Timestepper

Know how to starve an Obama supporter? Hide their EBT card under their work boots! I broke my back (shattered the L-3 & L-4 ) on July 31st of '98 and couldn't drive a truck for a while. My (now EX) wife wanted to go on food stamps while I was off work. I basically told her that I'd sharpen the end of my freakin' cane and walk the highway ditches picking up beer cans for 10 hours a day before I'd accept food stamps. Maybe I'm just too proud and stupid to accept help, but damn it, I've been down pretty low on several occasions in my life and always found a way to make out. And people who abuse the system just really piss me off. And now we've got a president and congress who WANT more than anything for EVERYONE to be dependent upon the freakin' government and it just blows everything I've ever believed clear out of the damn water. The people should take care of the government, NOT the other way around. EVER!

Damn, killed another one!

Wow. That's all. Just WOW!

Up home in <considerably drier> Kansas the old rule of thumb about the right time to hunt morels is, "First rain after the redbuds start blooming." I'd think that rule would work in NW Tennessee as well. Luck to you!

Love fish eggs. Tastiest I've found is carp. Baked, boiled or fried, they're tough to beat. Weird stuff eaten? Skunk, beaver, lizards, snakes and earthworms come to mind immediately. Pickled robin's eggs was probably amongst the tastiest. Snake jerky was a close second. Fried grasshoppers aren't bad once you get over the initial ..."ugh!" factor.

I was once walking alone through the forest and a tree fell right in front of me... and I didn't hear it. Our universe is an amazing place. Huge beyond mere mortal comprehension. Because of that, I don't stargaze anymore - I just look up and say "Wow..." and go back to making my man-sized plans. It makes my own world more bearable. But I do sometimes rely upon the North Star to navigate and I'm glad that it's there even if I can't quite grok the why of it. It's enough for me that it is. Perhaps everything in it's own way is relative. We are less than atoms compared to the vastness of our galaxy which itself is less than a dust speck in the universe. But we're larger than life to our children and absolute gods to our pets. (Can't even begin to wonder what ants think of us.) I like the universe. It's a neat place. And I like the fact that while we occupy only the tiniest, most miniscule portion of it, we can't help but wonder about all of it. But I sold my telescope 20 years ago and bought some binoculars... and I'm still humbled by what I can see through them. Any time you get to feelin' like you're a pretty important feller and you need a dose of humility, try ordering someone else's dog around.

My laptop is sitting on my steering wheel in the truck. (perfectly natural since I am a truck driver and my steering wheel serves as my desk.) Within reach I have two knives (one pen knife, one lock blade), a winch bar and any number of "less lethal" potential weapons (that is to say whatever I can get my hands on to smack someone with if they try to get in my truck without my permission).

Glad you like them. I came across these a couple of years ago - don't remember where - and saved them. Thought I might be taking a bit of a chance posting them here, but I figured if others hunt anything at all like I hunt, then they've gotta' have a sense of humor.

I haven't shot at a public range since I left Kansas 5 years ago, and, being primarily a black powder/muzzle loading guy, seldom had to worry about it then. BUT, the one time it did happen (when my best friend and I were pumping rounds through our lever guns), I simply turned to the guy and said, "Hey, I really appreciate you picking that stuff up for us, but we've only got about 200 more rounds and we were just gonna' grab it all at once when we got done. If you want, you can just dump it in my ammo can - that's what I usually do." He mumbled a crestfallen "Oh, okay..." and dumped our brass into my ammo can and left. All you gotta' do is kill 'em with kindness!

Should I go with "Blue" ? Or "Bubba" ?

With the increasingly high rate of attacks on women in secluded parking lots recently, especially during evening hours, the Minneapolis City Council has established a ‘Women Only’ parking lot at the Mall of America. Even the parking lot attendants are exclusively female so that a comfortable and safe environment is created for patrons. Below is the first picture available of the world’s first women-only parking lot…

Without better pics I'd have to agree with most everyone else and say that you've got a big 'coon (maybe as much as 30-40 pounds) there. Couple things we can determine for sure: It's not a cat of any kind - their claws are nearly always retracted and don't show up in tracks. It's not a canine - too many toes and no pug mark (which would be visible in mud this soft). It's probably not a 'possum - unless he's a world-freakin'-record throwback to dinosaur times. And... It's NOT a bear - even in the mud the toes would be broader and you'd have a more defined pad area, not to mention that even a cub generally leaves a bigger print than the average deer. (Plus, the deer track seems to be superimposed over part of the other track and deer don't usually like to go where bears have recently been.) No, I'd say what you've got is a great big 'coon walking kinda' splay-footed through the mud so as not to sink in. One caveat - raccoons are genetically related to bears, so if you wanted to s-t-r-e-t-c-h things a little bit and tell folks that you've found tracks from a member of the bear family, you wouldn't really be lying.

