Category → Family
DuckDuckNoGo
Like oh, so many Americans seeking digital refuge from the combined forces of tyrannical government partnered with the Big Tech industrial complex, I too began using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine about three years ago. Before that I had used some other search engine that was not Google, because Google has been overtly evil since 2015.
Evil because Google did not perform as advertised, and in fact it sought to undermine its users.
When a search engine deliberately skews its search results to fit a particular political view or goal, then it is no longer a search engine. It is an information censor, shaper, editor. But it is not a search engine in the sense that we type in some term, hit the ENTER key, and sit back as the most relevant results are presented to us. Nope, that is oh, so 2010, and we are living way beyond that innocent time now.
Enter DuckDuckGo, a high tech response to the outpouring of consumer frustration with Google providing laugh-out-loud fake results like “Hillary Clinton’s awesome fabulous answer to rising crime!” to the search “Hillary Clinton Criminal.” Instead of providing accurate results that would enumerate the many criminal wrongdoings and run-ins and cases of Arkancide associated with Hillary Clinton, Google still to this day provides a list of dodgy and patently false narrative misinformation to actually obfuscate and cover up Hillary Clinton’s long trail of criminal wreckage.
DuckDuckGo presented itself as an alternative to this about-face by what had been the world’s greatest search engine and source of arcana, with the additional promise of hiding user information and providing privacy. It was a great sell, and millions of people flocked to the Duck, happy knowing they were not propping up evil Google and also were getting more accurate information with greater privacy.
I was one of those users, and had DuckDuckGo installed on my smart phone and my laptop. In a small way, it made me feel all renegade and subtle dissenter against Google’s all-knowing, overbearing Big Tech.
About a month ago I noticed search results were suddenly fitting the same kinds of patterns I expect to experience on YouTube, where censors and book burners have been running unabashedly wild for several years. A kind of smooth uniformity and consistency of results that you could one and all fit into a thimble, due to their repetitive and simulacra nature. No more outliers, no weird blogs you’d never heard of before, no more….diversity.
For example, searching a loaded political phrase, term, or name was suddenly giving 100% mainstream media results, that almost all read exactly the same as one another, regardless of the outlet name (MSNBC sounds the same as CNN sounds the same as NPR sounds the same as ABC). This had become both the Google model and more recently the YouTube model, a shameless effort to block your access (my access) to the wide variety of information sources and opinions out there on the Internet, and to instead serve up a particular and purposefully misinformed narrative, related in numbingly same phrases and terms, regardless of the source (NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS… they all sound the same).
I kind of wondered aloud to myself when I encountered this the first few times. And then the bird was let out of the cage the other day by DuckDuckGo’s founder and owner, Gabriel Weinberg. Weinberg published a tweet on Twitter, admitting to having changed the once freedom-embracing DuckDuckGo into Google Junior. No more honest search results. Nope. Instead, in the name of “fighting misinformation” DuckDuckGo would join the rest of the Big Tech lackeys and do whatever evil manipulation and spread whatever misinformation their political masters demand of them.
So now, I am like so many millions of other Internet users, former DuckDuckGo users betrayed by Gabriel Weinberg and the sick, dishonest, woke ideology he serves, searching for a fair and unbiased source of Internet search results. Right now I am using Brave’s search function, because Brave is the browser I use. I suppose that when someone offers the owner of Brave enough money he will sell it and we will be looking once again for a fair and unbiased browser.
Bottom line is I have ditched DuckDuckGo, because I will not participate in its evil lies and deception. It is now DuckDuckNoGo.
Fly away, Duck, and do not come back here. You are a dead duck to me, now.
(And while I am on the subject of individuals in Big Tech who make bizarre decisions that promote the spread of disinformation and false narratives, can I ask what the hell is in the water that Gabriel Weinberg (DuckDuckGo), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Serge Brin (Google), and a zillion other Big Tech Jewish guys drink? Do they all drink the same poisoned water, together? Why is it that we have no Jewish radicals in Big Tech? Like, why are there no pro-freedom, anti-censorship, pro-democracy, anti Big Government, pro-individual rights Jewish people running these Big Tech companies? Instead, it seems like every. single. one. of these guys thinks exactly the same, and it is a horribly shitty sameness they push. I ask this earnestly, because I am a male version of Pippy Longstocking, and my intentions cannot be ascribed to evil. Raised in the wilds of America with a pack of howling malamutes, with few social distancing norms to guide my thoughts or my mouth, I am asking this question honestly. For a friend. For my wife. For my kids. Hey Serge, Gabe, Mark…what the f*ck is wrong with you?)
