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Modern Day Buckskinner: Some Ruminations of Days Gone By

ArdyJan 10, 2022Adventures,Current events,Hunting0 Comment

 

I’ve always believed that I am a man who was born in the wrong  era. I would have preferred to have been born in the 1870’s. Notice that I didn’t say the 1810’s, and there is a reason for that, actually there are two.

The first is the fact that the percussion cap was invented in 1807 by Scottish clergyman, Rev. Forsyth, who came to the conclusion that it was too hard to prepare for an emergency when one had to jack around with sharpened rocks and two different kinds of powder in order to get a gun to fire. I’m not by any means dependent on modern technology for survival; however, I do appreciate it very much. And the percussion cap was definitely a step up in the utilization of the firearm for advancement to the best of defensive weapons.

The second  reason I wouldn’t have wanted to been born prior to 1870 is that I would not have wanted to have gone through any part of the American Civil War, not even the reformation period immediately afterwards. The reason for this I think is obvious; it was a bloody and brutal time and it would have been hard to have lived in this era without having a heart full of hate because of all the meanness that was prevalent.

If you’re like me then you are likely a big fan of the 1972 film “Jeremiah Johnson”. This is a story of a mountain man named John Johnson who lived between 1824 – 1900. He was nicknamed “Liver Eating Johnson” because he was at war with the Crow Nation and whenever he killed a Crow Warrior, he would cut the man’s liver out and eat it. He used a pair of Hawken Rifles and a brace of pistols that shot black powder and used percussion caps. He also used tomahawk and bowie. This movie was a deciding factor in my boyhood when I decided I wanted to be a mountain man. I still hunt deer and other large game with a muzzleloading rifle; however, now I do it while wearing a blaze orange jacket pursuant to state law, and carrying a camouflage possibles bag.

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Cold Snap! Another Strategy for Late Season White-tail Deer

ArdyDec 30, 2021Camping,Hunting0 Comment

It was still dark when my son and I sat shivering at dawn, in a rickety old deer stand, in the freezing cold of a frosty January morning. It was our fifteenth day hunting deer in a stand of hardwoods that had thus far revealed nothing other than several pesky squirrels; one screaming, (snitching), squawking, Bluejay; and a gaggle of turkeys that meandered about like a group of church women looking for a sinner to save.

There was plenty of sign! As a matter of fact, the only reason I had picked this exact spot for my young son’s first deer hunt was because, if you judged by the sign, it was a veritable metropolis of deer activity.

However, we had gone over two weeks with nothing other than sign to substantiate our hopes and dreams of deer loin and a full winter freezer.

The weather that deer season in Ohio had been very mild. Archery season had opened in Mid-September while it was still quite hot and I am not the guy who believes in harvesting deer while there are still ticks on them.

The weather had stayed mild throughout the season even into Mid-December when the state gun season had started. Me and the boy had gone out faithfully everyday even though we averaged a temperature of about 50 degrees or so. And, we hadn’t even so much as gotten a single shot. We had not even seen a single deer, let alone any married ones. We did see plenty of sign though which was evidence to me that they had gone completely nocturnal for some reason.

Our state, Ohio, had a late season gun hunting session which took place in early January and which only lasted 2 days. By early January it had gotten cold.

It was on this day that we found ourselves shivering in this treestand fully expecting to have more of the same bad luck that we had received all season long. I was contemplating crawling down out of the tree and going home, as the first light of dawn illuminated the forest, and just as I was about to recommend to the boy that we run into town and see what Loretta had on the breakfast menu at the local diner; I heard something crunch.

Looking down I saw a young meaty doe drift quietly beneath our stand and glide through the meadow we were overlooking. Simultaneously, there were suddenly several does walking amongst us, moving hurriedly as if there were some urgent business to attend to. The boy shot a very fat meat doe clean and quickly. His first deer!

This taught me a valuable lesson in the habits of deer and the effect of the weather on their habits. Deer, just like people, are subject to the influences of the environment on their well being. The cold makes them move to keep warm. I have used this strategy ever since that day, and have had a successful hunt each and every  time I wait for a cold snap to sit a deer stand. It also seems to me that the snowier it is , the better.

