I'm ready already for the new Bond movie to get here. Yes. Sad, isn't it? A grown man and what he looks forward to the most in the next several weeks is the arrival of an almost didn't get made Bond movie.
That's the way it is.
I like this Daniel Craig fellow as Bond. I didn't so much mind the Bond before him, Pierce whatshisname, or the other guy before that, but they were no Sean Connery or Roger Moore. So hopefully the Bond group will use the success of this latest film to ensure that some more Bond films happen, and on a little more frequent basis please.
Seems like there are enough storylines out there in the world to take Bond off on a tangent on as to guarantee the continued longevity of the Bond franchise.
I'd really like to see him get a gun worth having. Nothing wrong for those low-key moments like a .380 PPK, but I'd be toting a Glock or HK or Sig or Colt or any number of other handguns for those really dangerous moments, were I a double naught spy.
The P99 does nothing for me. Fine gun and all, but other guns do it so much better.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Friday, October 12, 2012
COWBOY'S SOUTH TEXAS GLOCK WILD BUNCH RIG
My friend Cowboy, who is a man of letters and a lawyer, is actually a cowboy by birth and upbringing. He owns multiple horses, which he keeps on a 15 acre plot adjacent to his 300 acre family ranch. His family raises or has raised chickens, goats, sheep, cattle and horses at various times. Right now there's probably 10 horses that are their personal horses, several hundred head of cattle that run their land and some amount of goats. Right now, the goat and chicken population has been decimated by hog, big ole' wild hogs.
One of Cowboy's brothers lives on the family place, and there are numerous travel trailers belonging to the other family members that they use when they visit, which is frequent. It's an expansive place and very well laid out by both nature and by his family. They also have multiple gardens and hayfields within their land.
His family place is in the area known as Central Texas, where the first anglo settlers to Texas in the 1800's first landed and established farms, ranches and towns. It's a beautiful spread, and it's got plenty of trees and nice pastures growing good grasses and lot of water in numerous tanks (also with fish). You can ride horses in large routes as well as motor cycles, ATV's, 4 wheel drive carts and even a good truck over much of the ranch. There's several different kinds of terrain, owing to it's location right where the rolling hills of Central Texas give way to a little higher elevation and a rockier environment where the hills are around 1000' and where there is still water in several spring fed rivers.
And of course, in many parts of Texas, this big ole' State of Texas, we have what we call deer infestation. A recent article in the Austin American Statesman said that the scientists at the state don't know if development is running deer into urban areas, or if it's lack of food in the areas with little development or what, but come near sundown in lots of parts of Texas, you have to really be careful driving with all the deer around. You go places as diverse as San Marcos and Alpine and near sundown, DEER ARE EVERYWHERE!
Where old friend Billy Ray lives, he's on the edge of a town in a new development that backs up to tens of thousands of acres of wilderness. He gets lots of deer feeding on his yard, which being the calm and mellow Billy Ray that he is, is glad that they're able to feed on his yard. Besides, little is left from the drought of 2011 and the semi-drought his area had this summer, and the deer are leaving the roots so it'll grow back over time.
Billy Ray has lots of vacant lots around him, and is literally at the edge of town. I haven't seen any signs of hogs in the 5 years he's lived there, but I suspect there are plenty of snakes, racoons, skunks, possums, armadillos, deer and bobcats within a mile radius of his house, and there would have to be hogs all up in that mix as well. Still, haven't seen anything but deer in his area and no signs of other visitors from the wild.
But back to Cowboy. Although deer are plentiful on his families place, they're not the really BIG deer with HUGE racks that are in South Texas. He's had a lease down near Laredo for dang near 30 years with a couple of friends of his. It's a huge lease of several thousand acres, and it's rancher/owner lives down the road on another huge spread.
There are tons of deer, big deer with big racks, big rattlers, plentiful bobcats and an overabundance of hogs. At their camp, particularly near the end of the season, they kill hogs in large numbers, giving the buzzards, coyotes, wolves and other predators something to feed the food chain. And it doesn't matter because there are more of them every year.
It's not that far from Mexico, and several of the guys have cabins made from steel containers to keep safe from the unstoppable numbers of smugglers, the "bandits", those who pray on the illegal immigrants and the immigrants themselves making their way through the semi-arid desert like territory. Others who have travel trailers take them with them when they leave each time. A travel trailer would be stolen (highly likely) or at least totally ransacked if left unattended for more than a day.
Add to that those who live in rural areas these days, be they black or white or brown. Crack and meth are all over rural areas of Texas, and thefts at unattended weekend places and deer camps are quite common and meth or crack is often at the root of the situation.
Almost everything like water pumps and electric boxes are contained in steel boxes with concrete bases because everything not so secured will be damaged or stolen with the unstoppable tide of folks fleeing Mexico and points south. And those who prey upon them.
Cowboy carries a Glock Model 23 in .40 caliber with two extra mags when he's around camp. He had a fellow in a small Texas town that does custom leather work on both saddles, holsters, scabbards, chaps and the like make him a Wild Bunch rig but for a Glock instead of a 1911.
It looks great and carries well, with a Ranger type buckle system and a matching underbelt. You can use belt keepers if you want but most people I know wearing rigs of that nature just wear them slung slightly down on the strong side hip.
So several months ago, Cowboy is by himself on a remote part of the lease where he has a feeder and feeder camera set up. The feeder is malfunctioning and he's fixing the electronics standing on a ladder leaning into the innards of the feeder mechanism.
Suddenly he hears footsteps behind him, several of them. He turns and gets ready to draw and it's a group of immigrants making their way through Texas. They ask for aqua and money. He's got no problem with giving them water but of course has a problem giving them money. And of course you don't know if this guy is harmless or not or a coyote or armed or what or a smuggler or what.
Most of the group was women but the men were sort of semi-circled around Cowboy up on the ladder. They didn't speak a bit of english nor does Cowboy speak anything but cuss words in spanish.
Cowboy motioned them to move on back and they did, toward his running diesel 4wd truck. He was able to get down off the ladder where he had been standing backwards facing the group. He gave them several jugs of water and they went on their way, albeit, eyeing his truck and asking him if he could give them a ride. He also had a Glock 21 with two extra mags in the console box of his truck as well as several rifles on the rear seat of the car, one a bolt action .308 custom rifle and the other some kind of (legally) suppressed piston M-4 high end SBR.
When they first began hunting there in the 1980's, there was a wooden cabin they used. And soon it began to get broken into, for shelter, for whatever canned or bottled foodstuffs were around, and whatever beer was in the fridge. Pretty much everything would get stolen...glassware, food, dishes, blankets and sheets, dining ware and none of it was very good to begin with.
In the old days, they thought they were being nice by leaving the outside water faucet turned on with a hose attached for the inevitable trespassers thirsty from their trek. So even though the owner lives a few miles down the road, these folks creep through day and night in huge numbers, for hundreds of miles of border land.
So Cowboy said he was glad he had his Glock 23 instead of his six-shooter or any other number of handguns he could've had with him. 14 rounds plus another 26 on the belt. There was about ten guys in the group and yes, he felt threatened by the semi-circle stance they assumed and the way they approached.
Usually, he said, if folks want water, they whistle or shout from maybe 50-100 yards away to alert you of their presence and see what your reaction is. Cowboy felt these folks were sneaking up on him. He said they did stare at his gunbelt and rig.
He's got him some kind of custom knife sheath and custom knife on his rig. There's also a pouch for his rifle bullets when out hunting deer or bobcat or shooting hogs. It's a nice rig. I need to make myself one like it.
You gotta feel sorry for the current generation of border ranchers, not just those within the actual physical border region but also those in the path of the immigrants, and these lands span hundreds of miles across south and west Texas. They are, for the most part, harsh lands with no live water, lots of dangers such as snakes and other critters and all sorts of banditos and highwaymen and scammers waiting to take advantage of the immigrants, and of course these opportunists are the ones we should most fear. And sometimes in these border lands, you can't even trust some of the lawmen.
Towns are few and far between in parts, although there are "communities" in some part between smalller towns. So neighbors are scarce and families have been working this land for hundreds of years. Not all the farmers and ranchers are anglo, many former mexican citizen descendants have had this land in their family as long as it's been Texas or the U.S.
In any event, the deer are big down that way in Texas, and it's a shame that personal and physical hunting camp security have become the custom of the day.
Good luck, fellers! It truly is still the wild, wild west down where these fellers have their deer lease. But they've been hunting there a mighty long while and seem to have good results every year, with both bow and gun.
One of Cowboy's brothers lives on the family place, and there are numerous travel trailers belonging to the other family members that they use when they visit, which is frequent. It's an expansive place and very well laid out by both nature and by his family. They also have multiple gardens and hayfields within their land.
