wildcat junkie

I had 2 Beagles when I moved from Indiana. Cottontails are scarce up here although they seem to be increasing. I tried eating a snowshoe but it sure ain't as good a cottontail. I used to make rabbit pot pies with cottontail. My son was out deer hunting this evening & called me on his way home to tell me he saw a cottontail run across the road down at the end of the old horse paddock. He was all excited. If we get a huntable population of cottontails in these parts, I'll get a pair of beagles. I'll tell you an interesting story about flintlocks. I lived in Southern Indiana for 22 years. That is the Mecca of muzzleloaderdom. One coild find a muzzleloader shoot somewhere just about every weekend in spring & summer. we shot for meat, powder, percussion caps, etc I started my home gun making hobby on muzzleloaders. There was a pharmacist that would sell stock blanks, barrels, locks, etc to us & have gun making night every Wedsnesday. I started shooting imy home made .54 plains rifle in competition & I would hang in with a couple of 3rd place scores. In variably, this local guy would come by about 1 hour before the firing line closed & shoot his allotted 3-prize limit to bump me out of the prizes. This continued for over a year until I built my brother that lives near Pittsburgh (Pixberg) a .54 cal half stock plains rifle. I took it to the range to test it out & damned if I didn't finish in 2nd place in one match. Now you have to understand that these were hardcore front stuffers. We called breech loaders "supository guns". Flinters shot in the same matches as cap guns & most of the matches were won by flint guns. I built my self a .54 full stock plains rifle & started claiming my own 3-prize limits. From '82 until '95 I hunted exclusively with MLs, even using two 12ga dbl barrel shotgun MLs to hunt small game & Turkeys. 90% of the time, unless it was raining HARD, I left the cap gun at home & used my flinter for deer hunting. What a flintlock dose, is force you to use good follow-through & if you can master that, it makes you a better shot. I lost interest in ML deer hunting after I moved here when they restricted area 6-A to antlerless only in the early ML season. After that, the sport became dominated by inline scope sighted high tech "muzzzleloaders" that turned the season into an extra week of modern gun season. I would love to hunt late season deer with my flintlock when they are under less pressure & returning to a more natural pattern.

Once I really started getting serious about bow hunting I found myself within spitting distances of unalrmed deer under my stand that more often than not didn't provide a shot. I found that Bow hunting usually provides more heart pounding thrills than gun hunting even when a shot doesn't present itself.

Congratulation! Your 1st deer is a trophy of a lifetime & it will never happen again. Looks like a mature doe & thay can be harder to get the drop on than any rut addled buck. Looks like great shot placement too. I'll bet she dropped in her tracks.

Laugh if you want, the stats are what they are & it certainly isn't the BO that makes the difference. Please enlighten us with your opinion on why there is a difference. Maybe it's just a coincidence, maybe not. It's certainly not out of the realm to suggest that those that voluntarily wear BO might be a little more safety conscious dispite the absurd posts that suggest just the opposite.

This might be it. As I thought, an Israeli contract 98 in 7.62X51. FN would definately be post war manufacturer as it is Belgium. https://www.gunandgame.com/threads/ft-israeli-fn-mauser-308.51632/

Is it a 98 Mauser? I have heard of .308 chambered military Mausers & FN certainly has built 98 Mausers.. FN is a very well respected gun maker & they have contracted many many high quality commercial guns for Browning & Winchester just to name a few. You can get a LOT of good tech information including markings on the site liked below. There are many on that site that have many times more experience than I do. A good portion of what I have learned came from this site. I post under the same wildcat junkie username on there. you will find older posts about my Mauser on there. I have hunted with it for 5 seasons now, but the final finish as you see it was achieved just before last season. I would like to get some simple checkering done on it to put the final finshing touch to it, but I don't trust just anyone with my pride & joy. http://www.mausercentral.com/forum/index.php?sid=aebe4ce6ae6d075fe13bf135bb7b5522 This thread may help. http://www.mausercentral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=11338

Since the K98 has already been "Bubba'd" it would be a good candidate. It's only 1/4" longer than the Yugo action. I saw in another post that you also hunt PA. Do you hunt the Flintlock season?

The really interesting stat is the one that shows BO wearers are less likely to be victims of accidental discharge. While the anti BO crowds points to this as an absurdity ("magic bullet") that discredits the statistics, perhaps it demonsrtates that those thay wear BO have a bit more common sense than those that don't & are therefore more likely to employ good gun safety habits. I never clinb into a ladder stand with my gun & I make sure there isn't a bullet in the chamber when hoist the gun up with a rope.

And the point you made was...........

