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I have not picked them in a long time! I have actually been out of work for the last 9 weeks and have four more to go before I go back. Had a major surgery March 6th! Needed something to do! Plus I wanted to eat them.

Thank you Paul! God Bless.

you are familiar with "fiddleheads"? I find them delicious! I picked most of these for an older couple who can not get out now. God Bless.

Well, it is not only turkey season up here, it is also fishing season. I figured I would go out and get a mess of brook trout to eat at one of my old holes. Fishing is just good for the Soul. God Bless.

To say it's been a rough week with the turkey hunting over here in my parts would be an understatement!
Turkey were non responsive to calls right from day one and would just not leave the hens to save their lives.
I literally could not get these turkeys to give up their roost either.
I spent a lot of time, spotting, stalking, going to where I thought they might end up, etc..
Then last night I caught them across the road and actually watched them roost from my driveway. My "hopes" were to get close enough and maybe they would fly down by the decoys and I could get a pop at one.
I set up about 60 yards from where I figured the tom's roosted. It was not long after getting against the tree they sounded off and I was not all that far from them.
I heard at least two fly down, but it sounded like they headed to the other side of the woods and the field in the back.
I sat tight until 5:30, then I got up and took a good look down the field edge and the flock was about 150 yards from me.
So I sat back down and just figured I had nothing better to do and I would wait and see if they made their way down to me.
About 20 min later, this guy broke off and came to check out my decoys.
He was all puffed out and I honestly thought he was the big tom. He got within about 20 yards of my decoys, puffed down, and it looked like he was not buying it.
I pulled up the gun and shot him at about 25 yards.
He is a funny turkey, has the tail of tom, and the body of a jake. The beard is 2", and he weighs in a little under 15lbs.
This is a very young turkey so the tail is very confusing to me. The 4 middle feathers of a jake's tail are longer than all the rest of the feathers, one easy way to identify a jake. But that is not the case here.
So it looks like my string of 20+lb turkeys is now broken! But after the week I have had with these turkeys, I will gladly take what God gives me and be happy with it!

Well, up here in the great state of Maine, they have "caved" and are letting crossbow hunters in on archery season. I actually started bow hunting about 18 years ago. I started doing it because it was in October up here, when it is nice and warm, and, we were also allowed to take a doe without a tag, so it was like having a free doe permit.
The state of Maine has doe permit lottery system for rifle season and doe permits are allocated by zones, some zones are much more populated with deer so one would obviously stand more of a chance to receive a doe permit. For example, there is one zone in Maine where they give out about 12,000 permits, in my zone, they give out 150.
So along with that, and the influence of this forum (there were quite a few bow hunters to talk to back then), I decided to start archery hunting.
It was not long after that and taking some deer and bear with my bow that we had the worst winter we ever had and it roughly killed almost half of our deer herd. With that, they took a lot of doe permits away, and they took does out of bow season all together, so I quit archery hunting. 
As of last year, they started allowing does to be taking during archery season again and it "sparked" my interest to get back out there. As I was reading the laws, I then noticed that they now counted crossbows as "equals" to regular bows and they were allowed all the same rules. As to be expected, this made a lot of archery hunters mad as we all now compound and crossbows really are not the same, especially when you have a bolt all knocked and waiting. And it would put more people in the woods during bow season which archery hunters really did not want.
At first I felt all of that, and as a "bow hunter", I was going to stick with the bow and not be a "sissy".
Then, I borrowed a bow from a friend, went out and shot it, and found out that I really suck at it now. My eyesight has a hard time lining up the peep sight, I seem to have a "should problem" in the hand I draw with, and obviously since i have not shot in awhile, I got tired easy. I also decided to find all this out a week before the season started.
Now, as God would have it, I had a friend who's wife got a moose permit. He bought a savage axis in 6.5 creedmore and wanted me to mount a scope on it and get it sighted in for him. He also had a crossbow that he had never really used and was more than willing to let me try it out.
With as bad as I was with a compound now, I thought, what would it hurt. I had already taken, deer, bear, grouse with a compound, I might as well try it.
I will admit, I was a little nervous at first, I know crossbows are not a toy and one can loose a finger or two awful fast if they do not pay attention. The first bolt I sent at 20 yards was little off so I made the proper adjustments on the scope and got a dead bulls eye at 20 yards. I then proceeded to hit almost dead center at 30, 40, 50, and 60 yards. I was definitely hooked at this point.
As I researched crossbows, it seemed any crossbow shooting at least 400fps was fully capable of taking a deer out to 100 yards. I was simply amazed.
So, I believe for this year, I just may purchase my own. Are there any crossbow hunters on here with experience they may be able to share? God Bless.

Kombi1976.......your still alive!

