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#91
Non Hunting/Fishing Photos / Re: Keep up the good work ladi...
Last post by pitw - April 24, 2025, 08:27:06 AM
Pure gold.
#92
Fishing Photos / Fishing Machine!
Last post by nastygunz - April 23, 2025, 08:07:30 PM
🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

#93
Non Hunting/Fishing Photos / Keep up the good work ladies!
Last post by nastygunz - April 23, 2025, 08:01:40 PM
 :biggrin:



#94
The Tailgate / Today in history 4-23
Last post by remrogers - April 23, 2025, 10:01:25 AM
1778
April 23
John Paul Jones leads American raid on Whitehaven, England

At 3 a.m. on April 23, 1778, Commander John Paul Jones leads a small detachment of two boats from his ship, the USS Ranger, to raid the shallow port at Whitehaven, England, where, by his own account, 400 British merchant ships are anchored. Jones was hoping to reach the port at midnight when ebb tide would leave the ships at their most vulnerable.

Jones and his 30 volunteers had greater difficulty than anticipated rowing to the port, which was protected by two forts. They did not arrive until dawn. Jones' boat successfully took the southern fort, disabling its cannon, but the other boat returned without attempting an attack on the northern fort after the sailors claimed to have been frightened away by a noise. To compensate, Jones set fire to the southern fort, which subsequently engulfed the entire town.

Commander Jones, one of the most daring and successful naval commanders of the American Revolution, was born in Scotland on July 6, 1747. He was apprenticed to a merchant at the age of 13 and soon went to sea from Whitehaven, the very port he returned to attack on this day in 1778. In Virginia at the onset of the revolution, Jones sided with the Patriots and received a commission as a first lieutenant in the Continental Navy on December 7, 1775.

After the raid on Whitehaven, Jones continued to his home territory of Kirkcudbright Bay, where he intended to abduct the earl of Selkirk, then exchange him for American sailors held captive by Britain. Although he did not find the earl at home, Jones' crew was able to steal all his silver, including his wife's teapot, still containing her breakfast tea. From Scotland, Jones sailed across the Irish Sea to Carrickfergus, where the Ranger captured the HMS Drake after delivering fatal wounds to the British ship's captain and lieutenant.

In September 1779, Jones fought one of the fiercest battles in naval history when he led the USS Bonhomme Richard frigate, named for Benjamin Franklin, in an engagement with the 50-gun British warship HMS Serapis. The USS Bonhomme Richard was struck; it began taking on water and caught fire. When the British captain of the Serapis ordered Jones to surrender, Jones famously replied, I have not yet begun to fight! A few hours later, the captain and crew of the Serapis admitted defeat and Jones took command of the British ship.

Jones went on to establish himself as one of the great naval commanders in history; he is remembered, along with John Barry, as a Father of the American Navy. He is buried in a crypt in the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel at Annapolis, Maryland, where a Marine honor guard stands at attention in his honor whenever the crypt is open to the public.

#95
The Tailgate / Today in history 4-22
Last post by remrogers - April 22, 2025, 11:03:21 AM
1889
April 22
The Oklahoma land rush begins

At precisely high noon, thousands of would-be settlers make a mad dash into the newly opened Oklahoma Territory to claim cheap land.

The nearly two million acres of land opened up to white settlement was located in Indian Territory, a large area that once encompassed much of modern-day Oklahoma. Initially considered unsuitable for white colonization, Indian Territory was thought to be an ideal place to relocate Native Americans who were removed from their traditional lands to make way for white settlement. The relocations began in 1817, and by the 1880s, Indian Territory was a new home to a variety of tribes, including the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, Cheyenne, Commanche and Apache.

By the 1890s, improved agricultural and ranching techniques led some white Americans to realize that the Indian Territory land could be valuable, and they pressured the U.S. government to allow white settlement in the region. In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison agreed, making the first of a long series of authorizations that eventually removed most of Indian Territory from Indian control.

To begin the process of white settlement, Harrison chose to open a 1.9 million-acre section of Indian Territory that the government had never assigned to any specific tribe. However, subsequent openings of sections that were designated to specific tribes were achieved primarily through the Dawes Severalty Act (1887), which allowed whites to settle large swaths of land that had previously been designated to specific Indian tribes.

On March 3, 1889, Harrison announced the government would open the 1.9 million-acre tract of Indian Territory for settlement precisely at noon on April 22. Anyone could join the race for the land, but no one was supposed to jump the gun. With only seven weeks to prepare, land-hungry Americans quickly began to gather around the borders of the irregular rectangle of territory. Referred to as "Boomers," by the appointed day more than 50,000 hopefuls were living in tent cities on all four sides of the territory.

The events that day at Fort Reno on the western border were typical. At 11:50 a.m., soldiers called for everyone to form a line. When the hands of the clock reached noon, the cannon of the fort boomed, and the soldiers signaled the settlers to start. With the crack of hundreds of whips, thousands of Boomers streamed into the territory in wagons, on horseback, and on foot. All told, from 50,000 to 60,000 settlers entered the territory that day. By nightfall, they had staked thousands of claims either on town lots or quarter section farm plots. Towns like Norman, Oklahoma City, Kingfisher, and Guthrie sprang into being almost overnight.

