doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Julia's Auction, your thoughts

That story reminds me of an electric alarm clock I had in college. The damn thing started going off at random times, but sometimes did not go off at the correct time. It made me late for a number of classes. Money was tight, so I tried to fix it several times, and I would think I had it working. Then it would either wake me up in the middle of the night, or not go off at all. This went on for some time. Finally, it made me miss another class, and a quiz that the professor would not allow me to make up. I took it out dove hunting that evening, and had my buddy throw it into the air by the cord when I said "Pull".

I was never so focused on making a shot. I killed it deader than dead.

West bound span, North side, right into the shipping channel. I did make sure there were no boats under the span. I have used PW's for 40 plus years and never had one that was so aggravating. When we were back visiting the Eastern Shore at Christmas my wife asked me if I regret throwing it over the side. I asked her if she wanted one of our boys to "inherit" the loader and injury himself with a bad load. No of course not she said. I said then I have no regrets at all.

Well, maybe I should have dropped it on one of the many DNR boats that use to harass me when I fished or hunted in MD. Never seen a state with more game wardens per county and ones which were so hostel to hunters and fisherman. In KY and OH we have about one per county and they go out of their way to be user friendly. Back in MD they acted like we were scum and their only job was to make it nearly impossible to hunt or fish in MD. Along with the many state taxes and fees I do not miss them at all. Do miss the crabs and pulling in a nice big Rockfish or a string of early perch, fat with roe.

I remember a former bowling teammate who tossed his ball into the Cedar River after a particularly bad night. Bag, shoes and all. The Mississippi and the Missouri both have plenty of deep spots, as rivers go. Lakes . . . a lot of ours are man-made. But what Iowans call our great lakes--NW part of the state--there's some pretty deep water. Okoboji is particularly deep, and has darned good fishing. Smallmouths.

Maryland . . . I lived in Virginia for 3 years. I seem to recall there was a strange regulation regarding the Potomac between MD and VA. Most places where a river is the boundary between 2 states, I think they share the fishing rights. Pretty sure I recall that in the case of the Potomac, the boundary was actually the VA shore. If you fished the Potomac from the VA side, you needed both a VA and a MD license . . . although I'm not sure whether the VA DNR guys enforced that. And I suppose, if you put on boots and stepped into the river from the VA side, you would have been OK with just a MD license. Seemed strange to me.

I think you can fish the Potomac from a boat with either a Va or Md license. Hunting is a different ballgame however. If you want to hunt from the Potomac in a boat you must have a Md hunting license for some reason and you must have a Md resident with a Md hunting license with you as well.

A quote from the DNR website:

Under current law, in the Sea Duck Zone, Offshore Waterfowl Hunting Zone, or on the nontidal waters of the Potomac River, Conococheague Creek and the Monocacy River, a nonresident may not hunt from a boat that is drifting or being sculled unless accompanied by a Maryland resident.

I think even if you are standing on the shore on the Virginia side, you can't have decoys in the river unless you have a Md hunting license. Md owns the water rights and I think it goes back to colonial times or something like that.

I do know that at one point my buddy and I wanted to duck hunt the Potomac and all these rules got in the way. I was a nightmare and instead we hunted the Shenandoah River which was too shallow for the most part and all we did was shoot a few ducks and tear our boat up on the rocks. Those days are gone now. Duck hunting is in the rear view mirror for me now.

Yes the river is in Maryland. When slot machines were still legal in Maryland, but not VA, there was an interesting loop hole that used the river as state line. You would build your slot machine house at the end of a pier from the VA side of the river. Then remove one board and make a gap in the pier so the was not solid connection from the VA side of the river to the pier. Then your slot machines were considered to be in Maryland. One of the larger family owned slot machine houses was owned by the Goldman family and one brother was the long time Comptroller for the State of Maryland.

Someone's always going to bend the rules. There was a time when casinos in Iowa--other than a couple Indian casinos--all had to be riverboats. I know of a couple cases when ponds were dug and the "riverboats" were in fact permanently attached to the shore--albeit located over water.

I greatly regret not keeping and not buying more antique Colts and especially Winchesters from the 1970's/80's. Less than a $10,000 investment would be retirement money now. High quality and grade mean everything.

As for investment in general, there are basically three things in which you can invest: collectables, real estate, and the stock market. For much of the past few years, the money has gone into the stock market. If you watch it, a huge jump or crash could happen at any time. The Obama "recovery" is non-existant. We are a capitalist country, and only a capitalist economy will start a true recovery. Obama is a Marxist. The numbers lie SO badly! There is no inflation because food has been removed from those figures that are counted. Jobless rate decreases? Count the people who have given up looking or at part time jobs. With any hint of calamity, the stock market could crash again. With a conservative president and Republican Congress, the economy would go off like a Roman candle. The big corporation have not reinvestited huge amounts of cash. The banks are cash rich, too, not loaning out available monies. With the future unknown, expect the same miserable, very slow improvement, or less.

The best way to make a profit is not in selling but in buying. Don't let your personal preferences cloud your judgement on the best buys.