Posts Tagged → Pennsylvania
Upcoming Primary Election recommendations
Pennsylvania’s primary election (Democrat vs. Democrat, Republican vs. Republican, and sadly, no one else vs. anyone else i.e. fewer choices for voters) is coming up in a few weeks. On May 20th, Pennsylvania voters should all be going to vote for candidates they believe will best represent their interests in our self-run government.
Through voting, We, The People, select our fellow citizens to represent us, to be a voice for us, to make sound choices for us, in the giant government blob. Why more Pennsylvanians do not vote, why so many fail to vote, eludes me. Nothing is more important than casting your vote, and yet, historically, few people vote overall, and especially in primaries. Voting is not difficult. It does not take money, or good looks, or nice clothes, or a lot of time, or a fancy car. You, the voter, simply have to make it a 15-30 minute priority on one day in the Spring, and then again one day in the Fall. You go to your voting precinct and vote for those candidates who best represent your views, religion, ideology, whatever. Many elections are really close, and every vote counts. Your vote counts, so do it.
In the state-wide Republican primary races, Ann Marie Wheatcraft is the superior candidate for Judge of the Superior Court. Judge Wheatcraft is hard on criminals and supportive of crime victims, which is how good judges should be and how they used to act. Now, it seems popular for judges to themselves break the law and to also throw Americans aside in favor of hardened criminals. As if the hardened criminals are somehow victims who need the judge’s protection. That appears to be the upside down mindest of Maria Battista, Wheatcraft’s opponent. No thanks. America has had quite enough of this nonsense.
Vote for Ann Marie Wheatcraft for Superior Court.
Joshua Prince is the by far and away best possible candidate for Judge of the Commonwealth Court. Josh has distinguished himself for decades as a court room force for good and for sticking up for the little guy against government over-reach. I know from personal experience, as Josh Prince has represented me personally, and a group I am a member of (FOAC), in a Harrisburg 2A lawsuit we simply had to bring (and which we won). Josh’s demeanor in the court room is impressive, steady, clear, and really organized. I have seen him run rings around attorneys touted as the best of their kind.
I have nothing personal against candidate Matt Wolford, but like so many grass roots voters, I am frustrated by the behind-closed-doors process that got Matt Wolford into his candidacy. Matt Wolford is a product of the Republican Establishment, which across America, and especially in Pennsylvania, is one of the biggest failures of any sort of organization. This is a cookie cutter group that time and time again loses easy races and then says “Aww shucks, we’ll get ’em next time,” even though there is no next time. With the Democrat Party aggressively gerrymandering the voting map, and engaging in motor-voter registration of illegal aliens and last minute changes to voting laws, honest elections look like a thing of the distant imagination. So campaigns must be hard-fought, which is not the PAGOP’s forte.
Of all the GOP groups across America, the PAGOP is especially mostly run by election consultants, who get paid well, whether they win or lose. Pennsylvania GOP politics is all about getting political management and consulting contracts, which has yielded a bitchy and mean-spirited entitlement attitude among the consultant class. They like candidates who will bend the knee and give them consulting contracts when they win. They do not care about policy or philosophy of government; every vote to them is a question of horse trading for money.
While I am on this bitchfest, let us point out that Dauphin County was one of the few PA counties to LOSE Republican voters in 2024. While the rest of PA was moving right with increased Republican voter registrations and votes, Dauphin County regressed. And Dauphin County has been regressing for years. It is probably due to the fact that the Dauphin County GOP chairman spends all of his time on…. high paying political consulting contracts, instead of focusing on winning elections.
To me, politics should not be about making money. But then, I never won any of my election races, which were run strictly on policy. Perhaps if more people like me and Josh Prince did get elected, America would be in better shape.
Anyhow, Matt Wolford comes out of this failed insular, unprincipled, and artificial process, which always seems to yield the most tepid, boring, unimpressive candidates who then go on to lose to aggressive Democrats. Let’s not do that again.
Vote for Josh Prince for Judge of the Commonwealth Court.
