Coyote Tracks!

If you've been reading the blog, you know that I've been after coyotes here in the last month pretty hard. Well this morning, the dogs were out at the back fence barking up a storm. My wife went out to see what the fuss was all about. After a few minutes she came back in carrying on about a fresh set of coyote tracks just across the fence. I had to go out and investigate.
I thought to myself, she doesn't know a coyote track from a rabbit track. I got to the back fence and found fresh rabbit tracks up and down the fence row. But then I noticed another set of tracks about 5 feet out from the fence. Seeing this I had to cross the fence and investigate. Sure enough it was a set of coyote tracks, not fresh this morning, but they were made in the last couple of days. That means I will be back out trying to nail one. I haven't tried to night hunt without a full moon, but with Mike's new Barska scope, I might try it hopefully one night this week.

Ice Fishing

It has been a slow week here in Michigan. We were going to get out and coyote hunt last night but the clouds moved in and messed that idea up. I did get out and hunt them in the middle of the week. Check out my other blog at www.michiganhuntingtoday.com/hooksandbullets/ to read about it. We were going to get to Ohio this weekend to do some scouting for turkey season, but a snow and ice storm messed that up, so we decided to go ice fishing today out on Lake Minnewanna and Lake Nepessing both in Lapeer County. We didn't do too well. We caught a few small blue gill and a couple of small perch that we used as bait fish for our tip ups. That was it! No one on the lake was catching anything, but the weather was beautiful out. Warm, sunny, and clear. I did manage to loose my bait twice to the same fish that I never caught! I played with that fish for a 1/2 hour with no luck. Michael thought he could do better and it stripped his bait also. So much for him thinking he could outdo me! HA. A lot of our outings now consist of him trying to outdo me! It must be a kid thing. Of course he only wins when I let him, which is NEVER! LOL One cool thing we saw was an ice boat. Shown in the picture to the left, the boat was zipping around the lake for a couple of hours. Mackenzie also saw a vehicle on the ice for the first time. She thought that was neat to see a van on driving out on the ice. I was also impressed with her baiting her own hook with a wax worm and later with a minnow. She is becoming quite the outdoors-women.

Ice Fishing

Finally Some Thick Ice!

We finally got back out on the ice today. We hooked up with our good friend Chuck Parr, who brought his son out for his first ice fishing experience. It is nice to see guys bringing their kids out and giving them the chance to experience the outdoors.

We headed out to our local duck hunting lake, Lake Ponemah. Not knowing where to fish, since we have never ice fished this lake before, I tried spots that I had some success at this summer. WRONG! We hit two different spots with no luck, but we did have over 12" of solid ice. We spent about 2 hours on the ice and not even one bite between five people. After moving once we tried a spot we had success at this summer near a small inlet channel. It wasn't 15 minutes till a local gentleman came out to talk with us. He informed us that the fish had moved to the west and northwest end of the lake. He said that, the fish move during the winter to the far end of the lake. No one ever has any success near the area we were at. We stood around and talked for about 1/2 hour or so. It was nice to talk to another fisherman and hunter about the outdoors. If more people would take the time to share information like this the woods and water would be a better place. We get so hung up at times about our spot, and not sharing information with others. I guess we are afraid that we might give up our secret spot! I understand that everyone has their secret spot, but it never hurts to give some general info to help out others, so they can enjoy the sport also.

Chuck's boy had a good time and my kids had a good time, that is all that counts. No fish sticks for us today.

Bushnell Scope

Bushnell Banner Dawn to Dusk 3x9, 40mm Scope

Well this week we took my Marlin 925 Bolt Action .22 Magnum to Williams Gun Sight ,which is one of our local gun dealers, to sight in the new Bushnell scope. We first had to re-mount the scope, because we decided to try to put it on ourselves and it was not perfectly parallel to the rifle barrel. That was a pain in the rear! Then when we took the bolt out to boresight it, it was to tight to put it back in! I dont know how we managed to get it out, so we had to take off the rear sight and re-mount the scope again. After about 5 minutes of work, Kevin (their gunsmith) boresighted it for me (the coolest way I have ever seen it done before, will post more on this later). After getting that out of our path, we fired three rounds at the 25 yard target, made a couple of adjustments and got it dead on, then we moved up to the 50 yard target, two more shots and an adjustment, also dead on. At the 100 yard range, one shot and we have it dead on, it only took us six shots to sight in the new scope. This rifle will make a good varmint hunter out of me and a good marksman too, the Banner has impressed me with how clear the vision is. The only thing I don't like that much is, that it rides up to close to the bolt, but over all it's a good buy!!! Thanks to Bob Rich from The Bob Rich Shooting Journal for all the information you gave me about this Bad Boy!!!

