If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Mt. Everest anyone?

I am looking for 5 more people to join a group to climb Mt. Everest.  Seriously. 
First things first though.  We need some climbing experience.  So we will have to spend a lot of time and money traveling around the country and abroad climbing other mountains first.  One does not simply climb Mt. Everest on his first foray into mountain climbing, just as one does not simply walk through the gates of Mordor.  Experience, experience, experience.  Then it's all about the money, money , money.  The guides I am looking at are called the Himalayan Experience.  You can find them at himex.com.  They have been featured on TV and some of you may have seen their expedition.  I made the mistake of watching an episode from like 2006.  There were deaths, horrible frostbite complete with amputations, grueling conditions like
-40F temps debilitating winds and I thought that looks like fun I want to do that. 
The trip runs from like May 1st to June 11th.  Yes it takes a long time to climb Everest.  It also cost about $60,000 dollars.  That does not include your gear or your flight to Khatmandu.  So in the mean time we need to get rich and possibly retired or really chummy with our employers.  Think I'm joking?  Look at this!

I can't stop thinking about it. 
Give it time you might say and you feelings will change.
They would but why would I want to let them?  Why should I spend my whole life letting things fade away?
Because I'm not good enough?  Because I don't have the money?
I have been doing that most of my whole life and where has that got me?
I flat out refuse to just accept my fate should that be the case.
I have made a few forays into elements outside my place of residence.
Most were hunting excursions, the mountains of Montana chasing elk, the plains of Wyoming searching for the elusive antelope and scouring the draws and gulches for mule deer.  Trekking the tundra in Northern Quebec, where the perma frost inhibits the growth of anything more substantial than a shrub, stalking caribou.
I still dream of these places and I hear them calling once in awhile.  I can still smell the sage brush in Wyoming.  I can hear the stream trickling through the mountain meadow in Montana.
I don't want to miss it if I don't have to.  
We can start by hiking Yellowstone.  Colorado for some altitude hiking, there are plenty of "low" mountains in the US we can hit.  Then we'll go big and hit Denali, the tallest in North America.
Then on a double vacation we can hit Italy and enjoy the culture and the food and work our way North on the reverse route that Hannibal took when invading Rome.  Into the Himalayas.
Can you imagine going to Nepal?  Sherpas?
Maybe some things are just dreams that will never come true.  It's sad that we accept this.
Some may say I was never meant to climb Everest just as an ostrich was never meant to fly.
Do you think ostriches dream of flying?  I think they do.
I really don't know where I'm going with this, perhaps I have hit my mid life crisis stage.  Does everyone have these?  Perhaps I am just bored with my life and unwilling to accept it.
I am always searching for my purpose in life.  I surely haven't found it yet.  There are many things I thought it was.  My first true passion was hunting I thought that was all there was to life.  Then it was work, my business.  I was going to be a big shot someday.  Then it was drinking.  That really numbed me up for a long time.  You don't need dreams when your drinking let me tell you.  Then I thought it was cooking.  I still sometimes say it is writing.  Woodworking?  Gardening? The list goes on and on.  However, nothing lasts for very long and I am left with that feeling of emptiness again.  Like I need to prove myself.  Certify my spot in this world.  Make a difference.  Champagne taste with a beer pocketbook I guess is what it boils down to.
Who knows, but if all I can do is dream then damn it,  I'm going to dream big!


Saturday, September 25, 2010

Bathroom Remodel

Ok it's not a total remodel.  I wish it was.  Our upstairs shower developed a leak sometime ago.
In the process of investigating, repairing the wrong things and re-sealing the right things but in the wrong way I believe I finally have it conquered.  The seal in the drain of the upstairs shower pan had loosened over time and needed restoration.  I removed it and sealed with silicone.  I then monitored the downstairs bathroom ceiling for a month.  Over time a hole the size of a softball had appeared in the ceiling so it was easy to see if any leaks developed.  I pinned a piece of paper over the hole so I could see the faintest drip.  I was resolved to fix the problem not just cover up the hole(like last time).    So began the journey into DIY.  I scraped all of the textured ceiling off around the hole and sanded.  Then on both ends of the tub the caulk had degraded and the shower water was leaking out of the tub.  So of course the drywall was bad on one side and the other side(plaster) had all bubbled and cracked.
So I removed all the bad stuff and patched it all in.  Then I had to re-caulk the entire tub surround.
Then I removed the wallpaper border at the top of the wall.  Cleaned and painted.

