wolc123

The only camo, left on the Lockport Walmart rack today, was a size small jacket. I got a good deal on hot-hands, brown thread and light bulbs. They had 4-packs of 60 watt equivalent LED’s for $ .97. Home Depot had most of the other electrical stuff that I needed, so it wasn’t a wasted trip.

I love the snow, and I feel sorry for the poor bastards down south, where they don’t often get it. In addition to making it about 10 times easier to see and kill the deer during hunting season, it sure makes it easy to see what they are eating and what they like best. Local conditions are very good for them right now. I imagine they are still packing on the fat. We got about 20 inches of snow a couple weeks ago, before the ground was frozen. Now, that snow is insulating the ground, keeping it from freezing. The deer don’t need to work very hard to get thru it, to the green winter wheat and turnip bulbs down below. It looks like they are hitting the wheat harder than even the remaining standing corn right now. I am glad that I switched to wheat, from rye, that I used to use as a nurse crop for the white clover. Deer like wheat a lot better than rye. I didn’t realize how much they liked it, before today’s snowshoe walk. Wheat is also cheaper and easier to find. It sounds like we are supposed to get a thaw, mid-week. That might make an ice layer, when it refreezes, making it much harder for the deer to get at the wheat and turnips. From the looks of the tracks and scat, they prefer the winter wheat over the white clover, by about 10X right now. The tracks indicate that there might be too many deer back there. I hope the DEC opens up an early antlerless season this September, like they did last year. If they do, I will try harder to use my (4) dmp tags on mature does, instead of button bucks. I only filled two of my four prior year dmp tags (one was technically filled this year). I couldn’t be that fussy, because my brother got married in the middle of the early antlerless gun season. That took out half of the weekend days, that I could have hunted during that “special” season. Between that wedding and our daughter’s playoff field hockey run (took away most of my crossbow season), I am thankful that I was able to take any deer last year.

It is comfortable, but I have yet to take a shot at something out of it. The closest I came to that, was two springs ago when I called in a big Tom turkey. He came in quiet, about 10 or 15 minutes after I called. I was not ready, and he got within 10 yards before I saw him. The winter before that, I blew a chance at a coyote, because I didn’t open the little front window in the front, which was facing the wind. It was frozen shut and wouldn’t budge when I saw the yote and tried to open it. What I like about it, is that it is portable, and I can pick it up and move it with the loader on my tractor, using fork extensions. One of these years, I might place it in a good spot, and kill a deer out of it.

This morning’s workout was a slow snowshoe walk around the back 30. It looks like a quite a few deer must have survived hunting season, and are now using our place for winter food. My back 1.5 acre corn plot is nearly picked clean now, but still holding a little. The front 2.5 acre corn plot is long gone, but did not yield nearly as heavy as the smaller, back one. I kicked out just one dove, while walking thru the back one. Doves will only stay in standing corn while there are still some kernels of corn on it. All the greens are eaten off the little turnip plot next to it, and some of the bulbs are dug up. It looks like the deer are digging thru a foot of so of snow for clover in a couple spots. The heaviest deer feeding activity right now looks to be in the winter wheat, that I planted last fall (as a nurse crop with white clover), in 1.5 and 2.5 acre plots. I didn’t take a deer off this farm last year. I saw a spike, a small 4 point, a 2.5 year 8 point, and one doe, during the September antlerless season, and 3 unidentified deer during the late and Holiday ML seasons. Those three were in, or headed to that small corn plot.

I wonder what he charged for a filling ?

I may run up to Lockport today and check out Walmart. I got a “Scent factor” camo jacket there a few years ago, that I really like, and it was cheap. I am also out of brown thread, for tying bucktail jigs, and that is usually the cheapest place to find that. The only hunting item, I could really use, is a few pair of light camo gloves. I will definitely check out their ice fishing stuff , and probably maybe hit Runnings also. My main stop will be Home Depot, for electric supplies to wire my shop.

