American guinea pigs
A long time ago, guinea pigs were used for scientific experimentation. Feminine makeup, tool impacts, eye and ear capabilities, G-force and rotational effects on their brains and orientation, chemicals and drugs, and much more were all tested on what many Americans viewed as family pets. Like with most other small, cute, furry critters, the optics of the most egregious of these tests conducted upon them did not sit well with the American or European publics. And so most guinea pigs became liberated from the horrors of quasi-scientific testing.
Enter the human as the new guinea pig. There are so many of us humans on Planet Earth, and especially so many Han Chinese, that the value placed on a single human being is being dramatically reduced to measures of momentary comforts of the people standing around (post-birth infanticide), the organs in a human body (China), and hacked-up teenaged trans-sexual Frankensteins. At one time, Americans, at least, highly valued human life. Not anymore.
Today, we allow our American selves to be subjected to all kinds of unknown, un-volunteered scientific tests, conducted by distant Han Chinese politicians and scientists. Covid-19 was the first time we became fully aware of Chinese biowarfare testing being conducted upon our entire American population, but there were plenty of past strong hints that our health was being meddled with, and watched.
Unusually stronger and stronger influenza strains over the past two decades come to mind. Once correctly called the “Asian flu”, as these influenzas in fact come from Asia, wokeism/ political correctness demanded that Americans stop calling it what it was. Probably inspired by the prompting of a host of Chinese academics burrowed into American universities, where ridiculous ideas seem to come from non-stop.
Well, here we are in late March, 2025, and a lot of Americans are struggling with the strangest cold virus family doctors have seen (several family doctors told me this). I myself have had this weird cold virus for over three months now, and although the hacking cough stopped last week, the nasty mucous continues. I feel like crap, am low energy, and every time it seems I am past it, it comes back. Normal cold viruses last a week, maybe ten days. Like many others who have caught this “cold”, I am past ninety days. This is not just not normal, it is orders of magnitude waaaayyy not normal.
Several friends and acquaintances have experienced this cold virus much worse than I, getting pneumonia and being hospitalized. Many of my friends simply had its endless hacking cough for months. My own family physician told me “We are seeing a lot of it and we don’t know what it is.”
Well, I am going to venture a guess at what this is: Yet another Chinese bioweapon being tested on the American public.
What made me curious about this virus was the day I was exposed to it. I was flying back from a southern fishing trip in December, and a guy in the seat behind me was coughing, hacking, and sneezing his head off. Strangely, he made no attempt to cover his mouth, and everyone around him was objecting loudly to his unpolished behavior.
And what was his most unexpected behavior, as he was a white guy in his mid sixties, short hair, wearing a button down Oxford shirt, chinos, and Dockers. This very epitome of Middle Income propriety was behaving like someone raised in a cave. Very odd clash of how someone presented in public and how they then acted in public. Everyone raised as this guy was raised knows that you cover your mouth when you cough and sneeze, and yet he deliberately did not. Almost like he was trying to share his misery with those around him.
I remarked to the Princess of Patience next to me, “It’s like the airport scene in the Twelve Monkeys movie, where the deadly pandemic virus is exposed to the public.”
And then a week later, sure enough, I showed symptoms that now over three months later are by far the worst, longest, and strangest cold I have ever had. Too many people I know have had a similar experience. Normal viruses last a week. This far outlier thing has to have been made in a lab. Add to that the remarkably bad Asian bird flu this year, resulting in egg shortages, and we have two or three data points to plot on an X-Y graph. The R² is looking like almost a perfect 100.
And so now I share with you, the public, a curiosity in my mind that will not cease: Are people being paid to go forth into the American interior and deliberately spread experimental viruses created in Chinese labs, for the purpose of both damaging America and using us as a giant colony of guinea pigs?
Why wouldn’t China do this? China is already at war with America at every contact point between our two nations. China’s concept of “total war” includes making war against our public health, as much as it includes economic war and aircraft carriers. America’s freedoms can be an Achilles heel in this fight, and we had better get a handle on what is being done to us before China’s domestic allies here on our soil (America’s domestic enemies) begin demanding that we again curtail our freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, etc.
America must really get control of its borders and know exactly who is here and why they are here, before something much worse happens. God only knows what the imperialistic Han Chinese CCP is concocting in their weapons labs right now.
