Recent Posts

That area does look very tempting. I've driven through there just out of curiosity a couple times, but never checked out ownership or sought permission.

I can understand the reluctance to allow hunting with firearms that close to the airport and with a busy interstate all along one border. Looks like it would be a great place for an archery-only area. I know how likely that is, but it seems like it would be a great fit.

Maybe if we could document the number of deer-car collisions in the area, we could ask Farm Bureau to request one.

I remember sitting along the edge of a cornfield one still evening and waiting for a deer to come by. There was a railroad track about forty yards behind me.

After things had settled down from my arrival, I soon began hearing slight noises from the stalks nearby. Watching them closer, I noticed that nearly every stalk had a ground squirrel visiting it, mostly invisible down inside the shuck as it filled its cheeks. They were very busy, stuffing their cheeks then scurrying quickly to the railroad embankment, which was honeycombed with tunnels, only to return for more as soon as they delivered that load. Those chipmunks picked and shelled more corn in the hour or so I sat there than I could have, I'm sure, as they seemed to be working the first few rows at least all the way along that edge of the field.

There was one lone doe that came by after a while, and she did nibble a couple times on ears that were already half exposed by the rodents.

Lots of damage, and one set of hoof prints that "proved" which varmint was the culprit.

Very familiar with the feeling.

I was watching a doe and her button fawn approach a few years ago on a trail that would lead right past me. It was nearly the last day of the late season and my last reasonable chance for a kill in what had been a season with very few opportunities due to local conditions. I raised the CVA and took a steady rest against the trunk of tree, and as they came closer, even pushed the safety forward with my thumb.

But as I watched the inquisitive fawn trotting around investigating stuff and the doe watching him and waiting for him to catch up, I decided I just didn't want to kill either in front of the other that day. I slid the safety back on, and when the doe finally got suspicious at about fifteen yards and bolted a few yards off the trail, and stomped lightly to bring the youngster to her side, I intentionally verified her suspicions by lowering the gun and taking a step, sending both deer to cover before I walked out to the truck and ended the season without putting anything in the freezer.

No regrets. And there would have been none if either deer had come by alone and I had killed it. Sometimes it's about bringing one home, and sometimes it's about enjoying the interaction and the satisfaction of knowing you could have taken one is plenty. On that day, under those particular circumstances, I just felt better about watching them get away.

Loving to hunt, and also loving the animals we hunt, can seem contradictory to non-hunters, and maybe even to hunters at first, but it tends to become more natural after a while. I think most of us who have hunted a long time are familiar with the situation described.

Have to side with those who don't see a place for lions or wolves in our modern countryside, at least in areas populated as densely as IN.

I think it's completely unrealistic to expect the peaceful coexistence of such predators with humans. There have been people killed, and will be more people killed, to exercise some dreamers' longing for a time long gone where we might have shared a more scarcely populated landscape.

Bears are borderline, IMO, and they are omnivores with a taste for lots of vegetation and insects, who usually den up and hibernate during the winters. Other apex predators with the need for meat in their diets in greater proportion, will find those unaware and slow kids at the bus stops to be easy and delicious when they run low on deer and neighborhood pets during the hunger moon.

Does it actually have to happen for some people to see the probability increasing until it does?

Read very many positive posts about Vapor Trail strings on a couple of other archery boards. I ordered a set of cables and strings for an LX and the service was very fast, price was reasonable, and the order arrived exactly as specified.

Unfortunately, the bow I put them on was stolen a few days later, so I can't report on the durability or stability from firsthand experience. They did look great, and the few shots I managed to take with that bow while sighting in and fine tuning after installing the new strings gave me a good impression of their quality.

Only small glitch I had in dealing with the company was that I couldn't get their website ordering to work right. I gave up pretty quickly on it and just gave them a call. Ordering over the phone was easy and involved no robots or taped messages, just a friendly and competent human on the other end of the line.

I plan to give them another call after the season ends.

WRT to the Soviet nukes, I happened to see a news bit just the other day about the electricity that has been generated by our reactors during the last few decades using the fuel rods that were originally part of the Soviet nuke warhead program. The piece said we're just about out of them now, and to expect a rise in electric rates as we run out of them.

