The Hunting Files

Buzzards, Possums and Pick Up Trucks

A true story about some buzzards, a dead 'possum, and a young fella in an old pickup truck.

Several years ago, at work, I was driving on patrol and decided to check on one of our guys that was manning an entrance/exit gate. On the way to the gate on the hilly paved road, I encountered some buzzards feasting on a dead 'possum. I slowed way down because I didn't want to hit the birds on the road, giving them plenty of time to fly and clear the road.

At the gate, I was visiting the other guard when an old pickup arrived with the passenger sicker than a poisoned dog. The driver had a terrible mess, a huge wide swath of rotten 'possum guts and other sickening stuff the entire length of his truck, including the windshield. It was horrible and the weather was very hot. The swath was about 4 feet wide.

I was standing upwind alongside of the terrible mess and asked the driver what happened. The poor fella said he topped the hill and there were buzzards all over the road and he nearly hit some of them. One or more of the spooked birds regurgitated as they lifted off the ground, trying to lighten the load and gain altitude. The contents hit the front of the truck and traveled the entire length of the truck. You could see where he turned on his windshield wipers to gain some visibility, but didn't have any windshield washer fluid in the washer tank. He had just enough view to drive, the wipers smearing the terrible stuff.

I looked at my fellow officer that was the unfortunate downwind from the mess. Poor ol' Remo was kinda pale and green, too. We were going to eat our lunches at the guard shack, but kinda lost our appetites. The driver asked me if I could smell it. I said, "H*ell no, I'm upwind! Get this stinking mess out of here!" The poor sick green kid said he wondered if he could even make it to a car wash. Off he went, headed to a car wash miles away.

John Andrews

John's Custom Knives

www.gutpilestyle.com

A Yankee Duck Hole (Part 2)

So we have our duck hole location all planned out and I have the seed bed ready, what do I plant? I chose Japanese Millet and Buckwheat since it fit my capabilities (hand seeder) and short growing season (70-80 days). My friends to the south plant rice and corn as well as millet. I don’t have the farm equipment to pull that off and spring planting is out of the question for me as my hole is too wet to work till mid-summer. My other option was to work the soil up and rely on natural plants such as wild millets, smartweeds, and other goodies to germinate and grow. So after burning the dead weeds you see in the image from (part 1) I attached a small disk to my ATV and scratched the soil. Just prior to the 4^th of July we planted millet at about 40lbs/acre rate using my hand seeder. That turned out to be too much seed and my yield has suffered as a result. The correct seeding rate for Japanese Millet should be about 20lbs/acre. We ran the ATV disk over the seeds to work them into the soil. The Japanese Millet cost me about $50 for a 50 lb bag and the Buckwheat cost $15 for 40 lbs. As you can see in the attached photo taken 60 days after planting both crops came in well. Later I found out the nutritional value and desirability of the buckwheat for waterfowl is questionable. Ducks like it but I guess it has limited nutritional value. As it turns out that won’t be an issue for me any way as my whitetail deer have pretty much cleaned out the buckwheat soon after it got to be 18-24” high. They never bothered the millet.
          It’s now September and I turned the water pump on a few weeks prior to our opening day. I don’t know how long it is going to take to put 18” of water in the field but based on my flow rate of 100 gallons per minute I am guessing a few days at least. A big unknown for me this first season is how much water loss I will have as the field saturates. I have a neighbor checking it for me and I have a stand pipe at the low end so any excess will flow into my willow bog.
         The even larger unknown for me is how much duck usage I will have at my hole. I think it’s a great mystery how ducks find productive new feeding areas. Is it just by chance or can they see it or smell it, I don’t know.  My duck brothers to the South tell me they “sweeten” a new hole the first year to develop a tradition of usage by the ducks. This consists of dumping piles of shelled corn in the hole. They do NOT hunt the hole that first year as that would be illegal baiting. I believe this approach would be problematic for me as I have neighbor hunters immediately adjacent to my property. If you have any questions regarding dumping food for ducks (even if you don’t hunt them) check with a game warden first. Next time I will share the final results of the Yankee duck hole project and hopefully share some successful hunting stories.

