10-Ring

I like it here. Great forum! We have a good balance between not too strict (some forums I have been on) and not too lax either. Too strict and people get bent about everything. Too lax and no one can stay on topic and all the information on the forum is scattered about and useless to everyone. TGO maintains a very nice balance.

Last box of .22 mag I bought was about $10 for 50, and like others have said it really doesn't do any more for me plinking than .22 LR. I have to suggest the Mosin as well, best bang for the buck in the gun world with spam cans of 440 rounds going for under $90.

Do they ever really go into hibernation? I've seen them on warm days in December before.

After getting a doc's go ahead you can try P90X, just do what you can. Max yourself out on each exercise and don't quit. As the others have said get on a nutritional plan. You don't want to diet, you want to change your lifestyle. Pass the fried chicken, have grilled instead. Cut out the potatoes. Have turkey burgers instead of beef. Two things that I've found that make eating healthier easier are 1) Don't eat out, it's hard to get good nutritional food at a restaurant. This might be especially difficult with your occupation. 2) Let's face it healthy food is not usually tasty food. But, you can use a variety of spices to make it taste better. For example I will grill turkey burgers and season them with McCormick grill mates hamburger seasoning. Yes, it does add a little sodium but it's still not as bad as all that fat you would have gotten from a beef patty. Don't be tempted to jump on the Atkins bandwagon either. Yes, excessive carbs are bad. But the Atkins diet is bad for you and certainly not meant for long term use. Do try to cut out carbs to an extent. Some carbs are good for you but don't over do it. To get you started I would suggest daily... Breakfast- Oatmeal or cereal. Midmorning snack- Granola and fruit or yogurt. Lunch- Turkey sub or sandwich but watch the dressings, condiments, etc. Maybe a few pretzels or fruit on the side. Or a salad instead of the sandwich. Afternoon snack- Try something like peanut butter and crackers. Supper- grilled chicken, steamed veggies. Any meat that is lean and grilled is good. Pass on desert. Other considerations... Have a bigger meal at lunch then a small one in the evening, the earlier the better, no need to load your body up on calories right before bedtime. A salad or something light would be good around 6pm. Beverages, cut out the sodas, period! Home brewed green tea is a good alternative, if you can't drink it without sweetner add 3/4 cup of sugar per gallon. Cut the sodas, chips, desert foods, potatoes, fried food, and just make good choices and you will notice a difference both in your weight and how you feel within a couple of weeks. If you decide not to go the P90X route, just do something, anything, physical, for 20 minutes per day. Don't count work related activity, we'll count that as bonus points. Walk, swim, just whatever to get the blood flowing. Best of luck!

I think the neighbor had a point. If the conversation that you posted was verbatim I believe you came off as confrontational and she took it that you were challenging her and she meant to stand her ground. Knocking on the wall might be appropriate if you already know your neighbor but I think that it is rude to do that to someone that you don't know. Why not go over and introduce yourself, at least act like you are a friendly person, something like "Hi, my name is Chris, I live next door, how are you tonight?... Well I was trying to watch a movie with my family and I'm having a hard time hearing my TV over yours. Do you think maybe you could turn it down a little bit?" If you make the approach as a friendly neighbor instead of the excessive noise police you may get better results. If you don't want to get to know your neighbors that's fine, but don't expect them to go out of their way to please you? Honey attracts more flies than vinegar.

6. That reminds me of a similar incident to where I learned that not all straight trees without limbs are suitable for climbing stands. I was about 19 or 20 at the time. I took a younger friend maybe 15 hunting. I had a good permanent stand and I was going to put my climbing stand in the tree right next to it so we would be about an arms length apart. I don't recall now what kind of tree it was but it had smooth bark. It was really cold that morning and it was sleeting. Once I got a good ways up the tree I realized that the tree was covered in ice on the back side, more like frozen rain really. I figured the cleats on the stand would hold it in place. I take another push up the tree and the bottom portion of the stand slips, when it does I cut my right hand on the top portion of the stand, it's dark, I'm not wearing gloves, and it's so cold I can't really feel my hands anyway. I'm oblivious to the injury. I finally get situated in the stand and the sun comes up. At this point I realize that my hand is bleeding profusely. Didn't require medical attention but it taught me a lesson the hard way. 7. This one is quite funny. For my 18th birthday my parents bought me a climbing stand, I really didn't know how to use it. Against their recommendation I had to try it out ASAP. It was dark and I went out in the back yard and attempt to scale an oak tree. Somehow I mange to get about 30 feet up without realizing that I was supposed to attach my feet to the platform, don't ask how I did this. Well the platform fell away so here I am sitting in the stand stuck. I yell, throw stuff at the house, etc, but I can't get anyone's attention. Finally I manage to shimmy down the tree. I then went inside and watched the VHS that came with the stand and figured out how to do it the right way. Probably a good thing I figured out the harness anyway.

