So we pulled the pictures from dad's game camera this weekend. We were suppose to work on the bulldozer this weekend but the bearings were not available in time. So we moved the game camera and took down 3 of the deer stands. The deer stands needed a little work and moving them off the trees keeps that from damaging the trees. Also getting them down before the bulldozer is done will save them from my uncle. He's going to be like a little kid with a new toy when that think is operational and so getting them out of his way seemed like a good idea. None the less I made a moderately large animated gif of the nearly three weeks worth of photos. You will see just a few deer in the pictures I was mostly trying to get empty photos to show the growth of the skunk cabbage in the small swamp in the background.

( 5MB animated gif behind cut )

I missed modern gun season this year, just too busy with Abby and work and the like. I did, however, get to hunt the last two days of muzzle loader season, Monday and Tuesday, with my dad and brother.

( Rambling hunting story with dead critter pictures behind the cut )

Saturday morning I was up early and met a co-worker and a customer of ours at a small hunting preserve and spent the morning hunting pheasant. It was a cool, very wet morning. It had rain most of the night and rained the first hour and half we hunted. The field had only just received two killing frosts so the cover was still thick and tough. It soaked through my waxed canvas Filson chaps in about 10mins of walking. We were all pretty soggy by the end of it. We had two flushing dogs with us; neither had great noses but they did were eager and fun to watch work. Sometimes they would get too far out ahead of us but we still manage to get six bird between us. I got the lion's share, taking four of them. Some days the birds just fly your way?... GFWTR cooked them up for me today for dinner. They cooked all day in the crockpot with rice, milk, chicken stock and salt and pepper. Very tasty.

Sunday was the club's last USPSA match of the year. It was cool but the rain held off until just before we finished tearing the stages down and putting all the equipment away in the storage shed. I was on fire most of the day. I won Limited-10 and my run on the classifier should push me a few tenth of percent higher, probably not enough to get A class but it will get me closer. I won three of the four stages in Limited-10. On my reshoot I shot Production and my score would have won Production. I again won three of four stages. Just one more match this year over in Erie and competitive shooting will be done for me until next year.

Since these are my favorite political topics to talk about and the of course judge candidates on I thought I would ramble a bit on Obama and his stance on the second amendment and hunting.

( Rambling post about Obama and his anti-firearms and anti-hunting endorsements )

Back in this post, I not only announce that I was going to be a father, but I recounted my deer hunting experience from this year that was, personally speaking, a very exciting hunt. Well I had that deer mounted. This was the first deer I have harvested worthy of the effort. Dad picked it up today for me coming back from the farm on some business. The taxidermist was a new kid just out of taxidermy school so I was taking a little bit of a chance with him but his price was good and I am all for helping someone getting a new business established. I was very pleased with his work. The deer looks just like I remember him, but he is dry this time unlike that very rainy day I shot him on. Anyway a few picture of the mount behind the cut.

( Deer mount pictures )

I manage to get one day of bunny hunting in this year. Season ends at the end of this month and I will not likely get out again. A co-worker, myself and our dads all meet down at the farm this morning and we hunted for about 4 hours or so. It was really cold this morning, temp in the low teens, but the sun was out and very warm. We had lots of rabbits up but due to the cold they were going underground pretty quick. The first rabbit we jumped ran 50yards right into a stack of cinder block. The second one we jump made three hops and then right down a groundhog hole. We lost the third one when the dog couldn't follow the sent due to the very cold and crusting snow. They were sitting tight, I walk a semi circle around one within 15-20 feet of it and it never ran. It wasn't until the dog got close that it final moved and I noticed it. It only ran a few feet. I got three rabbits and the last one was the best. The two dads were up on an edge and jumped the rabit out of a nasty thicket of briers. I saw it from the time it jump as in came down the hill across my vision and then started turning away s from me. It was moving fast enough and I had time enough to think about it that I had to give it a lead it about 4 feet . One shot and rolled it to a dead stop at probably nearly 35 yards. This all took place in a pretty dense stand of mature pine trees so I had to time my shot between rows of trees. I was please with the shot (yes, I am patting myself on the back and no I won't hurt myself, it think). We ended up only get four rabbit total but had a great day.

