Pennsylvania Hunting and Trapping Digest

The new presentation of the 2010/2011 PA Hunting and Trapping digest is tops.

It includes some new illustrations, the maps are now broken out in a much easier to read format and it has a grid of orange requirements per season per device per activity. The “handsome deer tine” illustration is still there. They still don’t explain what the difference is between a rabbit and a hare.

What’s lacking is the wording can still be goofy in places due to legalese and the hunting licenses are now 7 little thermal squares. The antlerless application still is printed on it but the paper is the glossy stuff that came out of old fax machines and thus it’s impossible to write on. To their credit, they broke out the seasons now so you have the standard “short season” listing, but later the season is in a color coded box and the box corresponds to the appropriately colored page of the digest. This makes it much easier to flip through in a hurry.

The big news for the state was that hogs are being regulated. Previously it was just hush hush over the whole thing and if you shot one you got a wink-wink-nudge-nudge pat on the back. While it’s been regulated to the back page right next to the elk permit, the green box says “yes we have a hog problem and it’s open season except where they’re being trapped”. Where are they being trapped? No-one knows! Since it didn’t make the digest I’m going to simply say shoot’em if you see ‘em.

The Body Count is Now Six

And that makes six

This guy got double bagged because we’re start to attract buzzards when we toss them into the woods. At least I think they’re buzzards. Bow’s a High Country Archery lefty bow, carbon fiber cabelas arrows with 125gr tips.

I'M IN UR COMPOST, EATUN UR GROUDHOGS

Digital Camo Dumped

Finally. Not entirely, mind you, but I had missed this article last month from military.com. Apparently the marines felt that digital wasn’t worth it and evaluated new camo patterns. You can read their take on it. As someone who hunts, the digital camo pattern was stupid. While it might look cool, there’s no 90 degree angles in nature, and I personally felt it make people really obvious. Even if your eye didn’t see the person, it was drawn to the area because you knew something “wasn’t right”. If my eye is drawn to it, you know the stuff wasn’t worth crap in the field. I think a lot of other hunters agreed, digital never made it’s way into the woods. Multicam on the other hand, is cool stuff. The whole digital craze was “lets take thousands of photos, pick the prominent color, and make a camo pattern”. It’s an OK idea, but then things become universally brown. (The 90 degree thing aside). Multicam used their heads and kept the “splotches” pattern, they got rid of black and avoided the temptation of red. Most european camo has red in it for whatever reason. Furthermore it’s made from fabric woven by faeries which reflects light, which is another cool idea, because one camo just works in many environments.

Candian camo, called cadpat, works slightly better since they put more effort into making the colors match, but the effect is still jarring with the thousand little squares.

Me and Jordan Hunting

Unfortunately it was far too quiet and all the deer lived.

Bows

I know I said I wanted brewing crap for my birthday/christmas present, but then I got high bought a bow. My downfall? French Creek Outfitters has this awesome videogame system where you unscrew your arrowhead and screw on this reflective marker and shoot at videos of deer. It sounds terribly uncomplicated in text, but the actual video of the deer coupled with the fact it does “after the shot” analysis on the spot where you hit the vitals – this is well worth it.

ebay is your friend for this crap. Unlike gunbroker where the laws of limited competition apply for both the sellers and consumers, ebay appeals to everyone. Bows are still “ebay ok” weapons. As are knives, blackjacks, clubs, sword umbrellas, regular umbrellas and swords.

Ebay is also subject to the Ford Pinto effect. If one blows up, surely they all do! Prices go down, but people in the know already took care of the problem or realized it was a straw-man. As such, old bows have a “reputation” of blowing up, which means you can get them on the cheap. (The reality is that almost all bows have a lifetime warranty on the limbs, so “blowing up” isn’t something to worry about).

when I saw this bow I jumped on it. Lifetime warranty on the limbs, and while not the current model, it’s a steal for the $60 I paid for it.

Now, Internet archers, here’s your chance to put in two bits:

1. I need a decent sight. I think the 5 pins in a column is just fucking stupid and you should learn to hold over/under, so I need to know what my sight options are and maybe have two or three pins.

2. Any opinions on the arrow rest? Everyone says whisker biscut. Is there ANYTHING else out there?

Suggestions welcome.

Post Deer Season Wrapup and One Year Homebrew

The last day of flintlock hunting and I’m empty handed. Not from lack of effort, mind you, but more from the weather. There’s a reason they didn’t fight battles in the civil war when it was the middle of a snowstorm.