His family place is in the area known as Central Texas, where the first anglo settlers to Texas in the 1800's first landed and established farms, ranches and towns. It's a beautiful spread, and it's got plenty of trees and nice pastures growing good grasses and lot of water in numerous tanks (also with fish). You can ride horses in large routes as well as motor cycles, ATV's, 4 wheel drive carts and even a good truck over much of the ranch. There's several different kinds of terrain, owing to it's location right where the rolling hills of Central Texas give way to a little higher elevation and a rockier environment where the hills are around 1000' and where there is still water in several spring fed rivers.
And of course, in many parts of Texas, this big ole' State of Texas, we have what we call deer infestation. A recent article in the Austin American Statesman said that the scientists at the state don't know if development is running deer into urban areas, or if it's lack of food in the areas with little development or what, but come near sundown in lots of parts of Texas, you have to really be careful driving with all the deer around. You go places as diverse as San Marcos and Alpine and near sundown, DEER ARE EVERYWHERE!
Where old friend Billy Ray lives, he's on the edge of a town in a new development that backs up to tens of thousands of acres of wilderness. He gets lots of deer feeding on his yard, which being the calm and mellow Billy Ray that he is, is glad that they're able to feed on his yard. Besides, little is left from the drought of 2011 and the semi-drought his area had this summer, and the deer are leaving the roots so it'll grow back over time.
Billy Ray has lots of vacant lots around him, and is literally at the edge of town. I haven't seen any signs of hogs in the 5 years he's lived there, but I suspect there are plenty of snakes, racoons, skunks, possums, armadillos, deer and bobcats within a mile radius of his house, and there would have to be hogs all up in that mix as well. Still, haven't seen anything but deer in his area and no signs of other visitors from the wild.
But back to Cowboy. Although deer are plentiful on his families place, they're not the really BIG deer with HUGE racks that are in South Texas. He's had a lease down near Laredo for dang near 30 years with a couple of friends of his. It's a huge lease of several thousand acres, and it's rancher/owner lives down the road on another huge spread.
There are tons of deer, big deer with big racks, big rattlers, plentiful bobcats and an overabundance of hogs. At their camp, particularly near the end of the season, they kill hogs in large numbers, giving the buzzards, coyotes, wolves and other predators something to feed the food chain. And it doesn't matter because there are more of them every year.
It's not that far from Mexico, and several of the guys have cabins made from steel containers to keep safe from the unstoppable numbers of smugglers, the "bandits", those who pray on the illegal immigrants and the immigrants themselves making their way through the semi-arid desert like territory. Others who have travel trailers take them with them when they leave each time. A travel trailer would be stolen (highly likely) or at least totally ransacked if left unattended for more than a day.
Add to that those who live in rural areas these days, be they black or white or brown. Crack and meth are all over rural areas of Texas, and thefts at unattended weekend places and deer camps are quite common and meth or crack is often at the root of the situation.
Almost everything like water pumps and electric boxes are contained in steel boxes with concrete bases because everything not so secured will be damaged or stolen with the unstoppable tide of folks fleeing Mexico and points south. And those who prey upon them.
Cowboy carries a Glock Model 23 in .40 caliber with two extra mags when he's around camp. He had a fellow in a small Texas town that does custom leather work on both saddles, holsters, scabbards, chaps and the like make him a Wild Bunch rig but for a Glock instead of a 1911.
It looks great and carries well, with a Ranger type buckle system and a matching underbelt. You can use belt keepers if you want but most people I know wearing rigs of that nature just wear them slung slightly down on the strong side hip.
So several months ago, Cowboy is by himself on a remote part of the lease where he has a feeder and feeder camera set up. The feeder is malfunctioning and he's fixing the electronics standing on a ladder leaning into the innards of the feeder mechanism.
Suddenly he hears footsteps behind him, several of them. He turns and gets ready to draw and it's a group of immigrants making their way through Texas. They ask for aqua and money. He's got no problem with giving them water but of course has a problem giving them money. And of course you don't know if this guy is harmless or not or a coyote or armed or what or a smuggler or what.
Most of the group was women but the men were sort of semi-circled around Cowboy up on the ladder. They didn't speak a bit of english nor does Cowboy speak anything but cuss words in spanish.
Cowboy motioned them to move on back and they did, toward his running diesel 4wd truck. He was able to get down off the ladder where he had been standing backwards facing the group. He gave them several jugs of water and they went on their way, albeit, eyeing his truck and asking him if he could give them a ride. He also had a Glock 21 with two extra mags in the console box of his truck as well as several rifles on the rear seat of the car, one a bolt action .308 custom rifle and the other some kind of (legally) suppressed piston M-4 high end SBR.
When they first began hunting there in the 1980's, there was a wooden cabin they used. And soon it began to get broken into, for shelter, for whatever canned or bottled foodstuffs were around, and whatever beer was in the fridge. Pretty much everything would get stolen...glassware, food, dishes, blankets and sheets, dining ware and none of it was very good to begin with.
In the old days, they thought they were being nice by leaving the outside water faucet turned on with a hose attached for the inevitable trespassers thirsty from their trek. So even though the owner lives a few miles down the road, these folks creep through day and night in huge numbers, for hundreds of miles of border land.
So Cowboy said he was glad he had his Glock 23 instead of his six-shooter or any other number of handguns he could've had with him. 14 rounds plus another 26 on the belt. There was about ten guys in the group and yes, he felt threatened by the semi-circle stance they assumed and the way they approached.
Usually, he said, if folks want water, they whistle or shout from maybe 50-100 yards away to alert you of their presence and see what your reaction is. Cowboy felt these folks were sneaking up on him. He said they did stare at his gunbelt and rig.
He's got him some kind of custom knife sheath and custom knife on his rig. There's also a pouch for his rifle bullets when out hunting deer or bobcat or shooting hogs. It's a nice rig. I need to make myself one like it.
You gotta feel sorry for the current generation of border ranchers, not just those within the actual physical border region but also those in the path of the immigrants, and these lands span hundreds of miles across south and west Texas. They are, for the most part, harsh lands with no live water, lots of dangers such as snakes and other critters and all sorts of banditos and highwaymen and scammers waiting to take advantage of the immigrants, and of course these opportunists are the ones we should most fear. And sometimes in these border lands, you can't even trust some of the lawmen.
Towns are few and far between in parts, although there are "communities" in some part between smalller towns. So neighbors are scarce and families have been working this land for hundreds of years. Not all the farmers and ranchers are anglo, many former mexican citizen descendants have had this land in their family as long as it's been Texas or the U.S.
In any event, the deer are big down that way in Texas, and it's a shame that personal and physical hunting camp security have become the custom of the day.
Good luck, fellers! It truly is still the wild, wild west down where these fellers have their deer lease. But they've been hunting there a mighty long while and seem to have good results every year, with both bow and gun.
Monday, October 8, 2012
REAL COUNTY, TEXAS
Real County, Texas is one of those places that Hollywood would use for scenery in the cowboy flicks and serials of old. Often, they used locales in Arizona and California, and said it was Texas, and although Real County was not the scene of any westerns as far as I know, it's the kind of place that was wild and woolly until probably even after 1900.
I got to thinking about Real County because I read a news story involving a double homicide, with a third death being the shooter who allegedly shot himself. That kind of thing, unfortunately, can happen anywhere, and happens a whole lot more than it should. But it struck me as odd because Real County has a real (see how I did that?) small populace and probably not a whole lot of murders.
Real County is one of those 254 counties in the state of Texas that doesn't have a whole lot of people and is kinda large in size. It's probably as big or almost as big as several of the east coast states.
It's located about 100 miles northwest of San Antonio, or as some call it, San Antone', so it's right in what we'd call The Hill Country part of Texas.
There ain't a whole lot of folks in Real County. Just over 3,000 or so. Wiki says the largest industry employer is tourism, with just over a hundred employees.
It's a mostly rugged terrain, and those who originally settled there found game and fish to be plentiful in the area. Two major river canyons course through Real County, the Frio and the Nueces. Both of these are beautiful, mostly clear waters that are spring fed and also fed by spring fed creeks and streams.
As late as 1881, there were Indian attacks against settlers in this still somewhat remote part of Texas. Although Indian and Mexican bandito attacks continued well up to the time of WWI in part of Texas further west like Brewster County (Home of the Big Bend National Park), one must consider how civilized many other parts of the US had become by 1881.
Indian tribes once ran freely through these areas, and artifacts are often found. Likewise, numerous mines were dug throughout the area, one by the famous James "Jim" Bowie of the Bowie knife fame and Alamo infamy.
You've always got to be careful roaming around in this area and for that matter, lots of areas in the Texas Hill Country. There are hidden and long abandoned mine entrances, some no bigger than a person and some just vertical holes, that can await the unwary. There are natural caves and crevasses and steep ravines that also await the unwary, and it's a good idea to carry at least 100 feet of climbing rope and a ready rattlesnake loaded handgun or shotgun when out in the field here.
As a kid, we took several drives out in that area. Neither of my parents had been there before, and we found fishing opportunities aplenty at low water crossings and were clear spring fed creeks crossed the roads.
Being from Houston and by my parent's people being from East Texas, I was accustomed to murky, often sand filled streams and rivers. It was a challenge to fish in gin clear water, where you could see the fish and more importantly, they could see you.