Here in the county court system, we have the Court of Common Pleas, where the most basic cases are heard. This is where you, the voter, want a most stable and normal person sitting up there on the bench, judging you. Two great candidates for this role deserve your vote: Fran Chardo and Jim Zugay.
Fran is the current District Attorney of Dauphin County. A more stand-up, normal, clean hands guy you will not find in American politics, anywhere. Fran is even keeled, does everything by the book, is a great listener, and will be exactly the kind of fair-minded judge you want looking back at you when you get carted into court for making some first-time-ever stupid decision that you regretted the moment you did it. Good guy.
Vote for Fran Chardo for Court of Common Pleas.
The other candidate for the Court of Common Pleas who deserves your vote is Jim Zugay, a long-time Dauphin County steadfast functionary and do-er git-er-done kind of guy. Jim has been (I think) Dauphin County Recorder of Deeds, among several other important county roles. And let me tell you straight up: Jim Zugay does not like me, because I am a pain in the butt. Jim is a serious, level headed, by-the-books guy, and he does not like bitchfesty people like me asking annoying questions that are not about getting the job done right now. I admire Jim for that, even though he grimaces when we encounter one another at social events.
Vote for Jim Zugay for Court of Common Pleas.
No, please do not vote for Katy Kennedy-McShane for this judge role. Yes, Katy and her husband are boxers, which is cool, and yes, they work with disadvantaged minority kids, which is very very cool and meritorious. But Katy’s ideological/ philosophical perspective on legal outcomes is not Constitutionalist. Rather, Katy will be a judicial activist, trying to make herself into judge, jury and executioner, or rather judge, legislator, and chief executive, all in one. This failed approach to judicial review has created so many problems by now that America is having a tough time sorting them out. Our constitutional rights cannot withstand this ongoing leftwing assault.
America and Dauphin County need judges who rely on precedent and the Constitution to make narrowly applied decisions. That’s Chardo and Zugay. America cannot take another activist judge, and Katy Kennedy-McShane will be an activist judge. No, no, no.
Finally, Graham Hetrick is the handsomest, most debonair coroner in American history. Few men who carry a gun and badge are better looking or better dressed or nicer or smarter than Graham. For some reason, a lot of coroners are colorful characters, and Graham is the most colorful of them all, while also maintaining stellar standards. The guy had his own national TV show, and smitten lady friends from lives past in distant states would call me out of the blue to ask “Do you know Graham Hetrick? OMIGOD can you get me his autograph, Josh, dear?”
Graham probably has this same electrifying effect on the dead, too, as well as justice for the dead. Vote for him. Dauphin County needs his steady hand in crime solving.
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.
Want to feel good? Go to the PA Farm Show!
The Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg, PA, has been an annual event for something like 160 years. Over that time the Farm Show building complex has grown and grown and grown. The large, beautiful, evocative Art Deco facade remains visible on most of the buildings seen from Maclay and Cameron Streets, while the buildings themselves have multiplied in size and number, especially over the past 25 years.
While the Farm Show itself is ever so slowly evolving with time, mostly from technology changes, its direct connection to agriculture and farm life remains. Agricultural organizations like 4H and FFA remain front and center in much of the activities, including the kids’ bull riding rodeo and horse barrel vaulting competitions we watched last Saturday night. Hands-on activities include all kinds of food, fiber, and animals like sheep, goats (the baby goat snuggling place returned this year and it was overwhelmed with people wanting to snuggle with adorable baby goats), cows, horses of all size, chickens and chicks, ducks, rabbits, pigs etc. are all available for close-up viewing and or holding and petting.
While there is always food available in abundance, I was pleased to see a revamped and larger PA maple syrup stand, with more products. Hate to admit it, but I am a big fan of real maple syrup. When I am not making it myself in my own maple stand, I buy between four and six gallons a year. While 99% of maple syrup is made through the reverse osmosis process now, with no cooking or maybe a very brief flash heat at its end, it is still a unique flavor that I crave all year long.
