wolc123

I’ve been wanting to get some deadfalls cleared over in my parent’s woods for the last few weeks, but the weather has not cooperated. I finally managed to open up a couple trails yesterday. It was cold and windy, my favorite kind of weather for cutting wood, so I barely work up a sweat. I only had a 16” bar on my Stihl (model MS280) and I was wishing for my 20” to deal with a big ash that fell across one of the main trails over there. I’ll be sure to bring that on my next trip. Cutting from both sides, I was able to remove enough of the logs to get my dad’s and my sister’s side x sides through the trail.

I think that my neighbor said his Ruger # 1 was around 12 pounds. Not sure what ammo he had, but he claimed it was suitable for elephant. We shot it from a bench and I can vividly recall how tame that the recoil felt, compared to all of my slug guns. i would think that an old fixed power scope, like this Weaver 1.5 on my Ithaca featherlight, would hold up very well on your .458. That little “featherweight” shotgun is a real shoulder pounder. I never noticed it while hunting, in the late fall and winter, but I never shoot it from a bench without a good recoil pad. My shoulder is thankful that I only shot my ML, during the early September antlerless deer season this year. Touching that Ithaca off, in just a t-shirt, would definitely cause some serious bruising.

My neighbor had a Ruger #1 in .458 Win mag. I shot it a few times, and I was surprised at how tame the recoil felt, from that heavy rifle. I’d say that it punched my shoulder roughly half as hard, as my hardest kicking gun, a 16 ga. Ithaca featherlight model 37 deerslayer shotgun. How does the weight of your .458 compare to a Ruger # 1 ?

That’s awesome, and it’s great to hear that she is thriving there. Thank her for her service. It’s looking like she might have some opportunities to put those Russian language skills to use in the not too distant future. We stopped at West Point, with our youngest daughter, on the way home from dropping our oldest off at a downstate college. It certainly was an impressive place, and a very scenic location on the river. We saw that they had some women’s sports programs, but no field-hockey (our youngest’s favorite). She got recruited by several colleges that had that, including St .John Fisher, where she ended up. No serving of her Country for her, so far anyhow. It’s nice to have her, just about an hour from home. Our eldest had enough of the downstate college, 6 hours away from home, after a semester and a half (thank goodness). She came back home, got a decent-paying job, and is contemplating the Navy. We were only “empty nesters” for 1/2 of a semester. Both of them are in Florida on spring break right now.

Unless you do it yourself, you really don’t know for certain how long it was aged before it was froze. My money is still on, that it wasn’t long enough to get past rigor mortis. Maybe the guy lost track of how long it was in there, or grabbed one from the wrong end of the rail by mistake. Maybe the temperature regulation got messed up and everything in the cooler froze solid.

I like the single-shot smoothbore shotgun in ML season idea. It might have put an extra deer in my freezer last year, during the Holliday ML season. I caught the tail end of the Christmas blizzard on the first day of that last year. A considerable amount of wind driven snow must have made it into my muzzle that morning, then melted down into the powder charge, when I brought the gun in the house at lunch time. That was the second mistake I made that day. I should have left the gun out in my unheated barn. I also should have covered the muzzle, when hunting in the wind driven snow, that morning. That evening, I suffered my first misfire with my in-line ML, saving the life of a nice sized broadside doe at 50 yards. My old, NY-arms 12 ga single shot smoothbore would have had no trouble getting the job done that day with a plastic-cased smokeless-powder slug. If such a law passes (and I don’t believe it ever will), I would only use that shotgun on rainy or snowy days.

It’s probably tough because it was frozen before it got past rigor-mortis. That’s a very common mistake with deer hunters, and a critical part of the process if you like your red meat tender. Several ways to fix that now: 1) Take the frozen meat to a processor and have them grind it for sausage , hot-dogs, etc. 2) Get a pressure cooker, thaw it out, chunk it up, and can it. To prevent future occurrence, age the carcasses before processing at 33 - 43 F for 5 days if 1.5 yr old, 7 days if 2.5 yr old, 10 days if older. An old refrigerator with the racks removed works perfect for that, if the outside temperature is too warm.

That may have been an issue 20 years ago, but no problem these days, thanks to cell phones (unless you are hunting a spot that don’t have reception). I only hunt by myself up at my in-laws place but my phone is always with me. My father in law can be in most places I hunt up there in minutes with his loader tractor or atv. I think his new tractor has a lift capacity of over 2000 pounds. He had to upgrade a couple years ago, to handle his new snowplow. If I was way back, where it was difficult to get an atv close for the drag, I would skin the bear first and drag just the hide out, leaving the head and paws attached. That would be the toughest (and most important) haul. Next, I would go back for the 20-40 pounds of edible meat on my second trip (assuming the bear weighs 200-400 pounds live). That will likely be my plan anyhow, unless the temperature is predicted to be below 40 degrees at the time of the kill and for the next several days. With bear in warm weather, it is very important to get the hide off fast and get the meat cool. I know for sure that my best chance of getting a bear will be as a “target of opportunity” while I am deer hunting during the northern zone early northern zone ML week. Global warming has made that week very warm, the last 10 years at least. That is surely not going to change anytime soon. Keep your knife sharp and you have nothing to worry about.