[Edit: I apologize for the many small mistakes and the slow editing process to fix them all day. I feel like wombat sh*t, which is to say, kind of weird and uncomfortable, and not totally focused]
Eye for eye, order for order
Unelected over-reaching judges driven by blatant partisan political activism are trying to thwart the will of The People by issuing decisions (“orders”) on Trump Administration activities that are far outside their courts’ constitutionally defined jurisdictions. Something like nearly 100% of these decisions in the past twenty years have been issued against President Trump alone, which shows that Democrat Party judicial tyranny is the same as Democrat Party executive branch tyranny. These people will burn down America’s constitutional norms simply to hold on to power.
Executive branch decisions that are solely the jurisdiction of the executive branch are not up for question or “orders” by the judicial branch. But this elementary separation of powers fact is not stopping these political activists in black robes, and something needs to be done to stop their power grab, to restore balance to the galaxy.
That some people, especially John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, want these outlandish decisions to be adjudicated through the lengthy, time-consumptive appellate process means just one thing: They want to stop President Trump’s agenda from being implemented by any means necessary. No matter how illegal or unconstitutional, they want the judiciary to be the sole arbiter of the judiciary’s own unconstitutional over-reach.
In other words, “We have investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing.” The judiciary is so far mostly siding with itself in hogging more power than the Constitution grants to judges, and is unlikely to stop itself from hogging even more power.
This is not an acceptable way to run the American republic, and some thing or many things must be done to fend it off. Some are talking about impeaching the most rogue, most lawless, most openly partisan of these judges, such as James Boasberg and Beryl Howell. OK, one survey I saw showed a 2:1 margin in favor of impeaching them, so get on with it, US House Speaker Mike Johnson. Impeachment will probably send a good signal, even if conviction and removal in the US Senate is not guaranteed. Impeachment hearings will tie up a judge’s work load and cause it to be re-distributed to other active judges.
Another way to end this radical judiciary’s assault on democracy is to take away their funding, and to then re-organize the courts, and then even more clearly defining their jurisdictions in the reorganization process. All of this is the sole purview of Congress, and while the Republicans have the majority, so should they act. So get on it with it, US House Speaker Mike Johnson, and do your duty.
Another way to respond to these lawless activist judges is to simply ignore their decisions. Issue blunt and stinging rebukes to their overeach, and carry on with executive branch activities as if they had never been involved. This will cause the Democrat Party’s mainstream media outlets to scream that there is a “constitutional crisis,” but again, I think there is sufficient new media firepower to over-ride that dead horse with the response that whatever “crisis” exists is solely due to the judicial branch’s inability to stay in its own constitutional lane.
However, there is a potential hybrid response the Trump Administration can make, that I am advocating here. While I have not seen anyone else write about it, I am certain plenty of politically active people have been thinking it: For every dingbat leftwing anti-America judicial “order”, such as Boasberg demanding that hardened illegal alien criminals – murderers, rapists – be returned to America from where they were legally deported to, the executive branch must issue a commensurate order in response.
For example, President Trump can issue an executive order requiring Judge Boasberg to personally retrieve all the illegal aliens he wants returned to America. With no promise that said wildman judge will be allowed back into America.
Or President Trump can issue an executive order that countermands exactly the precise wording of whatever unconstitutional order Judge Beryl “Howlin Wolf” Howell has issued.
Thus, this whole “crisis” becomes a battle of equal orders, from the rogue judiciary against the executive branch, and from the executive branch back against the power-hogging judiciary. This “eye for an eye” order-for-order response will flesh out the visible constitutional symmetry that President Trump’s administration needs the public to see. No longer will this situation be cast as “The courts have spoken…,” which always goes against the Republican president, but rather, it will be two co-equal branches of government issuing co-equal orders against one another, each order cancelling out the other.
An eye for an eye, an order for an order. And if the judiciary refuses to follow the executive orders, then so shall the executive branch be free to ignore the wild judicial orders, as well. True constitutional parity restored.
Judges Gone Wild
Years ago, hell probably decades ago, who the hell can remember any more, an entire film and entertainment genre was spawned based on amateur videos of “college girls” acting foolishly during Spring Break. The videos showed young, scantily clad women drunk and casual with their bodies, behaving badly or naughtily. Their carefree public exhibitions of what used to be private behavior fit within the free-wheelin’, whimsical attitudes of the 1980s.
Then followed cops gone wild, truckers gone wild, old people gone wild (usually hitting one another with their canes), and moments later, the adult movie industry riffed on the theme with whatever variations the human mind can possibly contrive, and well, here we are.
The general idea stuck, and is now a part of America’s daily lexicon. The “… Gone Wild” moniker has now come to represent how almost all human beings have a hidden wild side, a capacity for indecorous or careless behavior in view of the ogling public, regardless of income or education or upbringing. “And we have the videos and photos to prove it,” is what makes it all so enjoyable to the viewer.