By: Little Mike

Barska Scope

As you all know last week we finally got up and around to sighting in my Barska holographic scope on my Ruger 10/22. We sighted it in at 50 yards, and decided not to go to 100 yards because the scope has no magnifacation. The target was very hard to see at 100 yards and besides that I'm not going to take a squirrel at that distance. This is the main thing I didn't like about the scope, it has no magnifacation whatsoever! Also the glass element looks like it could be very easy to break in the field. The main things I like about this scope are that it has very fast target aquisition, 4 different sight patterns and is very compact and takes up very little space on my rifle. The 4 patterns are: small dot, big dot, circle dot, and crosshairs. It also has 7 different intensity level settings for brightness. I paid $70.00 for this scope which is a good deal for the things that it does. The only thing I would have done differently if I had designed it would be to have a 3x magnifaction. Over all a good buy!!!

By: Little Mike

Mike's First Duck!

I finally got around to finishing the video of Michael's first duck hunt last year on the opening day of the youth waterfowl hunt. Check out Michael shooting his first duck! You can read his version of the story, by clicking on the Youth Hunting & Fishing Stories link to the right.

Outdoor Wood Projects

This weekend we got the old saw and hammer fired up at the Up North Journal. Little Mike and I built a couple of wood duck nesting boxes and some wooden weasle box traps. Below are the two videos that show how to build them. You can see our other videos by using the Up North Journal Televsion link to the right. Enjoy!

Coffee For A Gun?

Would you ever trade a gun for a pound of coffee? Well, I ran into a gentleman today at the shooting range who had a unique story and gun. He obtained the pistol from the father of a friend of his. The dad obtained this pistol while serving in the Merchant Marines during WWII in Germany. He traded another person a pound of coffee for the pistol! I asked the guy at the range, "man, coffee must have been at a premium back then"? Anyway the pistol is a .25 cal. Spanish made "Kaba Spezial". He found out that it was made somewhere between 1920 and 1937. When he first obtained the pistol, it wouldn't fire, he thought it was missing the firing pin. Come to find out, the WWII Veteran he got it from put the firing pin in backwards the last time he tore it down to clean it. This little pistol made quite a pop when he fired it. It is nice to see something with such a unique story behind it and see it in action. He asked me to post the story and info to see if anyone might know more about this gun. If you do, please email me with any info you might have. View my profile for my email address.

A Day At The Range!

The weather was crazy this week, we decided to go to the shooting range instead of ice fishing, due to the warm, & wet weather this week. Michael wanted to get his halogram site set up on his Ruger 10/22, so we took that out and the Remington 870 youth 20 ga. for Jacob to start shooting, so he could get ready for our Ohio turkey hunt in April. Jake adjusted well to the 20 gauge, but he did have a hard time trying to stand and shoot. The gun was still a little too heavy for him. We need to get him used to shooting at a standing position, due to the fact he has to take a hunter's safety class in 3 weeks. He will have to shoot from a standing position.


I sighted in Michael's 10/22 for him at the range. It wasn't too bad to get it ready. We started on the 12 1/2 yard range or pistol line. Click on the target to see larger picture. On the first target you can see our first two shots were on the paper at the lower left. We had to start somewhere. Then we went 2 1/2 complet rounds up and 1 1/2 rounds right, that put us 2 clicks left and 3 clicks low. We then went up 2 1/2 rounds up and 1 round right, that put us dead on vertically, and 2 clicks right. Our next adjustment was 1 complete round left, that put us dead on at 12 1/2 yards, only 5 shots to get there!
The above target was for 25 yards. First shot was 7 clicks high, and 1 click left. We went down 3/4 of a round and right about 1/4 round. That put us right on top of the bull, I went over 5 clicks which put us basically in the same spot only dead center horizontally. I then moved down 5 clicks which dropped it down to 1 click below the bull. This seemed to drop too much so I shot again and it drifted right about 1 click. We then cleaned the rifle and moved it back up 5 clicks. That last shot put us back on top of the bull. Thinking that it was close enough, we moved on to the 50 yard range.
The above target was at the 50 yard range. The first shot was 1/2 click low and 1 click left. I made a 2 click right adjustment and let Michael take over. He put the first two through the bull. Then he started to experiment with the different reticle patterns. Only 13 rounds to hit the bull at 50 yards, not bad!

