Ultradog

The whole Tribes thing. Sheesh! They are allowed to net spawning walleyes here. It has decimated the population on Lake Mille Lacs - one of the most popular and productive walleye lakes in MN. I think my brother has it right; if they want to exercise their treaty rights they have to do it in the manner it was done when the treaties were signed - no modern technology. Bro says he would even disallow those who wear eyeglasses or have filling in their teeth :)

Cool. Don't just take one tho

I feel a greater loss from Rush's passing than I did from either of my parents passing. I listened to him less than I used to but that was because I just didn't listen to the radio as much. Always tuned in for a few days after a major event like an election though - to get his take on things. And I always took comfort knowing he was out there. Like you sleep better knowing the sentry is at his post. Now the sentry is absent and the enemy is still at the gate. Very sad.

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Yeah, I saw Biden had pulled the plug on Keystone. Wondered if that would affect you. Only good news I saw that pertained to this was union boss Richard Trumka slammed him for it. Hope it is yet another nudge for unions to start endorsing the other party.

Ha! I was beginning to think that no humor was allowed here.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Implicit in that statement is we have the right to pursue happiness but not a right to happiness itself. Happiness, like success, is not easily defined. One man can consider himself happy and successful with an acre or two of land, a moble home and an old car that gets him around. Another man might need a castle and a 100,000 head of cattle to consider himself as happy and successful. One woman might have pushed her 3 children through grad school, saw them married well and gets to see her grandchildren frequently. Another might have hoped to get on govt assistance and live in a Section 8 highrise apartment and have a close relationship with God. When she achieves those goals she considers herself happy and successful. Happiness and success are relative. They are undefinable. They are like the term quality. Robert Pirsig wrote a lengthly tome (Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance) trying to define quality. It was a great book but he couldn't definatively give a standard for quality. One might say that all 4 of the above mentioned people - if their sense of accomplishment, if their relationships, surroundings and things seem to have quality, if they provide a sense of success, well being and happiness - have achieved Their version of the American dream.

Just checking in. Hope everyone is staying warm.

People protest because their lives have no meaning. There are professional protesters who have been to all the big events from Occupy Wall Street to all the major leftist protests we've seen by antifa and blm. If these protests were military operations these professional protesters would have a chest full of ribbons for their efforts. I bet soon some of the leftist run colleges and universities will offer degrees in protesting. I think if I was the dictator of all the world I would take the names of these dirt bags and make them all pay 5 times the normal prices for gas, electricity, food, clothing and other essential needs so they learn what the effects of their shenanigans are.

...could probably have tracked this deer. I took a big doe Sat morning. Bullet took the heart out and exited at the very bottom of her chest cavity so she dumped every bit of blood out. She ran about 60 yards and crumpled about 30' from my blind.

My cousin's daughter took this buck on Sat - opening day of rifle season. She's been hunting since she was 15 or so and is quite the deer slayer. Now fellas, keep your eyes on the deer. Ok? ?

Thanks for posting that. It's still good after all these years.

Photoshopped? Pretty creepy. https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=vTZ7_1603790129

Any of you remember the hunt with Bill Jordan where he nicked a barbed wire fence with a broadhead? Must be 15 years ago now on one of RT's monster buck videos. He missed a great buck.

Yeah, it's that time. We had flurry's on Friday but it melted as it hit the ground. I spent the day yesterday getting ready. Checked the antifreeze in the tractor, drained and ran the fuel out of the lawnmower, put the hose away. And I cleaned and swept my wife's stall in the garage after I used it all summer. It won't be long and it'll be looking like this again.

I think if you've never lost a deer you've never hunted. Sorry to hear of your bad luck but it happens.

Mike and I got my deer blind installed. Hauled it up to the land yesterday and unloaded it off the trailer. Used short pieces of 3/4" pipe and rolled it off. Used both the tractor and the pickup as a dead man to come-along it into place. Kind of scary doing it as it sits on a very narrow promontory about 15' above the old gravel pit floor. One mistake and it would have rolled over the side. It is very stable out there now though. I will go back up in a few days and get the electrics hooked up to it. I broke the 3/4" pvc conduit where it comes up out of the ground. Won't be hard to fix but I didn't have the conduit to do it so we came home. I also took the chainsaw and cut open a better shooting lane on one side. Rifle opener is 1 month from tomorrow. Hoping I'm not too late to get it in there.

