Manhunter

Oh, rooky! It's Buckzirra!!

Hard buck to judge. In addition to the obvious extra main beam and sticker, he's got some cool swelling and extra mass well out on the main beams. Looks like the 4x4 main frame will go around 108 or so. I'd figure the extra main beam at 17 or 18 inches, add the sticker off the extra main beam and I'll go 136 to 138 in velvet. Hard-horned and dry, around 132/133. (Looks like he might develop a G4 on his left side.) Definitely a shooter!

That is an incredible buck!! I pity the poor "little" deer that had to carry all that bone around! Did his back feet even touch the ground? Harold probably put him out of his misery...

Sorry, guys, didn't mean to be pedantic or to preach, but every presidential election year, the unbelievably biased news coverage gets me fired up. I'm politically active and a registered Republican, very conservative, but I'm by no means a partisan. I am a former Army intelligence officer (which is why I lived in Arizona from time to time) and ran a variety of intelligence-related programs for the US Department of Justice. I spent a lot of time outside the United States on every continent but Antarctica. Shortly after 9/11, I was detailed to the White House to help organize counterterrorism intelligence operations and helped establish the Department of Homeland Security in February 2003 (not something we did so well, by the way). The public perception of our "leaders," borne primarily of biased news reporting, is so unbelievably wrong that it sickens me. Some examples: President Bush is, by no means, stupid. When he leads a cabinet meeting, he's in charge and no one ever doubts that fact. He has an amazing command of facts, but he's not obsessed with sounding intelligent; he's a very real kind of guy with a great sense of humor. The first time I met him was shortly after we'd written some talking points for a press conference on terrorism. The morning after the press conference, he came to Gen. Downing's office and said, "Hey guys, no more big words, OK?" He was kidding, of course, but he knows he's not particularly eloquent. This fact is not known to the public and it's intentional - are you aware that, everytime he goes to his ranch in Crawford, TX, at least once he makes dinner for his Secret Service detail, they sit for dinner, and he serves them? Of course not! His ranch in Texas is so green that it is almost entirely self-sustaining and uses almost no external energy of any kind. Compare it, for instance, to the home of Al Gore, "savior of the earth." And, although I like President Bush personally (no, we're not friends; he was my boss and I was one of hundreds of employees at the White House), I have serious problems with some of his policies, most notable among them, illegal immigration. To illustrate the incredible bias of the national media, I mentioned in an earlier post that the media never discusses any of Obama's mentors - ones that he mentions himself in his own writings. Among them are Frank Marshall Davis and Saul Ailinsky, both avowed communists (yes, there really are communists around, despite the media's best attempts to make anyone who uses the term sound like a nut). I also mentioned William "Bill" Ayres. Ayres and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, are also avowed communists and both were members of the Weathermen Underground and the Students for a Democratic Society, radical 1960s student groups, and were involved in a number of bombings and attempted bombings of US Government facilities in the 1960s. Obama has said that Ayres is "just a guy who lives in the neighborhood." Ayres is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Obama kicked off his political career at Ayres' house. Look up some of Ayre's quotes on 9/11. His attitude about the United States is not all that different from Michelle Obama's and, I suspect, Barack Hussein Obama's as well. There is also Tony Rezko, a Syrian-born US citizen, who was involved in a number of "very interesting" real estate deals with Obama; Rezko was recently convicted in federal court on several counts of fraud and bribery, but, according to Obama, Rezko is "just an acquaintance." I challenge you to look up some of this information. You'll find some seriously kooky things out there, but the sheer volume of information that's available on Obama and his mentors/associates is too significant to ignore. It's a shame that Zell Miller is not the Democratic nominee; it would make for a much more encouraging and far less frightening campaign. I'll be hunting Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois this year. I wish all of you the very best of luck this hunting season as you pursue the little deer for which I developed such appreciation and admiration. But I also implore you to educate yourselves on the choices at hand and vote...

Congratulations! That is one very, very nice buck! Your stalking and shooting skills are obviously top notch.

It's been said (in the past and by some of the "experts" on PMS-NBC last night) that people vote for a president, not a vice president. However, Sarah Palin will probably be the first VP candidate in history to have a decisive, measurable effect on the election of a president. I was lukewarm about McCain until Friday, warmed up a bit on Friday, but after last night, I'll volunteer to work on his campaign (which I haven't done since 1980).

