Perfect Trailmix For The Outdoors?

 I've been trying to find the perfect trailmix, the grocery stores have a few different ones but they are either all nuts, berries or too much chocolate. I tried mixing some together to get the right blend but it's a PITA. I think I found the one I'm after at Trader Joe's. It's called Happy Trekking. Almonds, cashews, pistachios. chocolate, cranberries and cherries. Just the right amount of nuts, fruit and a bit o chocolate. The one improvement would be dried bananas, luv me some nanners.

What's your recipe for trailmix?

Top 10 Missed Dove Excuses

Top 10 missed dove excuses

10 - stupid bug landed on my glasses right as I yanked the trigger

9 - dang ground squirrel holes, I lost my footing

8 - Was that a dove mixed in with them tweety birds? I wasn't sure so I pulled up

7- Crappy import shells, that's the third one with a bad primer

6 - Must of bent my barrel in that fall back there

5- Dayum brother in law, his reloads suck

4- I was sweeping just fine, the dove just stopped flying

3 - Shouldn't have et that PBJ, got jelly all over my trigger finger

2 - Didn't you hear that rattler buzzing? It puckered me up so bad I yanked it way right.

1 - I hate new guns, never can find the safety on em.

Got anymore you've heard?

Wut ya got?

Shot of the gang at Cibola Sportsman's Club in Cibola AZ. It was a good opener this year. Limits by 8am and everyone safe back at camp for a float down the Colorado River to cool off.

How's your dove season so far?

Pixelpipe. Gateway To Social Networking, Blogs & Storage.

Anybody using it? So far I like it for the business and personal use. Instead of creating several emails from my cell (EVO) to cover Twitter, Facebook, Flickr etc., I can just send one email to Pixelpipe and they push the content to whatever I have selected.

From their website:

Pixelpipe is a content distribution gateway that allows users to publish text, photo, video and audio files once through Pixelpipe and have the content distributed across over 100 social networks, photo/video sites and blogs, and online storage around the globe. We provide a number of mobile & desktop applications for users, liberating their content and sharing their life.

Right now it covers everything I need except Google+ which does NOT have email upload yet. I hear that is coming soon. Speaking of Google+, if anybody needs an invite give me a shout. It's basically Google's version of Facebook and in my and many other's humble opinion, going to whoop Facebook's butt.

Youtube video review



http://pixelpipe.com/

Bunny Season Opener

After being skunked on the July 1st cottontail rabbit opener here I thought I'd try my luck once more tonight. As I was loading up the .22 WMR Marlin rifle and slinging the Badlands hydration pack on at the truck on I noticed rabbits and "squeaks", (ground squirrels), running across the road about 150 yards down from where I was. There was a small dirt levee to the right of the road and I love peeking over them since animals on the other side can't hear or see your approach.

Peek-a-boo time.

I wish I would have had a camcorder rolling because as soon as I poked my head over about 15 rabbits that were right out in the open exploded like a quail flush. They went everywhere and I all could do was sweep back and forth with the .22 and hope one would stop for a shot. Finally one did stop for just a second and I shot and missed a bit left. Curses. The rabbits continued to run everywhere and another one screeched to a halt just short of the brush and I shot him in the head at about 50 yards. I'm not sure what all the bunnies were doing together, might have been the evening hootenany I guess. Tracks were everywhere like it was some kind of dance.

Walking out I saw another rabbit way down the end of a clearing but he hightailed as soon as he saw me. The last rabbit I saw crawled up on that same levee, he must have heard me coming as his ears were twitching back and forth as he attempted to pinppoint where I was. I had a clear shot at him but it would have been shooting up toward the road so I let him go.

It was a good stretch of the legs and an awesome sunset over the San Gabriel Mountains as usual. It has been over 100F the past couple days but some monsoonal weather blowing up from Baja Norte cooled the temps off today and that may have explained why more animals were out this evening.

Did anyone else make it out for the bunny opener? How'd you do?