Now we have a pretty fascinating addition to the Gone Wild entourage, that being some American judges. Turns out, highly educated people wearing ominous black robes and sitting in severe command of their court rooms, theoretically laying down the law of the land, have a capacity for indecorous behavior as well. Not just any judges, but overwhelmingly (92%) judges nominated by Democrat Party presidents.
Described as the “resistance judges,” a host of far-Left politically radical judges have issued decisions that have nothing to do with the American law, but everything to do with a personal commitment to opposing everything the Trump Administration does. If someone brings a lawsuit against the Trump Administration in one of these judges’ court rooms, there is a very high likelihood that the judge will rule against President Trump, regardless of what the law or the Constitution say. And then the judge will follow up with all kinds of non-judicial orders and demands for information that these judges have no business seeing.
It is as if these judges are trying to take over the day to day decision making of the executive branch. Which is so crazy, destructive, and unconstitutional that it has landed the judges in the Gone Wild category.
Recall that the American government is formed of three co-equal branches, each with their own lane, their own bailiwick, their own distinct role: Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. Judges are not lawmakers, and their decisions are not law, nor are their decisions the final word on the law. As originally designed, the courts were simply to say if an executive or legislative decision was constitutional, or not. Judges have no right to make law and policy out of thin air, creating detailed government actions.
However, a hundred years of aggressive judicial expansion into performing the roles of the executive and legislative branches has resulted in a culture of un-earned deference to judicial activism. As if Judges Gone Wild deserve the same respect as judges who are cautious and careful with their decisions, who follow the plain letter of the law and Constitution, and who steer clear of acrimonious and often highly personal decisions.
This deference to wild people wearing black robes cannot stand, because the entire arrangement of our three separate branches of government is disintegrated. When a judge assumes the power of the executive branch, and begins making executive branch decisions, you do have a crisis. And the system must respond in kind and restore order and balance.
Yes, we all understand the political Left does not care about order or balance, but rather prefers chaos, destruction, mayhem and violence. The entire Democrat Party seems devoted to destroying America, hurting American citizens, protecting waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer funds, and burning Tesla dealerships and cars. But the entire American body politic is not Leftist, but rather centrist, i.e. at the middle where balance is found, and I cannot imagine that regular, normal taxpaying Americans will stand for this ongoing violence and lawlessness, even if some wild judges say it must continue.
Such as a Democrat president illegally imports ten million illegal aliens into America without response from the courts, which then immediately demand that none of the violent criminal illegal aliens be deported by the incoming Republican president. This is lawless, wild behavior by radical judges who do not respect the rule of law. It is a “legal” insurrection against the American People by a handful of un-elected people who are supposed to know better. But their commitment to chaos and destruction outweighs their respect for the carefully crafted legal system.
Presently there are discussions about how to address these Judges Gone Wild: Defund their offices, eliminate their offices, ignore their lawless decisions, impeach them. None of us know how this is going to turn out, but one thing is certain, the American People overwhelmingly voted in 2024 for a hard-about turn and change from this same lawlessness and Government Gone Wild behavior. It is difficult to understand how the Democrat Party is going to gain voter support while it stands for general lawlessness, placing violent criminal illegal aliens above the interests of our own American citizens, or continuing to waste and fraudulently abuse hard-earned taxpayer money.
But I guess the Democrat Party is not really thinking logically about the outcomes of their actions. They are in Gone Wild mode, come what may.
Over twenty years two thirds of injunctions were issued against Trump by nearly 100% far-left Democrat appointed district judges. Lawfare much?
Vote: NRA Board of Directors
The National Rifle Association board of directors election is happening right now, and your vote counts a lot. And a lot is at stake. The organization is recovering from decades of bureaucratic malaise and overspending, personal ego battles among leaders, and frankly, the overstayed-your-welcome of its longtime Executive VP, Wayne LaPierre. The more people asked Wayne LaPierre to step down, the more he clung to power, hogged public attention, and damaged the careers and lives of those NRA staff and associates whom he perceived to be less than groveling to him.
The NRA has had some rough times, no doubt, and other worthy groups like Gun Owners of America have seized the opportunity to grow their market share of the 2A crowd. But it is still a fact that the NRA is the best sheriff in town to take on the anti-freedom tyrants. Though NRA has had some internal drama (and so has GOA), no one does its job better. NRA still deserves your membership, your support, your donation when purchasing things at Midway.
Yes, Donald Trump is now president, and so no, the federal government is not presently at war with our 2A rights and the groups that protect them, like the NRA. But presidents come and go, and our advocates like NRA must be able to stay in the fight, during the good times and the bad.
