reeltime

made some time last week to chase winter gold, been working too much and couldn't stand it anymore and needed a fix. nothing better than stripers through the ice.

being in the contracting business I see lots of roof issues. i agree with wildcat with the complete roof coverage with ice and water shield and have been doing complete coverage with the ice and water shield for years and have never had a water issue on a roof I have done. if you go with a metal roof its best to strip the shingles and cover with ice and water shield, myself I fir strip from eave to peak on each rafter then do the perlins that way if you get any water under the metal it has no restrictions to get down to the eaves. metal sweats ALOT, you can also double bubble under the metal to help with the sweating. The issue with ice damming is caused by heat loss into the attic or rafter bays in a cathedral style ceiling/roof. attics should be just as cold inside as the outside temps, this is done via vented soffits, ridge vents, and gable vents, its best to have more venting than you think you need. check the insulation, older homes rarely had adequate insulation values, more can be added or do blown in. check to see that your vented soffits are not blocked from insulation, or if you have a minimal amount of vents in the soffit which is also common in older homes you should cut in more vents. masonite or solid 1x soffits with grills or spaced 1x's with wire in the gap are common old home construction methods. cathedral ceilings should be baffled from the eave all the way to the peak, again older construction codes or lack there of had builders doing smaller rafter sizes lots of older homes have 2x6 or 2x8 rafters, what that equates to is r19/21 insulation, that is ok on walls but not near enough on ceilings. I guess what I am saying is if your having serious ice damming issues try to address the issues that are causing the problem.

im not that old but many .... but in my own defense I grew up in an area where folks resisted the fast moving trends. my great grandmother still lived in her original house that was built on the ground, 1 outlet in the 600 sq foot house, a sink with a hand water pump, a coal cook stove, and a 2 holer outhouse. she lived there till she was 94 in 1978. she was still getting milk delivered as were we just up the hill, REAL milk, spoon the cream off the top of the jug type of milk, from the cow to your belly. I was good for a gallon a day by myself. those were simpler times, I often think that if we got rid of the internet and hollywood and went back to the way of living back then the world may be a much better place to live. I miss the old A&W rootbeer drive in where you pulled up put the little speaker/microphone box on your window and placed your order and the waitress brought your burgers and dogs out to your vehicle, and your real rootbeer came out in a frosty mug.

there are some good pointers throughout the turkey hunting forum, as well as above. if you are going in blind get there early, especially if your on state land, I doubt you will receive common courtesy of turkey hunters where if they see your vehicle they move on. I am in the woods well before first light, especially in area's I have not roosted a bird, turkey's do not see well in the dark but if its getting light or a bright moonlit night they may see you. its not uncommon for me to be setting against a tree 1-2 hours before daylight. its even more imperative that you get in early during the early part of the season when the foliage is not fully out. while yes its nice to get set up close to a bird it takes some experience to know how far a bird is taking into account wind, foliage, terrain, and which way he is facing. its safer to keep a little distance than to try and sneak in closer and bump him. If other hunters are in the area its also putting yourself in a potentially dangerous situation because another person may already be set up, getting all worked up because a birds gobbling close by, its low light and they see movement and shoot. you can use decoys if you choose, if you are on public lands I would strongly caution using a gobbler or jake decoy. if you do set up with decoys do so defensively, what I mean is set up against a large tree where its visible so you can see another hunter approaching. do you need decoys to kill birds? absolutely not, after several instances of people stalking my hen decoy in the spring a good number of years ago I put them away and haven't used a decoy in close to if not over 15 years and I certainly don't have a problem killing birds. I do know that decoys can spook birds, yes they will work on the right birds but they may also cost you a bird. As I have told folks before, if you don't use a decoy you know its not going to cost you a bird. Older mature birds, and especially public land heavily pressured birds are to me the funnest birds to hunt. While sometimes you get an old mature bird in the right circumstance to come in limb to gun, most times its a chess game requiring multiple days and or multiple set ups to seal the deal. There are a number of tricks to utilize to try and convince a gobbler that you are a real turkey, like scratching in the leaves, flydowns, etc. all the tools and tricks you have can at times help in the right situation. its hard to try and convey help before a situation even begins to unfold, experience teaches you how to take a birds temperature and how to pursue the hunt from that point. some birds want to be hammered with calling while others want very subtle calling. Turkeys have an unbelievable ability to pinpoint where sound is coming from, words of wisdom from an experienced turkey hunter many years ago to me,, make one call the bird knows what hill your on, second call he knows with in a hundred yards, third call he will come visit you at your tree..... in my younger days I thought it was bogus wisdom, after 35+ years of chasing these birds i realized a long time ago my grandfather was right once again. I can not even begin to tell you how many birds I have killed with less than 5 series of calls. You do not need to call like your on a turkey calling competition stage, there may be times where you need to pour it on, again what they want is determined when you understand what they want( by taking their temperament temperature) Also if you get a bird going and then he falls silent keep your eyes moving as he may be sneaking in quiet, this is especially common when dealing with a satellite gobbler. a number of things can cause a bird to go silent, he got intercepted by a live hen, he got bumped by someone trying to stalk him, another predator tried to ambush him ( coyote, fisher, fox ) he could of came to an obstruction ( I have called birds across a stream, up hill, down hill, over pasture fences and a host of other things, but have also seen them hang up and not walk around a big log laying on the ground) or he may have gotten to a vantage point where he could look over the area and saw you move. I dissect every close encounter to see if it was something I did or if it was an outside interference issue, sometimes its just chalked up as turkeys being turkeys. good luck this spring, hopefully you can get out at least a few times before the season. if you do and hear birds or better yet locate them keep that info to yourself... people prey on locations and especially cyber scouters. google denny gulvas turkey hunting and get some of his video's they provide a wealth of information, its a good starting point but nothing teaches better than experience. Lee

