686

That would last over a decade in our house.

You see what we're dealing with over here? "Aggie Jokes" were/are stories just like yours, that sound like fiction, but are usually based in/largely fact. Its Dunning-Kruger on an institutional scale.

I agree we are taking too much risk regarding CWD, I personally would be in favor of laws banning the import of deer genetics across state lines. It's not worth it. I would also be in favor of a minimum size pasture for a high fence deer operation (say 640 acres or so), but I don't think that is practical. My hope/optimism that high fences will be passe at some point comes from the following: People understand now that high fence, imported genetics is something different than low fence native genetics. It's even advertised ("Holden Pasture Low Fence Monster Bucks!") A lot of the "elitist"/hardcore hunters are expressing stronger views against high fences on social media and elsewhere. Generation Y and Millenials would rather not hunt high fences from what I've seen, both because of a nagging ethics dilemma, and: If you post a picture of a big buck you shot on social media, people are going ask if it was high fence or low fence, and if the answer is high fence, they are going to ridicule/dismiss it. I think poaching of trophy deer will decline over the next 20 years, because the younger generations just aren't that into having a big rack of questionable provenance on the wall, and if it's poached, you can't post it on social media or you're going to get caught, because there are cameras everywhere. (See 271" buck story, etc.) There is a nexus between the foodie/organic/sustainable eating/living movement and free range hunting that is growing, Steve Rinella is the most visible "leader" of that movement, but there are a lot of other folks like him putting stuff on youtube, etc. that are way more focused on the meat than the antlers.

The dynamic I've seen a fair amount on hunting/ranch trips is that the wealthy businessman is somewhat envious of the ranch hand's life out in nature, and the ranch hand is envious of the wealthy businessman's sophisticated life of means. I really enjoy watching folks from those two spheres share stories/knowledge around the campfire and live vicariously through each other's experiences. A lot of times, it seems that both come away with a renewed appreciation of their own sphere (frequently because the other guy's challenges seem insurmountable from a novice, outside perspective), while also developing a more nuanced/detailed view of the world by better understanding the other guy's sphere. I used to think that the growing high fence/expensive/guided/etc. hunting market was a negative development (and some of it is), but at the same time, putting big city businessmen and country-raised ranch hands in a blind or around a campfire together is a great thing. Also, a humble, optimistic prediction: in 20-30 years, it will be en vogue to replace high fences with low fences (on sizeable places).

I'm not a huge fan of high fences either, but you are overestimating the amount of effort on the owners' part on this place. Its a 5000 acre investment property with energy-based revenue streams; the deer hunting is just a fringe benefit. They don't sell any hunts or breeder deer, they just pay a guy to occasionally shred the roads and fill the feeders, and invite friends to come help them shoot numbers per the biologist's quota. They don't even run trail cams. These guys (brothers) are really wealthy and travel the world, etc; sifting through trail cam pics and differentiating/tracking/managing individual bucks (like I do on my family's 200 acre low fence central Texas place) is just not something they are interested in. They are actually planning to sell it in the next few years. Also, just of note, this place is a lot harder to hunt/harvest/whatever than my central Texas place, the brush is very thick and the bucks don't come out much except for the rut. We were shooting does down there in late November/Early Dec. and I didn't see a single 2+ year old buck in three days, then when we came back to hunt bucks on Dec.15th, all the big bucks came out to run does.

My traveling battery for Africa. Taking a 7mm Rem Mag along with the 375. Going to cut the middle layer of foam in the next day or two.

Yes, they have a biologist and are MLD. They maintain good pasture conditions, herd numbers/ratios, and have a good feeding program. My friend has only had the place a couple years, he's just been managing the existing genetics, but we have seen a couple of ear tagged does, so the previous owner may have brought a few deer in from elsewhere at some point. The photos were taken at the peak of the rut, so the bucks were about as pumped up as they get.

