jdmidwest

You forgot the fireworks fee for the 4th of July, Car Stickers, ATV Stickers, etc. And fortunately, the Covenants are pretty strick. They have their own Police and Fire Depts. The water patrol is the Police sitting on the dams telling you to pull over to him. All things considered, they keep alot of the BS out that normally runs rampant in that county out of the subdivision. I do like the fish feeders, I have run across them too. And a river runs thru it also. One of our accesses to the Big River.

Great. I want to catch a few Grayling sometime. Maybe next time up.

I carry for a number of reasons. I usually don't carry concealed when I am out and about in the stream or woods, I carry open. About the only time I don't carry is when I fish with one of my good buddies that is commissioned LE. I know he will toss me his backup if we get in a bad pinch. In my travels I have run across seedy characters. But the seediest are the stray dogs or wild dogs. I have had a few encounters with those, but I have never had to shoot one. There is always the chance you may come across a wild bear, wild hog, or mountain lion in MO. Bears must be a real threat possibility or MDC would not post Bear Aware warnings. Wild hogs are really a pain as they can get nasty if you run across a bunch of them, and they like stream beds. One of the main reasons is that it is a good signalling device. What if you slip and fall and need some assistance? It makes a pretty good noise. What if you encounter someone target practicing and can't hear you yell at them? A few shots in the air gets you noticed and can prevent an accidental shooting. Many streams pass thru private property and you never know what is out in the fields you are passing thru. I have had a few encounters with target shooters that did not suspect that anyone would be wading the creek that I was fishing thru. My main fishing weapon is usually whatever I have with me at the time. When I wade or do a walk about, I like my new Ruger P22. It is light and I can pack 50 rounds without much trouble. Others I carry are a snub 38, Keltec PF9 9mm, S&W 6906 9mm, S&W M&P 45C 45 acp, S&W Model 19 .357, or my Colt Officers 1991A1 45 acp. It really depends on my situation as to what I may have on my hip. When I am out during a fall hunting season, it will be a large caliber. Fishing, I tend to stick to the smaller ones. Hiking or mushroom hunting, anything goes.

Geese are milling around the local ponds on this side of the state and getting nervous. No wetlands this year, swamps are dry where I have been. Major bodies of water are low. I might try to float and hunt 11pt this year. A few years back we fished it in Sept. and it was full of teal.

One Ounce Jugs tipped with a minnow hooked thru the lips works well in the Tennessee River below Pickwick Lake. Other than that, deep jigs, spoons, crank baits, or just a minnow fished on the bottom. If they spawn in the lake, look for a clear gravel area in Jan. or Feb and target that.

We put kayaks in the smaller lakes without any problems. You could drop a small Jon in most of them too.

Which lake, there are 5 big ones and several small ones. I have a friend that lives on Capri, we fish it often. We fish Shane and Carmel from time to time. We fished a tourney last fall on Shane in a blowing wind and front coming thru, did not fair well. You have to live there to fish or be with a resident. Fees and tags on every boat and trailer. They stock many of the lakes every year.

Nope, I have never eat a turnip since I was a kid. I dig em up and take them out to Dad.

Congrats. I have to choke on second hand cheap cigarello smoke every day at the office. I hope the lung cancer gets him before it gets me.

No way you could have paid for it yourself, even if your provider offered to accept payments like a loan installment? Most hospitals have payment plans and cost are reduced considerably if someone does not have insurance and needs the care. Most of the inflated costs of medical care are the results of the hoards of people needed to file all of the needed paperwork and forms to get money from insurance companies.

A friend of mine is worrying about his deer herd that he raises for profit. There is an abundance of the midge fly that is spreading the disease. Ponds are drying out and exposing lots of foul mud and stagnant water spreading the problem insect. Cattle are affected to.

Glad to see the okra is not just me. Part of mine got razed last night by a band of roving rabbits. Just some stems today. I will try the mustard greens. I have been planting turnips and radishes in the fall for ground cover.

While it has nothing to do with the thread, I would be interested in a civil way to know the answer to the question. Do you think the country is better than it was 4 years ago? Since you brought it up.

"Aside from the political poo in his tag line, J.D. has it right. " And you think the country is in good shape now under current leadership?

2 storm fronts have broke up so far and went north and south of me. I watered the garden anyhow to be safe.....

That was what I was looking for, this spring. I did rotate my tomatoes down a few rows into where I had been planting corn and they did better. But I think the fungus might be in mine also. You can order varieties of tomatoes that resist that from the seed catalogs. It did not really matter, the dry heat took more of a toll on everything anyhow. I am still trying to figure out what is going on with the okra, last 2 years it has only gotten about knee hi and not done anything. First time in 12 years that I have not picked a piece of okra out of the garden.