I'm not saying it's alright... But I understand.

You guys have some good stories. 1. A few years ago I'm sitting in a climbing stand about 30 feet off the ground. I drop a scrubby buck and start the process to come down. I had a retrieval rope that had a little plastic clasp on it. I run the rope through my rifle sling and clip the rope onto itself. As I lower the rifle to the ground I get about 5 feet down and the clasp breaks sending my rifle on a 25 foot free fall. Busted the scope. At least I did it on the way down and not the way up. 2. As a young teenager I used to bowfish a lot. One day I was standing on the bow of my jon boat, bow in hand, while my brother was navigating us through the shallows from the stern with a trolling motor. We hit a rock or stump or something, the boat stopped I didn't. Took a head first plunge into about a foot of water and 3 feet of nasty lakebottom mud. 3. In my early 20's I took my friend Mike deer hunting for the first time. He is my age. It was Thanksgiving Day. I killed a deer the night before and we met up and he helped me quarter it out. We then went hunting and used the tarsals out of the buck I had just killed as lure. We went in the woods about 1 O'clock. I didn't expect to see much of anything until around 4 or 5, so I'm sitting in my box blind reading, sleeping, whatever, just not really paying that much attention. About 20 minutes after I sat down I hear a shot and have no doubt that Mike fired. I wait for a couple of minutes and don't hear anything from him so I call him on the radio and ask if he shot. He is breathing very heavy like he's been running and says something like "I shot a huge buck, it's down." I tell him to stay put and I'll be there in about 2 minutes, as I didn't want him trying to chase it if it wasn't dead yet. I go to where he was sitting and he isn't there (but his lawn chair is.) I walk about 20 yards and find a heavy blood trail. I yell but get no response. I call him on the radio again and he tells he that he is almost out of the woods with the deer. Once again I tell him to stay put and he does this time. He tells me several times That he has shot some ungodly buck with something that looks like a rocking chair attached to his head. I finally catch up with him. He's wearing a pair of overalls, no shirt. He's literally covered in blood from his neck to his toes, and there on the ground lies a 60 pound button buck. He was so excited, wasn't the huge buck that he claimed but I was excited that I had helped him get his first deer and glad he was so happy. I decide to go get the truck. Well I sink the truck to the frame rails while retrieving the deer. 8 hours, 4 trucks, and a tractor later we finally got the truck out. Mom wasn't too happy that I came to Thanksgiving Dinner two hours late covered in mud and blood and smelling like tarsal glands. 4. I was about 17. Learning to bow hunt. Had access to land but there was not really anywhere to put stands so here I am an inexperienced bow hunter trying to bow hunt from the ground. I get out of school one afternoon and go hunting. It was about 75 degrees and I'm sitting on the ground next to a hay bale hunting a good sized field. My back starts bothering me so I figure I can lay down and still see if anything works its way into the field. I was hitting a bleat from time to time when all of a sudden a nice doe comes running at me full speed from across the field 200 yards away. I didn't know what to do, I stayed still and kept lying down on my back. She went right on the other side of the hay bale and stopped. I tried to ease up for a shot but she bolted when she heard me draw before I tried to ease around the round bale. Lesson learned, never lay on your back while hunting. 5. About a year later I'm wandering through some woods where I hunted a lot. It was back when TN had that break between the two segments of gun season. I see a great tree to put my climbing stand in and do a little bow hunting. I wonder the whole time I'm hunting why I've never hunted out of this tree before, it's perfect. I end my hunt without seeing anything and head to the house. A couple of hours later my eyes are burning and I start to get itchy. Turns out during early bow season that tree was covered in poison ivy which I am very allergic to and that's why I never hunted out of it. That was some of the worst poison ivy I've ever had, in December none the less.

I'm currently with BoA, I've been very happy with them but I'm going to have to change now. I've been thinking about changing anyway as it is 35 miles to thenearest branch. I'm going to use some sort of local bank, haven't decided which one yet. Or I may go the credit union route.

Both good stories but this one tops both... http://www.tuckermax.com/stories/the-austin-road-trip/

Got a good laugh out of that one!

Another +1 on the Marlin, love it!

No wife or girlfriend here. My parents asked me once if I wanted to let them know what my combo was I just replied "Yall won't tell me what yours is, if something happens to me just get them to drill it.

Thanks, I do my shopping in Maryville and Alcoa, I'll stop by and check them out next time I need something.

I've spent a good amount of time on a tow motor. Never tried anything like that. Don't think it would be too hard though with a bit of practice time.

That would be his O.S. detector. OS is just a much more flagrant form of BS.

