wolc123

You got that right, now it's time for round two. I got the pack loaded up with plenty of ammo and will be headed back in a few minutes. Maybe I will take a couple extra wooden stakes back this time, for stapling targets on, because what was back there last time were in rough shape.

I always try minimizing range time with "real guns" because it is a pain going back there, ammo is not cheap, and I do not like subjecting the neighbors to the noise (I wear ear muffs). None of that stuff inhibits me from taking thousands of practice shots off the back deck with the bb-guns however.

I have four or five chains for every saw/bar. I usually make sharpening chains a "rainy day" job, clamping the bar in a vise and sharpening the chains in the shop. As long as I don't hit the dirt a lot, or metal, then those chains stay sharp a long time. I had some issues with metal the last couple years because I have been cutting down diseased ash trees that are loaded with nails from old tree stands. I am finally thru the last of those, so it should be "clear-sailing" from now on when cutting firewood. For sharpening, I use a file with a metal guard that holds a uniform depth and shows the correct angle. I have 14, 16, 18, and 20" bars and they take me about 5, 7, 9, and 11 minutes to file. The 14 and 18" are narrower and take a smaller diameter file than the 16 and 20" bars. When nails are an issue, I use the shorter bars because they are faster to sharpen. I minimize "hitting the dirt", by only skidding logs when the ground is froze in winter, or dry and hard in the late summer. I stack the logs on a wood platform to eliminate "hitting the dirt" while chopping them up into firewood. That looks like a cool tool, but I think those little tin-guard jobs only cost me about $ 7, with a file, so I doubt I will be getting one. I might ask for one for Christmas though.

My range is on the far back corner of our farm, about a half of a mile from the house. I have been putting off sighting in a couple of deer guns, because it has been too wet to attempt to drive any kind of motor vehicle back there. I just replaced the factory iron sights on one of them with fiber-optics, and put a new scope on the other. Normally, I sight in multiple guns at the same time, loading them all into my pickup and driving back there with all the ammo and gear. That has been a no-go this spring, and there is no end in sight to the wet weather. The long-term forecast shows rain every day, over the next week, except tomorrow and Monday. I ran out of patience with the weather Wednesday afternoon, and walked back there with rubber boots, carrying my gun-rest, lever-action 30/30 on a sling, and a pack of ammo, targets, etc.. The fiber-optic front sight on that was was removed from my in-line TC ML, which does not need it because it has a scope. The rear fiber-optic was removed from an old side-lock ML that I no longer use. There are shooting benches back there at 50 and 100 yards, and a 5-gallon bucket to use as a seat. Unfortunately, I could not get the rear sight adjusted low enough to get 150 grain bullets on the paper at 50 yards, just catching the top edge from 25 yards away. The rear sight has about 1/4" of vertical adjustment. I just finished machining and attaching a 1/8" spacer below the front sight and I am heading back tomorrow (maybe needing some higher boots since we got over an inch of rain last night) to try it again. Fortunately, that 30/30 ammo is relatively cheap. If things go well with that, I will walk back up to the house and fetch my rifled 12-gauge slug gun with the new scope. The ammo is astronomically priced for that, but the bolt-action is easy to bore-sight, and I have a bunch of mis-matched ammo that I can use to get it on the paper. A side-benefit of the long walk thru the mud is that it provides a great workout. If the rain keeps up, I might even be able to use my canoe to paddle between the target backstop, and a big pile of topsoil that the town highway crew left when they cleaned out the border ditch. No big rush on the slug-gun, but I really want to get the 30/30 sighted in so I can break it in on some woodchucks.

You got that right. He is the only one that I have seen admit that his opposition is based on selfish elitism. I appreciate the honesty.

This is the wettest spring we have ever experienced in western NY also. The local pro's are so far behind, that they were cutting today (on a Sunday). I barely managed to get my own third cut done today, of all the parts of the lawn that were not under water anyhow, and I only got stuck one time doing it. I have two 15 hp, 38" wide riding mowers, one with a gear and the other with a hydrostatic transmission. The hydro must have posi-traction, and I have not got that one stuck yet. It is not as good in the real thick grass though, because the hydro transmission is less efficient at putting the engine power to the blades. While mowing the thick stuff today, I got the gear one stuck for the fifth time this season. Thankfully, with all the practice I have had pulling it out with a bigger tractor, I can now yank it out of the mud-holes real fast. I have been mowing this lawn more than 40 years and never had a mower stuck until this year. We have not had more than two consecutive days that were above freezing without rain since last fall. Whenever the sun does come out you can almost see that grass grow.

True, but it would have scored much higher with me if they had not botched the hunting scenes so badly. It was very important to get those right, given the title. Had they thrown in a few real PA whitetails, it might have picked up a couple more Oscars. The movie that I just finished (Ben Hur) really cleaned up there, picking up the most of all time, largely because it got all the technical stuff just about perfect. Maybe DeNiro ought to try a stint as president of the NRA now that North is out, like the star of that one did. At the very least, he might learn a thing or two about REAL deer hunting.

