scoutm

I'm thinking 122 5/8 gross and 113 1/8 net

I had this sent to me by a family member who has close friends in Australia and thought you might like to see what could happen here if the dems take complete control. Australian Gun Law Update Here's a thought to warm some of your hearts... From: Ed Chenel, A police officer in Australia Hi Yanks, I thought you all would like to see the real figures from Down Under. It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars. The first year results are now in: Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent, Australia-wide, assaults are up 9.6 percent ; Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)! In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. (Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not and criminals still possess their guns!) While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed. There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly, while the resident is at home. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in "successfully ridding Australian society of guns." You won't see this on the American evening news or hear your governor or members of the State Assembly disseminating this information. The Australian experience speaks for itself. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens. Take note Americans, before it's too late! FORWARD TO EVERYONE ON YOUR EMAIL LIST. [ I DID ] DON'T BE A MEMBER OF THE SILENT MAJORITY. BE ONE OF THE VOCAL MINORITY WHO WON'T LET THIS HAPPEN IN THE U.S.A

A good tripod is a must. Good glass and a weak tripod is the equivalent to bad glass.

I've been looking at getting a trail cam and my research suggests the most important features are a quality and quick trigger, a flash that is powerful enough and range to take good pictures at night & at distance and good battery life. What I haven't seen is how important is it to have a built-in viewer? Do most of you that have cameras out have cameras with built in viewers? Do you simply trade out flash-cards and view pictures at home? Any help is appreciated.

I just spoke to a moultrie rep and they said they are about to release a $54.00 pocket viewer that will work with all their cameras. They cautioned about using a digital camera as a viewer as some of them will format the cards to the digital camera resulting in the trail cam locking up. Most of the issues they've seen are with Kodak digital cameras.

Thanks for all the feedback... I was thinking you could use a camera to view the cards but I couldn't tell if the camera I have and the SD card used by the trail cam are compatible.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks G&F is monitoring this site to see who's being naughty and who's being nice. I'm sure glad I haven't bad mouthed them. Who knows maybe it will help me draw a December Tag now that they know I'm being nice.

I have a pair of the swaro 15s and I find them very difficult to free hand. If you can only go with one pair and want a nice mid point a buddy has a pair of Nikon Monarch's 12x56. For the money they are great glass and with the 12x you can free hand much more effectively. We've yet to do a side by side comparison but when I first looked at them I was very impressed.

There's a lot of discussion about what scope people prefer but I haven’t seen any discussion on preferred bases and rings – If I’ve missed it and am rehashing an old topic I apologize. So, what does everyone prefer/recommend? Every scope I’ve ever mounted has been mounted with two piece bases. No particular reason other than I’ve always thought they are less likely to interfere with the spent case ejection – no evidence of this and no evidence a solid base might interfere – any experience either way? What do people prefer?

Badlands warranty work is unbelievable. I messed up my pack the weekend before a trip - I overnighted my pack to them they received it on Tuesday and I had it back on Friday for my trip. All I had to do is tell them that I needed it back for my trip and they took care of me. Can't say enough good things about them...oh yes, they sent me a new pack. Call their 800 number and get a ticket number and you're good to go.

I don't have the nikon but I recently purchased a bushnell elite 1500 and love it. I have been getting consistent reads on object at 1200+ yards and if I rest it on my tripod I can get reads to almost 1500 yrds off flat rock faces. I'm very pleased with it.

I completely agree with you - Marksmanship should be the goal too often it's not - a 100 grain bullet placed in the heart of an animal kills them just as dead as a 200 grain bullet in the heart. There are so many factors that go into marksmanship such as being comfortable with your gun, knowing the limits of your shooting ability, knowing your guns limits, taking the time to practice in different shoot situation, making the effort to get within your lethal range and not throwing that 500+ yard shot at a moving animal you busted out. That said, you still want to be sure you have enough gun to make a quick humane kill on an elk quartering toward you at 250 yards out 5 minutes before shoot light is gone. I've used the same 270 for the last 14 years. Too often people will try to copensate for their lack of marksmanship by shooting bigger guns that have more knockdown power. I, however, am not one of them. I own other guns and I'm sure I will purchase more because it's fun to evaluate the quality and character of different rifles and calibers, however, becuase I know my 270 and I know my limits with it, it's the gun that is most often the gun on my shoulder come hunting time. Where I can't agree with you is "most bad hits ain't (lethal)"...too many bad hits are lethal the animals just aren't recovered until the sun has had time to bleach the antlers out.

I've been looking at ballistic tables and it seems for the most part there's really not that much difference (+/- 2 or 3 inches, +/- 200fps) in velocity and bullet drop between the most common calibers - this is under 300 yrds. Where the real difference seems to really show itself is in the energy department. Does anyone have a good source for the energy required to make a clean/humane kill for different species? --assuming of course at shot is placed in the vitals of the animal. I know I'm asking for a very complex set of variables to be boiled down to an over simplified number but I did read an article at one time that discussed this very question but I'm unable to locate it and I don't recall the details. I've done a google search and have come up empty. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for the info. I will look into getting a copy of the book. Does it say what is signficant about the 2000 Ft/sec? I would think 1000 ft-lbs is a 1000 ft-lbs regardless of the what the given ft/sec are at any point.

