The Hunting Times

This post is not for the faint of heart.  Three of us took off for New Mexico to shoot prairie dogs.  Animals did indeed die.  Stop reading if that offends you.  But understand this, if we were not there shooting them, the ranchers will poison them.  Either way they are going to die.  So which is a more humane death?  You decide for yourself. This was our tenth trip down to Amistad.  16.5 hours one way in the truck.  It's a painful drive, but worth the time or we wouldn't continue doing so.  This year, Nick, Michael and I made the drive.  We left the Friday before Memorial Day because Nick had to be back for the State Track Finals the following Thursday. We ended up firing a total of 3,741 rounds of .223, .243, and 6XC rounds.  We tried to keep a running count of kills, not hits.  Nick had a habit of shooting off their feet.  Those were not counted.  We figured up we were somewhere in the 42% kill range - or ...

Daughter-in-law's baby shower was Saturday.  So I called the boys out to the farm to do some shooting whilst the womenfolk were busy.  I had Nick, Alex, Dad, and Nick's father-in-law Rod out. But first, we met at the South Fork restaurant in Mulberry for their Saturday lunch special of catfish, chicken wings, Rocky Mt. Oysters, and fries!  That already makes it a GREAT DAY and we haven't even fired the first shot. We set a steel plate in the fence row, angled down to deflect any bullets into the ground.  And we guessed at the distance.  I speculated "over 400 yards."  I was right, and I was also way off.  Laser ranged distance was 550 yards (503 metres) from bench to steel. And then we set off to a shootin'.  Folks pulled out whatever they had and wanted to fire.  Ole Rod is a pistol dude and had never shot a rifle before in his life.  I set him up on the .300 Win Mag, followed by the .243, .223, and the suppressed .22. ...

For the kid's birthdays, Sandy asks what they would like for a meal.  Whatever they ask for, we make and invite them all over to partake. For Alex's birthday, he requested meatballs.  So Sandy make a batch and I made a batch of venison meatballs to go along with hers. I took one pound of venison and mixed it with:  one diced onion, one row of Ritz crackers, teriyaki, and barbecue sauce.  I stirred it all up and then proceeded to hand-form 30 meatballs. This is everything above, mixed and ready to form In a large pan on the stove, I put in a sliced onion and more teriyaki.  I browned the balls in the pan and then put them into a baking pan. Once all the meat was browned and removed, I poured in a vanilla stout beer to the pan on the stove.  I added 1/2 cup of brown sugar and more barbecue sauce.  I brought that mixture to a roiling boil and then poured it into the baking pan of now browned meatballs. I threw the baking pan into the oven a...

So I reload .223 ammo for quantity.  I do not handload for accuracy.  I do not care about bullet concentricity, run-out, land depth, or checking every powder drop.  Not that there is anything wrong with accuracy, to the contrary.  If you want small groups, you have to care about all of the above.  I am going for bulk, not accuracy.  Hey, if I miss a varmint, I just pull the trigger again.  1 MOA is plenty good enough. With that said, here is my reloading routine: Clean spent brass so as to not dirty up the resizing die Resize brass using case wax lube Clean brass again to get wax off cases Trim cases to length Chamfer for ease of bullet entry Deburr Reload Of all those steps, 4 is the most time-consuming.  Steps 5 & 6 will give you hand cramps after just three hundred rounds.  Those three steps combined take about 3 minutes per case.  So when you are reloading 5,000 rounds, this takes a lot of time.  I'll do the ma...

The moon coming up on the evening of April 15 was epic.  Unfortunately, the camera on the iPhone 6 cannot effectively capture the detail.  That's okay.  I did not buy it for the camera. Still, it's not a bad picture.  You can see our 100 and 150 year Hoosier Homestead signs just fine.  And the weather station is there to the right on the sign posts. The landscaping is fresh.  Sandy has planted two types of flowers inside the railroad ties.  And the first set is already up and about to bloom.

Back a month or so ago, Alex found the largest snapping turtle we have ever seen on our property crawling through my front yard.  Of course, we grabbed him and turned him into turtle soup for Texas. Well, yesterday (April 15) I found ANOTHER one crawling in about the exact same location in my yard.  This one was much smaller, and it was a female.  And wow, was she aggressive! Snapping turtle season has ended*, so I could not turn her into soup.  But she was so tiny anyways it would probably have not been worth my time to clean her. I grabbed a stick to distract the biting end and picked her up by the tail.  Although I know she is looking for a nesting site, I carried her over to the pond.  Not only is there a water source there, but there is plenty of habitat suitable for a nest site. Why we have seen two snapping turtles in my front yard in less than a month is beyond me.  I guess we just have attractive habitat - or, I could be the Turtle Whi...

As I was looking through the freezer to find something for dinner, I came upon some old rabbits.  Now "old" is a relative term.  I freeze all of our wild game in freezer bags full of water.  This helps eliminate freezer burn by removing all of the air.  The other option is to vacuum pack everything - except I do not own a vacuum sealer.  Thus the water.  Works great. I thawed out the bunnies.  I lost less than 2 square inches due to freezer burn.  I threw them in the pressure cooker for 1 hour.  I let them cool and then peeled all the meat from the bone. Next step was to make stir fry from the now cooked rabbit meat.  I cut up the onions and carrots and tossed them into the pan first, as they take the longest to cook.  I added broccoli, cauliflower, corn, green beans, and soup.  Now generally I like to put in cream of mushroom soup, but I accidentally grabbed French Onion Soup.  I noticed this oversight AFTER I had pou...