SuperDan

Ok, opened a trouble ticket with Vbulletin. Looks like others are having the same problem with v 3.5.3 and it just started today Also the User CP seems to be broken.

WTH? Working on it.

14 days or 30 posts.

Collateral damage from the upgrade, hope to have those features back by this comming weekend. Dan

Hmm... that's weird

Wow Lee! It's been a long time.

http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?p=607107#post607107

On the list of things to be added back.... later today I think.

First car I owned when I was 16 was a 1966 Corsa 180hp, had that thing for about 5 years.

No, it's a random problem and I have tried to fix it but we need to upgrade the Photopost software so we can get support from the developer. More details to be posted soon. Dan

A rule I live by is something my grandfather once told me: "Never trust an Irishman who doesn't drink or a horse that doesn't fart" No, that's not it. "Wars and paintings are best viewed from a distance...." No, wait wait wait, I got it. "Buy cheap buy twice" That's it!

Thanks for reminding me, I need to upgrade the version we have since it stopped working a few months ago.

Yes it will auto expire after one year (in your case 03/10/2006 @ 21:54). In the past, March seems to be the "Donation drive" time, hence most of the members donating status will expire in that month. Thanks for your concern and support! We appreciate it! Dan

I have had the best luck with MicroShaft... I mean MicroSofts anti-spyware. My dads PC was so screwed up with GAIN and it was the only one that removed all traces of it. Just my .02 Dan

Had a little time at lunch to finish up this day so.... Ok, where were we? Oh yeah I cocked the hammer and suddenly he took a quick step forward "SONOFABITCH!” I whispered to myself, “good kitty, easy boy….” I was startled and lost the cat in my scope for a few seconds, I peered over the top of my rifle to see he was still standing there, then took aim again. I was a lot more focused at this point, and decided that something needed to be done, we were at a standoff and neither one of us was backing down. I did a quick assessment of the situation and determined that one of us had to leave the area. Understand that I had no wish to kill this animal unless it was absolutely necessary, a decision that would later still makes me nauseas every time I think about it (I am actually shaking typing this). I quickly determined that I did not have the option of leaving the area, there was no way in hell I was going to turn my back on this cat nor was I going to give up the advantage I had with him square in my sights, HE HAD TO LEAVE one way or the other. I continued to look at him through my scope and noticed a cantaloupe size (granite I think) size rock about 3 feet in front of him… “Hmmm…” I thought back to when a buddy of mine and I use to go shooting out in the desert years ago, one of the “fun” things we would do is bring out some old sheets of plywood and stand them up on end, then place softball size rocks a few feet in front of them and shoot them with my .308 or his 300 Win Mag. Anyone who has done something similar can confirm the effects this can have on a sheet of plywood, the rock (depending on it composition) in general will vaporize send pea to marble size projectiles into the plywood embedding themselves about a ¼ inch into the wood, sometimes blowing completely thru it. “Give kitty a little swat on the nose” hopefully not enough to kill him, just get his attention and scare the crap out of him. I made my decision in an instant; I knelled down on one knee, removed my knife and stuck it in the soft sand next to me, pulled the spare cartridge from my mouth and cupped it in my hand under the rifles forearm. I took aim, my best guess was about 4 inches under the rock, the cat was still, not moving at all, just staring at me. Isn’t it weird what will flash through your mind at a time like this? Visions of my wife and my 15 year daughter and the little boy named Andrew who just had his first birthday the Tuesday before I left. Second thought, “just drop his *** were he stands, no questions or regrets, just 100% assurance that he will not be able to attack.” I squeezed the trigger, BOOOOM!, over the top of the scope I see a gray dust cloud form, and hear the sound of small rocks crashing through the brush. I look quickly for any sign of the cat and verify that he is gone, then a voice from the movie Independence Day echo’s in my head, “…negative…. target remains” I see the cat make a small circle then he rushes towards me, ears down a teeth showing “oh my god… oh my GOD!, this is it, ah ****, what have I done!” I yelled in a broken high pitch voice, I look down at my rifle, focused and alert I cracked the breach, tossed the spent casing to the side and shoved another round into the chamber, “it’s too late, IT’S TOO LATE!, he is has to be on top of me by now… don’t look up!, it will be over soon” I raise my head, simultaneously bringing my rifle up “Oh GOD!..” he was in a dead run towards me less than 10 yards away, “too late… it’s too late!” wondering to myself if it was going to hurt a lot, I closed my eyes, “boom!!!” a shot rang out, I slowly opened my eyes to see a gray dust ball in front of me, the cat was nose down in the soft sand and slowly rolled to it’s side. I quickly looked around to see what had happened, to my left and above me I see the dark silhouette of a man still shouldering a rifle, dawn breaking behind he slowly lowered his gun and in a familiar voice, calm and comforting I heard him say “Danny…, you ok son?” SUCKERS!!! Ok, that’s the campfire version! What really happened. I squeezed the trigger, BOOOOM!, over the top of the scope I see a gray dust cloud form, and hear the sound of small rocks crashing through the brush. I look quickly for any sign of the cat and verify that he is gone, nope no kitty and whatever it was he had at his feet was gone also, It looked like a jackrabbit or maybe a small javalina, not sure. I reloaded my gun, gathered my thoughts and continued on ever so cautiously until I found a small wash intersecting the one I was in about 100 yards up the way. I meet up with my dad a few minutes later, “hey, did you get one?... I heard a shot coming from down in that wash you were in” he asked, “nope dad, I missed” I told him. We had a long talk later about how I no longer like his hunting technique. My cousin did take a nice little forky that morning and after a 3 hour drag we got back to camp and planed for our last hunt in the morning.

