Pygmy

In the late summer of 1973, Ed Hart's Gun Supply in Bath offered NIB 1100 Skeet A's for $169.... I bought one, also in 20 Gauge and that was my main skeet AND deer gun for several years....I broke a lot of clays and killed some bucks with that gun, but like you, I eventually sold it..

Alaska trip ??? Going hunting ???

Very cool..The first ones I remember ( late 1950s) were in red paper tubes that had a crimp on the end similar to a shotgun shell, except not so tight...You opened them by pinching the tube....

Nope...Growie's german shepard…...

OKay, but I'll bet Angel was licking Stormy's butt....

Nope.... Biz a product of an early morning turkey hunt with Stormy and Growie in the cardboard blind....

Splitear's post about his newly acquired Rem m12 rifle inspired me to check out the MFG date of my treasured 3" Mag Rem 1100.... I had been using a Browning A5 12 gauge 3" mag for my main turkey and goose gun.... It was great gun, and I shot well with it, but with it's 32" barrel, it was a handful for a sawed off little gnome like myself... That was before the gun companies started making special short magnum turkey barrels...The shortest 3" magnum BBl you could buy was 28", and the great majority were 30" or 32"... SOOO, when I read in shotgun news that one of the gun shops in PA ( perhaps GRICE) was selling 3" mag 12 gauge 1100s with 26" full choke barrels, I just had to have one.... Back in those days, I couldn't afford to buy a new gun without selling something, so I sold my A-5 for $340 ( $40 more than I paid for it) and bought the 1100 Magnum...It has been a fine shotgun and has accounted for many turkeys and also a bunch of deer with the fully rifled cantilever barrel I bought for it... I just checked the MFG date...It was made in 1980....Forty years old and still in fine condition and functioning as well as ever...

Harry Truman.....

Happy birthday, Big Fella..!! Hope ya get lucky <<wink>>….

I'm looking forward to helping you break in the new boat...<<SMILE>>….

I'm reading " Sally's Strange vacation" again.. I'm at the part where Sally spread the peanut butter on the bisquit and then called Spot out behind the playhouse...

From the picture they also appear to be gutted and they were all dragged to one spot...Could be a poaching operation that got interrupted and the perpetrators were scared off before they got away with their booty...

Yeah, but you haven't MET Mable... <<wink>>….

I can't remember who, but I know it wasn't me... I could give about three good guesses, though..Hehehe….

Yeah, IIRC, he got his panties in a knot over something and quit posting...

They sent me to diversity training three times....Must have thought I was a slow study....Hehehe....

MMMMMMMM...….Smells like fresh fish...…<<SMILE>>….

When you are scouting, leave your turkey calls at home to avoid the temptation to make " one little call"....A crow call is OK, but I'd rather just listen most of the time...As TF says, keep a LOOOW profile....

The farm birds may work to your advantage, getting the wild birds to gobble more and let you know where they are... Keep in mind though that the gobblers are entering the field to meet hens....It is to your advantage to BE the first hen in the field.. Even if he enters the field in company of hens, the hens will often work to the decoys and bring the gobbler with them..

Long before season, the wild birds will be aware that the farm birds are not available to them..A gobbler might sound of to a domestic gobbler in the distance, but I don't see them going to the domestic birds.. The gobblers will be much more interested in wild hens that are closer to them... If you have permission, set up on the edge of the woods where the birds roost... Place a decoy in the field in front of you.....Let the birds gobble on the roost ( which will be behind you) and then do a little soft hen calling, just enough to let the gobbler know there is a hen in the field... If the stars are aligned properly, the gobbler may come into the field, see your decoy and come down the edge of the woods to within range...Be sure you have good cover behind you and to your sides, in case the gobbler enters the field close to you.. Easy to get busted that way... A pop up blind works well for this, and you don't have to worry so much about getting busted squirming or shifting your weight...

They started showing up at my feeders late last week... I normally don't see them here in Dogpatch until around the second week of March.. Perhaps the damned woodchuck was right..

Yeah, but that's a long drive home for me... Especially at midnite a 12 pack under my belt....

Smelt are basically extinct in Seneca, and rare in Keuka, which are the two places closest to me..I guess the numbers are down in the other Finger lakes too... I'd love to have a bucket or two of fresh smelt, if they were still available locally...

Actually, if that were true, I would have turned into a beaver when I was in my twenties...

Not at all....It is very flaky white meat...Nice and firm when taken from cold water in the spring...