Recent Posts

Seems to be some legal question.

I was informed many years ago by a DNR spokesperson that ANY shoreline ownership by the state made the waters of a lake open to use by the public providing they touch land only on the public portion of the shore while launching/landing.

I was asking in reference to a lake otherwise entirely owned by a church and used for some youth summer camps.

It would seem that the same would apply to a shared shoreline situation where neither party was the state, in that the the shared shoreline would ensure the shared use of the water, but not the land used to access it.

As it turned out, after contacting the leadership of the church, access was granted (and a donation was made, not necessarily a "quid pro quo" arrangement, much as it may appear to be), and I subsequently fished the lake by the much easier access through the church property. Better for both parties, as the church got a small annual donation and I didn't have to portage my canoe a couple hundred yards across state ground to go fishing. I avoided being there during the few weeks of the summer when they had their camps in operation, and everybody was happy.

Some years later, looking up access questions regarding public waters like rivers and the Great Lakes, I was introduced to more legal wrangling and various court decisions that have clouded the issue more than cleared it.

The oldest legal precedence seems to go back to old English common law that provided for the public to ba able to access the waters up to the "Ordinary High Water" level, which was ill-defined then and has been either ignored or defined just as loosely in court cases since. It was, at the time of it's inclusion in English Common Law, apparently a rejection of the claim of royalty and the wealthy to ownership of waters, while leaving them the ability to completely deny access over land.

Various interpretations and inferences have become standard practice, with or without being tested legally, ever since.

If at all possible, achieving a friendly agreement with the landowner of the major portion of the shoreline would be best all around. Attempting to defend your "right" to use the waters encompassed by the shared shoreline may end up paying for your attorney's dock fee for his yacht before you ever get to wet a line, even if you're right. That's the reality of it as best I can make out. Good luck in either case.

I'm pretty sure that the law is a better way to solve disputes than shooting, but it's not perfect, either, and often is inconsistent, perplexing, and ignored by the courtts we imagine are upholding it. I suspect the lawyers prefer it that way.

Think I got it now, too. have to wait to see this entry to find out whether I changed usernames in the process accidentally.

OK! Another big job done!

I'm getting slower in adapting to changes. Main problem was I haven't convinced this thing to recognize me again as the same old guy who has been here since about the start of the site.

Keeps calling me "guest".

I suppose it's about time I took the time to do whatever's necessary to stay registered so I don't get caught complaining about issues that really aren't issues....again 8^).

Do I need to delete my original registration somehow and then re-register? No. wait. On second thought, don't tell me. Be good practice for me to try to figure it out. Thinking about a "smart phone" on down the line, and I need to build some skills 8^).

Woody, the search I just made indicates that the source was a poll by the Quinnipiac University. The actual question asked and much of the demography is to be found on the site www.quinnipiac.edu and the date of the poll was apparently Feb 7, this year. Of course that was just two months after the CT. school massacre.

I always wonder about the accuracy of telephone polls, myself, as I don't know anyone personally who lets the caller get past their introduction, except to request that their number be excluded from further calls.

But aside from that and the fact that the majority of their calling was done in the east, and the timing factor mentioned above, the results would appear to be accurate.

That's going to be the problem, as I mentioned before, in stopping the background checks. The devil is there, but it's in the details.

And the majority of people know someone who probably shouldn't be trusted with a table knife, let alone a firearm of any kind, and they assume that the background checks will screen out those individuals from acquiring such weapons. It's a tough sell to impress on the general public that in truth, government screening has not been very successful, government rules against the possession of stuff has been a miserable failure, and the more likely situation will be that such checks will much more often result in people who are NO danger being denied the ability to legally possess the means of self defense they need, and becoming victims due to the government's attempt to protect us all.

Everyone knows that crazy kid down the block shouldn't even have a slingshot, but they don't think the checks would prevent Uncle Bob from keeping his shotguns because Aunt Sally had that episode years ago that resulted in a brief stay in a rubber room or a prescription for anti-depressants.

There are some encouraging details in the whole report, too, if you have time to look it up and inspect it.

But IMO, the most important factors in the apparently honestly reported percentage pro-checks, were that the polling was mostly done in eastern cities and 'burbs, just two months after Sandy Hook.

BHO's honesty in continuing to use that statistic from one liberal university's poll of mostly eastern liberals so soon after the tragedy, and representing it as a more permanent national figure, while less than completely honest, is probably no worse than most statements we hear coming from elected mouths.