Good road hunting this fall then. As far as the ducks go, if it continues to stay dry, they will probably keep on flying instead of loafing around the area. No major bodies of water other than lakes and rivers. And no food. Wetlands are dry and did not produce much in the way of food. If they don't flood, they won't use them. Crops were poor and are going to be harvested early due to the dry weather, not much there either. Poor nut crops for the woodies. I actually think the waterfowl will keep on trucking to better water and food down south.

Not just a hobby, an adventure. When I set out at something, it is usually full bore. The net is a great place, lots of info and ideas. Local beekeepers are great resources too. I like to make stuff myself instead of buying it. Wood working is not a problem with me. It kills the time in the afternoons while I am watering the garden or wishing there was water in the streams to fish. And, Beekeeping is work. To be consistant, you need to open the hive up and check it during the warm summer days. If it is weak like mine, you have to work it to make it stronger, Winter is only a few months away. If they are not up to speed, I will end up with some fertilize for the garden in the spring. The nice thing is watching them work. They are a well organized, self sufficient colony for the most part. They carry out their dead and diseased bees. They scrub their cells and hive, meticulious cleaners. They patrol and repel invaders. They control the temperature of the hive with their wings and vibrations. They do a little dance and wiggle their butt to tell others where the good food is. Watching all that is going on inside of a creature with a brain the size of a pin head puts life into a perspective.

Snakes have been few and far between this summer. I think dry weather may have an adverse affect on them.

I have seen more young turkeys in the past month along county roads than I can ever recall. And they all seem to be healthy. Must have been a great hatch year.

Juice them and make some jelly. I gave a bunch a few years ago to a lady and they came back to me in jars of jelly.

But, the minnows sold in the bait store are not the minnows normally in the watershed that you are fishing. So if you toss them in and let them live, the technically become invasive if they survive and reproduce. I have noticed some signs at accesses that state you should kill your bait, no matter what, instead of letting it loose live into a watershed. I wonder if the Canadian Night Crawlers will overtake our crawlers some day

Driving through the countryside the past few weeks, I have notice something strange. Hen turkeys with large flocks of young turkeys. Seems like the dry spring and lack of flooding may have actually helped the turkey population. I rounded the corner on a gravel road in Perry Cty yesterday to find 2 mature hens with 20 healthy young turkeys standing in the road. Fall Season may be good this year. I have also noticed more than usual numbers of Bucks out working the bean fields in the daylight hours. I watched 3 nice ones grazing in one field yesterday. Drove about 2 fields and noticed a tan spot moving in a field of green soybeans. Binocs came out and I glassed a nice buck bedded, the tan was his velvet antlers. I have seen more quail this year along the gravel roads too. But, unless we get some water, Duck Season is gonna suck!

My hive of bees has finally made a turn for the better. Weekly inspection today revealed many new eggs and some new comb drawn on my Homemade Foundationless Frame. No beetles or moth worms. Most frames were being filled with nectar. The bees were feisty and flaring up at me when I tried to move them off frames. The past month has been depressing each time I opened them up for inspection. First it was the small hive beetles. Then there was the lack of brood. Last week I found a frame of comb being destroyed by wax moth larva. Then Saturday, I found Varroa Mites in one section of comb. All the major problems except for the biggie have been plaguing me. With advice from others, I condensed the hive down to one brood box. I started feeding sugar water and reduced the entrance so they could guard better. This weekend I took the boxes apart and painted all of the hive parts with a fresh new coat of paint. I dug wax moth cocoons out of all the crack and crevices. I made a new solid bottom to replace the screened hive bottom that came with the hive. I removed the last frame of odd comb that they had made and found where my queen may have been hiding. Instead of using the foundation material provided, they had built a new comb on one side of it and had brood on it. Since it was wedged between the foundation, it created a hiding spot for a lot of bees and bugs too. Since there was only space for one layer of bees in there, they were having a hard time cleaning and covering the brood causing them to be deformed. After some research, I decided to try a foundationless frame to replace the one I pulled out. Standard foundation comes as a sheet of beeswax imprinted with a standard cell size that they draw out. But in real life, bees make several size cells. Small ones for workers, bigger ones for drones, and a large one for a queen. So I made a foundationless frame and installed it Sunday. Today I pulled it out and they have drawn their first new comb since I moved them in. Pretty little white comb, all natural. It does not look like much, but it takes a lot of effort for them to produce the beeswax. I may go this route from now on in the brood box as it was a simple design, and all natural. I need to rotate out the old wax comb as it is getting dark and nasty looking. Wood frame, bamboo skewers, large craft sticks, and some 50 lb fishing line for support. Its obvious that they like to do it this way, they never attempted to draw any wax on the store bought foundation I put in there the first few weeks. Now we need some rain and some nice fall flowers. Nothing like a bunch of happy bees.