A mistake I never plan to repeat Have had this for ~10 years, just for target shooting and 1 time on a "pistol only" Javalina hunt. http://www.ruger.com/Firearms/FAProdView?model=806&return=Y But, what I left behind was this, only about 20 years older http://www.ruger.com/Firearms/FAProdView?model=316&return=Y

Sorry guys, will have to wait until I get home tonight to finish the story, no time at work today.

Bad kitty, bad!, sit, sit!.” Saturday, Day 3. 04:15 am. Laying in bed, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling, my brother is at it again with the snoring. Time to rewind to a few days before we left on our trip. Picture my wife and I in our bedroom, I am laying out all my gear on the bed to take a quick inventory, in my hands is my trusty Ruger Blackhawk 357 Mag. Without fail I have carried this thing with me on every single hunt since I was 18. I slip on the belt and holster, tie the leg lace up and holster the shinny blue beauty. “Honey, I think I might leave this at home this year…” I said “why?” she says. “I’m getting a little older and cannot move as fast as I use to when going up a hill, I think I want to pack light this year” I said, “why do you carry it at all if you already have a rifle?” she asks, Condom theory I explained. She gives me a confused look, “I carry it because I do not need it” I tell her, now she is looking really confused, “I would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it..” I said. Alright, I think I lost her so I explain how, although rare, there have been incidents were a hunter has taken a deer, elk etc down and while he was in the process of field dressing it was attacked by another animal such as a bear or mountain lion while his rifle was leaned up against a tree or non-accessible. Ok, she now gets it. I put my gear away and decide to make up my mind later on what to do. Fast forward to the present, smell of coffee brewing, we are up, grab our gear and head out to a new location. We pile out of the truck, Moe (my dad) is giving Larry and Curly (my brother and cousin) there marching orders, then comes my turn, “you remember that big *** wash we passed back behind us?” he says, “yeaaahhh….” I said “why don’t you hike up that wash heading west until you get to the base of that mountain, then head up it and get on the very top, you will see everything from up there” he tells me. I think to myself “why don’t I?” well for one, I hate hiking through sandy washes, it sucks, and it’s still dark, and it’s about 1000 yds to the base of that mountain, how’s that for starters bud?. “Ok dad, sounds like a plan” I said, and I was off. Time again for another translation, what my dad was really saying is “I will hike to the top of this little ridge overlooking the wash while I send my 1st born son down it to kick up any deer that may be in there so I can blast them when they pop out the top” I’m in the wash, trucking along slowly, the sandy gravel bottom is tough going in spots, looking down along the way I see lots of tracks, “hmmm… deer tracks, but when?, wait, those are the tracks left by my brothers truck the evening before and these deer tracks are on top them, these are less than 12 hours old, woohoo!” So I’m trucking along happy as can be and start to notice that this wash is getting deeper and deeper as I progress thru it, it’s a large wash and water has cut into the solid rock and I was now looking at the near vertical sides and they are about 8 – 10 feet tall, “maybe I should start looking for a way out of this thing and just skirt the side until I reach the base of that mountain”, yeah, that’s a good idea I thought. Ok, I am about 500 yards in this sucker with at least that much left to travel when I look down to see if there is any more