The Hunting Times

On Saturday, February 21, RePhil, Davey, and I took Alex on his inaugural deer grinding at Rob Vincent's in Montezuma, IN (small town just N of Terre Haute on SR 63).  It took us 2 hours and 15 minutes to get there due to the 6" of snow we received.  The roads were covered, but not impassible. We arrived at 8:30 am and were greeted by a Vincent breakfast of hash browns, biscuits & gravy, homemade bacon, scrambled eggs, coffee, and tomato juice.  This was the fuel to get us through the grinding process. Rob already had everything set up, so we retired to the garage.  Alex and I were the grinders.  We mix 20# of deer with 5# of pork butt, season it with Pepper Stick or Jalapeno (prepacked mixes), and send it all through a rough grind.  We then regrind it to fine.  At which point, we put 25# of mixed and seasoned meat into the stuffer, where it got turned into salami, brats, and sausage by the other three.  Trust me on this, stuffing does not...

Kathy and Alex are down to crunch time on getting their driveway put in so that they can start building their new home.  BUT, before that can happen, we needed to put in drainage so the driveway would not flood.  390 feet of drain pipe to be exact. So like morons, we waited until it was -15F and blowing 25 mph before starting.  Actually, we had to wait for the weather to cooperate a bit.  We needed the ground frozen enough to support the backhoe, but not so frozen that we couldn't dig.  Plus we needed a time when we were all available.  Welcome to Saturday, 14 FEB 2015 - Valentine's Day.  Hey, let's go dig a ditch.  It was either NOW, or wait until August when the ground dries back out.  Time to get r dun..... Dad drove the hoe up at 9:30 am.  Alex and I took the Gator over with shovels.  We started E of the pond and between the pond and their driveway.  We quickly returned to get ski goggles as it was too cold and windy to...

Last week brought us somewhere around 6" of snow.  Saturday temps reached 46F.  Great day to try and push some bunnies. Michael, RePhil, Davey, and I took Alex on his first rabbit hunt ever.  We drove out to Tippecanoe county right across from Michael's.  We checked in with the land owner and loaded up. We pushed E through a pasture to the property line, then N, then back W to the property line.  We pushed out one coyote and one rabbit, that only I saw.  We pushed N to the pond, then E, then back to the truck with no shots fired. We did run into a load of turkey tracks.  They are impressively large. Turkey track in the snow.  Sorry, no perspective, but it is HUGE. Alex, RePhil (Elmer Fudd), Davey, and Michael. Note the sun shining down on us. We dropped Michael off and then headed to Marshall's S farm.  As we were loading up to push the creek to the S, RePhil got a call from mamasan, who is out of the country on busine...