UPDATE: Today, March 14, 2022 DuckDuckGo is running ads on WHP580 AM radio. Never heard a search engine run ads before, anywhere, but the immediate and deserved ass-kicking that DuckDuckGo must be taking to inspire the company to purchase these ads is probably magnificent.
Joe Biden incompetence/ corruption = Ukraine invasion
The only reason Russia felt comfortable invading Ukraine yesterday is because corrupt senile pedophile Joe Biden is asleep at the wheel.
The only people Joe Biden is dangerous to are innocent, law-abiding Americans who oppose Biden’s lawless fascist dictatorship. The Russians sure as hell are not scared of him.
Joe Biden’s word salad public statements about “our hearts and prayers are with the Ukrainian people” etc etc are not only not presidential, they are a clear signal that the Biden Regime intends to let Russia do whatever they want to do, and America will do nothing but send fondest wishes via Twitter to the Ukrainian people and the thousands of Americans now abandoned in Ukraine.
An administration worthy of being called “American” would have at least negotiated the escape of our American citizens now stranded in Ukraine, before giving Russia the green light to invade. But this Biden Administration is not American. Rather it is an assemblage of anti-Americans whose job it is to destroy America from inside.
Need an example? Why is Joe Biden shutting down domestic American oil and gas production, while openly committing to continue purchasing RUSSIAN oil and gas? This weakens America, artificially raises the price that Americans pay for oil and gas, and it greatly strengthens Russia.
Biden’s bizarre anti-America arrangement ain’t high-end, complicated economics, people. This is Econ 101, the kind of super simple economics most college graduates were taught their first year, and that non-college graduates of Life College had to learn the hard way on their own. The things that Joe Biden is doing can only damage America and Americans, and in fact they are greatly damaging America and Americans.
If you are an American citizen still loyal to Joe Biden, then shame on you. You must really hate America and your fellow Americans. You would not tolerate this malfeasance from any politician in a different political party, and this misplaced loyalty really highlights the silliness of political party loyalty.
How the hell can American taxpayers be loyal to any political party that does this much serious damage to America?! How much damage do you think America can sustain? What the hell do you think will happen to your life and your family if this wanton destruction is allowed to continue?
Anyhow, it is Joe Biden’s weakness that invited the Russians to invade the Ukraine, and China will now probably follow up with an invasion of Taiwan. Both of these dictatorships know that they will not face any real, meaningful resistance from Joe Biden.
Instead, Joe Biden is obsessed with trying to criminalize his own domestic political opponents, so he can eliminate them altogether and establish one-party rule over Americans. So he and his successors can act just like Vladimir Putin.
And while we are on the subject of Russia and American presidents, if President Donald Trump really was a Russian asset, as the Democrat Media constantly alleged for four years, then why the hell didn’t Russia invade Ukraine when Trump was president? Why did they wait for this weak, old, child-sniffer Joe Biden to dodder up to a microphone and mumble some meaningless words?
I am amazed that anyone with half a brain could ever believe the utter crap that comes out of NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, PBS, MSDNC, Washington Post, New York Times etc. Everything these partisan outlets say and write is designed to promote one political party. They are not in the news business, they are in the propaganda and brainwashing business, and if in this day and age when there are so many different news and information outlets available to anyone with an iota of curiosity, you are nonetheless still listening to what these mainstream media outlets say, then you are brainwashed. Or incredibly lazy. Stick your finger in an electric socket and wake the hell up, before it is too late for you, for your retirement fund, and for your family members.
Everyone have a nice weekend, and enjoy the fabulous fireworks display in Ukraine over the coming days, brought to you by day dreaming, child-sniffing Joe Biden.
One thing Rush Limbaugh got right
Radio host Rush Limbaugh died a year ago, and people who enjoyed his show or his books are remembering him today. I am remembering him for two reasons. First, for his zig-zag career path and conventional/unconventional life path. Second, for a single political prediction he made in 2019 that was labeled “outrageous” and “dangerous” by his opponents, and which even raised a lot of eyebrows amid his supporters, but which has proven to be spookily prescient and 100% accurate.
First with number one.
