Royal Navy Field Gun Competition.

You don't see this kind of stuff every day.

Courtesy of Cousin Wallace.

Deerhunting so far.

Busy this beautiful cool morning but back out this evening. Up to 19 times out.

Lot of hours in the tree, trekking, hauling corn, downloading cards. Not any shooting. Yet.

AIM K31s and older Swiss rifles.

AIMSurplus has a new shipment of Swiss rifles. Seems like they have every model. Always wanted a 1911 but I do have many old rifles already. Hard to justify another one. My K31 has won all the vintage stuff that can be won, so I doubt I would switch. Fun to look at though....

The Walking Idiots.

Sunday, the Cowboys beat the Buffs...then we got another edition of the Walking Dead. Last week they were camping out on an anti-gun zealot's plantation. In the face of all reason and sanity, they disarmed. This week, the hot chick who wanted to off herself and couldn't be TRUSTED with a gun now has...um...gotten into it. She tries a prone 300+ yard headshot off the roof of the busted RV they drag from week to week, (wouldn't you have the latest, bestest, armored-up RV?), with a scoped Remington 700. No cheek weld, no natural-point-of-aim, no nothing but she actually grazed the walker....who turns out to be one of the team who has fallen off his horse, stabbed himself with his own arrow, come to with a walker eating his leg, hallucinated his brother and walked home.

Moral: When you come walking home late during the zombie epidemic, walk briskly!

Daryl's flashback showed white people to be stupid, ignorant, corrupt, manipulative, racists, but never mind that: The anti-gun headman who gives off stranger and stranger vibes has a locked barn full of zombies. I bet it makes milking time sporty.

Poor asian guy gets tasked with all secrets. He HATES secrets. He knows about the pregnancy, sex with the farmers daughter and now the barn full of shambling stiffs. Good deal.

Oh, the BIGGEST event of the whole series was the FIRST funny line of the whole script: The hot chick is blurbling about shooting Daryl in the head. Dale says "Hey babe, we've ALL wanted to shoot Daryl now and then."

Watching The Walking Dead is like watching the Cowboys. You better not expect much.

Busted Antler.

I think this is the bigger deer below. Broken antler from fighting. We haven't seen him in person yet.

Hunted all weekend. 13th outing was this afternoon in a T-shirt and 82 degrees of a Texas November. Just tree-sat. No rattling. Didn't see a thing. first time out I carried my newer rifle, a Remington 700 in .308. Sat until I could see stars. Big armadillo, squirrel action, late thrashing in the woodline like an owl taking a rabbit. Usual stuff. Jupiter up in the East. I could see four moons with my 10 power Nikons. Saturn up in the West and low. Clouds took it before I could get a good look.

Back out in the morning. Maybe 14 is the lucky number.

Daily Deercam

2 1/2 year old buck.

Another, slightly bigger 2 1/2.

Back to buck number 1.

Bucks making the rounds. The bucks don't go into rut until the does are in heat so it must be on but I haven't seen orphaned fawns or solitary does. Doe and two yearling fawns came past me twice this morning and didn't pick up any bucks in an hour and a half sweep of the ridge and creekbluff. I rattled and the does eased off. They didn't want any part of fighting bucks.

Yesterday at mid-day a nice 2 1/2 was at both ends of the cam line.

Daily Deercam

Nice buck just under the hill.

Another earlier nice buck. Might be the same one.

New profile photo for facebook.

Finally some rubs appearing on small trees. In fact, I am setting up the decoy in the middle of a bunch of fresh ones. Also have the first real shootable bucks on cam. Maybe things are picking up.

Heading out for 8th session. Probably going across the creek to rattle near a big scrape that is cameraless. Haven't been in that tree since last year.

Cousin Wallace surveys deer guns.

My 7X57 Mauser single shot Ruger in the tree.

Wallace put out an email asking about deer rifle selections. Here's the result:

Whew! This turned into a can-o-worms to keep up with...but it was fun! Some folks did an admirable job of listing all the details I had originally asked for, others left out a lot of stuff which made for a less than complete survey. Nonetheless, I gathered some interesting data to share with ya'll. A total of 38 hunter's info was collected. Several listed more than one rifle they intended to use so the numbers dont always come out right on my listings. Like I said, it got confusing. Some neglected to list the scopes they were using but it seems Leupold was the most often listed with 3 X 9 models also the most popular. Just about all other brands were listed with Nikon making a strong argument for being 2nd most popular.

Rifle action type was very one-sided bolt action (no surprise there) with a few autos, pumps, levers and a couple of single-shots too.

Rifle brands were likewise not always listed but of those listed Remington was the most popular with 19, of which 9 were Rem M700's. (Rem 721, 722, M7, 760 also listed). Ruger and Savage tied with 5 each listed. Only 3 M70 Winchesters (might have been more but they werent specified). Two Steyrs and one each for FN, TC, Mossberg and Weatherby.

