Outdoorsman Thread

[tjmurphy]

Anybody besides me NOT seeing Mike's pictures??

[zp4ja]

We lost pic posting and existing pics TJ. The site was down for maintenance briefly this morning when I tried to log on. The pics from Mike were there earlier.

I am sure Brian is working on it. I put a call into Gino right after it happened but is is probably working. I am very grateful for all Bryan and the Admins do for the forum for all of our enjoyment, that is for sure. Happened one time before if you recall about a year ago roughly. Just have to wait it out.

Jerry

[tjmurphy]

I tried to log on earlier and saw that maintainence was being performed. After doing a little digging through past posts, I got the idea that Bryan was up-dating.

[TripleF]

Knice pics Mike! Thanks for sharing! I appreciate your spirit and OUTDOORS!!!

Even though the temps were a slight under boiling I had to get outside, so I headed to our local State Park with the intent to gather some fatwood.....and that I did.

Yesterday I opened up the processing plant (me and a cigar) and made some resin slivers........oh lordy, these will burn.

I got quite a bit if anybody wants to trade fer some.......

[313 Mike]

Nice score on the fatwood Scott!
I can attest to the quality of the stuff Scott gets ahold of....It has started many a fire for me! Lights easy, burns well and gives off a great scent....I keep a little pouch of it in my pack at all times.

[treefarmer]

Hey Scott,
Noticed your post about the fatwood. If you didn't live so far down the state, we could go in business making fatwood kindling. There are a lot of folks selling these splinters, I even noticed that some were imported .

Years ago most of the big stumps were removed by stumpers who sold the "tar wood" to companies like Hercules Powder Company. The railroad siding in our little town used to have lots of railcars loaded with the fatwood stumps. Driving by you could smell the aroma of the pine knots. A stumper would remove them, from a tract of land, free of charge, allowing the land then to be farmed with larger equipment than the old horse and mule equipment.

Hanging a lighter stump with a set of bottom plows or a subsoiler will get your attention . For some fields you needed a bag full of big 30 or 40 penny nails for shear pins on some of the old trip plows. Sometimes the plows would reset by raising them up and backing up and lowering the plows to the ground, replace the shear pin and go hit another stump! Sometimes you had to reset the tripped plow by hooking a chain to the back of the wing and the other end to a tree. It's not unusual to still hit roots and stumps with a tractor in fields that were farmed with a horse or mule. The old equipment didn't usually run as deep as the more modern implements.

Once in a while we run across an old growth long leaf yellow pine that has died and the heart of it will still be standing tall. There are 2 of these in our old cow pen area. The sap wood has all rotted away and all that remains the the heart the is all fatwood or lighter pine.

Here's a pile that I have by my shop that I have picked up over the years.
Treefarmer

[orvet]

How big are those fatwood stumps down there? Up here in the Pacific NW, we call it pitch and a stump like that is a pitch stump.
I think our Douglas Fir trees and other pine & fir species up here are quite a bit larger than your pine trees down there. When I was stationed in Georgia in 1970 I wondered why all the pine trees were so small. Someone told me that that was as big as they got.


Back in the 70s I went snow shoe camping with my father in law, 2 or 3 brothers in law and a friend and a couple of his brothers. On the way up the mountain we got rained on and soaked. We were geared up for the cold, but not as well for the wet conditions.

We made the snow pack and called a halt at the first sheltered spot we found where we had a break from the wind. We pitched camp, guys used little stoves to get their food warm. My father in law made me some soup, while I worked in vain to get a fire started on top of an old fir stump about 3 to 4 feet in diameter. Snow was packed on the stump and it was soaked. By this time it is dark and snowing and I am a bit more hypothermic than everyone else because of my exposure. By now all I had was a few smoldering twigs and a couple C-ration heat tabs. Finally I gave up and scraped the little bit of fire down into a hole around the outside of the stump. I thought I should open up the edge of the hole so it could get some air it the fire was to have half a chance of catching. I cut out a couple slivers of wood and discovered it was pitch!