In the current polarized atmosphere wherein we are all pigeonholed into stereotypes and considered by each side to be in the other's camp unless we toe the line all the way, those who think for themselves and come to their own conclusions are generally left out.

People seem comfortable with a world where everyone else "fits" into their preconceived notions. I suppose it's easier to cope with mentally than one in which there are multiple answers and many facets to issues, and where compromise is often where the best solutions will still be found.

I'm another oddball social liberal and fiscal conservative. A Constitutionalist and history junkie who realizes that we are not perfect as a nation, and never were, but may still be the closest man has ever come.

I became a conservative back in high school when I first became aware of Barry Goldwater. He favored smaller government, a modernized and ready military that would be held in readiness but hopefully not constantly busy at their trade....like firemen and EMT's and disaster responders, people you want to be ready, but idle as much of the time as possible except for training exercises.

Barry also was quoted as saying that a soldier didn't need to BE straight, just to SHOOT straight, when asked about accepting gays into the military. Did that make him a liberal? He was recognized at the time as the leading spokesman for conservative politics in the country, if not the world.

Used to also enjoy another leading conservative political spokesman, William F. Buckley, as he would politely maneuver any liberal guests overconfident enough to accept his challenge to debate on the air and guide them out onto a limb, then saw the limb off with a bit of logic and truth, still smiling and still not shouting. He was a strong proponent of legalizing marijuana as well as many other regulated drugs. Did that make him a liberal, or just a conservative who could see that the drug war that was fifty or so years old at that time, had been lost for at least thirty years, and was no more than a repetition of the failure that Prohibition had been?

The only political party that currently proposes smaller government and debt, and less foreign entanglements involving our military, and increased personal liberty, is the Libertarian Party. I don't even agree with every position they take, but I'm much more comfortable being put into that pigeonhole than any other.

The old adage is that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We have now granted the government as a whole something that very closely approximates absolute power over our lives. We happily swapped our liberties for promises, and still do, thinking we are playing one side against the other in their battle for our support. A few have come to the realization that what we thought of for so long as two sides, are now one....the statist side, and they are no longer all that concerned about our support.

Interesting comparison.

We find the hunting on public land to be generally poor by comparison to private land here. Wonder if it's any worse in the states where private land can be hunted over bait, but not public.

Georgia would also appear to offer an interesting comparison between areas where baiting is allowed and disallowed, with the state divided between the two.

Strong feelings on both sides of the issue, based on both science and traditions.

I've openly suggested on here and on state questionnaires that I have come to favor baiting being allowed here. It would offer several advantages on the smaller parcels that we now find ourselves hunting, which are increasingly surrounded by non-huntable land. But the main factor IMO is the fact that the current inability to effectively enforce the baiting restrictions leaves us with the poachers being guaranteed an advantage unobtainable by those who follow the rules. Self-restriction is a fine thing and many of us include varying degrees of it in our harvest goals or equipment restrictions, but those are personal limitations voluntarily imposed. Restrictions imposed by the state on everybody should be enforceable, or they become just another advantage to the outlaw who disregards them. Poachers have quite enough advantage already without help from the referees.

Resharpened a bunch of slightly used blades for some older Thunderheads this year. I always liked the old TH's and found a package still in the original packaging on an old tackle box while cleaning the garage. A few other ferrules and pieces brought my total to seven good ones, so I sharpened up several of the used blades I had accumulated in my tackle, and am carrying these this year.

I have a cheaper Smith sharpening system that works like the Lansky, and it works very well. I get them to point where they are starting to shave the hair from my arm, then strop them , still in the Smith blade clamp for easier handling, on some cardboard rubbed with a chunk of polishing compound. That last step takes them from just barely shaving to shaving cleanly and comfortably on one pass, which is slightly better than the new ones did out of the package.

I also give the hardened steel tip of the ferrule a few strokes by hand with a stone, just to freshen the needle point. Probably doesn't make much difference, but it only takes a couple more seconds and makes me feel better about doing everything I can to get a humane kill and a good blood trail.

Getting very nice groups out to 40 yards with the TH's and had excellent bone penetration with them back when I used them all the time, many years ago.