Certainly it is true that the vast majority of bears taken in NY are "targets of opportunity" that are harvested by deer hunters, who happen to be in the right place at the right time. The reasons for that are: #1) bears are mostly nocturnal. #2) baiting is not allowed in NY. I am a pure meat hunter, and that is the main reason that I never had much desire to hunt bears. The problem with bear meat is: #1) Less than 10% of their body weight is edible. All of the rest is non-edible guts, hide, bone, and fat. #2) Meat from bears that weigh much over 200 pounds field-dressed tastes bad. The math here just doesn't work out for me (as a pure meat hunter). Why should I waste much time and money in pursuit of less than 20 pounds of ok-tasting meat, or a little more bad-tasting meat ? The answer that question, is that my father in law would really like a bear rug. For that reason only, I have devoted some time and energy, over the last 20 years since marrying his daughter, in pursuit of one. The bear population is definitely on the rise where my in-laws live, up on the NW corner of the Adirondack park, not too far from fort Drum. While I have yet to see one, I had a close call up there last October, during the early ML week. We found fresh tracks that were made (at night) while I was there. They have also captured a few daytime trail cam photos, and neighbors have seen several out in the daylight. Bears have been my primary target up there, about every other year, over the long Thanksgiving weekend. On the "in-between" years, when I still have a buck tag because I haven't filled it at home in the southern zone on opening weekend, bucks are my primary target. If I ever do manage to get a bear up there, it might be killed with my 16 gauge side-by side shotgun, and a Remington "slugger". Grouse, are my "secondary" target on those "every other years", so I bring along some # 7-1/2 shot for those. I have patterned that double with the slugs, and it groups pretty good, out to about 60 yards. Shots further than that, in the the heavy cover up there, are unlikely anyhow. This was a couple years ago up there on Thanksgiving weekend. I had a couple slugs in the double and was watching a spot at sunrise “buck-tagless”, and hoping to see a bear. We had to come home a day early that year, because it got warm and there was a big “opening week” buck carcass hanging in our garage that I had to process before it spoiled (the victim of another 16 ga Remington slugger from a different gun):

The lack of any frozen ground this winter took out my winter firewood gathering. With my spare “free-time”, I’ve already exhausted my supply of bucktails, making jigs for bass fishing. I’m not sure if they will like coyote tail jigs, but that’s all I that I got left, so I’m going to give it a try: Maybe I can get a few more of those before that season closes at the end of March.

I never shot a sucker, but I really enjoyed spearing them, back when it was legal on the local streams. Murder creek in the town of Newstead was my favorite spot. The first warm rain in the spring would always bring them up.

I went out after small game with my neighbor the last 2 Sunday afternoons. Two weeks ago we saw (3) rabbits and a squirrel and killed (2) of the rabbits. Last Sunday, we didn’t see any small game whatsoever. I think I’ll skip next Sunday.

I’m going to plow our front yard for my early sweetcorn this year. My wife has already given my the ok on that plan. That will make it easy to water. It will also make it easy to harvest, and to control the raccoons. They, and the deer got almost all of my early sweetcorn plantings way out back, last year. Other benefits will be a lot less wasted time mowing our lawn this summer. My front yard has gotten so rough the last few years, that I have had to run the riding mowers very slow. The early corn will be done for, just in time to disk it up smooth and reseed the grass, at the optimum time of late August. My front yard drains very good. I could probably plow it now if I wanted to. I’ll wait until mid March or so, let the sod rot a couple months, then disk it and get it ready for planting early sweetcorn in mid May.

It takes me about a half hour and 2 quarts of gas to blast everything out/off from a raw, skinned head using my 3100 psi power washer. That also beats the heck out boiling them in the house, especially when it comes to the cleanup, and keeping my wife happy. I just leave the mess outside overnight, and the birds and vermin have it all completely cleaned up by the next morning. I like the natural bone color on my euros, and you would also likely get that with the beetles. When you boil them, they sometimes turn an ugly yellow.

As long as there is not too much wind, the tree umbrella works ok for me. I’ve now managed to kill (2) deer from under it, when it was falling pretty good. I wouldn’t have believed that was possible before that, because the rain makes so much noise hitting it (sounds like a snare drum). I also use an old 10x gor-Tex jacket on occasion, if walking in the rain can’t be avoided.