doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Fall is just around the corner...

Quit squabbling and start walking in the mornings, get to a skeet range and figure out your crossers.

Get your eyes checked, update your optical prescriptions, and make sure your boots are ready for another season.

Get stocked up on Ranger Ready and Permethrin so you don't have to deal with tick problems such as Lyme's Disease or Alpha Gal (even worse).

Get your game guns ready, make sure they're functioning properly and have ammo on hand for each one.

Good dogs only have so-many productive seasons, make sure yours are ready for the field this year and moreover...one does not know how many gorgeous autumn days they are alloted in this lifetime. Each one must count now.

Make your plans and then execute on them.

Lloyd,
37 days until "Grousemas"! At 79, I truly "get it"!
Karl

Great advice. Part of the fun is preparation. I bumped up my daily walk from 3.5 to 5 miles and my exercise routine. By the time October comes I will be at 6 miles M-F with Saturday and Sunday off.

thanks for the memories...

You've made some really good points and I loved the pic's!

The point about tick prevention is really important this year in many area's of the country. I have a good friend & hunting buddy who has been visiting his daughter in NY. He somehow got a tick born disease known as Babesia which is similar to Malaria where your body has trouble producing red blood cells. It is treatable but it takes time and my friend who Lloyd has met is basically stuck in NY because he's so fatigued that he can't make the drive home.

Be careful and prepared out there guys--Even the ticks are out to get you.

It’s a perfect time of year to pre-treat your hunting gear with permethrin.

Follow the instructions, let it dry, and everything will be ready to provide tick prevention when it’s time to go.

Don’t forget to order a couple Seresto collars for the dogs just in case when season starts everybody is out.

Crappy shoelaces? Get new ones!

I had babesia, plasmosis, and erlichosis along with the Lymes from my tick bite in 2003. None of it is any fun.

Totally altered the arc of my life.

Alpha Gal will wreck your gut, making it impossible for you to eat red meat.

Thankfully Ranger Ready and Permethrin work very well if...you pre-treat your clothing with the Permethrin at least once before hunting and your skin with the Ranger Ready daily.

Seresto’s are definitely useful
[img] https://imgur.com/gallery/fitty-ticks-ghtm1rY[/img]

50 ticks in a three hour Hunt.

That would be a starter set here.

A bit of vintage "ad art" to complement the anticipation.

So are those ticks that died and fell off of your Seresto collared dog after the hunt, or did you find them alive and attached or crawling on your dog's skin?

It's been wetter than normal here this year, and the tick population seems higher than I've ever seen it. I've sprayed about a 50 ft. wide band around my house, garage, and the areas I most commonly walk through grass or weeds with a .75% solution of 36.8% SFR Permethrin, and have still caught a few crawling up my arms or legs. One I caught took over 15 minutes to become immobilized after I sprayed it with a direct shot of 0.5% solution of Martins 10% Permethrin. That's why I started mixing the SFR I spray around the house stronger. It makes you worry about the ones that might attach and feed without ever being noticed. One was a deer tick, and the others were brown dog ticks, which aren't supposed to carry Lyme's disease, but do carry other diseases.

I put another live tick in a jar because I was going to put it on an article of hunting clothing that I pretreated with a stronger solution, as a test. It crawled around for several days, and then appeared to die. About 5 days later, I was going to discard it, but instead I put a small piece of wet paper towel in the jar. to simulate moist leaf litter. The next day, it was crawling around again. I did that a few more times before it finally didn't revive after having no moisture in the jar for over a week. They are very hardy and persistent critters.

Lloyd's experience, and the ongoing ordeal of a co-worker's wife made me take ticks a lot more seriously than I did previously.



This might help to explain Joff's brain damage...

I have never hunted grouse, but after seeing the first picture of that defiant looking little bugger I may just have to give it a try!! I believe we have Blue grouse (?) up near Cuba New Mexico. I may have to give it a go this year.

Not the same, Perry. Yes, you will have gone grouse hunting, but, not ruffed grouse hunting.

Best,
Ted

It's good that you're engaging in self reflection and admitting some of your problems. The next step is stop acting like a childish ass.

Perry:

If you want defiant, try this guy:



My phone tells me that this was on the morning of September 29th, 2022.

He would run out of the woods near to the house when we'd pull in and then chase my brother up onto the porch, pecking at the back of his legs. He never did that to me, but he did glare at me occasionally like this. There were several birds hanging around the house that Fall and I guess he figured all those hens were his.

Later that year (in October), Ted & I would come in at the end of the day and several of them would be under one of the vehicles parked in the yard. As you might imagine, that was a rather productive year...



The hens are usually far more passive.

FWIW: In the 25 years I've spent up there (soon to be 26), I have never seen it quite like this before or since. Also...we never hunt or shoot these "pet" birds (talk about unique photographic opportunities!).

We still see birds at the house occationally, but nothing quite like it was that Fall.

This one's the ultimate...



I was sitting on the deck having an adult beverage after a long day's hunt (I've no memory of how successful it had been). This bird came up to look at me closely, showing absolutely no fear of me. I put my drink down, stood up, got my phone out and took this shot, then I put my phone in my pocket and picked her up.

A "pet" indeed (I held her against my chest and looked at her very closely).

She struggled a little so I put her down and she walked off of the deck, never getting that close again.

I might add that the birds we pursue out in the forest harbor none of the fearless behavior seen in the camp birds.

None.

Make note of it.

Best,
Ted

The Spring of that year (2022) brought bad flooding to the LOTW and the whole property was under a foot or more of water for several weeks.

I'd have to wonder if some flood-related biologic activity was responsible for the birds acting so unusual at the house that year. Like ergot in wheat, something seemed to be affecting them.

The neighbor who gardens extensively nearby (wondeful tomatoes!) told me last Fall that the soils were altered by the flooding such that she now prepares the ground for her garden very differently than she did before and that amongst other things, a new & much-more tenacious tendril of a weed is now present.

Here's some info on dogs and traps.
https://fwp.mt.gov/binaries/content/assets/fwp/montana-outdoors/2019/trapreleasesingle.pdf

This conversation triggered some memories from a past life...

Flooding and molds have troubled the world since the beginning of time. Molds have two defensive mechanisms to keep otherwise destructive entities away from their newly adopted homes, many produce bio-aerosols and then undergo sporification (both can contain a micotoxin). That "moldy" smell is a warning to anything air-breathing to stay the hell away.

These micotoxins can produce very abarrent behavior in the animals and people that are subjected to them (suspected as a contributor to the events leading up to the Salem Witch Trials) and it can kill after a fatal exposure threshold is met (black slime mold is associated with SIDS [sudden infant death syndrome] in poor innner-city children).