Daily Check in!
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@bigfoot Brave Man!
I'm going to be smoking a turkey today and roasting another turkey tomorrow on the grill. Both my brothers and my daughter and family are coming "over the hills and through the woods" tomorrow. My wife has been baking cornbread, making stuffing, baking yams, and baking pies all week. The house smells great!
Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!
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@shakeyhand I thought about putting the turkey on the smoker I have never done one. I figured it needed to be brined but these Butterball's are already injected with something a fresh bird might be better. I remember going to a farm close to here with my grandmother and getting a live turkey when I was pretty young. We stuffed it in a feed sack still alive and its head was poking out riding back in their old Dodge Coronet car with me holding it. Boy was it in for a surprise. Turkeys have a lot of feathers but easier to pluck than a chicken. I had all kinds of big feathers to decorate stuff with after that.
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Happy Thanksgiving to one and all! Before Hallmark, Thanksgiving was a day set aside to give thanks, to God and to friends and neighbors for the good fortune to have made it through another year alive. Perhaps it would be good to return to those roots and remember that time is the only thing that cannot be replaced and we have no idea how much of it we have left. Share time with those you love, everyday.
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Front is blowing in right now. A little spattering of rain and the temperature is dropping back to a more realistic December level. The Gulf of Mexico is still relatively warm and when the wind blows from the south-east, we can get back to shirt sleeve weather quickly.
The North wind is blowing a fresh crop of post oak and cedar elm leaves into the yard and porch so the broom will make another appearance this afternoon. We are finally over half-way through the leaf season...
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Now the wind is blowing hard out of the south-east and the leaves are flying again! We are about 3/4 through with them finally! Warm then cold: repeat, repeat, and repeat again...
Steel challenge match again tomorrow: move from the waist, both eyes open, squeeze, don't slap the trigger, but most of all, don't shake that hand!
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Wind straight out of the north since around midnight. Temperature has dropped 50 degrees but humidity is much lower than yesterday. Don’t think I’m going to get any rain out of this.
Off to meet the new landlord of the muzzleloader range in a bit. I need to negotiate a sublease with him for Texas Single Shot Rifle Association match dates or go get Travis lined up to move our equipment off the range with his tilt bed wreckers. Our old landlord has had that range leased since 1971. There was a succession plan in place, we thought, but he ignored it and turned the range back to the landowner unexpectedly a couple of months ago. The guy leasing the range beside ours was nearby and snagged it on the spot. The windy weather today pretty well precludes hunting in brush country so might as well get this out of the way.
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@rr2241tx good luck on the negotiations! We got .38 inch last night and I slept well with the storm pounding on the roof.
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What a glorious day! This is the weather that makes that long, hot summer worth it! The sun was warm and comforting as I sat propped up on the bricks that were bathed in bright mid-winter sunlight with my faithful dog sitting beside me. Such a change from yesterday with low clouds and wind gusting out of the North. I was surprised that the shakey hand behaved even though the rest of me was shivering at the match.
To top it all off, one of the shooters who is also a gunsmith and FFL dealer told me that a package from Primal Rights for me was delivered on Friday!
What a glorious day indeed!
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Range use negotiations started off poorly and quickly got worse. New guy wants his annual lease back for each weekend of use. I’d have to charge $200 range fee to pay him. I’m good with the old guy until 31Dec. so will begin vacating the range Wednesday.
TSSRA Spring Match is 21-22 APR, so finding a new home range is my immediate priority. I have a feeling this is a turning point; whether for better or worse remains to be seen.
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@rr2241tx Sorry to hear that! Maybe you can find something even better now - I sure hope so.
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@rr2241tx Go buy a chunk of property on your own and do your own thing. :)
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@orkan Man, I wish that was possible. There are so many people moving here that the grass hasn’t even sprouted on the graves when the developers start cutting roads in the old ranches. Texas has laws that protect shooting ranges. The trick is that you have to defend even frivolous suits alleging noise, stray bullets, etc. and they can quickly run you broke and tie you up for years with TROs while the court gets around to holding a hearing. I watched that happen to a neighbor who built a 4-H range on his 400 acres. He had NRA advisors and the highest berms I’ve ever seen. All out in the middle of his land for kids to shoot 22LR. The construction company was still loading out their dozers when a sleazy lawyer slapped a TRO on him based on a corroded, unfired .375 bullet that allegedly was heard hitting a neighbor’s roof nearly a mile behind his firing line. His kids graduated high school before he could get a hearing on the merits. Land off in the boonies here runs about $16K/acre. It takes 11-12 acres to set up a 200 meter range and berms. I’d be looking for land beside the landfill if I had the money and was 40 years old again. But I’m 69, have survived cancer the doctors told me I had a 30% chance of living another 90 days, six years ago; this is a fight for a younger man.
