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686

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Everything posted by 686

  1. Sat in the blind with my oldest yesterday morning, she took a shot at a doe but missed. Sophomore slump maybe. She’d been on the rifle for a solid 10-15 minutes waiting for this doe to clear the brush/barbed wire so I know some fatigue was a factor. Went and bought some trees to plant where we lost some of the big cedars. We have oak wilt and the best tree I’ve found that will survive without supplemental water on our place (other than live oak) is cedar elm. Definitely not as attractive as live oak, but it will get us down the road 30 years and then maybe there will be a live oak cultivar immune to oak wilt and my grandkids can re-forest more of the place with them. A good nursery had some big elms, got one installed yesterday and two today. Blew the shaft seal in the auger drive right as I was finishing the third hole, I’m sure that will be expensive. Have any of you east Texas guys tried Dunstan Chestnut trees? I have a low area that has deeper soil and pretty consistent moisture where I’m tempted to try some. http:// https://chestnuthilloutdoors.com/learning-center/dunstan-chestnut/ Got to watch some deer as I was finishing up which was nice. Saw a 3 yr old 8 point and a bunch of does. My dad said he saw the big 10 up by the house this morning, hopefully I can get a closer look at him next weekend. Had an epic sunset tonight.
  2. Thanks. 67mph peak wind on our weather station
  3. Had a little twister go through my folk’s Lampasas place this morning, lots of small hail as well. Several big trees down close to the house, one tower blind destroyed, and the roof peeled back on a second tower. No damage to the house or barn we’ve seen yet. Lightning blew up a power pole at the road and we didn’t have power for about 8 hours. Back to normal now, but lots of clean up once the mud dries up. Last weekend after my oldest shot her doe I got my food plots planted, and we’ve gotten about 2” of rain this week which was great. Saw a nice 10 point this evening running a doe while we were driving around in the mule checking feeders and blinds. Almost talked myself into pulling the trigger on him. Would probably have been the highest scoring buck we’ve shot on this place. Cell phone pic from -150 yards:
  4. Got my 12 yr old daughter on her first deer yesterday. We sat the morning looking for does or pigs. Had a pig really early, but not enough light to shoot, then saw four bucks over the next two hours, but no does, which is weird as we have a lot of does. Anyway, we head back to the house at around 9:30, and on the way we see some does. She wants to try for one, so we stop the mule, hop out and put a little stalk on. I’m constantly telling her to go slower and make every step quiet. We get to a fence gate that is a good spot to watch from and rest the rifle on, but the does start moving out. About the 4th candidate for a shot finally stands still watching us for too long. She was quartering on hard to us, but I had gone over shot placement with the kiddo in the blind and just told her to aim halfway up the body inside the shoulder. It was at least a 100 yard shot, maybe 120. We talked through squeezing the trigger slowly, and as she was lining up the shot, I knew the safety was on, but I wanted to watch her trigger pull/flinch to gauge if we needed to calm down and reset, as she was breathing hard. There was zero flinch as she realized the trigger pull wasn’t resulting in a shot and the safety must be on. Very cool, made me feel like we had a good chance at a clean kill. She slid the safety off, re-lined up and put a shot on the doe. I heard the hit and saw the on-side shoulder malfunctioning as the doe spun, and she was down in ~40 yards. Kiddo was stoked. I mean like really stoked. “I am achieving things!!!” Lol It was great. Later she asked me if I noticed her breathing hard before the shot and I said yes, and she said it was because she was tiring of standing on her toes to get the rifle lined up. (The top rail of the gate was a little too high of a rifle rest) Buck fever was evidently not a factor. She had only shot this rifle (300 BLK) off a heavy tripod with subsonics, and I had put in some supers for hunting and now wasn’t using a tripod. I was hoping she wouldn’t notice any difference with the changes and I didn’t mention them as I didn’t want her distracted. Worked great. She really wanted to make it happen, and she did.
  5. Great write up @Spaulding Smails , thanks for sharing and great pics! That was a nice bull your partner got! Sucks about your scope - what cartridge and scope are you shooting if you don’t mind? Do you think your elevation turret could have been turned a full revolution and you didn’t notice? That, or leaving the scope dialed up for some potential shot and forgetting to turn it back to zero is a fear of mine.
  6. SIAP
  7. Jerky from last year’s elk eaten earlier this week while elk hunting. Didn’t get a shot at an elk this season, so having to figure out an alternate wild game meat plan this year. Also brought elk steaks and sausage up and they were great; but was too hungry to think of taking pics before consuming.
