wolc123

That does look nice. I did the opposite (planted before projects) to take advantage of the brief lull between rains. Last year, the corn I planted after Memorial Day didn’t amount to Jack Sqwat and I feared a repeat. I plan (2) new blind locations this year. I can move this one into place, in less then 15 minutes, using fork extensions on my loader tractor. It will also take about that long to set up my pop-up in the other spot. I hope to be able to squeeze that half hour into my busy “free time” schedule, sometime before September 8 , when I think the early antlerless gun season for deer starts in my home wmu.

If one of your boys wanted to hunt deer with a crossbow would you support that choice ?

The other 2 acres, plus 2 more that was corn last year, will be getting my usual wheat/clover mix after September 1. I was going to hold the weeds at bay over the summer on those plots with buckwheat, but that was a no-go at $ 75 for 50 pounds. Thankfully, I still have a gas tractor and should be able to keep those 4 acres relatively weed free with a drag till then, for less money than that. I’d probably about break even on the buckwheat seed, doing it with my diesel tractor at almost $ 2 more per gallon. For me, it is all about minimizing my venison cost per pound after subtracting all input costs.

I cut back to just 2 acres of RR fieldcorn this year, due to high fertilizer and fuel prices. I hope it lasts until January 1. I plowed a couple weeks ago, disked 3 times in between, then cutimulched and planted on Saturday. The 4 acres that I planted last year lasted until March 1. 2 acres ought to make January 1, so long as I keep the coons trapped out of it. I also put in about 1/2 acre of sweetcorn, which I will start trapping hard, as soon as it starts making ears in early August. Standing corn is the only sure fire way that I know, to keep deer on my ground, after December 1. I saved a bag of fertilizer for about 1/4 acre if brassicas, on the back of that corn plot, which will go in in July. Standing corn and brassicas is a great combo for late ML season.

This is the one that I use “Lifestyler Rower”. It was a combination Rower and Skier but I never used it as a skier and lost the parts for that many years ago. The wheels and sleeve bearings wore out a few years ago. I installed those heavy duty roller bearings under the seat and some angle brackets as guides and it now works better than it did when new. I use it for 20 minutes most Tuesday and Thursday mornings, year round, switching from wide grip to narrow grip every other month. I split that up into (4) 5 minute sets, alternating palms up and palms down. After that, I do (2) sets of 50 decline crunches with weights. My weekday morning workouts take 30 minutes total. I do some weight training Monday, Wed and Friday mornings, and stationary bike, leg extensions with weights, and leg raises (about an hours worth) Monday, Wed, and Fri evenings. I always look forward to the Tuesday and Thursday morning rowing sessions the most. It’s kind of like a reward, after busting my ass with the weights on Monday, Wed, and Friday. As I mentioned earlier, what I like best about the rower is that you can set your own pace, going as fast or as slow as you want and the resistance force is directly proportional to the speed. It uses two extension dampers for resistance that are valved for minimal force on the compression stroke (similar effect as oars thru the air in compression or thru the water when pulling). It definitely works your legs and arms at the same time. It has no electronics of any kind, but I have an old tv in front of it, and my stationary bikes, with a vcr and DVD player.

I also had basically the identical truck in a 92 GMC, also silver. I nearly smoked the tranny on that, towing a trailer loaded with sleds in overdrive, into the wind, coming home from the Adirondacks. One of my buddies who was following me said he could see the smoke, over the CB. It wouldn’t even shift, by the time I pulled into a store in Corfu, and added a couple quarts of tyranny fluid, to nurse it the rest of the way home. I got a buddy to get it to shift again and swap out the burnt fluid, then traded it in on the 95 Chevy. That was the only truck I ever traded in. Most, I have sold then to friends, but I didn’t want to stick someone with that questionable transmission.

I had a 95 short box regular cab half ton 4x4 just like that in silver. It was a good truck. The 5.7 liter was a good power plant, but the 6.0 liter’s I have had in my last two 3/4 tons is a bit better. My 3/4 ton 4x4 is great on a snowplow. Not sure how that 1/2 ton will hold up on that. Now that global warming has kicked in full time, and snow in wny is mostly a thing of the past, I prefer the 2wd 3/4 ton extended cab that I am driving now.

