philoshop

Started 7/8. Tobacco-free for ten days now! It feels like a whole new world for me. The coffee-can fund has me thinking about a used d90 body, wooly. I've been bitten hard again! Thanks, or damn you, I'm not sure. But thanks anyway.

Venison stew with cornbread biscuits tonight. Stew has been in the crockpot all day while I was working. Biscuits are just about ready for a late dinner. I should have picked some berries for dessert. Epic fail on my part.

And the number one most dangerous gun in America is... THE ONE THAT GOES BANG. RS used to be a generally insightful and frequently funny mag, 35 or 40 yrs ago. Now it's just sad.

Bee decline has been going on for well over a decade. There doesn't seem to be any single cause from what I've read, it's more a cascade of causes. Lots of little things that have come together over the years. I try not to kill any bees if I can help it. Or other relatively benign critters for that matter. Snakes, spiders, toads, etc. I put off mowing a few acres of lawn a while ago because there were bees in the clover tops. A week later the bees seemed to be done and I got the lawn back. I'm not sure if it really helps the bees at all but the does and fawns were just rolling in that lush clover.

LMAO! I guess when you get tired of teasing your cat or dog with the laser pointer, the next step is facebook. Very sad all around, actually.

Any chance that the clock on the posting date/time stamp could be reset to NY time? I tried resetting my own clocks to HNY time, but it caused me to miss breakfast so I changed them back.

Sounds like a great couple of days on the water! Thanks for the pics.

Here's one. http://www.food.com/recipe/weed-killer-at-half-the-price-of-round-up-434896

I'm in complete agreement here. Voting doesn't work because the only people who are ever elected are, by nature, politicians, and they all suck, and everyone knows it. Working towards electing anyone is like a dog chasing his tail. It's basically an act of lunacy, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Local, state, or federal. That said, I'm also a man of action. I see a problem and I attack it to find a solution. That;s just part of my nature. The problem is we have a government (state and federal) that doesn't respect the Constitution. My little part of the solution is to work at booting out these guys, starting at the local and state levels. Yep, I know it won't do any good in the long run because the next guy will be just as bad. Welcome to Democracy. I'm open to other options that involve action, not just thoughts and ideas.

This is 100 yards behind my house. The only dog in the neighborhood that might run through there is Louie, my friend's beagle. Lots of different critters show up on the cam including feral cats. I've gotten to know the cats, and none of them are that color. Black, black/white, and brown/white. Here's the backstory: I stopped by the trailcam to swap the card on my walk farther west to see if I could get some real camera time on a field where deer have been feeding. I just love sneakin' up on 'em. When I pulled the card I saw that the batteries in the cam were dead, so I swapped the card and stopped a couple hours later to pick up the cam on my way back. It was dark by the time I downloaded the images and saw the whatizzit, and it rained overnight. No mysterious/unidentifiable tracks were evident when I went back to look more closely. Just the usual suspects. Deer, 'coon, turkey, 'possum, etc. This would be when the pic on the right was taken in the collage above. There was no stick there that could be seen as a tail. Experienced people who have seen the pic are saying beaver, and that's what I thought at first glance, just by the body shape. But then there's the tail, and the fact that beavers don't normally spend time in the middle of Seneca Lake and then wander 300+ plus yards inland across a state highway. Lots of beavers at the ends of the lake for sure, but in the wide open middle? Camera glitch due to low batteries crossed my mind, but other than the whatizzit it's a pretty clear image. A prank by a neighbor? That's usually a butt-crack pic, heh-heh. Not sure how someone would stage that w/o the cam taggin' 'em on the getaway. Prank by yours truly? Not really my style, and for sure I wouldn't take it this far. Good idea on the DEC. I'll pass it along and see what they have to say. Wish I had been running the cam in video! Thanks everyone, Mark

Congratulations and best of luck to you! I went to UB (architecture) many years ago and I knew I'd miss the hunting. In reality I never even had the time to think about it until I finished school. Even Thanksgiving break was spent catching up on sleep! LOL Remember though, with a camera you can hunt just about everywhere. And it doesn't have to be time-consuming.