My brother and I had been hunting the farm all day. I was using the flintlock but having serious doubts about this being a good idea. The problem was a constant wind (I’ve never winded the flintlock, I had no idea what the drift was) and when they called for six inches of snow, they were talking about “over the course of the day”. It was snowing when we got there, there were periods of hail, and it was snowing at sunset.

I had followed a deer trail from one side of the farm to the other end, the deer was there but having seen no deer beds and nothing but tracks, I doubted the deer was stopping. Given the weather I figured it might have gone to the pines on the far side but it went straight through. I knew the tracks were recent because they were on top of the snow but since the deer didn’t bed down, it wasn’t waiting for me or anything else. I took this as an opportunity to hike around the other areas to check for tracks or beds. Even in the places you would expect to find deer (acorn mast), there were no tracks and no beds. I checked mostly point to point, there’s no sense in line hunting alone. My brother doesn’t own a flintlock and has no interest in it so he was out with a shotgun for small game.

I had resigned myself to sitting on top of a hill in some light cover waiting to see if the deer would circle around. I had about 1h30m until sunset, so I figured it would be cold and boring. It managed to be both. With single digit temperatures in the valley and windchill on top of that, taking off my gloves to type on my phone quickly turned into OH GOD MY FINGERS ARE SO COLD THEY HURT. I was never so pleased with shoving my hands down my pants in public as I was Saturday on that hill.

Suddenly, a deer! Hunting goes from slowly poking around to sheer excitement with nothing in between when game is found. My brother was up the next hill over chasing a snowshoe hare when a deer came crashing through the bushes trying to avoid him. The deer was as suprised he was there as he was suprised he nearly got run down by the deer. I had heard the whole thing and suddenly my well placed stand with brush behind me became a liability as I tried to bring the gun around. I finally brushed the snow off the sights and found a lane to shoot through. I pulled the trigger and…

I actually watched the spark blow sideways off the frizzen and fall into the snow. George Washington’s ghost was laughing at me.

I reset the lock rested the gun again, and once again pulling the trigger lost the spark in the wind. I was trying to fire between gusts but deer rarely sit still and my firing lane was crowded anyway. There was a very real chance the deer would spook, especially since the lock isn’t exactly quiet and the delay between sparking and firing is enough to let the deer “jump the string” over enough distance. Given this was about a 50 yard shot, I was worried. One more spark in the snow.

Ripping my hat off, I supported the front of the gun on a thorn bush, aimed, then put my hat over the pan. This time the spark landed in the pan, but didn’t catch. By now the flint and frizzen were getting polished, where the face of the flint matches the frizzen so well it can no longer scrape the surface. Figuring I needed fresh powder I took down the gun and opened the lock to see that my pan had collected a layer of snow with all this false firing. I dumped out the pan and cleaned the rest with my fingers, which were now hurting again since I had discarded my gloves to help with the aiming and priming.

I pulled the powder tube over the pan and pressed the button. Nothing came out. Looking down the tube, it was also filled with snow, and to make matters worse the button to dispense powder bound in the down position. If George Washington were laughing before, his entire regiment was laughing now. I started to look for a place to lay the flintlock before realizing that six inches of snow is more than enough to lose a rifle in. I resigned to holding it across my chest in my elbows while I unscrewed the powder horn’s lid. I managed to dump powder into the pan wholesale (and all over me and the ground with the wind) and shove the horn in the snow upright with the lid laid on top.

Bringing the sites back onto the deer I see… Nothing. The deer probably winded me because she took of running away from my stand and onto the neighbors property, far and away from the longing sights of my gun.

The woods win again.

But all wasn’t lost, my brother shot a squirrel at about 25 yards, I was suprised he connected with it. We took it home as our only prize that day.

Dad always lightly fried up squirrels in butter, but Dad also really sucked at the whole preparing the

New Years Review

The stout I made is starting to go funky and a bit musty, probably because I tossed the coconut in without enough boil time to really sanitize it. The coconut never really manifested as a flavor anyhow. The beer had the smell in the first week then completely died. Frankly I’m chugging the stuff playing Gears 2 every weekend just to get rid of it.

The All Grain IPA came out great, it’s easily the best beer I’ve made to date and I’m completely sold on all grain. It’s a brilliant blond color reminiscent of Chimay’s triple. It’s probably the clearest thing I’ve ever made, and what sold me was the “fresh cereal” taste. I’ve made IPAs before, but with extract, but the complexity of beer comes from the grains, and you can’t get that with extract. I almost wish it was less hoppy so I could taste more of the delicious delicious grains.

Also I kinda wish I didn’t lose 5 bottles to trub, but whatever.

I haven’t tried the Chamomile beer experiment from Sacred and Herbal Beers. That one gets one more week in the bottle since I’m afraid of how much sugar it called for. It probably tastes like tea.