I am currently considering that choice but I'm concerned about the 300+ yrd energy...I want to make sure it has enough to knock them down at that range if you don't hit the vitals.

Flagcoueskiller - Here's some footage of some deer Sundevil and I took on one of our scouting trips. They were just under 300yrds and the video was taken with 22x optical zoom with a tripod mounted camera. I didn't have the doubler at the time - I wish I had because the footage would have been really good then. They sell universal doublers at Best Buy. Clarity suffers very little with the double and the extra zoom more than makes up for it. http://s99.photobucket.com/albums/l302/sco...MBucks_0001.flv

While out scouting last weekend with Sun Devil we really noticed or believed that the Buck to Doe Ratio was out of wack. This made me curious about what an appropiate buck to doe ratio should be in order to maximize a deer herds potential. Everything I have read promotes a ratio of 1:1 or 1:2. Further articles have stated that when the ratio gets to 1:5 the herds potential diminishes greatly interms of age demographic of the heard, recoupment protential and antler growth. The ratio we observed was close to 1:10. I'm sure we missed several bucks as they were the first to bed but even if we assume for every buck we saw we missed one the ratio would be 1:5 (I don't think we missed that many). So, from what I've read when the herd gets to this point the vast majority of the bucks, due to hunting presure, will be under the age of three. Based on bucks we saw and based on the size of the bucks I believe this holds true for our observations. At age three the bucks are just starting to mature and over the next three years their antlers will be at there peak. What has everyone else seen? Does anyone know what GF's target ratio is? If the ratio is out of wack what can be done to restore it to a level that does maximize the herd?

Jim - Great information! We spend most of our time in units 32, 33, 36c and on occasion 34b. We were in Unit 33 on the day this particular question came to mind. I would be very interested in seeing info on all these units. As for the survey process...has GF ever considered broadening unit survey areas by using experience volunteers? It would be interesting to see if the results changed if volunteers were used on the ground in assigned areas. Again, thanks for the info. Larry

I'm not nor did I suggest that our time in the field qualifed as "scientific research" I simply stated that our day in the field raised what I thought was an interesting question one that would be interesting to discuss on this forum. The questions posed were - if anyone knows what GF's target ratio is? and IF it's out of whack what could be done about it?

Well Sun Devil and I are back from our third scouting trip of '07 and it was a good one. It started with us seeing a turkey running across the road in an area that we've never seen them before. Turned out to be two of them. We saw an increadible number of does but were getting fairly discouraged until we found this buck with some major mass. The picture isn't the best as we were very far way looking into the sun with the buck in the shade. We had a really hard time field judging him as his antlers are unique. His mass was amazing. He has one G3 that goes out farther than his main beam on one side and almost no G3 on the other. Unfortunately, you can't make out these details out in the pictures. Hope you enjoy.

Here are two articles I've read: http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/...ement/deer/age/ http://www.buckmanager.com/2007/03/11/impo...k-to-doe-ratio/ No where have I found that ratios above 1:5 or 20:100 would reflect a healthy heard - health as defined by one that has appropriate fawn to doe ratio, an appropirate age distribution of does and bucks and produces maximum antler growth. I've read over 15 articles in the last two days and it seems that they all agree that when you get to 1:5 ratio the heard starts having problems. There was one article that talked about the impact of the rut on bucks when the ratio is out of wack. I couldn't find it again but it's main point was with a buck to doe ratio that is too low the rut takes too much out of the dominate bucks which puts them at greater risk of predation and physically puts them behind when they start to grow their new atlers resulting in smaller ones. I don't want to make it sound like it's all about the antlers because it's not. There are as many people on this site that are for quantity as there are for quality. And based on all my reading a balanced herd provides more opportunity for both.

There hasn't been enough said about making sure if you spend the money on good glass you need to invest in a good sturdy tripod. Good glass on a bad tripod is no different than bad glass.

Just to clarify I'm the small guy in the gray sweat shirt with my back to the camera...Sun Devil, I didn't think you kept any pictures that were taken of you before you discovered the atkins diet. Remember though it's still not health to consume the entire deer in one sitting even though there are no carbs.

I also should mentioned I have an angled eye piece - with the Nikon's I struggled to get the scopes lined up on my target. With the Swaro the piece used to attach the camera to the scope doubles as a sight to line up your scope. It works great.

I have the Swaro 80 HD and am very happy with it. I've used Sun Devil's Nikon ED 82 and have used a loaned Nikon ED 65. I believe the Swaro is brighter than both of those. I preferred the 80 & 82 over the 65 even though they weigh more. Nikon eye peice that goes to 75x is definetly a plus. I don't have the camera attachement for my Swaro from what I have seen though it is much easier and more universal than the Nikon camera adapter the problem with it is that you can't use it with the Swaro formed scope protective case. You have to take the case off to use the adapter. I've posted a number of pictures I've taken without the adapter and they have turned out pretty well. I just hold my camera by hand. Adding the +/- up you can't go wrong with either one. If money is an issues then the Nikon wins hands down.