My dad had a good friend who had a family cabin that they'd owned for several generations in Real County right on the Frio. We stayed there on numerous occasions, and the fishing was always good on the Frio back in those days. We'd come in the early spring or late fall, before the crowds of spring and summer hit. As far as I recall, the water levels were always about the same, so we must not have had a lot of drought during those times in the 1960's and 1970's.
I did a lot of learning to fly fish on the Frio. It and several other rivers are the closest thing you can get to semi-mountain stream or river fly fishing like in Colorado and other places. The Frio does get a bit chilly in the winter, like most spring fed rivers, but trout are not the primary pursuit in the Frio, although I believe at some point they were stocked here in the winter some years back.
You find the standard Texas Hill Country fare here for fishing. Lots of bluegills and other types of panfish and perch and such. Largemouth bass and the Guadalupe bass are found, with the latter being more plentiful in my experience. Catfish of several types can be found in the deeper holes, including channel, blue and yellow. I've seen some big nasty yellow cats come out of the Nueces in Real County.
Not surprisingly, I still like to fish in those kinds of places in the counties that surround Real, where clear water runs free and all kinds of fishing can be found.
The best access, of course, is on private land. My friend Tommy owns a large spread with a good bit of frontage on the Nueces. Large cypress trees border the river, and live oaks cover the rest of the property, which has a huge amount of elevation rising from the river canyon.
Live springs pop out of the ground literally everywhere near the river, many right at the rivers edge on the shoreline, and he's got several feeding into a system that, after being purified some more from being pretty damn pure already, goes into his home via piping and a solar/electric powered pump.
The excess from the feed to the house puts untreated spring water into an underground and several above ground cisterns for storage for lean water times for their gardens. It could also be piped back into the purification system for use inside the house if needed.
His spread was an old family ranch that was subdivided into 200 acre parts and sold. There's still a lot of very large old family ranches in the area, and several of my friends have and have had deer leases in this area the past 40 years. That's another way I've been able to do fishing in this area, particularly in my 20's and 30's when my single friends had money to spend on deer leases. I could tag along and pay the owner a few bucks to use his hunter's cabins and do some fishing in "safe" (i.e. non-hunting areas) on the river and sometimes in the ranches stock tanks.
One rancher let me come back in the off season just to do some fishing on several occasions. I'd bring him several cases of Coors Light and could fish all weekend and come and go as I pleased. I'd stay in a small motel about 20 miles away. He had a fish cleaning table of sorts with running well water outside his house, and I'd make sure to pack some nice filets or catfish steaks from trotlining if we had a successful trip.
I've got another friend who has had a lease in one of the Real County river canyons for several decades now. He's got his own hunting camp set up out there and it's his escape on a thousand acre place. He's another one who uses a modified shipping container as his hunting camp, keeping a false front behind the locked steel doors of the container.
Once the steel container doors are open, there's a large picture window made of some 1" thick Plexiglas, a huge motel type floor air conditioning/heater unit, and a steel entry door. All of this is welded into a steel false front wall that's behind the container's doors. The AC unit has a steel cage around it.
This area is bad for folks passing through on their way from Mexico. You never know when some resourceful Coyote (the two legged kind) or some lost immigrants might stumble across your hunting camp. Like most folks, they'd be hungry and thirsty and most would be good folks but some would be thieves and so now deer hunters can't have an old time deer camp with a wood cabin and windows anymore, due to this problem.
So numerous folks I know either tow trailers out to their lease every weekend or have some sort of fortified container based cabin.
When you get a bit further west from Real County, things begin to get drier surface water wise. That's when you start hitting West Texas. I like that area that surrounds Real County, the parts that have lots of live water.
Neighbors are still few and far between in most places in those counties like Real. Ranching is the main business, with cattle, sheep and goats being the main stock raised. It's a semi-rough terrain, and other than grasses, most of the stuff that grows here has stickers or stingers and things to protect it. The rocks are rough and abrasive, as anyone who has done any river time on the Frio, the Dry Fork of the Frio or the Nueces can tell you.
Like most other parts of Texas, hogs are, of course, everywhere in this area. Likewise, wolves, coyotes and cats of various kinds (mostly bobcats but some mountain lions) keep the ranchers busy. Being on the Edwards Plateau, it's a rough geological environment that is the perfect terrain for rattlers, and we grow them large in Texas.
Although the various predators keep ranchers busy protecting their stock, it's the scorpion population that bugs me the most. I've told the story before, that'd we'd have a place there now on a high cliff with a beautiful view of the Dry Fork of the Frio River (not dry at all but a raging spring fed stream) but for the scorpions.
A little family humor about scorpions. We had another place my family would go when El Fisho Jr. was 3 and 4 years old. There were some scorpions there at this ranch, and were frequently encountered in the freakishly large family game room my friend's place had and in the boathouse out at his private lake. For whatever reason, El Fisho Jr. called them "scorpios" and not scorpions, and so we laughed and we've called them scorpios since then.
When I was a kid, when we'd come to my dad's friend's place on the Frio, sometimes there would be scorpions everywhere. Under the rafts and canoes. All over the skin and scuba diving gear. All over the front porch and on the ceiling.
You shook stuff out and swept and moved furniture and broomed the ceiling and you killed a bunch of scorpions and cleaned them up and then sprayed for them inside and out and then stayed at the cabin after it aired out for a day. It was bothersome but no real big deal. It would take about three hours but was no biggie in the scheme of things.
With today's modern pest control methods, I think you could keep 90% of the scorpions out of the cabin with very little effort.
The further west you get in Texas, or to me at least, the weirder the bugs get. Black crickets are seemingly everywhere, and I've seen and smelled their population infestation periods from one side of Texas to the other.
I once stayed in a motel in Ozona, Texas, which is pretty far out in West Texas towards El Paso from San Antone on I-10 West, and not really anywhere near Real County. And I digress.
Anyway the motel was in the midst of a tremendous cricket infestation/birth explosion. The Indian owners of the motel apologized at check in, and said that despite vacuuming the rooms multiple times per day, the crickets were everywhere in their rooms.
He went with us and they had special mats inside the doors and slippers for guests to wear in the room, because it was impossible to walk outside without stepping on multiple live or dead crickets. There were hundreds of thousands of them.
He again vacuumed up the twenty or so crickets that had appeared in the last several hours, he said. He lamented that for a month out of the year, the crickets were out of control.
I told him of several south Asian cultures that considered the cricket as good luck. He told us he himself was born in Asia, in India, and that in his particular area he was from that crickets were just bugs.
He then smirked and said "I must be a very lucky man indeed".
We laughed quite a bit with him over that one. I need to go visit his establishment again, although not in the August-September cricket infestation window time period.
I got to thinking about Real County because I read a news story involving a double homicide, with a third death being the shooter who allegedly shot himself. That kind of thing, unfortunately, can happen anywhere, and happens a whole lot more than it should. But it struck me as odd because Real County has a real (see how I did that?) small populace and probably not a whole lot of murders.
Real County is one of those 254 counties in the state of Texas that doesn't have a whole lot of people and is kinda large in size. It's probably as big or almost as big as several of the east coast states.
It's located about 100 miles northwest of San Antonio, or as some call it, San Antone', so it's right in what we'd call The Hill Country part of Texas.
There ain't a whole lot of folks in Real County. Just over 3,000 or so. Wiki says the largest industry employer is tourism, with just over a hundred employees.
It's a mostly rugged terrain, and those who originally settled there found game and fish to be plentiful in the area. Two major river canyons course through Real County, the Frio and the Nueces. Both of these are beautiful, mostly clear waters that are spring fed and also fed by spring fed creeks and streams.
As late as 1881, there were Indian attacks against settlers in this still somewhat remote part of Texas. Although Indian and Mexican bandito attacks continued well up to the time of WWI in part of Texas further west like Brewster County (Home of the Big Bend National Park), one must consider how civilized many other parts of the US had become by 1881.
Indian tribes once ran freely through these areas, and artifacts are often found. Likewise, numerous mines were dug throughout the area, one by the famous James "Jim" Bowie of the Bowie knife fame and Alamo infamy.
You've always got to be careful roaming around in this area and for that matter, lots of areas in the Texas Hill Country. There are hidden and long abandoned mine entrances, some no bigger than a person and some just vertical holes, that can await the unwary. There are natural caves and crevasses and steep ravines that also await the unwary, and it's a good idea to carry at least 100 feet of climbing rope and a ready rattlesnake loaded handgun or shotgun when out in the field here.
As a kid, we took several drives out in that area. Neither of my parents had been there before, and we found fishing opportunities aplenty at low water crossings and were clear spring fed creeks crossed the roads.
Being from Houston and by my parent's people being from East Texas, I was accustomed to murky, often sand filled streams and rivers. It was a challenge to fish in gin clear water, where you could see the fish and more importantly, they could see you.
