A good number of them stay on for a couple of years. When I was hunting in Florida, a dude backed his camo pickup in to pick up his brand new Gator Trax boat outfitted to the gills and proceeded to put on a calling seminar to whomever would listen. He was a pro staffer for a manufacturer and you would think he was filming a show that day. To my knowledge, he's still hammering away at it. Rough estimate, I would guess he has $50k wrapped up in duck hunting shit. In Florida.
I might be missing something but if a hot rod company (Edelbrock, Holley, Dart, Brodix etc) wanted me to work a tradeshow for them and in lieu of pay I got 40% off their shit, I'd be all over it.
Holy fucking catfish... they are learning! Those are some huge badass fish. Makes me want to fish the Mississippi. Now how to keep live birds in a bait box?? <a class="postlink" href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/?p=8057&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiscoverBlogs+%28Discover+Blogs%29#.UMDiGoM81cd" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notro ... MDiGoM81cd</a>
One of my best friends, who helped me with the butchering, is a psycho catfish fisher. I mean there are huge swaths of the year he is either at work or at a lake. Period, nothing between. He fishes stocked lakes too. They truck em in and Id imagine you are just recatching fish all the time? Ive never gotten the allure. I guess there are like powerful hillbilly campout drinking parties which sound fun but the ex cons that seem to frequent them turn me away.
I've caught lots of small channel catfish in farm ponds with my family in Illinois but never the big river fish. Yes, that also means I've been to a couple of those hillbilly catfishing campouts where you get shitfaced drunk and fish with jugs. Never really got into river fishing though.
Just a few more days until I can get out ice fishing. I bought a lot of new gear over the past year. I had to sell all my gear a few years ago to pay for school stuff so I've only got out on the ice a few times since then. Just traded my small 2 person portable house for a bigger one, got a new heater, and a chip for my GPS that shows lake structure and depth. I also picked up a new auger this past winter and a new ATV this summer so I am ready to go. I'll post some pics once I get out. Between the warm days last week and the snow this past weekend I've had to wait a little longer but I'll get some pics when I do, hopefully this weekend. I already have two trips planned to Lake of the Woods with some friends who have drop down wheel houses. If everything goes good financially for me this next spring and summer I will be building my own wheel house.
I just use a Marcum Lx-2. I believe it's the cheapest flasher you can buy that still has a zoom feature. I kinda wish I had something a little better but it still does fine in the deepest water I fish, up to 40ft or so. It can see a split shot at that depth without too much gain. It might be something I upgrade next year. One thing nice about it is the battery life, it lasts 3x longer than friends who have Vexilar FL20 and 22s.
Marcum has some great flashers. My FL18 is still running strong, though, and I don't forsee it crapping the bed any time soon. Battery life on it is still at least 14-16 hours if I keep it off the ice.
Finally got my butchering knives. Skinner, boner, and cimeter, all by F Dick. Yes, it is marked 'Dick ergo grip' on the blue handles. The blue ergo grip ones feel solid as fuck. The Sani grip black boning knife a little less so. Looks like Ill have to get another deer to test them out. Thanks for the suggestions.
There really aren't many differences between them. I think it's just more a matter of what you can get the best deal on. I've occasionally had interference problems with Vexilars. I'm the only one out of my group of friends that ice fish that has a Marcum, though.
Just received shipment on an early xmas gift to myself. These hogs are gonna have no chance at my lawn now with the new night vision scope I get to mount on my AR-15.
So could you just throw up some huge IR illuminators for these beast? Would it spook them? God the hillbilly shit I'd try if I lived in a part of the country these things lived.
There's an IR light on the top of the scope to supplement if needed. Hogs aren't scared by IR light; hell, once they start eating I can hit them with my tac light and it'll take them a while to notice even the white light. I finally got them to start coming to the feeder so now I just run a bunch of wire snares along the hog trails leading to/away from it. That way if they don't get snared on their way to the feeder where I'm setup, then once I start shooting they get all confused and run carelessly into the snares on their way back to the woods (this happened last weekend, and was quite hilarious). The NV basically just buys me extra time and a better chance at multiple-kill outtings (as opposed to spotlighting them, where you either aim for the largest or the closest one). Hogs follow the same trails over and over and over, so with nv and a semi-auto you can somewhat reliably predict where your second, third, fourth shot is going to be.
Finally got out on the ice today. Me and a buddy got 2 limits of crappies. No pics, maybe tomorrow if I go out again.
Nothing noteworthy, maybe 11" biggest. It's sad, now every time I catch crappies it only makes me wish Red Lake was still a 14" crappie factory. I went out today again with another buddy, caught tons but only kept a few for him. Here's a pic of my setup. Spoiler
I'm going boar hunting this weekend in the backwoods area of NC. I'm going with about 10 other guys from my department, and we are using spears that we made out of either self forged metal or household goods. I made mine out of a wooden sledge hammer handle and a steel Tiki torch stake that I sharpened to a point and knife edge. The hunt is going Friday evening after sunset being led by some locals and a few of their dogs and we will be staying the night. Any suggestions on what to bring or how to conduct the hunt?