There were oodles of turkey and deer tracks all over the place. A suprizing number of coyote tracks. My co-worker jumped a nice size buck with doe. My Uncle said that Ohio Division of Wildlife will be coming in next week to use their rocket net to capture another group of turkey for transplant to other parts of the state. I would love to see that rocket net.

Before we left I got the new 1100 out and ran some shells through it to make sure is still worked after all the mods. It ran like a champ. It even cycled the real light 7.8oz load I had been hunting rabbit with in my Citori. Shot slugs pretty good too except the slugs really badly leaded up the modified choke I had in the gun (I forgot the rest of the chokes tube at home). Next time I will use a skeet tube with the slugs and hope it doesn't get leaded up as bad. I had to scrub like crazy with bronze brush to get the lead out of the choke.

All and all a good day

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and this year was the best ever for several reasons this year.

First and foremost, and likely the most momentous thing I have ever posted here, GFWTR and I are expecting our first child. We announced it at Thanksgiving to our families’ to much excitement and surprise. I am pretty sure both of our parents had given up on us ever having children.

I am presently somewhere between exhilaration and terror. This is going to be quite a life changing experience, and the more I tell people about it and think about it the more excited I get at the prospect. I think GFWTR is still taking it in a bit slower than I am. She is a bit more level headed than I am when it comes right down to it.

Needless to say the two mother-in-laws are beside themselves and have already had at least a few phone calls and one face to face meeting. I am sure the first few months of the new child’s life have already been planned out to the minute by them. Living this close to both parents is no doubt going to be both a blessing and a curse but I think (after much chastisement by my brother) is going to me a larger blessing than a curse.

I told my co-workers today and between telling them about the coming addition to our family and my weekend hunting I was very distracted at work. It was next to impossible to concentrate on the proposal I am suppose to be working on.

I am sure there will be many more posts on the baby as this progresses. I have created a tag just for posts on it.

The other thing that made Thanksgiving good was my brother coming up. I got to play lots with his two sons. One almost 4 years old and the other about 6 months old, they certainly fed the baby fever around the place. We had a good time having my whole immediate family together along with several of my parent's siblings and their kids and grandkids around for Thanksgiving. I think we only had about 26 show up for Thanksgiving dinner (we have had as many as 51). It was good times all around and GFWTR was somewhat the focus being the one with the "announcement". It's a tradition in my family that baby announcements happen at Thanksgiving and ours was a nice surprise to most. I think, despite her likely denial, she is enjoying the attention.

Finally to top all this family goodness off with an excellent deer hunting experience. I took a very nice 10 point buck opening morning of Ohio’s modern gun season. It was nice enough that it will be my first deer to be mounted, to be hung in the house down at the farm.

( Long detailed story of the hunting with pictures of the deer behind the cut. )

ETA: I fixed a for a few typos and bad grammar, don't worry I'm sure I left a few in there.

Start with a mild drought, I was informed this morning by a co-worker that a drought will cause plants like poison ivy to produce more quantities of the oil that cause the reaction at higher toxicity when stress by low moisture. That was interesting but a bit too late to help me any. If you didn't read the comments in the previous post you probably did not see the graphic picture of my left arm. Pic (WARNING graphic and gross picture of my arm. Looking at the picture will likely make you itch) This is the worst body part my left leg is almost as bad but a smaller area. My right arm and leg are also effected but not as badly. Yes, it does itch as much as it looks like it does.

So now that we have super poison ivy how does one expose one self to this super concentrated skin irritant? Hug a few tree with the ivy growing up them what else? Why was I hugging the tree? No, I have not become an enviromentalist (SP intentional) I was hugging them so I could wrap a good chain around them and then tear them out of the ground at the roots. I knew the ivy was there but I usually do not react to it much if at all. Not this time it kick my butt.

We were creating a clearing on the farm to plant a fed plot for the wildlife. Again not completely altruistic as well fed game taste better and produce larger populations making for better hunting. We will be planting a mixture of plants that will feed the deer, turkey and other game birds on the farm later this year. The first to go in will be the fall with some special clover for the deer. It will also create more edges and transitions between cover and travel corridors which the whitetail deer like.

So here is a large panoramic picture of the clearing we created.