We chose a grayish blue color called slate quarry.  The floor is blue tile.  The sink top is blue, the shower is blue so colors were limited.  This color worked real well.  It gives it a sleek contemporary look and the old "country style" is gone.  The ceiling I patched and re-textured.

My texturing is wanting but I did it with a dishrag so not bad considering.

The gray makes the white parts really pop.  Of course I had my helper by my side the entire time.(as evidenced by the white footprints around the house)

Now I need to clean all my crap off the counter!!!LOL

Yes the kitchen counters are blue as well.  The exterior of the house used to be blue too.
The carpet was blue as well before I removed it all and refinished the hardwood floors.
I guess blue was the color back then.  It's not bad just hard to work with if you want to change things up a bit. 

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Fast Food

I like fast food but I prefer it to slow down so I can shoot it!!

I did manage to harvest a mature whitetail doe on Saturday evening.  I took no pictures.  It's just a doe.
I like to eat venison and she just (I can be so lucky) happened to be made of venison.  So bang!! now I get to eat her!  My neighbor shot a doe Friday night and gave her to me so now I have two venisons.  :-)
After all the butchering, trimming fat and sinew, grinding and slicing I put about 60 lbs. into the freezer.
I will be eating venison tonight.  I ate venison on Friday night .  I will eat venison for lunch on Wednesday.
Did I mention I like venison?  I will make sausage sticks, summer sausage, trail bologna, jerky with these two venisons.  No that's not the proper way to say that but I like the way it sounds.  Perhaps if we are fortunate Kaitlin will get to harvest another deer during the youth hunt.  The 60 lbs of venison I put in the freezer cost me only .33 cents per lb.  It was $15 for one of the tags and I spent $5 on packaging materials.  Where else can you get meat that cheap?  Meat that has been processed at home and is free from the yucky stuff that the butcher guy would just grind right up.  So with that said I leave you with one final thought...........
I LIKE VENISON!!!!!!!!

Saturday, September 18, 2010

High Speed Beef

 Yep, it's that time of the year.  Pull the lightning stick out of hibernation and rack in a fresh shell.
The state of Michigan has deemed us worthy enough to have a go at some early season does.
It is my understanding that the herd has progressed to a saturated state ( as if you couldn't tell by the carcasses that litter the highway and rural country roads) and the DNRE needs our help to thin the herd.
Yes the DNRE.  Department of Natural Resources and Environment.  It seems as though they have done such a great job at managing our hunting, fishing and camping that they now have the power to manage our environment.  Who only knows what that is going to cost us.  So anyways in order to thin the herd the DNRE has placed a bounty on the heads of the doe population.  Should I say a reverse bounty.  Somehow they have figured that $15 per tag should help get them out of debt or rather get "us" out of debt.  Sounds to me like they are not quite as concerned with the doe population as they are with making some money.  I won't dwell but if they charged $5 per tag then I might line up at the counter with the rest of my hunting comrades and buy our limit of 5 per day.  Yes I said 5 per day.  Can you imagine shooting 5 deer in a day?
I am lucky enough to have the facilities and the capabilities for home processing but some do not and the local butchers are charging between $75 and $110 a deer for processing.  Multiply that by 5 and most need a small lottery winning to put some venison in the freezer.  Where am I going with this?  Nowhere really.  Just whining about the price of a license.   It doesn't do any good because I purchased one anyways.  Next i will purchase my combination license which is $30 and allows me to shoot 2 bucks.  Then I will purchase another 2 or 3 doe license.  It doesn't matter because the addiction to hunting and sausage/jerky making is too powerful for my checkbook to resist.  So here we go.  First night of doe hunting.

Of course all I see is BUCKS!!!!

This guy was a 6 point or so.  He didn't stay out in the open very long.
This is the view from the left side of the stand.  This grass path runs out to a 100 acre corn field.

This is the view out the front.  A pine stand to the front and a pond and thickets to the right make for a nice bedding area and the deer are frequently moving through this tall grass to and from their bedding and feeding areas.

These two guys were at the end of the grass path next to the corn.  A scrubby 4 point and a 6/7 point.

This little unicorn walked right out in front of me at ten yards.
That was all I saw the first night.
The neighbor shot two does and donated one to me for some good grub.
Start filling the freezer back up.

