MCSCOTT

I wanted to vote no on this, but after voting "yes" on UFO's and ghosts I thought it would be kinda strange for me to vote "no" for a living creature of this planet, that could possible be out there somewhere. One thing that years of hunting has taught me is that you never know what will come walking along. There's alot of land out there that people haven't really explored much, so there's no telling what people will eventually find. If they're like some other animals, and are really good at hiding from people, then maybe they've moved back into these wooded areas were people rarely go. Maybe they're smart enough to bury their dead in areas that are well hidden, and that's why no one has discovered any bones yet. I really have no clue, and until I run across one in the woods I will just assume they're not out there. Just felt like it wouldn't make much sense if I didn't believe in a large hairy animal of this planet, but yet I believed in ghosts and aliens from another planet. Heck, maybe Bigfoot is an alien.......maybe he's a ghost.......hmmmm

At least it wasn't "poo".

Black pepper. I refuse to eat eggs anymore if I don't have any pepper to put in them. For the most part that's really all I need, but sometimes I'll throw some shredded cheese on top if they're scrambled.

In a way it is one continuous storyline as far as some of the characters go, and then in another way it's not. Personally I am still undecided as to whether I like this show or not. For me it's basically on the borderline of being a great show that I must watch every week, and a show that I could care less whether I catch it or not. It's nowhere near the caliber of show that SOA is because with SOA they leave you each week at a point where you absolutely MUST see the next weeks episode so you can find out what happens next.

I voted yes, but I'm really still uncertain. The house I grew up on years ago was built where an old cemetary had been. The PO had took a tractor and pushed all the tombstones up into a smaller area in the back yard so that he could sell the land (he went to jail for this from what I've heard). We built our house there before we knew that the cemetary wasn't just confined to the back yard, and had weird things happen several times that may or may not have been ghosts. Personally my biggest experiences happened on a regular basis. The closet door in my bedroom made a distinct sound when someone closed it. I kept the door closed at all times, just like I still do in the house I live in now because it's just a habit for me to keep closet doors closed. Several times in the middle of the night I would wake up to the sound of my closet door being closed fairly hard. My bedroom door was always closed, so I knew no one had come in the room while I was sleeping. There were several other incidents such as lawn mowers that would die even if they were brand new if we mowed certain areas of the yard as well. One other thing that didn't happen to me, but to my dad when we first got the house built and moved in. He doesn't want to believe in ghosts, so he's never even told me about this. My mother told me years later what had happened because it scared him bad enough to wake her up that night. He woke up to go outside and smoke, and came through the dining room to find a young girl standing at the door looking out. At first he thought it was my sister, and called her name. When he did this, the girl looked around and disappeared. A short time after that I went out to where all the tombstones were piled up and got to looking around. Sure enough, one of them was of a little girl that was fairly close to my sister's age when she passed away. All kinda freaky, but like I said I personally still have no proof or definate reason to believe that ghosts really exist.

Yeah now that I think about it the last few posts probably fit my way of thinking better. In a SHTF situation I'm going to protect me and mine first, and might help the rest of the group once I'm assured of my family's safety. I don't need anyone telling me what to do and how to do it when it comes to using MY weapons to defend my family, and personally with my ammo addiction I would definately have a problem sharing my stockpile with others in the group who were less prepared. It would all depend on the situation, because if it were one such as a revolution of some sort instead of a defensive situation then I would have a different take on things.

I think certain groups could be very beneficial, but you just have to make sure you don't pick a group of nutjobs.

I use to live in an area that was full of rattle snakes, and in the past I killed a couple but had heard it was illegal. These were on my back porch, which personally makes me not care whether it was legal or not for me to kill them since the snakes weren't checking any laws to see if it was legal for them to kill me. I did however stop killing them after my third encounter though. I was walking through some grass back to my barn and noticed what I thought at first was a frog, and as he raised his head up a little and turned in my direction I realized it wasn't. My first though was "why isn't he rattling yet", and then I realized I was standing on his rattles. Now in general I'm not too scared of snakes, but I honestly think that moment was the worst feeling I've ever had in my entire life. I thought for sure he was about to strike, but once I lifted my foot he went the other direction. Every one I've seen since has tried their best to get away from me, so I realized that as long as you don't have them cornered, and just leave them alone, they will leave you alone. Plus a wise man told me that every rattle snake I let live, may end up biting someone I don't like one day.

