fritz

I have some loaded ammo coming from AIM at $9.50 a box, reloadable brass case. A friend wanted a scope mount for his SKS, and they had a 4x32 Leapers scope and mount for $35, so I ordered it and threw in the ammo.

I'll see what it does with the correct ammo. I was using regular 6.5mm (.264) bullets in it at first. That was many years ago, and I couldn't hit the side of my barn with it. The correct bullet is .268.

fritz

We have pretty well controlled the rosehedge infestations,because the nearest big breeding ground for them is in the next county. Only when equipment is moved in, with dirt and roots attached, is it a problem.

Now, in addition to the usual mesquite and huisatche and chaparral brush, we have the wild lime, or whatever the hell they call it. It makes little fruits like limes that are bitter as all get out (wouldn't work in a whiskey sour). It also spreads like rosededge, and makes big (I mean big) thorns that will go right through a tractor tire. Tires that are suited for mesquite thorns will not resist one of these things. Deer eat the fruit and crap out the seeds in another part of your land.

And you are right about keeping the bush-hog in the shed and going after stuff like this with chemicals. Shredding only spreads them further. That's why I always go around a cactus bush, because cutting it off only spreads it.

fritz

Jim,

I think you know me well enough by now that you don't think badly of me for not suggesting a solution to your situation. After all, only you know just exactly what happened.

But I gotta admit that encounter with the polecat was hilarious. I have had a few myself, but not when crawling through liquid turkey manure. And I remember how hard it is to get the smell off oneself. I still have the old single shot .22 that a skunk got me with. It stunk and stung so bad that I can't remember if I hit him or not. But I can still smell the skunk in the wood stock. 50 years later.

He hit me, and that's all I can remember.

I am wishing you all the best in the end of this disaster. And if the county ain't decalred it a disaster yet, they are being negligent. A disaster declaration will allow you to pay the tax out over a period of years.

Just like when we had to sell a whole herd of cows due to the drought. The sale price of the cows skewed income for that year, so some of it was deferred.

fritz

Bob,

Merry Christmas to you, and as a former federal employee, May God bless you and yours (with the aforementioned caveats included). In my sincere wishes for you, and all Americans, to have a happy New Year---I say this, "The best is yet to come!"

Now that I am no longer a federal employee, I say "To hell with the aforementioned caveats!" Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, just remember--The best is yet to come!

fritz

Fellows, I don't ask a lot of questions here, but a friend brought me a Remington 742 semi-auto in 30/06 that is having extraction problems.

Here is what the extracted (after repeated attempts) case looks like--

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0603/fritz/case.jpg

It looks like the extractor is slipping past the rim and not fully extracting it.

I am just at the beginning stages of checking this rifle out, and I know that I should go through the cleaning, etc. before asking questions. But this rifle looks immaculate, and (supposedly) has been cleaned before. How "before" I am yet to determine.

Since semi-auto Remingtons are not my normal "faulty firearms, can you fix?", can someone give me a clue as to what to go on to "fix" this one?

Damned, at longer look at that case rim, it looks like the extractor is trying to do its job (why is the rim so distorted), so it must be something else.

Thanks,

fritz

Jim,

If there is anything worse than priclky pear cactus, it has to be that wild rose you mentioned. We have some areas between here and the coast that are conpletely infested with it. You can't even work cattle in it because it gets so dense (and thorny).

Where the dry arid land stops, the wild rose starts. It seems to like wet conditions, whereas the cactus will actually thin out in wet years. They say it gets a fungus in it that retards it. But when it gets dry again, it comes right back.

I know how easy the rose takes root because we never had any on a ranch until an oil company moved in a rig that had been in a rosehedge infested ranch. Just the few twigs stuck to the equipment started it. But we caught it before it spread. I doubt if you can get them anymore, but there used to be herbicide pellets that you could just throw into the bushes, and rainfall put them down to the roots. Velpar herbicide works well also, but will kill anything near it. Someone once killed a part of the huge oak tree here in Texas known as the Treaty Oak, Velpar was suspected and it took quite a bit of soil replacement and doctoring to save it.

There is a tree on my golf course that would be a good target for Velpar. I seem to hit my ball into it a lot.

fritz

I've learned the hard way how to straighten a crooked steel fence post---push it instead of pulling it. Many times these things are about rusted off in the ground, and will come loose suddenly.

Better to slip forward into the fence than have the post hit you in the face.

fritz

It seems there is a little moth that eats prickly pear cactus. He comes from Mexico, and is not welcomed here, just like the illegal immigrants from that place.

Now, what is wrong in a little moth eating that damned thorny spined schitt that sprouts (and thrives) in places where man and animal abide? I can think of many, including myself, that has gotten the little bastards embodied in my body. Also my dog. Begone with it, I say!

But, there are those in this country that are called "experts" in this field (even if they never worked in a field). They say nay, the little moth is the enemy, not the cactus. They say that the cactus serves as a food source for cattle in a drought, that it provides shelter for reptiles and rodents, that it prevents erosion, and I could name a dozen more of the "benefits" of this schitty plant.

Well, I posted a pic here a few months ago of a cactus branch that I cut and placed in a hole that the dog had dug in the yard. My goal was to keep the dog from digging.

So much for idealistic goals. The damned thing took root in my yard when the dog covered it up with dirt. Now I have cactus in my yard!