I definitely prefer the real thing, in the form of my father in law’s 14 ft Meyers, or my (2) 12 ft Sears gamefishers. It is nice not messing around with a battery and an electric outboard and you see and hear a lot more wildlife when rowing for power compared to running a gas outboard. That said, I do train twice weekly, year round with a “rowing machine”. It is an older model and I wore the seat mechanism out on it last year. I rebuilt that with some roller bearings and it works better than when new now. I will check the brand when I get home from work. I like that the handle width can be adjusted wide or narrow. I alternate that monthly to mix things up a bit. What is also nice about it is that the force applied if directly proportional to velocity, so you can work as hard or easy as you want, just like the real thing. The machine works your legs also, while the boats I use are mostly just the upper body.

No matter to me, since I see the early antlerless gun season is a go again this year in my home wmu (9F). Filling the freezer and then some should be a piece of cake this year. At least, with this latest crossbow over 55 full- inclusion failure, I won’t have to choose between northern zone ML and southern zone archery. Hopefully, lots of the Democrats will be jettisoned during the midterms due to the spiraling economy (caused mostly by Biden’s failed energy policy), and we will have better luck getting it thru next year. It is interesting that the Democrats are anti crossbow across the board. Why does that not surprise me ?

I bought the boat in 89 with the 60 hp version of the same motor. It was slightly underpowered with that, but the 70 is just right. I probably put more hours on the 60, in the first 10 years (much of it on the big O) as I have on the 70 over the last 21. I only fish Lake Ontario on days when the wind was favorable. I usually launch at Wilson or Olcott harbors, and if the waves were high, I go up the creeks for largemouth bass instead of out on the lake for salmon. That boat will do it all, but nothing quite perfect. It takes a good wind driven wave on the big lakes, but sucks on boat wakes. Mostly, I drift the Upper Niagara or the St Lawrence rivers at times and in places when and where there are not many other boats around.

Still got the boat ? I don’t know of a better mid-sized outboard ever made by any manufacturer, than those old Johnson 70 hp, 3 cylinder 2 strokes. I have an 1999, that I bought new. It hasn’t missed a beat, since 2000, when it got a new power pack under warranty. It has the VRO injection system, which is nice because you don’t have to mix the gas, spark plugs last a long time, and it don’t smoke much at trolling speed. I can’t stand today’s heavy 4 stroke outboards. My back is still sore from lifting my father in law’s Honda 9.9 hp onto his barge this spring. This rig is light enough to tow with my wife’s minivan if I want to.

Good luck, I know how that goes. Do you think it was an ethanol related gas issue ? My 99 Johnson 70 still has the original fuel filter in it, and I have not ever had a fuel problem with it. The only trouble of any kind I had was in 00, when it got a new power pack under warranty. I have paid the extra 50 cents per gallon for ethanol free gas ever since it was available. That said, I probably won’t have time to get it out this year until regular bass season opens up in mid-June. I did pull it up from the back of the barn, to the front, the other day though, and put the new registration stickers on it and the trailer.

Miller lite is my go to when I can’t find Genny light.

Wife’s gone on a shopping vacation, no turkey for me this morning, getting sick of venison and fish, so it was PB&J for dinner tonight: It goes very well with the Ruby red.

If you really want them angus to taste good, you should finish them on Holstein milk. That’s what Ike (my favorite President) did and he won lots of beef championships with his herd.

Man, you ain’t kidding, they wanted $75 for 50 pounds this morning. I gave the turkeys just an hour this morning, and made it to the seed/fertilizer place 10 minutes before they opened at 8 am. I dropped $100 there on 3 ($24 ) bags of triple 15 and some sweetcorn seed. I managed to get my 2 acres of field corn in and about 1/3 acre of sweetcorn (fertilized at less than 50 pounds per acre). I saved a bag of fertilizer for turnips in July. Hopefully, the rain we are getting now gets that corn going. I didn’t have the ground disked up quite as well as I normally prefer, but looking at the forecast, today was my only chance of getting it in before Memorial Day. Things went pretty smooth today, except for a fertilizer hopper chain came off my corn planter once, and I noticed a broken spring tooth on my drag. I always go over the fields with a drag / cultipacker combo (cultimulcher) prior to planting. A friend of mine said someone gave him a bunch of those spring teeth. I will have to see if he will trade me one for some foodplot seed, which I have in great abundance this year (except for buckwheat). I had to take a break from planting to load up another buddies truck with some barn beams. He paid me well for them. Now I have some gas money that I can use to keep the weeds out of the fall plots with the drag, since I was too cheap to pay $75 for buckwheat seed this morning. I think buckwheat is way overrated as a food plot seed. People just like using it because it has “buck” in the name. They have no clue that don’t mean “buck” deer, it is from a German word for “black” I think. What I don’t like about it is that it keeps resprouting until you get a real hard frost. A fool and his money are soon parted however, an no doubt the food plotters will be lining up in droves, to fork over $75 each for those bags, because they think they will draw in the bucks.

