wolc123

For some reason, those Ruby Reds taste better out on a boat than they do in the house. Labatts makes a grapefruit light that tastes similar (made in Rochester NY, maybe even at the Genesee brewery). That and Blue light lime (also made in Rochester), are the only two Labatt products that don't give me a headache the moment I start drinking them. Apparently the Hemlock lake water is the secret to no headache.

I shot one from my stand last fall. The stand is 9 ft up and the turkey was 40 yards away. The stand has a 3 ft high barn wood wall all around and I was wearing a camo hat and jacket, but no face paint or mask. There were about 8 turkeys in the group and they did not see me. When one offered a clear shot, with no danger of striking the others, I aimed for its neck with my 12 ga Remington 870, extra-full choke tube, and a 3" load of number 5 (plain lead). At the shot, it flew up into a tree almost directly above me. I could not see it clearly enough to shoot again just then, but it fell down into a ditch, after a minute or two. I climbed down and shot it a second time (in the head), from 10 yards away, which stopped its flopping. I was very surprised when the bird took off after my first shot. I had shot a grey squirrel at the same range with the same load the day before and it was instant "lights out". When I butchered the turkey, I noted a couple shot passed thru the lung area, which I assume were from the first shot, and what caused it to drop from the tree. I am not sure if aiming a little higher or lower would help from a stand. Since a couple of my bb's apparently struck lower than my point of aim, I assume that I should have aimed higher. It wouldn't hurt to pattern your gun from up there so you can find out for sure.

There might be a better way to cover the processing cash shortfall, if indeed there is one. Say for example, that a participating processor normally charges $ 60 to cut and freezer-wrap a deer. A hunter who wants to donate a deer to the program ought to be encouraged and given the option of covering all or part of that $ 60 themselves. The dollars they cover might be indicated on a receipt as a "charitable contribution" for tax auditing purposes. More importantly, in the long run, it is ALWAYS better to give than to receive. That "extra" deer is a lot less of a gift, if other folks money has to pay to process it. I believe that there are lots of hunters out there who really do want to give more, not less, especially when so much of their own effort went in to getting that "gift" in the first place.

We are doing the same, up on the NW corner of the Adirondack park. I may try for a turkey, if I hear some gobbling on the hill tops surrounding the lake, when I go out fishing at daybreak each morning. Using the oars instead of the outboard lets me hear that and all those other sounds of the woods and water waking up. The loons and the beavers seldom disappoint, but some years (usually when I have tags), the turkeys have not shown up. I never see any other "campers" out, at that time of year up there, at that time of day. The only thing that gets me off the lake (besides a turkey) will be the smell of my mother in-laws fantastic breakfast, when I am drifting downwind. Our kids love hiking, the campfires, and grandma's cooking. Swimming will probably have to wait until our next trip up, over the Fourth of July holiday, because the water will still be a bit too cold next weekend. I have a tough time picking my favorite holiday/long weekend up there, and sometimes it is a four way tie. Memorial day mornings on the lake are tough to beat, Fourth of July swimming and fishing are top-notch, Muzzleloader weekend offers good hunting and great fishing and wins on the years when it corresponds to peak fall foliage. Thanksgiving weekend wins for the deer hunting, on the years with good tracking snow. We used to camp more when the kids were younger, and we still make a trip or two a year with our truck camper. That burns more gas and is a bit more work than taking the mini-van up to the in-laws place, and it sucks to have to cook. My wife is getting better at that, but she has a ways to go before she does it as well as her mother.

That sounds somewhat restrictive. I think I will stick with my 32 oz thermos of hot apple cider.

