TN Bucknasty

I'm starting to feel a tingling sensation. Nothing more awesome to me than a big funky looking rack.

Yeah, something about my computer won't allow me to load them larger. I'm having to reduce the size in paint. I just charged by the hour on this one. I begged and pleaded for him to allow me to do a remount, but he had a deep attachment to the cape.

I've kept extensive records from my hunting and scouting trips since August of 2007. Since then, I've observed 653 deer in Tennessee. I've also collected over 10,000 trail camera pictures. Of all of those deer, I've killed one 4.5 year old buck and had pictures of one more. I've killed eight 3.5 year old bucks and had pictures of one more. So of the 653 deer that I've actually laid eyes on, nine have been bucks older than 2.5 years of age. That comes out to a whopping 1.37%.

Here are a few more pics.

I had a customer with a really, really rough mount. The ears had holes in them, the lower eyes were terribly sculpted and cracked, and I can't even begin to describe how horrific the nose and muzzle were. The guy was dead set on keeping the same cape even though it was really old and faded, so my only option was to patch, recolor, and rebuild. The finished product is nowhere close to perfect, but I think it's a heck of a lot better than what he had. He thought so, too.

Any owners of 17 ft bass trackers out there care to comment on how it handles in rough water? My definition of rough would be a river with barges and ski boats cruising by regularly. Lots of people fish out of them here, but a lot of people will take 12 foot flatbottoms out here, too, which I think is insane.

I don't think it was my agent's fault. I blame my insurance company for being dirty, and myself for not being careful. I bought the boat after my policy so it was never explained to me. As far as what I included on the claim, I claimed everything from my floating key chain to my rods. I was able to remember $2,104 worth of missing items. I have no idea how much of that I'll see. If I can get $2-3K from insurance and sell my outboard for 2K, I'll just downsize to something like a 17 or 18ft Bass Tracker. Mainly, I just want to get my son back out on the water. He's 15 months and he and my wife went with me 25-30 times during the spring and summer. His first word was fish, and he jumps up and down, squeals, and claps every time I hook one. I want to raise him right with a rifle in one hand and a fishing pole in the other. The thief took a lot away from us, but hopefully, the judge will take the next 10-15 years away from him. The investigator told me yesterday that he has completed 7 warrants on him already, and he hopes to have a few more done before his trial.

Homeowners insurance is only going to cover 1K on the boat, but they said that they'll cover my fishing equipment which was 2K. Still sucks. In the front of my policy booklet, it says that watercraft is covered. The bad news was in some of the fine print in the back of my policy where there is a clause saying that there is a 1K limit on watercraft. I only fish and guide from late February until early August, so I don't keep boat insurance during the dead time. Guess I'll have to work and save for another 5-6 years to get another one.

They found my engine, pieces of my trailer, and a few pieces of my equipment yesterday. When they pulled up, the guy had a chop saw cutting up my trailer for scrap. He had destroyed my hull ripping out the wiring and tearing out any metal, then he dumped it off a bride onto some rip rap. An $8,000 rig torn into $500 worth of scrap. He didn't admit to it even though he was sitting on it with a saw. He had a bunch of other stolen property, too.

Please help. This AM someone cut the lock and stole my boat right out of my driveway while I was out hunting. I'm in southwest, TN. The Boat is an 89 BassCat 19ft with a 200 Mariner. Boat is silver with a red lightning bolt. It is on a galvanized, double axel trailer. The engine hood has "aint skeered" in red on both sides. It also had TN numbers, but the trailer had an old MS license plate that I couldn't get off.

Some of you have heard my occasional rants and whining about things going on in the world of education, but I'm really burning out here. There is a lot of BS going on in TN because of Obama's Race to the Top. Mostly a bunch of hollow paperwork and formalities that don't amount to much. That is just par for the course. What's pissing me off is that this week alone, I've had to attend four meetings with families and social workers because of things going on outside of the school with these kids. This week, I've found out that two of my students have been getting raped by their fathers for years. Another student is in witness protection. Another is losing his vision because he was thrown through a wall as an infant. What in the **** is wrong with people? How am I supposed to teach algebraic expressions to a kid who is worried about getting murdered in their sleep? What am I supposed to say? "I'm sorry you got molested, now back to the Revolutionary War." I'm just finding it really hard to focus on making my "quotas" for the standardized tests and designing lesson plans that fit all the criteria listed in our 8 page rubrics. I get so ****** sick and tired of politicians and administrators looking at kids as a test score. I'm dealing with REAL HUMAN BEINGS HERE! Yes, they need an education, but there are too many things that we're taking out of school to replace with academics. I don't recall having 2 1/2 hours of math per day in school, but I do remember having teachers who had a couple of minutes to see how things were going in my life. Don't get me wrong, I had some piss poor teachers in school. I also had some teachers who taught me things that weren't on any test that I still use daily. Most teachers who spent all their time teaching me to well on the standardized tests gave me very little that has stuck with me. I wonder how many parents would classify the best school as the one with the highest test scores. I have a son of my own. I want him to leave school with appropriate social skills and a broad base of things to help him in every day life. I don't really give a rat's hairy hind end if he knows how to find the square root of 47,567 as fast as the Chinese. Somehow, I don't see that type of thing improving his quality of life. Basically, I love the kids, but I hate everything about the education system. My list and my students' list of priorities is a lot different than the list that big brother keeps sending us. I wish our lawmakers had been at those meetings this week.