I make my own maple syrup the old-fashioned way: Collect sap from my own maple stands with old fashioned spiles and buckets, wood or propane fire under a large stainless steel evaporation pan with a spigot, constant stirring, regular addition of maple sap until the syrup reaches an almost-done consistency. Then I tap it off the evaporation pan and finish it off in pots and pans inside the house on the stove top. Takes me about 16-20 hours to boil down sixty gallons of sap. Fact: Nothing commercially available tastes anything like my own home-made, deep brown, super rich maple syrup. I think the heat really augments the maple flavor. Anyhow, I am digressing.
Old tractors, new tractors, out-buildings, clothing, boots, hats, you name it, all kinds of neat stuff is available. The only cost is parking, and that amount depends on where you park.
If you are looking to feel good, because Lord knows we all have burned out on politics and everyone is looking for opportunities to shake off the misery, go visit the PA Farm Show. It runs until this Saturday night. You will not regret it. If nothing else, you will be reminded that the food we all eat does not in fact grow in styrofoam containers in the grocery store. Rather, our food is grown on farms, and then through an elaborate and energy-intensive route it ends up on our dinner plate. Unless you grow your own food, this is how you eat. That lesson alone is a worthy reason to take kids to the PA Farm Show.
Nina got a new Stetson at the Farm Show
2024 in Review
Year 2024 was huge. So many changes for good have been achieved this past year. And despite big obstacles remaining for regular American citizens to overcome the Media-Military-Uniparty-Industrial Complex, I think we can see light at the end of the tunnel.
Back in 2008, the Tea Party started, right here in Central Pennsylvania, in response to then US senator Arlen Specter’s clear lack of principle. A town hall Specter was hosting erupted into widespread shouting and wide open frustration after just one person – Katy Abrams – stood up and denounced Specter’s loyalty to politics and self over the elementary interests of his PA constituents. It was the beginning of a grassroots voter rebellion against both the Republican Party establishment, and against the GOPe Uniparty.
That fight has taken on different names and wider meaning since 2008, including Tea Party Patriots, and then just Patriots, and Constitutional Patriots. By 2016 it was the Make America Great Again movement. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign motto grew into the bipartisan/ nonpartisan “MAGA” take-your-government-back movement. MAGA includes a large portion of black and Hispanic voters, as well as frustrated whites of all income brackets, almost all rural voters, and growing numbers of disillusioned urbanites who bear a big burden living directly under failed Democrat Party policies.
This “populist” bottom-up political evolution-revolution has always been by and of We, The People, despite the Media-Military-Uniparty-Industrial Complex’s efforts to falsely brand it as “racist” or “homophobic” or whatever the silly name is du jour. Plenty of groups and organizations popped up to use, re-direct, or take advantage of our intense populist energy, like Americans For Prosperity. AFP was an early ally, then it merged with industry, and industry then went for open borders, and We, The People saw them as sellouts.
I ran for US Congress in 2009-2010, then state senate in 2012, and again in 2015 before dropping out from a bad hunting injury. Being part of this movement has been fascinating, frustrating, exhilirating, energizing, as well as draining tens of thousands of dollars from my own pockets. I always put my money where my mouth was, and believe now it was all well spent.
As a candidate, my political principles were those of America’s founding: Small, responsive, accountable government, and big citizen.
Because government exists solely for the benefit of We, The People, we are now heading into a direct head-on clash between the citizens who own the government – basically the Frankenstein federal bureaucracy, and the posh individual taxpayer-funded Marxist denizens of that Frankenstein bureaucratic behemoth.
Trump is our We, The People champion. Because Trump has suffered a martyr’s mistreatment as he seeks to return power, rights, and decision making to We, The People, he has taken on almost a god-like stature among so many people. The blatantly stolen 2020 election cemented what many Americans already knew in their gut, that we are in a deadly serious combat over raw power.
Despite intense censorship by government and corporations entangled together, new media outlets formed and grew wildly in response to the overtly corrupt establishment media. Americans are hungry for truth or at least an honest opinion. Now the alternative/ new media ecosystem is unbelievably rich, varied, diverse, and useful, while the useless old mainstream media is dying from its own self-inflicted wounds.
