wolc123

That is a beauty. Where did he catch it? I remember catching one that was about that size , 32 years ago in April, on Honeyoye lake while I was fishing for perch and calico's. It was on the south end near the center, just into the swamp. I had to release it, because the season was not yet open. The quantity of fish caught that morning was nothing special, but the sizes of four was very memorable. I also caught and released a big largemouth bass. I got a real big perch that morning, along with a slammer calico. We ate those two, along with a dozen or so other "just barely keepers" of those species. That was one day when I would have liked to have had a camera in the boat. That was decades before smart phones, and I never worried about a camera, while panfishing.

Another surprise today, when I was able to finish my last two acres of spring plowing without blowing out the right rear rim on my 70 year old tractor. Hopefully, it makes it thru a little more planting and some cultivating this year. I will try and find a used tire and rim, in a little better condition, prior to next spring. If I dont find that, then I will probably go with a new set of tires and rims. That will cost about $1200. I won't load them, which means this might be the last time it is used on a plow.

Yes, it's the one. The JB weld repair turned out ok, but I have not fired it since the repair. I would have taken it up next weekend, if a patched round .50 cal ball was legal for turkey, but it is not (illegal in NY for turkey on 2 counts: rifle, and larger than #2 shot size). I will be packing my .410 Winchester model 20 and some high brass # 6's. I only intend to use it if I hear gobbles on the hilltops while I am out on the lake perch fishing at daybreak. I have had the lake to myself at daybreak, thru Memorial weekend, for the last 8 years. I started using the oars rather than the outboard on those outings, out of respect for all the late sleepers. Other benefits of no outboard motor noise are less spooked fish and wildlife. Beavers are common companions at sunrise. 5 years ago, there seemed to be a gobbler going off on every hill around the lake. They were safe, since I had no tags that year. I have not heard any since then. I will be ready for them this year, with 2 tags, 2 calls, a decoy, a popup blind, and this other little peashooter: Ps, I am hoping to not hear any gobbles again this year because i would rather be fishing.

Nice, I am headed up to the NW corner of the Adirondack park over Memorial day weekend. I have never caught a trout on a fly, but I plan on giving it try in the afternoons. Thanks for posting the picture of the fly. I will tie up a few like it prior to departure. Some fresh brookies, wrapped in tinfoil, over the campfire would be pretty tasty. Usually, I target petch in the small lake that my in-laws live on, at that time. Perch are few and far between on that lake, which is dominated and overrun with smallmouth bass. I don't like "senselessly maiming" bass prior to spawn, buy I typically catch dozens of them while trying for perch. Whether I am fishing or hunting, it is mostly about the meat for me. I remember those fresh wild mountain bookies tasting wonderful, 50 years ago when I ate them as a little kid. Did you cook them up and how were they ? My secondary mission, as I fish the little steam that winds around the back of the mountain, is to scout the area for early ML week this fall. I plan on spending the afternoons on that steam with my fly rod and my 50 cal carbine. Hopefully one or both will produce some meat.

They are calling for rain tomorrow, so I got the 2 acre "antler" plot planted with RR corn today. I hoping that pays off during the holiday ML season this year. I left a spot in the back for a little turnup/radish plot. I also got in about 1/2 acre of sweetcorn. I have a nice truck cap blind overlooking that in the gap to the left of the tractor. That will be my North wind hunting spot. I have about 2 acres yet to plow this spring and I hope my right side rear tire makes it thru that. It made it thru today's planting with no trouble. That antique Ford tractor is better than my newer, larger 4wd JD tractor on the plow and way better on that corn planter. It is quieter, lower to the ground, and you can get on or off easy from either side. That helps a ton when you are checking seed and fertilizer, or clearing jams. A chain came off the sprockets on the planter, as I was finishing up the sweetcorn. I put it back on and stretched a spring a little farther on a tensioner pulley. It made it thru the 2 acres of RR corn with no further trouble. I will have to pick up a new tension spring from the hardware store, prior to planting the next batch.

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.