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A Kind Word For the Ruger Mini-14

ArdyDec 13, 2021Adventures,Camping,Current events,Hunting,Military Surplus Blog Posts,Prepper,product reviews0 Comment

In a world that has somehow fallen in love with the AR platform of rifle, for everything from varmint shooting to deer hunting, many people forget that there were other platforms prior to VietNam and the M16.

According to several knowledgeable individuals, the absolute best platform for survival and combat was the M1 Garand, a .30-06 rifle that helped America settle the mess that Hitler and Hirohito started in WWII.  This rifle was great for distance as well as for CQB, (in a pinch). A friend of mine named Dale “Piper” Hickman was in the 5th wave at Omaha Beach on D-Day, and walked across Europe in the 1940’s a privileged guest of his Uncle Sam. Once, while pinned down in a French village by a German sniper, he successfully used his Army issued M1A1 Garand to  counter snipe the unlucky bastard after he observed his muzzleflash in the top of a church steeple. Piper claimed he got three rounds off as he ducked behind the corner of the building he was using for cover, and then flanked the church from an adjoining street and cleared the church with two other members of his platoon. There he found the sniper, deceased from one round that punched a hole in his throat, one in the center of his Nazi face, and one adorning his forehead like a ruby red jewel. Piper was very impressed with the rifle’s performance stating that was the only time during his entire tour that he was able to judge his own accuracy, because no one else had shot at the guy.

However, most soldiers found the M1A1 Garand to be too heavy, it’s ammo too cumbersome, and it’s length too much to try to maneuver. Therefore, the next rifle that went into service was the .308 M-14 rifle, which never saw a lot of combat use other than in the very early years of the VietNam war. There it was discovered that the ergonomics of the rifle were off for jungle combat, and the M16A1 was introduced into service.

However, many people saw the benefit of the M-14 design for sporting and utility purposes, specifically for ranchers. That is why, as the M-14 rifle lost it’s place to the M16 platform, companies like Sturm Ruger saw and opportunity in the design. Ruger therefore took the basic design and repaired the ergonomic flaws and produced the current Mini 14 rifle. This rifle had a very distinct cult following before the attention turned toward the AR platform which evolved from the M16. It was very popular in law enforcement and quasi military organizations like Border Patrol, Correctional Facilities and Fish and Wildlife. Sturm Ruger Co. offers excellent customer service for these rifles, and even offers armorer courses around the world to teach dis-assembly, modification, and upkeep.

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350 Legend: A New Ballgame for Restricted States

ArdyDec 01, 2021Adventures,Hunting,Prepper,product reviews0 Comment

If you are a midwestern hunter in states like Ohio, Indiana, or Iowa, then you know the absolute frustration of trying to pursue big game in what is known as densely populated hunting grounds.

For years we have been restricted to hunting whitetail deer with either a shotgun or a smoky old muzzleloader. The reason for this has always been hunter, (and farmer), safety. In the flat lands where corn and wheat fields abound, there is a real concern with hi power rifles, which can shoot for sometimes up to a mile, missing their targets and hitting people or equipment.

Several years ago, the state of Ohio allowed for the use of handgun cartridges in the hunting of whitetail deer. Recently they have gone a step further and allowed for the use of handgun cartridges that fire from rifles. “Straight -Walled” cartridge rifles for deer hunting are now a common thing in Ohio. In response to this new market for deer hunters, Winchester Repeating Arms developed a fairly good product in the 350 Legend™ rifle cartridge.  This cartridge is basically a 5.56mm necked up to accommodate a .357 bullet. The result is a hard hitting, fairly low velocity round that won’t really go too far.

Many firearms companies are making these rifles to supply the market and they are using every platform to accommodate an individual shooter’s needs.