deer sign…”hmmm…. Yup, there are a few tracks right here, and what looks like cattle tracks, and a funny looking track” Pop quiz, what kind of animal makes a track with 4 small pad prints half circling a larger pad? Yup, you guessed it, mountain lion…. “hmmm…, prints are about the size of a large grapefruit, OK, that’s a big kitty!” “oh, and very fresh, nice!, it was heading the same direction as I am, excellent!” I stopped for a few minutes to gather my thoughts, should I head back? Or keep on trucking and jump out of this wash at the first opportunity? “Hell with it, keep trucking…” Now I am moving along at a slightly hastened pace, but stopping every 25 feet or so to check my back and above me. In all the years we have hunted this area I have only seen 1 mountain lion, he was up about 800 yards on the side of a rock face peering out of a small cave, I was about 22 at the time. For those who do not know they are pretty illusive creatures and do not perceive man as a food source or really a threat and would rather turn tail and run when confronted by man. But, there are of course exceptions, the very basics are: 1. They are cornered or feel threatened. 2. They have fresh kill and you stumble into an area where they are feeding. 3. You have fresh kill, they are hungry, and want it. 4. Female with cubs. 5. Mentally unstable who just likes to kill for fun, hey it happens, they just snap. (keep these in mind, we will be referring to them later) Well, I have built this up enough, and it’s go to be pretty obvious what’s going to happen next. I round a small bend in the wash and stop dead in my tracks, about 50 to 75 yards in front of me I see something off to the side, yup you guessed it’s a freaking huge mountain lion, looking back on it I would guess his weight at around 175+ lbs. I stood there for a second, thinking he was going to turn tail and run, no dice, his head was down slightly and staring right at me, he heard me coming around that bend and was ready for me. Rewind to Thursday morning at 05:00am, I had my gear already to load into the car, standing there holding my .357 in my hands, I said to my self “not this time old buddy, you going to sit this one out” I locked it back in the gun safe and headed on out. In all the years I have carried it I have only had to use it once, and that was to put down a deer that I botched a shot on, what do I really need it for anyways? See condom theory above for an answer. Fast forward to the preset. A small voice in my head says “you idiot, wth were you thinking when you left your pistol behind” I notice at his feet is something furry and grayish color, see basic kitty cat rule # 2 above. Small voice in head is getting louder now “oh man, you really screwed up this time” “quick do something moron!” At this point I am no longer petrified with fear and the vibrations in my body are starting to subside, reality is returning and I am starting to think clearly again. Voice again “at that distance, if he rushes you, you will only get 1 shot off” Decision time, I slowly un-sling my rifle, and shoulder it, his head lowers and he decides to open his mouth and show me his teeth, no noise from him and it looked almost like he was smiling at me. I reach into my pocket and grab a 2nd round and put it between my teeth, not really ever expecting to be able to get a 2nd shot off, but it made me feel better. I unsnapped the strap on my knife and drew a bead right between his eyes. Damn voice again, “ummm… you are 2 inches high at 200 yds, he is about 60ish yards away” I try to quickly do the math in my head and said to hell with it, I put the crosshairs on his chin. I cocked the hammer and suddenly he took a quick step forward "SONOFABITCH!” To be continued, have to eat dinner……

