Kill 'em All.

  I noticed a little scattered and gnawed deercorn so the last time I got a couple of sacks at the feedstore I added two cheap mousetraps.  1.45 or so.  Nothing.

  So far I have killed five mice.  One a day.   Two with catfood and three with the same dry and wrinkled corner of Velveeta.  I'm giving them Christian funerals on the leaf pile pyres at the lakehouse.

  Hardly any deer except a couple of button bucks on the cams.  I know they are around- big tracks coming and going but not to the cams.  Plenty coons.  Five in one frame.  Time to deploy the Havahart and go back to the Coon War.  

  For New Years we are keeping it low and slow.  I don't know if we will make midnight.  Going out to a bonfire/telescope/champagne thing.  As long as we aren't killed by a drunk driver it ought to be a laid-back evening.

  A happy and safe evening to all!

  Update:  Tomorrow the Redhead and I put pen to paper of what we want to accomplish in the next year.  She starts off with a big Pilates workshop at her place.  I'm going back to teaching a couple of sections at Tyler Junior College.  Besides the big picture we have some specifics.  2008 was wonderful.  We have much hope for 2009.

Suppression Progression

 Now up to 3.5 grains Titegroup under a Sierra 77 Matchking.  No barrel sticking.  No sonic crack.  Need a chronograph to see how fast they are.

  The Yankee Hill suppressor and mount had to be slathered in oil to make sure they didn't rust.  Had the gun out in the rain and the contact points on the mount, kind of detents at the end of the screw-mount rusted with a little moisture on them.  Did the whole thing and a clean job, plus put grease down the buffer tube to cut spring noise.  I guess if I am noticing spring noise it must be pretty quiet.

  Sure wish I had a better dot sight.  A 4X power would be just about perfecto.  Haven't found it yet.

  Comments asked about a .22LR conversion kit.  Good idea, but the suppressor is going to also mount on a 10/22.  It's all about the learning.

  Oh, the bullets that came out of the barrel- the stuck ones?  I reloaded them and shot them today. 

Bottom in Black and White

  The Good Doctor and I hunted the lake this morning.  34 and still with overhead stars.  Near-perfect conditions.  I dropped off into a B & W creekbottom and ghosted my way across the gurgling creek and up a deserted log road without a light.  Picked out a huge pine to sit against and watched the hillside come to life.  I didn't crack a dry leaf or touch a twig coming in.  With these soft old rubber boots give you every familiar root and hollow underfoot.  Nothing moved through the morning except flashing birds and darting squirrels but it's a good spot.  Absolutely gorgeous, (though cool) as I sat through the morning hours.  I went up the hill and found it ringed with fresh rubs, big ones.  Prime habitat and probably the core area of some huge buck.  The moving neighbors piled plastic chairs on the curb.  One of them is going on the logging road.

  Corn gone while nothing on the cam.  Coons probably.  I could hear people talking, dogs moaning, doors slamming, a sizzling shot from across the road with a "whomp" on the end.  I was shivering with cold toes when I came out, glad to be moving.  Sneed blanked as well except for dogs and squirrels.  The rut is over and the deer have shifted behavior again. 

Update:  Checked cams today.  No deer for the third check on the close cam on one on the cam across the creek.  There are fresh tracks since the rain but they aren't hitting the cams.  If I was rich I would have ten cams.

Slowing things down

  Here's the stuck 77 grain Sierra Matchkings.  Probably could load and shoot them again.

 My suppressor is loud, or louder than you might hope, with my normal .223 match loads.  You could go without earmuff while shooting, but it's marginal.

  I looked on the Hogden site and found a subsonic load: 3.1 grains of Titegroup and a 55 grain bullet.  I tried 3.1 grains of Titegroup under a Nosler 69.  It works, doesn't cycle the rifle but it's quiet.  The gun kind of rattles a bit when it goes off.  Kind of a beefed up .22lr.  About six inches under the zero for my normal ammo.

  Learning.  Going to try 3.4 and a 77 Sierra Matchking.  Might go sonic.  

  Could have killed a roaming dog, one of three, graveyard dead today, with the suppressed AR. Had the red dot centered up and first stage of the trigger gone.  It's lake policy to shoot strays, since we get so many dumped dogs.  Three in this group, but I couldn't bring myself to break the trigger.  Let him go.  Perhaps they will move on.  They were looking for deer to run but I don't think the deer are in much danger.

Update: 3.4 Titegroup stuck two 77s in the barrel after shooting one out.  77s have more bearing surface than the 69 Hornadys.  (More power!)  Got on the web for stuck bullet advice and found plenty.  Used Kroil and a fiberglass rod to drive the bullets out the muzzle without much problem.  Learning.

Worst Christmas Gift

  I'll open the nominations.  It's a pinata of a soldier.  So...we are hanging soldiers and beating them to bits?  Or what?

  And it's not mine.  It was a gift to a grown woman who has no soldiers in the family, no friends who are in the armed forces, nothing.   

