Core

They hand you the gun with the gun lock on it? Never check it?

Go into dicks and ask to see a gun and every single time they hand you the gun they will unlock the trigger lock, then they will confirm that it's unloaded before handing it to you. Why are they confirming it's unloaded even though they "know" it was put back unloaded? Because you can never be entirely sure. That's why they do it, and it's also why you shouldn't be totally fine with somebody having an "unloaded" gun at you, because you're just never quite sure. Here you go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_safety#Treat_firearms_as_if_they_are_loaded

Rule #1 always point in a safe direction. Come on, you know this. There was a guy who got killed at a party just this weekend while facebook streaming playing around with an "unloaded" gun.

My condolences. Don't know what else to say; like you said he went out doing exactly what he loved to do, with two kids next to him, and that is worth an absolute ton, but also sounds like it was way too early.

Some good ideas. Next pair of pants will have to be briarproof. I love the bib-style of my recent pants, makes me tons warmer not worrying about air coming up the back. Some ass-less chaps actually look like they would sort me out nicely, protecting the top of my boots and also function for any pants I buy. As EJ said, in Wayne county it's nothing but damn thorns every freaking where. There are also some very well recommended gaiters from amazon, these would wrap around the boots and my lower legs. they wouldn't go as high as chaps, though.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/12/13/media-types-hit-panic-button-over-cia-russia-assessment.html These people are going absolutely bonkers. BTW, Condi Rice this week said that Trump's pick for sec of state was good and she liked it (others have said this too including entrenched politicians). I have yet to read the reason why we're supposed to only have people in office who have a clear animosity to the second strongest nuclear power on the planet.

Yet another gear thread! I didn't much care when my $30 Walmart pants (great pants btw, used them many times) took the occasional cut from thorns but in the past month I bought some much nicer waterproof ("hydroproof") pants and also some muck boots (basically stole them and couldn't resist the price). I love both pairs of gear but thorns I cannot avoid where I hunt are trashing my gear in very short order. For the pants I see some iron on patches online. Are these the best way to sort these out? Are there any preventative measure I can take short of sewing on a slab of leather to the lower leg of the pants? I assume the waterproof is out the window with patches but oh well. Is there anything I can do with the boots other than shoe-goo some of the holes (they haven't yet pierced the rubber, but they are going to soon I am sure)? I can't always wear the pants over the top of the boot (this would protect it), and I know a pure leather boot would withstand these thorns like a boss, but now that I have experienced the joy of being able to dunk my foot in deep water without getting wet I doubt I could ever go back to another "hiking" type hunting boot. Is there some sort of a tape or cover that would wrap around them? This is obviously why the la crosse aeroforms have a bunch of rubber on the front, to avoid this precise complaint.

Those look nice and the continual single material without seams looks like it would be resilient and waterproof.

I can't find one damn deer on 8 acres. I would love if bigfoot was real. It would be awesome, but I don't expect there to be ever proof provided. I agree with some other sentiments that nobody can unequivocally say it isn't real. But I guess that's the scientific method; we can't prove something isn't there unless we can look at everything at the same time.

Surprised they still have any left. That is about 1/4 or 1/5 the normal price. I have shot 1/3rd of a box and each went bang

Damn I wonder if that happened to me Saturday. I only found snow underneath tracks and my guess had been that this was because the fresh snow had fallen on top of blood trail that didn't begin for a hundred yards after impact, but now I wonder if there was blood trail near the beginning the entire time but the blood had sunk below the fluffy top. Still not a lot, but I will have to keep this in mind.

This is essentially exactly what I did on Saturday except I got a crap hit instead of a good one. The only gimme deer is when you're gutting it. I still haven't decided if my very massive number of hunting sessions this year make me a diligent hard-worker or a person suffering from an addictive, obsessive type of personality. I think the line between the two is often blurry. This activity certainly teaches a bit of humility.