I live in a small town in Tennessee where I teach school and do some high school coaching. I'm not really looking forward to the next couple of years because all of the middle school coaches are going through such **** with their group right now. It's bad enough that the kids are really soft and are more concerned with how they look thank whether they can even compete or not, but the parents' behavior has been ridiculous. Here are a couple of examples of the kinds of things I'm seeing- Case #1 The football team is practicing in the gym because of the rain outside. Coach has the biggest kid on the team holding a tackling dummy for the other kids to hit. He goes step by step through how to hold the dummy and brace for impact. The kid stands there like a limp noodle and gets knocked to the floor by someone 100lbs lighter than him, and he thumps his head on the hardwood. The next morning, his parents inform the principal that they are filing suit for putting him at risk for serious head injury. Case #2- A kid is skipping soccer games in order to go to band practice after the coach and the band director have agreed to allow the kid to miss practice on game days. Rather than cutting or punishing him like I would have, the coach tells the player that he needs to make a decision whether to be dedicated to the team or not. Then the parents complain to the local paper and the school board. Nothing serious, but still bad publicity in a small town and a pain in the butt. Case #3- A parent donates a substantial amount of money to the team, then demands a refund because his son is not getting "adequate" playing time after continually missing practice and poor performance. This leads to a whole big legal battle about whether someone can or can't be refunded after donating money. Now the auditors are being brought in and it has hit the fan. Case #4- Despite the girl being really upset, a parent will not allow her daughter to run cross country, because she might get injured and miss basketball. Here in this county, most coaches make 3-6% of a beginning teacher's salary. For me, that works out to about .23 cents an hour. If it starts getting like that over the next few years, I'm just not sure that it will be worth it. So far the worst thing I've had happen was the principal threatening to fire me because his lazy kid wasn't getting enough playing time. I guess I should count myself lucky.

Went to two hardware stores, and it was smaller than anything they had.

I called and they couldn't tell me. WTH?

What size alan wrench is it that you can use to remove the screw in a Shwacker broadhead? I need to work on my blades, but I lost that little sucker somewhere in Kansas, and I guess I'm gong to have to make a special trip to the hardware store.

Thanks for the compliment RTF. I've gone up on a few things because of changes in shipping, and a bigger client base. I'm probably still lower than you'd be comfortable with, but I'm sure that the amount of money I'm investing per year in utilities, travel, etc. is probably a lot less, too. I'll have to go up next year or I'll have to start turning away work. I was going to start doing fish commercially, but I don't have the time for it.

No sir, not my first, but my first in quite awhile. This is the first one that I've had any degree of comfort with. I've been so busy with deer that I haven't had much of a chance to practice on cats. I'm in a lull right now, so I decided to study reference photos for a couple of weeks before tackling this one. I'll probably never be completely satisfied, but I'll keep working out the details. I have three more to play with until deer season starts up again. I did change one thing about this one after I posted the picture. I curled the tail up a little more to match my reference pics.

Still has to be finished and painted, but how does he look? How cool is that limb?

In years past, I've chased and killed The Ghost Buck, Even Steven, The Crazy Eight, Crabby, Slick, Buzz Ted, Pretty Boy, The One Eye Love, Roy Bean, and Lucky. Mr. Lonely is still on the hit list. He got his name because I've killed 5 other bigger bucks with him standing next to them over the past 4 years. Other than him, pickings look slim although I do have a 2 year old that I call The Metamucil Buck because he has been such a regular visitor. I had a 6 pointer that I called the OCD 6 because he showed up at 8:30am and 4:30pm every day for a single month. I have a lot of other names for deer I've seen. It's pretty fun to me to keep up with them.

Unfortunately, I didn't shoot this one. Back when I first started doing taxidermy, I started cutting and splicing on a small eight pointer so I could get in some practice on antler repairs. This thing has been laying over in the corner of my shop and everyone who walks in goes nuts over it. I've gotten more free advertizing from this set of antlers than any other way. I had an extra cape and form, so I figured I'd go ahead and mount him up.

I finally got a chance to finish my own mount. I call him Picasso. My question is, how many layers of undergarments and socks would you ruin if you saw this coming through the woods? I'll be back on here Tuesday. Y'all have fun with this one while I'm gone.

Bingo, we have a winner! This unlucky feller was clobbered by a Volkswagon Beetle last night. Rather than watch him go to waste, I salvaged what meat I could and kept the horns to be mounted after TWRA released it to me. The driver is fine, and the damage to the vehicle was nowhere near as bad as it could have been.

Here is the one that I got last night. Any guesses on what caliber or broadhead did this kind of damage? Hint: It's was made from German steel.

You sir, are the man. If I had a memory like that, my wife might not keep me in the doghouse.

Last season, I'm not that antsy yet.