wolc123

The Whitetail Institute “Tall Tine Tubers”, that I planted last Wednesday, look like they germinated pretty good. It was at least 3 year old seed, so I wasn’t sure how they would do. This plot is about it 1/2 acre and I seeded it at about half the recommended rate. It is on the end of a good looking 2 acre RR corn plot. I plan on planting an adjacent 2 acre wheat/clover plot after September 1. I have 50 lbs of wheat leftover from last year and a couple pounds of Whitetail Institute Imperial Whitetail clover, that should work good for that spot. I am going to set up a pop up blind, with a comfortable padded chair, in the middle of a small old clover plot, that is on the inside corner of the corn, TT tuber, and new wheat/clover plots. As long as the wind is from the NE, that should be a good spot. With that wind, I will need to drive the Durango to the west property line, and park on the north end, in order to avoid spooking the deer on the walk back to that blind. The tires it came with look like they have some decent tread, but I am going to put some chains on all four, as soon as it starts getting muddy or cold, so it will be good to go in all weather conditions. The drainage is very good along that route, because it is all right along the creek bank. I also think I will put my hitch reciever cargo carrier on the back, so I don’t mess up the carpet, if I need to haul out a deer carcass.

It looks like the germination percentage don’t drop off too bad on 3-4 year old Whitetail Institute “Tall Tine Tubers”. I seeded this plot at about 1/2 the recommended rate and it looks decent (6) days after planting. I also rolled the seed into freshly worked ground with a cultipacker, rather than cultipack first, like it said on the bag. It’s had maybe 1/2 inch of rain total over those (6) days:

I hope to get out at least the (4) weekend days. If possible, I will take one mature doe the first week and another one the second. I prefer to let the carcasses age about a week, to get the meat thru rigor-mortis, and I only have room for one in my “deer fridge”. It will surely be way too warm, for skin-on carcass aging in my insulated garage, in mid-September. I am hitting our venison supply hard right now, to make space in the freezer. I’d like to add (3) mature deer to it over the next year. Getting two doe out of the way early would allow me to be more selective with my (2) buck tags later. I would definitely like to save one of those two buck tags, for the Holiday ML season, which has become my new favorite time to hunt deer.

How much for just the cord ?

I like the regs the way they are now. I think “earn a buck” would put too much pressure on the does. Plus, with the global warming trend that we are currently in, the odds of good rideable snow before New Year’s in NY state is getting less and less each year.

Those are leveling blocks. For optimum comfort in a stand, I like to keep the platform within half a bubble of perfectly level.

Scratch one more bait/corn snatcher. Another adult male coon today. This one swiped the marshmallow, out of one box traps, before he went for the cat food in the dog proof. The new negative post knife switch on the Durango worked good. I don’t even need to prop open the hood to use it.

Definitely a big step in the right direction. I have a hard time picking the best of the changes that the NY state DEC made for deer hunters last year, since (4) of them helped directly, to put deer in my freezer last season. The early antlerless gun season definitely ranks near the top. I guess I would call the Holiday ML season my favorite of those changes. It’s hard to beat getting paid from work to hunt deer, without having to use extra vacation days. Those extra half hours of hunting time, before sunrise and after sunset sure were great also. So was the reopening of early antlerless ML harvest, in many Adirondack zones that had been closed for too long. I wouldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t have seen those changes printed out in black and white in the “highlights of changes” section of this year’s regulation book, when I picked up my new tags yesterday. I thought maybe last year was just a one-time fluke for those changes. It looks like they are now “carved in stone”. As a pure meat hunter, I can’t think of a time when the deer hunting was any better in NY. Bravo DEC, and keep up the good work. I had been hearing rumors that the Holiday ML season in particular was not certain. It was great to see that it is.

Shepard’s pie, it was so good that I had to go back for a second helping.

