wolc123

I went to Tops this morning to pick up ice and sports drinks for the guys in the shop. Sign out front said masks optional. It was about 50 50 inside. Sure felt good shopping without one.

I had a silver one just like it. It was a great truck. I put about 70000 miles on it without any breakdowns and sold it to a friend who still runs it. I replaced it with a 3/4 ton 2000 8 ft box Silverado which I gave to my father in law a few years ago. He put a plow on it and still uses it to maintain all the roads at his retirement camp. My 2000 has the 6 liter and has also been relatively trouble free, never leaving me stranded or requiring a tow. The only troubles it had were rust/road salt related. They did improve the fuel mileage a bit when they redesigned the engines in 2000, but I have no complaints with the (3) GM 350's that I have owned. I drive another 2000 Silverafo now, also a 3/4 ton but a Florida truck that has never seen a NY winter and does not have a spot of rust on it. As long as I can keep it that way, I dont suppose I will ever be in the market for another truck. He still "let's" me use my old truck when I go up there hunting in the fall:

Florida is a nice place to visit in January, February and March, but other than that forgetaboutit.

My EDC was a small, "made in USA" Imperial, very similar to that. I found it in a $1.00 bin at the Alexander steam show in 2014. The smaller blade was broken off about mid way (that's why it only cost a buck). I reshaped the broken stub blade on a grinder, such that it was about 1" long, and I always kept that razor sharp. Prior to that, my EDC's rarely lasted me over a year before I lost or broke them. I have been carrying miscellaneous knives since mid-February of this year, when I lost the little Imperial while ice fishing up on the NW corner of the Adirondack park. Lately, it has been a roughly 3/4 scale Buck 110 copy that my father in law brought back from China years ago. It sucks, compared to that little Imperial 2 bladed folder. Rumor has it, that he found my $ 1.00 knife, near the top of the stairs to his dock, up on that small Adirondack lake. I am looking forward to getting it back, when I head up there next. If I do, I might just see how many skips I can get out of this Asian buck. I will guess 6 because it is nice and flat.

I have been "wearing" my mask in my front shirt pocket for the last 2 days. If someone asks me to, I will wear it over my mouth. I would only wear it over my nose at gunpoint.

No decipher needed unless English is not your native tongue. It is spelled right out in bold letters.

If you want to know who or what to trust, open up your billfold and read it off your folding money.

That is a beast. I am hoping my biggest one (43 hp, 4wd) will have enough pull to bring down my old barn in the next few weeks. I plan on using a 1/2" wire rope and a snatch block to double my pull force.

I will be using my JD 8 ft pull-type over the next week, hopefully starting tomorrow. No rain in the forecast for a while, and the soil temp should be plenty warm enough, after a few days in the 80's I would like to get a little "sacrificial" early sweetcorn in yet this week. I have 70, 80, and 90 day varieties (cappacino, bodacious, and silver queen). Most of the first batch to get ripe always goes to the coons. I usually get them before they get much of the next batch though.

That is definitely true. I have used 5 different pull-type disks. Each of them worked way better than the (2) 6 ft 3-points I have had. My favorite is the 8 ft JD, which I still have. Ironically, that was also the cheapest. It came with a wagon load of stuff (including a 3 and a 4 section drag), that I paid the guy $200 for, which was less than scrap value at the time. One of my favorite sights was that 6 ft 3-point Dearborn disk leaving my farm in the pickup of a very happy buyer, who gladly forked over $ 450 for it. I had struggled with that for about 10 years. It took so many passes, compared to my granddad's old 8 ft Bissel, and another that I borrowed from a neighbor, previously. My uncle, next door, had an 8 ft IH pull-type, which also worked way better, as did my dad's 6 ft Bissel pull-type. I only picked up the 6 ft Howse 3-point that I have now, because occasionally I need to do a job for a neighbor and that requires road transport. It works a lot better with about 300 pounds of steel plate bolted to the frame, but still no where near as good as any of the pull-types. I also use the 3-point on very small plots (less than 1/4 acre). As a general rule of thumb, a 3-point disk takes twice as many passes to achieve the same level of soil breakup and about 25 percent more horsepower per unit width to pull on each pass. The 3-point hitch is great for lots of tools but definitely not a disk.

Maybe it is more the combination of gun shots and human scent where it is not expected. I had a young antlered buck come out of the bush and sniff the muzzle of my 06 on the range one time, about 2 minutes after I fired. I was 100 yards downrange checking my target. I have never been so scared of a deer as I was that time. My rifle was on the rest and pointed my way. There were no other humans around. I was pretty sure there were no more rounds in the mag.

Thanks for the easy question. The answer is very simple: NOISE. Deer and coyotes are two of the best survivors there are when it comes to being killed by man. They have hearing many times better than we do. Their sense of hearing is only slightly exceeded by their sense of smell. The problem with the guns is the noise they make. A vertical bow or a crossbow get around that issue. It dont take too many gun shots going off, to force deer into doing more of their feeding at night. By allowing a more effective silent weapon to be used, during the time when there is more daylight activity, the DEC could gain much better control of the deer population using hunters rather than vermin as the primary tool of control. Allowing guns throughout, would be more of a loss of control than a gain, due to the "noise" factor alone.