The problem is real, and we need to address it as best we can by educating as many people as possible to the truth in those details. Not gonna be easy.

With you 100% Billy!

One of my pet peeves since the first hunting vid's I ever saw. I can even understand the ridiculous whispering commentary that is obviously done in post-action dubbing but whispered to be "realistic". At least there's some justification for that attempt.

No justification whatever for drowning out the background sounds of nature (or the feeder noises as it scatters the corn,or the traffic noise in the background).

The current omnipresence of musical accompaniment to everything is disturbing enough with TV commercials and cop dramas. Reminds of the old Hollywood westerns when we could always tell that the redskins were about to attack by orchestra's switch to something vaguely reminiscent of tom-tom's.

At least in the old Hollywood movies the hero and the villains could be heard and their dialogue understood because the silly music was silent during the speaking portions of the films. Got pretty intense during chase scenes, though.

Wish with modern technology we could at least have the music on separate track so that the viewer could delete or diminish the volume on it to find out anything being whispered actually contained any words of wisdom regarding the hunt.

Oh, forgot to mention Wildberry's. It's somewhere in the hills in Shawnee Territory. Nearest trading post where the round-eyes will stay is in Bloomfield. I think. 8^)

It really is worth the effort to find it and shoot there, and I'm pretty sure it qualifies you for your Pathfinder Merit Badge for getting there and the Mountaineering Badge for completing the course.

I may be exaggerating a little.

It was a good shoot and the guy running it seemed like a friendly young fella. Probably will try it again this summer, but may wait for a day when the temp and humidity aren't racing each other to the hundred mark. No place for old men the day we were there, but that was no fault of the operator of the shoot. Younger and slimmer people may have found it lots easier even that day. They have a website also. (But no ski-lifts!)

Price sounds right in the ballpark as normal pricing from a decent pro shop.

Last string I bought was about three years ago, and the string and bus cables for my Mathews was, IIRC, about $90 to my door, for a Vapor Trail string that looked very good and shot nicely.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to assess its durability, as the bow was stolen a couple weeks later.

Add to that the price of the peep and loop, and the shop rate for installation, and a few percent for sales tax and inflation during the last three years, and the total seems right.

If the job was done correctly and the string quality proves to be average or above, I'd say you were served well and should be satisfied with the deal. Maybe not a steal, but certainly no gouging.

Final tuning tweaks should always be done by the shooter. The best to be expected from even the best shops will be to duplicate the settings that you had when you brought the bow in, or to set everything to exact factory specs. That's probably going to be satisfactory for the average shooter, but if you have some slightly unusual form or fit issues or technique that differs from the average, you may need to change a few details to zero things in, just as you would to regain target accuracy with a good rifle after having a good gun shop mount a new scope.

My younger brother lives in AZ. He always enjoyed catfishing even before moving there long ago, but after he had been there a few years he bought a houseboat on Apache Lake and spent more time fishing for them from the comfort of his "front porch". Caught a number of twenty-plus pound flatheads but couldn't seem to connect on the real monsters of the deep.

He finally got into his wallet and took a guided trip with a pro catfishing guide. Said the guy was worth the price if they hadn't got a bite, just for the entertainment. Big old southern gent who sounded like Jerry Clower and told stories in the same vein, and could keep them coming all night without being tiresome.

Along about the middle of the night, my brother's line began to move slowly. He started to grab the rod, and the guide said to leave it alone. It stopped moving after a short run and then a minute or so later began to move again, and the same scene repeated itself, after which the guide told him that the next time it moved it would be the time to strike back and set the hook. Sure enough, after another minute or so it began to move again and he set the hook and was into a very heavy fish. Several minutes later after a good but not extreme struggle, he boated a 47# flathead.

Patience seems to be the magic ingredient. The big ones are usually caught late at night, when most of us amateurs have long since given up and gone home.

Yep, depending on your definitions, it would be pretty easy to agree with that.

Certainly no conservative president that most of us could agree on since RR, and some even question his inclusion in the "true" conservative camp (it's kind of a small camp) 8^).

I've considered myself to be a conservative since high school, when I began paying more attention to such stuff. H20n64 !

But in those days you could be a devout follower of the "Father of Modern Conservatism" (or one of them, anyway....if you Google the term, it turns out modern conservatism is a bit uncertain about its paternity) and still believe that soldiers didn't have to BE straight, just SHOOT straight, and that pot should be legal, and that abortion should not be the business of the government, at least early in the pregnancy.

So, apparently, the terminology has evolved.