Thanks, the wide 8 point I shot was 180lbs, my Dad shot a mature 6 point that was 185lbs. This ranch has nice, big bodied deer, but the herd does have a bit of an unfortunate genetic strain of fork-y six points (like that one that is jumping in my last photo). My friend is trying to preferentially harvest those and low-scoring mature 8 pointers like the one I shot, to the degree possible.

That’s on a friend’s well managed south Texas place, I shot the wide 8 point there as a “cull”.

One more comment on the poor lost souls that keep mentioning Starship Troopers as not holding up: there is so much going on in the coed shower scene, that ~2 minutes is just masterful, peak Verhoeven. Here’s an essay reflecting on it 20 years after release: “One of the more good-humoredly fascistic scenes in Starship Troopers is the coed shower scene. Like a lot of on-screen ’90s nudity, this was a key talking point in a long-ago era before you could google any sex act that anyone has ever imagined. From the director of Showgirls and Basic Instinct, it vibed transgressive. The rumor was that Verhoven had been naked behind the camera while his cast was naked up front, a fact confirmed by Verhoeven himself in a 2012 interview with Empire. This sounds prurient, but the effect of the scene isn’t really voyeuristic, and it’s certainly less weird than all those times Michael Bay introduces female characters underbutt-first. The nudity might even be part of the movie’s illusion: a way of getting you to focus on everything besides the point. The shower scene arrives early in the movie, after apparent lead character Johnny Rico (Caspar Van Dien) has joined up with the Mobile Infantry, the sci-fi army that fires cool future weapons and does awesome space stuff. “JOIN THE MOBILE INFANTRY AND SAVE THE WORLD!” is how one newsreel advertises this career option, which sounds like funny only-in-satire hyperbole until you remember that 1998 ad where a marine fights a lava monster with an Arthurian super-sword. “SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP!” is the odd postscript to that newsreel, one last advertisement promise that sounds more insidious every time you hear it. It’s tantalizingly unclear what a “citizen” is in the movie’s context. The original Robert Heinlein book went more in-depth, but Verhoeven barely read the book and hated what he did read, so don’t get too hung up on canon. Johnny’s parents don’t want him to join the army and seem to be doing just fine for sub-citizens. Actually, they live in Buenos Aires, a fact that’s only strange because Johnny and all his friends are played by Americans so white they all had guest arcs on Beverly Hills, 90210. It’s possible that the beginning of Starship Troopers is meant to be a fun utopian future, where the world peacefully formed a global government and then decided to make American english the lingua franca. All that military drapery makes you doubt that anything was peaceful, though. You start to wonder: Are Johnny and his friends growing up in some long-established totalitarian uber-regime? Is this what daily life would look like in some 400-hundred-year-time-jumped Man in the High Castle where America used its brief span as World’s Only Superpower to take the whole thing over? This is the stuff of dark-future terror, but part of the fun of Starship Troopers is how Verhoeven keeps recoding our perspective. There are visual references to Leni Riefenstahl, and half the hero’s plot depends on a high school romantic triangle. The upper-level government spooks wear uniforms that recall the SS, but the different branches of the military have no-bull gender equity (Space Captain Brenda Strong!!!) Actually, the most immediately despicable soldier is Jake Busey, a white dude so white-dude-ly that he was in Shasta McNasty. Busey’s just been abused by a drill sergeant, taught a lesson that involved a knife going through his hand. The scene that follows is, broadly, the “getting to know the squad” scene, plot-sacred since the days of Sands of Iwo Jima, introducing all the soldiers who might die gloriously in the fifth reel. Team chatterbox Kitten (Matt Levin) walks into the group shower, clearly the sarcastic one. “We all have one thing in common,” he moans. “We were all stupid enough to sign up for the Mobile Infantry.” He goes around the horn, asking his squadmates what led them to sign up. A farmboy wanted off the farm. A dude smart enough to get into Harvard needs scholarship money. A woman named Djana’D (Tami-Adrian George) says, “I’m going into politics, and you know, you gotta be a citizen for that, so here I am.” Another women named Katrina (Blake Lindsley) says, “I want to have babies,” which earns an eyeroll from Djana’D, but nobody blinks an eye when this second woman says, “It’s a lot easier to get a license if you serve.” And then Kitten asks Johnny why he