In no time I had a roaring fire as most of that old stump was a pitch stump. Never was heat so welcome as that night with 7 or 8 soaked & freezing guys gathered around that roaring pitch stump! We got warm and dry and slept pretty well that night.

[treefarmer]

Dale, when they were "stumping", the men used bulldozers with a special blade to push and lift the stump out of the ground. Some of the crawlers had an auxiliary boom with jaws to load the stumps on the trucks in the woods. Some of the stumps would be as large as 36+ " diameter and 8-10 feet long, solid fatwood. As they were lifted from ground lots of the roots would break off and these are what we usually pick up in a plowed field. Regionaly, the stumps are usually called "lighter stumps" or "light wood", which refers to thier use as kindling to light some other wood. They are also a "forever" fence post, unless a wild fire gets to them.
After the logging operations in Florida ended and the old growth timber was cut, the rails of tram roads (railroad spurs) were removed, the cross ties were left on the ground. Many miles of fence was built from these old cross ties which were either lighter pine or heart cypress. Heart cypress lasts forever but without the resin of the pine.
History records that the virgin long leaf yellow pines that were cut for lumber and used for what they called "naval stores"(Turpentine), were sometimes 150 feet tall.
I use a little lighter splinter or two each time I start my smoke house wood, usually oak or pecan, also use it to start the fire in the wood burning grill/smoker for ribs, burgers, etc..It definiately needs to be burned up before you begin cooking or smoking. Makes a very black smoke.
Treefarmer

[Old Hunter]

Many years ago (30 - 35) the old SCL RR line that paralleled US17 from Jacksonville to Wilmington NC had sidings that would be lined with stump wood gondolas full of pine stumps for the dynamite & powder producers in Delaware. The rail line was pulled up about 30 years ago and the pine stump business went away. They used logging equipment to load the rail cars right on the side of the highway back then. The Marine Corps owns all those pine forests now (the area referred to as Camp Davis, an Army post in WW-II, now firing ranges and a part of Camp Lejeune). OH

[313 Mike]

Very interesting stuff Treefarmer, Dale, and OH ! I am learning some new things, thanks for sharing!

[carrmillus]

Knice pics Mike! Thanks for sharing! I appreciate your spirit and OUTDOORS!!!

Even though the temps were a slight under boiling I had to get outside, so I headed to our local State Park with the intent to gather some fatwood.....and that I did.

Yesterday I opened up the processing plant (me and a cigar) and made some resin slivers........oh lordy, these will burn.

I got quite a bit if anybody wants to trade fer some.......

..........that looks like an "old hickory" cleaver to me?????..................... .............

[orvet]

That is interesting Phil. I guess those trees are smaller than the trees around where I grew up. I don’t think they make a bulldozer big enough to pull out a big Douglas fir stump. I have seen them 4 to 6 feet in diameter where they have logged old growth stands. They are often on mountainsides that are so steep you can’t get a bulldozer up there. That is why we have so much clear cutting and use of high lead logging operations here in the Pacific NW. It is not safe to log any other way, and even then “safe” is a relative term!

There was a large stand of old growth virgin fir timber up the mountain from the ranch where I grew up. I chased a big buck into that stand when I was in high school. I never did get a shot at him, the trees are too close together and it is dark on the forest floor because the treetops block out all the sunlight. Some of those trees are 300+ feet tall and I expect most were 5 to 8 feet in diameter at the base. They are bigger than most of the trees we see today in Oregon, because the trees are harvested for lumber. Now days I think they cut the trees when they get to about 3 feet in diameter and then they replant. I have heard people who listen to the environmentalists that are shocked when they come to Oregon and see all the trees. One said, “I thought Oregon had been clear cut and all the trees were gone!”
That is not the case. They say we have a lot more trees in Oregon than when my family first got here in about 1842. Loggers are the original environmentalists. They realized early on that if they didn’t replant there would be no trees to cut before long, so the logging companies actually were the first people to advocate mandatory reforestation.