Rush Limbaugh’s successful life path and career path are things worth studying, because so many Americans have been corralled into falsely believing your career must be, should be a straight and linear path forward. Even though that is just not correct, and in many cases it’s not healthy.
You know, graduate from high school, then go to college and spend an inordinate amount of money to be indoctrinated in nonsense and useless hokum, with the hope of getting a college diploma that “proves” you are smart and capable of making decisions. I don’t know if this linear career path idea is a natural result of the old guild mentality, where a son or daughter would apprentice in a particular guild (plumber, wood worker, watch maker, gun maker, horse carriage maker etc.), and then either take over his or her father’s work shop, or go start their own work shop/ atelier in some distant locale doing the same work. In truth, this guild and apprencticeship process offers a lot of value, not just three hundred years ago, but even today. It assures that young people go into work they enjoy, and that they are well trained when they are released unto the world as a certified expert. It also gives people a good income in what had been a feudal world of poor serfs and ultra-wealthy aristocrats.
But this guild approach to career saw its last vestiges swept away with the end of high school Shop Class and Vo-Tech programs that actually taught Americans how to do needed things of value.
And so Rush Limbaugh followed his own path in the radio world, and ended up being the most successful and well-known radio personality in radio history. His success did not happen in a linear way, but quite the opposite. He had to find his way. His stories about his first few jobs in radio, and about being fired by different types of radio managers for different kinds of real or imaginary infractions, and moving across the country several times to take radio jobs, are useful examples to those just now entering the work force or who are stultifying in old jobs.
Only after failing, or growing as it might be euphemistically called, did Limbaugh eventually get to sit behind the Golden EIB Microphone. It was his initial failures and zig-zags that eventually created his character and inner strength, his skills and abilities.
Lessons that Limbaugh learned were be yourself, be honest and forthright, work hard, take risks, make some sacrifices, and if you end up doing what you enjoy the most, then you will often be rewarded with material success and deep personal happiness. And as we well know, contentment is its own form of wealth (and as some of us know, there are a lot of very wealthy people who are also desperately unhappy and often cruelly, even destructively negative, to those around them), so becoming a high school shop teacher earning forty five thousand dollars a year may make you deeply content with your life, but your life partner is going to have to work, too.
But there is no such a thing as high school shop class these days….one should wonder Why…that is a separate issue.
Similarly, his personal life resulted in a strong and committed marriage to a woman, Kathryn, only after the two of them had been friends for many years. How rewarding it is to be married to both your lover and your best friend. That is the pinnacle of relationships, and Limbaugh’s marriage should serve as a useful template for others contemplating marriage themselves. Find a friend, and marry them.
Now about that crazy prediction Limbaugh made in 2019, the one thing he got right that at first sounded so outlandish and impossible…I remember shaking my head when he said that “the Democrat Party will seek a way to eliminate elections so that they can become the dominant and sole political force in America.”
“I don’t know how they are going to do it, but they are working on it,” Limbaugh said. “Oh, they will allow the trappings of elections, but they won’t be meaningful or fair.”
And I was not alone in my skepticism at such a huge claim. Many observers and listeners to Limbaugh’s radio program openly said that he was just being bombastic for the sake of poking his political opponents. No one in American politics could ever want to eliminate elections, the bedrock foundation of our constitutional republic, right?, we naively thought.
And yet Limbaugh stuck to this public claim several times more, and in the end he was proven correct with the stolen 2020 election, and the Democrat Party’s all-out hyperdrive to convert that theft into absolute iron control of Americans by any means necessary, including the federalization of elections and permanence of vote fraud activity.
It turned out that Limbaugh really did understand the Democrat Party and the American Left better than anyone else outside of those two movements. What is amazing is that the subject of his analysis, the Democrat Party, now makes no effort to hide its totalitarian ambitions. Everywhere American citizens have demanded audits of the voting machines or the ballots cast in the fraudulent 2020 election, they have been met with deviousness, rude defiance, threats, blocking lawsuits, and outright ballot-shredding skulduggery by the Democrat Party and its Republican Party enablers.
This is not the behavior of people committed to open and accountable elections, but rather the actions of the desperate and dangerous thief trying to keep his theft from becoming widespread knowledge.
America as a continuing constitutional republic is in huge trouble. Most of our institutions are overthrown and taken over by leftist activists, who then bend those cultural and political institutions against the American constitution and the rule of law. Rush Limbaugh was so deep into the political fray that like a champion prize fighter, he saw where his opponent’s next punch sequence was going to come from.