As for calibre, not surprisingly the old .30-06 Springfield was tops with 11 listing it. The great old .270 Win was next with 9. The .243 Win was third with 6. Five hunters used the .223 Rem (a couple mentioned only for wild hogs in an AR15). Tied with 2 each were the .257 Roberts, 7mm-08 Rem, and .30-30 Win. There were a bunch of calibres mentioned only once. Those include: 6mm PPC, 6mm Rem, 6.8SPC, .250-3000 Sav, .25-06 Rem, 7X57 Mauser, .280 Rem, 7mm Rem Mag, .300 Rem SAUM, .300 Win Short Mag, .300 Weatherby Mag, .32 Win Special and 12 ga slug. Surprisingly, no one listed any muzzle loaders...and that's OK as I didnt ask for ML stuff.

Well folks, thanx for all the help and I hope ya'll enjoy seeing what others use in the happy hunting grounds. I was surprised at the lack of magnums. Although it's mostly silly to think you need a magnum to slay a whitetail, if thats what you like, then by all means use one. I know there are quite a few other folks out there using various magnums...or at least the 7mm Rem Mag used to be very popular. I also expected the .308 to be more popular. It too is used a lot, just not listed here. Variety makes for an interesting array of hunting rifles.

As for handguns, I got everything from 9mm Luger, .41 Mag, .45 ACP & .44 Magnum....no real pattern.

I tried to keep up & not leave anyone out. If I did, it was unintentional. As always, I welcome your comments and thanx again for your participation.

Wallace

Postscript: I love deer season because you get to DO something with a firearm. It is a lot like competition. You don't just have them to hang on the wall or stuff in a safe. You actually carry them around to USE. It's fun, going armed with some purpose.

Daily Deercam

Sitting in the tree while rainstorms blew in and out. I was on the dry side. That helped. Damp by the time I came off after 10. Nothing but some squirrel squabbling. The big squirrel wins. (Moral: Don't just support the right to arm bears. Squirrels need guns too!)

Bucks on the two cams near me. They are moving around. Nothing big enough to shoot but, like Bigfoot, they are out there, somewhere...

The decoy busy decoying. Nothing seen it yet, but every time they saw it last year they reacted. Maybe I should pull the horns.

In the rain.

View from the tree. You can see the big scrape. Decoy is under the oak at the top right. Decoy can be seen by a pasture I can't see.

Ruger in the tree. Had to pull the sock off to dry everything out when I came in today.

Little buck was at the gamecam when Sneed and I walked in Sunday morning. We saw the flash going off.

OK buck on the cam just off the hilltop.

Doe in the scrape.

Raining hard right now. Glad to be home and drying out.

Pickles. Ready-to-Eat.

P.R.E.s. I've had these. Not bad. Breda ran into them. Waterloo, Wisconsin.

Walking Dead anti-gun idiocy.

First, lets ban guns on our property because....well, just because we need to warn folks that we are mentally ill, even if we seem older, wiser, experienced, et. First they were rare and hard to find....(in Georgia...riiiiiight.). Now they are just....bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad guns. Never mind that they are the only tool...oh heck. I won't even continue that rant. Bad guns!

Then let's lower one of our most valuable folks on a hemp rope down a well containing a zombie to rodeo him out....somehow. It will work out.

Then let's continue all characters slobbering in introspection and existencial angst. No wonder the little girl split to hide out and eat sardines. It would take a week of that to get the taste of this bunch of losers out of your mouth.

Uncleanche! Thanks!

Seriously, when are we going to see the episode where they cross paths with the three chicks and one gay guy who set up machine guns on a roof, crank up the classic rock and strobe lights and mow down zombies while drinking tequilla shots and dancing all night, then climb their 4-WD Ramchargers over the mounds of bodies to do it again?

When asked why one of them, a spandex blonde who prefers a M249 belt-fed, blinks and says: "They're rotting to pieces in front of our eyes. This isn't going to last forever, you know!"

The one-handed guy shows up and the gay guy shoots him graveyard dead as he utters his first sentence.

This sorry sad sequel could ROCK, if the writers weren't mentally ill.

Sunday Night.

Across the creek to rattle and sit in a really terrible stand. Awful ergonomics. It's like double-left-handedness. Even the screw in steps up force you off to one side. Needs adjusting all over. Hard to get in and out and not comfortable when you do. Luckily, all the stuff to fix it is already in the tree. Board, hammer, nails. If I do.

Low batts so nothing on the cam but no corn left either. Great place to hunt but they have to come right to you. Site is right below the tree. Pistol range. Sat until darkness fell and waited until the moonshine was stronger than the night and walked out in the gloaming. It really IS a black and white landscape at night. You just see the big shapes and outlines. Traversed out of the thick brush across the bottom, treaded the pixie-sticked fallen pines and up over the old indian village. Jumped a deer off the other old camera site/scrape in the darkness and they thumped and crashed.

Saturday morning the neighbors shot once. Someone East of the Loop 49 construction shot twice, then once more. Probably a young buck circling back. They did the same thing this morning. A young, dumb buck AND an unzeroed rifle. Or yanking the trigger in the grips of buck fever.

4th hunt of the season. First weekend is over.