My dad had a good friend who had a family cabin that they'd owned for several generations in Real County right on the Frio. We stayed there on numerous occasions, and the fishing was always good on the Frio back in those days. We'd come in the early spring or late fall, before the crowds of spring and summer hit. As far as I recall, the water levels were always about the same, so we must not have had a lot of drought during those times in the 1960's and 1970's.
I did a lot of learning to fly fish on the Frio. It and several other rivers are the closest thing you can get to semi-mountain stream or river fly fishing like in Colorado and other places. The Frio does get a bit chilly in the winter, like most spring fed rivers, but trout are not the primary pursuit in the Frio, although I believe at some point they were stocked here in the winter some years back.
You find the standard Texas Hill Country fare here for fishing. Lots of bluegills and other types of panfish and perch and such. Largemouth bass and the Guadalupe bass are found, with the latter being more plentiful in my experience. Catfish of several types can be found in the deeper holes, including channel, blue and yellow. I've seen some big nasty yellow cats come out of the Nueces in Real County.
Not surprisingly, I still like to fish in those kinds of places in the counties that surround Real, where clear water runs free and all kinds of fishing can be found.
The best access, of course, is on private land. My friend Tommy owns a large spread with a good bit of frontage on the Nueces. Large cypress trees border the river, and live oaks cover the rest of the property, which has a huge amount of elevation rising from the river canyon.
Live springs pop out of the ground literally everywhere near the river, many right at the rivers edge on the shoreline, and he's got several feeding into a system that, after being purified some more from being pretty damn pure already, goes into his home via piping and a solar/electric powered pump.
The excess from the feed to the house puts untreated spring water into an underground and several above ground cisterns for storage for lean water times for their gardens. It could also be piped back into the purification system for use inside the house if needed.
His spread was an old family ranch that was subdivided into 200 acre parts and sold. There's still a lot of very large old family ranches in the area, and several of my friends have and have had deer leases in this area the past 40 years. That's another way I've been able to do fishing in this area, particularly in my 20's and 30's when my single friends had money to spend on deer leases. I could tag along and pay the owner a few bucks to use his hunter's cabins and do some fishing in "safe" (i.e. non-hunting areas) on the river and sometimes in the ranches stock tanks.
One rancher let me come back in the off season just to do some fishing on several occasions. I'd bring him several cases of Coors Light and could fish all weekend and come and go as I pleased. I'd stay in a small motel about 20 miles away. He had a fish cleaning table of sorts with running well water outside his house, and I'd make sure to pack some nice filets or catfish steaks from trotlining if we had a successful trip.
I've got another friend who has had a lease in one of the Real County river canyons for several decades now. He's got his own hunting camp set up out there and it's his escape on a thousand acre place. He's another one who uses a modified shipping container as his hunting camp, keeping a false front behind the locked steel doors of the container.
Once the steel container doors are open, there's a large picture window made of some 1" thick Plexiglas, a huge motel type floor air conditioning/heater unit, and a steel entry door. All of this is welded into a steel false front wall that's behind the container's doors. The AC unit has a steel cage around it.
This area is bad for folks passing through on their way from Mexico. You never know when some resourceful Coyote (the two legged kind) or some lost immigrants might stumble across your hunting camp. Like most folks, they'd be hungry and thirsty and most would be good folks but some would be thieves and so now deer hunters can't have an old time deer camp with a wood cabin and windows anymore, due to this problem.
So numerous folks I know either tow trailers out to their lease every weekend or have some sort of fortified container based cabin.
When you get a bit further west from Real County, things begin to get drier surface water wise. That's when you start hitting West Texas. I like that area that surrounds Real County, the parts that have lots of live water.
Neighbors are still few and far between in most places in those counties like Real. Ranching is the main business, with cattle, sheep and goats being the main stock raised. It's a semi-rough terrain, and other than grasses, most of the stuff that grows here has stickers or stingers and things to protect it. The rocks are rough and abrasive, as anyone who has done any river time on the Frio, the Dry Fork of the Frio or the Nueces can tell you.
Like most other parts of Texas, hogs are, of course, everywhere in this area. Likewise, wolves, coyotes and cats of various kinds (mostly bobcats but some mountain lions) keep the ranchers busy. Being on the Edwards Plateau, it's a rough geological environment that is the perfect terrain for rattlers, and we grow them large in Texas.
Although the various predators keep ranchers busy protecting their stock, it's the scorpion population that bugs me the most. I've told the story before, that'd we'd have a place there now on a high cliff with a beautiful view of the Dry Fork of the Frio River (not dry at all but a raging spring fed stream) but for the scorpions.
A little family humor about scorpions. We had another place my family would go when El Fisho Jr. was 3 and 4 years old. There were some scorpions there at this ranch, and were frequently encountered in the freakishly large family game room my friend's place had and in the boathouse out at his private lake. For whatever reason, El Fisho Jr. called them "scorpios" and not scorpions, and so we laughed and we've called them scorpios since then.
When I was a kid, when we'd come to my dad's friend's place on the Frio, sometimes there would be scorpions everywhere. Under the rafts and canoes. All over the skin and scuba diving gear. All over the front porch and on the ceiling.
You shook stuff out and swept and moved furniture and broomed the ceiling and you killed a bunch of scorpions and cleaned them up and then sprayed for them inside and out and then stayed at the cabin after it aired out for a day. It was bothersome but no real big deal. It would take about three hours but was no biggie in the scheme of things.
With today's modern pest control methods, I think you could keep 90% of the scorpions out of the cabin with very little effort.
The further west you get in Texas, or to me at least, the weirder the bugs get. Black crickets are seemingly everywhere, and I've seen and smelled their population infestation periods from one side of Texas to the other.
I once stayed in a motel in Ozona, Texas, which is pretty far out in West Texas towards El Paso from San Antone on I-10 West, and not really anywhere near Real County. And I digress.
Anyway the motel was in the midst of a tremendous cricket infestation/birth explosion. The Indian owners of the motel apologized at check in, and said that despite vacuuming the rooms multiple times per day, the crickets were everywhere in their rooms.
He went with us and they had special mats inside the doors and slippers for guests to wear in the room, because it was impossible to walk outside without stepping on multiple live or dead crickets. There were hundreds of thousands of them.
He again vacuumed up the twenty or so crickets that had appeared in the last several hours, he said. He lamented that for a month out of the year, the crickets were out of control.
I told him of several south Asian cultures that considered the cricket as good luck. He told us he himself was born in Asia, in India, and that in his particular area he was from that crickets were just bugs.
He then smirked and said "I must be a very lucky man indeed".
We laughed quite a bit with him over that one. I need to go visit his establishment again, although not in the August-September cricket infestation window time period.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
TAKEDOWN LEVER ACTION CARBINES, SHOTGUNS AND OTHER MUSINGS ABOUT CALIBERS AND RECOIL
I've written all too many times about my extreme fondness for the Wild West Guns Alaskan Co-Pilot, a massively powerful and functional and even cool rifle.
The takedown lever-action carbine is not a new idea. Winchester was doing it in the late 1800's. I'm no expert on takedowns, but I know that over the years certain lever action rifles that are takedown have ben available, like certain of the Savage 99 and the Browning BLR.
Bottom image from http://www.theduke.de/content/mediabrowser/images/shop/newpix/longguns/winchester/win-1892-trappertde.jpg .Apparently he runs a gun shop and may do international business. He has excellent taste in guns. Top image from Winchester.
Recently I saw a VERY NICE Winchester octagonal barreled Model 1892 Trapper Takedown in .45 Colt. A 16" barrel is why it's the Trapper model. Extra nice stock and ultra luxurious finish. Comes in a bit over 6 lbs. but felt less. The LOP was perfect enough to account for adding a Pachmayr Decelerator pad for some reduction of (felt) recoil.
Really, it would still be perfect even without the Decelerator pad. Really. Did I say it was VERY NICE?
So at one point years ago I was considering a Browning BLR pistol grip takedown rifle. Lots of internal thinking about what a good caliber would be.
Image from http://www.discountfirearmsinc.com/images/library/brs/zoom/3082-0314.jpg
Browning Takedown Pistol Grip Lightweight BLR
A 30-06 would be great for hunting larger animals or even defensive purposes, but frankly, I really don't care to shoot much more than a .308 these days.
Still, for the right price, I'd take one with some stock wear or finish issues in "aught-six". It's a popular caliber in these here parts and easy to find ammo for and fairly easy to get parts for.
Other great caliber abound in BLR selections, especially if including past and present calibers.
Here's a cut and paste from the Browning site just to show you the variety of calibers currently available in the BLR takedown lightweight series (note that the header doesn't match the columns):
So the shortest rig you can get in this model is the 20" barrel in either the .450 Marlin (too much for me, man) or in .223, .22-250, .243, 7mm-08, .308 or .358. The only ones I'd consider would be the .223, the .243 and the .308, with the .243 being a popular cartridge here in Texas where ammo for that is easily found and it's just a little more recoil than the .223.
It's still at least 4" longer than a Takedown Trapper when taken down or in ready form. Also, the Takedown weighs 6.4 lbs, so it's as lightweight as the BLR lightweight.