Presently there is an internal contest going on at NRA, at the board level and amongst some of the staff, about Whither NRA. There is an effort to keep the “old regime” folks around, when what is needed is a complete overhaul, a housecleaning, an NRA 2.0. For that to happen, new voices and fresh faces have to be voted onto the board. I happen to know a few of the board members (spanning all positions on Whither NRA), and I have been asking them what their opinions are about some of the new faces and some of the old faces.
Couple of recommended NO votes: Larry “Bathroom Bud” Craig (for God’s sake, NRA, have you no shame?), Sandra Froman (been a board member for long enough now, thank you), Joel Friedman, a fantastic 2A stalwart who tied himself too closely to Wayne LaPierre and the old NRA establishment.
Recommended YES votes:
- Knox Williams of the American Suppressor Association. I do not own suppressors, nor am I interested in suppressors. My gun interests are in the circa 1775-1925 range. However, a lot of new gun owners are very into suppressors and the modern sporting rifles they connect to. Young people like Knox Williams speak this new language and are necessary for the NRA to walk effectively into the 21st century.
- Jonathan Goldstein, a well known Second Amendment attorney from here in Pennsylvania.
- Al Hammond, Mitzy McCorvey, Anthony Colandro, Charles Hiltunen, Isaac Demarest, Todd Ellis, and Jim Wallace are all fresh voices much needed on the NRA board.
Your official NRA ballot is due before April 6th, 2025, so get it in the mail, pronto.
Back to basics, America
We have a Republican Party crisis here in Pennsylvania, and in Dauphin County, and this blog will be addressing these problem children soon. However, the real friction happening between lawless, rogue judges and the Trump Administration is the most defining issue of the day.
As most politically interested and involved readers already know, a real contest of wills is developing betwen the Trump Administration on the one hand, and politically radical / rogue/ lawless politically activist judges on the other hand. This contest may seem alarming to some people, but it is a perfectly natural and healthy aspect of how our Constitutional republican form of government is designed to operate.
With three separate but co-equal branches of government forming an equilateral triangle, but made of living, breathing people, and usually the most aggressive, power hungry, conniving people at that, American government is designed to have friction. That friction results in constant contest, and a constant creative renewal, as all three branches naturally seek to exert as much dominance as they can get away with over the other two branches. Or as much outright control of the decision process as the other branches will concede.
So when grotesquely overreaching politically corrupt activist judges, like James Boasberg, “order” the executive branch to turn around planes carrying lawfully deported violent gang members to foreign destinations, and return said violent deportees to American soil for the judge’s evaluation, we can expect some friction to result. The executive branch, and its chief executive/ military commander in chief (the president), is well within its rights and within its sole discretionary function when it engages in illegal alien deportation, as defined by the US Constitution.
The Trump Administration is under no duty or obligation to do whatever some judge tells them to do. Judicial Tyranny might be a goal for some Americans, but it is not something anticipated or accepted by the Founders and writers of the Constitution.
Not every situation or question or policy is justiciable, meaning that not every question can be resolved in a court of law. Some things, like deportations and war and a host of other subjects and government functions, are the sole purview of the executive branch. Neither the legislative branch nor the judicial branch have anything to say about it. It is not their “lane.”
Or, the judicial and legislative branches can try to say something about a given policy, but the best way to force the executive branch to follow is to pass a law requiring it.
In this particular case, President Trump blasted Boasberg’s unconstitutional overreach, and called for his impeachment, which is built right into the Constitution. Then US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in turn criticized the President for his calls to impeach said America-hating radical, James Boasberg. While Roberts personally dislikes Trump, he is defending his judicial branch more than anything, and trying to take power away from the executive branch.
This is all normal stuff, even if America has not seen this kind of constitutional friction in a long time. To my mind, this activity just shows that the various parts of the government machine are working properly. It took a Donald J. Trump to actually test run the American machinery for the first time in about seventy years. What is scary is how aggressive the judicial branch has been about hogging power over the past fifty years, and how little pushback the executive branch did until now. Presidents and Congress alike keep conceding judicial review as though the judicial branch is some sort of hallowed gathering of super smart and pure minded arbiters of fairness. Ha! Judges are just politicians in black robes, as one of my Penn State professors used to say.
Don’t worry, America has been down this path before in recent times. The Obama Administration, especially, engaged in a ton of simply ignoring judicial holdings and decisions and demands and orders; Obama DOJ lawyers were repeatedly held in contempt by a number of judges over the tenure of that administration. Not one judge got up out of his or her chamber to go enforce their order in person…nor could they.