Definitely don't believe in bigfoot. I can't bet my life on him not existing but there remains quite literally not one iota of legitimate evidence, and given the prevalence of cameras and people in the woods and bigfoot supposedly going around people's houses from time to time I find it all a bunch of crap. I have watched many episodes of finding bigfoot, though, and my daughter and I enjoy it. Particularly when they shout at each other with the bigfoot call pretending that there isn't another person on the crew 200 yards away responding to their call.

Sounds like a great way to build customer allegiance! Maybe the guy running the store should work on his inventory management a little better and not takeout his inability to stay stocked on a customer.

Went in once. Guy is friendly, but you could spend all day driving around looking for powder so I'd call first.

Almost makes me wish we had a wild hog issue in NY. Wild hog sounds tasty and good huntin'.

A week back Beikirch was selling 50/30 777 pellets box of 100 count for $5. I imagine they are sold out by now at that price. They have 50/50 I think for about $25/box. Field & Stream has 100 count boxes of 50/50 777 for an outrageous $42.99. or a box of 50 count for about $25.

That's the worst thing, not knowing exactly what went wrong. With a bow at least you know if you missed and if not vitals you'll know approximately where you hit, but with a gun it's harder to figure out. Eventually we'll all have video cameras tapped into the scopes so that we can look back and see what happened. When you screw up and know the cause you can work on it, but if you don't know the cause all you can do is play the moment over and over and over and each time you play it, it's probably a bit further from what really happened.

8F I doubt it got that far

Biggest single mistake was hitting a deer on Saturday I could not recover.

I'll use this thread to post what happened to me on Saturday. It's kind of eating me up a bit so I can get it off my chest here. Long story short, after 20+ hunts in a row without a chance at a deer I had one walking in front of me broadside at 40 yards and I somehow missed the vitals even though I had a perfect rest, I've shot my rifle a lot, and its zero is dead-on. I believe I got just behind the vitals based on the fact that eventually I did find a blood trail (a light one), but I could not successfully track the deer (snow started falling heavily after the hit, which damned me and although I was able to find blood under its tracks by brushing the snow away--confirming a hit--I could never find it, and the blood trail dried up). and it absolutely wasn't hit double-lung, else it would have piled up. I think I made two mistakes: 1) I didn't take enough time with the shot. After all, who could miss vitals on a broadside deer at 40 yards? There was truly nothing obstructing my view, but I must have gotten just behind vitals. 2) I will not use 223 again. I used a bonded round specifically made for medium size game, and lots of people use this for whitetail, but I had the same issue other uses of 223 have had: light blood trail. Missing vitals was my biggest mistake, and 223 into them will drop the thing, but I can't help but wonder what a .50 cal muzzleloader projectile would have done, and I wish I had brought my MZ on Saturday instead.

Holy crap, how heavy was this?

Yeah I think even the cheap Simmons scopes won't fog up (at least they claim not to). Fog proof is an essential for any scope

I wondered about this in my new cva. I've only shot it twice on a clean bore after zeroing it. The second time was yesterday and my first shot was approx 1/2" from my second (i.e. no difference). The first shot was with a meticulously clean bore that I had used hoppes oil on followed by two dry patches, so if there was no meaningful amount of oil left in the bore. The second shot was with a water clean and two shotgun patches--enough to make it "pretty clean" but not obsessively so. I have been cleaning the breech plug with solvent and then blowing it out with a small can of compressed air. Re-dirtying the gun with a primer approach means I would end up with a dirty gun if I want to use it hunting. Chuck Hawks (big muzzleloading site) says he walks around with a fouled gun when hunting. My hope is that I can know where the first shot will go on a clean bore and, as long as it's consistent, I am less interested in follow up shots anyway.

This is good for a laugh, though its humor is tempered by the fact this person actually leads youth in some capacity. Says the election was an "assault", its outcome "an act of terrorism". The scariest thing to her is that the people committing the assault "are among us" (I guess one who filmed it is one of these assault actors), and that the nation is as divided as it was during civil war times. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/12/09/california-professor-caught-on-video-calling-trumps-election-terrorism.html This is what happens when all you do is get your news from huffingtonpost.