If, by "busted" you are referring to the deer raising it's tail, snorting, and bounding off, then I can believe that. The real issue for me is the deer that catch a slight glimpse of the quick motion required to draw the bow and transitioning to a state of "high-alert". A deer in the alert condition is far more likely to "jump the string", than a relaxed deer would be. To me, that is the biggest reason why the crossbow is so much more effective on live targets like deer. It is a lot easier to hit an individual hair on a deer that is in the same place when the arrow/bolt arrives as it was when it was launched. I have always practiced "aim small miss small", but that don't help much if the target moves during the flight of the projectile. With a vertical bow, after a few bad hits (mostly shoulder blades), I learned to assume that all deer caught a glimpse of my draw, and I started aiming for the lower heart to compensate. The problem with that, is it moves your point of aim off the center of the kill zone, making it unnecessarily smaller. That concern has gone away since I dropped the vertical bow and picked up the crossbow. The slow motion required to position a crossbow has always gone unnoticed, and the four bucks that I shot with it have been right where I thought they would be when the bolt arrived. That includes one standing broadside at 59 yards across an open hay field (second toughest shot, second smallest buck), one standing slightly quartering to at 15 yards on the edge of a corn field (second largest buck, second easiest shot), one walking steady broadside at 20 yards in the woods (toughest shot, largest buck), and one standing broadside at 20 yards in a hay field (easiest shot smallest buck - bb). The first and longest shot struck significantly lower than I aimed, due to my underestimation of the range. Fortunately that bolt was directed into the heart by "you know who". Had it struck center-lung where I aimed, the paltry 8" of penetration would have only made it thru one, and that would have made for a much tougher recovery. A big part of the crossbow issue centers on the fact that those who hunt "for the challenge", can not comprehend that there are others (myself included), who hunt for the meat. For me, the less "challenge" the better, give me a quick clean kill every time (which is exactly what the crossbow has done for me). Why should I put a living, semi-defenseless creature at risk just to "challenge" myself. It reminds me of "catch and release" fishing, just a senseless waste of a fine food source. Folks who want that challenge ought to stick to golf or video games.

That particular instructor might need a little more education as to how an arrow or bolt kills an animal, compared to a bullet. (Arrows and bolts kill by cutting and bullets kill by shock). Don't you think that the archery course should be required to hunt with a crossbow ?

I do not think that early ML season would be a good idea in the southern zone. All the additional loud "bangs", coupled with increased hunting pressure, would likely cause more deer to switch earlier to "full-nocturnal" mode. That could very well decrease the overall deer take (archery, gun, and ML combined). Just like with a vertical bow, the intended target deer is usually the only one that hears a crossbow go off. When a ML, or other medium or large caliber gun goes off, most of the deer in the DMU can hear it. Sure, there are few gun blasts made now during big-game season by small-game hunters, but I think those numbers are small compared to what would happen if ML's were allowed early for big game. Everybody and their brother would get a ML, if there was an early big-game season for them. I am ok with the two weeks that the crossbow gets now, in the southern zone, before the guns come in. Were they any other two weeks, I would not be quite as content. I have personally done much better with the crossbow, hunting just those two weeks over the last 5 years, than I did with a vertical bow hunting the whole season, over the 30 years prior. The crossbow hunters up north are the ones who are really getting screwed, and so are the local merchants who depend on tourism dollars. Under the regulations since 2014, there are only three days for the crossbow up there before the early ML season opens, and not one of them falls on the weekend. Finally, it seems ludicrous to me, that the archery course is not required to hunt with a crossbow. That seems to be one point that I have not heard anyone argue against. I don't mind the current restrictions on crossbow minimum limb width and poundage. Maybe we will see some changes to the rules this year, but I certainly will not bank on it. There are a couple of ways around the "front-heavy" issue: 1) Get yourself a smaller, narrower crossbow. My cheap little Barnett Recruit handles almost is easily as my Ruger 10/22 and has been 4/4 on deer and all of them dropped dead within 40 yards of taking the bolts. 2) Shooting rails - almost all ladder stands come standard with them, and it don't take much to throw some up around permanent stands.

It took a third trip back and forth to get the first one sighted in. The 1/8" spacer that I made for under the front sight was not enough, so I had to walk back to the shop and make another. It took some time and is not real pretty, but it got the job done. I only have 6 bullets left for woodchucks, after that third trip back to the range. Walking thru the soft ground and water really is a good workout with minimal joint impact loading and lots of calories expended. I wound up getting that gun hitting right where I wanted, at 50 and 100 yards with the "mismatched" fiber-optic sights, but now I lack the energy to try the other gun. The lawn could use cutting again, and my daughter has her last field-hockey game later this afternoon, so no more range time for me this weekend.

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.