I have several guns capable of being taken down. One of my favorites is a just over 40 year old .410 Single Shot. It's just like a H&R Topper, except that it takes down. I'll have to check and see who made it. My dad bought it for himself when he got me a Topper Jr., which I still have also. Great guns.
My dad had already tired of 12 gauge recoil by the time he was 40 or so, buying that gun. He didn't mind a 20 gauge either, which is what I favor these days. I shoot better skeet with a 12, but enjoy it much more with a 20. For hunting, I suppose, the 12 is the better choice, being that it has that extra "ummmphhhhh" that the 20 doesn't seem to have in terms of reach. That's my personal experience.
I've successfully hunted quail with both .410's and 20's, but other fowl sometimes require a little more voltage and admittedly you've got that extra reach, power and spread coming with the 12 gauge that you don't with lesser calibers. Like they used to say in the muscle car world, cubic inches count.
So as with the recoil of shotguns, so goes it with the recoil of rifles. I greatly enjoy rifle shooting. I don't mind some recoil. The 30-30 has never seemed oppressive to me, and I've got that great shooting Marlin Model 336 30-30 of my youth, scoped and dead on after all these years. It's been dead on at 100 yards since the day we sighted it in, decades ago.
Mostly these days I've hunted hogs. Bigger Texas hogs. Mean ones. One that will live despite a fatal wound just to spite you and hopefully inflict some sort of injury on you before it keels over. Head shots are popular when possible, but when going after a moving target, sometimes that's not possible.
So I have for years preferred the .308 as the best hog and large varmint option for me recoil wise. It's about what I can tolerate on a practice and field basis. It's got more oommpphhh for me than the 30-30. I used to have a Remington pump 30-06 and the recoil from that was fairly harsh for me.
I've shot rifles more powerful than the 30-06 but again, baring a move to bear country, I really don't even need a gun as big as a 30-06 in my proverbial closet. But one day I'll probably have one when I stumble across a deal on a used Baikal/Remington/USSG double rifle or combo rifle/shotgun in aught six.
As I've written before, I like the idea of a kit I can fit into a Pelican suitcase type deal with wheels and an extending handle. It keeps it handy to throw in the trunk or the back of the suv for out of town trips without having to pack ahead of time, with a combination of takedown fishing rods, tackle and takedown guns and probably a pistola or two.
I'll blog more about the kit I'm gonna build. I've a got a smaller Pelican case and can attest to their durability in carrying both photographic and delicate Digital Audio Tape recording gear over the past twenty years in that case. I'll get a deal on the larger size case that I have in mind soon, and will build my kit in time for spring.
What kind of takedown guns will be in that case? Stay tuned...
The takedown lever-action carbine is not a new idea. Winchester was doing it in the late 1800's. I'm no expert on takedowns, but I know that over the years certain lever action rifles that are takedown have ben available, like certain of the Savage 99 and the Browning BLR.
Recently I saw a VERY NICE Winchester octagonal barreled Model 1892 Trapper Takedown in .45 Colt. A 16" barrel is why it's the Trapper model. Extra nice stock and ultra luxurious finish. Comes in a bit over 6 lbs. but felt less. The LOP was perfect enough to account for adding a Pachmayr Decelerator pad for some reduction of (felt) recoil.
Really, it would still be perfect even without the Decelerator pad. Really. Did I say it was VERY NICE?
So at one point years ago I was considering a Browning BLR pistol grip takedown rifle. Lots of internal thinking about what a good caliber would be.
Browning Takedown Pistol Grip Lightweight BLR
A 30-06 would be great for hunting larger animals or even defensive purposes, but frankly, I really don't care to shoot much more than a .308 these days.
Still, for the right price, I'd take one with some stock wear or finish issues in "aught-six". It's a popular caliber in these here parts and easy to find ammo for and fairly easy to get parts for.
Other great caliber abound in BLR selections, especially if including past and present calibers.
Here's a cut and paste from the Browning site just to show you the variety of calibers currently available in the BLR takedown lightweight series (note that the header doesn't match the columns):
| Item # | Caliber | Barrel Length | Overall Length | Length of Pull | Drop at Comb | Drop at Heel | Nom. Weight | MSRP | |||
| SA | 034012108 | 223 Rem. | 20" | 40" | 13 3/4" | 7/8" | 15/16" | 6 lbs. 8 oz. | |||
| SA | 034012109 | 22-250 Rem. | 20" | 40" | 13 3/4" | 7/8" | 15/16" | 6 lbs. 8 oz. | |||
| SA | 034012111 | 243 Win. | 20" | 40" | 13 3/4" | 7/8" | 15/16" | 6 lbs. 8 oz. | |||
| SA | 034012116 | 7mm-08 Rem. | 20" | 40" | 13 3/4" | 7/8" | 15/16" | 6 lbs. 8 oz. | |||
| SA | 034012118 | 308 Win. | 20" | 40" | 13 3/4" | 7/8" | 15/16" | 6 lbs. 8 oz. | |||
| SA | 034012120 | 358 Win. | 20" | 40" | 13 3/4" | 7/8" | 15/16" | 6 lbs. 8 oz. | |||
| LA | 034012124 | 270 Win. | 22" | 43" | 14 1/4" | 1" | 1 5/8" | 7 lbs. 4 oz. | |||
| LA | 034012126 | 30-06 Spfld. | 22" | 43" | 14 1/4" | 1" | 1 5/8" | 7 lbs. 4 oz. | |||
| LA | 034012127 | 7mm Rem. Mag. | 24" | 45" | 14 1/4" | 1" | 1 5/8" | 7 lbs. 12 oz. | |||
| LA | 034012129 | 300 Win. Mag. | 24" | 45" | 14 1/4" | 1" | 1 5/8" | 7 lbs. 12 oz. | |||
| SA | 034012146 | 300 WSM | 22" | 42" | 13 3/4" | 7/8" | 15/16" | 6 lbs. 12 oz. | |||
| SA | 034012148 | 270 WSM | 22" | 42" | 13 3/4" | 7/8" | 15/16" | 6 lbs. 12 oz. | |||
| SA | 034012149 | 7mm WSM | 22" | 42" | 13 3/4" | 7/8" | 15/16" | 6 lbs. 12 oz. | |||
| SA | 034012150 | 450 Marlin | 20" | 40" | 13 3/4" | 7/8" | 15/16" | 7 lbs. | |||
| SA | 034012177 | 325 WSM | 22" | 42" | 13 3/4" | 7/8" | 15/16" | 6 lbs. 12 oz. | |||
It's still at least 4" longer than a Takedown Trapper when taken down or in ready form. Also, the Takedown weighs 6.4 lbs, so it's as lightweight as the BLR lightweight.
I have several guns capable of being taken down. One of my favorites is a just over 40 year old .410 Single Shot. It's just like a H&R Topper, except that it takes down. I'll have to check and see who made it. My dad bought it for himself when he got me a Topper Jr., which I still have also. Great guns.
My dad had already tired of 12 gauge recoil by the time he was 40 or so, buying that gun. He didn't mind a 20 gauge either, which is what I favor these days. I shoot better skeet with a 12, but enjoy it much more with a 20. For hunting, I suppose, the 12 is the better choice, being that it has that extra "ummmphhhhh" that the 20 doesn't seem to have in terms of reach. That's my personal experience.
I've successfully hunted quail with both .410's and 20's, but other fowl sometimes require a little more voltage and admittedly you've got that extra reach, power and spread coming with the 12 gauge that you don't with lesser calibers. Like they used to say in the muscle car world, cubic inches count.
So as with the recoil of shotguns, so goes it with the recoil of rifles. I greatly enjoy rifle shooting. I don't mind some recoil. The 30-30 has never seemed oppressive to me, and I've got that great shooting Marlin Model 336 30-30 of my youth, scoped and dead on after all these years. It's been dead on at 100 yards since the day we sighted it in, decades ago.
Mostly these days I've hunted hogs. Bigger Texas hogs. Mean ones. One that will live despite a fatal wound just to spite you and hopefully inflict some sort of injury on you before it keels over. Head shots are popular when possible, but when going after a moving target, sometimes that's not possible.
So I have for years preferred the .308 as the best hog and large varmint option for me recoil wise. It's about what I can tolerate on a practice and field basis. It's got more oommpphhh for me than the 30-30. I used to have a Remington pump 30-06 and the recoil from that was fairly harsh for me.
I've shot rifles more powerful than the 30-06 but again, baring a move to bear country, I really don't even need a gun as big as a 30-06 in my proverbial closet. But one day I'll probably have one when I stumble across a deal on a used Baikal/Remington/USSG double rifle or combo rifle/shotgun in aught six.
As I've written before, I like the idea of a kit I can fit into a Pelican suitcase type deal with wheels and an extending handle. It keeps it handy to throw in the trunk or the back of the suv for out of town trips without having to pack ahead of time, with a combination of takedown fishing rods, tackle and takedown guns and probably a pistola or two.