What is amazing is that the Republican Party still, even now, behaves like an amazed ringside commentator asking incredulously at the end of the fight how the champion prize fighter ever saw the attack coming and not only beat it back, but managed to land his own blows in order to win the fight. This just goes to show just how outside the political fray the Republican Party is; the GOP is barely an observer much less an actual participant in American politics.
We need Rush Limbaugh’s insights more than ever now, but he is somewhere else, and so the only bit of related wisdom or insight I can scrape up at this point is to say We must all be Rush Limbaughs, and each of us fearlessly stay in the fight for freedom and liberty.
And trust our gut instincts about our political opponents. Even if it seems like crazy talk to say that the Democrat Party or its Canadian political ally, Justin Trudeau, are hell bent on becoming absolutist totalitarian overlords. We must fight fight fight, or we lose everything.
Rush Limbaugh behind his EIB Golden Microphone, fighting for freedom and liberty. He knew politics better than most people and loved a constitutional America more than most
Limbaugh’s right-hand man, James Golden aka “Bo Snerdley” continues Limbaugh’s fight for liberty today
Yep…the Super Bowl was worth ignoring
Plenty of entertaining memes circulated Sunday about not missing the Super Bowl. People asking each other on article comment sections and in texts, “Do you even know who the teams are who are playing?”
Like a lot of other Americans, I had no idea which teams were playing in the Super Bowl. I didn’t care, and I was not going to spend the time to watch it,
Plenty of Americans were not enthusiastic about watching a professional sport they had once enjoyed, but now feel alienated from. And why wouldn’t they feel this way? Since 2016, all kinds of anti-America, anti-police, anti-capitalism, anti-Western Civilization behavior had been acted out at football games. Multi-millionaire football players whined and complained about problems they had not faced, ascribing “racism” to the very people paying exorbitant amounts to come and see them play, and buy their jerseys etc.
I don’t believe a human being can create a more antagonistic arrangement than what we watched unfold in football games since 2016. The spoiled players vs. their fans!
So what in fact did we miss in Sunday’s game? We got to not see the blathering talent-less ‘Eminem’ “take a knee,” the virtue signal of all virtue signals. Eminem was years late to the kneeling thing, but decided to do it anyhow. And NFL senior management knew he was going to do it, and they did nothing to oppose him. Just kicking more sand in the eyes of former NFL fans. Hey, NFL, it’s your own business you are burning down, not ours. When you treat your audience with disrespect, you lose us, you don’t hurt us.
Also present was a “Snoop Dog,” a talentless noisemaker known for his graphic threats of violence against America’s last president, his violent “songs” that promote murder and rape. Sure, the NFL is going to magnetically draw law-abiding citizens to its games with people like these as its mascots…
I turned on the TV to watch the latest episode of Meat Eater, but caught the Super Bowl after-game on-field interviews just in time to hear a sweet-looking football player named Douglas say “Glory to God, Glory to God” in response to the reporter’s question about how he felt about winning. And that was the kind of behavior that would attract me to watch a NFL game any day of the week. But unfortunately Douglas’ nice statement is too little, too late. After seven years of not watching NFL games, I see no reason yet to return.
I would rather fold laundry than watch an NFL game.
An idiot called Eminem pretends to care by taking a knee and disrespecting law-abiding Americans everywhere
An idiot called Snoop Dog acts out murdering President Trump, and yet is most welcome at the NFL Super Bowl halftime performance. Unacceptable double standard. Nope Dog
Several versions of this meme bounced around the textsphere last night. A lot of Americans felt liberated by not watching the America-hating NFL game
Great American Outdoor Show is on
This is a fake rhino, not a real one. It’s meant to provide people a realistic trophy without actually killing a living animal
Pro-America, pro-fair elections hats are highly popular with this audience
Right now I’m sitting in a nice old fashioned wooden rocking chair in the Farm Show complex in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, at the Great American Outdoor Show. Been chatting with each successive guy who sits in the rocking chair to my left about every ten minutes. We all agree America is in huge trouble, and we worry about our kids’ future.
Surrounded by “Make My Day Come And Take Them” tee shirts, holsters, every type of firearm accoutrement, custom knives, lots of firearms manufacturers hawking their wares, many NRA staff, the top hunting guides and outfitters in America and Canada, outdoor clothing, RVs, ATVs, boats, boots, bows, trucks, campers, kayaks, anoraks, and exotic stuffed animals both real and fake, I am totally in my element.