I did ok shopping at Runnings in Lockport this afternoon. They had everything that I was looking for, except bullets (30/30 and Hornady 2-3/4” 12 ga SST sabots). I might have to use my 16 ga, crossbow, and ML a little more than I intended to this year. I picked up my Hunting Licence with (2) wmu 9F dmp tags, bow/ml buck tag, regular buck tag, bow/ml antlerless tag, bear tag, and (3) turkey tags for $ 72. They threw in a free blaze orange ball cap with the deal. I bet you “lifetime guys” don’t get that. I also picked up a new battery for my tractor or truck (it’s got top and side posts). It’s got a few more CCA than the NAPA legend battery that I picked up last year for that purpose. That one cranked my 4wd diesel tractor pretty slow, when it was real cold last winter, (now it’s a backup battery in my summer Silverado). It will be interesting to see if this one does any better in the tractor this winter. Our new next door neighbor wants me to plow his driveway, so I will have about twice as much plowing to do. I am working on trying to get another snowplow tractor for backup. If that deal don’t pan out, I’ll set up my antique Ford 8n for that “backup” service. I used it the first few years we were here, for snow plowing, and it worked pretty good with a rear blade. It’s only 2wd, but the rears were both loaded (now only one is), and I have chains for them. I also bought a neutral post knife switch for the Durango field car. Taking the 3/8 wrench off the keychain will make it easier to carry anyhow, and it should speed up my starts. That will be handy for working the coon/corn trap line every day until mid October. Other items in the Runnings cart included cowhide work gloves. I hope they hold up longer than the Buffalo hide ones that I bought there many months ago and wore out on my barn demolition projects. I also got a Gallon of pink rv antifreeze, which will be needed with the new camper (old one lacked plumbing and didn’t need it), and filters for the two furnaces in our house.

The woman at the customer service desk at Runnings in Lockport wasn’t able to take a donation, towards the “support venison” today, when I picked up my hunting license and first two wmu 9F dmp tags. Oh well, I guess I’ll try for $ 20 when I go back for the next two, after November 1.

No action in the coon traps this morning. I finally finished the last of the bush-hogging yesterday afternoon. I still have a couple acres of wheat/clover/alfalfa mix plots that I want to get in after September 1, then I should be set for the season as far as food plots. There are still a few tasks remaining out back, prior to the early September antlerless gun season. I need to clear away a dead ash that fell near my two story blind, blocking the view from the upper deck. I am going to move a truck cap blind to a new location where I just bush-hogged some nice shooting lanes. After that, I will set up a pop up blind, with a nice comfy chair that I just garbage picked, near the intersection of corn, turnip, old clover, and fresh wheat/clover plots. I will only be able to hunt that one with NE winds. I also need to finish dialing in my Marlin 512, for longer range shots, and check the zeros on my crossbows. I have one stand location over at my parents place, on the opposite corner of wmu 9F that is too close to buildings owned by others for firearms, but ok for crossbow (250 ft setback required while guns are 500 ft). That stand is 400 ft from the nearest double-wide mobile home. It’s supposed to be a scorcher this afternoon, so I think I will run into town and pick up my license, doe-tags, and do a little more shopping in the air conditioned stores. The water level in the pond our back is looking low. There is rain predicted over the next two days. That should help the plots and the pond.

My first one was a Daisy pump. I am not sure of the model. You only could pump it one time. It had a threaded insert, that went in the end of the barrel and held the bb’s. My brother and I each had them, and mom would hide the inserts when she didn’t want us using them. A couple times she “forgot” where they were hidden and we went days it weeks without them. One of those times might have been after I let a friend carry my brothers as we walked along the creek bank one day and he accidentally killed a hen mallard duck with it. I had told him how I would hit ducks from over 100 yards away with mine and it would just aggravate them a little, but do no harm. The creek ran almost perfectly straight behind our house, between our bridge and the neighbors, about 150 yards away. I would sit on the middle of our bridge and hold my Daisy at about a 45 degree angle. By watching the bb’s splash down on the still water, I could walk them in, until one landed square on the back of a duck, 100 yards away. The struck duck would flap its wings a little, then go right back about it’s business, as if nothing had happened. The problem with my friends shot is that it was taken from up high on the bank, at a downward angle, at a duck only 15 yards away. The bb still had enough energy at that range to break the hen’s neck. Mom heard about it and hid those inserts for quite a while. This incident happened almost 50 years ago. I saw that friend at a party a few weeks ago and I asked him if he still remembered killing that hen. He said that he did. I don’t remember if I ever got the insert back for that old Daisy. My next BB gun was a few years later. I think it was a Crossman nylon 766 or something like that. You could pump it up to 10 times and it would take bbs or pellets. It was way more powerful than my old Daisy.