I'll blog more about the kit I'm gonna build. I've a got a smaller Pelican case and can attest to their durability in carrying both photographic and delicate Digital Audio Tape recording gear over the past twenty years in that case. I'll get a deal on the larger size case that I have in mind soon, and will build my kit in time for spring.
What kind of takedown guns will be in that case? Stay tuned...
Thursday, October 4, 2012
BUILDING A RIVER RAFT PART ONE
When I was a pre-teen and a young teen, my neighborhood friends and I had access to a closed down cattle ranch that was hundreds of acres, with a multi-acre pond plus an artificial creek that wrapped around in two arms for about a quarter mile each until meeting up in a large lagoon type area.
Each of the two arms of these fake creeks departed from opposite ends of the big pond, or lake as we called it. The lake itself was big, and was probably 4 or 5 acres.
This property was at the back of our subdivision, where the roads ended. As we explored the area on our motorcross bikes, the elderly owner and his wife stopped us, talked to us, decided they liked us, and told us we could hang there and ride our bikes and fish and even shoot if we were careful. They didn't live on that property, and at that time there were no nearby residences or businesses and they had retired from ranching. They lived nearby and were an old German farm and ranch family whose family had tended that land for several generations. They were nice folks and were happy that someone appreciated the land and wanted to hang out there and would respect it.
Although a lot of the property was old pasture, most of the land that had the lake and creek was heavily forested except for some well established trails. There was plenty of wood to throw into various parts of the lake and fake creeks to create fish habitat and structure as well as for bon fires and for building stuff.
He told us we could build whatever we wanted to, and cut trails and sink trees into the deep parts of the lagoon and lake to create fish habitat. He told us it had been stocked for many years with perch and bluegills, largemouth bass and several types of catfish. He said he'd killed off all the gators but there were a bunch of beavers on one side of the fake creek.
When I say fake creek, it was like a creek except it was part of the pond but didn't flow on to a river like a real creek would. Nonetheless, it did flow around, as there were springs in the lake that generated the water. The creek was about 20 feet wide and ranged from about 8' to 12' deep. There was good fishing all over the place on this ranch, but I had my two favorite spots.
One was on the backside of a hill made from the dirt removed to build the creek some 50 years before, now with large trees all over the mounds of dirt that had become small hills, and there was a deep hole with lots of structure right in front of this spot. The other favorite spot was in or near the lagoon where the water was deep and where there was a spring and where we had sunk fallen trees and christmas trees tied to scrap concrete pieces and rebar from the new home construction in the area.
So it was an ideal getaway as a kid. We built lean-to's and a tee-pee and a tree house over near the big lake. We had several lean-to's near the lagoon for shelter from sun and rain, although the lagoon was generally well shaded. Off to the backside of the lagoon was sort of an overflow pond about the size of a football field that took in the overflow from the spring fed lake. It was real deep and only held catfish, either by design or by operation of the food chain. Big nasty yellow catfish. We'd catch them and let them go, they were good for a fight but no much else.
One of the things we built out there was a raft, actually, two rafts. Our first effort pretty much sunk immediately. Back then, it was me and my friends Big Al, Mog, Andy and a few others. Most of the time the core guys were me and Big Al, as we were the big fishermen of the group. This started in the sixth grade and went on for four years or so until we started driving.
So it was probably me that said we ought to build a raft. Our large neighborhood was just getting started, and hundreds of houses were being built. All kinds of scrap materials, wood and carpet and buckets and just everything you could imagine, was there and the builders were glad to have us take their trash away. Back in those days, they burned it all after they finished building the home.
We also used to collect, again with their permission, soft drink bottles from the construction sites. We could easily cash in several wagon loads and get $10 or $15 bucks. Big money in those days. I used money I raised by gathering bottles to get some outdoors stuff like a Puma White Hunter knife, Garcia Ambassador reels, a japanese Bamboo fly rod, several pellet and bb guns, a guitar or two and lots of non-outdoors stuff like music albums.
The huge construction boom in the area went on for years and we made a lot of cash for fishing gear with collecting bottles.
Our first raft was made by using rope and cut down trees. Freshly cut down trees, selected for uniformity of size and were about 10" thick tapering to 9" thick. We had watched too many movies about people making rafts from trees and what we didn't figure into the construction was that green trees heavily laden with sap do not float at all.
At all.
It sank like a rock as soon as we pushed it in the water. Big Al was standing on it as we pushed it in and had no choice but to go down as the Captain with his ship because it was so instantaneous.
So our second effort was more noteworthy. We used five gallon buckets from construction sites, with their lids and used caulk to seal the buckets. We had a few leaks but not many. This raft for some reason listed about 6" to the forward corner, but since it was just for the private water that was no big deal. We tried to account for it by weighting the opposite corner and that helped a great deal.
Big Al had a smoker/grill that weighed about 30 pounds that we put back there, and had a tarp over the back half of the ten foot long by 6 foot wide raft. We basically just poled it where we wanted to go, or drifted if the wind was blowing or the springs were flowing strong.
We used scrap 2 x 4's and plywood to make the frame and floor. It could've been lighter, and had we built another one it would have been a much better build. As it was, it was totally seaworthy for that small lake and was used quite a bit over the years.
This past summer, one of my friend's son built a raft from discarded drinking water bottles. He grouped them together in mesh bags and built a frame with pvc and some kind of plastic netting under the boat framing in the bags of sealed bottles. He attached a wooden and plastic top to the frame and had a dandy raft for the 2 acre lake on his folk's place.
I'd like to get a bit more fancy than that in a raft build. I'd like to use as much recycled materials as possible. One idea involves using sealed PVC pipes as the floatation, but I worry they would be too heavy even in a 6" or 8" size.
Another idea I've written about before involves cannibalizing an old Hobie Cat catamaran sail boat, getting rid of the mast and boom and building a compartment where the tarp is for the passengers and building a motor mount for a small outboard and electric motor. With some sort of cover over at least half the boat to fight the sun.
It'd be Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer for sure, floating down the river on their homemade raft, a fire going in a cast iron pot or today, a BBQ grill or smoker,
Each of the two arms of these fake creeks departed from opposite ends of the big pond, or lake as we called it. The lake itself was big, and was probably 4 or 5 acres.
This property was at the back of our subdivision, where the roads ended. As we explored the area on our motorcross bikes, the elderly owner and his wife stopped us, talked to us, decided they liked us, and told us we could hang there and ride our bikes and fish and even shoot if we were careful. They didn't live on that property, and at that time there were no nearby residences or businesses and they had retired from ranching. They lived nearby and were an old German farm and ranch family whose family had tended that land for several generations. They were nice folks and were happy that someone appreciated the land and wanted to hang out there and would respect it.
Although a lot of the property was old pasture, most of the land that had the lake and creek was heavily forested except for some well established trails. There was plenty of wood to throw into various parts of the lake and fake creeks to create fish habitat and structure as well as for bon fires and for building stuff.
He told us we could build whatever we wanted to, and cut trails and sink trees into the deep parts of the lagoon and lake to create fish habitat. He told us it had been stocked for many years with perch and bluegills, largemouth bass and several types of catfish. He said he'd killed off all the gators but there were a bunch of beavers on one side of the fake creek.
When I say fake creek, it was like a creek except it was part of the pond but didn't flow on to a river like a real creek would. Nonetheless, it did flow around, as there were springs in the lake that generated the water. The creek was about 20 feet wide and ranged from about 8' to 12' deep. There was good fishing all over the place on this ranch, but I had my two favorite spots.
One was on the backside of a hill made from the dirt removed to build the creek some 50 years before, now with large trees all over the mounds of dirt that had become small hills, and there was a deep hole with lots of structure right in front of this spot. The other favorite spot was in or near the lagoon where the water was deep and where there was a spring and where we had sunk fallen trees and christmas trees tied to scrap concrete pieces and rebar from the new home construction in the area.
So it was an ideal getaway as a kid. We built lean-to's and a tee-pee and a tree house over near the big lake. We had several lean-to's near the lagoon for shelter from sun and rain, although the lagoon was generally well shaded. Off to the backside of the lagoon was sort of an overflow pond about the size of a football field that took in the overflow from the spring fed lake. It was real deep and only held catfish, either by design or by operation of the food chain. Big nasty yellow catfish. We'd catch them and let them go, they were good for a fight but no much else.
One of the things we built out there was a raft, actually, two rafts. Our first effort pretty much sunk immediately. Back then, it was me and my friends Big Al, Mog, Andy and a few others. Most of the time the core guys were me and Big Al, as we were the big fishermen of the group. This started in the sixth grade and went on for four years or so until we started driving.
So it was probably me that said we ought to build a raft. Our large neighborhood was just getting started, and hundreds of houses were being built. All kinds of scrap materials, wood and carpet and buckets and just everything you could imagine, was there and the builders were glad to have us take their trash away. Back in those days, they burned it all after they finished building the home.