An extraordinary display of the American settler lust for land, the first Oklahoma land rush was also plagued by greed and fraud. Cases involving "Sooners"–people who had entered the territory before the legal date and time–overloaded courts for years to come. The government attempted to operate subsequent runs with more controls, eventually adopting a lottery system to designate claims. By 1905, white Americans owned most of the land in Indian Territory. Two years later, the area once known as Indian Territory entered the Union as a part of the new state of Oklahoma.

#96
The Tailgate / Re: Today in history 4-21
Last post by Okanagan - April 21, 2025, 06:42:46 PM
Interesting character.  I lean slightly toward ground fire killing the Baron, based on an autopsy that Richthofen reportedly had a side to side chest wound.  Canadian pilot Brown was firing from behind Richthofen.

Of interest to me is that the rookie pilot Richthofen was pursuing, Wilfred "WOP" May, went on to become a famous pilot in northern Canada.  He worked with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in their pursuit of the Mad Trapper of Rat River.   He spotted the trapper's snowshoe tracks from the air, and when the Mounties caught up,  May circled the gunfight while reporting live to a radio station.  Listeners could hear the rifle shots in the cold air above the frozen river.
#97
Big Game / Re: They lost it.
Last post by pitw - April 21, 2025, 04:09:40 PM
Deer antlers [usually White tails} Make a lot of money for tire repair shops as they fall ad sit on the main beam leaving the points pointing up.  I picked up hundreds in my spraying career and was thanked by farmers for it.  I remember my father finding a large antler which he brought home to save the tires, the dog found it and next day dad found it again in our biggest tractors tire.
Never saw an elk antler in a tire as they spend more time in the bush.
#98
Big Game / Re: They lost it.
Last post by KySongDog - April 21, 2025, 12:50:28 PM
I have heard that big antlers can play hell with tractor tires. True or is that just an old wives tale?  Those are nice looking racks and ought to worth a few bucks (pun intended)  :laf:
#99
The Tailgate / Today in history 4-21
Last post by remrogers - April 21, 2025, 12:37:23 PM
1918
April 21
German flying ace, "Red Baron," killed in action

In the well-trafficked skies above the Somme River in France, Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the notorious German flying ace known as the Red Baron," is killed by Allied fire on April 21, 1918.

Richthofen, the son of a Prussian nobleman, switched from the German army to the Imperial Air Service in 1915. By 1916, he was terrorizing the skies over the Western Front in an Albatross biplane, downing 15 enemy planes by the end of the year, including one piloted by British flying ace Major Lanoe Hawker. In 1917, Richthofen surpassed all flying-ace records on both sides of the Western Front and began using a Fokker triplane, painted entirely red in tribute to his old cavalry regiment. Although only used during the last eight months of his career, it was this aircraft with which Richthofen was most commonly associated and that led to an enduring English nickname for the German pilot—the Red Baron.

On April 21, 1918, with 80 victories under his belt, Richthofen led his squadron of triplanes deep into Allied territory in France on a search for British observation aircraft. The flight drew the attention of an Allied squadron led by Canadian Air Force pilot Captain Arthur Roy Brown. As Richthofen pursued a plane piloted by Brown's compatriot, Wilfred R. May, the Red Baron ventured too far into enemy territory and too low to the ground. Two miles behind the Allied lines, just as Brown caught up with Richthofen and fired on him, the chase passed over an Australian machine-gun battery, whose riflemen opened fire. Richthofen was hit in the torso; though he managed to land his plane alongside the road from Corbie to Bray, near Sailley-le-Sac, he was dead by the time Australian troops reached him. Brown is often given credit for downing Richthofen from the air, though some claimed it was actually an Australian gunner on the ground who fired the fatal shot; debate continues to this day.

Manfred von Richthofen was buried by the Allies in a small military cemetery in Bertangles, France, with full military honors. He was 25 years old at the time of his death. His body was later moved to a larger cemetery at Fricourt. In 1925, it was moved again, at the behest of his brother, Karl Bolko, this time to Berlin, where he was buried at Invaliden Cemetery in a large state funeral. In a time of wooden and fabric aircraft, when 20 air victories ensured a pilot legendary status, the Red Baron downed 80 enemy aircraft and went down in history as one of the greatest heroes to emerge from World War I on either side of the conflict.
#100
Big Game / Re: They lost it.
Last post by pitw - April 21, 2025, 10:30:32 AM
There are at least 7 more of them out there.  I/we had found a a herd of four bulls the size of the two bottom ones.  I believe that is a set from the same animal. The biggest one on top is at least one year since drop, likely one, in my opinion.  There was a bigger bull spent the latter part of the winter a mile South of the four and I'm assuming that top one is his last year shed.
  The four had their antlers one evening and four days later they were slick heads. Kinda/sorta cool that they lost them that close together.