Last Goose Hunt

Today was the last day for goose hunting for me and it was productive for sure. We had a ton of birds flying more that I have seen in some time but they are very educated now and did not respond to our spread very well, I mean we shot 10 geese but it was hit and miss with getting them to decoy. All in all I had a great season hunting with my friends and hanging out in the blind with them. Now it is time to work on the deer woods for nxt year and hunt sheds, get geared up for turkeys, and maybe even shedding some of those blind pounds I put on this year!

Frozen creeks and Open water

Down here in the tidewater area of VA the creeks are frozen solid except those that are flowing into the bay. The Bay Proper is open and the military has a bunch of ships moving around heading out to sea for some reason. But the variety of ducks sitting on open water is just amazing. Widegons, which are a very beautiful duck, buffle haeads, Blacks and Mallards, Brant and Canada geese are everywhere there is open water. One more week till we have to change blinds and get the boat ready for perch fishing and possible some pickerel fishing . Till then we keep shooting!

Going to the Gun Show

I am down visiting the web foot gangsta in Hampton roads and there is a big SGK gun show happening. I am saying that there were easy 2000 people in line to get in and another 2000 in side already when we got there. The line to check your ammo was short and those who were carrying a weapon had to check ammo, but you got it back when you left. Very organized and professional show with a ton of vendors. Now here you could get what you wanted, a Thompson machine gun you got it of course the price was out of my range damn it! How about a 30 cal machine gun, or a M1 Garand, any number of variations of semi auto weapons, knives, and assorted parts. Training aids holsters, knives exploding targets. They had it all there and more. Know what I did notice there, everyone was polite got along well made way for everyone to get to the tables and look over the guns and parts. People were there to help you find what you needed to complete a project or start a new one. Very nice indeed especially with the activities of the past week or so. Now I am a card carrying member of the NRA and I love me some guns, but the bad guys are making for a lot of bad press for us. Shooting students and cops, leaders of our government, all by wackos. The shooter in Arizona was kicked out of his local community college for being a little shakey, he had some police reports about his behavior, and somewhere the system took a bite in the ass. Personally I hold those responsible who knew he was off his rocker that did not say anything but just pushed him along. It was my understanding that the one guy who took one to the head but still managed to subdue this guy was a right to carry person and was armed at the time, but did not use his weapon, because of the other people there. True or not I can't say but if so then he exercised gun control. I will say I am all for gun control you should always have a clear sight picture, know where the round is going, what is behind the shot and use both hands!  

Sat Goose Hunt

This past Saturday I once again spent the day in a goose blind with some really good guys, I really enjoy hunting with these guys they are funny as hell and poor shots making for some good times naturally. We shot one apiece but the guys in the field next to us shot early and left...with there decoys sitting out drawing birds like no other. That just makes more fuel  for the fire about calling or not, these geese responded to the spread with no calling at all. All in all I have to say that my shotgun though undergunned compared to the 3 1/2 inch shells some of the boys are shooting holds it's own and I have my share of birds to prove it. Once again precision shot placement beats large loads everytime.

Birds should be moving

Tomorrow I will be in the blind and they are screaming about bad weather up north so maybe we will get some birds down here. We have had really good luck with the goose hunting this year and hopefully tomorrow will be just as good. One thing I like is to see em come to the decoys and set those wangs! Good luck tomorrow to all those who will be enjoying the last days of deer season, and those in the blind. Soon we will be perching!