It's nice to sit in the quiet and read with the background noises of nature.

Saturday morning I took Kaitlin with me and the morning started all right but then a storm moved in and it began to lightning and thunder.  The deer were pretty much bedded down and not moving.  We sat through the storm anyways.  We just closed the windows and Kaitlin curled up in her chair and napped while I read my book.

Isn't she just adorable?  My mighty huntress!!
Once the storm let up we both decided to call it quits and head for pancakes and sausage.
I'll try again tonight. 

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Sunday Salutations

Hello and Good Morning!!!
It is a beautiful Sunday morning here in mid Michigan.
Yesterday was our last outing on the duck boat until regular season kicks in.
Our final tally was 11 geese.  We would've had more but didn't shoot well.
We were rained out around noon.  We sat in the rain for around two hours and finally called it.
We were supposed to have lunch on the boat and I had packed the food as well as the Coleman stove.
Ernie and Steve also brought goodies.  We had BBQ chips and Frito's, smoked salmon, venison sausage stuffed with pepper jack cheese, banana nut muffins, coffee and soda and I had prepared a pulled pork tenderloin with a honey, brown sugar, balsamic sauce.  I hollowed out some ciabbata squares and stuffed them full of the pork and sauce.  We ended up coming home and cooking here but it was still tasty.
The morning started out with a beautiful sunrise.



I thawed out all the goose breasts and sliced them up for jerky which will hit the smoker around noon today.

This is about half of them.  It is from all three of us so I wasn't worried about my possession limit.
I butterflied them and then sliced into jerky strips, laid them on plastic wrap and sprinkled with the cure/seasoning and then packed in plastic bags for a 20 hour rest.



This is ten lbs of goose strips.  Season one side then flip them and repeat.
I will smoke them today, should take about 4-5 hours depending on temperatures.
I like to smoke around 180 degrees or so. 
My next projects are going to be re-fabricating the duck boat (countless hours of sitting in it gave us some good ideas for changes)
Repairing ceiling in bathroom from leak upstairs, painting bath and peeling off wall paper border.
Possibly making the fireplace in the living room active instead of a useless imitation gas wood burner that doesn't do anything except keep my gas bill up in the clouds.  Seal up windows and all cracks in basement, cover windows and put weather seal around doors.  $ 500/month energy bills are killing us.
Need to find a solution or I'm gonna be bankrupt and living with OP.

Plus early doe season is coming, and regular season goose and archery deer and duck season, not to mention a youth season for deer.  Help pack the freezer once again and cut down on the grocery bills.

Friday, September 10, 2010

The furlough that haunted!!!

An appropriate title for a sub middle class outdoorsman who makes his living one week at a time.

I am truly sorry that I haven't visited with you in a week.  I am just trying to squeak by last week and this coming week.  I won't bore you with my monetary deficiencies.  Let's just say it's tiiiiiiight around here.

The goose hunting has been a little slow since I last posted.  been out a few time since but not a shot fired (in anger or in aiming).  So I have a whole lot of nothing which usually turns into some mindless rambling so buckle up.
Boring!!! I even bore the dogs sometimes.  I wouldn't call this a full fledged act of spooning but perhaps a spatula????

Sunrise on the goose field.  There doesn't have to be geese flying to have a successful hunt!!

Captain Ernie piloting the duck boat back to shore.

Triple Berry Shiraz anyone?

Look at his nuts!!!  (that he's eating)


Shocking!!

Vietnamese Omelet????????

OK I'll end on that one.  SORRY!!!!

Friday, September 3, 2010

Goose Hunts

We went back to the pond today and had a couple flocks come in.  Not many birds.  Can't figure out where all of them went to but we were wrapping things up, hooking decoys and picking up any floating empty shells when the mother load came in.  The boat was adrift in the pond and we were close to the anchors (actually had one by hand ) but not set.  The wind was blowing pretty hard and the boat was drifting back and forth and the geese were circling.  probably close to 30 geese all wanting in.  They circled about 4 times and finally came in close enough.  We opened up and a few took a nose dive.  What a rush, we were giggling like school kids the whole time. We ended up with 4 for the day.  Our shooting was lackluster to say the least.  Ernie's son Steve ended up taking a double leg banded goose.  It had a band from the recent oil spill on the battle creek river.  The DNR trapped and cleaned the birds of oil, banded them and released them.
The tag said to call and it turns out they just wanted to tell us not to eat the bird.  The neat thing was they only banded about 80 birds and he got one of them.  These pictures are from two days of hunting.
The foggy ones are from Thursday.
Here's me in the front of the boat.