My cousin sent me this yesterday. Not the best photo but it gives a good hint. In my 50? years of hunting I have never seen a rack this big in our area. Never even Heard of anyone taking a deer this big up there. But of course there must be some. Cousin's place is about a mile (as the crow flys) from mine so not too far for a buck like this to travel during the rut. This would be a BOLT (buck of a life time) for sure. Time stamp on the photo says he went through at 2:30 AM.

I didn't mention that I screwed it up. Max width you can legally haul on the highways is 102". Any wider and you need an over dimension permit. Somehow it ended up being about 105 1/2" at the eves. Ugh. I strapped it down tonight and hooked the PU to the trailer and tomorrow morning gonna just go with it. If it doesn't go well I'll post the story after I make bail. Wish me luck. Thanks for all the nice comments

What a great post! It has it all. Hunting, game, guns, cute kids, critters, beautiful scenery and an excellent narrative to tie it all together. Thanks.

For some reason it wouldn't let me edit but I wanted to mention: I have some camo netting to use as curtains. The type you can shoot an arrow through. I learned with the old blind that I need curtains or the deer can see you inside. That netting is up at the property and I'll install it when I get the blind up there.

I got a little carried away with my new deer blind. Almost afraid to show it here. Especially since some of you don't like all the technology and prefer hunting the old way. But I finished it yesterday. 8'x8' All super insulated, carpeted - for sound and additional insulation. It will have electricity to it - like the old one. For heat, coffee pot, cell phone charging and a microwave on the shelf above the bunk. I built it here at home, on my trailer, with mostly free, cheap and used stuff l got off Craigslist. Still have quite a bit in it though. Will transport it up to the hunting land next week. For me, a big part of hunting is to be able to just sit and do absolutely nothing. No nagging thoughts about things to be done - paint that bedroom, quarterly taxes, laundry, clean the garage, fix the tractor, handrail to the basement, etc, etc. Just sit there. And hey, maybe a deer will come out and I'll get some venison out of the deal. So I built a cool little buulding where I can sit, maybe with my wife, or a friend and do nothing. It's nice, if I say so myself and it was fun to build. So even if it's not how you folks would hunt I hope you'll all approve. 45 days till the opener here.

I think if you are surrounded by beans and corn you aren't going to compete with those staples with a couple of 1 acre plots. So I would put in something that's extra tasty to the deer. Try planting something like turnips for them. Like you, I keep a couple of one acre plots. I'm not surrounded by crops like you but the deer get enough to eat from natural forage. But the deer love to cruise through my plots to grab a few tasty morsels. They don't stay long but just cruise through and eat a few mouthfuls of dessert. That's all you need is for them to cruise through on their way to or from their main feeding area.

I am not here to impugne or denigrate anyone for what they hunt or how they hunt it. This conversation started with a question about using technology to increase your success rate and the use of technology naturally causes ethical questions to be asked. When we go afield there is a high likelihood that a deer will die. Whether that deer is a button buck or a monster is somewhat immaterial as it is still just as dead. What seems to be happening though is we are not seeing a deer as one of God's own creatures or even as meat for our family. We are objectifying the deer as a set of antlers to hang on the wall. The more horn it has the higher value we place upon it and the more we lust after the thing. And the more likely many are to bend the fair chase deal to be in their favor with technology. If you hunt for horns, well that's what you do. I didn't come here to impugne, remember? But I will say that I will be far more a stickler for holding big rack hunters to the notions of fair chase, of morals and hunting ethics than I would some country boy who can't afford all the latest and greatest stuff and is still out there using the old ways to feed his family.

Who said anything about taking the first deer that comes along? I prefaced my post with a quote from Elkoholic. "In our insatiable quest to put trophies on the wall..."