I've seen some of his pigeon sniping videos before, I love seeing those pellets in flight. Awesome stuff. Any recommendations for a >$100 .17 pellet gun with iron sights? I'm thinking about picking one up for simple basement range fun and staying sharp when I don't get to the range as much as I want to. Emphasis on sights, I'd rather have some simple aperture sights than a crap scope.
I used to pick off rabbits in my back yard with my sling shot. I got pretty good with it. Max range was about 20 yards from the top of my deck. I could never kill one, though. It would hit them with a loud 'THWACK!'. They'd jump about 4 feet in the air and then run off. I never found any blood or anything, so I think the ol' slingshot just doesn't have the velocity to penetrate the skin. I'm sure they'd just flop over and die if I got one in the head, but that's a damn tough shot. After getting hit a dozen times, they stopped coming back.
For the past year I've been using a Ruger Explorer that I picked up at the local Tractor Supply Centre for $80 or something. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.pyramydair.com/s/m/Ruger_Explorer/2016" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.pyramydair.com/s/m/Ruger_Explorer/2016</a> Works awesome, and you can get a red-dot for it for $40. Here's a view out the window, at night. I put up a motion detecting light that would go on when critters were eating under the bird feeders, and in the picture below you can see we had a couple possums show up. I left them alone because they'd clean up the other things. But raccoons, skunks, squirrels, chipmunks... all fair game, and know enough not to hang out around here any more. You can see the small target I stuck to a piece of plywood screwed to a stake... it'd almost go through the plywood, and that's only 500 ft/s, one-pump action. I was quite impressed, to say the least.
I never tried sling shots on rabbits, but did learn about how surprisingly effective blowguns can be. A .22 with CCI CB loads (29 grain bullet, no powder just the primer) is still my favorite. I just saw this for the first time today and love it... an ad for CZ but a great upland video regardless.
Amazon has it for $65 and free shipping on Prime. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0030NZ5UE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I've also been in the market for a pellet gun to knock out some vermin (.22 is getting more expensive and harder to find). So I just ordered one as well. Figured I could do a lot worse than shooting with something nett recommended. Though I have a red dot, and a small scope, I think I'm gonna just stick with the fiber optic open sights on it... for now.
I used to shoot rabbits out of my bathroom window with these when I lived in town. At about 20 yards they would usually go completely through the rabbit, and they were as quiet as a pellet gun. The sound of the round hitting the rabbit was just as loud as the gun going off.
Since school is out for the summer, I have roughly two months before I have to go back to work. I used this first week to head out into the marsh in the kayak to try and pick up some reds for the bbq. As I was paddling around there was bait fish going crazy all over the place. I haven't seen that many small fish swimming around ever. I anchored up in a spot I have had success before. I started throwing dead shrimp on bottom and the success was immediate. I ended up boating a nice red and trout, but had a nice 18"+ trout spit the hook at the boat. I was also broken off twice by something large. I'm thinking it was a black drum by the way it was running and keeping its head down. The highlight of my day was watching flounder go airborne when they were hitting the baitfish. Seeing a 16-18" flounder come completely out the water is really neat. I watched the flounder hit the topwater for an hour or so then decided to try to go catch a couple. I anchored about 3 feet from the bank they were hitting and rigged up a green hornet matrix shad. I let about 6ft of line and swung the tip of my pole through the baitfish that were getting hit. I immediately hooked up with a redfish, but he only measured 15" so back in he went. I still wanted to catch a flounder so I stayed a bit longer. Sure enough after about 5minutes of moving my plastic along the bank a flounder hit hard. Normally I'm worried about them spitting the hook while trying to net them, but this one was not going anywhere.
This is what my lunch hours consist of now... a sack lunch at a lake near the office, rod with bobber or Beetle Spin, and the occasional "fun size" bluegill and bass on the line. Can't think of a better break to have in the middle of my workday. I should be way up North slaying smallmouth bass right now, but these will do in the meantime.
Deer Hunters, need some advice. I'm looking to replace my coat and overalls, I still hunt all over the east coast. What I'm mainly looking for is cold weather camo, price range for each item under $300. I have some older stuff but it is wore out and doesn't keep me warm during the later season. What do you use and recommend? I'm specifically focused on deer hunting as I have all of my upland and waterfowl gear covered.