I think it's possible that there's more life out there somewhere else, but I don't have any good examples for proof. Back when I use to sit outside and get drunk every night I saw alot of things in the sky. Personally since I was drunk I would like to think that I was just seeing things. However, it could also be argued that since I was drunk, some of what I was seeing may have in fact been UFO's.

That answers the biggest question I had in regards to calling. I had heard that alot of folks new to turkey hunting would usually overdo their calling, but I didn't have a clue how I was suppose to know when enough was enough. I don't get to try them again until this coming Sunday, but you can bet I'll be ready this time around. Thanks for the advice.

I guess mine would be my earthtone XD45, but then again the only others I own to compare it to are my Glock 22 and a couple of cheap .22 revolvers that were given to me. I really, really, really want me a 1911, but with so many different one's to choose from I've never been able to decide on which one to get. I fear that after I finally purchase one, the fact that there are so many to choose from will cause me to want to get more of them.

Like roverboy said, I bet it is easy when everything comes together. I was thinking it was going to be yesterday. Hit the owl call when we got to the woods and instantly heard a gobble. Headed in that direction, and it sounded like 3-4 on both sides of me. I quickly got set up kinda in the middle of all of them and started calling. Heck, at one point it sounded like one of them was running toward me and gobbling, so it had me thinking it was all going to be really really simple. I realized I was wrong as they suddenly just all headed back down the direction they were originally going. I think I was doing decent with the calling, but I think my biggest problem was that I didn't get my pot conditioned good enough so some of it was inconsistant. I will NOT have that problem again.

As far as planes go, one that I will never forget was out around the airforce base in SC. The AC130's were doing touch and go training, so me and my g/f (at the time) decided to park at the end of one of the runways that was close to the road to watch. Don't know if it's still there, but back then there was a parking area because alot of folks liked to stop there. After watching for a while, one came in from behind us and to me it looked like the tires on that thing couldn't have been more than two feet above my windshield. We decided after that that it must not be a good idea to sit there while they were training, and about the time I started the car to leave a police officer pulled up and told me exactly what we had just figured out. One of my favorites though is one that nobody believes when we tell it. My cousin and I were riding down a local backroad here late one night. We came around a curve, and there was a deer standing on the side of the road. As she went to run across to the field on the other side, a Bud-Light 12pack box flew up and went right on her head. The only thing I could ever figure out was that she musta been chewing on the box, and threw her head back when she went to run. She ran around in the field for a bit with the box covering her head before she finally got it off. Had to be one of the funniest things I've ever seen, but my cousin and I are the only ones that even believe the story.

I was just talking about this very subject with my g/f last night as we were following a couple of 4wheelers down the highway. I'm not 100% sure but as far as I know you can't make them street legal, which I've never understood. These days, they cost as much as a new car, they go just as fast so driving around normal highway speeds isn't a problem, and they have brake lights and tail lights. On top of that, and the things you mentioned, it's perfectly legal for farmers to drive tractors on the roads, and they can NOT drive normal highway speeds. Alot of those same farmers use 4wheelers just as much if not more than their tractors, but yet they aren't suppose to have them on the roads. Most LEO's in my area don't pay any attention to people riding them unless you're causing trouble in some way, but it still doesn't make sense to me why there are laws saying people can't ride them on the roads.

The whole first weekend was a big learning experience for me. There were several gobbling in the area I was in, but I never could get them called in close enough. Seemed like doing a few purrs on the call would get them headed my direction, but if I made any other noise with it they would change their mind and go the other way. Yesterday it just seemed like I was helping everyone else in the county. It would be kinda quiet for a while, I would pick my call up, hear a gobble off in the distance, and then here a shot. This happened several times, so I decided I must just be calling for everyone else in the area. At least I do know they're in the area, and that they do respond to my locator call as well as some of my calling on the pot call. I've just gotta get the hang of it. Now I'm more interested on just being able to call one in than I am in getting to get a shot off at one. I also never realized how many owls there were in the area that would be out making so much noise in the middle of the day. If I could only get the gobblers in as close as I can the owls I will be in good shape.

I agree. Personally I KNOW that I couldn't hold it together if that were a relative of mine, heck I don't even think I would try. I'm absolutely sick of the people in this country that hide behind our Constitution, in order to speak out AGAINST what it stands for and those that support it. Our soldiers are doing what our government has told them needed to be done in order to protect this country. If you don't agree with what they've been told to do, you should take it up with their boss instead of protesting at a fallen soldier's funeral. If I ever ran into one of these protesters in public, and knew for a fact that he/she did such a thing at a soldier's funeral, I would imagine I would spend the rest of my years sitting in prison for what I had done to that person.