My work schedule is pretty nutty but I love my job. I'm off on Mondays and Thursdays. Tuesday and Wednesday aren't too bad. Weekends are hectic and I get very little sleep. Might get to sleep 4 hours on Friday night and 3 on Saturday night. The good part is I'm off from Thanksgiving until around the middle of February first of March. I don't get to do very many recreational activities during the on season, you gotta make hay while the sun shines. As soon as I wrap stuff up at Thanksgiving I spend the rest of deer season in the woods. I don't get to bow hunt anymore which I miss but I just don't have time. It is nice to be able to get so many days in during gun season though. I don't get to fish anymore either, which I really miss. I about went crazy staring at the walls January and February of this year. I did spend quite a bit of time hiking this winter though. I usually spend one of my days off each week running errands and doing domestic chores and whatnot and the other day I try to get out on my motorcycle or do something fun.

Check all of your connections. You are dealing with a corrosive rich environment. Most of the time on smaller boats the ground will run back to the battery, so make sure your post and terminals are very clean, clean them good then apply dielectric grease to the connections. If that doesn't help start tracing your wiring, any time you get to a connection clean and replace it. I'd be willing to bet you either have a short or a bad connection. It's probably something really simple that if you spend a little time on won't cost much.

I grew up jugging, limblining, and trotlining. That was my grandpas favorite method so I kind of fell into it. I never caught monster cats but I caught a ton of cats 15 lb and under. For limblining I would find a good strong limb that had some give to it 3-6' above the water. I would use nylon string and tie it so that the hook rests about 6" below the surface of the water. You want to set it in atleast 3' of water or else that cat will hit the bottom and get loose. As previously mentioned bluegill work great. Go catch a bucket full of them and hook them right under the dorsal fin. I always baited my lines just before dark and checked them as soon as it was light out. When I got old enough I would check them every two hours during the night, rebaiting as necessary. I usually used blocks of styrofoam for jugs, maybe 6"x6"x8" They were more durable than milk jugs. Half the fun of jugging is finding those things in the morning, it's also fun to just float at night and check them with a spotlight periodically. If you do use jugs fill them about 1/3 with water, especially if you are using live bait as this will cause them to drift a lot less. I'm thinking if you wanted to go after bigger fish use bigger bait and bigger tackle. I always just went after the smaller ones and would catch so many I wouldn't keep anything bigger than 2-3 pounds a lot of times. Been a good 10 years now since I've run a line or chased a jug and writing this has got me missing it. My friends and I used to run about 50 limblines, 25 jugs, and 4 trotlines all at the same time. By the time we got everything checked it was time to start over, we kept the whole community in all the catfish they could eat. I remember having a 4th of July catfish cookout and having over 100 people show up, and we didn't run out of fish.

This hasn't been said yet, but since Rob is going turkey hunting for the first time I thought I would throw this out there. Don't aim for the head, aim for the neck. If you aim for the head half of your shot will be going over the bird. This is where spending some time patterning the gun will really pay off, so you know just how far down the neck to hold. besides that, if you make a good shot to the neck and no shot happens to make it to the head you will still have a dead bird.

I've thought about doing this before but I'm a little ignorant to some of it. Is inbreeding among rabbits ever a concern? Seems eventually they would become inbred?

I wear hoodies, a lot. They are comfortable. I like to wear them at work because if it gets cold or the wind starts blowing I have a head covering right there as I don't have much hair. The fact that I wear hoodies to work probably sets me apart from most of these thugs, seeing as I would be willing to bet most don't have jobs. I hate to give up my beloved hoodies but I certainly don't want to get confused with these hoodlums, of course I wear my pants around my waist, with a belt (helps keep my gun up,) I wear Wranglers and boots, and say yes sir/ ma'am no sir/ma'am to everyone older than myself. Oh yeah, and most of my hoodies are ripped/torn, tattered and have various stains on them (from being worked in), maybe I'll be alright.

So you are asking if your HD gun that you would depend on to kill a person can handle small game? I don't guess it's ideal, I would be careful at what range I'm shooting at. Go ahead and pattern the gun, you say that you can't afford it but a box of 25 shells (hunting loads)costs about $7. I'll just stick with my old plain Jane 870 Express with the 28" barrel and wood stocks. It's not all tacticool but it's not going to make a damn bit of difference to the guy breaking into my house anyway.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has this issue. Those things are cursed for sure. That reminded me of a funny joke... Little Johnny has a used lawnmower for sale. The preacher down the road buys it from him and takes it home. A little while later the preacher comes back down to Little Johnny's house and says "Johnny, I can't get that old lawn mower to start, I think you sold me a piece of junk." Johnny replies "Oh no preacher, it's a good mower, you just have to give it a good cussin to get it started." "A good cussin'?" says the preacher "Why I haven't cursed in 25 years." Johnny just replied "Keep on pullin' that rope, it'll come back to you."

Good to hear, Nashville is running out of "safe" places to shop. I know HH and Rivergate have decided to not allow us responsible citizens to protect ourselves on their premises. What is the carry situation at Opry Mills currently? It's been a while since I've been in there but I don't remember it being posted, not from the Bass Pro Shopps entrance anyway.