That video plays at at least double speed which makes it look a lot more dangerous than it really is. It is easy to tell that by watching the folks "speed-walking".

I went out for an hour in 9f. Heard a few distant gobbles, just after sunrise, and a single shot that sounded about a mile away. It was a nice morning and I picked out a good spot for a late spring / early summer planting of field corn. There is way too much standing water in the fields to even think about plowing yet. As long as I can get it planted by the Fourth of July, it should do ok.

Its a major award.

I also was wondering how that turned out, aside from the breast. I have always been a dark meat guy, when it comes to domestic turkey. I once tried some drumsticks in the crockpot, from a wild spring tom, and they were barely edible. Even after cooking on low for 8 hours, they were tough, stringy and poorly flavored. Those that I did from a young wild hen last fall, that same way, were much better.

A couple of 1/2 pound burgers (made from doe fawn grind) grilled rare, on fresh wheat buns and a Genny light. Those were some of tastiest burgers that I can remember. Light winds this afternoon made for some easy grilling out on the deck for the first time this year.

The wedding sequence was very good. Hollywood has lots of experience with those. I liked when the sergeant crashed the wedding and they bought him a drink. His reply, when they asked him how it was "over there", was interesting. The scenes in the steel mill were also very realistic, and were probably the most technically correct part of the film. The combat scenes and special effects were better than average. Had they not botched the hunting scenes so badly (can you say: no deer ?), I might rank that movie as one of my favorite 5.

I will have to watch it again, but the animal that died in that first "clumsy" deer death scene certainly did not appear to be a whitetail. Since the title of the movie is "The Deerhunter", I can understand why the director would be unhappy with the hunting scenes. I would imagine that the writer was also furious that they substituted what appears to be a European stag (in the first "clumsy death" scene), and a Western elk, in the later "did not shoot" scene. There are not many states where whitetail deer hunting is more popular than PA, and It is almost inexcusable that no "live" ones made it into the movie (I did see a few "real" whitetail shoulder mounts). At the very least, they should have retitled the movie "The Staghunter" or "The Elkhunter", if they could not find any live deer while filming. I would have scored the movie an 8 out of 10 had they done that. Back in 1979, when that movie came out and there were a lot higher percentage of deer-hunting moviegoers, I bet many from north-eastern states walked out of the theaters wondering why there were no actual deer in the movie.

Same here. My grandpa, on my mother's side, left me his guns when he passed and that was the first one I used. It has a modified barrel and a long "deerslayer" barrel. The modified barrel still sits in the back of my gun cabinet. I only used it one time: on my very first, when I was 14 and my uncle took me grouse hunting. I fired 14 shots at 10 grouse and never even took a feather off from one. After that hunt, I used the other 16 gauge that grandpa left me ( J Stevens side by side choked imp cyl and mod), and finally managed to bring down a few grouse with that. All of the grouse that I have killed with shotguns have been with 16 gauges, including going 2/2 the only time I hunted them with my dad's Browning sweet 16. I still use that Model 37 for deer now and then, and it only failed me once, on the second year I hunted with it, and before I put a 1-1/2 power Weaver scope on it. I missed a big buck, at almost point blank range, with the open sights. I think that "buck-fever" may have prevented me from bringing up the rear sight properly. I killed my first deer (a button buck) with it, earlier that same year, using those open sights (no buck fever on that one, that I thought was a doe). The family still talks about that shot. In truth, I might have been aiming at the leader of a pair of twins, as they ran full-tilt down a mountain in Allegheny state park. It may have been the following twin that was struck perfectly thru the front shoulders. I am still kicking myself for not toting that Ithaca on a late-season hunt on my grandfather's old farm last fall, when the gun I used instead misfired on a doe that a couple little bucks had chased directly under my stand. Because of that misfire, I took a farther running shot, that I probably should not have, just to see if it would go off, when they chased her around my stand a second time, about a half hour later. I am 95 % sure that shot missed because I spent several hours following tracks and looking for blood on the snow, finding no signs of any. That was the first deer I shot at, with any weapon, and did not recover in more than 10 years. Now I have missed two in a row, including another doe that I shot at with my ML a few weeks later, striking a branch instead. Maybe it is time to bring out that old Ithaca again to end my current "miss" streak. Were it not for the generosity of a neighbor who gave us a badly shot up 2.5 year old buck, and a wonderfully tasty (just finished her last pack of grind) doe fawn, we would be hurting for venison right now, due to those two mishaps.

I will be adding this wretched soul to my prayer list, but it would be sweet if you fellas could stop quoting him because I do need a break.