Yes, I agree that there is an entirely different expectation of moms and dads. In fact, there are a lot of double standards at play here. If you're a liberal woman, you can do it all: be a mom with multiple kids, hold down a full-time job, stand toe-to-toe with any man, etc. - as long as you tow the liberal feminist party line. Woe be to those, however, who do it on their own without association with their assigned "group," in this case, liberal feminists. Obama's been on the national stage for the better part of four years, has yet to sponsor a major piece of legislation - in either the Illinois state legislature or the U.S. Senate, yet we're bombarded with stories of Sarah Palin's lack of experience and we've found out more about her and her family in the last four days than we have about Obama in the last four years. There was an earlier post speculating that Obama's daughters would probably have gotten an abortion and some criticism of that opionion. Remember, it was Obama himself who stated, "If either of my daughters made a mistake, I would not want them PUNISHED with a child." The words of "the savior" himself, not mine. We haven't heard a word in the media about the gentleman he refers to as "Frank" in his most recent memoir. Why hasn't the media told us that "Frank" is a fellow by the name of Frank Marshal Davis...? What about Obama's neighbor, Bill (William) Ayres, the guy who just "lives in the neighborhood"? The media hasn't told us that Obama kicked off his political career with the assistance of Bill Ayres - at Bill Ayres' house. As one of the modern hip-hoppers so eloquently stated, "You are who you hang with." Don't know who these guys (and others) are, look 'em up. As for Sarah Palin, I haven't met her, but I like everything about her. She's a conservative first and a Republican... a distant second. Yes, I like the fact that she's a lifetime member of the NRA, she hunts, she's from Alaska, etc. But more than that, I like the fact that she has been succesful without depending on the endorsement liberal feminists, without the endorsement of the state or national party, and that she's a real person with the same kind of challenges that everyone of us face on a daily basis. Since I left Arizona, I've had the opportunity to work at the highest levels of the government and I've met some of the icons of the feminist left and some of the targets of their ire. I met with Condi Rice almost daily when she was the National Security Advisor and I like her on a personal level, but she is no conservative; scary intelligent, but I have a problem with her view of policy. I met with and briefed Nancy Pelosi several times when she was the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee IHPSCI) and she's a complete blathering idiot; I found myself wondering how a person could sit on the HPSCI as long as she did and not know anything. By the way, Phoenix is much larger than Alaska, but only in terms of population. Alaska is 2/5 the size of the entire Continental U.S. and Phoenix doesn't supply 20 percent of the energy consumed by the entire U.S. Oh, Sarah Palin's popular support is about 80 percent. I think that's a little better than Janet Napolitano - and I knew her when she was the U.S. Attorney in Phoenix. I could go on, but I'll yield the balance of my space to the gentleman from...

Hello Dave. Nice to hear from you again, but it would be far better to be sitting on a mountainside parked behind some binos looking for a toad. Sure do miss you guys! Wish I could've been there. You can get my email by clicking on my alias. Drop me an email; I'd like to catch up.

BWAAAAHAAAAA! The truth hurts, don't it?

Too early to tell. The electorate in Pennsylvania is kind of strange: pro-union, heavily Democratic, but pro-life, very conservative, and extremely pro-Second Amendment. Obama was referring to Pennsylvanians (I'm still an Arizonan at heart, by the way) when he made the crack about "...clinging to their Bibles and guns" it didn't go over well here. When Obama's positions on gun control are more widely known and Pennsylvanians realize that McCain's VP pick is a real hunter, life member of the NRA, a hockey nut, and a real person, McCain is likely to be in a very good position here.

But Obama's going to give his kids his undivided attention, right...?

OK, the thoughts of another "independent," albeit a conservative-first, registered Republican who has never voted a straight party ticket. No, the world will not end if Obama's elected. However, regarding your "debate policy" quote, what are Obama's policies? You have to take the initiative to go to his web site, view his specific policy imperatives and have sufficient gray matter to evaluate the effect they will have on our country. You will not hear mention of any specific policies in any of his "stem winder" speeches and you certainly won't hear details of his policies on any nighttime news casts. Here's how I see it: Obama had 143 days in the United States Senate prior to the beginning of his election campaign, yet his "spokespersons" decry Sarah Palin's "lack of experience" - even though she's been the chief executive of an entire, albeit not very populous state; Obama's the "agent of change," yet his VP nominee, Joe Biden is very much a longtime Washington Insider; The Agent of Change and his VP nominee have never bucked the Democratic party hierarchy. McCain and Palin have bucked the Republican Party hierarchy on numerous occasions; Palin in particular has attacked every member of Alaska's congressional delegation on corruption issues; Obama presumes to garner the womens' vote and has stated the need for "pay equity" and equal opportunity for women, yet he chose Joe Biden when he could have chosen a woman; pays the 39 men on his staff an average of $11,000 more per year than the 31 women on his staff, while John McCain pays the 31 women on his staff an average of $6,000 more than the 19 men on his. So who's the party hack and who's the Agent of Change? Remember, losing your job, your house, your family, and your sanity is CHANGE, but is all change good...? One of my favorite quotes is, "If your mind's too open, your brains will fall out..."

I have to echo what COUESNUT (DH) said about Bill. Bill was a very good friend for a long time, especially to those of use who developed a love for hunting Coues whitetails, but to me he was a very good personal friend as well and helped me during the most difficult time in my life. I was stationed at Ft. Huachuca twice in the 80s and 90s and we shared many a campfire, many a brew, tuned some loads, and shared some tears as well. Aside from the whitetail, muley, bear and elk hunts we shared, Bill did some things for me that very few friends would have ever done. I had to return early from an assignment in Korea to take custody of my daughters and divorce my first wife. Bill helped me through some very, very difficult times and for that, I will always be in his debt. Tragically - and primarily as a result of my divorce, as so often happens - my divorce was a contributing factor in us drifting apart after I remarried, left the Army, and moved to Pennsylvania, and we didn't really stay in contact. Nonetheless, I will never forget the many times at Bill's house and in his shop that Adam, Tom, Dave and others of us spent in his shop talking about hunting - especially Coues deer - and sharing many a story and laugh. I feel ashamed to say that it took his death to remind me of what a good friend he was to me when I truly needed a friend of Bill's caliber. As DH said, "God speed, Bill"; I'm sure the Lord has you sitting on a mountainside behind a pair of big binos. We'll be there with you soon enough, buddy...