So is the Grand Canyon, but it's still a good crack.

So I’m driving home driving home from dinner last month with my wife, it’s like 16 degrees out. Cold as hell. Icicles on your cajones kind of cold. So anyways we’re going around a slow corner and she (my wife) spots a baby skunk lying on the side of the road. Being the animal lover she is, I get yelled at to pull over and help the little guy. “Fine, I’ll stop but you gotta get out and help it.†I say. So she jumps out of the car and picks up this baby skunk. Poor little guy is half frozen but still alive. She says, “What should I do?†“Bring it in the car†I tell her and we’ll “warm him upâ€. So she gets in with the skunk and asks, “How should I keep him warm?†I tell her “Put it between your legs.†She replies “What about the smell?†So I say, “Just hold his nose!†The doctors expect I’ll make a full recovery, but the skunk she beat me with died during the incident.

Heck, just put up some signs like "Trespassers will be shot - survivors will be prosecuted!" or "Warning: If you are found here at night, you will be found here in the morning." or even, "I can't afford a fence, so just keep the f*ck out - it'll save me a trip to court and you a trip to the morgue." Fences are like locks, they keep out honest people and emergency responders. Like others have said, If it's that bad where you live, I'd skip the new fence and look for a new house in a different area.

How nice for you. By all means, bottoms up!

Not sure about the others, but better to grow the garlic and either pickle it or dehydrate it yourself. MSG, on the other hand, is not a spice but a <sometimes naturally occurring> poison which simply tricks your brain into thinking that foods taste better than they actually do (this is what allows food companies to get by with what would otherwise be substandard ingredients). Some people (myself included, hence my knowledge on the subject) are very sensitive to MSG and may suffer from any of a number of reactions including, but certainly not limited to, migraines, arrhythmia and arthritis-like joint pain. Since reactions are not allergic, but rather dose-related and may be cumulative and since different people tolerate different amounts, it's often difficult to pinpoint a reaction as MSG related. Nonetheless, it is potentially a very harmful substance (as I well know first hand). Better just to use quality ingredients and not take the chance of doing accidental, but irreparable harm to a loved one. Okay, I'm off my soapbox now. We grow a couple of different types of garlic in our yard and garden and it's quite easy to grow and preserve and tastes better than anything you'll find in a store. As to the rest, you might check Three Rivers Market at their new store on Central - they've got a lot of really good stuff there. (But they know that MSG isn't good for you.) Good luck!

Longest: 4 out of six shots into a pie plate at 150 yards with a <repro> 1858 Remington Buffalo cap & ball revolver (14" barrel), using .451 swaged roundballs over pre-lubed felt "wonder wads" and 40 grains FFFG Goex black powder. Best: Hit a life-sized crow silhouette in the head at 90 yards with the same pistol and same load. (Probably pure luck, but I have won several shoots with this pistol.) Proudest: Head shot (again probably pure luck - I was aiming center of mass and must have flinched just right) on a squirrel in the top of an oak tree in our back yard (same pistol, same load).

For quite a spell, I'd pick one junk mailer per month and cram as much other junk mail as would fit into their return envelope and send it to them - One month company xyz would get junk mail from companies rty, zyx, pqb, xgh, etc... the next month, company rty would get it all. After that, company pqb and so on. (I don't get much junk mail anymore!)

Went through basically the same thing with the North American Hunting Club. After going to the expense of becoming a life member, I discovered that the only difference with being a life member is that basically you get screwed in perpetuity instead of just a year at a time. I no longer receive anything from them except the occasional plea to be come a "Trophy" Life Member. (Which is great if you're wealthy and bored because you get all the benefits you were supposed to get as a regular life member, only you now have the privilege of paying MORE for them.) If they ever send me anything else, I will happily dig out my magnifying glass... even if it's only to focus the sun enough to set it on fire. Good luck to you!