We also used to collect, again with their permission, soft drink bottles from the construction sites. We could easily cash in several wagon loads and get $10 or $15 bucks. Big money in those days. I used money I raised by gathering bottles to get some outdoors stuff like a Puma White Hunter knife, Garcia Ambassador reels, a japanese Bamboo fly rod, several pellet and bb guns, a guitar or two and lots of non-outdoors stuff like music albums.
The huge construction boom in the area went on for years and we made a lot of cash for fishing gear with collecting bottles.
Our first raft was made by using rope and cut down trees. Freshly cut down trees, selected for uniformity of size and were about 10" thick tapering to 9" thick. We had watched too many movies about people making rafts from trees and what we didn't figure into the construction was that green trees heavily laden with sap do not float at all.
At all.
It sank like a rock as soon as we pushed it in the water. Big Al was standing on it as we pushed it in and had no choice but to go down as the Captain with his ship because it was so instantaneous.
So our second effort was more noteworthy. We used five gallon buckets from construction sites, with their lids and used caulk to seal the buckets. We had a few leaks but not many. This raft for some reason listed about 6" to the forward corner, but since it was just for the private water that was no big deal. We tried to account for it by weighting the opposite corner and that helped a great deal.
Big Al had a smoker/grill that weighed about 30 pounds that we put back there, and had a tarp over the back half of the ten foot long by 6 foot wide raft. We basically just poled it where we wanted to go, or drifted if the wind was blowing or the springs were flowing strong.
We used scrap 2 x 4's and plywood to make the frame and floor. It could've been lighter, and had we built another one it would have been a much better build. As it was, it was totally seaworthy for that small lake and was used quite a bit over the years.
This past summer, one of my friend's son built a raft from discarded drinking water bottles. He grouped them together in mesh bags and built a frame with pvc and some kind of plastic netting under the boat framing in the bags of sealed bottles. He attached a wooden and plastic top to the frame and had a dandy raft for the 2 acre lake on his folk's place.
I'd like to get a bit more fancy than that in a raft build. I'd like to use as much recycled materials as possible. One idea involves using sealed PVC pipes as the floatation, but I worry they would be too heavy even in a 6" or 8" size.
Another idea I've written about before involves cannibalizing an old Hobie Cat catamaran sail boat, getting rid of the mast and boom and building a compartment where the tarp is for the passengers and building a motor mount for a small outboard and electric motor. With some sort of cover over at least half the boat to fight the sun.
It'd be Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer for sure, floating down the river on their homemade raft, a fire going in a cast iron pot or today, a BBQ grill or smoker,
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
STILL A FAN OF "THIS FAB TREK"
I've been reading this blog by this Austrian fellow named Manfred for the past several years now. It's a great travelogue of current adventures all around the globe. Europe. Asia. Africa. The Middle East. North and now South America.
Manfred's blog is currently telling of his travels in Peru.
This is not the first time I've given him a plug, and he's located over in my blog roll for those who want to visit his travel-blog.
His writing is a few months behind, but no matter. I urge folks looking for an interesting read and some interesting stories to go back on his blog to the beginning, around 2005 or so, when this educated banker decides to drop out of society.
He heads to Africa in what is a very cool Land Rover, very heavy duty. Boy meets girl. And after a year or so, girl gets pregnant. They marry. Girl has twins. They make it awhile and he wants to get back out on the road, to continue the adventure. Apparently, she does not. They part, and divorce, apparently amicably. His sons join him every year for further adventures in his globe-trotting lifestyle, and I'll guess the kids live the rest of the year in Morocco where their mother hails from. I could be wrong about that.
In any event, for the past several years he had a girlfriend traveling with him, and apparently she decided to get off the road as well, she being from South America. So as for now, he's on the road in Peru and has his kids with him, and the current blog entry is dated July 29th, 2012. It takes a while for him to write and edit and get his photos all up.
The photos alone are worth the visit. Manfred has become quite the photographer over the past seven years.
It's an absolute budget trip around the world. He rarely stays in any kind of motel or home or hotel or the like. Usually he's sleeping in his van or whatever his vehicle de jour is, and taking baths often in a bucket outside the van in some faraway locale. He often parks near places with wi-fi and again, apart from his beer expendatures, it's a spartan existence on all fronts. But I guess that enables him to keep on the road.
He's been a lot of interesting places, and the fact that there are places where one can drive hundreds of miles through the desert on "tracks" or through jungles or down empty beaches developers have yet to discover is very cool. His pictures take us a lot of places that a white male American like me absolutely could not go, whereas his white male Austrian self can get into places I never could.
Some of the islamic backwater places this guy visited both in Africa and the Middle East are the types of places folks like me are not welcome in and have been known to disappear from. Just disappear off the face of the earth. Literally.
I judged this guy more harshly in a previous review of his blog, in that it bothered me that he was stopping in the middle of the Sahara and basically bumming meals off folks who literally had nothing to give, when he could have brought more food for sharing in the food and the camp the folks let him make.
That aside, his and my world views don't always agree but who is to say mine are right. It's good to get exposed to some other point of view about what's right and what's wrong in the world.
I'm envious, and would like to have done that trek in younger days when unmarried and unencumbered with children and mortgage debt and a job and retirement and medical insurance and the like. Back in my mid-20's, my friends and college roommates Australian Paul "The Crazy Australian" and John "John Juan" (Also known for the last 20 years as "The Singing Border Patrolman) wanted to go around the world in a couple of hard core vehicles.
Paul had a serious International Scout that he had restored that he wanted to use as one of the vehicles. As I recall, he had enough parts to run the Baja 500 or lots of other grueling desert races, and that would be enough to head around the world with.
Paul's uncle was then in the MI-6 and working in Africa at the time and had all kinds of friends all over Europe and Africa and Asia that we could visit. We never did make that trip, but it was fun talking about it and thinking about where we could go and where we couldn't. Back then, it was a few years before the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall came tumbling down, so lots of Asia was off limits.
Paul's over in his homeland now, happy as he can be in his super off road Land Rover Discovery. Before he left the USA, he was a super kayaker maniac over on the east coast. John Juan, the singing Border Patrolman, was at last account patrolling the border. Our plans involved Aussie Paul, John Juan, Billy Ray and I taking off a couple of years before settling into serious life and seeing the world.
One thing and then another happened to all of us. The military. Law School. Psychology grad school. The Border Patrol. Women. Jobs. Families. And so it came to pass that we never did take that trip around the world.
We're all still alive, and Paul, Billy Ray and I are still in frequent contact and if nothing else we might still be up for some kind of trek someplace exotic in the future. Paul does have that ready to roll Land Rover...
Manfred's blog is currently telling of his travels in Peru.
This is not the first time I've given him a plug, and he's located over in my blog roll for those who want to visit his travel-blog.
His writing is a few months behind, but no matter. I urge folks looking for an interesting read and some interesting stories to go back on his blog to the beginning, around 2005 or so, when this educated banker decides to drop out of society.
He heads to Africa in what is a very cool Land Rover, very heavy duty. Boy meets girl. And after a year or so, girl gets pregnant. They marry. Girl has twins. They make it awhile and he wants to get back out on the road, to continue the adventure. Apparently, she does not. They part, and divorce, apparently amicably. His sons join him every year for further adventures in his globe-trotting lifestyle, and I'll guess the kids live the rest of the year in Morocco where their mother hails from. I could be wrong about that.
In any event, for the past several years he had a girlfriend traveling with him, and apparently she decided to get off the road as well, she being from South America. So as for now, he's on the road in Peru and has his kids with him, and the current blog entry is dated July 29th, 2012. It takes a while for him to write and edit and get his photos all up.
The photos alone are worth the visit. Manfred has become quite the photographer over the past seven years.
It's an absolute budget trip around the world. He rarely stays in any kind of motel or home or hotel or the like. Usually he's sleeping in his van or whatever his vehicle de jour is, and taking baths often in a bucket outside the van in some faraway locale. He often parks near places with wi-fi and again, apart from his beer expendatures, it's a spartan existence on all fronts. But I guess that enables him to keep on the road.
He's been a lot of interesting places, and the fact that there are places where one can drive hundreds of miles through the desert on "tracks" or through jungles or down empty beaches developers have yet to discover is very cool. His pictures take us a lot of places that a white male American like me absolutely could not go, whereas his white male Austrian self can get into places I never could.
Some of the islamic backwater places this guy visited both in Africa and the Middle East are the types of places folks like me are not welcome in and have been known to disappear from. Just disappear off the face of the earth. Literally.
I judged this guy more harshly in a previous review of his blog, in that it bothered me that he was stopping in the middle of the Sahara and basically bumming meals off folks who literally had nothing to give, when he could have brought more food for sharing in the food and the camp the folks let him make.
That aside, his and my world views don't always agree but who is to say mine are right. It's good to get exposed to some other point of view about what's right and what's wrong in the world.
I'm envious, and would like to have done that trek in younger days when unmarried and unencumbered with children and mortgage debt and a job and retirement and medical insurance and the like. Back in my mid-20's, my friends and college roommates Australian Paul "The Crazy Australian" and John "John Juan" (Also known for the last 20 years as "The Singing Border Patrolman) wanted to go around the world in a couple of hard core vehicles.