Rifle season this weekend

Rifle season is coming back in this Friday and Sat so i am excited. Now I can deer hunt fri evening and then hit the goose blind Sat Morn and give that ol swamp donkey another try. Seems that the deer are dropping antlers already so we have to be just a little more selective in our harvest. I did not shoot any large buck deer this year, not because I was not trying, but this year it was about the meat and filling the freezer with venison. Of course we did selectively shoot some does and spikes that needed to go and hopefully that will pay off in the end. I went out Sat to check on the property I hunt, took the wife and one of her friends out there with me to keep her co. while I went looking for a fox. sat from 3 till dark and saw nothing at all no fox or deer. So I go back out there on Mon. and did not see anything at all, but the 100 lbs of corn I put out for the turkeys and deer was gone! Now I said I did not see anything at all but a HUGE flock of 42 turkeys did show up in the field. Hopefully I will be able to keep them on the neck and the foxes down so they have a chance. Speaking of turkeys they seem to be gathering up pretty early this year I saw another flock tonight just down the road of 6 birds so maybe things will pick up this year for us.
I know that there is a huge deer out there because I was able to track him this last snow storm. However he did not get big by being stupid so we will have to match wits. I got a feeling he is going to win!

Check your slings everytime!

Okay i learned a very hard lesson the other day. Taking "Carlos the Night Stalker"  (my encore 204) out one evening as I stepped out the door and onto the CONCRETE steps my sling came undone and Carlos took a tumble. Naturally he landed directly on the upper turrent and crushed it by a good 1/4 inch making that Nikon Monarch a very expensive piece of junk. Now my slings are not trashy but good leather backed slings with swivels and mechanical fasteners. In fact it takes three motions just to get em undone and going out the door all the stars and moon lined up at that very moment. So before you go out the door make sure that you check your slings every time you go out the door.

Life in the blind

some time back I talked about the blind I was hunting out of this year. I have to say it is first class and makes for a comfortable hunt not to mention it is very portable. I have a feeling the old style duck and goose blind is evolving in a whole new way.

Goose Hunting on the Eastern shore of Md.

Well the late goose season is in full swing as well as the late duck so there are many options open right now, for those willing to get out there amongst em! I have been hunting with a great group of guys this year and having a blast in the blind with them. There is a good mix of old farts (Butch) us middle aged guys and the young ones who keep us going all the time.  They have a great location and on most days we can limit out and everyone gets plenty of shooting, notice I did not saw killing but shooting. Of course there is the usual goose calling going on and good nature ribbing when a off note is sounded. Now most of these guys shoot 1100 Remington in 3 inch, or the 1187 in 3 inch but I still shoot my old 870 Wingmaster pump in 2 3/4. Now I did switch out the barrel going from full to improved now that we shoot steel shot, and the bigger pattern is better for shooting  when the birds are in the spread. I guess I am just comfortable with her and know how to shoot her to make meat. All in all I am happy with her and she does well for me if I keep her cleaned and oiled up good. Not to mentioned shells are $8 for me and $14 for them!

What went wrong here?

For the past few weeks I have been unable to get onto my blog and keep you posted with the late waterfowl season. Somewhere somebody put voodoo on me and I was blocked out. Don't worry though we have a bunch of stuff to share with you all.

Thomas Jefferson

I got an E-mail today about Thomas Jefferson and the man was def. motivated to say the least and it would appear very wise. He studied under his cousin at age 5 and that would be a bit early today I believe, but  by nine he was also studying Latin Greek and French, now that is quite a accomplishment. By 16 he was enrolled in the college of William and Mary and studied law at 19. Now I don't know about you but at Nineteen all I had really accomplished was wrecking my car twice and enlisting in the navy as a welder. Not Thomas he was a lawyer at 23 and retired from his practice at the ripe old age of 31, heck I am 55 and retirement is not even on the horizon! He accomplished much in his life time and wrote the Declaration of Independence at the age of 33 not bad but what were we all doing at 33, here was a man who was shaping a new nation. At 55 he was the active head of the Republican party, and at 57 was the 3rd President of the United States. At 60 he put together the Louisiana Purchase doubling the size of America, now that was a pretty good real Estate deal. At the age of 83 he and John Adams died on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He had some neat things to say also and some are true today  here are a few:
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
I predict the future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Personally this is not a political blog but this man had some pretty good things going on and I found the interesting and wanted to share with the thousands of readers of this blog

