whiskey

Looks great!

I am a man. I have a purse. There, I said it. I have a Maxped Versipack. I keep several key items in it, so I can grab it and take it in the house, in the truck, in the car, or any other place I might need it. Items from my man purse have come in handy more times than I can count. Super Glue, lighter, sharpie, ear plugs, first aid kit, multi-tool... One challenge I will make is to not just shove everything you can think of into a bag. Examine each item and make sure that it has real value. If you end up with an excessively heavy bag, you are more likely to not carry it as often. I started with way too much, but have slimmed way down to the a lot less after several years of man-pursing. Accept the man purse, carry the man purse, OWN the man purse way of life.

I'll send you a PM.

This time of year they are grouped up into huge flocks. Last year in early March we had a flock of over 200 visiting our lease. By opening weekend for the youth hunt, they had busted into smaller groups of 30 or so birds. By mid April they were down to 10-15 bird groups.

Sounds good. We usually camp at the outfitters and do the Old Dam Ford trip back down. One trip per year is with all my rowdy friends. One trip is family and kids. The kids usually do yaks by themselves. I think I would like the dam down to the outfitter best, but I don't know much about the river below the outfitter. I want the most current I can get.

We float the Elk a couple times each year. I would like to do the overnight trip this year. I have an old heavy canoe, but I'd really like to upgrade this year.

Just a heads up, start looking for your favorite turkey loads now. If you wait till March, lots of places will be sold out. I'll be shooting Hevi Shot 13 3.5" #7's. I tried the magnum blends last year, but they didn't pattern as well as the straight 7's.

I have some extra equipment that I don't mind loaning out for a trip. I would rather loan it to a young man that is still in school and can't afford to purchase their own stuff. Since I live in Clarksville, I could help outfit a Clarksville/Nashville area person and give them a ride. I vote for early to mid March. The later we wait, the warmer it will be. The warmer it is, the less we have to carry. Turkey season opens the end of March.

Well, my daughters pack came in today. It fits her good and we are fired up about doing some hiking this spring. We are looking for total pack weights under 20 pounds. Both of our packs are under 2 pounds. I have an Osprey Exos 34 and she has an Osprey Talon 33. We are splitting the weight of a Mountain Hardwear Lightpath 3 tent, 5 pounds. Both of us will have 2 pound sleeping bags. This should help keep our base weights down. I picked up a 3/4 length Therm-a-rest pad for her on Craigslist for 20 bucks, it's about 25 ounces and fits her well. I have a couple of regular sized Therm-a-rest pads too. I hope I can upgrade to a lighter pad for myself, but we shall see. I have a Katadyn Hiker water filter on the shopping list for this weekend. Water is heavy, so we'll plan to carry less and refill as needed. We'll both carry 2 liter platypus bottles with drinking tubes. I have a small Peak 1 canister stove. Still need to pick up a couple titanium mugs for us. I have outfitted both of us with light weight clothing to help with total weights too. I read somewhere that it costs between 600 and 1000 dollars to outfit with an ultralight hiking set up. That may be, but I have been shopping on ebay, craigslist and goodwill and I haven't spent anywhere near that amount on our stuff. The sleeping bags will be the biggest purchase, but I am insisting on going new for them. Luckily my wife is understanding and supportive. I will probably do more solo hiking, so I am planning to pick up a lightweight solo tent too. I did all the heavy pack hiking I ever wanted to do in the Army, so now I am going to make sure we are as light as financially possible.

hey, slip me a snort of that Blue. I figured I better make an appearance since y'all were having a whole discussion about my finer points. JW Blue is one of my favorites. Aside from scotch, I like most of the popular top shelf bourbons. Woodford Reserve is a usual. I grew up near Tullahoma, so George Dickel has a permanent place in my bar. I'll have to try some of these others...

I am in! My daughter and I are planning to do lots of overnighters/weekend trips this year. We are going the Ultralight route. Smaller packs, smaller tents, smaller everything. We have been picking up items all winter and are just about fully outfitted. I've budgeted for sleeping bags next month, so nothing before March probably, but then we are up for it.

Only about 10 weeks till Turkey Season!!!! It's time to get those calls out and start annoying your wives. Also time to pattern those shotguns. If anyone wants to volunteer to pattern my gun with those shoulder breaking loads, I'm more than happy to meet you at the range.