Bad Day For A Mr. Muley in Mexico

Just WOW!! video of a big cat taking down a big muley in Mexico. Reminds me of the pic I saw years ago from a CA DFG biologist in northern CA that showed some fresh racing stripes on a big bucks backs. The racing strips were from where it appeared a cougar had jumped on this buck's back and the buck tore off and threw the cat off leaving the scrape marks in the hide all the way down to flesh from the cat's claws.

Bad motorscooters in my book. The way the cat constricts the deer and wears him out is like what a boa constrictor and wrestler do to their opponents. To me the buck doesn't seen to fight that hard or use them nice pointy antlers he's sporting. This was shot during the rut so the cat may have caught this buck when he was zapped from all his carousing.

Some Awesome Sauce Here. Pappy's Fine Calls from MO

http://www.exoticwood.biz/boisderose.htmBeing a callmaker I always enjoy seeing other callmaker's work. I recently stumbled upon Pappy's Calls on Missouri Whitetails websight. Pappy writes:

"Fly Reel Purrer...it is going to have the slate mounted under the carriage and when you turn it the striker will run over it...I want it to be like a purr pot...made it from Strawberried Box Elder, Redheart and Ebony with Torquoise button and 1909 Barber dime."

 

 "This is the 2010 Midwest Decorative winner where I got the Outstanding Novice Callmaker of the Year Award. It is made from 120 pieces of Bois De Rose and Birdseye Maple. Didn't sound all that great but it was for the decorative class...."

If you've never heard of Bois De Rose, pronunced bwah duh rose, some consider it the most beautiful of all the exotic woods.

 I'm still waiting on the details on this fine goose call called the Pappy's Delivery Truck

You Made A Turkey Call Out Of What?!!!

I've made turkey calls out of just about everything you can think of. My first turkey call was made from young maple seed leaves that twirled to the ground at our elementary school yard. “Whirlybirds” we called them. You could tear the seed off and use the leafy part like a turkey diaphragm call to make hen yelps. This brought joy to our ears but ended up with hair pulling by our teachers who dragged us by our ears to the principle for blowing the them in class. You could also make them sound like a squeaky fart which is what got us in trouble.

Image from http://smalltownandrurallife.com/

Turtle shells, fence posts, wood from the floors of old cabins we found in the Ozark mountains, wingbone yelpers made from turkey wing bones. You name it, I've tried to coax a yelp from it.  I've been to Nashville for the NWTF callmakers competition and seen all kinds of turkey calls from callmakers all over the world. Well, I thought I had the gamut covered until Eric showed up at the Fred Hall Show last year and told me of his oyster shell friction turkey call.

"No way", I proclaimed, taint happening. The more Eric talked the more it made sense and the more it tripped my "gotta see it" detector.

Fast forward to this past Friday at the Fred Hall Show and who do I spy sneaking down the aisle with his oyster shell in hand but Eric and his buddy.

"Ah ha!" I hollered to get his attention to our NWTF booth.

Being from Mizzurah I told Eric it was time to "Show Me". And show me Eric did, he whipped out the corncob striker and struck up a hen yelp. Kelp, kelp, kelp came the beautiful notes. Eric is a biologist who records all kinds of animal sounds and he loves to hunt turkeys too so it was simple destiny for him to find the oyster shell and make fine turkey music on it.

Eric said the real beauty of the call is with all the ridges and bumps inside the shell you can get all kids of tones and pitches. Kind of like having a bunch of friction pots instead of just the one. Heck, I'm half deaf from all my years flying in the USAF and shooting guns but even I could hear the magic.

One thing Eric mentioned that struck me was he couldn't believe with all the cavemen and Indians running around years ago that none of them hadn't tried scraping something on an oyster shell to make sound. Surely one of them had tried he said. Having grown up around Muscatine Iowa where they were world famous for their pearl buttons made from clam shells we used to play in the piles of discarded shells behind my cousin's house. We never even thought of using a striker on a clam shell so it's possible Eric is the inventor of the Oyster Shell Turkey Call.

No word from Eric yet if he's going to make a few for sale, he's still punching the 9 to 5 clock and he's not sure if he wants to throw another iron in the fire yet. If he does, you'll be the first to know.