.270

on time years ago me and some other guys were bein' lifted into some rough country with a chopper. on top of a flat solid rock ridge there was a dead 4x4 muley skeleton just layin' there. entire skeleton was there, just like as if it decayed away and nothing ever touched it. heck of a nice buck too. always meant to hike back in there and get it and never did. Lark.

you guys are all actin' like she's so bad, heck she looks like the brightest bulb of the whole bunch to me. look at alla them morons. at least it don't look like she claims to be an outdoors-person, like them other clones. when she votes to further screw up huntin' and fishin', with the rest of them losers, at least we'll know she's actually doin' what she thinks is best. wait, what's that i hear? oh, it's just montana callin' me again. Lark.

zat casey? dint rekanize him without his banjo. shoot alla them dogs. Lark.

bullwidgeon chews javelina turds tryin' to make his breath less offensive. he took a bath in the dead sea once, when it was still the live sea. and once again, the only thing that always works is to keep the wind in your favor. i've had every kind o' game there is come upwind right into me before, sometimes they do. but if you're puttin' the sneak on any animal, you best be downwind and don't let em see ya move. Lark.

i hate to say i told ya so, but i told ya so. won't be long now. dang, i can hear montana callin' louder everyday. Lark.

a couple months ago there was an article in a magazine where a college had done a study on the effectiveness of scent lock stuff. charcoal activated, all of it. they said that it was a farce and that if anything, it retained smell that regular clothing didn't. once the charcoal got impregnated with body odor, you couldn't get rid of it. if you're gonna be a successfull sneaker, keep the wind in your face and never let em see ya move. Lark.

keep a live skunk in the bag with em. main thing is to keep em clean and aired out. but none of it does any good really. if a deer winds you, or sees you move, he's gone. learn how to hunt into the wind. scent covers and eliminators and camo are really and truly overrated and only serve to give inexperienced folks false confidence. wear dark clothes, move slow and stay down wind. Lark.

looks like another perv has found the site. too bad ya can't shoot folks with a computer. Lark.

i am going home. i'm in mourning. Lark.

main thing is to get the hide off soon. especially with an elk. if it's real warm, get it to a locker plant real quick too. also with elk, most of the time you're in high country that is fairly cool. the sept. can be a challenge, but again, the main is to get em peeled and quartered. a good ol' garden hose will take a lotta heat out also. hose em down and let the natural evaporation cool em off. you don't have to worry near as much with deer. get em skinned in a reasonable time and hose em off. you're gonna have a harder time learnin' the language here than yer gonna have coolin' off meat. welcome to the club. Lark.

hey az>nm, you got it wrong, you dint step outta the dark, you jumped into the darkside. wierd folks here. 'specially that bullwidgeon dude. he was gone for awhile bein' a stunt double on brokeback mountain, but he's back now. anyway, welcome to the darkside. Lark.

i don't know. amanda will be looking at the site soon and see it. she'll fix it. Lark.

my first rifle was a winchester model 69 .22 that my uncle gave me because a guy he knew shot hisself with it and he didn't like it anymore. first rifle i bought was a real old model 94 .30/30. saved up my cotton choppin' money. got it at Talley and Sons in safford. $42 for it and 11 shells. still have it and pack it horseback often. shot my first deer and pig with it. also have killed elk, bears, lions, all kindsa stuff with it. most folks would scoff at using a .30/30, but i'm comfortable with it. i musta wore out a dozen daisy bb guns. dang, i wish i was a kid again. Lark.

chuck norris is a weenie. he wanted to join our he-man toughguy club and run off screamin' halfway through the first night of initiation. Lark.

lions probly kill more deer than everthing else combined, including humans. that is if you exclude me. i've killed more deer than drought. but i'm sorta superhuman. anyway, seriously, if you find a dead deer and it looks sorta like it's been skinned out. head and hide still attached, maybe the leg bones still in the hide. could be it was a lion kill. they tend to skin an animal as they eat it. but most of the time, coyotes and ravens and other vermin tend to scatter the remains around. you also might see where a neck vertebrae is broken, if there are any still attached to the skull. i imagine that if you find a dead deer, and it ain't been obvisously poached, you could surmise it was a lion kill and be right over 50% o' the time. especially if you're in what a guy might call lion country. if the leg bones looked like they've been chewed off or had a rasp took to em, probly a lion too. sometimes they tend to gnaw on a kill for quite awhile, in cool weather. that big ol' raspy tongue they have will grind up about anything after awhile. Lark.