In the ranch where I grew up we heated and cooked with wood, as we didn’t have electricity. We always had some pitch or cedar we used for starting fires. A few sticks of good dry Western Red Cedar will start a fire as faster as a few pieces of pitch wood. Western Red Cedar can get bigger on the stump than Douglas fir, but they usually only get to about 200 feet tall. A cedar stump 8 to 10 feet in diameter is not uncommon where I grew up. Sugar Pine trees can get a couple hundred feet tall as well and they can be exceptionally pitchy.

On the ranch we mostly used cedar kindling to start fires, as it was more common and easy to find. Where we cut wood there were usually dead cedar trees, broken tops or limbs, so we would cut that up for starting fires. Cedar is much cleaner than getting pitch all over your hands (bacon grease removes the pitch) and it burns much cleaner than pitch, though perhaps not as hot as pitch wood. You don’t get that black smoke from cedar. Cedar also makes great fence posts as the bugs generally won’t eat them.

[TripleF]

Some good info fellas! Love it!

[AREMINGTONSEDGE]

Dale I really love the "look see" into your family history and insight/info on the variety of trees on your ranch. Thanks again!

[garddogg56]

This is the way we celebrate the 4th on the 5th with a 4lb 22" Landlock Salmon

[313 Mike]

Great catch GD!

Is that the Grip I see stuck in that salmon's head? Nice. You happy with it so far?

[IMBand]

Beautiful fish GD......congrats, fantastic way to spend part of the 4th weekend for sure!!

IM

[garddogg56]

U betchya guys put the 555 to her quickly she was tasty I lost an even bigger Salmon trying to pass the rod to the boy behind me so he could play the fish his Grandpa almost died Mike so far so good I have to get use to the axis lock

[johnny twoshoes]

We made our yearly trip up to camp for bear season a few short months ago. Our group had changed dramatically from my previous seasons and the most notable change was my grandfather's absence. He had passed away earlier that year and this was our first season without his presence at camp.

I think we all took it as a chance to honor him and remember him, because that night at camp we shared so many of our memories that we had had with him along the way.

See, at our camp, success has never and never will be, measured by a kill count, it will on the other hand be judged by the number of laughs, the amount of good food and good times provided within it's walls. So far camp has never failed.

The opening morning took place on a Saturday, so naturally a lot of guys were off work and the woods were full of hunters. Thats a bonus because they get things moving and even if you don't get a chance at a bear you'll still see some game. So, with more than a few cups of coffee to go on we all piled into the trucks and headed for the woods.

With rifles in hand and the sun about to dawn we solidified our game plans and separated. It was a chilly morning, but it was far from the bone chilling temps we had dealt with in previous years. I tend to dress light and move a lot to maintain my heat, it gives me a chance to rediscover old hunting haunts and find new grounds for the next year.

Shots could be heard off in the distance as the sun rose higher throughout the morning, nothing too close it seemed, but it still got the adrenaline going.

As the morning turned to afternoon, the wind began to pick up and that chill turned into a freeze. My light clothes were cut by the cold wind and I started moving more often. Finally I had had enough the wind and decided to head for a rocky point that I stop at every year, there I would find some good shelter from the icy breeze.

I had just settled into my mossy home as the wind seemed to die down, I rolled my eyes at the unpredictable weather and leaned in to take a rest against the giant boulder that had now become camp. A few minutes passed on and I found myself day dreaming of hunting with my grandfather, I missed knowing that he wasn't waiting for us back by the trucks, hoping we would bring back some excitement, as long as we hunted together we never shared success at bear camp.

