Let's eat some critters!

Honest-food.net is an absolute gem.

I stumbled upon this blog while researching game processing. Although I have not had my first hunt yet, this blog has tons of recipes and information for everyone. From foraging mushrooms and making your own fancy mustard, down to aging pheasants and making corned venison, this website covers quite a bit of ground, and is updated regularly.

After learning more and more about the corporate nature of the food industry, and how this country’s management of food has changed since the Second World War, hunting and foraging has become far more attractive to me.

Honest-food.net quickly found its way to my favorites list, and I foresee myself purchasing one or more of the author’s books once I get my hunting life under way. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Warmest regards,

TSS

Shoot like a girl.

There’s been a recent trend in firearms. Shotgun makers are starting to introduce models specifically for women. What’s behind this recent thrust towards the female market? Well, more women are shooting than ever before. Simple as that.

We’re not talking about a youth shotgun adorned with pink camo, which will only fit women built exactly like 12 year old boys. Women’s handguns have been on the market for a while now, presumably because it’s pretty easy to take black rubber grips and turn them into pink rubber grips. Shotguns are, however, a different animal altogether.

A shotgun should never be aimed, only pointed (with the exception of slug and turkey hunting). A well fitted gun should shoot where you’re looking. Now, there are tons of shooters that concern themselves with specific lengths of pull, drop at heel and comb, amount of cast, etc. to make sure they get a gun that fits them properly down to 1/8” increments.

Now compare an average man to an average woman. Her neck is longer, his shoulders are wider. She’s got soft tissue on her chest that he doesn’t, if he has listened to his doctor’s advice.

I encourage anyone with a member of the fairer sex in their lives to take a look at the new Syren double shotguns, a collaborative effort between Caesar Guerini and Fabarm, building high quality shotguns tailored to a woman’s build. Ithaca, now in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, has been building a woman’s version of their popular-but-niche shotguns for a couple of years now, and drawing rave reviews from female shooters.

There has never been a better time to be a female shooter, and that’s a lovely thing. In a couple of generation, a young woman may be fondly reminiscing about her recently inherited “Grandma’s old shotgun”.

The rose to my thorn, at the Grand Canyon

All the best,

TSS

Obtaining your first firearm in NJ.

I will keep this blog completely devoid of any political debates due to my personal convictions. This is simply an account of the first steps of firearm ownership in New Jersey that southern and mid/western Americans might find interesting.

I went shooting for the first time in my life a few years ago with a friend of mine. I really enjoyed it, and found it extremely relaxing and exhilarating all at once, so I decided to buy my own long gun.

And so commenced my journey to become a FID card holder.

The FID card never expires (unless the law changes, which has been discussed), and allows you to buy any NJ legal long arms and pistol ammunition. In order to own a handgun, you need to apply for and buy an individual handgun permit, which is a whole different can of worms.

In order to obtain my FID card, I went to my town’s police station on my lunch break. After asking for the application form, I was told to come back after 4:00, as the officer that handles this paperwork was currently on patrol.

I came back after my shift and spoke with the officer, who gave me the forms to fill out at home. I brought them back complete with proper identification, mental health record release forms, a $60 application fee and the contact information for two character witnesses. My county seems to have farmed out background checks and fingerprinting to a 3rd party, as I then had to make an appointment and drive about 45 minutes south to the closest fingerprint scanning depot. This depot was, I think, an old storefront or row home, and consisted of just one room about the size of my living room where a middle-aged foreign woman scanned your digital fingerprints and sent me on my way.

This is where things can get murky. You’re supposed to hear back from your police station within 30 days, but your application is totally in the hands of the police, and there’s little to no recourse for them if they drag it out 6 months or longer, as I’ve often heard is the case. It is supposedly somewhat dependent on the police's relationship with their residents, or the particular officer's view of citizens owning firearms.  My police station, however, got back to me in about 3 weeks.

At this point, I returned to my police station, was taken to a back room where my inked thumb print was applied to my new FID card, and I was done!

The card is really just business card paper that’s slightly larger than a driver’s license, so I decided to get it laminated.

What many people in NJ don’t realize is that you need an FID card in order to legally own a BB gun. There’s no national registry for BB guns, so any NJ resident can buy one at a sporting goods shop in PA and DE without needing to show any identification. Once you bring it into NJ, you had better have your FID card in your pocket!

A look at the 28 gauge

There is an ongoing debate about the virtues of the 28 gauge. I mistakenly considered this gauge to be a "snake `n squirrel blaster" like a .410, but after some conversations with somewhat knowledgeable folks and doing some online research, I'm coming around on these guns.


Chuck Hawks wrote an excellent overview, here.


I'll still stick to the 20 gauge for my future double purchase. While both gauges are versatile, it seems clear that the 20 gauge is at least more easily adaptable, and certainly cheaper to shoot for a non-reloader like myself.

Looking West

Something funny happened while my wife and I were vacationing in Arizona. We saw ourselves leaving the eastern time zone, and we liked it. We really liked it. If I could’ve cancelled our plane ticket back and survive out there, I would’ve.

Sedona, AZ: The Jewel of the South West

Then something else funny happened a few months later; my wife’s company was bought out by a well-known worldwide company that has made “Forbe’s 100 best places to work” list several times in the past few years. Thus, a myriad of opportunities opened up for her to transfer to one of hundreds of locations within the country.

The door west has been left open, and we’re preparing to run right through it by getting our house ready to go on the market sometime next year.

I don’t know where we’ll land. Colorado Springs, Salt Lake City, and Sioux Falls and others have all garnered our attention as relatively low cost cities we might relocate to. We would downsize, and focus more on doing what we love rather than maintaining what we have.