Looking back on 2024, it was a year of miracles, a year of difficult trials and tribulations, of intense fear and frustration, of growth and clarity. The difficultues made us Americans stronger. Despite facing immense odds in 2024, the good guys prevailed; hopefully, they are successful in 2025. Recall that some 65 million Americans voted for communism in 2024, so we clearly have real work to do. It remains to be seen if President Trump is as wise and willing to fight as we think he is. God knows, We, The People cannot afford to lose our combat with the Uniparty or its Frankenstein bureaucracy.
Only one of us can emerge victorious, and I hope it is the American citizenry and our Constitution.
[thanks to Ron Boltz for helping me remember a couple facts here]
[ps horrendous human being former failed US president James Carter became deceased in 2024, a net positive for America]
Is sitting in a box actually hunting?
Hunting season is cold, and getting outside to seek deer or bear or really any other wild game animal requires a person to put up with some level of discomfort. You can put a lot of effort into hunting, and still come up empty handed. So to up the odds of escaping the attention of deer and bear, some hunters created hunting blinds up in trees. The least difficult ones were railroad sikes driven into a tree to be used as a ladder, and we would hoist ourselves up onto a stout lower limb, and there wait for a shot at a passing deer.
The truly old tree blinds from the 1930s and 1940s were ridiculously frail, made of random assortments of surplus lumber; practically death traps as soon as they were nailed up to living trees. The better old fashioned tree stands would usually be put on what we called an “Indian tree,” where someone a long time ago had deliberately bent over and caused a tree to grow parallel with the ground.
When the horizontal bent limb was at least a foot in diameter, enterprising hunters would find creative ways to attach a stable platform, usually reached by a dangerous rickety wooden ladder made out of woods trash and nails. Platforms ranged from plywood to rough cut boards, some with railings and tattered old olive drab canvas and maybe a stool. Deluxe versions had some sort of roof or covering to keep rain, snow, and sunshine off of the hunter. These elevated hunting blinds were usually eight to ten feet up off the ground, and if the rickety blind did not fall down and kill you, the hunter, then you could usually use it to kill a deer. Despite requiring skill just to stay in them, these blinds were always in demand, and elders got first dibs.
Here I am talking about the American Northeast, and Pennsylvania, specifically. Not about India, where the elevated machan gave hunters of dangerous game not only an opportunity to shoot before being detected by tigers and leopards, but a chance to get in at least one more shot or even a stabbing blow with a spear before the claws and fangs were at your throat.
Fast forward fifty years, and now elevated blinds are everywhere. But they are not like the old rickety kinds jimmied onto trees with long spikes us older guys fondly recall. Witness the rise of the elevated box blinds, which are light years ahead of the rickety wooden tree stands in use when I was a kid. These new ones look like Martian landers, and are sold along the side of RT. 15 from Duncannon to Williamsport, as well as anywhere farm machinery and grains are sold, or even in Amish farm yards.
These modern elevated hunting blinds are airtight, have windows that open and close, and safe ladders or steps made of treated lumber of metal. They are downright sophisticated, and one farm lease I know of has propane heaters in all of their elevated “huts” where guys literally cook their breakfast while waiting for a deer to show up out one of the sliding windows. Some of them are big enough to hold a whole family, and indeed these are like little remote hunting cabin outposts, where everyone from Pap to the youngest kids can comfortably take a poke at a deer from a steady rest with plenty of quiet encouragement around them.
The question is, Is this elevated box blind business actually hunting?
My four-plus-inch-thick 1987 Random House Dictionary (the resilient if lonely, unknown cornerstone of our written culture) says Hunt: To chase or search for game or other wild animals for the purpose of catching or killing.
How much chasing or searching do you see going on from the ubiquitous elevated box blinds?
Not a lot. Well, none. Shouldn’t hunting involve actual pursuit and physical exertion? Don’t we need to earn our kills?