  8. I sat at that spot for 12 hours so I had plenty of time to work on the composition and wait for the light to get just right for my palate. I grew up watching Bob Ross so maybe he rubbed off on me a little. The weather here has been great for photos but bad for hunting. Too hot and no snow. We threw everything at it today, hiked/stalked over 10 miles, 2000’ elevation gain from 8500 to 10500 and back, glassed thousands of acres and no elk. Didn’t hear a shot all day. The elk are just hunkered down. Bummed about that but still a great trip. Thank the Lord my leg held up (torn calf injury still healing) and didn’t leave me stranded anywhere. Had 15 hen turkeys feed up this valley to within 20 yards of me at this first spot while I watched a grey fox catch mice and play with/eat them for an hour. She would take the mice out of the tall grass to a big rock and let them go, catch them again and then eat. She was playing. I’ll never forget that. The turkeys let the fox get within ~30 yards with no concern, I was very surprised. Aspens on old logging trail at 9500’: Sunset at 10,000’; logging trail through rockslide: Thanks for everyone’s kind words on the photos. Hunters see some amazing things that most other folks will never experience. I like trying to capture that to share.
  9. That’s terrible but wow could have been so much worse. Glad everybody made it out alive.
  10. Well, bad luck today again. On my way into the spot I wanted to hunt today I spooked a good size herd that was bedded maybe 30 yards off the trail. It was too dark to see them but it was a good number of elk, lots of noise as they got up and got out. There wasn’t a way to pursue them through the thick timber and private land was only a mile or so the direction they headed, so I waited at my spot, a nice meadow up the hill from where they were bedded, but no luck. Another beautiful day 8000’ above my typical rat race. Taking a nap in the mountains after a backpack lunch out of cell service is best nap possible.
  11. I’ve heard him talk about it and I think it was in a book I read about Boone. Also there is a roadside historical monument by a settler’s cabin site close to Junction that talks about how they ate bears in lieu of pork there as well.
  12. Saw a cow and her calf today but no bulls. Didn’t hear a single rifle shot today, so something had the elk hunkered down. Hitting it again early in the morning, two days left to the season.
  13. Got into the elk this evening. My hunting partner put down a spike for his first bull ever, so that was great. I saw 4 spikes and a herd of cows/calves, but no big bulls. We saw a trophy mulie buck as well. Beautiful evening.
  14. Cooked elk steaks from my last year’s bull over the open fire tonight which was nice. Also bought a bear tag today. We saw a decent black bear last year here and the neighbor said they saw a big one a few months ago. Bear bacon, bear grease, hams, a rug and a skull would be fun. In the frontier days, bears were market hunted for eating while deer were primarily market hunted for hides.
  15. Made it to CO, saw lots of mulies and turkeys today, but no elk yet. Hopefully tomorrow. A little too warm, but very scenic.
  16. Thanks! Southwest Colorado. Scouting and small game hunting Friday, elk hunting starts Saturday. The calf muscle I tore in March is still bothering me, so going to be taking it slow and easy.
  17. Did my last bit of target practice Saturday while the OU game was starting. not great / not terrible results. (Swirling wind, i held too much windage, need to not overcompensate) I couldn’t let it screw up my hunting prep if Texas was screwing up in Dallas; figured I’d watch later on delay or dvr. Dad came down to the barn at halftime and said you’re going to want to come see this, so I wrapped up practice and enjoyed the game. Still enjoying it on third rewatching. Back to hunting: took time Sunday and Monday to get 95% packed. Leaving Thursday, can’t wait. Imitation elk quarter isn’t going; getting in a one more Ruck around the neighborhood tonight before I swap the cargo net off the frame for the bag.
  18. I screwed up last season and guided an inexperienced hunter into shooting two does, the second of which happened to be a button buck. I just didn’t check closely enough. Honestly it was only at ~100 yards so I probably just took a glance through the binos before giving him the green light. My eyes just aren’t good enough to take much for granted anymore. Luckily he wasn’t bothered by it.
  19. Decent interview: https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-canadian-foreign-minister-melanie-joly-at-a-joint-press-availability/ “It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.” I’m wondering if we should be isolating Putin from Russia at this point in communications, i.e. something like “we will welcome the Russian people back into the international economy when they stop Mr. Putin’s wars, etc.; in the mean time we will work to make sure alternate energy supplies are available to our Allies and partners who wish to avoid doing business with Mr. Putin.” Start clearly illustrating the off ramp for the Russian people, since Putin isn’t interested in off ramps.
  20. The Russians are terrible at BS and spin because they have no opposition party and can just say whatever. The obvious spin would have been “the unis were burned up in a warehouse fire started most likely by some Ukraine nazi loving Anglo-Saxon operatives. Please alert your local FSB branch if you have any info related to the recent rash of arson.”
  21. Probably a low hanging tree branch. Dad just the same thing to our beautiful barn kept 25 year old Hew Holland. : (
  22. Sako TRG precision rifle?
  23. @deadshank did you had to drive the whole way back yourself with your busted up partner riding shotgun? How far did he have to walk out with the broken bones? That must have been tough. Sorry to hear that it was a tough trip. That looks like some really rough country in those mountain pics. One of the things that makes a successful hunt so great is knowing just some of the infinite number of things that could have gone wrong.
  24. SIAP. Russians must still get some real info somehow. This lady knows what is waiting in Ukraine. “You send our children there, and then they burn in tanks.”
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