that'd be takin' alla the fun outta everthing. i bet you started out on a full sized banjo dincha? get him a .458 with a 25" heavy barrel. after he gets used to that he can work his way down. Lark.

used to be a guy in safford had some texas whiteys in his backyard. them are the only ones i know of. all we have in nature is coues and muleys. Lark.

sometimes i get to thinkin' i'm purty tough and then i think o' guys like ol' John D. and my grandad and Ben Lilly, etc., and realize what a wuss i really am. got to know John fairly well. ran around with his son quite a bit for a few years. your ol' man is one o' the toughest guys i ever knew too. back all fused up and crap. i was in the best shape o' my life when he was my teacher. we'd go on labs and stuff and hiked to the bottom o' the grand canyon and i had to really hump it to keep up with him, and the whole time he was puffin' on a camel. he does make some fine rifle stocks. i was always gonna get him to whittle me one out, but never did. anyway, tell him howdy for me and next time i'm alpine way i'll look him up. Lark.

hey singleshot, if you're ol' man is that crotchety steve bingham character, then you did live across the street from the guy's grandad. and he is in the joint bigger than heck. dang idjut anyway. my cousin now owns his granddads old ranch. how is your ol' man? hope he is well. last time i saw him he measured a lion for me. he was recovering from a broken ankle. said his horse stomped him or some deal. talk about a cool dude. he told us a story about tryin' to finish off a deer that they ran over one night, with an axe that about cracked me up for good. you're a lucky kid to have him for dad. he was by far the best teacher i ever had. hope he is well and tell him howdy for me. Lark.

hey josh, i know zakly what you're sayin'. most lions won't top 100 lbs. but occasionally one does get big. the guy i was with when we got the 220 pounder has caught somewhere between 400-500 lions over the years. he figured that one cat was probably at least 40 pounds heavier than anything else he'd ever caught. we were over 20 miles from any road, deep in the gila wilderness. big cat country. and it was a wierd built cat too. thick like a jag. huge legs. the one my boy and me got was also deep in wild country. and he was a thumper. i'd loved to have taken him several years earlier, when he was in his prime. he'd have been well over 200. i have some photos of him. i'll see if i can scan one an show it to you. i always carry a 10', 1/4" tape with me. he was exactly 9' before i skint him. we carried out all but the guts and we had right at 150 lbs. as far as the stuff my granddad and his brother shot, take it however you want. those 2 were probably the best fur trappers there ever was. might have guys as good, but noone was better. and when they shot the big lion and the really big grizzly (the took several of them when younger) it was 1912 and the country they were in is still wild. both the big lion and the griz had a heck of a story with them. they skinned both and packed the hides out. the lion for the bounty, all they needed was the ears, but it was so big they wanted to keep it awhile anyway. someone bought the griz hide. there is a sonoran in the smithsonian that Ben Lilly killed in willow creek, north of hanagan, in the teens that is estimated at 900-1000 lbs. i was able to pack out an 8'3" tom whole that weighed 183 pounds. sometimes cats are able to get big. but most don't ever see 150. i see em in magazines all the time where they say they're 160 pound and such, and they don't look like they'll weigh 100. but i've seen a few that were real big. i remember one that this ol' guy in safford killed in the 70's that was real close to 200 lbs. i helped a taxidermist friend skin it. it was a real monster cat for sure. there was even photos in the paper, so it musta been big. and believe me, i ain't tryin' to belittle the cat you guys caught. he just looks shriveled up and i'd never seen a cat that old that looked so small. later, Lark.

i'm shocked crb don't know what them little smiley faces mean. i was jokin' dude. crap. in fact, the shoop boys are my cousins. sorta distant, but still relation. i've known bruce my whole life. i mean my whole life, and that's a long time. i think that's a young muley from excellent genes tho. it's sorta shaped like a coues, but no brows and the back forks and the big front forks sure look muleish. whatever it is, it's a neat rack. Lark.

what's all this stuff about reduced recoil? if ya can't take a little kick go bowhuntin'. and, i'm the smartest guy there is and i say the .270 is best. so does my ol' man, so that settles it. if you want to get a kid a good deer gun that won't kick much, get a .243. great cartridge too. 30/'06, now that's funny, i don't care who ya are........Lark.

not bad for a little carp. i know alla them guys. couple of em are cops so they probly poached it. hehehe. Lark.

crap, how many times do i hafta tell you guys to get a .270 and forget the rest o' them guns. Lark.