I could, but it would not do me much good on the two old tv's down there now (one in the gym and one in the workshop). Each had a VCR and DVD player, but one of the VCR's just crapped out. Hopefully, the other one lasts thru the couple of hundred VHS movies that I have now (about 150 left to watch). If and when one or both of those tv's craps out, we could replace them with smart tv's and go from there. That may be several years away however. "Deerhunter" lost another point for me in the second hunting scene when they substituted a big 6 x 6 Western Elk for a PA whitetail. I don't suppose Hollywood ever had any real eastern hunting knowledge and they are always good at turning good books into mediocre movies, like they also did with American Sniper. Fredo, killing the doe in the middle of the river, was a little lame also. The ending was good though, gaining back a point, for a final score of 7 out of 10 in my book. I would call it a very good movie, but not quite a great one. Ben Hur is up next. Time for some grilled doe burgers now, and an Empire Strikes Bock.

It is still too wet to accomplish much outside, so I am watching this movie today. A buddy at work gave me several big crates of VHS tapes on Friday. We no longer have cable TV in the downstairs gym, since switching to dish upstairs, so I am limited to VHS tapes or DVD's during workouts down there. I should have enough of those for a few years now anyhow. This looked about the most interesting, so I popped it in the old VCR. The picture quality is pretty good. I finished the first 1.5 hour tape, and am now almost ready to start the second. At 3 hour run time, it is a long one. During "intermission", I bore-sighted the new Redfield Revolution scope on my slug gun. Now, as soon as the lane back to the range dries up, I can get it sighted in. It sure is a nice clear scope, with good eye relief and focus at all ranges out to about 400 yards. So far, I would give the movie a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. I would have given it an 8, if Diniro had shot a real PA whitetail, rather than a skinny European red stag. It was cool watching them drive to the bar with it strapped across the hood of his Pontiac. Hopefully, it gets even better in the second half. Good luck to all the turkey hunters. I am too scared of ticks and too uninterested in "white meat" to try that. Time now to make a couple of doe-fawn burger patties (from my last pack), mix with an egg, and put them back in the fridge so they will stay bound together when I grill them for dinner after the movie.

All: Please refrain from quoting Storm. You would have more success arguing with a brick wall. If nobody quotes him then nobody HAS to read his nonsense.

Storm is blocked now. That is a cool feature.

PB & J

That might be true in the southern zone, but the crossbow hunters (and area merchants who depend on tourism dollars) are really getting screwed up in the northern zone. Since 2014, They only get (3) days before the guns come in with early ML season. Up there, there has not been a single weekend when crossbows can be used and guns can't. If I owned a motel, store, or gas station up there I would be pushing pretty hard to add at least one weekend of crossbow to the early archery season. Also, the three days they have now are a few weeks prior to the rut. I am ok with the way things are now in the southern zone, and very thankful for those two weeks. I have done more than twice as well during archery season, since picking up the crossbow in 2014 (hunting only 2 weeks) as I did in all the years prior with a vertical and hunting the full seasons. Better yet, At four for four, I have yet to send a bolt from a crossbow that did not put the deer down dead within 40 yards. edit, I think Larry was on to something blocking Storm. How does one go about doing that ?

I have been wanting to try a neck roast for several years, but it never worked out. I always forget about it, on the first deer or two every year. The late season ones often got shot in the neck, destroying the roast. Everyone says they are so good. I finally managed to save one from a big button buck that I killed with my crossbow last fall, so I might have to try it this weekend. My wife did not seem to excited about it when I asked her to cook it. She will be out of state on a big shopping trip this weekend, so it might be a perfect chance for me to give it a try. I ain't much of a cook, but I can manage the crock-pot.

That is very similar to what I do with regarding shoulder mounts. I only mount the ones that are "extra special" in some way, but not all of them are "firsts". The first one that I had mounted is still my largest-racked buck. That 3-1/2 year old 9-pointer was a couple pounds lighter than the buck I killed last year. Last year's rack would have probably out-scored him, were it not for the two busted off tines. The rack is narrower, but heavier and higher, and would have been almost perfectly symmetric. I also had my first bow kill mounted (a 7-pointer), and a 10-point gun kill that I took that same year. The taxidermist cut me good deal on the two. I had to have my first Adirondack buck (a decent 8-point ) mounted, still my largest up there, under pressure from my father in law. He is always looking for nice wall decorations for their place up there. Back before the wife and kids, when I had a bit more money to burn, I even had a road-kill mounted. That heavy-bodied, non-typical 12-pointer had antlers that look like heavy pieces of driftwood. It seemed a shame not to get it mounted. I tried, but could not find the broken off 12th point at the scene of the violent crash (totaled a car). The taxidermist did almost as good of job as your guy on the "restoration". The first antlered buck that I killed (my first deer was a button buck), was a 6-pointer. I mounted that rack myself, in another cape that a buddy gave me. He had an old shoulder mount, that was his grandfather's, redone on a larger cape. He gave me the old one. It fit my little 6-pointer a lot better than his grandfather's big 10. For me to have another mounted, it would have to be an 11-pointer (I already have one each, of the numbers 6-12, purely by coincidence), or my largest rack ever. One exception might be my first ML season antlered buck, if it ever happens. I have taken quite a few bucks with my ML, but all during the regular gun season. A big 11-pointer with it this year would be sweet.

Looks like a young puma to me. Probably on its way north to Canada. The photo was probably taken within 50 mi of Watertown NY.