The two things I don’t like about ice fishing are: winds and lethargic warm-water fish. That means perch, walleye (neither of which fights worth a crap even in the summer), but also bass and northern pike, which loose most of their power in the cold water. It is fun, if you can find trout through the ice on calm days. I am hoping for some brookies over President’s weekend. I only ever caught one Laker, and it fought like crazy, as did a few rainbows that I have taken. I’ll probably have to settle for the usual dozen or so smallmouth bass and a perch or two. The bass all go back, but they break up the monotony. I don’t mind catching them, when it’s not too windy.

Most of the time, I hate high winds (more than 10 mph) when fishing, but there are couple places and times where I like it, especially if it is warm and from the south west direction. I remember killing the walleyes on the Allegheny reservoir a few times, backtrolling into the wind in May. The other is up on the St Lawrence River in the summer. When that SW wind kicks up, the largemouth get real aggressive, and fall easily to spinner baits, slow rolled over the big weed beds, in the bays. My 17 ft deep v aluminum hull mostly sucks in the wind, but it does ok in those two scenarios. It is horrible in the wind out on Lake Ontario, trolling for salmon. I don’t even try that, when winds over 10 mph are predicted. I don’t love hunting in the wind, because it covers the sound of the deer’s approach. On average, I probably hear four deer first for every one that I see first. More than half that I see first, see me before I see them. That makes killing them difficult. I have been able to kill most of the ones that I wanted to, when I heard them first.

I don’t loose any sleep over getting every last little bit of crud off after each use. I just wipe it dry with paper towels, then apply a light coat of olive oil. Any leftover crud may add a little to the “complexity” of the next meal, but no bad effects that I have noticed anyhow. Certainly nothing that an extra big swig of 12-horse can’t fix.

What are you using for cleaning solvent ? It takes me about 15 minutes to clean my stainless T/C Omega using Traditions foaming bore cleaner and a bore snake. I also use (2)T7 pellets. At the range, and before the first hunt, I coat the nylon bullet sleeves with T/C bore butter, and can shoot 3 or 4 , before cleaning is required. It took me a lot longer, when I used T/C liquid bore solvent on patches and pushed them thru the bore. I also struggled with buildup and corrosion in the breech plug. No more. Now, it’s just squirt some foaming bore cleaner thru the little plastic tube into the breech plug. Wait 10 minutes. Pull the breech plug and drop and pull the bore snake though the bore. Coat the breech plug with gorilla grease and reinstall. Done in 15 minutes with no rust or powder residue left on anything. For extended storage, I push a patch of bore butter through, prior to reinstallation of the breech plug. I don’t shoot that much, just as many as it takes to verify zero pre-season. I load it at the start of the season and leave it loaded until a shot is taken at a deer. After hunts, the ML is locked up in an unheated enclosure. If the deer is not DRT, I reload without the bore butter. If it is DRT, I don’t reload and clean the gun when I get home. Before I learned the trick of the foaming bore cleaner and bore snake, I thought about BH209. No way now, with all the misfire stories, supply issues, and high cost. I have never had a misfire with (2) T7 pellets and the cheapest 209 primers that money can buy. I think I have a lifetime supply of each now, thanks to a fellow member who now uses a smokeless ML.

Happy b-day boys.

Flip a coin.

I used a minnow pattern (black back / white belly) bucktail jig 1/4 oz last March, in the Pacific, for spotted bay bass and they were liking it. I tipped it with a small rubber swim bait. That was the only time I tried hair jigs in saltwater. I was using a cheap pos telescoping fiberglass rod, that fit in my suitcase, and 10 lb mono line. Certainly that was not a very sensitive combo. In freshwater, I use a 6 ft 1 pc, medium light graphite rod and 8 pound test fluorocarbon line. You can almost feel the bass breath on a light jig with that super-sensitive combo. That, and skipping the beers, until you have your limit of bass onboard, are important when it comes to detecting the strike on a light (1/8 -1/4 oz) hair jig. The clearer the water, the better the hair jigs work.