Ernie in the back





The next set are from our field hunt this evening.  Seen a couple geese but the wind was howling and a storm was moving in.  Still fun to get out in the field with friends and have a good time.



It wasn't looking pretty!!

There was one ray of hope but.....

it faded quickly and the rain began.  the 35 mph winds and the rain was
just enough to drive us from the field.  Not much was moving tonight.
We are going to set up here again in the morning because we have been seeing them here in the AM
Stay tuned.......

Furlough Day 4

This will be a short one.  We hit the pond in the morning.  As soon as all the night roosting geese left (100 or so) we slipped into the boat and set up some perimeter decoys, trying to cover the area they want to land with the spread to force them to land closer to us.  Then we anchored up and waited.  We had 3 singles come in.  One landed too far out, one I pulled from the sky with a load of BB.  The third I flat out missed.  We also had a group of about 7 come in and Ernie gathered up 2 of them while I harvested 1.  Then it went quiet and it started raining.  It rained from about 8:30 and when we called it at noon it was still raining and wouldn't you know it the weather guy called for clear conditions until about noon so we had zero rain gear.  We paid our dues to the waterfowl club though because we were soaked to the bone.  I did snap a couple pics but when it started raining I had Ernie put my camera in his waterproof bag and it is at his house now.OOOPS.
So to make a short story long, just kidding, we ended up with four out of 10 sightings.  Pretty good for our first outing together.  The great thing is out of the hundreds of geese using this particular pond we only educated about 6 of them.  So Friday morning all the rest, or some of the rest, will return with no idea we are there or nothing to be suspicious about anyways.  Ernie's son Steve is making the trip with us this morning.  Hi first time in the duck boat.  He has access to some hot fields right now so there is some back scratching going on.  LOL  Ok enough for now.  We will be field hunting tonight so I will try and post this afternoon between hunts.  If I have enough time.  I have to change my field hunting gear over to wheat stubble instead of corn before this afternoon. 

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Furlough Day 3

Opening day of early goose season!!!
Left the house at 5:30 am and headed out to a green chop corn field.  I went alone on this hunt as my goose partner's daughter joined the Marines and had her swearing in yesterday.  Congratulations Nicole!!

I hauled all the gear out in the field.  Probably close to 120 lbs of blind, decoys, gun, shot shells, coffee, water, granola bars, corn cobs.  It was a good work out if anything.  I was setting up my decoys shirtless because it was pretty warm.

The pile of corn stuff is my blind

The sun is coming up. 

My spread of decoys.  The wind was blowing about 10 mph from the SSW so I set my blind with the wind at my right side, I was facing east, then strung my decoys out in a long J shape.  My blind sat in the curve of
the J.  Point is, geese land into the wind so they are supposed to land into the curve of the J or anywhere in front of it.  The decoys act as blockers and steer the geese into a shooting position.  Theoretically anyways!!


Here is a good shot of the J formation.  Zoom in and you will see my blind about 7th or 8th in the line of decoys.

Daylight shot of the blind.  I like to put a decoy by it like it is feeding in a pile of stubble.  Corn cobs strewn around make it more enticing.  They actually make plastic corn cobs to help lure them in.  It is illegal to feed/bait them with real food. 

Corn Feet!!

Turns out I didn't get any geese but I did have 3 Sand hill Cranes drop in on my set.  Also had a bunch of crows drop in and right at the last second they flared away.  That is the closest I have ever had crows.
You know you have a good set up when crows get close.  The geese just haven't found this field yet as it was green chopped only Monday.  They will. 
When I got home I had a not so ordinary breakfast of meatloaf and eggs.
I pan fried a piece of leftover meatloaf and plopped a big egg right on top.
The yolk mixed with the meatloaf was really good.

Well gotta go.  Ernie is meeting me here at 6:30 am to load the boat for our season premiere on the goose pond.  It's 5:30 am now.  Yeah if you haven't figured it out my posts are set a day late.
Stay tuned for the next blog, it is sure to have geese in it!!!