And that’s the rub here: Crazy judges and even crazier Justices who allow some members of the judiciary to run wild, without restraint, can expect constraint by the branches they impact. Especially the executive branch.
Judicial review is not sacrosanct, it is not wide-open, nor can judges simply demand obedience to whatever or wherever their egos or political interests take them (or in the case of corrupt Judge James Boasberg, where his family’s wallet takes him on policy questions). Judges’ credibility depends upon the dignity and caution with which they discharge their duties.
When judges like Boasberg run bloody roughshod over America’s Constitutional geometry, and when justices like John Roberts do nothing to rein Boasberg in, but rather defend the indefensible, then they pretty much deserve what they have coming: Impeachment by the US House of Representatives, and being simply ignored by the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief as he does what his job requires him to do.
As one US president said in a similar moment of great friction, “Let the judge come and enforce his order himself.”
And no, that judge did not attempt to personally force the executive branch machinery to bend to his will. He astutely stood down and granted to the Chief Executive that which was his, and which still remains his. If Justice John Roberts wants Americans to respect his office and his decisions, then he must act similarly. We have to get back to the basics of running American government.
Don’t eat yellow snow, don’t drink green beer
Don’t eat the yellow snow, and don’t drink the green beer used to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day today. But you should definitely enjoy a stout brown Guinness, preferably chilled. A Guinness beer is like a full meal in a bottle, but in my experience, it only goes down cold. People who drink warm beer of any sort, especially heavy, rich beers like Guinness, are not human, but are rather mostly goat. Goats can eat pretty much anything. Gag me with a warm Guinness!
Yellow snow needs no explanation. OK, for those who do not get outside in the winter, yellow snow is where someone or some dog or animal went pee. You do not want to eat that, or play with it, because it is gross. OK? Don’t eat that yellow snow!
Green beer? Who the heck came up with this weird idea? Chemical food dyes do not belong in our bodies, and especially not in our sacred beers. Beer at any time of the year is too special to adulterate with green dye. Natural ingredients only in our beers, please. Someone please call Health Secretary RFK Jr and get him to sort this out.
Celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day with a pure heart and a pure, healthy diet.
This guy ate yellow snow and drank green beer, and look at what that did to him
Josh Prince for Judge
Attorney Josh Prince with his posse of pro 2A clients and fellow attorneys in Harrisburg County court house last August, following a successful day in court.
Josh Prince is a candidate for Commonwealth Court, and I really hope he wins. Josh is probably one of the best candidates, one of the best people, to ever run for this elected position.
He is one of the most pro Second Amendment judicial candidates Pennsylvania has ever had. If you are a hunter, a target shooter, a self defense gun owner, Josh is your candidate. Josh has been protecting Pennsylvania gun owners for decades, with dozens of successful lawsuits against government overreach to his credit. Often done on credit, without demanding that his wrongfully/ illegally accused clients pay exorbitant retainers up front and huge fees. I am not saying Josh takes chickens (or eggs these days) in payment, like country lawyers used to do, but it would not surprise me if he does.
I have personally known Josh for twenty years, and I have been a FOAC client of his here in Harrisburg, where we defeated Harrisburg City’s unconstitutional anti 2A city ordinances last Fall.
Josh Prince is endorsed by Gun Owners of America, FOAC, and probably NRA, any one of which should be sufficient for him to get your vote on May 20th, which is PA Primary Election Day.
Please vote for Josh Prince for Commonwealth Court on May 20th, thank you.
Flintlock season recap
- Gunmaker Mark Wheland with the gun of my dreams, a flintlock English Sporting Rifle made just for me
Writing a blog is a delicate walk, because as much as I want to write about the righteous boss daddy treatment President Trump gave to weasel rat dictator Zelensky the other day, I have to stay focused on what our audience of exactly One Person has requested. If I turn off my one reader, then I will literally be writing solely for the air and the stars.
For the record, just because you or I call Zelensky (Ukraine) the weasel rat dictator he is, does not mean that you or I automatically like or support dictator Putin (Russia). Both of these men are in power because they have subverted their nations’ elections, amassed wealth and power at the expense of their countrymen, etc. Yes, Putin is responsible for the war in Ukraine, and yes, Ukraine can and should negotiate a settlement that ends the bloodshed. And yes, Trump should demand and expect to receive rare earth metals in return for all of the taxpayer support Americans have given to Ukraine. This is all normal.
Wanting the war to go on and on with greater bloodshed and destruction on both sides and with more powerful rockets is not normal. That is warmongering.