Go on YouTube or Rumble, and you can watch hundreds of “hunting” videos of hunters sitting in elevated box blinds, overlooking crop fields and power lines. These hunters usually have a long period of self-discussion to their camera about what they are looking for, any shots taken and misses they have had, etc. They have tripods and bipods, heaters, shelves with food, windows, and are generally protected from the punishing elements that mark hunting season.
The most dispiriting of this video genre has little kids holding forth, as if experienced adults, about the relative merits of various bucks caught on cell camera trail cams that very morning, and whether or not any of them are good enough for our young camerman.
And so I think we have to ask if this elevated box blind is not really hunting, then is it good for hunting? If maintained as a hunting method after their first one or two confidence building kills, the little kids are for sure being ruined by this stuff. Because it is not reality.
People who think that hunting season solely involves sitting in one spot all day, especially an enclosed and elevated spot, and then stiffly climbing down to either bitch about the lack of deer or worse, to boast about one’s prowess whacking “the big one“, are not hunters. They are shooters. If they have at all practiced target shooting before season, and they have some huge Hubble Telescope mounted on their Million Magnum Blastem Rifle, then surely they can make that three hundred yard shot on some unsuspecting deer eating dinner in a crop field.
Sorry to be negative about this, but we are losing our souls to these elevated blinds. Yes, they make hunting season more comfortable, and they make ambushing and surprising our quarry easier, but they are really dumbing down and whittling off our hunting instincts and skills, our woodcraft that separates us from the flatlander slobs who have no self reliance abilities. Hunting is not supposed to be easy, or comfortable, it is supposed to test us and make us earn the trophies we kill.
In Europe and Asia, hunting was used until the 1800s by warriors to hone their combat skills. Nothing like dismounting your horse to face off at ground level with a mean 4,000 pound Gaur or a ferocious 1,000 pound wild boar, armed with a stout spear in hand and a short sword at your hip. Back then, hunters were tough. As were our own American Longhunters on our frontier.
You want to actually hunt? Go do a deer drive like the BNB Outdoors kids, or with The Hunting Public guys. Or take a quiet, slow still hunt woods walk like John does at Leatherwood Outdoors. These hunts take skill and effort, which is the heart and soul of the chase. Everything else is just a hands-on video game at this point. No thanks.
A deer taken while still hunting two weeks ago, with open sights. Don’t look too closely, it was hit between the eyes.
Checking nearby cell cameras to see where the deer are while sitting in a blind…
Not picking on anyone here, but you boys can do better than this
Calling Elon Musk, we have landed on Mars
Good luck, deer hunters
Practically a religious holiday event, Pennsylvania rifle season for deer starts tomorrow morning, and I want to wish everyone who participates a hearty Good Luck. Up north, where poor to no acorn crops this Fall seemed to be widespread, finding deer is probably going to be more difficult than usual.
All the reports I heard from bear hunters across the northcentral region here is that acorns were nonexistant. But deer are spread all over the state, and they are doing better than just OK in places with farm fields and suburban lawns. If you just want to kill a fat buck with a nice set of antlers, you should go sit on my buddy Mark’s porch in Camp Hill/ Mechanicsburg. I am sure you can easily nail one of the stud bucks that casually lay about and wander around Mark’s yard every day, with a crossbow. Mark is not alone, as anyone who lives up on Blue Mountain north of Harrisburg will tell you. Deer are everywhere in these urban/surburban places.
Pennsylvanians traditionally like to hunt in the Big Woods because it is, well, big and woodsy, and quiet, serene, magical, inspiring. Wilder places have always been where religions start, where the voice of God is easiest to hear. People are drawn to the mountains to hunt, not just to hunt, but to hunt surrounded by beauty. This is where I like to hunt. Add to that a mix of beautiful antique and black powder firearms, and life is just fiiiine, even if a skunk is all I encounter.
This year, I suspect our deer hunters up north are going to get a lot more beauty and less deer. Hope I am wrong. Fortunate am I that I am easily amused by fondling blued steel and aged walnut while sitting on my can in the cold.
Good luck, shoot straight, and have a fun, safe hunt, everyone.
