell, but Deep Woods Off kept them at bay.

I would suspect a bear scraping off the dead bark to get at the insects/larvae underneath.

I use it for two things. Deer liver tastes best fried in bacon fat. Also, on the rare occasions that I make pancakes, I grease the skillet before adding each cake with bacon fat on a paper towel. It seems to lend a better flavor than other shortenings.

I love to hunt squirrels... As aierdale said, it gives me an opportunity to do a considerable amount of shooting and I love eating the little rodents. Early season my 1936 vintage 16 gauge M12 and my Belgian Browning A5 20 gauge get the most use. After the leaves fall, I use my 1971 vintage Ruger 10/22 or a NEA .17 mach II single shot. At heart, I am a wingshooter, but bird hunting opportunities are not real plentiful here in the southern tier anymore. I like deer hunting, and I love the meat, but after about a week it begins to bore me.. I'd just as soon whack a couple of dolly deer for meat and then go small game hunting or fishing.

I was up in NWT on a caribou hunt. My Inuit guide was gutting a caribou I had shot. He cut a slice of the raw liver, dipped it in the stomach contents in the animal's bloated paunch, and ate it. He even licked his fingers afterward. He offered me some, but I passed. My buddy recorded it on video. I probably could eat a slice of raw liver on a bet, but the stomach contents are a little over the edge.

Cannibal Sandwich.... Have at it..I'll pass....

Function over form... Not a bad thing... It's nice to know that you don't need to refinance the house to buy a rifle that shoots good groups...

Reputable logger ?? That's an oxymoron in my neck of the woods.

......Famon ???..... Well, I guess it's fonetically kerrect...Or CLOSE, ennyway....

Not a bad choice, Born... Those two cartridges have both been killing stuff for about 150 years.

Okay..I get it now... Thanks for clearing that up, John... Why not do something more pleasant, like sticking needles in my eyeballs ?

...WTF...?? I guess being an old fart, I'm out of the loop.. Makes my sack shrivel just thinking about it..

....Ruh - Ro.....