Laurel Ridge Farm: Apple Bonanza, Pumpkin Shortage

Sunday, September 22, 2019

Apple Bonanza, Pumpkin Shortage

It's a great year for apples. Both the humans and the critters are enjoying them. No rain at all this week and very little in the forecast. We had a very wet spring/early summer and then it stopped.

I was late getting pumpkins planted due to the rain. I only got about 2/3 of the field planted. And then entire rows didn't come up. So my "pumpkin dependents" may be disappointed this year. I do have some...

Very few large carvers this year. That's my size 10 boot.

Those few nibbles will allow this one to rot. I always lose a few this way every year.

Anyway, the majority of the harvest is in and this is it. Normally I would have four or five times this many.

Out in nature, the persimmons are producing fruit just fine.

This was in the powerplant food plot. I'm pretty sure that these are partridge peas.

Poop of the week - I'm not sure who is responsible for this one. Maybe a coyote.

The outfitter for this year's hunt had a spotting scope as an option on his equipment list. I decided to get a small packable one that can be mounted on my bogpod shooting sticks. I got this Vortex 11-33 and am quite pleased with the size and the packability.

So these are some of the "switcheroo" attachments. The standard fork is for holding the rifle. The pan and tilt is on the sticks with the scope. An the third gadget is a window clamp to mount the scope on a truck window. The pan and tilt base just pulls off the sticks and goes right into the clamp. The red circle is showing where I had the targets set up for 300 yard shots.

Picture taken thru the scope. The trade off for packability was magnification - only 33x at the top end. Seemed worth it. The only downside is very little eye relief at maximum magnification. Like eyeball right on the lens type eye relief.

I tried prone with my 6.5 creedmoor and was banging metal at 300 yards. Took one shot to figure the hold-over. Sitting off sticks was a little less reliable but pretty good. I decided to try 165 grain loads in my 300WM which was last sighted in at 200 yards with 180 grain. Lighter bullet, longer distance, should be about right - right? Wrong! I had to go put up some paper and see where I was.

I was 6" high at 100 yards. You can see I walked it down. I wanted it 2" high which is about a 200 yard zero. Then I shot at the bottom right circle aiming at the bottom. Decent group - two touching. I decide to shoot a 3 shot group with the 6.5 even though I had already put 20 rounds thru it - it was hot and dirty. It shot an ok group on the bottom left.

My old 20-60x scope and my new 11-33x.

The 300WM on top and the 6.5 creedmoor on bottom. Anyway, not sure if I will be able to shoot again before heading west in 3 weeks or so.

Last week out with the bobcat on culvert maintenance.

Camera tour.

I did eventually listen to the Mountain and Prairie podcast interview with Bryce Andrews (see previous posts). It was interesting and I subscribed to that podcast series. Here's a link to the website but you can find the podcast in iTunes etc. Mountain and Prairie There is a whole book recommendation section on this website which will take me sometime to explore.

I recently listened to another one in the Mountain and Prairie series and it was an interview with four women of the west involved in various conservation type issues. Also very interesting. There were several mentions of another publication called Modern Huntsman. I found the website. Modern Huntsman

Looks like it may be worth exploring but I was surprised to see a magazine at $35 an issue - I assume that it is not your typical "hornography". This is a description of the publication from the website; "The Modern Huntsman biannual publication is a collective showcase of photography and written stories from the top creatives and enthusiasts in the outdoor world, with the mission of restoring the perception of hunting in our modern society. Printed on thick matte stock, and bound into a substantial book of over 200 pages, it is more of an art portfolio than a publication, and a fitting format for the breathtaking work that our talented storytellers have produced." I'll let you know if I take the plunge. My wife took me to the new Lion King movie. The graphics are incredible with the animals looking extremely lifelike. It was an enjoyable show but you can definitely understand the "Disney effect" on the perception of nature. These were not cartoon characters - they were life-like representations. And the lions were friends with the warthogs, antelope, giraffes, elephants, monkeys and meercats. The lions didn't kill any mammals (there were some bad guys in the hyenas - they hunted - clearly bad guys ate mammal meat). In fact, the lead character grew from a baby to a full-maned grown lion while living in harmony with a warthog and a meercat - Hakuna Matata (and while only eating grubs - who could care about grubs?). Nothing new here except the amazing reality of the graphics but it is the same anthropomorphism that brought us Cecil the lion. By coincidence, I recently saw this link on another blog. The UK National Trust has suggested 50 things that a kid should do out in nature before they turn twelve (11 3/4 actually in the article). Anyway, kind of fun. 50 Things a Kid Should Do Any exposure to real nature has to be beneficial. Some recent items of interest:
QDMA Deer Stand Safety

Hunters Attacked by Grizzly in MT

Nat Geo Polka Dot Zebra