If you enjoy the outdoors, and all-America types, this is the place to be. It runs through this coming Sunday, and I hope to see you here.
Hunting/ retrieving dog competition pool
This is the self-proclaimed “Selfie Stand” where visitors are invited to document their visit. So I did
Review of Cousin T’s pancake mix
Lots of people are voting with their money and purchases these days, buying things from people and companies that are not at war against us or against our freedoms.
For example, “My Pillow” is a national brand of sleep/ bedtime stuff like pillows, comforters etc that was once carried in places like Bed, Bath and Beyond, and Target. But because the owner of My Pillow said some patriotic things and challenged a blatantly stolen 2020 election, anti-freedom companies like Bed, Bath and Beyond and Target stopped carrying his high quality products. But online buyers picked up the slack, and instead of buying My Pillow at retail outlets like those mentioned above, they began buying it direct via the Internet.
The owner of My Pillow says his sales have never been this high.
Similarly, Terrence Williams is a humorous black guy with a humorous personality and an honest wit. And so when he began openly questioning the white liberal Democrat narrative that has de facto enslaved American blacks and destroyed the American black family and their communities for the past seventy years, who else but white liberal Democrats sought to blacklist (“cancel”) Terrence and drive him from the public square. White liberal Democrat bastions YouTube and FaceBook began censoring his speech, although his was nowhere near as strongly worded as the strident and highly protected speech broadcast widely by white liberal Democrats on those same social media sites.
Instead, Terrence found other venues to share his humor, like Rumble. Terrence also has branched out into something he apparently enjoys a lot, food. He now has his own line of pancake mixes, among other things. And so I am here to review it and share my experiences cooking with and eating his “Cousin T’s” buttermilk pancake mix.
In a word, Cousin T’s buttermilk pancake mix is outstanding. It is literally the very best pancake/ biscuit mix I have ever owned, bought, cooked with, or eaten. And I have tried everything, including the ubiquitous Bisquick, Kodiak, and Hungry Jack.
In our family, I am known for my Sunday morning pancake fest. We eat berry pancakes only with real Grade B maple syrup that we either make from our own maple trees, or that we buy by the gallon from Pennsylvania and New York producers. I have tried to make my own pancakes from scratch, and they are usually OK, but they lack a certain pizzazz that the commercial pancake mixes have nailed down and that serve as their signature selling point. And so for decades I have used a variety of pancake mixes, until now.
Now, I am devoted to just Cousin T’s. And a quick read of the ingredients will tell you exactly why Cousin T’s pancake mix tastes so good: It has only premium types and grades of natural foods, like rye flour (found in none of the competitors’ mixes), which adds a hearty and poignant flavor. What is missing from the Cousin T’s ingredients are all the chemical preservatives, artificial flavors and colors etc that seem to be standard in all of the others. None of us will miss those “ingredients,” because they are bad for our bodies.
Cousin T’s is a carefully thought out blend of 100% natural ingredients, and the taste shows it.
Presently I can only purchase Cousin T’s products online, and the shipping adds real cost to it, about double. But I am OK with this, because I am getting a premium product from a company that supports my freedom of choice, freedom of thought, freedom of association, and freedom of speech. Hopefully Cousin T’s will be picked up by a national grocery chain like Giant or Wegman’s, so that the shipping cost is greatly diminished and the happiness of delicious Sunday morning pancakes can be more widely shared across America.
Try Cousin T’s, you will definitely like it like our family does.
Compare the wholesome ingredients of Cousin T’s to those of two major competitors
Baking peach cobblers using our own homemade peach preserves from our peach trees and Cousin T’s pancake mix
Finished peach cobblers using Cousin T’s pancake mix. The white on the left cobbler is sugar, which I coat the top with before baking
Two young men eating Cousin T’s blueberry pancakes for dinner
Rockville’s big tree
Every year over the past ten years around Christmas a family in the Rockville neighborhood north of Harrisburg has put up a beautiful light array on their yard tree.
It’s now so pretty that people come from all around to admire it. It’s one of those small local things that brings a community together. I like sharing it here.
Christmas, America’s Holiday
Whatever your religion, if you live in America, today is Christmas, our national holiday.
It’s at the very least a time of peace, goodwill, cheer, and merriment for everyone here. For religious Christians, it’s obviously more than all that.