So, I was going to Message Paul about a chronograph question, but thought I might get some more opinion on this subject and it is a good forum discussion.
   I have three rounds I need to get chronographed so I pulled out my chronograph last night and proceeded to read the directions on since I have not used it in 10 years. The chronograph in question is an Alpha shooters chrony. 
    Now it seems like I remember reading something years ago that "sunlight" can throw these things off a little since the chronograph reads the changes in light, as the bullet flies over it, to get the velocity.
    I took my middle son out an hour ago because he was highly interested in learning something about this. When we started with his 300 win mag the sun was primarily behind some clouds. the first two shots were pretty close together in velocity and not far off of the quickload prediction.
    When we went to shoot the 3rd shot, the sun came out in full force and all of a sudden the bullet was moving over 100fps faster. This happened with the 4 shot also, in fact it was 150fps faster than the first two.
    I then waited for the sun to back behind a cloud and we took another shot that did not fall from the first two shots.
  So my question is, is it better to chronograph on overcast days without the sun? do some people find it does not matter?

I also realize those extreme deviations in velocity could be my reloading, but there is a fat change of that!

Very sad news indeed! I always think of Alain when I shoot my 375 H&H. When I first got it, Alain sent me a message and told me to send the measurements of my barrel to him. When I asked why, he stated, "You need a muzzle brake for it." I told him that would not be necessary in which he replied, "just send the measurements!". I am glad I did that.

so it seems like every time I check who is online, this post is always getting a view. Hard to believe it's been viewed over 20,000 times!!
Anyway, I am certainly grateful to the members on here who helped me get into reloading and continued to offer help anytime I had questions when I first started. Heck, I still ask questions and its been 11 years since I started!! Gitano seems to be the lucky guy....I think he really enjoys my questions!! (lol)
Anyway, thought I might post some now pictures! I am still a ways off from really "creative" stuff, but the bench has held up like a champ! I initially purchased the Lee Challenger Breech Lock Single Stage Press Anniversary Kit. The only thing I swapped out from this kit was the scales, as the lee scales were junk and replaced it with the RCBS 5-0-5 scale, which has worked well.
Still using the same press today although I have looked at other presses 1,000 times!
Anyone looking to get into reloading, but just has not made the push yet....just do it, you will never look back!
I consider my bench pretty "neat" compared to some of the other members.....not going to mention any names to protect the innocent!

bench by David LeTourneau, on Flickr

bench 2 by David LeTourneau, on Flickr

on my property, pretty much limited to 100 yards. But, down the road 1/2 mile I could easily get out to 500 with a portable target. A mile down the road, I think I might get 1,000 yards if I play my cards right, which is something I plan on doing later.

Well, earlier this year I decided to get a caliber I have been wanting for a long time, the 338 Lapua magnum. Thought I might reload for it and try some "long" range shooting with it for fun. I could of definitely done this with my 7mm mag, or even 25-06, but the 338 lapua mag was an "itch" I had to scratch and we will leave it at that.

So, I didn't really want to break the bank on a rifle, so I decided to go with the Savage 110 Long Range Hunter. Also not wanting to spend more on a scope than I did the rifle, I decided to top it off with a Burris Signature HD 5-25x50 scope.

Once the rifle and scope were attained, it was time to get components together, which as you as you all know, is not the easiest thing to do right now. I ran powders on quickload and IMR 7828ssc seemed to be my best choice, followed by Vihatavouri N570. I set alerts on ammo seek and shootingbot.com and N570 became available first, so I ordered 3lbs.

The bullet I chose was the Berger 300gr Elite Hunter. I have used Berger bullets before and really like them, plus they were readily available. I also used Lapua brass and CCi Large rifle magnum primers.

I was going to wait till spring to test this out, but temps were in the 40's the other day, so I got my numbers off of quickload and got them loaded up to test.

I didn't measure all the groups, just the closest one, which was the 85.8 grains. This group came in at .762. All in all, that is not to bad for 20 test rounds.

I will play with this a little in the spring and see if I can tighten them up just for fun. When doing the initial test rounds, I had taken my measurement with my hornady AOL gauge, then remembered that I had a clip for this gun. So instead of starting 20 thousandths of the lands, I just measure the clip  and used that COAL in quickload. I would be interested to see if this tightens up right off the lands, who knows!

I also have room to keep loading hotter as I am 12,000psi from the supposed "max pressure" of the 338 lapua. And, if for some reason, this load does not tighten up any, I am good with .762.

338 by David LeTourneau, on Flickr
338 3 by David LeTourneau, on Flickr

338 2 by David LeTourneau, on Flickr

First bobcat in the wild, wow!! I would never have guessed that. They are not commonly seen up here as most of the people I know have never seen one. Apparently I have been blessed, because I seem to see them all the time. The last one I saw was about two years ago standing in the middle of my road while I was running. I don't even live in bobcat "county", persay.
I wish we could trap lynx because they are everywhere now!

I hear what you are saying and it does make sense, especially when you get into the bigger calibers. But, I have not once had that strategy fail, all the way up to 375 H&H.

As you know, I bought my middle boy a 300 win mag for his birthday this year. I did as I always do and loaded up 5 test batches from the quickload data, all in .3 increments, up and down from the actual node.

The best group I got was 1.3" with 67.5gr's of IMR 4350. I then loaded off of that by .1 increments, up and down. 67.3gr's of IMR 4350 yielded a group of .738". I am pretty sure that 67.2 was around 1.5" when I shot in the first test batch.

For whatever reason, this always seem to work for me, and I just gotta stick with real time results although theoretically it might not look so good on paper.