Ok, I should be working at work but ok, here we go.... “Cats? I thought we were hunting deer…” or ”How to ice down a deer” Friday, Day 2. 04:30 am, Opening day! I hear my dad shuffling around to make a pot of coffee, thank god! My brothers snoring was getting to me and I was about ready to suffocate his ***. The morning air was an unexpected surprise, 60 degrees and a light breeze, “screw this I am wearing just a T-shirt and my blaze vest!” We loaded up and headed out to the area we scoped out the previous afternoon. Now, understand that my dad is 62, I am 41, my cousin is 48 and my brother 38, all of the years we have been on hunts together my dad has always played the role of Boy Scout leader, and even at my age he still does it. “All right, David and Wes, get out and one of you take this mountain and the other take that one, Dan and I will head down to the south and get up high on this bowl and we will all form a half circle around this area…. We will meet back at the truck at 09:00 am” Or something like that. What my dad was really saying is “You two go out and push the deer right to me and Dan” hey, sounds good to me. So, we get to our spot and my dad takes off one direction and I head off in the other. Typical of the area, lots of loose rocks and decomposing granite, mesquite bushes, ironwood, creosote brush, miscellanies shrubs and choa cactus. BTW, does everyone know what choa cactus is? It’s proof that mother nature has a sick sense of humor. It’s a desert Chinese finger puzzle is what it is. It’s a small to medium size cactus that produces white / yellowish golf ball to orange size balls with needle size thorns that are extremely sharp and barbed. Even just barely touching one of the thorns and it has a good hold on you due to the barbed needle thorns, strong as hell, we affectionately refer to them a “gotcha cactus” If you ever get one of these nasty little suckers on the end of your boot, never try to kick it off, with each kick it will roll up your pants leg impaling you on it’s journey towards the top of your knee cap… enough about that, but important information for the rest of the story. The hike up to the top of the hill was about medium difficulty on my scale, a few times I had to strap my rifle across my back and get down on all fours. I Found a nice outcropping of rocks about 3000 ft up and planted my *** down. Perfect view of the entire area, spotted my dad about 1000 yds away and down lower, no sign of my brother or cousin. The sun was just starting to come up off the desert floor and small wind starting kicking up, absolutely beautiful. So I am sitting there glassing below me some of the washes and game trails I found on the way up, the long shadows from the mountains are becoming shorter and the warm sun is just starting to beat down on the back of my neck when I hear a commotion from a wash about 300 yds down, I put my binoculars on the area and see a large cubby of quail hauling *** away from the area, I then see leg movement beneath the large brush surrounding the area, I quickly shoulder my rifle and crank up the 6 – 24 power scope to max, “hmmm… sighted it in at 2inch high at 200 yds, should be dead on at this range” I steady the rifle on my knee cap, “.. no way I can miss this shot, he is going down… HARD!”. My thumb is on the hammer ready to cock it when something breaks out of the brush, out pops two bobcats, heading up the side of the hill away from me, “haha… little bastards….” . At this point I realize I am shaking a little… got buck fever and never even saw one. So, I continue to glass the area, about 08:00am I noticed a blaze orange cap on top of the truck, a quick glassing of the truck reveals my dads cap on top of the cab and upon further investigation my father sitting on the tailgate enjoying an icy cold beer, “umm… ok, so 09:00 am came a lot quicker than I thought. He must have gotten tired or hurt himself” he looked fine and seemed to be really enjoying that beer so I am just going to hang out for a little longer. About 15 minutes later I look over to the truck and there are three caps on the cab, “..wtf? they are having a tailgate party, ok I’m outta here” I start to make my way down the mountain when a large football size rock that I thought I had a good foot hold on gives way, I am on an “E ride” to the bottom, I slid about 15 ft down before grabbing a branch and stopping myself 2 feet before dropping off a 200 ft face… ok, not really it was more like a 2 ft drop, but around the campfires years from now it will be a 200ft drop, increasing a hundred feet a year. I check myself out, all good, dust off, and took a step “ouch!, wtf?” a piercing pain in the back of my leg behind my knee cap, without thinking I reached behind my leg to grab whatever it was, GOTCHA! “…ah ****!... I’m screwed” it has a good hold on my leg and now my hand, no choice… have to pull my hand off and hope none of the needles break off. I pulled my hand around to find that the little sucker preferred my hand to my leg, there it was in front of me, about the size of a tangerine, it had managed to get all four of my fingers and tie them together tightly, my fathers words echoed in my head “… don’t ever try to spread your fingers apart, you will just piss it off…”. So I found a bush nearby to lean my rifle against and sat down for a little surgery. I pulled out my Gerber multi-tool and had just managed to get the pliers open when I heard a thumping sound coming from behind me, I turned quickly to see the *** end of 2 bucks hauling *** away from me…. “.. you gotta be f’ing kidding me” here I am incapable of even holding a rifle, I yell down to my dad, “deer… DEER!...” they all in unison raise their bottles and I hear “… yeah, it’s ice cold, come get one…” I then watched the bucks disappear over a small saddle, I yelled back “you guys are not related to me, who are you people, go away!” I hung my head in shame. After about 5 minutes I managed to get my hand free and made my way back down to the truck, I was greeted by my cousin hold an ice cold bottle “what the hell is wrong with you guys?” I said. After a short refresher course on our purpose for coming out here in the first place, we headed back to camp. My dad made us a bitchen breakfast that included some very yummy venison sausage. Took a nice nap and we went back out around 3:00pm to do a quick truck hunt and check out the next area for our Saturday morning hunt. Stay tuned for chapter 3 entitled, "Worlds largest kitty litter box" or "The hunter becomes the hunted."