Henry™ rifle company for instance, is offering the 350 Legend in both a lever action rifle, which is their mainstay, and a single shot edition, which is high quality but also very affordable. Ruger™, Savage™, and Winchester™ all offer it in bolt action rifles, and many manufacturers are offering this cartridge on an AR platform. I personally bought one from the great Lakes Manufacturing Company out of Michigan and installed a Bushnell 3-9×44 Banner scope, and I am shooting 170gr. Hornady SP rounds after having sighted it in at 150 yards with a Winchester 145gr FMJ. According to the box, 0 at 150 yards will produce a 5.2″ drop at 200 yards and a decrease of 172 fps. I usually set up my AR to fire with my nose touching the charging handle as I was trained; however, you might want to back the scope up a bit because the recoil is more than you’ll likely be able to comfortably stand on the tip of your nose… at least that was my experience.

I’ll let you know how it goes in later installments.

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Woodland finds: 3 Reasons you should never leave feathers in the wilds

ArdyNov 18, 2021Adventures,Camping,Camping, Adventures,Earthquake Preparedness,Emergency Preparedness0 Comment

I was recently walking through the woodlot that my wife and I have acquired for a little getaway hunting spot when I spotted a pristine turkey feather lying in the underbrush, and immediately to the left of it a second one. I immediately grabbed both of them up and took them to my car to keep for later use.

I consider things like this to be a gift.  And, I make no bones about my belief that this gift is from a Creator God who loves me and provides for me. “What kind of a gift is two feathers from God?” you might ask.  Well, I would counter by asking what makes a Godly gift valuable? Is it the amount of money that another man would give you for it, or is it rather more valuable simply because God gave it to you? I’ll go with the latter.

In any event, I never walk by several things in the wilderness. I never walk by a good piece of flint, I never walk past an empty birds nest, and I never walk by a feather of any sort.

There are many reasons to acquire feathers for survival situations, and the need and use of them goes well beyond  simple survival. Writing utensils for instance. Quill pens were in use by early Americans for centuries before the common writing utensils were invented, and if times get hard again, I can see them becoming fashionable again. Ink isn’t hard to make either, a very simple ink can be crafted from lamp black, egg yolk, gum arabic, and honey. (Inmates make tattoo ink in prison by burning petroleum jelly in the bottom of their footlocker and letting the soot collect on the top of of the lid from the smoke as it burns).

Here are three uses for feathers in a survival situation:

  1. Camouflage.  Native Americans didn’t just wear feathers as a status symbol. They offer a practical use as well. Much like a multicolored, three dimensional ghillie suits offer superior camouflage capabilities, so too does the advent of nature’s camouflage to your kit and apparel.
  2. Fletching. It goes without saying that adding fletching to your arrows or atl atl bolts will increase accuracy over distance. Never let an opportunity to save feathers go so that you can maintain a quiver full of arrows if needed.
  3. Fluff. Never forget the need for insulation in a wilderness survival situation, and never pass up the opportunity to gather some of nature’s best insulation.

 

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Hunting Idaho’s National Parks: 3 Thing You Must do to Prepare

ArdySep 28, 2021Adventures,Camping,Camping, Adventures,Current events,Emergency Preparedness0 Comment

It has recently been noted that the world class elk taken by city dwellers,  and would be preppers and survivalists, in Idaho’s national parks, are a thing of the past. Those campsites which used to house truck campers, hobo camps, and military surplus tent enthusiasts are laying empty, windswept, and weedy.

Those trophy bulls, writes Andrew McKean for Outdoor Life™, can now only be found in private properties with river bottom hayfields that will accommodate these majestic animals under the guns of these independent ranchers. The problem, writes McKean, is wolves.

Wolves have been protected, and to many notions, over protected, for the last several decades in national parks. And it is because of these protections that much of the game has been driven from the parks to adjoining areas where private livestock, and property owner rights, make it safer for a herd animals to migrate hither and yon for breeding and grazing purposes.

None of this really affects me as a wildlife photographer per se. I would rather hunt wolves any day as opposed to elk, bear, deer, or bison. What gathers my attention the most is the reference to those empty camp sites and abandoned stands.

