Fire In The Hole!

Although this post isn't about hunting or fishing or even preparation for either, it does qualify as an adventure. With that said I decided what we were missing in our backyard was a fire pit and in my typical fashion it's taken me about two years to decide where, what and how. Saturday June 16 was D-Day! As you can see from the pictures below we still have a ways to go but much progress was made. Kelan and Dylan were a big help digging and moving cobble stones. The wall I'll build on either side of the pit will be from cobble stones I had in another part of the yard. Moving those stones was back breaking work.

Bella helping me decide where to put the pit. Pit bull, fire pit. Get it?
Yeah well anyway you have to find your humor where you can.

I'm linking the bed at the end with a new one and lining it with cobble stones
but first we have to dig it out and make it level.

After the digging and the picture taken from the opposite direction.

Fire pit hole and gravel base. 

Assembling fire pit. First run of stones and then steel insert.

Finished fire pit assembly and beginning of stone wall.

  

A Little Small Water Fly Fishing

It was a nice evening for a little fly fishing on a nearby creek. Dylan and I decided to grab the rods about 5:00 and try our luck for a couple of hours. I'm glad we did. Lots of small rock bass, bream and largemouth to be had on small white or yellow poppers (Sneaky Pete).

The red shirt in the middle of the photo is Dylan trying to find a place to cross.

Nice little Rock Bass or around here some people call them  a Goggle Eye.

The water is pretty low but served to bunch up the fish in these little pools.

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You have to admire the can-do attitude of this little guy. 

Bottom one looked an awful lot like a small mouth bass. Maybe some kind of hybrid.

Sweet Little Sixteen

It's June which means not too much longer before bird season starts. September kicks it all off with the opening of dove season. So what better way to spend my time (other than fishing) than looking at shotguns I'd like to own. I've been eye-balling a number of sixteen gauge beauties the last year or so and would love to have one by the time quail and pheasant season opens the end of October. My current favorite is an Arrieta Special No. 2 in 16 gauge. Arrieta is a Spanish maufacturer that's been making fine shotguns for over a hundred years. The gun I'm looking has a straight hand/ splinter stock with a 15 1/8" lop and 1 7/8" dah. 28 inch barrels and weighs in at 6lbs 6oz.

And...I'm Back!

So the outdoor adventures have been a little lacking the past few months and I've been more than a little lax in posting new entries. So here we go....

This past week the family and I rented a house at The Lake Of The Ozarks and when I say family I mean E V E R Y O N E.
Everyone is the four of us plus our two dogs. The weather was great, low 80's in the afternoon and 60's at night. We swam (mostly the dogs), fished, kayaked, golfed, and ate like we were on death row. A great time was had by all. Bama swam and swam some more. We weren't sure how Bella would take to water but she's very competitive so she sure wasn't going to let Bama have all the fun. The fishing was pretty good. I caught about 12 or so nice fish over the 3 1/2 days and plenty of smaller ones. I really didn't fish that much when I think about it, there was just so much else to do and this was after all a family vacation not a fishing trip.

View of the lake from our dock. We were in the back of the cove which was really nice.

Kelan and Dylan coming in from fishing.

Kelan and Bama chillin' waiting for Dylan to throw a tennis ball.

Bella being cool but actually totally wiped out from swimming all morning.

Couple of nice healthy fish caught on top water.

Another nice L.O.T.O. bass.

Dylan taking us back into our cove.

This is how we spent a lot of our time. Fun.

It Was Time For A Jailbreak!

Work has been really, really busy this first month of 2012 and has required working every weekend thus far. That made a perfect time for a jailbreak and a little preserve quail hunt this past Saturday. A group of us that hunt and a couple folks that were just in it for the adventure headed out to The Wil-Nor hunt club for a morning hunt. The pictures below were all taken by Joe O. Thanks Joe, great job!

The crew about to head out.

Mark striking a pose while Mark our guide directs his dog.

So that's what I look like. I probably missed but I look like I know what I'm doing!

Lynne hoping the quail doesn't fly straight at her. Duck Lynne!

Bill directing Mattie to stay.

Back to the lodge for lunch!

Mattie the star of the show. Great looking 16 month old English Pointer!

Late Season Adventure

My brother Craig came to visit this past weekend to do a little bird hunting and visit. He drove from South Carolina to St. Louis which is an eleven hour+ drive so I wanted to make sure we got to shoot a little. We spent two of our four hunting days out at Wil-Nor Preserve shooting quail, another day at my friend Mark's farm goose hunting and one day trying to scare up some wild quail out in Calloway County. We had really good weather if not just a bit on the warm side but better that than rain or worse. 

Calloway County - Reform Conservation Area

Doc Pete's day one. Craig pausing to wonder how you can knock so many feathers off a quail and it keeps on flying.

Mark and Craig in the goose blind. We had a flock of twenty land on the pond right out front of the blind before we  had gotten our decoys out and were set up.  Apparently we should have been there a little earlier!

Craig starting up the other side of a ravine after we had flushed some quail.  We walked a little over six miles that day.

Briars and thorns. Good thing Craig got some new briar pants for Christmas!
You can see that Bama is smart enough to let Craig lead through that mess.

Craig and Bama taking a break at Calloway. Like I said earlier, lots of walking that day.

One of the quail we flushed at Calloway. Last wild quail of the season for me this year.

Dylan and Craig at Doc Pete's on the second day out there.

Pretty good day shooting at Pete's and a happy but tired Bama.

The end

And Now Video!

For Christmas we bought Dylan one of those GoPro video cameras that come with different mounts so you cane wear it on your helmet when you're snow boarding or attach it to your car, bike or in our case on your head when you're bird hunting. Thought I'd share.