the matte black finish will be fine. anything dull will work, movement is the thing that gives most guys away.

i bought a sxp 3 last year for a new dedicated duck gun, I gotta say that is one sweet shooting duck rig. patterns steel excellent and swings nice, I will have to say for rapid fire wing shooting that recoil assist pump action takes some time to get used to! but its light, fast to acquire the sight picture and swings though beautiful !

just about any shotgun out there with the proper choke and shotshell combination will kill birds out to 40 yards. with a turkey gun set up its crucial that you get a shotgun that fits you. unlike wing shooting where you are more or less pointing and following through, with a turkey gun you are aiming at a specific spot and trying to put the heaviest amount of the payload in a softball sized target area. if you are set on the nova and it fits you then thats the gun you should buy, do the barrel work to it, put some type of sight system on it and try a few aftermarket chokes to find the one that throws the best pattern. comp-n-choke would be a first choice as they seem to have a good handle on producing tight patterns for turkey loads. no matter what gun you choose get it on the pattern board and see what it will do at set yardages so you know your maximum range which for general acceptable distance in the turkey hunting fraternity is 40 yards. can you kill them over 40? yes, but your chances of wounding and loosing them increases dramatically over 40 yards. when you are done on the pattern board you should have 10% confidence in your gun and your ability to kill a turkey out to X number of yards. When that crucial moment is at your feet and he is in range there should be no issue with your confidence before you squeeze the trigger. As far as camo goes, it really doesn't matter what design it is as long as its not shiny. I painted my 835 30 years ago and its never been an issue with a bird seeing it even when they are within a few feet of me. good camo head to toe and no movement will allow these keen eyesighted yet wary birds to walk so close to you that you could touch them....... don't grab their legs whatever you do no matter how tempting or good of idea it seems at the time.

for me its already decided, back on the family farm in pa. the only thing upstate offers better than where I grew up is fishing on Lake Ontario, at some point I will be driving up here to fish like I did 30 years ago. deer hunting is just as good if not better, turkey and small game no comparison waterfowl may be a little better here. Pa has millions of acres of state and federal lands open to hunting also. as far as the other benefits, the biggest is much lower taxes, lower food prices, lower fuel prices, lower vehicle costs, dmv rates, insurances, lower utility rates, and the list goes on. one of the biggest benefits is there is no UNSAFE act and likely if they ever tried to do something like that in Pa. there would probably be a revolution, firearm and hunting heritage is probably one of the deepest seated in Pa of any state in this country. on the downside, although we don't get as much snow as up here the temps are not that much different, spring green up comes a little earlier but on average i would say it may average about 5 degrees warmer there compared to here.

yup the states say we can't burn wood but its ok for them to dump millions of tons of salt on the roads every winter and millions of gallons of petroleum products on the roads doing tar and chipping every summer.. it just makes ya and ask what idiotic ideas will these over paid government folks come up with next.