A wildlife photographer’s best friend is said to be “down yonder”. In my experience, my favorite people are those found to be “Way Down Yonder”. I absolutely abhor company and love solitude. So it is definitely in my sphere of contemplation for the winter season, to haul my camper out to Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho’s Panhandle National Forest, up near Packsaddle Mountain, and see what kind of lupine footage I can find. Here, in retrospect, are three strategies for a successful hunt in Idaho.

  1. Consider your purpose and make adjustments as needed. Why do you hunt? That is a question I asked myself once while covered in doe blood, my hands greasy with winter fat from a deer I had just ended the existence of. Did I need the meat? No, we had a beef ranch at the time and had several fields full of angus to eat, money in the bank, plenty of food to be had from several different resources. I came to the conclusion that I enjoyed the competition of hunting. So I exchanged a gun for a camera.
  2. Make sure you are well prepared. When I go camping these days, I use a pull behind fiberglass trailer that runs heat and air conditioning from a dual fuel generator that will fire up from propane gas or electricity. Above and beyond that I have two solar generators that will mount on the roof of my camper to run heaters for emergency purposes. I also keep twenty plus gallons of potable water in the storage unit of my trailer.
  3. Be well armed. I cannot stress this enough. In this day and time you should not only want to be armed for dangerous animals, but for dangerous people as well. Generally my photography kit includes a Glock 17 with three 17 round magazines, (on my waist), a KelTec Sub2000, (fitted for Glock 17 mags and folded into a backpack with a bug-out bag holding five 17 round magazines), and a Smith and Wesson Model 629 Mountain gun holstered on my load bearing vest with molle straps.
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Uncle John’s Truck: The, (next to), Final Chapter

ArdyJan 21, 2021Adventures,Camping,Camping, Adventures,Current events,Emergency Preparedness0 Comment

That Fall arrived subtly, it was a very smooth transition and arrived more from the acknowledgement of the date on the calendar than it did from an awareness of the change of season. It had been a fairly mild winter, not too sunny and mostly rain for some reason. This had made it pretty insignificant in regards to the various sportsman adventures that I was used to having. Political unrest in the venue my dad worked at kept him pretty busy and he didn’t have much time to run to our fishing hole, even on the days that were nice and sunny.

And so I went about my routine, I was working at McDonald’s still even though I had finished my training. I was volunteering at two different fire departments, and since that was my passion, I focused my energy there. But with the advent of deer season coming into the scene, I suddenly started getting buck fever.

Over the summer my grandpa had died and he had left my mom some acreage in the woods of hilly eastern Ohio. It was a long way from where we live, but it was definitely teeming with wildlife and I decided that I was going to have a deer hunt there to enjoy my first deer camp as a full grown man, (I had just recently turned 18), and would be eligible to finally hunt without adult supervision. I also wanted to test myself as I had never been in any sort of survival or wilderness situation without the supervision of my dad or older brother.

I took advantage of the local Black Friday Sales to purchase a deer stand and a really good sleeping bag. My dad offered up grandpas old military surplus army tent for me to use since work wasn’t going to be able to let him go to the regular deer camp we usually pitched that year…

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Uncle John’s Truck: A Story of Coming to Manhood in Rural America (part 5)

ArdyDec 15, 2020Adventures,Camping,Camping, Adventures0 Comment

… I can’t really describe the taste of those fresh fish fillets fried over a hot little fire on the river bank. I was by myself which wasn’t really what I preferred, (my dad had other obligations over the weekend), but even so, as I settled into the little bedroll I had pitched in the bed of Uncle John’s truck and I listened to the screech owls scream at each other in the creek bottoms, I couldn’t really imagine that life could get much better.

I was wrong about that.

It was a few weekends later that my church youth group announced that there would be a creek run and that we would be participating. For those of you who are uneducated, a creek run consists of gathering any and everything that will support your weight through buoyancy, and floating it down the river. While you’re doing this you will be laughing, splashing, fishing, and trying your best to drown yourself and all your friends. It was a really great time, and unlike in the past, where I would have had to ask my dad to strap the two kayaks to his Subaru and take me to the drop off, this time I was able to throw both kayaks in the back of Uncle John’s truck and head out by myself. I also invited along the particular object of my affections at the time. Unfortunately for me I hadn’t bothered to tie my swim trunks particularly tight, and while I was showing off at some point they came of and got swept away in the current. I ended up having to borrow the object of my affection’s towel to wrap around my naked waist, and then I had to drive her home with no pants on. And “that” so they say, “was the end of that”.

