Steuben Jerry

What's the story on this? Did he run it up on a jetty?

Had to watch the Bills game on my iPad since stupid DirecTV is blocking our local NBC affiliate. They had the game on 212.1 but it was blacked out and redirected me to the local channel, which of course was blacked out due to their dispute with NBC. Not a happy camper with DirecTV - they have gone downhill since ATT took them over. Considering cancelling after 20+ years with them and going over to DishTV. What I could see on the choppy feed was that Josh looked poised, but still has to work on his accuracy. Zay dropped a sure TD pass that he should have had and Josh got sacked on the next play. Without that drop, Josh would have been positive on pass attempts with a TD and no sacks. I'll take that from a second year guy in the first rust shaking game of the season. Barkley is a solid number 2 that wouldn't scare me if he had to start a couple of games. OL play generally wasn't bad except for Bodine at center - ugh. Singletary reminded me a bit of Thurman, I like the kid! The Christian Wade TD happened after I went to bed, but I saw the video this morning and that guy has a high motor! Defense looked stout and should be a highlight this year. Even though it's just the preseason, I'm glad that football is back, and that only means bow season is that much closer!

Gotchya. I took a boater's safety course that was put on by the Coast Guard auxiliary. I haven't seen that card/certificate in 20+ years anyways so I guess I can't prove it.

Coast Guard course? I think NYS isn't accepting that for this purpose. Hopefully I'm wrong. I read it on an online article the other day, but can't find that now.

16 miles for the wifey and I. Although that was with the current on the Cohocton River. Floated along more than paddled.

I took the coast guard course over 25 years ago. I have no idea where the card is, but I read in one recent article that they don’t count for this new requirement. My local news channel said there would be an online option for this NYS course.

Congrats on the new addition to the family! Cute pup too!

It's a Browning, but I forget which model exactly. Dark Ops Extreme maybe? One of my better cameras. I had this one out since mid April, and there were over 7000 pics on it with 99% animals in the frame. What a pain in the butt to go through all of them!

I played the long game. Had to put up with a dozen people on 200 acres, putting drives on starting at 10:00 am, people sitting in your stand, etc. Then we bought the woods and smaller fields and another neighbor bought the 120 acre field that we surround and converted it from a fallow hay field to corn planted every year. At first a lot of the other original hunters felt they could still hunt it it because “they always have. That worked itself out in a few years and we use it exclusively for family, two neighbors and an occasional guest. Long game, baby!

It's been many years since I've went knocking on doors, but when I did, 100% of the yes's were crop farms in high deer density areas. Those folks couldn't get enough hunters to help them with their "vermin problem". And they don't want to hear anything about trophy hunting, they wanted deer killed, period.

Wow - great buck!

Stopped at the local Wally World for a few things on the way home last night. Always stroll through the hunting and fishing section. Saw "boonie" hats. Tried one on, found a mirror and said "f-that". Sticking with ball caps!

Got a better pic of him on the last card I went through.

Oh duh, just realized that.

I actually tried it out while we were floating there pumping out. It seemed to move the boat even with an extra thousand pounds of water weight.

I’d say same buck. 3 and 1/2 by October. Exceptional 3 year old.

I think those are starlings? Fast trigger time on the camera!

Finally got around to going through a couple of cards I pulled two weeks ago. Introducing this year’s eligible bachelors on our spread.

Thanks, hopefully this will be it for a while. At least the livewells should be working too. I was going to put that off until next year. Been boating for 35 years. Never had a situation where I was taking on serious water. I was pretty relieved to hear the bilge pump come on manually after the float failed. It crossed my mind for a second that sinking was a possibility.

Thanks! The row of flags hanging from the ceiling hide 80% of the clutter.

Long update; getting to be a saga.. Found that the grease seals on the trailer hubs were blown out from the previous owner overfilling his bearing buddies. Took it to the local boat mechanic and had that all gone through. Seals, bearings, etc. It sat for almost three weeks before they could get to it (their busiest time of year). But at least I now have full confidence in the trailer, especially with the new stiffer tires I put on. Got a fresh spare tire too. The starting/idling problem got worse and I couldn’t get it to start again reliably at home on the garden hose. If it did catch, I couldn’t keep it running without feathering the throttle. Seemed like it was starving for gas. I changed the plugs (old ones were burned up a bit) and first fuel filter and found the filter to be moderately contaminated. Then I drained the tank of 12 gallons of old gas with debris in it, flushed it with another couple gallons, and replaced it with new 90 octane ethanol free gas with Seafoam additive. Started better, but still not idling 100%. The primer bulb didn’t seem to pump up as hard as previous outboards I had, so I changed that. When I looked at the fuel line it was disintegrated on the inside with bits of plastic liner falling out of it. So I replaced that too. Hooked it up to the hose and boom, started like a champ! Smooth idle after warmup. Turned it off, and restarted it a couple of times with just a tap of the key - alright! Picked up a Minn Kota Powerdrive trolling motor for the front, and got that all installed this past Saturday. Looking forward to getting out and doing some bass fishing yesterday with everything all shipshape and took it to Waneta Lake. Perfect day. No wind, and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. The motor started great, ran great and we idled up the channel. Throttled up when we left the channel, and while it ran smoothly, the motor seemed to be laboring a bit to get up to speed. Flew out to the middle of the lake and looked for a place to fish. Went to run it closer to shore, and it had a hard time getting on plane. Got about 75 yards from shore and got ready to fish. As my wife mentions “I don’t remember seeing that much water in the splash well”, I realize we seem to be awfully low in the water. I peek in the bilge and HOLY CRAP we’re taking on water - lots of it!! Why isn’t the float switch turning on the pump?! I flipped the manual switch and thank god it works and is pumping. And pumping and pumping, and pumping. I seem to be gaining on it, but slowly. Finally as the water level drops, I can see water rushing in from the livewell pump mounted to the transom. We get most of the water out and haul ass back to the launch a mile away. Didn’t have any planing issues and the motor didn’t labor a bit without those couple of hundred gallons of water in the hull - lol. Motor ran great all the way around back to the dock. Poked around when we got home and found that the livewell pump was split open and the previous owner gobbed silicone all over it. The wiring looked shady as hell with automotive splice taps used and silicon gobbed all over those too. The livewells didn’t work when we bought the boat. I wasn’t worried about it at the time and figured I’d address that in the off-season. Well now I know why they didn’t work, but I wasn’t considering the possibility of sinking! The float switch worked when I bought it. No idea why it failed now when I needed it the worst, but that wiring looks shady AF too. After realizing I need to be a micro sized person to reach down there and work on it, I dropped it off at the local boat mechanic again today. I’ll have the pump replaced and all the wiring redone the correct way, and get the float switch issue repaired. He may be able to get to it next week sometime. Ugh. Its pretty apparent this boat had little to no maintenance in its life but slowly but surely, I’m getting it to be shipshape. Owned it for two months - zero bass boated. But it looks good - lol.

Looks great!

Wow!!

An after chores and trolling motor installation beer. Been on the go since 5:30 this morning. Back to basics. Go Bills!

Made me think of @Biz-R-OWorld