The loudest noise that can be heard in the woods is utter silence, it's chilling when things just stop. I became more aware to my surroundings and I closed my eyes and listened. I heard a rustling coming head on to my rocky home and I raised my rifle in anticipation. Step, step, step, I could tell something was sneaking it's way into the cover of the rocks, the same rocks I had chosen for protection from the winds.

As this yote crested the little noll in front of me, I raised the rifle. For a split second he discovered he wasn't alone and the stare he had was one of realization. Years of hunting these woods, climbing these rocks and wintering in the caves were over. He dropped without the slightest movement as my shot still echoed through the trees.

My grandfather had hunted all his life hoping to get a coyote out of Penn's woods, he never did. So our first year without him I was able to live out that dream of his and take one.

[treefarmer]

Great story!!! What a great way to remember your Grandfather! Been missing your posts this passed year. Glad your still kickin' . Oh yeah, a good coyote is a dead coyote !
Treefarmer

[tjmurphy]

WOW Johnny!! What a great descriptive of your hunt. I don't think that I've ever read anything better written, seemed I was right there with ya. Ya know, I believe it was your Grand-dad that took that shot for you. Good to see you posting again

[johnny twoshoes]

Practice makes perfect, buck fever makes me look like an idiot.

I am religious about my rifle practice, I shoot my rifles for ever season and adjust accordingly. I want to be dead on every time and I want to be ready for every occasion, off hand, leaning against a tree, laying in mud, snow, or hay, standing, standing with a chest cold, you name it, I practice it. And last year if you were a white piece of paper with a bull's eye, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near me, but if you were a deer, you're safe.

I missed five different buck this passed hunting season, yeah thats right five buck. I'm not gonna mention how many boxes of ammo I went through, but know this, people thought I was hunting with a full auto.

Ever since I was little my grandfather and father always preached on a clean one shot kill and in order to be ready for that shot, you needed to practice. Well, practicing for my favorite activity is no prob in my book, so I never lack range time.

I have back up rifles for back up rifles.... I'm serious about this whole thing.

Two years ago I went without a solid opportunity to take a buck, so the next year I was really anxious to get out. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a lot of time off for hunting season and it just so happened that my work days started at first light and ended at last light, so my hunting time was limited. This plagued me the entire season and I was always thinking about not having time to hunt. That and I would miss the last couple of days because I'd be in Florida.

So, with all this playing on in my mind I proceeded to look like an inexperienced idiot out in the woods. Now, I never took a bad shot on a deer and if I would have connected it would have been a quick death, unfortunately I wasn't even in the ball park. I can remember back to my first season, on stand with my grandfather as my first ever buck fed out into the corn field. He calmly directed my every move and it felt as though I was just a robot being programmed to do my job. Now, I'm shaking like there is an earth quake taking place.

I was excited, nervous and sweating each and every time I had a shot. Thats not like me at all, but I still enjoyed the experience. Finally my brother sat me down and went over the basics of hunting," Aim at the deer, shoot the deer". He was right, but he still wouldn't let me go back out until I had tested my rifle at the range with him. Five shots later and one hole through the eye of the Bull I looked at him, "It's not the rifle". He was right again.

I had changed rifles for this season because I really enjoyed shooting this new Sako Deluxe and at the bench we were a match made in heaven, in the woods... not so much.

I spent the rest of the season with my trusted Rem 700, but I never got the chance to fail with that rifle either. I learned a valuable lesson that season and hopefully I'll carry that on to this one up and coming.

[johnny twoshoes]

TJ, to be completely honest when I took that shot and watched that ol' dog drop, I thanked my grandfather. It was like he was there that day. He taught me so much about shooting it almost seems as though he has taken most of my shots.

Tree, I'm alive and doing especially well!
Good to be posting again, hopefully I can keep it up and not fall back into life too soon.

[jerryd6818]

Good to see you posting Caleb. Been a while. Missed ya.

[garddogg56]

Johnny sorry to hear about your Grandpa.Hope you and yours are getting on.Prayers and thoughts sent.You'll allways have those memories.