I just recently found the Sportsman channel on my TV, and am addicted to MeatEater. Steve Rinella is fucking awesome. Does anyone else have other recommendations for us?
That's the only show I actually like watching. Too much fist pumping and PRAISE LAWD JAYSUS AND MOSSY OAK FOR THIS SLAMMIN' 10-POINT BOONER! We haven't had cable for awhile so I actually don't know if their programming has changed much since, but I really miss Rinellas's show. I'm much more into his approach to hunting than the typical trophy hunting shown. I liked Dead Meat with Scott Leysath too. The concept is "Hey let's go get a bunch of different critters and make them taste good!" and Leysath is like Rinella too, laid back and cool rather than showy and loud. They do a wide variety of hunting and focus more on the road less traveled, like cooking coots and carp. One of my new roommates doesn't do any hunting or fishing but wants to start, and the other is from Northern Minnesota and grew up hunting grouse and ducks. They still hunt some but don't have a dog, so it sounds like things could fall into place really well for some trips this fall. My main hunting goal for this year now is to get my dog out waterfowling and watch him retrieve some ducks and geese from the water.
It's not on tv anymore, but if you can find any reruns of "The Best and Worst of Tred Barta" you won't be disappointed.
I haven't hunted or fished since I was kid growing up in northern Illinois, (and by hunting I mean shooting deer with an SKS on the farm), but what attracts me to MeatEater is both his approach and that the motherfucker can cook. There is something visceral about killling something then using it to fuel your body. The sad thing about MeatEater is that there are very few episodes, the good thing is that they are not that mass produced reality TV that is out there. Its quality TV. Which is at a nadir.
Yes, the dude is a carnivore to the max. In one of the first episodes I saw, he shot a goat (or sheep?) in the mountains and dropped red-hot rocks into the animals stomach to boil its meat, right there where he shot it. Now that is a fucking hunting show. In another episode he was chasing aoudad in Texas, went home empty-handed, and was still feeling positive about it. Just kept getting busted by the things, no matter how hard he tried. Not every hunt results in a trophy, or bringing home anything at all, and I really appreciated seeing that very realistic side of hunting. I don't think kids getting into hunting should get the impression that you HAVE to bring home a trophy critter or nothing at all, and the success of a hunt depends on the score of your kill, and that's exactly what I get from too many hunting shows. If you're a trophy hunter I respect that too (really, do whatever hunting makes you happy as long as it's sporting) but I'm a meat eater, so I like what Rinella does. One of the guys in a co-worker's deer camp group hunts with an old SKS. Seeing it and my custom Winchester 70 side-by-side in a gun rack and the contrast is funny to me but as long as its a well-aimed shot within range, the deer still can't tell what gun that bullet came out of. Both of us killed deer last year.
Any tips on finicky bass? The bass at the lake I'm fishing over the noon hour are cold. Today I was tossing out jigs, various plastics, and some spinners from the shore, and could see the bass simply ignore them as the lures came past. I'm trying different presentations and retrieves, and even bumped one with a jig today and it was annoyed but swam away rather than strike. It was partly cloudy today, about 80 degrees, and the water is clear with a heavy weed bank about 20 feet from the shoreline. A couple weeks ago I was having fun with them on beetle spins over the weeds but that is no longer working. At least the bluegills are still fun... dropping bright little fire ant jigs over exposed sand and gravel beds results in a flurry of hits. Spotting the bigger ones and hitting their nests never gets old to me.
Try a shaky head 1/4 to 1/2 ounce, with watermelon colored worm, you need worm that floats, the head will keep it down. Use 8 pound flouro carbon for leader and throw it past them a ways and work it back really slow, like an inch or 2 at a time.
Based on the recommendation a few posts back I just downloaded the first 3 seasons, and most of the 4th, of MeatEater. Watched the first 3 episodes so far, and I like it. Thanks for the heads up... I'd never even heard of the show before.
I'm leaving Thursday for the long weekend to visit my brother (North of Tampa) to go scalloping. He and his wife do this every year, but I'm a virgin at this. Anyone ever done it before?
So fishing was ok today, we hooked this guy at 11 am and 5 short hours later on 40 pound test line we got it on the boat, 160 pounds.