I love Jesus. I hope Tebow has a long career and makes the hall of fame. I support his right to his faith and I think the media is desperate to make a big deal out it. Guns and Religion make the news every time. I think the Fallon skit is funny too.

I can read, I just skip the big words. I had my wisdom teeth cut out today so I gotta heal up first. So as my face ain't swelled up, we can go after them.

I read it and enjoyed it. I read "My side of the Mountain" about the same time and it's still one of my favorites.

I would think that it happens from time to time, doe coming into heat late and being bred late. I think that the majority of these fall/winter births end in fatality. The doe probably isn't fat enough to feed a fawn and herself through the winter.

I'm a canoe guy myself, but I haven't been on the Caney or the Harpeth. I have looked into floats on the Caney. If you are looking to buy a boat, take a look at the Gheenoe boats. They are highly maneuverable, light and can get you most places a canoe will go.

Go to the hunter's safety course, or take one online, before you head out to the woods. It could save you some fines and possibly your life.

I an on an unlimited plan, but I make a habit of closing programs that I am not using by double clicking the home button to bring up the apps active in the background. I haven't used tree stand finder, but I do use MotionX GPS in the woods. I like it cause I can download the map at home and then I don't need service to use the app. If you had the GPS app running somehow in the background, then it may have been pulling new maps as you walked/drove around.

Very Cool boatman! Patty, I used to hunt the mountain when I was a kid, before it was a WMA. Definitely some good sight seeing up there. We hunted over in the mountains in Grundy Co too. There are some neat caves and bluff shelters over there too. We used to camp and hunt by a great bluff shelter and a natural stone bridge. I enjoy the mountains.

I'm in Clarksville, but don't have any experience. Alot of help huh? I would like to get started brewing also. If you decided to get into it, maybe we can split the costs of items we needed to buy in bulk.

Not my pic, but I do have this sight on my 22/45. It's a Burris FastFire II. The FastFire III is about to hit the market with a few nicer touches. The older versions will probably be on sale soon.

We didn't do the rim loop, but we plan to when we go for the overnight trip. We spoke with a couple guys that had camped and done the rim loop and they said it was pretty to see it from the top. It was a beautiful day and about 50 degrees. Perfect hiking weather.

For the past 5 years or so my mom has been talking about hiking to the Walls of Jericho in the mountains along the Alabama and Tennessee line. Last Thursday was her 56th birthday, so I called her Wednesday afternoon and asked her if she was up for the hike. The hike is 7.5 miles round-trip with 1200 feet of elevation change. Not exactly a cake walk for a 56 year old with a bad back and two bad knees. But this was on her bucket list, so we decided to test ourselves. I had to get up at 3:30am Thursday to drop my wife and daughter at the airport in Nashville, then travel on south to my mom's house in Tullahoma, TN. I got to her place around 7am and she was waiting on me. We got dressed and packed our bags and got to the top of the mountain at 9:30am. We wanted to get an early start so we had some time to spend at the Walls. The signs at the trailhead said that this was an extremely strenuous trial and to allow 6 hours round trip. We had 7.5 hours of daylight, so we felt good that we could be back to the truck before dark. We ended up back at the truck at 3:30pm and that included a good hour eating lunch and exploring the Walls. The trail starts at the top of the mountain, makes switchbacks down the steep side to the valley bottom. There are two nice creeks that converge in the valley, an overnight primitive camping area and beautiful mountain scenery. You are at the mouth of the canyon when you reach the valley and have to hike another 1.5 miles or so to the head of the gouge. The Walls tower over you during the last part of the hike, upwards of 1000 to 1200 feet. The head of the canyon is a natural amphitheater like formation carved by the creeks waterfalls. We were able to climb up 3 steps of the formation, close to the top of the rim. It was well worth the walk in. Now the walk back up the mountain was a different story... We will be going again. BTW, Beanie had a blast too.

Congrats! Hard to tell distance from the photo, but a neat trick to learn is to step off distance in the woods. The Army taught me to do this over rough terrain and smooth terrain, then you can count steps and get pretty close. The trick is to use a 50 yard (150 feet) open reel tape measure to measure out a known distance and then walk out and back while counting your steps. Then you can get some idea of how many steps it takes you to cover 100 yards in the woods. This could be a fun project for you and your boys during the off season.