The problem with opening the coyote season all year would be an increase in deer population, beyond tolerable levels for motorists, farmers, and homeowners. It is not all about hunters, but they should be the primary means of control. That issue could be quickly corrected by opening up all of archery deer season for the crossbow. The way things are currently, we need to protect those coyote pups in the hayfields in order to keep our deer numbers in check. Vertical bows are simply not an effective enough weapon to allow hunters to do that. Bottom line, you want to hunt coyotes year round then you need to open up all of archery season for the crossbow. It really is that simple. If you want to blame a group for not letting you hunt coyotes year round in NY state, your focus should be on NYB. They have successfully lobbied to prevent full inclusion of the crossbow for yet another year.

I am slowly weaning myself off the mask by "forgetting" it a little more often every day. I dont think I will wear it at all by June 1. I might keep one in my pocket, if someone asks me to wear it. It certainly isn't worth fighting over, but I do think it is stupid to keep wearing one, if you are fully vaccinated. The sad thing is, thanks to the smart phone, at no time in history has such a high percentage of the population been stupid.

I honestly think the coyotes do us more good than bad, but I didn't always feel that way. They take out mostly the weak deer, which tends to strengthen the herd. There are two "happy times" each year for the coyotes, when it comes to eating deer. First is fawn drop. Knowing very well how good button bucks taste, I can only imagine how scrumptious those little spotted morsels must be, especially eaten raw. The second, less recognized "happy time" for the coyotes is the post rut, when mature (over 3.5) year old bucks are so weakened and slow that they are relatively easy for the coyotes to run down and kill. If you have ever seen a group of antlerless deer and an old buck in late ML season you will understand this better. Those antletless ones (does and button bucks) can literally run circles around the old boys at that time of year. Which one do you think the coyotes will catch ? That is why you should think twice before passing on any 3.5 year old buck. If you don't kill him and eat him that year, the odds are that a coyote will. It is also very likely that his body will be at the maximum size, as well as his rack at that age (Milo Hanson's world record was aged at 3.5).

Looks like Shaw is drinking some kind of pansy Nantucket lager. Real men drink Genny Cream ale.

My uncle (lives nextdoor on the edge of the homestead), and cousin (lives in a big mansion down in Georgia- he married a rich southern woman) were just over eyeballing it today. If the trolley is still in one piece after the barn crashes down, I would like to hang it and a section of the rail up in my new pole barn. If they ever ban the killing of deer (that's where we get most of our protein now), I would probably raise goats. I hear they taste similar. Then I will use them old forks for loading loose hay into my loft.

If only they would legalize crossbows for all of archery season, Then the coyote would not be needed for deer control and the state could stop protecting them. The way the rules are now, the coyote is absolutely necessary to keep deer numbers in check. Without them, auto, landscape, and agricultural deer damage would be many times what it is now. I also appreciate the coyote for raccoon control. Now there is an animal that ought to be legal for anyone to kill in any number at any time without a permit. Fortunately, NY state let's us landowners do that now, with the "damaging" ones, so long as we bury or burn the carcasses prior to the opening of trapping/hunting season. They don't say how deep you got bury them and the coyotes always dog them up within a few days. I used to hate the coyotes, but I have learned to live with them now. I gladly take their help eradicating coons and keeping deer from coming thru my windshield on my drive thru Amherst (a no hunting town) every weekday. I hear that they also benefit the wild turkey by their heavy pressure on more efficient nest predators (foxes, coons, possums, and skunks).

Not a bad idea. The topsoil I put on top of the busted blocks looks pretty good. It will take a few good rains to wash it down into all the spaces between concrete chunks. It will be a long way back to stretch a water hose though.

I closed the big mosquito hotel today by capping my 12 foot diameter concrete fire pit with dirt. I still need to finish the barn teardown , before the first big campfire in it though. That fire would likely get a lot bigger than I wanted, with a little south west breeze, if I tried it now.

Sss (shoot, shovel, shut-up). That last one means don't post it here. If you think the DEC does not watch this site you got another thing coming.

I would rather be eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out on the boat for lunch today. I settled for grilled Italian sausage on the deck. It was good with a Ruby red.

I wanted to go walleye fishing this morning, but the neighbor kid decided to go to some college drinking party instead. I have about had it with turkrey hunting, after 3 times out at sunrise without hearing or seeing a bird. Fortunately, the ground has finally dried up enough for me to start my spring plowing. I was able to get 3/5 of it done this morning. I still have a couple more acres to do, but that spot was still too wet. I had a very close call on my left rear tire this morning. I have been worried about the right side, original, calcium-filled rear rim. It is badly corroded, with exposed rubber tube around the stem. Luckily, I spotted that shed antler on my previous pass. Maybe I can get another year out of the 70 year old rear rims. I won't be loading the replacements, and that will mark the end of the old 8n's usefulness on the plow. I was wondering if that buck had survived, and it is good to see that he did. I got a picture of him last July when he was 2 (last picture). I think I saw him a month ago. He should be a very stout 3-1/2 this season, so hopefully my plots will keep him around.

It is a spec of dirt on a camera lense.