JohnP & Marge

[Dave]

Marge,

Thanks for updating us on John.  Hopefully he'll soon feel well enough to continue his adventures and spoil those grandkids!

By the way, John, don't use too much of your imagination on that bear HnC was talking about. 
It was about the size of a medium sized bobcat.   

My family will keep you both in our prayers.

[pitw]

Well I see now that Marge had to pot up with a bit of nonsense in her life too.
I was busier than [L] yesterday with murdering a bunch of birds for Christmas.  It has been foggy here for the past bunch of days so that all our bush's look 


The wife sent me off to meet a person with this 30lber to get rid of for $100[I ain't told the story of being in a big box store that had turkeys on for $10 a bird but trust me that went well. Did you know that no one in that chain can tell you how long a bird has been dead amongst a host of other things and their only recourse is to ask you to leave there store when you start a near riot] and I obediently left.


While driving over to the meet I heard a voice[Damb John was with me again] saying it's so beautiful out we should do at least one stand to see what happens.  Of course when any one comes up with what seems like a good idea I gotta go along for the ride.  So we bounced across a 1/2 mile of rough hay land to park the truck[leaving a cell phone behind as I had someone to chat with anyway] and walked through the crunchy snow to where we sat looking like a couple of abominable snow men.  I blew on a small call cause we were drinking in the beauty of the day anyway.


  Almost instantly[like within 10 minutes] over the horizon to the South comes a blur that after another 10 minutes turns into a coyote coming straight in.  We sat comfortably waiting [you ever sat comfortably waiting while some feller from Arizona makes Neil Peart sound like a one stick drummer, with just his teeth?] The coyote came to the 175 yd mark and the J bullet went down the tube with a mighty BANG.  The coyote started jumping around in circles and you could clearly see it had a front leg with serious problems and before I could think or do anything, Bang goes again and the coyote lay still on the frozen snow.   I heard, "You can't leave a wounded animal to suffer" and that was that. 


Looking back at the bush we had sat at.


After getting the coyote loaded up I heard my cell phone beeping as I guess I had missed a couple calls from some crazy woman who seemed to think her time was worth more than ours.  So I sped across the field onto the road and over to where the insane was to meet me.  Now somehow that coyote managed to move around in that truck and pretty much had the turkey encircled by the time I got there and to say she wasn't amused would be like saying everybody loves Obama].  I wiped as much blood off the turkey bag as I could and got her money so I could enjoy my life.  We got home all proud and everything to find one [P]'d off wife who apparently had talked to the insane woman too.  So seeing as I was gonna spend the night on the couch alone [as John had done that mysterious disappearing act so many do when she gets like that] I figured I'd at least spend it with a bronze


You see bronze stands up to a beating much more than silver.

Sure is funny how a couple guys out enjoying life can get in so damb much trouble without even trying ain't it.  Thanks for all the stories and life John.
Have a Merry Christmas.
Barry

[Okanagan]

Got er done!  Good on you!

[Dave]

Here's quick little sequence that was kind of cool.
Was out archery hunting with Huntncarve (actually the evening he shot his buck). 
Here's some eye candy of Dave's buck:



Anyway, I was in my tree stand and probably 1-1/2 hours before last light I hear a little rustling on a trail behind me.  Here comes a big coon (raccoon) all business-like with something on his mind.  He passed by about 15 yards and briefly whiffed the wind as he passed, but my scent didn't concern him enough to turn back from where he was going.  He disappeared under a big deadfall as I was now trying to follow him with my binoculars. He reappeared about 80 yards away climbing straight up a tall ash tree, still with a determined bit of urgency to his pace. I quickly shifted my binocs up the bole of the tree to try and see what he was after.  Way up at the top the foliage appeared to be thicker.  I watched him continue to climb until he was 80 to 90 feet up, and in his own private patch of wild grapes.  He slowly moved around up there scarfing up everything he could get his paws on - reaching out, grabbing a cluster and devouring them before moving further out on thinning limbs.  I tried taking a few pics of him and thought for sure his weight would be too much for the limbs to bear. He continued munching away until I lost focus when a poor, unfortunate button buck seemed to have lost his way.    

here you can just barely see the coon in the treetop that is centered in the pic.

 

And here he is with my iPhone through a binocular.