Anyhow, the late hunting season here in Central Pennsylvania was exciting, but had no filled tags. I used to rabbit hunt a lot, but gave up when the rabbit populations showed signs of vaporizing due to abundant fishers and bobcats. For five or six years now I have hardly seen one rabbit in places where I have created the best habitat, and where rabbits should be swarming. So for many years I have just hunted the late flintlock season for deer, instead, just about daily.
And also trapped for predators, including fishers and bobcats. Not this season, however. On the December flight back from Florida, a man behind me kept coughing and sneezing. He never covered his mouth, and made no attempt to keep from infecting everyone around him. Sure enough, a week later I was showing signs of the same horrible illness half the country has now had, a persistent dry cough and a close brush with pneumonia. Lots of people are getting the pneumonia. So, I was sick as hell during the time I normally set traps, and my kit and steel just sat and sat.
Instead, just about every day after Christmas, I would go out for a couple hours and try to intercept a deer with the new flintlock, coughing quietly into my clothes to muffle the bark. I got off a lot of shots, collected blood and hair, but filled no tags. A new white checked Filson wool coat helped me blend in with the snowy woods.
Made for me by Mark Wheland, the new flintlock is a 62-caliber rifle based on the English Sporting Rifle design, which I have come to admire. It has a 28 inch decently swamped octagonal barrel by Getz from about 15 years ago, a beautiful patent breech made by Jason Schneider at Rice Barrels, a RE Davis late-flintlock era Manton-style waterproof lock, and a gorgeous stock of highly figured and irridescent English walnut. Wheland turned a perfect ebony ramrod, as well as its horn end and its threaded steel connector end.
The Manton-style lock has a roller frizzen, which is both very fast and also very touchy. Hunting in brush without bumping the heel of my hand up against the back of the frizzen would result in some blade of grass flicking it open and dumping the priming powder on the ground. So it requires some special handling, because it is so sensitive.
I also struggled with this gun’s sights all season long, probably also slowly acclimating to the short barrel. This barrel is ten inches shorter than that on my long-time go-to 54 caliber flintlock barrel, that is 38″ long, and my eyes have not yet made the transition. Moreover, the new gun has classic British rear sights, one standing and one folding leaf. The rear sites were conveyed to me with only the most rudimentary and shallow “V” filed in the standing sight, and the front sight was about a half inch high. It was up to me, in a short amount of time, to get this gun sighted in just days before bear season began, which is just days before deer season started.
So I just struggled to get the gun sighted in, and by the time actual flintlock season began, the day after Xmas, it was printing dead center and 2.5″ high at 50 yards. With 130 grains of FFG Swiss pushing the 335-grain lead round ball about 1500 feet per second, I reckoned it was probably dead-on at 100 yards. Or minute-of-deer chest within 100 yards.
I lost track of how many shots I took at deer. Mostly at does. One probably legal buck I let walk past me. Some deer I literally just walked right up to in the snow, and missed, maybe forty yards away. Others I ambushed from concealment on trail crossings, from fifty out to about 95 yards, while sitting. Each miss resulted in a little more blacking being put on the rear sight, a little more color added here or there, and by the end of the season the front sight was filed down to about 1/8″ high and painted bright neon orange. The rear sight has a bright neon yellow inverted V wedge under the V aperature, surrounded by black. I am thinking about scrapping the entire arrangement and going to front and rear fiber optic sights. Old eyes…
One doe was flattened by what seemed like a perfect broadside at 75 yards. I saw her go down through the cloud of smoke, and when I walked up I expected to find her stone cold dead. But while there was a perfect outline of her body in the snow, with plenty of blood, the actual deer was nowhere to be found. With dusk fast approaching, I used my headlamp to follow as far as I could in the snow and the thick brambles, and then went home. The next morning I returned and took up the trail, which resulted in three deer fleeing from fresh beds, one of which had some fresh drips of blood, but not much. Not even the coyotes would end up eating her.
My last shot of the season was taken like a mortar, at the biggest buck I have ever seen in the wild. He was just a bit over 200 yards away, and had been spooked out of his hidey nook by my prowling. When I snuck back towards the anticipated cut-off, he was indeed standing right there, looking all around, on high alert. While down wind, I was as close as I could get without being seen. So I took some pictures of him, which of course did not come out well, and then took careful aim with plenty of “Kentucky elevation” and let ‘er rip. At the shot he flew away with wings, and on my follow up I found where the big lead ball had hit the ground at plane, leaving a 20-foot-long long streak through the snow and dirt directly in line with the buck’s shoulder, but about 20 yards too short. His tracks were among the biggest I have ever seen. Guessing a 200″ buck.