Personally I think protesters of this type should be treated as traitors to the country, and therefore should lose their right to the First Amendment, and should possibly be hanged. That's just my opinion on it though.

For some reason I've always been drawn to the old houses, or places where they've been such as the old chimneys. I don't know why, because I'm not very old, but for some reason when I'm in these areas it's almost like I can feel what it was like to live back then. As far as other things I've found in the woods, I once found an old lever action .22 rifle. It was by far one of the best shooting .22's I've ever fired. After some time I was finally able to track down the owner of it, who at the time didn't even realize he had lost it. I also stumbled upon a good bow release, which no one ever claimed and I still use to this day. I also came across an area in the woods that I use to hunt on that seemed to be a place where all the animals went to die. There were a mixture of deer bones, coyote bones, and other types. Some of the deer heads still had the antlers even. My first thought was that maybe someone was dumping them there, but it would be nearly impossible to get any vehicle to this area, and it would be a long way to drag something just to dump it off. I haven't come across anything lately that was interesting much though. Seems like all the woods left in this area have already been combed over by someone.

I guess it's either fairly new, or county areas around here don't honor it much, as in the incident that I mentioned the dog owner's defense DID hold up in court and the driver of the vehicle had to pay court costs and lawyer fees. This was several years ago, and personally I haven't had a dog in the last 15 years so I haven't kept up with it. I will say though there has always been a need for statewide leash laws so it's good to know it's there, for situations like the OP is in, as well as many others.

X2. I've haven't owned one yet, and still might add one to the collection eventually, but for the most part I don't see a need for one, especially if you have a .223. They're too much for small game hunting, and not enough for alot of varmint hunting.

Someone else could give you more definate advice, but from my understanding the only time you can't carry on TWRA land is during the big game archery season. Since you could be hunting those turkeys with a shotgun, I don't think there would be an issue carrying a handgun while you're hunting with the bow.

What's a good turkey call? Being completely new to turkey hunting this year, I find myself in a total loss after looking at the many, many calls that they have out these days. From what I've seen so far I think I've got a good general idea of where they will be in the mornings, but I'd like to at least have something to help bring them in range if needed.

Wow this thread has become entertaining. Whether for or against LEO's, I still stick to my previous statements that you're better off to comply with what the officer asks or demands, and then let a judge sort it out in court whether the situation was handled properly or not. The video posted was made with the intention of making LEO's look like street thugs, so they chose isolated incidents accordingly to fit their purpose. Even with the ones they did choose, I would still bet there was some kind of provocation in several of those situations. Simple fact is some officers handle provocation better than others. On a side note, I have never claimed to be intelligent, but I also don't see any point in having intelligent arguments in a thread such as this. No matter which side you're on trying to lable all LEO's as nothing more than street thugs isn't very intelligent.

As others have said, the first though would be to report them to animal control in your area so that the officers can either find the owners or pick the dogs up if the owners can't be found. The other option is the mace that you already have. Also as stated once you feel serious danger I would say you're well within your rights to shoot the dogs, but this should definately be a last resort because you will be opening yourself up to retaliation from most dog owners. In most rural areas there are no leash laws. I know a guy a few years ago whos dog got out in the road and got run over. The guy driving the car sued for the damages to the car. The dog owner won his case because there were no leash laws in the area, and the driver was suppose to maintain control of his vehicle at all times. I'm not sure if the dog owner pursued this part, but his lawyer had advised him that he could even counter sue the driver for the cost of the dog. Best bet in your situation would be calling animal control and see if they can handle things, or use non lethal means of making the dogs run away from you instead of towards you.

That's exactly the what I've been wondering ever since Sunday especially. The government is no longer trying to hide their corruption, and have shown that they completely ignore and aren't one bit intimidated by the voting citizens of the country anymore. With this I fear that one morning I will turn on the news to find that Obama has thrown out our Constitution and appointed himself leader of this country, and there will be no more chances for the people to vote anyone out of office. On top of all of that, we now have the lawsuit against our government that several of the states have signed on with. I am aware that it will be a long drawn out lawsuit that will cost the taxpayers money, and in the end I don't think they really have a chance of winning it against a government that has so much control over everything. If and when the time comes that these states lose this lawsuit, what are they prepared to do as their next course of action? They're taking a heck of a gamble in signing on to something like this. If they lose, and simply leave it at that, then it gives the government a BIG boost in control over the people of this country. Personally I see that they have agreed to as one of those "no turning back now" moments in history.