http://www.autumnwings.com/

FatBoy Seat Cushions

Here's a way to stay comfortable longer while hunting:

Hunt Comfort’s FatBoy seat cushions are manufactured using high-quality materials like a double-thick inside layer of UltraSoft gel, a double-density foam base, and Teflon fabric protection. Both premium and lighter-weight models are available in a variety of camouflage patterns. Hunt Comfort also has a full line of other seat cushion styles and products. ($40-$60)

I must admit the price tag is a bit spendy. But, millions of people buy expensive memory-foam, gel-filled, tempurpedic mattresses and pillows for their bedrooms. Why? Because comfort is everything. The same way of thinking should reign true if you plan to sit on a metal treestand seat all day long. www.huntcomfort.com; (888) 757-3232 - by JJ Reich

Note: JJ Reich is the Senior Field Test Coordinator for North American Hunter and North American Fisherman magazines. He manages, writes and edits the product review sections for both publications. He also frequently writes gear-related articles for several other publications and is the author of Kampp Tales Outdoor Adventures, which is series of hunt-friendly books for kids (www.kampptales.com).

The Gun Safe

Recently, I finally decided to break down and get a "good" gun safe.  I've had a cheap sheet metal safe for years.  At the time that I got it, it was all that I could afford, and was adequate for my needs.  Since that time, my needs have grown substantially!  My poor little cheap gun safe just wouldn't hold anymore, so I finally decided to break down and get a good one.

After doing quite a bit of research on them, and then physically looking at quite a few, I settled on a Fort Knox safe.  For the money, they had more or better features than other safes available.  Of the models they have available, the Defender series looked like it would serve me well.  It doesn't have all of the "eye candy" that the more expensive models do, but functionally, it's just as good as they are.  The place where I was getting the safe, didn't have the exact one I wanted.  They had the safe I wanted, in the color I wanted, but it had a few other options with it that I wasn't wanting to invest in just yet.  After hageling with them for a while, I finally got them down to a price both of us could live with on the safe they had there.  Now that I've got the safe, I'm glad that I did go ahead and get the options.  They were worth the extra money.  As far as the safe itself, it's 72.5" tall, 41" wide, 28" deep, and weighs (without any optional stuff) 1,120 lbs.  The options I got were the reinforced fire door (add 167 lbs), 5 prong handle, inside light kit, and electronic lock.  So, with everything in it, the safe is right at around 1,300 lbs.

Prior to getting the safe, I knew that it was going to be heavy.  My house is 157 years old, so I knew that the floor would need bracing up prior to bringing the safe in.  I got two 6x6's, four solid concrete blocks, and 4 jack stands to handle all of the load.  After finally dragging everything under the house in the crawl space, I tried to get everything in place.  I tried laying on my back and holding a 6x6 up with my feet, while trying to get the jack stands in place with my hands.  This didn't work "as I had hoped".  After trying this for about half an hour, I finally gave up, saying several choice words in the process.  The next afternoon, I had my wife crawl under the house with me to put the jack stands in place.  Again, I held the 6x6's up with my feet, but this time she put the stands in place.  That went much smoother than the previous evening!

Now, with the floor braced up and everything level, it came time to get the safe.  I had checked with the place where I was getting the safe about delivery.  They charged $300 for delivery and bringing it into the house.  They say hind sight is 20/20.  If I had it to do over, I would pay the money!!!!!  But, being a tight-wad, I decided to do it myself.  My brother had gotten a similar safe a few years ago and had gotten his in his house with the help of a couple of his buddies without any trouble.  How hard could it be, right?  I guess knowing about his safe had given me a false sense of security.  I seemed to had overlooked the fact that this one was about 500 lbs heavier than his!  I had asked a couple of neighbors if they would help me, and had a guy from work that was also going to help.  I thought with 4 people, we should be able to easily get the safe in the house.  Man, was I WRONG!!!!!