The doe was flattened, and leaked some hydraulic fluid, but was gone and lived on
I have a lot more practice to do with this gun.
What looks like a shallow white “W” is just the higher visibility part of the huge buck’s enormous rack
Overnight beds, tiny amount of blood, a mere flesh wound and a long-lived lucky deer
The long path cut by the 335-grain round ball on its way towards the big buck
Nice view down into the woods, perfect for a flintlock. Yes, the barrel key is loose, which accounted for two missed shots
Hunting around an enormous buck capable of leaving big rubs like this one is excitement enough. Actually seeing him and getting a shot…even the miss is the highlight of the season
Hunting season re-cap
By popular demand by our one, single reader, we are going back in time a week or three, to when most hunting seasons ended. I was asked for a recapitulation of my own end of the hunting season, which, depending on which one we are talking about, could have been the end of January or mid February or even last week.
This past season was tough for me, for the simple reason that I am still recovering from a covid-related “medical event,” which really took the starch out of my shirt, the wind out of my sails, the gumption out of my Gump. Bit over a year ago, I was running the sawmill, stacking lumber, sawing logs, working very hard, getting ready for an annual out-of-state solo wilderness hunt that I do just about every year. It is a great hunt, whether I actually pull the trigger, or not, and it has resulted in both super Zen mind settling re-sets as well as the biggest bodied buck and the biggest bear I have ever killed.
So I was working overtime in the crisp Fall air filled with the sweet scent of falling oak leaves, trying to get a bunch of logs to disappear and become lumber, and enjoying the feeling of being in really great condition, and feeling physically powerful. Nothing like bossing big oak logs around with a cant hook and a pickaroon to make a guy feel strong.
By the end of the week I was in absolute beast mode. I might have been a bit heavy, but I was incredibly strong and in fabulous cardiovascular conditioning (proven by a radioactive dye test that same spring where the cardiologist told me I had the heart of an 18 year old). Over the years, I have made hunting guides and forest rangers alike laugh and shake their heads at the improbability of my non-svelte ability to carry a heavy pack and a rifle, and just go go go keep going to wherever we are going in the Scottish Highlands and many other mountain ranges from Maine to Alaska.
So I was ripped and in fantastic condition, ready to make the long drive to the out of state destination, just exit the truck, throw my pack on, grab my rifle, and head in about four to six miles. When finally out there, I live out of a Seek Outside teepee tent, which with a small titanium wood stove provides all the comforts of home I could ever need. Living on home made dried fruit, jerky, and Gatorade powder keeps everything super simple.
Hours before leaving, I woke up, feeling like I was about to die. Eventually convinced that I was in fact dying, I drove myself forty minutes to the nearest hospital, and turned myself in to the ER staff at 4AM.
“Whatever you are here for, you are in the right place,” said the wizened old lady at the ER check-in. Apparently I looked just as dandy as I felt.
Handfuls of blood clots from a freak Covid clot were sprinkled around my lungs and heart, which accounted for why I felt like I was dying. That I did not die right away amazed everyone medical. Had I reached my hunting destination without dying on the highway, I would have died in the teepee tent, and forest rangers would have had to recover my fat body in the middle of a designated wilderness area. Which would have scored me no points with people I am always trying to impress.
So, when your aging carcass nearly croaks like that, and you cannot breathe or move for months, your body begins to atrophy. Overnight. On an old body like mine, the warranty ran out long ago, and things and parts and bits of it just start going their own way. Months and tens of pounds of fat later, I was learning to walk again. Forget carrying heavy packs and rifles, just walking from one end of a damned log landing to the other end was a chore. Carrying a chainsaw? Unimaginable.
Two types of blood clots are related to Covid: The kind of “regular” red blood cell clot, which got me, which my cardiologist said they saw an enormous spike of from early 2020 to 2022, and the white, gooey clot that seems to result from the purported Covid “vaccine” shot. I never got the faux Covid vaccine shot, but I did have Covid at least twice, possibly three times. And so even a year or two later, people like me were still experiencing “late Covid” symptoms. Including death clots from out of the middle of nowhere, including originating from impossible parts of the body (not in deep muscle).
Whatever China cooked up in their Frankenstein lab in Wuhan, it was a real bitch, and China owes America at least a trillion dollars for all of the damage and death they inflicted on us. Screw you, China, you bastards ruined my fabulous annual solo hunt and kept me from doing it again the next year, too. Make your bill two trillion bucks.
