Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Done Got Turkey Slobbered

I finally got some free time so I went out on some public land Sunday morning for some turkey bird hunting. Birds were tearing it up but since I saw another hunter's truck nearby and didn't know where he was at I decided to go out on the pond levee where I had a good view of the hillside and let him have the honey hole.



Well anyways I went out and set up next to the levee and was listening to a bird and figured the other hunter was on it so I just sat back and listened to the show. The bird flew down and started coming my way and no boom.

Huh?

Pretty soon he was triple gobbling and walking my direction. He got about 100 yards out and was coming straight at me and I'm thinking this bird is going to commit hari kari. Then at 75 yards that darn little light bulb went off inside my head and said if he keeps coming the same way he is gonna be right on top of me.

I tried to ignore it but at 50 yards I laid my shotgun off to the side and a hasty ambush plan was in the works. I started hunkering down, the closer he got to the levee the more I just inched backwards on my side of the levee toward some cover. When I couldn't see him any more but could hear him walking in the leaves I got in my crouched position, pulled my hat down and got ready for the fun.

When his head popped into view about twelve inches away I made my leap from my hide.



It's just a blur now, but remember thinking "I got him" as we rolled down the other side of the levee as we were having some fun. Sometimes he was on top, sometimes I was. There was lot of squawking and wing flopping on his end and some some grunting and cussin' on my end. As we rolled to a stop in the grass he ended up on top and I lost my grip and he was gone.

I swear I watched him run at least a quarter of a mile and he was looking back at me the whole time laughing.



That's why I turkey hunt, for excitement and because if you ain't never been turkey slobbered you don't know what your missing.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Last Call For Our 7th Annual Game Cam Pic Contest

All aboard!!! Last Call For Our 7th Annual Game Cam Pic Contest.

If you have pics you want to enter into the contest you need to do it ASAP, the contest will close Monday April 18th.

Here are some of the pics so far.

Best Bird category, a ruffed grouse from Willy4003.



Best Buck category, buck from goatman.



This one in the Funny Pic category from Terrific Tom cracked me up. Dang young bears always getting into trouble.



Plenty more pics in the contest to admire so head on over to 7th Annual Game Cam Pic Contest.

P.S. We're always looking for sponsors for the contest. If you'd like to become a sponsor and donate a prize for the contest please send me an email or call 951-314-5837. Thank you.

Friday, April 9, 2010

YouTube/Google & Their Family Safe Content BS

YouTube, which is now owned by Google, allows you to run ads now on your videos, something that helps pay for the cameras and other recording gear used by JHO. Google recently rejected two JHO videos from their ad program. One is a ground squirrel shooting video which I admit can get a bit gory. This latest rejection of our turkey skinning video has me scratching my head. Google/YouTube is known as anti hunter leaning and this video rejection supports that notion.

Imagine a child or non hunter being subjected to actually learning how to clean and prepare their own food? The horror. Here's the YouTube rejection email.

Thanks for submitting your video How To Skin A Turkey (Breasts & Legs) for revenue sharing. We have disabled revenue sharing on this video for one of the following reasons:

* You have not provided adequate documentation that you have the necessary rights to commercially use all the video material and music
* Advertisers on YouTube are currently looking to advertise next to family safe content

Please note that we reserve the right to make the final determination on whether to enable revenue sharing for a video.

Thanks for your understanding,

The YouTube Team




What's also indicative of how this company operates is you cannot reply to the rejection email, it has one of those "noreply" email addresses. If you want to really waste some precious time I guess you could wade through YouTube's Help menus trying to find out who to appeal to, if they even allow that.

Thanks for your understanding? Ha! What kind of mamby pambies do they have running this company? Looks like the time has come to shift off Google, there are other video hosts to use like Vimeo, BrightCove and our own JHO Photo/Video Gallery . I'm also looking for another way to lose the Google ads on our website. Enough is enough. Heck, even this blog is run on Google's Blogger which means I need to find a new blog host. Feel free to let me know any blog alternatives that are gun and turkey skinning friendly.

As one of our forum members pointed out recently, how can we be in bed with Google by running their Google Ads on our forum when Google is a well known anti gun company? Looking around the other hunting and fishing websites I see Google Ads on many of them, it's hard not to jump on their gravy train. Google is the shizzle if you want higher search engine ranking and to make money off ads, no one is even close to them. Yahoo just shut down their Publisher Network web ad program that was comparable to Google's AdSense because Google kicked their tail.

Google also gave us crap over submitting feeds from our store for their Froogle listing because we sold ammo and knives, oh my! We finally pulled those items from sale to get the feed working but I really regret caving in to the PC crowd BS.

What are your experiences with YouTube/Google? Any nightmares or PC tales to relate? Hopefully this huge 100 ton gorilla will collapse from their own weight and someone with some common sense will take over. In the meantime I'm hoping the Chinese wreak havoc on them, Google needs a wake up call.