Great job! Me too, or at least 50 years, I did not want to come home. Thought nobody would ever ask “Highway to hell” or “It sounded like a good idea at the time…” Thursday, Day 1. Left San Diego at 06:00am, got to El Centro to hook up with my dad and brother around 07:30. We have always kind of roughed it on our hunts in the past, you know no tents just sleeping bags and cots. My dad decided to bring his new 40 ft Fleetwood diesel pusher, triple slides, satellite TV, the works. Not a good idea as we find out later. We head out of Hell Centro around 08:00 am, after a lot of screwing around along the way we make it to Red Rock Arizona and the 5 mile long dirt road that will take us to our camp area. First obstacle, an old wood plank bridge spanning a 50’ wide river…. Sign says “ Warning! 3 Ton limit on bridge” So, while my cousin and I are trying to figure out how many tons the RV weighs, “… how many pounds to a ton?” “… does not matter dude, we are WAY over that limit, this thing weighs like 27000 lbs” my dad is trying to “sneak up” on this sucker. I hear creaking and groaning coming from underneath us, I turned around to see we were half way across this thing then poping sounds start, like rivets shooting out of the girders, I look at my dad and he looks back at me with the classic deer in headlights look and quickly turns back facing the road, he punches it! We are across and alive…. Thank god. Ok, we are on the dirt road, we have about 5 dry washes to transverse, if we hit a bad one we will have to turn around and camp were we are or at worst we get stuck. So we come to the first wash, hmmm… not to bad looking, we get across it with little effort. Second wash, “hey dad, that looks a little steeper, we go should real slow on this one” too late, front license plate and bottom of the bra are toast, loud crunch and all. As we come out of it, we hear the horrible sound of frame or transmission or something dragging on rocks, ouch! So we are cruising along again, I look up the rear camera and see… nothing! In particular, the 98 Ford Ranger that we had in tow… “uh dad”, “what!”, “uh..” I point to the monitor, “.. ahh crap!” we check the side view mirrors, nothing, but you can’t see what you are towing anyways with out the camera, we stop get out and confirm that the camera lens is covered in 1/8 inch of dust and we still have the truck in tow. So after that we were cool, made it to camp around 03:30pm, much later than we wanted to but we made it. We setup camp, you know, real tough stuff like gather firewood, level the RV, pop the slides out, get the satellite TV working etc. My brother, who was delayed in El Centro showed up about 04:30. We head out to were we plan to hunt in the morning and get a plan together, get back around 06:00 and get the campfire going. My dad brought some bitchen steaks for dinner and we sat around and drank beer and got crap faced, told a lot of old funny hunting stories and I passed out about 09:00pm To be continued…

Yup, sending that sucker off to have a muzzle brake put on it, hoping for .308 like recoil I bet my little .17 HMR kicks more than that thing!

Posts in the General Forums ie: Non-Tech do not increase your post count. Try the download forum.

Not as bad as it use to be, light deer loads are cheap. http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=973500 But yeah, the heavy loads can get $$$, no plans to hunt cape buffalo though. I never hunt for trophy, just to stock up my deep freezer. http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=263477 Easy enough, until they are hauling *** up the side of a mountain

Going deer hunting in Arizona for a few days. Be back Saturday or Sunday. First time out for this new gun, T/C Encore carbine in 7mm-08, I also have a 375 H&H barrel for it but have not had the time (or wanting to take the beating) to sight it in yet. I have a used my grandfathers 300 savage lever action since I was 16 but it’s getting kind of old and time to retire it from hunting duty. It should be interesting using a single shot rifle, I did a lot of practicing and I can now reload it and be ready to take a second shot in 3 – 4 seconds. I really like this gun, I did not have any time to work up some hand loads for it so I bought some Winchester Supreme box ammo, long story short after getting it all sighted in, 4 shot group at 200 was 1 ¼ inch and 1 flyer, nice! The hunt reports from Arizona fish and game site leads one to believe that it will be a hard hunt and we will be lucky if we even see a deer, but my uncle called the other day, he and 5 of his buddies just got back from the unit adjacent to were we are going, all bagged big bucks and said they saw so many deer that they were able to be selective about which ones to shoot…. So we are hopeful. Later.