No fire swamp here, but I'm only 25 miles from the Zurich Bog. Very similar lore. It's a Cougar-tailed Pigchuck. Just so you know, it's the first official sighting, so I'm claiming credit. ROFL I sent the pics, w/critter and w/o, to a few friends. A couple of wildlife biologists, an old trapping buddy, and a photographer who might be able to clean things up a bit. We'll see. In the meantime, the original pic makes a pretty cool background scene on my monitor.

A labor of love. If ya don't love doin' it, it's just labor.

Pic on the right was 10:30 this AM. If that tail was a stick, he took it with him!! LOL FWIW, there were a bunch of racoons in the pics from last night.

I'll investigate further and see if I can get a size reference, check for the stick/tail, etc. I need to check the nearby ladder stand anyway. I went back and checked some pics from a couple weeks ago and didn't see the stick, but we've had some t-storms since then. BTW, it's the same cam and same angle as the one from my "bachelor party" post just down the page.

I've always treated it like very lean beef, rather than fowl. Skin it and bone it, then use a good seasoning rub and cook it rare to med/rare. Wild game does not like to be overcooked.

Thanks folks! The nearest body of water is Seneca lake, about 300 yards from there across a busy highway, so beaver or muskrat don't quite seem right. I've never seen them dead along the road. If it's a woodchuck, it's the biggest one I've ever seen! And he's sportin' quite a tail too. I was hoping somebody would say it was maybe a fawn lying down, or two of whatever, or something else my brain's not letting me see. I've been here for about 4 yrs, and gotten thousands of trailcam pics in that area. This one's got me stumped.

Only shot I got of it. I won't even mention what it looks like to me, because I really want some fresh eyes on it before I come to a conclusion. Hopefully it's one of those wineglass/two faces kinds of thing and I'm just not seeing it right. Otherwise

I'm going to give the e-cigs a try pretty soon. Several friends have made the switch and are very happy so far regarding smell, cost, convenience, etc. Health-wise, it can't really be any worse than smoking can it? I'm willing to take my chances. (edit) Wooly, as an added incentive I'm going to put all that cig money into a coffee can towards some new photo gear!

Several years ago I was sitting on a folding stool in a cold drizzle during deer season when a grouse wandered over and sat right underneath me for almost an hour. I guess he/she just wanted to get out of the rain for a little while.

Thanks for the bump, Mike. 4 months and counting,folks!! Who do you want at your back in this?

Let the deer live in the houses, with fridges full of nice veggies and plants everywhere, and sterilize the people?

Aw, man. now I'm hungry again. I warned myself about clicking on this post. "Self," I said, "don't even look." Now I want a sandwich! Recipe looks great, though!

My theory: it's a good price if you're happy with it! Way better than not having the bullets, IMO!

Bump. I was taught how to reload about 40 years ago by a master gunsmith. When I asked him how to get started he held up a reloading manual and said, "Go buy the book. And then go by the book." Words of wisdom that have stayed with me and that I've related to many newcomers over the years. There's no black magic in hand-crafting ammo, and there's no need to be fearful. The most dangerous part of the process is usually seating the primers. Use the correct tool for the specific primer, clean the crud out of the primer pocket, wear safety glasses, and keep your face out of the way. No distractions when seating primers. None, nada zero! Not just for safety reasons, but for accuracy as well. Correctly and consistently seating primers is an art form in itself. And with light powder-loads that could potentially be double-thrown, visually inspect with a flashlight. Keep good notes!!! Log everything that you do so that you can repeat the outcome. Or not repeat it, as the case may be. This is the biggest mistake I see among those getting started. Every round of ammo in a box should be identifiable to you. I use pieces of card stock glued inside the lids of my ammo boxes with a dab of hot-melt. Tells me what's what at a glance, and is referenced back to the log that stays in the shop if I want more specifics. When something works at the range, I have a really good idea of how to make it happen again. I'll confess here that I've come to like loading as much as I do shooting. More often than not, I'll shoot just to see how my loading is doing rather than the other way around. All the best, Mark