Uniparty movie & more Democrat Party lawlessness
The “Uniparty” is quite real. It is an unholy amalgamation of elected Democrats and Republicans-In-Name-Only as well as their assorted financial backers. Both of these groups have more in common with one another than what separates them, because their common interests are Democrat power and Republican money. The RINOs will always sell the Democrats power, and the Democrats will always ensure that the Republicans get lots and lots of money.
This cozy relationship is already on display, as something like 30 “Republican” US senators have lined up to oppose President Donald Trump’s strongest cabinet picks, people who would bring law and order and clean elections back into vogue. E.g. Trump nominated Rep. Matt Gaetz to be his Attorney General, and already the DC Swamp RINOs are lined up to oppose his nomination. Gaetz is among a literal handful of elected Republicans across the entire nation who both could and would make election integrity real, and vote fraud accountable to the law.
Think just how rotten to our core America is with elected “leaders” who actually oppose election integrity. A bunch of them must be making a lot of money from the corrupt status quo, to be so brazen in their opposition to election integrity and accountability to the law.
Witness also the open and defiant voter fraud taking place in Bucks County, PA, and in other Democrat Party strongholds in Pennsylvania. We are watching Democrat county commissioners openly flout the law and two recent PA Supreme Court holdings while they count ballots that are clearly disqualified.
Says Democrat Bucks County commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, “Precedent by a court doesn’t matter any more in this country. And people violate laws any time they want. For me, if I violate this law, it is because I want a court to pay attention to it.”
In other words, elected Democrat Diane wants a different court to have a different holding than the two holdings the PA Supreme Court already had on this very exact subject and question. She wants to help Democrat lawyers seeking out friendly activist Democrat judges to keep ignoring the law and the legal precedents that are standing in her way of getting more power. This is not an act of personal defiance or of some citizen engaging in civil disobedience against some terribly unjust law. No, this is just yet more Democrat Party lawlessness in a long long line of Democrat Party lawlessness going back to 1860.
Nothing has changed there.
What has changed is that the Republican Party, created in 1855 to oppose Democrat Party slavery and in fact throwing down in the Civil War, has long ago capitulated to the Democrats in these apparently boring matters of clean elections and the basic rule of law. The rotten GOPe just doesn’t care, because as far as they are concerned, win or lose, they still have their official positions and they still make lots and lots of money from insider trading with the Democrats.
So US Senator-elect Dave McCormick must watch in disbelief from the sidelines as the GOPe does and says literally nothing to save his already acknowledged two-week-old electoral win over election denier and anti-democracy candidate Bob Casey from the lawlessness out of Bucks County and other Democrat strongholds. Elsewhere in America, Democrat strongholds like California are STILL counting (fake, illegal) ballots to get their Democrat candidates disbelievably over the Win finish line in Republican districts, weeks after Election Day ended with the Republican candidates winning.
And yet neither the Republican Speaker of the House nor the Republican US Senate majority leader have voiced their opposition to seating such clearly fraudulent candidates in their respective houses. Both Speaker Johnson and Leader McConnell are GOPe RINOs. The rule of law is unimportant to them; money is.
Here is a funny thirty-three second Charlie Chaplin silent film that fits the Uniparty situation perfectly. The two supposed opponents face off against one another in a duel, and yet both opponents are reluctant to actually shoot at one another. Each ends up firing his revolver randomly in all directions, taking out birds aflight as well as the bystander people involved in overseeing the duel. When it is apparent that neither opponent is injured, they celebrate together and run off screen hugging one another, uncaringly jumping over the prostrate bodies of their apparently dead seconds and assistants.
This silent film sums up the Uniparty perfectly. America as a nation, our rule of law, clean elections, our democratic norms and American citizens alike are the innocent bystanders gunned down by the corrupt Uniparty. Watch it and cry.
Change Needed in Aisle One – Bob Casey needs to go
Several names are on repeat across the decades here in Pennsylvania politics – Scranton and Casey being the two modern dynasties. Both Scranton and Casey families have fielded repeat elected officials, some of whom have been impressive, and some of whom have simply ridden on the coat tails of their fathers and gotten very little done, except hold office and enjoy prestige and an easy paycheck.
