Johnsfolly

I agree with that being a great trail cam photo. Looks like a planned shot. Saw your trail cam photos from this year. I would be excited looking at those bucks☺.

We saw a spotted fawn over the weekend as well. Maybe it was from from a yearling that went into estrus in Dec.

That was a great video! Really enjoyed it but probably not as much as he did fly fishing on camera. Glad that the fish were cooperative.

Coosa - I have the same experience with low water smallmouth. I also have caught some of my largest brown trout between 10 am and 2 pm as well. I often have wondered if that was because of the time of day or because I wade fish and that I finally have reached water that is far enough away from the access to get to low pressured fish.

The view from my blind last season. Some of the deer from my trail camera last season. No giant but I should have been able to some meat in the freezer. Looking forward to this season.

Ketchup the year has been getting away from me. I still have to buy my licenses for this season. I will try to post any trips that I will take this season. Had a lot of encounters last season, but no success in terms of meat on the ground and in the freezer. I hope for a more productive season this year. Good luck to you this season and to all other bow hunters!

I don't really want to get into a pissing contest, but five years is correct if the event occurred already in 2017. So that would be 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.

Okay let's finish this meal. I had bought baby bok choi and water spinach from the farmer's market on Sat and that was part of the inspiration for this dish. I coarse chopped the water spinach and bok choi. I also sliced carrots, crimini (baby bellas) mushrooms, and onion. I minced garlic and ginger. I started by cooking the carrots in a little oil, then added the onions, followed by the squirrel meat. After some more cooking, I added some powdered ginger and S&P to the mix. I also added a couple of teaspoons of chili paste and the sliced mushrooms. Cooked that a bit more then added the bok choi and water spinach and a little more oil, fish sauce, and soy sauce. Once the greens wilted, I added the juice of a half of a lime and then lime zest. Let the flavors meld and served with basmati rice. If you need an idea for squirrel meat this really worked. It took a while to prepare, but was worth the work. It great way to respect game meat!

That really does sound good and not just because I am hungry.

Tonight's dinner started at 6:45 this morning. I finally decided on what to do with our squirrels. I browned the squirrel pieces in a dutch oven just in a little oil. Removed the browned meat and set aside. Added coarse chopped onion, lemongrass, and garlic to the oven and got just a little color on the onions. Deglazed the oven with a quarter cup of dry whire wine. Added back the squirrel and covered the meat with chicken stock (stored bought not home made... yet).I added some chinese five spice and turmeric to the braising liquid. Put the dutch oven into 325 deg oven cooked for over 3 hrs. My betterhalf pulled the meat from the bones. Will make a thai style stir fry this evening☺.

Sounds good RPS. I really like cold sesame noodles. Especially if they have a bit of heat in them! My family was un Savannah visiting my step mother back in July. I haven't been there in some time. Really enjoy the food you can get in Savannah.

A friend of mine says that you always bleed when catching musky☺. Maybe that's appropriate since you did stick one or more sharp hooks into its mouth! He uses 60 to 80 lb fluorocarbon leaders and I don't hear about him losing fish to cut leaders.

That is am awesome looking McCloud! Congrats on another sucessful trip to Crane creek! If I can get the time maybe we can make a trip. Do you prefer to fish it during the week?

There are some nice brown trout swimming below the trout parks like Roaring river and the Current. Don't be hesitant to travel. There are fine fish to be caught in the wild trout streams around the state. Flysmallie mentioned Crane creek. If you can take a weekend try Barren Fork, Spring or Mill creeks. Very wary but tough fighting fish in often challenging tight waters. Good luck! Can't wait to read about your successes or near successes fishing Ozark trout waters.

Not sure that I am considered to be seasoned more likely guys might just think that I am salty☺! To those guys I say they bettter just get out of my creek!