it's all frozen over

Well all the ponds are frozen over and there are just a few spots of open water and those are drawing in some ducks and the occasional goose. So what is a person to do? Well geese like to rest on open water in fact just check out any place with water open and a hundred geese are in a 10 by 10 area, but they do leave to eat and that is the ticket for harvesting your limit of geese. Like deer hunting your chances for success increase the longer you stay in the blind and with it frozen over the field is where they want to be eating left over beans and corn. If it has snowed you can put out some straw in front of your feeder decoys and by kicking the snow back and exposing the dirt it appears that they have been eating and pulling up clumps of grass. This past week I had the opportunity to hunt over some stuffer decoys and two of them were locked in and cupped up on rods about 5 feet over the spread and that really added to our layout. Keep your sentry decoys to the front rear and sides feeders in next and if you have any resting they should be more toward the center. I mean you never saw a resting goose sitting on the edge of a flock. Now I like a U shaped pattern or a V and I always start by setting my decoys on the perimeter, then I set one sentry out about 40 yds out in front of the  blind so I know when they are in my shooting range. I will set a few alert decoys and some feeders in front of the blind out about 15 feet and fill in  leaving a nice landing area in the center. Try to keep the wind at your back or even better set up so when the geese decide to set they are setting across your field of view and not looking directly at you when they commit to land and coming to your house for dinner. If you ask 10 people you will get 10 different explanations on setting decoys so my thing is to do what works for you at that particular time for that situation.

First Goose Hunt

I love to shoot ducks and geese but if you have been following this site then you know I gave up hunting from a boat and now I am happy to hunt the fields. This past Sat I had the opportunity to hunt with a group of new guys in their blind and I had a real good time as well as a successful hunt. Now we did not slay them but we did bring home meat and that is just a bonus on the hunt.

These guys had the best blind set up and it held 7 of us in comfort with no one being crowded out. Basically it is four  8 foot 2x4s and a 2x10 A a ridge pole. Some light weight corrugated plastic from a huge shipping crate acted as the walls and then covered with wire to attach the marsh grass to. A very nice and cozy set up especially if you have a small heater to heat up some beanie weeines or something on! It was cold around 18 degrees and the ponds were frozen over but the river was flowing having had a barge late that evening and there were geese flying. We managed to draw in two bunches of geese and had about four come by and check us out  just not to close, then five came in and checked out our spread. "We waited till take em" time and they fell like a cheap suit. All in all we had a very successful hunt and I met some really nice guys who hopefully I did not talk them to death and they will invite me to go again. All in all I had a great time in a great blind with great guys on a cold sat morning. It just does not get better than that does it?

What is that stuff?

Well it started snowing today around 11 where I was at and they shut the job down early and who knows what tomorrow will bring, But one thing that it will bring if it is not snowing and blowing is predators. When the weather is nasty that is when foxes and such feast best, and guys like me who like to shoot em look forward to those still cold mornings or evenings where the snow is shining bright. Foxes and coons show up so very nice  in the scope and even late afternoon shots are a little easier. Last big snow I made a snow camo suit and it blends me in with the edge of the woods really well so I am able to see them from a long distance. But I will have to admit that sitting in the cold is not quite as appealing as it used to be!

Whats been going on out amongst em?

Recently I have had the opportunity to take someone hunting who had not been taught by people who liked to hunt   My cousin who lost his father when he was just weeks old never had anyone to take him and teach him how to hunt and when he asked me to go with him and give some pointers  I was overjoyed of course. Being a teacher as my profession any time I can share with someone some knowledge I might have I always will sometimes weather they ask for it or not!  He has a beautiful piece of property of 100 plus acres with field surrounded by woods and every hundred yards there is a ditch that comes out into the field by about 150 yds. making some excellent shooting. So the first night we walk his property and take in  where the deer are coming into the field, and he has corn out in one corner. I observed a lot of activity where some ditches came together and some fresh deer crap telling me this was a prime spot.  So as we work our way around a edge of the woods there stand three nice deer feeding on soybeans and not real interested in us as the wind was in our favor. However my cousin did get a lesson on noise and how those huge things sticking off of the side of their head were about 50 times bigger than ours and worked real well. A snap of a branch and the deer worked their way into the woods very quickly not giving time for a shot. As it got too dark for him to shoot comfortably we made our way back to the truck, track soup again tonight, and discussed some things that he should always keep in mind, wind direction and noise control being the most important. And we talked about his blind sitting in the middle of the field just popping up on Friday evening after work. Like you and I we may not notice when the wife puts up a gnome in the garden, but let her put a new sofa in there and it will get our attention, a little natural vegetation goes a long way in concealment. The following weekend we hunted over at my property and I put him in a spot not far from the house in a big ol comfy chair sitting 5 yards in the woods camoed up nice and he did not see any deer well neither did I, but he had a chance to get out amongst em and watch the sun come on up and what could be better than that?

