Yes, at the lake again. Today we had invited some friends to join us which was a nice change. I had slow cooked two pork shoulders last week and made up a pasta salad. Today I just added more BBQ sauce and heated it up over charcoal. Not a lot of pics, but here's a few.
My wife and her dad used to go fishing a lot when she was young. In memory of him on the first Fathers Day since his passing, she wanted to go fishing. So that's exactly what we did.
I had taken one of his old fishing rigs to try and catch something on. The rod is a little loose and the reel has seen better days. It will remain as it is in memoriam. It is also probably now officially retired. Sadly, I did not catch and fish using the old rig.
I did manage to catch a couple of chain pickerel, but to small to keep so they were released. Below are a couple of cool action shots I took from video as well as the video.
BIGFOOT HAS COMPETITION!
While visiting a local lake this morning, my wife noticed some very large bird tracks in the water. I went over to have a look and saw these:
If you've been watching the channel, you know I've had an encounters with snakes on most of my outings since the weather got warmer. One of the local spots I go to often has an infestation of eastern water snakes. Yesterday on the walk back to my car a guy asks me if I'm taking pictures (I had my large tripod with me). I said sort of and he said take a picture of all these snakes. Ugh! I dislike snakes, I dislike them very much. I had already seen one, that was enough, but I went to see what he was talking about anyway when he asked what kind they were.
There's a small area on the pond they have railroad ties stacked to keep the bank from eroding. It's not very long, only two in length. He shows me the spot, and sure enough, there's at least 5 snakes laying on top, little snake heads poking out of holes in the wood everywhere. They were going in and out of the wood like something from a horror flick about snakes. All In all I did count at least 11 different snakes ranging from small maybe 8", to one that was about 4 feet.
The eastern water snake we have in my area isn't really venomous. Not technically. But, their saliva contains and anti-coagulant. They are strong, and because they can and do strike several times if they do bite you're going to bleed, a lot. It is recommended to get to an urgent care or hospital. I'd also personally recommend carry some like a blood clotting powder in your FAK if your in an area with them.
You also have to be careful as the colorings on the eastern water snake closely resembles a cotton mouth. Or in some instances, our eastern rattle snake and timber snake. I've seen them light colored like a rattler and darker like the cotton mouth, and almost black like the eastern racer. The latter is what I thought the first snake I saw yesterday was.
This was the first I saw yesterday.
I wanted to show how those budget wire saws can do, and I figured I might as well make a hot beverage while I was out in the cold. Packed up a haversack and hit the trail They had plowed a couple of other areas so there's a nice change of scenery.
Embracing the suck I packed up and headed out with a real feel of 4*. My plan? To heat up and eat an MRE and make some coffee. The MRE heater didn't really work out this time, so I ate a cold beef and bean taco with rice and corn MRE. Surprisingly, this ne actually had some coffee in it. But as my wife reminded me, I cannot have caffeine, so I guess it was a good thing when I went out with the first one there wasn't any coffee.
Fingers are still a tiny bit frostbit, but not bad. hard to wear cloves to eat and make stuff to eat and drink.
We left last Monday for our Fall cabin trip. The weather forecast wasn't looking to good and it was pretty correct. We had more rain than we had dry weather. We just went with the flow and made the best of things. I did have to miss one day of hunting and the rain made me bail a couple hours early the next morning.
I usually do a bunch of bushcraft practice, but this year I just wasn't feeling it. I did get the wood stove going with a ferro rod one night and flint and steel another, and of course hunting is bushcraft, but that was it really.
We did some touring in the car over to Long Lake, Raquette Lake, and found out one area was sold and the new owners have blocked access on their land to one of the more popular state owned mountains in the area we go to. What can ya do? Things change I guess....
The only deer seen was a very small doe on my way to my hunting area one morning. 4 days of the early ML season and the regular season opener for the NZ.
That's really about it. Not a lot going on this year for that trip.
I put the video for the last day of the archery season and the opener for the muzzleloader season together. So far it's not been a horrible season, having seen deer on 3 of the five hunts I've been able to get in.
Yesterday was part of the game on public land.
When I got to my chosen spot there were already two vehicles there. One smaller SUV and a pickup. The owner of the SUV was already gone (so to speak- see later), and the two guys in the truck were just finishing up getting ready. They asked where I was going to be (I wish everyone on public land did this), I told them and they said they were going to be in the second field. Which was fine as it did leave me a good area to watch.
They headed in and I threw my pack on and locked my own SUV and started in. I noticed a light coming back from the first field and figured one of the other guys forgot something. Nope. Upon my getting on the trail I was greeted by two dogs wearing orange vests with a third back with the owner. The light I saw was a pheasant hunter who was now leaving, in the dark. My best guess is he decided to give up the area to the deer hunters. At least I'm guessing for the benefit of the doubt here that's how it went. No night hunting allowed in any of the areas near home so....
I got to my blind and set up. After about 40 minutes I saw a doe trotting from the woodlot to the field and was out of my safe zone in less then a few seconds. She slowed and stopped for a second between me and the other field the other two guys here hunting. I didn't even get time to think about grabbing my ML/ I managed to get a little clip of her on video, but with the low light it's a little hard to see her.
So my morning consisted of seeing a good doe but not having a shot and hearing turkeys where I never heard a peep from a turkey all last May when I was hunting them.
The archery opener was last Saturday, but I had stuff going on all weekend and most of yesterday. But I was finally able to get out this morning. It felt good to be back in the deer blind. Plenty of acorns were dropping in the woods so things should get interesting pretty soon. Providing those woods don't get over run with pressure. It seemed very strange to be using a crossbow instead of my compound bow. You get used to something for so long it can feel off to do something different.
I didn't see any deer on this hunt. I might head back out tomorrow or Thursday if I'm feeling up to it.
We set out this morning to go over to the camp because I wanted to do some light bear hunting, try and locate a coyote den, and state why going forward my annual virtual gathering as well as all ABB outings will be set up through my forum now. So te end chat for this one is very dry and direct.
So upon arriving in the area we got a call from my buddy he had to help his father with a goat. Due to some bad cell coverage we thought he had said they also needed our help so we said we'd meet at the goat pens. Once there there was no one else around so I did manage to get ahold of my buddy who then explained that there was a mix up due to the call breaking up, but since we were there the extra hands would be appreciated. Turns out his father had suffered a nasty gore cut by one of the goats horns. So we got things handled. His dad drove himself to the ER even though we all tried getting him to let us take him. So off to the camp we headed.
Upon getting back in we talked for a while and then my buddy and I set out to look for the den and see if there was any fresh bear sign around. We did a big zig zag and passed by two of my hunting blinds but did not find what we were in search of. Back at the camp we opted to pass on making fire due to it being 81* in the Adirondacks in late September. I made the closing clip for my video then we talked about deer hunting, reworking the firepit at the camp, and the upcoming cabin trip.
From there we headed back out loaded things back into my SUV and went to see how my buddy's father was.
As a side note, I won't be discussing guns much on this blog, but those Thordsens are a huge step up from the spur if you live in here in NY. The best option by far if you want to go featureless. The 10/30 Hexmags aren't horrible for the price either.
I felt like stretching my legs a little this morning, so I grabbed the long bow and headed out for some squirrel hunting and then stopped to get my TRC picture.
I had to rebuild a brush blind this morning. I still may need to do a little work to blend it a little more on the side but for now it's very useable. My Boker Plus full size tracker and an SAK Ranger Grip 79 were my tools of choice. Good combo for some light chopping and sawing.
Been a very hectic and sad week. The camping trip I had planned was cancelled but I still headed over to the camp for a few hours.