Enjoy this time. Savor it. Every moment. Savor and be thankful for all the good relationships, the happy moments, the love each of us can share with others. Don’t take anything for granted, nothing: Not the people around us, the incredible opportunities that America uniquely gives us, not the unique freedom here. Cherish it all, celebrate it.
Merry Christmas, America, Merry Christmas, friends.
Ellen Greenberg’s mysterious homicide
Ellen Greenberg was a sweet and happy teenager when I met her probably twenty years ago. She was first cousin to girls my own daughters were friends with, and while my path intersected with Ellen’s maybe a few times a year, usually at kid drop off or pickup, for ten years the one thing I remember about her is her joie de vive. The girl glowed with happiness and sheer joy at being alive.
“Hi Mister First! How are you? Your girls have grown up so much, and they are so nice!” is the happy, positive report I would get from Ellen just about each time we saw each other. Nothing mopey or morose or unhappy about Ellen then. And nothing about her classroom teaching style ten years later was, either. Ellen was a positive, happy person.
Ellen has been in the news the past ten years because she was brutally murdered with a kitchen knife in her own home, and after initially reporting her death as an obvious murder, the Philadelphia Police Department then ruled her death a “suicide.”
In her kitchen, where Ellen lay stabbed multiple-multiple times and lying in a pool of her own blood, all kinds of crime scene protocols were run roughshod over. For example, her computer was taken from the house by a relative of her fiance, like just handed to him by the police on the scene. Crime scene photos show her initially found slumped over, and then again sitting straight up, or with a knife protruding one place but then in another in other photos. That someone first on the murder scene tampered with Ellen’s body and the murder weapon is actually preserved by the photos the police took.
So how could the Philadelphia Police so strongly resist investigating both the crime scene handling, and the murder? Why did the Philadelphia DA’s office recently hide testimony by a physician that made it plain as day that Ellen was murdered with that knife?
Something is not just fishy here, something stinks to high Heaven of rotten corruption and cover-up. Somebody with a lot to lose is being protected by the Philadelphia Police and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office. But why would the police and DA protect a murderer? It’s not like the sweet and happy Ellen I knew was a threat to anyone or anything, like, say, Jeffrey Epstein was. She was not politically active; she had no “dirt” on anyone. So why she was murdered like she had to be shut up and must remain shut up is a huge and very public mystery now.
Making the resolution of this blatant crime even more mind boggling is the indefensible way that PA AG Josh Shapiro has handled it. Shapiro is someone with a lot of skeletons in his closet. He is someone with a lot of wrongdoing to hide. He is allied closely with the Philadelphia Police and the city’s District Attorney. And although he has been presented with the latest evidence about how Ellen was stabbed after her heart had stopped beating (someone committing suicide cannot stab themselves after they are dead), as well as with the incredible picture below, he still will not open an investigation into the Philadelphia Police or the DA’s office or this murder.
Is Ellen Greenberg’s murder a case of “What happens in Philly stays in Philly“? A corrupt town with corrupt officials connected to other corrupt officials and unsolved murders because someone important has money and some allied politician somewhere can’t be questioned?
See this artist’s drawing of how Ellen was stabbed multiple times, the worst being from directly behind (the human arm does not bend this way), and ask yourself how on earth anyone could ever rule these wounds or her death a “suicide.”
Ellen Greenberg deserves justice, her family deserves justice, and frankly, no citizen can ever again trust any criminal investigation in Philadelphia if this blatant murder is not solved.
Philadelphia’s police say these severe bruises and stab wounds to Ellen’s body were self-inflicted. Does that make any sense to your eyes?
Anatomy of a deer season
It doesn’t matter if you archery hunt for deer religiously, from October 1 to mid-November; the archery season is always over way too fast.
It doesn’t matter if you archery hunt a bit for bear and deer, hunt the week of early muzzleloader for bear and doe, do some small game hunting, have the men up to camp for bear season for four days, and then hunt every day of deer rifle season. The ending is always the same: It ended way too fast. We wait all year for this time, and before you can blink an eye, it is over.
For many hunters, this time is about being afield, hunting. The occasional actual killing part is a welcome indication that the hunting part was done well. Proof that the time spent outside was not wasted.