This week

Well it is the rifle season in Maryland and I have been busy naturally. having to work two nights this week I was kinda wore out some but I did manage to get a hunt in on Wed evening. A friend of mine is wanting to hunt some so I am going with him and helping him get into the groove. He is shooting a 700 Remington in 30-06 scoped and from a ground blind. This past Sat we hunted over at the beach I set him up on a long field and I went and overlooked a field on the backside. Opening day the place was loaded every stand was occupied and this week no one was out there. Of course I saw absolutely no deer at all in the fields and only one on the opposite side of the river, however there are some monster sign still around just very nocturnal now that they have been shot at. Hopefully things will calm down and I will get another chance to take the big boy I have been chasing for the past few years.

Opening day

Opening day found me in a tree lounge stand overlooking a open area of woods giving me and my rifle "Adolf Von Klaussen", (you know I name my guns,) . He is an 8 mm Mauser that was made into a sportsmans rifle as my dad always told the story and outfitted with aperture sights, a true deer slayer if there ever was. Now Adolf has a pair of triggers one being a set trigger and the other being the one that fires the weapon, and believe me when you apply the slightest amt of pressure he is talking. I have NEVER missed a deer with this gun or have I ever had to track one as I am a head shooter or spine shooter whichever offers me the best shot. My son is also an excellent shot with his 30-06, and when he draws down, deer will be going to the grinder so to speak. As the morning progresses I am hearing sounds that make me stay on edge but the stand was not offering me the shot I was looking for, so I dropped down and took up behind a huge fall down root ball, sitting with my back to the clay and dirt with some natural vegetation in front, a beautiful sniper hide if there ever was. I am hearing some shooting and already had the word from my son that he had one down and he was bringing it up to the hunting lodge. When he pulled in he had a nice deer on the machine and we made short work of hauling it up on the pole and eviscerating it. Actually he did the work as he is very quick at it and I returned to my spot. In about an hour I hear a couple of shots not 50 yds from me on the edge of the marsh and in 20 min. this guy comes through  looking for a way to haul his deer out of the marsh. Now we have had some trespassing  going on and I was wondering who was shooting so after introductions I discovered that this guy was a family member of the adjoining property owner and had shot  a deer tracking it to where he dispatched it in the  marsh. Now if you have to have a neighbor these people are the ones you want there. Basically the property is a huge triangle with them on one side and us on the other we have woods and marsh and they have fields and marsh so it is perfect for us and them. Any how I digress ( I have always wanted to say that and mean it). So I jump in the chase and show them where I had four wheeler tracks cut through and lend encouragement. Now I am a vet so that was the best I could do okay?

 This guy has a beautiful 8 pointer down and a good 300 yd drag so off it went. I did manage to get this shot of the man and his deer in the marsh. Congratulations are in order to Walt Mumford for his harvest.