joined the Mobile Infantry, and Johnny refuses to say why, but his old high school pal/acrobat-football teammate Dizzy (Dina Meyer) knows he joined because he wuvs service-obsessed Carmen (Denise Richards), so she tells the squad Johnny’s here for a girl, and all the naked young soldiers laugh like this is the most hilarious thing they’ve ever heard. But two big statements were just said here, which fly by so quickly that you’re still trying to understand them when someone slaps Caspar Van Dien’s butt. You need a license to have babies? Running for political office requires some time in the armed forces? “You gotta be a citizen for that,” we’re told, and what else do you gotta be a citizen for? This sounds like a full-blown military dictatorship we’re looking at, or at least a government where federal service grants you power that mere civilianhood cannot, which in the long tail of history equals out to around the same thing. But this is also, weirdly, a reflection of a peculiar strain of ’90s action jingo. In Independence Day and Air Force One, Bill Pullman and Harrison Ford played presidents with enough military background to fire missiles at aliens and beat up British Russians. Both films reflect the ever-lingering influence of Top Gun, which mixed the vaguest Cold War propaganda with the most sanitized version of the MTV style and helped to redefine patriotism as a swagger-y performance of action hero coolness. Top Gun‘s influence is basically everywhere — actual American presidents have taken PR cues from it — and you can maybe watch Starship Troopers as a kind of far-future direct sequel, all the tough young lovely soldiers fighting unknowable antagonists. The enemy MIGs in Top Gun are precisely as nefarious and vague as the bugs in Starship Troopers, and both pairs of uniformed good guys receive their missions like dutiful, unquestioning gamers anxious for the next level to begin. We’re done with the Top Gun program and now we have to fly here to shoot these guys in black helmets? Got it, cue the music. An insect race from across the galaxy with no apparent spacefaring ability fired a meteor through a wormhole at Buenos Aires? Sure thing, boss, that sounds plausible. We’ll nuke first and ask questions later! Weirdly, though, nothing in the Starship Troopers coed shower scene is half as sexy as the volleyball scene from Top Gun. It’s kind of cute, actually? All these badass co-worker people bantering about 10-year plans, sans clothes, like they’re citizens of a commune that only accepts Highly Effective People? (The badass space soldiers of Aliens were casually coed too, but didn’t seem to have career ambitions.) That wasn’t the intention, maybe. In that same great Empire interview, Verhoeven said that the weird nonchalance of the scene was part of the subtext. “The idea I wanted to express was that these so-called advanced people are without libido,” he said. “Here they are talking about war and their careers and not looking at each other at all! It is sublimated because they are fascists.” Maybe? Verhoeven bangs the drum a lot for his films’ deeper themes, maybe recognizing (like Hitchcock in his later years) that there’s a young generation hoping to enrich the culture of their youth with the philosophies they learned about in college. And stamping “Fascism” across Starship Troopers genuinely enriches the film’s later parts, when the triumphalist military tries to stage a battle like the kind of heavily mediated aesthetic “event” that could make Brian Williams lick his lips while Baudrillard does whatever the French do instead of crying. The film will end with the great big battle still ongoing, like a distant Middle East conflict or whatever they’re fighting about in the new Star Wars trilogy. “THEY’LL KEEP FIGHTING, AND THEY’LL WIN!” is the final onscreen promise of the movie — a tease for a sequel, or a hint that all franchises depend on a state of neverending battle, on a world where all that matters is that there is a new enemy to fight. But so weirdly, the coed shower scene is the most human moment in Starship Troopers. Someone wants to go to Harvard, someone wants to make a difference in politics, somebody wants to crank out dem babies, and somebody just hates farming. Nobody seems to care about whatever the Mobile Infantry’s mission is, and maybe this suggests some deeply embedded fascism, or maybe this implies all the possibilities life can offer when there’s no world-ending nemesis to focus on.” Do you want to know more? http:// https://ew.com/movies/2017/11/07/starship-troopers-shower-scene-fascism/

I shot two whitetail with the factory 375 H&H Superformance GMX 250gr this fall; knocked’em flat, zero tracking job. Self-filmed hunting is hard, but I do take my SLR to the stand and take photos

My dad has had one for 20 years, never had an issue, beautiful gun, great lockup mechanism.