No doubt hearing is extremely important for hunting. I hear about (3) deer first, for every one that I see first. I always wear hearing protection when target practicing with real firearms and I do more than 95 % of my target practice with BB guns and crossbows. I also always use hearing protection in the shop at work, and when operating my tractors, chainsaws, and lawnmowers. I avoid concerts and loud nightclubs and keep the stereo down low at home and in the car. Once you loose any of your hearing, there is no getting it back.

No, that gets written off as “entertainment”.

I think that two mature deer will be enough for my wife and I this year, since both of our girls will be away at college. As I mentioned earlier, if I fill those September tags, I will give one to my brother in law (after I grind it). He used to have a buddy, who was a butcher and gave him lots of ground venison to mix with his ground beef, but that guy retired two years ago. The jerky that he makes from grind, just hasn’t been as good, since he stopped adding venison to it. I am going to try my best to punch all (4) of my wmu 9F dmp tags, because there is still way too many deer around here. If it works out with my schedule, I will butcher and grind all of them (except for the back straps, tenderloins, and neck roasts). My brother in law could easily use (3) deer’s worth of grind. If I don’t have time to butcher them, I will take them to the Buck and Doe shop, a local, participating “venison donation” facility. I am also going to try my best to fill my antlerless bow ML tag up in WMU 6C. There are also too many deer up there, based on the distinct browse line all around the lake up at my in-laws place. I hope that I can be selective enough with my (2) buck tags, so that I still have one for the Holiday ML season. That is my new favorite time to hunt, and it is a lot more fun if I have a buck tag. Any deer that I get up in the northern zone, I will likely get butchered up there, by the same outfit that I used last year (they must have kept about half of the meat). I assume they put their half to good use. The outfit that I used previously up there (Nolt’s in Lowville) was cheaper and gave me a lot more meat back from a smaller deer. They are a lot farther away from where I hunt, so I consider using the local place a bit of a “venison donation”, as well as a time saver.

I heard they were going to be doing that. This one seemed very healthy. It took a couple extra .22 lead pills to put him down.

Scratch one bait bandit. Apparently, he liked cat food more than marshmallows. Last night was the first night, since I put three box traps in the sweet corn, that there were no marshmallow baits swiped out any of them. This was another big male coon. Just like last year, I think the local coyotes are keeping the females and juveniles in check. Similar to General Custer, the coyotes don’t struggle much with the females and the immature, but they have a tough time with the adult males.

Since Jesus Christ alone determines the final destination of all living things, keeping Him alone in the top spot, is the best way to ensure that they end up exactly where you desire. I like it when they end up on my table.

I put a couple Duke dog-proof traps out tonight, one next to the three box traps, where marshmallows have been getting swiped. Hopefully, a little cat food, in the bottom of a dog-proof, will catch the culprit that has been swiping marshmallows. I put the other one way out back, on the far corner of my 2 acre RR corn plot. A few ears have been damaged back there, and I am not sure if it was from coons or deer. Hopefully, I will find out in the morning. I plan on cutting the hay in the front and side of that field tomorrow.

That’s not too bad. It sounds like they down a bit from this spring’s peak. The Fed’s recent interest rate hike must already be making an impact on high lumber prices.

Stuffed peppers (with ground venison of course), sweetcorn, and cucumber salad.

What were they charging for pt 4x4’s ? Last spring, I got 8 ft landscape timber’s at Home Depot for 5.99 ea. I had to sort thru quite a few to find straight ones.

I will probably donate my first extra one to my brother in law this year. I will grind it for him, because my great grandfathers old grinder worked so well, after I replaced the knife and screen on it last year, that I can’t wait to run another one thru it. I only ran that 3.5 year old buck thru it last year. The next deer I got (technically this year) was a button buck and it would be sinful to grind one of those. I am hoping for a couple nice mature wmu 9F does, during the early September antlerless gun season, now just over a month away. I am going to try and pick up the (2) tags this weekend.

The 3.5 year old, that sported that rack last year, was one of the best eating ones that I can recall. Proper aging of the carcass after the kill plays a big role in that. The older they are, the longer they need to age (at 33-43 deg F) to get past rigor-mortis. That one hung (9) days. I ground most of it, but I also made (2) neck roasts. I can’t wait for the second one. The first was the best I ever had. We slow cooked it for (8) hours, in a crock pot, with a can of Genny Ruby red kosh.