Maybe so, but I have a 2 years supply of vacuum sealed venison stocked up in our freezers now, so I am not overly concerned if a few get tipped off in the early fall this year. Topping the freezers off with venison, before next winter, should not be a problem if we have that beloved Holiday ML season again. I need to check the zero on my pellet gun with the open sights before I squirrel hunt with it. It has nice looking fiber optics on it. It also came with a cheap 4x scope ($39 special package price, .177 cal Marksman at Dick’s a couple years ago), and I had it sighted in with that. I pulled the scope off, because it has a horrible trigger pull (I guess there is a limit to what the Asians can do for $ 39), so that seemed to be “overkill”, plus it was mounted on the receiver and the barrel swings down to cock it. The open sights are mounted to the barrel. It has sling swivels on it and is not heavy, so it shouldn’t be too bad to carry to my roomier stands, in addition to my slug gun, crossbow, or ML. I have around 10 stands, with plenty of room for the 2nd “squirrel gun”, and just two that are too small. I think it would be legal, but a .22 rimfire would not be.

That’s all I have done with the reds. I think this year, during deer season, I am going to bring along my pellet gun (as a second “squirrel” weapon) on some deer hunts, beginning with the early September antlerless season. The silent report won’t spook off deer, and that will give me some squirrel time, when they are most active.

I just got back from my parent’s house, and mom made meatloaf for lunch. She used a mix of ground beef and pork. It wasn’t bad, but I prefer my wife’s, made with ground venison. I asked mom if she made it because meatloaf the singer had died. She did not, and was unaware of his passing. She did say that she had heard of meatloaf the singer, but could not recall any of his songs. I listened to “two out of three ain’t bad” and thought it was ok, not good, but not bad. rip Meatloaf.

Wolc prediction: Buffalo 37, KC 17.

And with open borders, getting workers down there should be a piece of cake.

It takes me about 1.25 times as long to process a doe compared to a buck. No big deal for one or two, but that adds up with more. The outer stuff ain’t so bad to trim, and I usually knock that off on “skinning day”. I final process the following day, and that is where the extra time really hurts. That extra fat is not just on the outside, but also within and in between the interior muscle groups. If I leave too much of that in, it adversely effects the quality of the grind (“roof of mouth sticking”). I can just drop the buck chunks into the grinder, with very little extra fat trimming. This is simply the way that God designed the beast. Does pile on fat and get “smarter” thru the rut, while bucks loose the fat and get dumber. It is no coincidence. That is how the species survives and flourishes. very little fat trimming needed on this 42-1/2” chest girth buck from last year:

I have a harder time with mature does, than mature bucks, so I would rate them as “smarter” by a long shot. Killing a mature buck just comes down to being in the right place at the right time and sometimes passing up on a small one first. Killing a mature doe, takes a lot more hard work and knowhow, at least for me. My harvest numbers back that up. If we consider “mature” as 2.5 years, then I have killed (6) mature bucks and (3) mature does over the last (6) years, along with (1) 1.5 year old buck and (1) 1.5 year old doe. (4) of those older bucks were at least 3.5 years old, as were (2) of the does. Mature bucks may be “smart”, for 50 weeks of the year, but those other 2 weeks are very often their undoing. Sorry, I only got a picture of one of those older does on my phone, but I do have all of the bucks: I am thankful that I don’t have what it takes to consistently kill older does, and that the old bucks are way easier for me to kill. Those bucks are a lot easier for me to process. I hate spending all that extra time that it takes me to trim out the doe fat, almost as much as I hate it sticking to the roof of my mouth, when I butcher and eat them.

AFC championship in Buffalo this year.

You will find a live 2022 thread in the deer hunting section, if you scroll down a ways. It often takes folks a while to flip their calendars.

My wife made stir fry with button buck back strap for dinner tonight. That was some damn good eating for sure, and definitely the best Asian meal that we have had. All the ingredients, besides the meat, were from “Blue Apron”.

It might count if you put it in the 22 thread.

Prayers sent for Mike.