Oh, we still have some late deer season remaining, which is the late archery and flintlock hunt. But by now, deer everywhere in Pennsylvania are on high alert. A twig falling out of a tree and rustling a leaf on the ground will send a nearby deer herd into panicked stampede into the next county. So getting deeply enough into the sensory zone of these intelligent animals to take one with a bow or a flintlock at this stage takes real skill, not just the usual luck.
Although I will hunt the flintlock deer season, because I have some DMAP tags left, looking back even now with a sense of longing has me thinking about the anatomy of a good deer season. Some take-aways:
- Eat good food. Whether it is home-made jerky and dried fruit we make ourselves for our own time afield, or it is the extra thick gourmet steaks we bring to hunting camp, eat the best quality food you can afford. Hunting alone or with friends and family is a celebration, so eat like you are celebrating. And because Man does not live on bread alone, make sure your drinks are of a commensurate high quality.
- Practice, practice, practice with your gun. Archery hunters practice non-stop, but for some reasons many gun hunters leave it to one box of ammo and the days right before the season to “practice” shooting. Well do I recall sharing a range with a guy from Lancaster County at the bench next to me. Friendly enough, he enthusiastically, if spastically, launched his one box of “extra” shells down range as rapid fire as a bolt action can fire. I had offered him the use of my spotting scope and Caldwell shooting sled, and he declined. He did end up relying on my spotting and calling his hurried shots, however, because he didn’t quite have his scope figured out. The old random “spray n’ pray” is the approach he packed up and drove off to hunting camp with. Do any of us think he hit what he shot at?
- Bring your best jokes, naughty or practical. Hunting camp is fun, and each of us must contribute to that festive atmosphere. Many years ago, I bent down to inspect a strange looking object hiding under the cabin’s kitchen counter. And just as quickly I jumped back and screamed like a little girl when the damned thing took off running. That it was merely a muskrat pelt attached to a fishing line being pulled by Bob and followed by uproarious laughter at my expense just made my revenge all the sweeter. As for naughty jokes and rhymes, the list is endless. Look them up and bring half a dozen. Maybe I am lowbrow, or maybe I have low expectations, but it sure seems that everyone present laughs at these men-only jokes.
- Get out into position early, like at least an hour before first light, and when you move play the wind (nose into the wind), go quietly and slowly, and carry your gun port-arms and not across your back. If you can get out into position at 4:30am, even better. Just bring a blanket and some Zippo hand warmers.
- Food sources matter for deer and bear, too. We humans are not the only ones who both enjoy and need food. In a year of abundant acorns, a stand of sweet tasting white oaks will draw more deer and bear, and you can sit down wind of that stand of trees. In a year of scarce acorns, like this year, any tree that had a decent crop will still draw animals pawing in the leaves for whatever may be left in early December. By this mid-November, almost all of the already scarce acorns were eaten up, and both bear and deer seemed to be moving widely across the landscape in search of any food. It makes for tough hunting, and so we have to team up with buddies and other camps to work together to scoop up what animals are out there. Be flexible and think outside the box of a permanent stand.
- Speak animal language. Last year I grunted in an Adirondacks wilderness buck after busting him out of his bed. He was a territorial and aggressive SOB. But the conditions were all wrong for playing around, and although his body was visible, I could not shoot through the beech brush to get him. This year I returned for Round Two with the same animal, which had probably never seen a human being, and after two days of tentative efforts, Day Three resulted in the furious huge buck storming right in to my position with leaves, twigs, snot and mouth foam flying. I shot him in the neck at five yards, five miles from my truck. Lot of work, totally worth it for that DIY hunt of a lifetime. My position was carefully chosen for what he could see or smell under a certain wind direction. I waited until it was all just right, and let fly. His response was immediate.
- Take pictures, send them in emails. While journaling is not dead, most people today do not write in a personal or camp journal. Instead, we take photos and email them around. The recipients always appreciate them. Especially when ten or twenty years has suddenly passed, our knees don’t seem capable of all those steep climbs and hard sidehilling drives any longer, and a lot of our best times at hunting camp are sitting around with dear friends and reminiscing together. So don’t forget to take pictures and share them.
Northern PA’s acorn crop largely failed in 2021, possibly due to a late frost that killed the acorn flowers. Acorns remaining on the ground looked OK from the outside, but were all rotten like this on the inside. Wildlife is hungry and moving widely to locate food.
My “Freedom Buck,” killed on Sunday November 28th at 7:45am, on private property in PA. The ban on Sunday hunting is an attack on freedom, and so I named this Sunday morning buck after my declaration of freedom.