The above target was used for the different patterns to see if they shot differently. I used the cross hair pattern to do the basic sight in. Michael wanted to switch to the small red dot and tried to shoot the bottom left target. As you can see the 5 shot group was about 3 clicks high and one click left. He then switched back to the cross hair pattern and shot the bottom right target and put 3 shots in the inner black ring, one just on the edge of the same ring and one flyer. I never shot it with the small dot, so I don't know if it was him or the pattern that made the difference. I do know that I like to use the cross hair pattern to draw my eye to the center of the target.

Once we got sighted in the boys began to plink away, with good sucess. Later in the day about after about 100 rounds into it, Jake had a misfire!!! I cleared the action and inspected the round. The firing pin DID hit the primer rim, but it didn't fire. I then took two pliers and pulled the bullet out of the case and dumped the powder out onto the snow. There was a clear impression made on the primer rim. This is the first time I have experienced this and I guess it does happen every so often. You just need to be careful when pulling the bullet out to disable the round.

Pleasant Surprise

Last night, I took my wife to my local chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation's annual banquet. I myself didn't quite know what to expect and was worried because she is not into the outdoors at all. Being a trooper and wanting to try to do something outdoorish with me, she decided to attend the dinner with me. It was at a local VFW hall and when we walked in it was a little crazy with everyone milling around looking at all the prizes to bid on and raffle off. I thought to myself that I hope she doesn't get bored. She walked around with me looking at all the prizes, and I was surprised by the quality and so was she. She commented on how nice a lot of the items would look in our home! Wow, maybe she will have a good time after all. There were about 10 REALLY nice paintings and prints, several guns, furniture, home decor items, as well as a few hunting and fishing items. We then found out the bigger items were going to be auctioned off, I knew I didn't have enough money for that!! But they did have games for earning tickets for the raffles. There were quite a few nice items in the raffles. In short we spent $35 on games to earn a wad of raffle tickets. We ate dinner, which was really good also, then the real fun began. There was an auctioner, and my wife had never heard one before. She thought that was a hoot. Two guys talking fast, and yelling, pointing, that was a show within itself. One guy there bought every painting and print there. He spent atleast $2000, it didn't matter who was bidding against him or how much. He won everyone! People were a little upset that they couldn't buy any of them. After, watching most of the items get raffled off, we thought, we weren't going to win anything. At one of the last tables put on by the Women In The Outdoors, we won an item of our choice. My wife picked up a fleece coat and hat with the Women In The Outdoors logo on it, for our daughter. I didn't win any guns, Darnit!!! Towards the end of the night, my wife started talking to a few women and found out that girls can have fun in the outdoors. One lady she talked with was our local DNR field officer for our county. They hit it off and talked for quite a while. All in all it was a good night, a lot of money was raised for the wild turkeys, but most importantly my wife had a good time, made a few business contacts, and is now going to attend a women's event in the spring with our daughter!!

Chuck's Huge Pike!

Check out this nice pike Chuck Parr caught on

Hougton Lake this last weekend.

It was 37 1/2" long and 11lbs. 15oz.

He caught it on a ice rod with 6lb. test line
and an oversized tear drop tipped with a minnow.

Hunting and Fishing Expo

Well, today I took the kids to the Hunting and Fishing Expo up the freeway. We had a great time and spent a little money. I found way too many things I wanted and even more that I thought I needed. There was the typical outfitters trying to get you to book a hunting or fishing trip along with the junk dealers. I did see a couple of neat things. First I saw a dealer there with a truck tent camper. It was one of those new tents that attatch right to the bed of the pickup. It was reasonably priced at $210 for my truck bed. I'm considering buying one for my April turkey hunting trip in Ohio. I also found a booth that had a U-V killer for your hunting clothes. I talked to this guy at a turkey seminar last year about the stuff and did some research on-line about it. I wanted to buy some but just never got around to it. At the booth this year he had a tent set up with a black light to show the before and after effect of the U-V killer treatment. It was a pretty good demonstration to show the effects. I'm usually skeptical of these things, but I have checked it out for sometime now and finally bought some. I will hopefully be doing an interview on the PODCAST with these guys soon. The link to their site is www.atsko.com They also had some scent killer or Odor Oxidizer, I'm going to try this also. Field test forthcoming. The last thing I want to discuss is a group that was there helping kids get access to hunting. Their group is called Helping Young Hunters Inc. Their website is www.helpingyounghunters.com This is a non-profit group that is getting access and equipment for kids that otherwise can't. I talked with these people for a while and will be doing an interview with them also for an upcoming PODCAST. If you would like more information on these items email me and I will try to help. Shoot Straight and Be Safe! Mike Adams