Mount Rainer

This morning I got up kinda early cause my internal clock is still on eastern time. It was a crisp clear night with the stars out and that big ol moon hanging in the sky was just to much. Looking out the  huge floor to ceiling windows at the Olympic mountain range I was hoping to see Mt. Rainer but the view is not oriented that way but I did notice a pink line off in the distance. Getting a coffee and a pair of Binoculars I settled in to a big comfy chair turned up the fireplace and watched the sun light up the mountains from the top. They came into view a bright pink illuminated  from the reflection off the snow and just majestic as they come. Now I have traveled the world, from the Pacific rim to the alps of Europe and these mountains are as beautiful as any in the world.  In the late 70's my wife and I traveled quite extensively working at Nuclear power plants out west. When we finished up our work at San Onfre units 2 and 3 we took a 7 moth tour around the country heading up to Canada when Mt. Saint Helen's erupted putting an end to our northern trek. We took a left and went into Wyoming, Jackson Hole area. The Tetons are Majestic no doubt but the Olympic range is much larger and has many peaks visible from my vantage point. I still have not seen Mount Rainer yet but when we leave here I will be flying right past it, and then I might have a better view. I have left my port home and cannot post any pictures yet but I promise that when I do I will.
Today is the day before Thanksgiving and I am with my family in Seattle Washington, naturally we will have a traditional feast especially since I have not seen them in a coons age. But keep in mind today and tomorrow that many of us will not be feasting, but battling the cold and just trying to find a warm spot. Now you know I am not a bleeding heart, I am a true work for what you get guy, but sometimes things happen and that job got downsized or may the company you worked for folded. Be thankful for what you have and if you have two give one to a person who could use it.

Weather out west

Well it has snowed for the past two days and while not deep it is very cold and some ice on the road making for serious travel. I am not driving so it is no big deal to me buckle up and hold on! But this morning I got  a couple of phone calls from back east at like 4 am here and decided to get up and just cruise the net for a bit. Well it has dawned clear and very cold with a phat moon over the Columbia lake and this morning I am just loving life. Of course I am taking a break from the field to relax and I got to tell you that not shooting or being out amongst em is taking it's toll. Now I know there are ducks falling into my pond, the biggest racks of the year passing my stand and my retriever is scamming on how to open the refrigerator and get to my summer sausage! There is a float plane port on the lake and I have seen a few float planes land and take off but not many. A quick look at the lake showed some small clams about the size of a quarter and a gravel bottom perfect for setting decoys out. Now I am seeing a ton of diver ducks buffleheads mostly and they are large but the number of green heads is limited here and no black ducks so far at all or geese but I hear that they are here. Today we will begin to prepare the turkey brining it for cooking this Thanksgiving, going down to the oyster house for a few oysters, when I asked for "Arsters" they did not know what I wanted" (man they talk funny here). I have some hayman sweet potatoes at home that I know are cured and ready to eat, and I love me some sweet potatoes you know. So not much on the hunting front but I am enjoying myself to no end.

Seattle fresh market

Yesterday I wandered downtown with my family to the fresh market right off Puget sound, and I was amazed at the amt of fresh vegetables, and wild  mushrooms. I saw mushrooms that I have never seen before, and a ton of fresh fish in any form you can imagine. Fresh Ling cod, Halibut. Pacific oysters, fruit, and veg.. plus the vibe downtown was very positive. A ton of art, street performers,and exotic foods were everywhere not to mention the original Starbucks.  Also something I have not seen in some time a fresh cut butcher shop, with fresh sausages and custom cut meats. Of course my nephew picked us up some fresh Salmon and a few chuck steaks that we finished off nicely with fresh garlic roasted in the pan. In fact I was so  impressed I may wander down there again and pick up dinner for tonight you know I love to cook and my family out here has not experienced Uncle Bill's cooking for sometime. Of course my Nephew and his wife keep a well stocked larder and if I get rooting around who knows what I will find. The rest of the Family will be here tomorrow and Wed, my great nephew is a vegetarian but my Niece is a true carnivore! However in my young life I experienced the vegetarian lifestyle and have no doubt I will be fixing him a very tasty dish. The time has me wacked right now and by Friday I will be in tune, but I leave Friday to get home in time for opening day, I have a guest coming down to hunt and will be here ready to go. Naturally I have my gear all laid out so all I have to do is fall into it and go. Webfoot Gangsta and another young man both missed deer with their bows last week but were happy with the hunt and plan to return so good for me bad for deer....well maybe good for deer!