I am heading north next weekend too, and I am definitely taking my turkey gear. The one year I didn’t buy tags, I heard toms gobbling on every hill surrounding the lake, when I went out fishing at sunrise each morning. It is really amazing how much more wildlife I hear in the early mornings up there, when I use the oars rather than my gas outboard. If I hear gobblers Saturday morning, I will have my pop up blind, 870, 3”-#5’s, a hen decoy and two calls with me to use Sunday and Monday morning. If I see one black fly in the woods, I will be back to the lake for the fish. They are usually not as bad out on the water, same as the tics. Some years, my venison has come in at under $ 1.00 per pound, after subtracting all input expenses. I got pretty close to that last season. This year is going to be tough. The fertilizer that I used today cost more than double what I paid last year. Hopefully, the 2 acres of RR corn that I put in today will be enough to hold some deer around till New Year’s Day. Diesel is really crazy this year. I am thankful that I still have an old gas tractor. I know that when we raised beef, pork, and chicken, it cost more than if you bought it at the store, and I didn’t like any of that as much as I do the dollar a pound venison. I don’t include travel expenses in my venison cost calculations, because I only get it at home, at my parents, or at my in-laws places. We have to visit them regularly anyhow. I can’t help it that they have decent hunting.

That’s it for me, nothing seen or heard this morning.

If I can get 50 pounds for less than $20, I’m in. We will see in about an hour. Otherwise, I’ll spend that much in gas, going over those spots with the drag a few more times this summer. Gas is so much less expensive than diesel this year, that I am glad I still have my old Ford 8n tractor. I can probably work foodplots cheaper with that, than I can with my modern, turbocharged, 4wd diesel.

It is so windy here in wmu 9F, that it knocked over my decoy. This is the first morning behind the house that I did not hear any gobbles. The mosquitoes are swarming but this Repel tick defense and the 30 mph west wind is holding them off pretty good up here in the cupola. I got to get back here with a chainsaw and a hammer before the early September antlerless deer season and clear away the fallen ash tree and replace the missing board. I am giving the turkey hunting until about 7:00, then I got to go get fertilizer for my corn planting. Hopefully, a silent Tom will hear my yelping and sneak in from downwind before then. If not, it will have to be all red meat and fish on the table.

I disked up the corn plots this afternoon. I am going to get fertilizer tomorrow, after a short turkey hunt. I am cutting back a bit, to try and keep my boneless venison cost down , after subtracting all input costs. That means just (3) $22 50 lb bags of triple 15 this year. It would be nice to get these planted before Memorial Day. I think I will also get some buckwheat seed tomorrow (I’d it’s cheap enough) and plant that on the two other spots that I disked up, where I had corn last year. That will suppress the weeds over the summer, save me some fuel on tillage, and build up some organic matter in the soil. At the end of the summer, I will mow that buckwheat down, work up the soil again, and put in a wheat/clover mix.

I didn’t hear or feel anything Friday night.

No luck fishing the Hudson this morning. I guess I need bloodworms next time.

My guess is “grand theft auto” and violence on tv and movies gave him some ideas.

Only a branch, some fishing line, and a sinker (which I disposed of the in the trash can). Same as last fall, I didn’t even have a bite on the jigs. Nobody else was fishing, but a guy walking a dog said that bloodworms work good for bait, but to watch out for the eels and catfish. My lifetime record, of zero fish of any kind caught in the Hudson, remains intact. There were lots of Canada geese around and some young ones are hatched. A sign on the docks said to beware of tics. It was a bit cool out there at sunrise, I should have brought a warmer shirt or a light jacket.