It’s not snappy, because it’s heavy (12+ lbs), it’s more like a hard shove. I enjoy shooting it off sticks, shooting off the bench is work. Yes a safari and hopefully future Alaska gun. I’m going for plainsgame next month, hopefully Buffalo on another trip.

Yes, and due to the 1:12 twist rate of the barrel, accuracy depends on the speed of the ammo (slow ammo isn't accurate). The rifle shoots factory Hornady Superformance 375 H&H 250gr GMX @ 2850 fps, so basically the same POI as my handloads. I would probably just shoot that instead of handloading, but the Barnes LRX has better ballistics and is pure copper, not gilding metal (which is harder and less than optimal IMO). The rifle also shoots low cost Remington 260grain softnose fast enough to group well. The low cost Federal 300gr only shoots about 2500fps, and the groups are bad. I didn't try and Federal Premium, as they don't load by preferred bullets in 375 (and they cost about $100 a box).

Thanks, finding the old gun and working it and the load up have been very satisfying. I’m taking it into the field for plains game in July. A neat thing about .375 Weatherby is that it will shoot .375 H&H ammo (lower speed), so if you’re ammo doesn’t make the trip for some reason, you can usually find a local source for some factory H&H.

.375 Weatherby Magnum Handloads. 270 grain Barnes LRX @ 2850 feet per second, about 4900 ft-lb of energy at the muzzle, more energy than a .416 Rigby at 100 yards. Here’s my rifle, it’s an older custom with a heavy Douglas barrel: When you touch one of those off, it’s kind of an event.

Don't waste my MOTHERFUCKIN' TIME!

A couple tips - when you are going to pull a kid, tell them to lay down and be far enough back on the board so at least their feet are in the water (then get up on their knees once you're getting up to speed), and don't drive the boat overly slow starting the pull. If the kids are too far forward and/or you start too slowly, the front of the board could dive and the kid will get a facefull of water, and you will have just set yourself back. I take about 15' out of my tow rope so they are closer to the boat and pull kids from the tower, which also helps keep the nose of the board up at slow speeds (10-11 mph).

Mine love the Zup. Great for guest kids that have never been behind a boat also, because the board is big enough for an adult to ride it with the kid. It’s also neat that you can stand up on it with the kid:

Good call, thanks.

Lake is in pretty good shape at 94% full, only 2' below "full pool" elevation. This is of course my fault, but it would be nice if there was a buoy on that rock ledge.

Good info, thanks! We were on Belton today, down in the deeper part of the lake, I was just unfamiliar with how far this rock shelf went out: Normally on this lake if you’re twenty yards offshore you’re in way over 20’ of water:

Trophy hunting crossed my mind, but we had a ~15 knot wind blowing us toward a rocky shoreline and 90 degrees from our desired course towards the closest ramp (which was about 1/4 mile away), I had some pretty concerned girls/women on board, and no potential tow help in sight. Needless to say, I was up to my eyeballs. I know where I hit though, so I’m going to try to find it at some point. It could have been much worse, thank the Lord we didn’t have any hull damage/weren’t taking on water fast or anything like that.

Shaft is bent. So I’m at least looking at new rudder, prop, shaft, seals, maybe the mounting struts/hubs and seals too. Over $1k in parts, I’m guessing $1k in labor. I’ll probably do the steering cables as well. Here’s my policy limits, I haven’t had many insurance claims, I guess this means maybe I’m only out $500 for this :