Panoramic Picture of the clearing (1.7mb image)

The dog behind my Element is Rigby, my dads Golden Retriever puppy (9 months old, he is grown a lot since the picture I posted of him sometime ago), the guy on the left is my brother's brother-in-law. The guy in the middle is my little brother (younger not smaller) and finally is my father.

GPS map of perimeter

I walked the perimeter of the clearing with my GPS and this is what it would look like from above. The way point marked "Truck" is were the vehicles were parked in the panoramic picture and about where I was standing to take the panoramic picture.

The large pile of brush, logs, and stumps on the right side of the picture is most of the trees we pulled down. Although there are several other piles of brush around the clearing. All the logs and stumps were piled together to make dealing with them later easier. The piles of brush are going to make great places for the rabbits and game birds to shelter in this winter.

It was a superb week. We worked long hard days and had a blast doing it despite the ivy and a bit of rain on the first day. If I ever decide to quite being an engineer I think I could be a farmer, or at least someone that did the clearing of the land. I loved rigging the cables and chains we were using and running the tractor. We had three of us the whole time (myself, brother and dad) and my uncle helped about half the time and brother's b-in-l showed up for the last day. We had an ax, chainsaw, and two tractors with a variety of attachments to do the work. I could not image the work it must have taken to clear this land back in the time of horses and buck-saws. Damn if we are not soft compared to our elder generations.

The lot is just over 5/8ths of an acre and it took us three days to finish pulling down the trees. Dad and my uncle (his older brother) had pulled down about 1/2 the trees the previous weekend. We also spread about 1000lbs of lime and disked the ground thoroughly. It was still a bit too rooted to actually plow not to mention the ground being as dry as it was would have been very hard on a plow and tractor. We manage to break or chip several disks on the disk and near the end of the last day I broke the end of the top link off the three point hitch.

In addition to the wonderful work I set off a bunch of fireworks Wednesday and Saturday night got to meet my new nephew Whitiker and play with his older brother. On top of all that I ate like a king with mom's and aunts excellent home cooked food and a cook out over at one of my cousins that lived nearby. Finally I shot a pistol match Sunday morning shot like crap, between the poison ivy, and my XD rejecting the new trigger bar I put in it, but damn it was still one of the best extended weekend in recent memory.

So on gun forums someone always bring up knock down power and thinks that a bullet can knock a target off its feet and/or send the target flying; you know Hollywood style. Well a quick consultation with Newton's third law of physics (or Mythbusters for that matter) and we basically see that if the bullet send a target flying off its feet then it probably sent the shooter flying of their feet. That whole conservation of momentum stuff pretty much bust the idea of a bullet knocking down a target.

( long winded essay on knock down power )

I promise my readers (yeah all four of you) and myself this is the last I will say on Mr. Zumbo. The whole thing has made me sick and a bit ashamed of the firearms community.

First Mr. Zumbo, yep he screwed up and effectively ended his career with a few miss typed words. All that has happened to him has been a direct result of his own words. I pray I am never such a public person that my words could have this drastic effect on my life. I have even considered ending my own blog due to the reaction to his.

He's still not to bad off he is 67 years old probably financially in a good position; retirement is probably a good option and he will be just fine in that. The blow to his ego/pride/self worth must be devastating and far harder to move on from than just the lost of a career. I could say a lot more but I will sum it up with the fact that I feel sorry for Mr Zumbo more than anger at his miss spoke words. I am willing to accept his apologies (the latest apology hosted on Ted Nugent's forums) and assuming he follows through with his promised actions, let it go. The focus now needs to be getting past this sickening episode and on to more import issues like that new AWB and other external threats to the 2nd Amendment.

A word on the response to Mr Zumbo's blog: The outrage by the community as a whole was good, the sponsors severing their relationship was appropriate. The joy some individuals found in watching this man self destruct was wrong. I don't care if you never forgive the man for his words, that is your right, but finding joy in his self induced miss fortune seems twisted to me. Sure there should be some satisfaction from thing being set right but I read replies on forums from people that hoped nasty things would happen to this man, made implied threats towards him and reveled every time some new consequence crashed down on Mr Zumbo. For this attitude by many gun owners I am ashamed. It is one thing to police your own within a community it is quite another to finding joy and relish in having to do that.

This has been and ugly nasty little episode and one I hope will quickly fad into the past.