Bob Casey, Jr. is of the latter clan, and he has now been a US senator for egads, I don’t know how long, a really long time. At least 18 years. Before that he held elected office at the state level. All because his dad, Bob Casey, Sr., was an impressive moderate governor, who understood and worked with all ends of the political spectrum.
This current Casey apple has fallen way far away from the Casey apple tree, as Bob Casey, Jr. has held hard to the extreme political Left and never looked back or right. Everything he originally ran on – somewhat pro Life, earnestly pro gun rights, pro free speech, pro religious rights, pro Pennsylvania jobs, pro Pennsylvania workers – forget it all, he ditched it all.
Bob Casey, Jr. is a full-on Washington DC Swamp Thing. He has abandoned us Pennsylvanians as he galavants around DC enjoying feeling important, year after year after year. I took some screenshots of his official US Senate website earlier this year, before the campaign season started up. See them below. They show that Bob Casey has done literally nothing, zero, for years. He did not even try to pretend that he was doing anything!
One of my greatest frustrations are voters who say “Well, my parents were Democrats and, by golly, I vote Democrat, too.”
Ummm hello, this Democrat Party today is not your grandfather’s Democrat Party. It is a totalitarian, cruel, vicious, lawless communist movement that must be stopped. It really has not changed much since the Democrat Party was defeated by the Union Army in 1865, but for a few decades it was home to amazing American leaders like John F. Kennedy.
Today, JFK would be a far-right Republican. That is how much the Democrat Party has moved to the Left.
So, the only way a do-nothing DC Swamp Thing like Bob Casey gets re-elected is when people vote because they recognize a name and think “Awww, I like that guy.”
No, you do don’t like Bob Casey. Not if you are paying any attention to him. He has done nothing for Pennsylvanians for decades. Casey has literally abandoned us Pennsylvanians, because he has relied on a mindless, robotic voting bloc to keep returning him to power, regardless of his incompetence and lack of loyalty to them.
Unfortunately, candidate Dave McCormick is the alternative to Casey. And I am no fan of McCormick, who I think is likely to try to become a DC Swamp Thing himself.
In the Republican primary for US Senate earlier this year, I supported Brandi Tomasetti, whose ballot signatures were ridiculously challenged by McCormick at the last minute, so she was forced to withdraw from the race. Anyone who has an inkling of this ballot petition process knows it is ripe for abuse in every direction, and McCormick took full advantage of his big money opportunity to knock his only competitor off the ballot. Brandi just did not have the money to withstand all of the legal challenges McCormick threw at her.
I really dislike people who game any system, and McCormick definitely gamed the PA primary election system. Yuck. If you believe in giving the voters a choice, and if you believe in yourself, then you are not afraid of a challenger with ten bucks in her campaign account. You debate her and beat her fair and square. McCormick did not do any of that.
Plus, I like my Pennsylvania politicians to actually live in Pennsylvania, which Casey used to (he has spent all his time in DC for many years), and which McCormick used to. On this count, both men are losers.
Whatever RINO DC Swamp garbage McCormick is inclined to engage in, he will stand up for our Second Amendment rights, of that I am certain. And that alone qualifies him for my vote and the vote of every other Pennsylvania gun owner and hunter. So tired of being sold out on this critical issue by liar Bob Casey!
So I am no huge fan of Dave McCormick. But on balance, he is the lesser of two evils. After decades of watching Casey do nothing for us, it is time for a change in Senate Aisle One and Bob Casey has got to go. Time for a new face, a new voice. McCormick got my vote, and I hope you will send a message to DC and vote for him as well.
And Dave McCormick, if you win this election, and spend the next six years ingratiating yourself deeply into the DC Swamp, and abandon us like Bob Casey has, then I will move Heaven and Earth to find a viable challenger in your first primary race.
Only in July of this year did Bob Casey post anything on his senate website. And he made no mention of the assassination attempt on Trump. Bob Casey is a huge zero.