It’s only a matter of time before I’m in the field, looking for wild game birds out west.

All the best,
TSS

My Hunting Heritage (or lack thereof)

I’ve been fishing since before I can remember. My mother grew up with a fishing rod in her hand, and she did me the courtesy to raise me similarly. My uncle on my mother’s side took me for an annual October fishing trip on his old yellow fiberglass boat through the streams and canals in the marshy landscape of Salem County. We would catch so many Crappies on our standard issue red and white tube jigs that we would regularly toss back keepers that were less than 14” because they didn’t seem worth fileting.

One of my favorite memories was crabbing from the dock with my mom. Armed with a net, a bucket, and raw chicken on a rope, we caught enough blues one by one to feed our group of 6 people on a vacation houseboat. I’ll never forget seeing a pair of bald eagles pluck a fish out of the water some 50 yards away from us and fly back to their roost while I was dutifully stooping over my crab rope that day.

That said; guns and hunting were never part of my childhood. My grandfather duck hunted on the Chesapeake when he was younger, but the tradition stopped with my father and never made it to me. Couple that with the general mistrust and misunderstanding of firearms (and their owners) in our state, and I admit I am an unlikely candidate to take up wing shooting.

The sport appeals to me, however. Perhaps walking with a dog through a vast field reminds me of a long lost childhood. My interest is only encouraged by my wife, who has recently made it her (read: our) goal to eat locally grown and unprocessed foods, of which game birds certainly qualify.

The next step in my shooting life is a shotgun purchase. I’ve owned a few shotguns, but ended up selling them to fund projects that needed to be completed for us to put our house on the market.

My favorite action, by a large margin, is a side by side. A trip to Holland and Holland in London this past fall has certainly done more harm than good, because I now have an itch to own a higher quality double than my previous guns, all of Miroku make. Even though the Mirokus were well-built guns, they couldn’t save me from my fateful meeting with a Merkel.

I was at least generally aware of the Merkel brand, but after researching guns of the next class up, I fell in love with these hand crafted Germanic beauties. The double under lugs are a feature generally found on high-volume breech loaders, but add in the greener-style cross bolt and side clips, and you have a tank of a gun that is sure to outlast most shooters’ grandchildren.

When I handled a used Merkel at Cabelas, I was surprised at how nimble this over-built gun actually was. It fit me like it was made for me, and really displayed a high level of craftsmanship. It was love, a level of “feel” I’ve never experienced with a shotgun before.

Merkel 147e

I’ll update my blog with some toys I’m parting with to make [financial] room for my beautiful German mistress.

All the best,

TSS

"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop."- Lewis Carroll

I suppose I should take Mr. Carroll’s advice, and start at the beginning.

I was born and raised in southern New Jersey. When people think of New Jersey, they usually think of crumbling industry and runoff from New York City. They think of “shore towns”, tank top sporting, chain wearing Italian American youths who all seem to have a[n imaginary] uncle that in some obscure way is connected to the mafia.

People rarely picture open farmer’s fields, bordered by dense forests and tidal river water. That is, however, where I was born.

I spent a good portion of my childhood listening to the distinctive call of bobwhite quail, fishing marshes and lakes for Largemouth Bass and Crappie, and birdwatching. My road was a dead-end street that led to patchwork farmland, where my sister and I would take walks, collect empty shotgun shell hulls, and see how far we could make it down the railroad tracks before we would turn around and head back home. Pheasants and white tail deer would, on occasion, show up in our back yard, along with a variety of snakes that or Scottish terrier mix would quickly dispatch.

Heritage's Dairy, a South Jersey classic

The pseudo-Dakotan landscape I grew up with has long disappeared. The street where I grew up now leads to an NJAL baseball stadium, a large playground, and a gravel parking lot. Beyond the stadium, the seemingly endless farmer’s fields have been replaced by 55+ housing, golf courses, and community centers stretching all the to the Delaware River. Wild pheasants and bobwhites are currently extinct in our county. The wild of my childhood has been supplanted by proud South Philly natives, intent on turning all of the surrounding towns into another Philadelphia suburb.

You’ve heard this story before, I’m sure. The tragic thing about my story is the span of years in which this turnover occurred. At the time of my writing this I am 29 years old, not the grizzled old-timer that has seen enough years to justify the fields he grew up in becoming indistinguishably similar housing developments.

Just two towns away from where I spent my first weeks, I live with my wife in one of the last blue collar towns in our region. We have a park with an overfished trout-stocked lake, surrounded by a chain-link and barbed wire fence. No dogs are allowed in the 40-acre park, which is heavily patrolled by a ranger who treats visitors like unwelcome guests in her living room.

It’s not all bad, though. 30 Minutes south, there’s a hunting reserve and sporting clays range, where I’ve recently taken up shooting. I have never fired a shot at live game, but I intend to soon enough. More on that later…

There’s a saying; “When you can’t change your situation, change you attitude.” I propose that when you can change your situation to the benefit of your health and happiness, you should have the resolve to do so. My wife and I are childless, and in our mid and late 20’s. We are home owners, but besides that, we’re relatively unfettered.

So with our eyes set on the western horizon and ambitions to simplify and reconnect with nature, we are taking our first steps towards breaking away from the only state in which either of us ever lived.

This blog will document our move, my learning to shoot and bird hunt, results of fishing and hunting trips, and links to helpful websites and resources I’ve discovered. I hope you enjoy my musings, either as a fellow suburban sportsman, or as a lifelong outdoorsman willing to look at my experiences from a different perspective.

Best regards,

TSS