I got over to the place, paid for the safe, and then backed my truck and trailer up to their loading dock.  They brought it out with a forklift and sat it down behind the trailer.  With the weight of the safe, they had to lay it down because it was too top heavy to stand upright on the trailer.  Two guys got on the trailer to balance the safe when the guy with the forklift started tipping it.  Once they got it balanced, the guy on the forklift got off and climbed on the trailer to help lay the safe down.  I should have known that the whole ordeal was going to be a pain when they started laying it down on the trailer.  The weight of the safe hit the trailer (with the 3 guys holding it and laying it down easy), the back end of the trailer almost hit the ground and the tongue of the trailer and the back of my truck flew up in the air!  After the safe was on the trailer, they took the forklift and pushed it on up on the trailer.

On the way home with the safe, I called the guy from work to have him come over and help.  Once at the house, I backed the trailer up to the front porch and got the two neighbors over to help (one of the guys is a "big ol' boy!").  The 4 of us tried to lift the safe up from the trailer and couldn't budge it.  We then went and got 2 "spudge bars" (long heavy steel bars with a flat edge on one end to pry with) and stuck them under the top edge to raise it up enough to get a 2x4 and a 4x4 under it.  After it was raised up a little, we could get our fingers under it and started lifting.  It was everything the 4 of us could do to raise it up into an upright position!

OK, now it was upright on the porch (finally!).  I had borrowed the place's dolly, so we strapped the dolly onto it and took the bolts loose inside that were holding the pallet onto the bottom (as well as taking all of the shelves out of the inside to lighten it a little more).  After taking the storm door loose going into the house so it would be open all of the way, we finally tipped it and started rolling it toward the door.  Getting over the door sill into the house was a pain, but we finally got it into the edge of the house.

Prior to getting the safe, when I was bracing the floor up under the house where the safe would sit, I was looking at the span between the front door and where the safe would eventually sit.  There is about an 8' span between a concrete support pillar and the front door.  I thought that with that short of a span and the short amount of time the safe would be on it, everything should hold.  When we got the safe in the house, with it resting on the dolly, the weight of all 1,300 lbs of the safe was concentrated on the two wheels of the dolly.  When we started rolling the dolly, the hardwood floor boards in the hallway started cracking wherever the dolly wheels were!  All of the sudden, a vision of the safe breaking through the floor entered my head and I shouted, "Let's MOVE!!!"  We got the safe over the top of the concrete pillar (the floor boards cracking the whole way) and set it flat to distribute the weight.  We scooted it the remaining 6-8' into place.

1,300 lbs sounds like quite a bit of weight, and it is.  But you truely can't appreciate just how heavy 1,300 lbs is until you've got ahold of it and are trying to move it!  Steve (the big ol' boy) and I were on the front end of the dolly rolling it while the other two guys were on the back side of it pushing.  At one point, Steve had to let go a little to get a better grip, and quite a bit of the weight that he was holding transferred totally onto me!  Again, you truely can't appreciate how heavy this thing is until you've got ahold of it!  After we got the safe in the house and in place, I thanked the guys for helping me, offered them a beer, and then appologized to them for me asking them to help with it.  Moving something heavy (stove, refrigerator, washer, etc) wouldn't normally be that big of a deal, but this thing was a FREAKING MONSTER!  It was so heavy, I felt bad that I had asked them to help with it.

The safe is in place now and I've very happy with it.  I've checked the braces under the floor and everything is holding.  I've decided though, if the wife and I ever sell this house, the safe is staying with it!  I'M NOT MOVING THE SAFE AGAIN!!!  Either that, or I'll pay the money and have someone else move the monster!

Big58cal