Summer was a true blast in that truck, regardless of my failed attempts to woo the opposite sex, but the real excitement of having a truck came with the fall and winter…

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Uncle John’s Truck: A Story of Coming to Manhood in Rural America (part 3)

ArdyNov 30, 2020Adventures,Current events,Fishing,Hunting0 Comment

As soon as I was free of the crash and saw the scene, I knew someone had to be hurt, (it never really occurred to me that I was the someone who should have been hurt). I immediately reached back into my car, rummaged around in the debris until I felt the familiar canvas of my medical kit, and rushed to the Expedition that I knew had been occupied by the woman. I picked her first for two reasons. First, I knew she was of “young mother” age, and, though an Expedition is technically an SUV, for many it serves the same purpose as a mini-van, albeit a 4 wheel drive one. So I fully expected there to be a child restraint seat or two in that Expedition. I wasn’t wrong, there was a child restraint seat in the back; however, it was unoccupied.   Second, I was a little pissed at the old man in the huge pickup truck to be honest.

As it turns out, both of the other drivers were fine, and even I was fine, though I turned out to be sore as hell for about a week afterwards. Unfortunately my car was destroyed front and back.  My dad came and got me and together we followed the tow truck to the impound lot, we grabbed the plates off of the front and back, grabbed my personal gear… and left my first car in a dirty old gravel lot, crumpled and destroyed, surrounded by the corpses and skeletons of other peoples dreams and visions that had been decimated in like manner.

I don’t know what made my dad think of it, but he recalled that his sister’s husband, my Uncle John, had mentioned a few weeks earlier that he had bought a new truck and had his old one up for sale.  Uncle John is one of those guys that you want to have as a neighbor and a friend. He stands 6’7″ tall and weighs in at about 450 pounds. He’s not fat though. He’s a big solid chunk of muscle on a steel alloy frame. He used to pick up trailers and pull them to a bumper hitch while the rest of us were trying to back up and align the two. John was also the type of guy who really took good care of his things. A chainsaw, for instance, was taken apart and cleaned after use instead of being thrown haphazardly into the bed of a truck…

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Uncle John’s Truck: A Story of Coming to Manhood in Rural America (part 2)

ArdyNov 06, 2020Adventures,Current events,Emergency Preparedness,Uncategorized0 Comment

… The car that stopped in front of me was pretty straightforward. The lady driving the heavy Ford Expedition pulled up to the stoplight and ceased all motion as planned, I followed suit, and the guy in the F350 dually – which was directly behind me – blew it!

The crunch was horrendous as everything moved in slow motion around me. I remember thinking back to every modern action movie I had ever seen, with “The Matrix” taking a predominate spot in my rumination. As the shattered glass, bits of plastic, and personal items that had been sitting in the seat beside me began to dance in strange rhythm around my head, and the ass end of that Expedition loomed menacingly in my windshield preluded by the crumpled metal that had just milliseconds before been the hood of my car, it occurred to me that I could be injured and I experienced a strange calm and quieting.

Suddenly everything sprang into motion and I could hear a horrible cacophony of sound. There were car alarms sounding, the tinkle of glass, loud honking, and the memory of that never ending thud of being battered from both ends by vehicles far larger than mine.

My first thought was for the injured. By this point in my training I had adopted the mindset of a first responder, and grabbing my medical kit from the floorboard where it had landed, I pulled the door handle on my car and threw my body weight into the door. It squeaked open grudgingly, and in a moment I was free. In my periphery, I could discern that the Expedition was driven by a young woman, mid-twenties to early thirties. The truck I had seen was driven by an older man. I had noticed this somehow as I glanced in the rearview mirror after stopping at the light, and saw that he had a dogged, determined look on his face as he barreled into the back of my car; I don’t think he even saw me or the Expedition for that matter…

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