Paul had a serious International Scout that he had restored that he wanted to use as one of the vehicles. As I recall, he had enough parts to run the Baja 500 or lots of other grueling desert races, and that would be enough to head around the world with.
Paul's uncle was then in the MI-6 and working in Africa at the time and had all kinds of friends all over Europe and Africa and Asia that we could visit. We never did make that trip, but it was fun talking about it and thinking about where we could go and where we couldn't. Back then, it was a few years before the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall came tumbling down, so lots of Asia was off limits.
Paul's over in his homeland now, happy as he can be in his super off road Land Rover Discovery. Before he left the USA, he was a super kayaker maniac over on the east coast. John Juan, the singing Border Patrolman, was at last account patrolling the border. Our plans involved Aussie Paul, John Juan, Billy Ray and I taking off a couple of years before settling into serious life and seeing the world.
One thing and then another happened to all of us. The military. Law School. Psychology grad school. The Border Patrol. Women. Jobs. Families. And so it came to pass that we never did take that trip around the world.
We're all still alive, and Paul, Billy Ray and I are still in frequent contact and if nothing else we might still be up for some kind of trek someplace exotic in the future. Paul does have that ready to roll Land Rover...
Monday, October 1, 2012
SANTA'S HELPER ALERT: SMITH AND WESSON LADYSMITH MODEL 65 -OR- A MODEL 13/65 WITH A ROUND BUTT AND 3" BARREL
I think I'm gonna ask Santa this year for a Smith and Wesson Model 13 or Model 65 (the stainless version of the Model 13) with a round butt and a 3" barrel. With any luck, my friend Zach will stumble across a used model at some gun store I was unaware of for me, as he's done in the past. I can put it on layaway and have it paid off and here by the holidays.
FROM: http://www.gunshopfinder.com/smithandwesson/model65ls.jpg
Ideally, I'd like to find a Model 65 LADYSMITH, yes, that's right, the Ladysmith version of the Model 65. It's a shade lighter than the regular Model 65, has a round butt, a 3" barrel, is stainless and has a shrouded ejector rod to boot. It comes with some nice looking wood grips which would quickly be replaced with a set of Pachmayr compact grips for a K frame RB.
Most of the Model 13's and 65's I've seen do not have a shrouded ejector rod. Even if I can't find a Ladysmith 65, if available, I'd loved to find a regular 13 or 65 that did come with a shrouded ejector rod. Perhaps the later models came with the shrouded ejector rod. I'll need to pose that question over at the Smith and Wesson forum, as I've seen a lot of posts about 13's and 65's and I know they have their fans on that forum.
The 13 is basically a Model 19 with fixed sights. It more resembles, in it's 4" bull barrel version, the bull barreled Model 10 M and P revolver.
The adjustable rear sight on the 19/66 are great for target shooting but make concealment of this already difficult to conceal (because of it's large size) revolver even harder and without the right holster, in an IWB (inside the waistband holster) holster can lead to getting poked in the side with the rear adjustable sight.
The FBI had this gun, the blued Model 13 with a 3" barrel and a round butt, as their final wheel gun issued to agents in the early 1980's before making the move to semi-autos.
I much prefer the Model 13 with a 3" barrel and RB to the Model 19/66 with the slightly shorter 2.5" barrel and RB mostly due to the adjustable sights that are on the 19/66. The 13 comes with a groove down the top of it's receiver for it's rear fixed sight, and has a uniquely designed front sight that was made to be snag less. It always has been snag less for me.
For a carry gun, the 13/65 is an excellent choice, particularly in the 3" round butt configuration. I wonder why Smith and Wesson has not brought this model back as part of it's "Classics" series.
I also wonder why they don't currently market the Ladysmith version of the Model 65 as a non-Ladysmith (that moniker will turn off some potential buyers...not me, but I know some who simply would not own or carry a gun so marked) gun for the individual wanting a serious carry gun.
The Ladysmith version, as said above, has the benefits of being a shade lighter than the regular version as well as having a nice shrouded ejector rod. It bridges the gap between a heavyweight .357 revolver and the ultralight weight .357 varieties that Smith is currently selling.
Such a gun with a slightly tapered barrel could rightly be called a Mountain Gun as well. As it is, any Model 13/65 is a good choice for carry when visiting the field and stream or simply walking your fenceline. I like the bull barrel of the 13/65 and feel that it gives good balance to the gun.
I see quite a few Model 13's with 4" barrels and a Square Butt frame out there, and the occasional 65 likewise set up with a SB and a 4" barrel. I frequently see Model 66 2.5" barrels with a RB but never seem to see the 13/65 with the RB and a 3" barrel.
There's an excellent to dang near new Model 13 RB 3" at a dealer down in Houston priced at $900. That's quite a bit more than I can or will pay for one of these. Apparently, others feel the same because he's had the gun in his case so priced for about 16 months now. Right next to it, there is an equally pristine (but with a much more lusterous blued finish) 3" Model 27 Highway Patrol that's priced at something like $1400. It hasn't moved during that time period either, but it sure is a dandy looking N frame. And bear in mind that this store moves A LOT of guns in and out the door every week, many of them much more high priced than these two examples.
As for me, I'd prefer simply to have the Ladysmith Model 65 variant, and the Ladysmith laser engraving on the right side of the gun wouldn't bother me at all.
If you know where one is, let me know. I'd surely appreciate it.
Ideally, I'd like to find a Model 65 LADYSMITH, yes, that's right, the Ladysmith version of the Model 65. It's a shade lighter than the regular Model 65, has a round butt, a 3" barrel, is stainless and has a shrouded ejector rod to boot. It comes with some nice looking wood grips which would quickly be replaced with a set of Pachmayr compact grips for a K frame RB.
Most of the Model 13's and 65's I've seen do not have a shrouded ejector rod. Even if I can't find a Ladysmith 65, if available, I'd loved to find a regular 13 or 65 that did come with a shrouded ejector rod. Perhaps the later models came with the shrouded ejector rod. I'll need to pose that question over at the Smith and Wesson forum, as I've seen a lot of posts about 13's and 65's and I know they have their fans on that forum.
The 13 is basically a Model 19 with fixed sights. It more resembles, in it's 4" bull barrel version, the bull barreled Model 10 M and P revolver.
The adjustable rear sight on the 19/66 are great for target shooting but make concealment of this already difficult to conceal (because of it's large size) revolver even harder and without the right holster, in an IWB (inside the waistband holster) holster can lead to getting poked in the side with the rear adjustable sight.
The FBI had this gun, the blued Model 13 with a 3" barrel and a round butt, as their final wheel gun issued to agents in the early 1980's before making the move to semi-autos.
I much prefer the Model 13 with a 3" barrel and RB to the Model 19/66 with the slightly shorter 2.5" barrel and RB mostly due to the adjustable sights that are on the 19/66. The 13 comes with a groove down the top of it's receiver for it's rear fixed sight, and has a uniquely designed front sight that was made to be snag less. It always has been snag less for me.
For a carry gun, the 13/65 is an excellent choice, particularly in the 3" round butt configuration. I wonder why Smith and Wesson has not brought this model back as part of it's "Classics" series.
I also wonder why they don't currently market the Ladysmith version of the Model 65 as a non-Ladysmith (that moniker will turn off some potential buyers...not me, but I know some who simply would not own or carry a gun so marked) gun for the individual wanting a serious carry gun.
The Ladysmith version, as said above, has the benefits of being a shade lighter than the regular version as well as having a nice shrouded ejector rod. It bridges the gap between a heavyweight .357 revolver and the ultralight weight .357 varieties that Smith is currently selling.
Such a gun with a slightly tapered barrel could rightly be called a Mountain Gun as well. As it is, any Model 13/65 is a good choice for carry when visiting the field and stream or simply walking your fenceline. I like the bull barrel of the 13/65 and feel that it gives good balance to the gun.
I see quite a few Model 13's with 4" barrels and a Square Butt frame out there, and the occasional 65 likewise set up with a SB and a 4" barrel. I frequently see Model 66 2.5" barrels with a RB but never seem to see the 13/65 with the RB and a 3" barrel.
There's an excellent to dang near new Model 13 RB 3" at a dealer down in Houston priced at $900. That's quite a bit more than I can or will pay for one of these. Apparently, others feel the same because he's had the gun in his case so priced for about 16 months now. Right next to it, there is an equally pristine (but with a much more lusterous blued finish) 3" Model 27 Highway Patrol that's priced at something like $1400. It hasn't moved during that time period either, but it sure is a dandy looking N frame. And bear in mind that this store moves A LOT of guns in and out the door every week, many of them much more high priced than these two examples.
As for me, I'd prefer simply to have the Ladysmith Model 65 variant, and the Ladysmith laser engraving on the right side of the gun wouldn't bother me at all.
If you know where one is, let me know. I'd surely appreciate it.
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