turkey populations across the state vary from poor to excellent. our area here has taken a large hit over the last 3 yrs. we lost close to 60% of our birds 3 winters ago both adults and juveniles. heavy snow cover with a quick warm up and then a sudden drop in temps made it almost impossible for them to dig through the crust to feed. with an extended cold spell coupled with the snow cover we had birds roosting until they died. I had birds roosting in the yard so they could hit the bird feeders.. thankfully around here we don't have many fall turkey hunters when hens can also be taken but it certainly wouldn't hurt for them to close our fall season for a year or 2 to see if that helps the population rebound.

from the news article it seems as they know who it was. I just can not even fathom an explanation as to how you could mistake a horse for ANY kind of legal game animal... being a horse owner there is a lot I would like to type out here but i know better.... completely inexcusable and the shooters .should loose their hunting privileges for life! absolutely NO excuse for this!

if your interested i may have a few extra shimano 200's on the boat

penn 209's are certainly a reliable reel, the only downfall is the retrieval rate is slow 3.2:1 the shimano tr200's are 4.3:1 . if your fishing for browns and landlocks I would go with a faster retrieval rate. how many set ups are you looking at getting?

congrats grow. grandkids are great, wind them up, fill'em up with sugar and send them home.

for our camp I did osb on the walls instead of drywall. using the osb was a 2 fold benefit it allowed for a solid backer so we could hang any pictures and or mounts anywhere without concern of finding wall studs. allowed me to install the pine vertical -vs- horizontal. Just my personal preference to run my wall boards vertical. still have the ceiling and base trim to do to finish it off. i will second jjb's note, lighting is key, put in more lights than you think you will need and put them on a dimmer, you can also add accent lights to spotlight particular mounts if you want. stairway picture, other pics have been posted in the past.

knotty pine

i agree with machinist, the camo colors look good but I would choose a different jacket or as machinist said color the white looking parts. Turkey hunting is probably one of the top hunting sports where you as a hunter needs to hunt more defensively than offensively. being that its a vocal sport people can hear the bird and posted signs do not exist. doesn't matter who has it posted they will walk right by them to get to that gobbling bird. people get so amped up that sometimes they color shoot or movement shoot.

Dan, I have the sportdog model for my lab and an older model tritronics for the coon hounds simply because the hounds range much farther. almost all of the units have the alert tone feature, ALWAYS use the alert tone before you shock. the sportdog model I have has a tic feature and full shock, the tic button gives a very quick hit of the shock. The full shock button gives a set amount of time shock at whatever level you have the collar set on ( you cant hold the button down and shock the dog non stop) make sure the collar is fairly tight and obviously don't ever shock the dog while its in the water, alert tone is ok in the water but do not shock the dog unless the dog is headed for immanent danger then obviously you do whatever you need to do to get the dog to return to you. Generally speaking I am very careful where I hunt my dog in regards to water flow, ice, swamps etc. everything is taken into consideration in how we hunt and what my dog wears while we hunt. What I mean is in open water on the bay or lake she will likely be decked out if full hunting gear ( vest, collar, e collar). if we are hunting a swamp she will likely be hunting without any gear, no vest, no collar, no ecollar , I don't want anything on her that she can get tangled in brush to cause her to drown or get her collar caught and be strangled. as far as the use of the collar goes, use the warning tone and use the collar sparingly, you can certainly ruin a dog with one. if the dog shows that it picks up things quickly you may fix the problems with one or 2 hits. always start on a low setting and work up. most dogs don't take long to understand what that tone means. good luck.

yup the new governor and the fact that the let got the NW region boc person yesterday who has been very vocal of his disapproval of the elimination if big game and a minimum age for mentored youth just smells afowl!! with his termination of a non pay position now leaves the board at 7.... the meetings are the 25th &26th. wonder if this discussion and vote will happen during the live stream of the meeting or will happen behind closed doors like last time.

all one has to do is look over the hundreds of hunting sites during archery season and see how many notes get put up about hits and not recovered, I would bet that far more of these happen 25 yards plus -vs- under 25. hunters should not be using deer for target practice or just plain old poke and hope type shots that just shows no respect for the animals.