So, this past hunting season, beginning in October, I was just starting to really move again. But it was slow going, and slowed down more by the incredible amount of excess baggage I had stashed away around my gut. But whaddaya know, those old timers who used to talk about their elder years being their best hunting skills time…they were right. Because when I started moving through and across our hills, fields, and especially our Pennsylvania mountains, I was by necessity moving slooooowly.
And when you move slowly, you move silently, and with more attention paid to your surroundings. This results in seeing more animals, at closer distances, than usual. Being close range to prey animals with a rifle in your hand is usually a recipe for success.
In rifle season I killed two deer up in the mountains this way, the slow, sickly, deadly old man way. Then I returned south to the mostly Flatlands, and proceeded to again slowly sneak up on a doe in the middle of a wind storm with snow on the ground, and shoot her with a lever action rifle at about twenty-five yards. I was starting to feel a lot better physically, and about life.
Later on, in the late season, I really struggled to master a new flintlock rifle, for which I had waited two years, after taking a year of my time just to assemble the parts. I will write about hunting deer with this beautiful new flintlock rifle tomorrow, as Part Two of this report.
The Real Avengers
You can count on your right hand the number of real-life big-time times that the Good Guys have come back from apparent defeat, and gone on to defeat the Bad Guys. Depending upon how you qualify what is big-time, maybe you can count them on two hands. But not too many more than that.
Let’s try: A couple of Biblical-era wins, like King David’s defeat of Saul at the foot of Mount Gilboa, which incidentally looks today the same as the farmland there looked three thousand years ago, and the Maccabees defeating the Seleucid Greeks and their liberal Jewish allies…add these to the signing of the Magna Carta, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War II, and now, I think, something of the same magnitude, which is yesterday’s completed appointment of The American Avengers, which is really the crowning achievement of President Donald Trump’s miraculous return to the White House.
We are talking about yesterday’s selection of Dan Bongino as deputy director of the FBI, which is now headed by Kash Patel, today being his first full day in that office. With US Attorney General Pam Bondi already working overtime for the American people, America now has a true American Avengers team that is set to re-set the anti-democracy situation that brought the American republic precariously close to termination in the past few years, and return power and decision making to We, The American People. Radical transparency in government activity is already underway, and what we are seeing is not pretty.
Yes, I recognize that leftists and liberals and partisan Democrats see things differently. To paraphrase our impressive VP, I don’t care, Margaret. The way that leftists and liberals and partisan Democrats see things makes absolutely no sense from any angle.
Every time Donald Trump got closer and closer to winning back the White House over the past year, the more and louder the left bleated that “We are losing our democracy,” while simultaneously censoring, auditing, canceling, de-banking, firing, and jailing their political opponents. Nothing comes close to losing democracy like cutting out your opponent’s tongue and putting him in jail on fake charges, which is what the Democrat Party was doing daily to Americans and to other oppressed peoples around the world, using taxpayer money via the rancid USAID, no less.
Anyhow, with these three proven heroes at the helm of American justice, we should expect to see Biblical-style results. Remember that Democrat Party mantra, No one is above the law. We are probably now going to see a hell of a lot of people who thought they were above the law, and whose evil sins were hidden by a politicized and corrupt mainstream media, finally get held accountable.
A couple times a week over the past month, people with open minds have been shocked but not surprised at the new recordings of federal workers bragging about how many tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars have been siphoned off, stolen, and deliberately mis-spent on purely partisan and zero-benefit policy activities over the past few years, even over the past few months and weeks. James O’Keefe at OMG and O’Keefe’s old Project Veritas both are catching federal employee criminals laughing about their rip-off exploits, on camera.
This morning I listened to a brief interview with a senior US Marshals Service employee, who ran into serious and un-earned Human Resources trouble there because of the deep, deep rot in that important branch of government. His story is just one guy in an agency with probably a hundred such guys, maybe more. Multiply his story across the federal government….Which is to say that whatever shocking financial crimes Elon Musk’s DOGE has daily revealed, there is a LOT LOT more criminal activity just flush throughout the entire federal government. Our government is rife and filled to the gills with criminal activity, and The American Avengers are going to have their hands full bringing all of these bad people to justice.
Be prepared, because I don’t see Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, or Dan Bongino giving up on holding bad people accountable. The next few years are going to be much more exciting than some fake Hollywood action movie, that’s for sure.
Remember how FBI employees put then- Congresswoman now Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on the Do-Not-Fly list because she stepped off the Democrat Party plantation?
Kash Patel is the new FBI director, on a mission from God
As soon as Kash Patel was confirmed by the US Senate as the next FBI director, suddenly Democrats were calling to end all of the investigations that had defined Washington DC for the past eight years. Wonder why…