  Out of the blue, apropos of nothing: a pinata soldier.  Kind of an ugly bad rendition as well.

Update:  maybe it's an Atlatl target!

UpdateII: Gave two prints from the Owens Archive as gifts.  Worked.  The Redhead got one instant regift, though it might just go in the Goodwill stack.  This soldier though....is confusing.

Update III: So far, no copy of "Hell, I Was THERE!"  

Deadly Gunz in the Parkz

  Ignorance on display out of the Boston press.  This is particularly galling when you realize the founders were in Boston when they enumerated a list of human rights, including the right to arms.  Unbelievable.

  Wonder what Derrick Jackson thinks when he watches Saving Private Ryan, (illegal invasion of another country with regime change in mind), Open Range, (murder of all members of civil authority), Brave Heart or god forbid, The Patriot (riot and rebellion against established government.

  Jack Straw is rolling over in his grave at about 10,000 rpm.  Same with Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, to say nothing of Travis, Bowie, Crockett, Sequin.  Bill Tell can't be pleased either.

  I'll just leave him with the quote off the Democratic Underground, and one Christmas thought: human beings are born to be free.

East Texas Twang

  Tyler bow hunters ship gear to Iraq.

  Next:  Atlatl ambush.

Merry Christmas

  Ho, Ho, Ho.  Deer from two years ago.  I used this for my Christmas card image.  Mixed results.  Some folks just have a hard time getting into the holiday spirit I guess.

Coyotecam

  Same dog from a month ago.  One of the area landowners, an FBI agent, killed 11 coyotes by hanging chicken parts about six feet off the ground using strong line and treble stainless ocean fishing hook sets.  This is a coyote who won't eat chicken or recognizes stainless steel.

Update:  Might have been shot by a local.

Daily Deercam

  Panic.  God knows why.

  The Bent-horned buck has made it to late December.  Front feet in the scrape.  He's 1 1/2.

  Youngster checking the licking branch.

  Working the scrape.  1 1/2 year old.  Dumb.

  Healthy mouse-eating coyote.  Seen him on cam a couple times before.

  Across the creek cam hadn't been visited since December 4.  High water, darkness, schedule.  Things have been going on over there!  Too dark to read sign when I crossed.

  Cold and dark time of the year.  Long US Army undermawears, lit a cheery pile of leaves before leaving and carried a flashlight.  No wind so it was comfortable out.  Does on the close cam but boring ones.

If you don't like the law....CHANGE it!

  I hear that a lot.  It presupposes that the laws are affected by citizen input, or that laws COME from citizens demanding this or that.

  Interestingly, here's a laundry list that a state bureaucracy wants passed...not citizens- but a powerful subsection of the state itself.  Very little if any citizen involvement.  The bureaucracy wants this list so as to empower....the bureaucracy.

 You don't think they will put on uniforms and go testify as to what good ideas these are, thereby using their prestige and influence as to get their list passed do you?

  It was fun while it lasted.

Last Train to Clarksville.

  The good Dr. and I hunted last weekend and this weekend my brother and I went up.  Brother is a Dragonov kind of guy and shot two does with his.  I mostly watched tree lines and little bucks.  They are logging behind the farmhouse and we walked out to look.  It's a natural site for Precolombians and the logging scars were full of pottery, flint chips and village trash.  When it rains we are going to have a good look at it.  I found this freshly-broken point in a log-drag mark.  We actually took four big jugs of water back to the site and washed it looking for the hasp but no luck.

  This point looks like it was originally much wider but was sharpened several times, working the edge back but losing the angle.  The site is the end of a ridge 100 feet above the creek below.  Wonderful overwatch for wide flat riverbottom in three directions.  Folks lived here on and off for centuries.  

  Might be a knife blade, might be an atlatl point.  No native flint so the material got walked in.

  What a life.  Deer hunters and gatherers, farmers, living right here.  No Internet, no power, no written language.  You had to memorize everything.  You would know everyone within walking range, have an encyclopedic knowledge of your technology and a firm grasp of your religion and cosmos.  All those folks dead and forgotten. Language, culture, technology, all gone.

  Folks these days can't do a fraction, don't believe in God, can't gnaw a plastic chair or a ballpoint pen out of a root much less butcher a deer.  

  Who's the ignorant savage now?  

  Gas, whatever the heck gas actually IS, was 1.39 a gallon for the 4-runner, whatever a 4-runner is.  Maybe they are hatched from dragon's eggs.

Update:  Had a shot at a shootable doe last evening but mostly didn't want to be bothered and the light was nearly gone.  I painted her with the red dot and took the slack of out the trigger.  (AR carbine with a YHM forearm)  She was just over the hill crest but mostly exposed.  Sure wish those cheap red dots had a little magnification.  I heard the Dragonov and held off.  His evening doe went 100 live weight to 80 field dressed.  Teeth looked about 5 1/2, some of the oldest I have seen at Clarksville.

Update:  Have you hugged your atlatl lately?