I personally would like to to see an alternative to farm raised tilapia and catfish. I am frequently disappointed at the flavor of these species. If you are able to raise a good tasting fish and demonstrate that it could be profitable more power to you and your research. Maybe it a simple issue with water quality but it seems that the quality of the taste of the fish suffers as farms scale up their operations. To get over people's hang up with eating bass you might want to sell under a pseudonym like Kentucky kingfish☺! Good luck!

Awesome photos! Glad you were able to upload them. Congrats on a great trip with your son!

Top_dollar - try what SIO3 mentioned and see if that helps. I often cannot upload directly from my phone due to the picture size. So I download the photos to my laptop and resave them, which makes them smaller size and then I can upload into OAF. If you can afford one, a pocket digital camera usually takes great photos at a smaller size. Lots of threads on OAF about cameras. Ours is an older Olympus Stylus Tough that is drop resistant and waterproof (at least for the water that I typically fish). I find this perfect for a wading camera. The photos are typically 1/2 to 1/3 the file size as those with my phone.

I have seen some videos of mantis catching hummers. Last year we had a large mantis staking out our feeder. I moved it a couple of times before it stopped coming back. Don't know if it ever caught any birds.

It's pretty cool to see their growth and pupation through to adulthood. I would do the time lapse if we had the equipment.

Not a monarch, but a painted lady butterfly on the butterfly bush. We used ot buy and rear these butterflies when my oldest was interested in them. Have had five or six of these guys around with two to three monarchs hitting the flowers daily as well as lots of bees. Our asters haven't started blooming. Once they do we will likely continue to see lots of pollinators.

Thanks RPS. Must have been good since there are no leftovers !

Just finished reading the monarch butterfly article in the latest Conservationist. The article brought back many memories. We participated as a monarch way stop several years ago and we tagged butterflies for a couple of years. That was Olivia's first experience in rearing caterpillars to adults. We have been growing milkweeds as well as other natives like blazing stars, coneflowers, and asters for the pollinators in our neighborhood. I also have a couple of butterfly bushes as well. Their not natives, but do produce a lot of flowers for the butterflies. I noted in a different thread that this year when our milkweed was blooming that we had really poor numbers of pollinators in comparison to years past. Live had only found four monarch larvae earlier. She released those adults back in June. It looked like it might be a poor year of monarch through our yard. However, since the third week of Aug we have begun to see a greater number of monarchs and other butterflies visiting our Folly flowering way station for their migration. Livie has been finding lots of larvae and has been rearing 10 to 15 monarch caterpillars. The last couple of days there has been a push to pupate with at least seven going into their chrysalis stage. Should be releasing the migrating adults in about 10 days. It always amazes me that the adults that will emerge from these late summer larvae are the ones that will head down to Mexico to a place that none of them have ever been. We have a little hope that in our little way we are helping these pollinators.

We picked up a spaghetti squash, Italian basil, and an interesting head of garlic at our local farmer's market on Sat. The garlic was one of about 25 varieties at this one booth. None of us can remember its name. I knew that we had pine nuts at home. So I thought of using the spaghettis squash and making a pesto. We thawed a couple of chicken breasts. I deboned each and cut them in half. I made a marinade of minced garlic, and chives and rosemary from our herb garden. I mixed the herbs into EVOO and balsamic vinegar. Added the chicken and marinade into a Ziploc bag. Massaged the chicken with the marinade and into the fridge for a couple of hours. To make the pesto, I dry toasted the pine nuts and added them to the picked basil leaves and more chives and pulsed the processor. Then I added four cloves of the garlic and a little EVOO and pulsed some more. I then added grated parmesan and the rest of the EVOO, S&P and then blended the pesto until well mixed. I added a little more S&P and a bit of fresh squeezed lemon juice. I had cooked and shredded the squash earlier. Once the coals were ready, grilled the chicken. Reheated the squash and mixed in the pesto. Sliced the cooked chicken and served it with the pesto spaghetti. I took a picture, but poor lighting made it a bad photo.

That's awesome budddy! Congrats on a great night fishing Taneycomo!