this is not a rumor. there is a proposal with the BOC of the pa game commission to make the minimum age for big game ( in pa that would include deer and turkey for the mentor youth, bear and elk we never included) They "claim" the 2 issues driving this is safety and adults using mentored youth tags to kill another antlered deer. first issue of safety,, the mentor has to be within arms reach of the child, mentor has to carry, load and unload the firearm. to put it in simple terms basically the child lines up the sights and pulls the trigger. I believe its been available to youths for around 9 years, although the first few years it was for small game only. There have been very few if ANY shooting related injuries involving a mentored youth. going by statistics the weekend of the mentored youth hunt would be the safest in the woods, the same can not be said about adult hunting seasons. Adults using mentor youth tags ( mentor youth do not have to follow the antler restrictions) so the BOC An legislators are going to penalize all kids because of a few poachers. if they don't use a kids tag they will use a wife or girlfriends tag, the game wardens hands are tied basically with this scenario unless they either witness this in person or a witness will testify they saw the adult shoot the deer or turkey. they can not interview a minor without a guardians approval. Like I said the first few years it was strictly small game, there was very little grumblings about it from anyone. WOW when they included deer and turkey you wouldn't believe the comments, basically what it all boils down to is there are a number of people that think a kid might shoot "their" deer, "their" turkey, "their" duck.... They claim safety as a concern well past safety records show otherwise, so now they go with the poacher scenario, does that happen? without a doubt there are scumbags out there that will take advantage of the system just like they did prior to the mentor program and just as they do without needing the mentor program tags. there are 40 + pages on this topic on the huntingpa site. some of the comments as you can imagine will leave you shaking your head. I have always tried to help get kids involved in hunting, this past fall I took one of our grandsons out deer hunting in pa. at 8 years old he is a really good shot, fully understands firearm safety and knows what to do and say and do if around guns when an adult is not around ( what I mean is if he is with a friend and his friend picks up a gun with out an adult present) if this passes it will be a real shame that peoples greed and jealousy will be the root cause of taking opportunities away from our young hunters.

as others have said an e collar can be a great tool when used correctly but it can also certainly ruin a dog. puppy's require a lot of attention, both in playing and working on commands. they do require a lot of your time and like a lot of things you get out what you put in. I have had labs almost my whole life, most of them were very well behaved and great work dogs you have received some good advice from the folks here. sometimes you have to show some really tough love but with out a doubt you need to instill in the dog that you are THE ONLY boss and when you speak she needs to listen. check cords, collar, stern voice have been all I have ever used, I don't ever strike a dog with my hand. my current lab has been the easiest lab I have ever trained, she picked up things very quick and has an overwhelming desire to please her owner. she is not without issues and knows better and she knows when she has been bad and when she is being punished, when she has done something really naughty she has to set in the corner for time out. she will set there till I let her out. generally my dog is with me 24/7 other than when I am on the charter boat she is with me, she would rather set in the truck all day while I am working on someones house than to stay home. most job sites she can be out and run around and then she goes and gets in the truck.

like the other members here I pattern my 835 turkey rig from 10-40 yards. I did most of concentrations at 25-40 yards. I did a lot of barrel work prior to doing any patterning. I did a lot of barrel polishing from the chamber out to the ic choke tube. once I was satisfied with the barrel I put in the after market choke ad concentrated on the choke seating area. I sighted in the scope with 2 3/4" #6 lead shot at 10 yards then went to 20,25,&30 with the lead shot while cleaning the barrel between shots. Then I went to the turkey loads, at the time I was shooting custom loaded nitro's with 4,5,&7.5 shot. at $5.00 each i didn't want to be shooting a bunch of them. I set up the 40 yard target 30" circle with a 10" circle in the center with a 2" circle in the center of the 10". off the bench with a rest the first shot I had 242 pellets in the 10 " circle. I set up the second pattern paper and did the 40 yard shot again and almost the same result. since then I have switched to winchester extended range in 6 shot and I am still around 175-190 in the 10" circle at 40 yards. they are impressive rounds for sure and certainly hasn't been a problem killing birds out to 40 yards with 6 shot. if you do all the work on the barrel and go with an aftermarket choke and get the pattern tight you will be best served with some type of sighting system whether its rifle sights, one of he turkey sights, holo sight, or a scope. with a bead and a super tight pattern you will need to make sure your shooting form is almost perfect when taking a shot at a turkey that is 20 yards or less. I know my gun at 15 yards the pattern is the size of a baseball so they can be easy to miss without a good sighting system.

we had a 3 legged doe at camp for 6 years. she was born without a left rear leg, she was in our pasture right in front of camp almost every day and raised fawns every year after age 2. everyone gave her a pass in hunting season. dad found her in late Feb. 3 months shy of her 7th birthday. no obvious signs of cause of death. no doubt about it they are as you said doc very resilient animals.