I guess I'm lucky in that respect. We always had a garden when I was growing up and between Mom and and my grandmother, we always had canned vegetables, fish, etc... around. My mom turned 80 back in November and still raises a small garden and cans what she doesn't consume herself or give away. As far as storage, she has lived in a tiny retirement apartment since Dad passed away and you'd amazed how much food you can store just in a closet or on a sturdy bookshelf. As for my wife and I, at any given time we have enough preserved food to last us at least six months and that doesn't count the eggs we get from our chickens every day (we have a combination of Bantams and Rhode Island Reds) or the wild plant foods we gather nearby in the Spring, Summer and Fall, nor what I'd be able to procure through hunting and fishing. And the thing is, it really doesn't take up as much room as a person thinks it would. For example: That corner of the living room/bedroom/den/whatever that doesn't do anything but collect dust? (Come on now, everybody has one!) Fill that corner with five gallon buckets containing preserved/dehydrated foodstuffs! Stack 'em two wide, all the way to the ceiling and cover them with a curtain or a wall tapestry - BINGO! You've just found a place to store several months worth of food and use some otherwise wasted space. Be creative! I lived in a one room efficiency apartment for a while 30 years ago and was constantly amazed at how easy it was to hide stuff from myself even in that tiny little place. As to getting your family on board, one thing you might try is just leading by example. When they come over, show 'em what you've accomplished and explain to them why you've done it. One way to do this is with something I tried: Friends came over for dinner and I told them "We're gonna' mess with your heads a little bit tonight and pretend that we've just had an ice storm or an earthquake or something and don't have any power or running water, just to see what we can come up with." Then I flipped the breaker, lit some candle lanterns and my wife and I (with their willing help) proceeded to whip up a meal for four, complete with dessert and cocktails, using only what we had on hand. Most of the main course cooking was done on the kitchen table with a couple of little alcohol stoves that I'd made from Colt 44 beer cans. And I made dessert (an absolutely delicious strawberry, blueberry upsidedown cake!) in one of my Dutch ovens in the back yard using charcoal from my smoker grill. Needless to say, it was a hit and they had a blast helping us. When they left, we sent a bucket of basic foodstuffs with them and a week later my buddy bought his first Dutch oven and started peppering me questions on how use it. They have since started their own basic preparedness plan. Luck! ...TS...

Thank you, sir! It is one of my all time favorite stories. Caster: While I see your point, I don't think it was "the sound of silence" that nearly seduced Odysseus into crashing his ship, and I always thought that if I experienced "silence" while I was hunting or fishing then either I was doing it wrong or something really bad was about to happen. Lack of noise, yes. Silence? Decidedly not.

I'm on the "no call" list, but sometimes still get them. I decided quite a while back to just have fun with these idiots. So any time I get a call from an "unidentified" or "unknown" number (which is invariably how telemarketer calls show up), I always answer in a child's voice: "Heeellllooo?" If it proves to be a telemarketer, then no matter what they say, I giggle and say (still in the "child's voice") "Hee, hee - I got a secret! ...Ahm not 'posed to tell anybody, but my momma's up in the attic." Then I'll pause while they ask if there's an adult available and then continue as if I didn't hear them or just can't wait to 'tell my secret' - "Daddy tol' the 'surance comp'ny that she fell out of the boat at the lake an' they gave him a big bunch of money, but she's drinkin' Crown Royal and eatin' little fish eggs in front of the big screen TV up in the attic... So, uh... Okay... thanks for listenin' to my secret - if you got one you wanna' tell to me, you can call me back in the mornin' 'fore we leave for Mex'co..." Then I just hang up. (My ex was a telemarketer for a time, so I know that, by law, they're not allowed to call you back.) Got one last year from some guy who was trying to sell me a "warranty" for my "older vehicle." I listened as politely as I could for a few minutes while he extolled the virtues of this particular plan. Then I told him, "Wow, sounds like just what I'm lookin' for!" He started to say something else and I cut him off, "I mean, sh*t fire, man! I got an '85 Ramcharger with 400,000 miles on it and the freakin' front bumper fell off last time I went stump jumpin'! Now I think I need new hoses and belts from when the battery was leakin' when it got knocked outta' the bungee cords - sign me the f*ck up right now!" (He hung up on me.) I don't suffer fools gladly, but I'm not above having some fun at their expense!

Great. With any luck, I'll be coming through with a load of tarped steel out of Jackson just about then and racing the storm home.

Don't know anything about cultivating salt, but here are a few ways to determine dairy product spoilage: Milk is spoiled when it starts to look like yogurt. Yogurt is spoiled when it starts to look like cottage cheese. Cottage cheese is spoiled when it starts to look like regular cheese. Regular cheese is nothing but spoiled milk anyway and can't get any more spoiled than it is already. Cheddar cheese is spoiled when you think it is blue cheese but you realize you've never purchased that kind. (Wanted to share this somewhere, but couldn't justify starting a new thread. )