Good for you guys, the rules are what this thread is about. More to the point, trying to change an archaic rule. I wasn't trying to excuse hunting beyond the legal hours. I was also just trying to emphasize that it already happens.

I once had a doe stand still after being center punched through the lungs with a .535 round ball at about 150yds which is no slouch when it come to knocking deer flat even at that range. It did walk off while I was reloading & I shot at another deer in the group assuming I had missed the 1st one.. After walking over to ridge after the group ran off in a different direction, I found that the 1st deer was down & trying to lift her head up. The ball missed the ribs & went through the lungs cleanly. Still, 2 hits at close range with a 30/30 170gr flatnose W/O a reaction would be unusual but I would say not entirely impossible. Giving the guy the benefit of the doubt? Maybe the bullets didn't expand for some reason?

If you start out at 100yds, better to use the side of the garage instead of a small paper target to assure that a bullet is "on target" so you can make an adjustment. Another thing. While shooting 1 shot & making adjustments at 25 yds is OK. I've seen a lot of guys shoot up a lot of ammo chasing 1 shot bullet strikes at 100yds trying to "save ammo". If the gun isn't a tight shooter anyway, coupling that with some people's inability to hold a group themselves really gets them puzzled as to why the bullet stikes never settle into the center of the POA. I always shoot atleast 2, preferably 3 shots at 100yds & use the center of the group or eliminate obvious "flyers" when making adjustment. Usually 6 or at the most, 9 rounds is all I need to get completely dialed in. I like 2 1/2" high at 100 yds, then I can hold on the center of the sweet spot just above the heart anywhere from 10 to 250 yds with my 8X57 & never be out of a sure kill zone. I watched 1 poor guy burn up almost 2 boxes of ammo at 25 yds one day before we figured out he had the scope mounted 90° off. He had the windage on the top & elevation on the left side. By the time I helped him get it back on the paper he was completely out of ammo & it was the evening before opening day. He was sighting the gun in for his son too. I felt sorry for them both.

Acorns are everywhere around my place & that can be a bad thing. Deer are spread out. Food is everywhere. I usually see more bucks than does on my place but I've only seen one buck. fortunately he was a nice one.

For you Camaro/Mustang fans. The part about the Chevy "Volt" is classic! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eeplOPqdyA

I've seen this at the taxidermist. They look like the went 15 rounds with George Foreman. The 1st time I saw it I asked what happened. I don't think it affects the mount other than perhaps increasing the neck measurements for the form.

Best post yet.

Nah, it's Big Foot!

Once every 5 days filling a feeder isn't "hand feeding". As far as "human interaction"? No more so than planting food plots is "human interaction"?

Have you ever seen the new Camaro rollout version? They have to tell him that a Mustang version already has more HP with similar results.

Hey, I'm flexable. I can be civil & polite or I can be an a$$hole if I choose to be. The key words here are, drum roll.... "if I coose to be"! It seems some unfortunate souls don't have that ability to control their a$$hole factor. If someone sets the tone, I can play it anyway they want.

Logic & reasoning? That seems to be rare commodity, especially in the last 6 years or so. And is it any wonder why even non-hunters that are not boo-hooing bambi huggers are getting a negative opinion about hunters? The hunting/firearms related forums seem to be populated with a certain percentage of knuckle dragging loonies of the Ted Nugent sect that can only summon enough intelect to hurl insults & deny anything that resembles logic & reasonimg when it doesn't fit within their narrow minded view of the world as it should be. I couldn't stand Nugent when I saw his slob hunting whack em & stack em trash years ago. The guy's a completely raving mad lunatic a$$hole that takes shots that no ethical hunter would take. Lord knows how many animals there were that ran off wounded & didn't show up in his white trash videos. He shits his pants to avoid the draft during the Vietnam war & poeple in the hunting community buy into his "patriot" bull$it? He is not a good ambassador for our cause & the caliber of hunters that worship him are unfortunately the biggest loud mouths and they reflect on the rest of us. It seems that many in our community don't have the gray matter to realize this & they emulate his actions, thus causing even more public image problems. I stayed away from these sites for quite some time because of this kind of drivel. Lately, due to my son's recent interest in deer hunting I have become more active. I'm sure he woiuld have a dim view of the conduct on these forums by the few imbeciles that make the loudest noises thus making all of us look like a bunch of ignorant beer swilling red-necks in the eyes of the non-hunting public. I got news for you boys & girls, if we alienate the modertate non-hunting community they outnumber us & if we don't clean up our act they will exert pressure on the democratic process with results that we won't like.

I thought he promised to stop posting on this thread? Oh well, it is becoming quite entertaining, from an amusement standpoint.

Black Powder last almost indefinately in a sealed can.

A "retired" dog's life is rough.

"Hand fed" is bull.