I’m moving our range gear to the New Braunfels Schuetzen Verein where a manageable amount of work may buy us a few more years.
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@rr2241tx Yikes. Sorry to hear about all of that.
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1/1/22 - The year of the rimfire! Hope it is a great one for everyone!
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Sunday was a welcome relief from the wind, rain, and generally typical winter weather. A light southerly breeze warmed things into the high 50s by noon. The silhouette range was open for practice in the afternoon. No emergency honey-dos. So, I loaded up swingers, a Uberti 1873 Winchester, a 1885 Winchester Single Shot, and an arm-stretching load of 44-40 ammo and got out of the house for a change.
At the range, the IMHSA Pistol guys had all the short berms and the long berms were claimed by F-Class shooters. That left the 100 meter berm completely open. 100 meters offhand with 19th century rifles and primitive iron sights was the order of the day. I have been unable to shoot pistol cartridge silhouette matches since 2019 so there was considerable relearning initially.
Once I recovered my hold and got used to the 4 post globe sight on the 1885, the AR-500 plate hanging from chain serenading the range got lots of attention. A chain-suspended plate gives a much more melodic feedback than bolted down targets.
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I see we're not the only one getting "weather."
It's been the windiest year I can recall for a while here. Just blows constantly... which is really saying something. It's windy here anyway, but yikes it has been really something lately.
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@orkan You have wind. We have what you’d likely call light breezes suitable for practice. Because we don’t have Great Plains winds to practice in, we generally can’t shoot in even half-serious wind conditions.
More drizzle and gusty winds today. Maybe I’ll wash the lightbulbs.
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Fifty degrees this morning and damp. Last week right at freezing every morning and dry air, 14% humidity. Sheriffs loaded a pickup truck yesterday evening out of the ranch adjacent to me. I assume it was stolen I saw the owner of the ranch with them but haven't talked to him yet. This will be the third one since December 22 that was on our road. This one was a new GMC the two other ones belonged to a paving company all we found was their personal property out of the vehicles. Boxes of company checks and credit cards also.
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Freezing rain here last night... and it didn't warm enough for it to disappear today... so it's slippery and cold out!
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@orkan We missed out on the freezing rain last week we could have used the moisture. We had a fifty degree temperature drop and lots of wind with wind chills in the teens.
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Gloomy and cool this morning mid forties. The calves were close to our house and were plenty frisky butting heads and running full speed with their tails in the air. Grouchy old bull gets irritated and if one gets close to him they can get a solid head butt if they are not careful. One of the big ten point bucks we had been seeing either got hit by a vehicle or tangled in a fence showed up a few days ago all cut up. A big wound on his neck and shoulder and on the opposite hind quarter a bloody patch of hide is missing. Yesterday he showed up and had dropped his horns boy I would like to find them while they are fresh. It won't be long all the bucks will be slick headed here. Purple Martins have arrived also and so have the starlings I have something for them. I didn't have much trouble out of them last year or sparrows either a couple had to be relocated. I got the story on the truck it was stolen and hidden on my neighbors place. The thieves cut the lock on an oilfield gate and stashed the truck in some heavy brush but didn't realize there was a workover rig close by. The workers came in the next day and discovered the cut lock and once at the rig saw the truck from the derrick tower. Truck was recovered but no arrests made. I guess we will go into town for some bread and eggs and clean out the mail box. Last time I was there I used my debit card and two days later someone tried to buy clothes at an online store with my account so it got shut down I feel like I am surrounded by thieves.
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When I crawled out of the sack this morning there were rain drops on the windows. We haven't seen that in a while maybe some dew unfortunately the drops were few and far between. In a couple of hours another big drop in temperature is coming spring hasn't quite sprung yet and we still have Easter almost always get a spell of weather then. I visited my reloading supplier yesterday and picked up a pound of Titegroup for some pistol loads and a box of Hornady 10mm hollow points. Saw some primers there and some Lapua and Alpha brass all for PRC cartridges. Lots of Peterson brass also but nothing I load. Leaving there we visited the Wal Mart and my mood changed that place does me no good.
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-30 this morning... and it's due to hit 50 tomorrow.
Welcome to march in SD. lol
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@orkan They don't sell thermometers here that go that low.
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After having Spring-like weather for a few weeks, with lots of daytime temps into the 70's and a couple in the low 80's, we are going to go to around 19 here tonight. That will be one of the 2 or 3 coldest nights of the season so far.
With the warm weather already, a bunch of stuff is flowering and foliating. You should see the number of people out with blankets, plastic, etc trying to cover plants and trees.