Flintlock season is almost over, dad was the only one who got a shot. Because his buddy talked him into not taking the fouling shot, he missed the deer. I saw everything but deer. Red squirrel, black squirrel, gray squirrel, chipmunk, fox, coyote, all types of birds and a bear track but no deer whatsoever. My wife was the only one who got a shot in regular rifle season and it’s because I pretty much pushed her into the deer patch that usually pays off. It did, but she got so excited she merely shot the trees and gave the deer a good scare.

I Had a Wonderful Birthday

I had a wonderful birthday yesterday thanks in a large part to my wife and my parents. Of course, I got the XBOX 360 with the 60GB drive as my Christmas (Yuletide?)/Birthday present, so this was simply a bonus on top of an already excellent birthday. We went to Iron Hill and the food was fantastic as were the beers. The only problem with Iron Hill is that it’s very easy to get pallet fatigue because the food and beer are both excellent. The service occasionally is questionable but otherwise it was a nice sit down with my parents, my brother, and my wife. Thank you all.

My wife also started going hunting with me. While the Marlin 39 is only good for small game, it’s all she needs and frankly I’m just happy to have her go out with me. That was a better present than the XBOX. Hopefully we can keep that up as a family tradition also.

Bizarre Hunting Stuff

There’s a class of hunter, and it’s probably present everywhere, that is so obsessed with shooting that trophy whatever that he or she will do anything to get to it. Sometimes this is good – they strive to be masters of their art and go on hunting trips at ranches and crap like that. Sometimes this is not so good and their efforts to improve their land boarder on witchcraft. Case in point, I knew someone years ago who didn’t have salt licks, but they were pouring baby formula into these troughs he set out for the deer.

This wasn’t baiting since bait is legally defined as “salt” or “feed” (don’t quote me on this, the laws have changed). The distinction is important because you’re allowed to use scents and calls to lure deer in. I don’t think anyone envisioned baby formula as something anyone would give a deer.

But, it turns out that not only is this idea popular, but they’ve taken it one step further.

Introducing: THE TROPHY ROCK.

Plant one of these and apparently those really big bucks, which eat rocks, will camp out your property.

In other game news, Searching for Bigfoot claims to have found just that. More from cryptomundo and more from Scientific American and even Yahoo gets in on it. The Grain Of Salt warning here is that no-one has ever done DNA testing on a body, and all the bodies seem to vanish before any critical examination can occur. Don’t be surprised if this one grows legs and walks away or is “lost”.

Thawed Creature

Hunter Safety and Arms Dealing

I AM SO PSYCHED UP FOR HUNTING THIS YEAR.

I’ve possibly taken it beyond general interest and approached rampant fetishism.

Part of this is because my wife is interested in hunting. She’s also decided that she wants to make wine, which on some level overlaps the brewing hobby. However unlike beer, winemaking is a lot less involved. So as a “together” hobby, that one doesn’t really pan out since there’s a surprisingly minimal time investment for something that is going to age for six months plus.

On the other hand, it’s really nice that she’s interested in hunting, which is a fantastic “together” activity. Men who read this blog – take your wives hunting.

She wants a bow, but they’re marginally expensive ($300 buys you a midrange compound) and the accessories can be insane ($100 for expanding tip graphite arrows, twelve of them). There’s cheaper alternatives, but like bullets it doesn’t behoove you to hunt with match bullets nor does it work to shoot targets with expensive hunting bullets. But, bows are on sale right now, and if she catches the hunting tradition, then maybe that’ll be for next year. I would like to know where people go to dump their used bows – there’s nothing like bowbroker.com (gunbroker, but for bows). To further complicate things, we’re both left handed, and not a lot of second-hand lefty stuff is floating around out there. Unlike guns which are generally ambi-, bows are almost entirely single-handed.

Anyway, the point is that it’s just nice to have my wife involved in something I’m interested in. It certainly means that our family will continue the hunting tradition. I’m also dragging my friends into it – both Travis and Jon are taking or will have taken their hunter safety courses, so now you guys need to get your women into it also. Women don’t seem nearly as turned on as men are at the prospects of DIY BBQ potential though.

Everything is cyclical – one family enters the tradition as one family leaves it. A guy here at work hadn’t hunted since 1991 and was a fairly typical “drop out” of the hunting scene. He hunted with his father and went through the motions when his dad stopped hunting and never seriously pursued it past a “together” activity. His Remington 700 in the popular caliber of 270 hadn’t seen the sotto light of the woods since then, and he was looking to sell it. A hunter safety instructor is interested in buying it where once again it will be reborn into it’s purpose.