Where is that little moth? Rick Perry, just because you got reelected, don't try and tell me what to do with my damned prickly pear. As for cattle food in a drought, we usually have a burn ban in effect during a drought, and starting a fire to burn the little spines off the cactus would amount to a $500 fine.

I can buy some sacked feed for that.

fritz

I said it here several months ago, that it would all end up in the courts and the only ones to benefit would be the lawyers.

Well, I may be right. Now I understand that the landowners who have an interest in stopping an energy company from testing for uranium in our county have enticed the county commissioners court to advance them some money (read our taxes) in order to form an "advisory group".

The first sum asked for is $10,000 to pay the retainer fee for a lawyer for them. They already admitted that it may cost $250,000 or more in the end. The court approved the "advisory group" forming.

They then appointed the chairman of the opposition landowners, who is also the chairman of the water district that has gone on record as being vehemently opposed to the project---as the chairman of the "advisory group".

Now, if this ain't a kangaroo court, just what is?

G.W. Bush would have loved to have "his" people on the Iraq Study Group, but it didn't happen that way.

It happened here. We just allowed our county commisioners to vote themselves a big pay raise (just for them, not the workers) and now they start to give away more tax money to fight a losing cause.

All for the benefit of a few informed (and well endowed) landowners and a lot of others less informed (and less endowed).

It's called "Follow the Leader". After all, the leader is never wrong is he?

Or is he?

fritz

Hi spec.4,

How does the arrests of those Swift & Co. illegals effect you drivers? Maybe the reason they deadheaded you you is because of the labor shortage in certain plants?

fritz

Clear and Present Danger?

fritz

Well, I must admit that my eyesight is not as good as it was in the '70s. I have gotten to using more scoped rifles than when I was a kid.

Now my biggest concern is being able to pass my drivers license eye test next year (without glasses). It appears that, in the slim chance that this bill passes, it will be easier to get a hunting license than a driving license in Texas.

Hell, the hunting license sells for several times more than the driving license does, and has to be renewed each year---read money for the state of Texas. And make no mistake about it fellows, money talks in Texas!

I would feel safer hunting with Dick Cheney (and he did not even have a correct license, he somehow overlooked the recently added extra "endorsement" for hunting upland birds (quail). We have another "endorsement" for migratory birds.)

Hell, we have an endorsement for hunting everything but bureaucratcs here in Texas. And they all cost money.

I can imagine what the the state would gain from adding another "endorsement" (with fee) to grant a blind person the right to a hunting license.

Sorry fellows, some things can be carried to the extreme.

fritz

I don't usually watch the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, but when there is certain news in the papers or in the media, he usually has something to say about it. Like it or not, he says it.

Tonight, he talked about the Swift & Co. raids, and about the Texas bill to legalize blind hunting. About the raids, nobody in management knew anything about workers using fake names---"What, Jose's name is not Yaz Svenson?"

About the blind hunters in Texas, he said it was still safer than being with Dick Cheney.

And he mentioned that even Walmart is hiring illegals---"The Santa in there is called Santa Anna".

fritz

Get In the Van?

fritz

This reminds me of something me and my Mexican friends were talking about, over a few beers today.

The Mexican custom is for the boy to ask the father of the girl for her hand in marriage. A story was told of this long haired (pony tailed) boy asking for the father's permission to marry his daughter. He gave a few quick rules, the first was to get rid of that damned hair.

He got a haircut, and they lived happily ever after.

I like the Mexican customs.

fritz

I think cokes were a nickle when I was in grade school, but by the time I got to vocational school in 1962, they were 6 cents.

But the trade school I was in had a grinder, and the vending machines were not very sophiscated. We could take a penny and grind it down to the size of a dime, put it into the machine and get a coke and 4 cents in change.

Well, you can guess where the four pennies went, back into the machine again as dimes. This little scheme worked until the school narrowed down the shops that had grinders.

Let me see, in 1957 I was 14 years old and yearning for a car of my own. My parents didn't like me using their '55 Chevy, although my dad did let me use the '49 Chevy truck to fix fences, etc.

Finally in 1959, I got my driver's license and my dad bought me a '52 Ford hot-rod. Oh, the memories that old car brings back. Some good, some bad.

How times have changed, but I did get a few of those bargains on guns back in 1967. The problem was that I didn't have enough money to get as many as I can get today. I noticed in the 1967 ad that there were no Chilean 1895 long rifles listed. I must have gotten the last of them in 1966, unissued, for around 20 bucks.

How times have changed.

fritz

Karl,

You Scotch folks have us Germans beaten when it comes to being frugal.

But a German would have reinvented the funnel and made it even better.

I heard that the Scotch (where the game of golf started) were so stingy that they vulcanized the covers of their golf balls so that they didn't need to buy a new one when they wore out the one that all of the regiment used. One ball.

I have been called tight, but I do buy a new golf ball now and then. But only when necessary, I am still a bit frugal. But I quit the golf tee repair business because I discovered that the cost of the tape used to repair a broken tee cost more than a new tee.

Sometimes you just have to buy a new one.

frugal fritz

"The real question is, How blind? There would have to be some sort of test."

There would be a requirement that the blind hunter use a lazer site and that he/she be accompanied and guided by a fellow with full eyesight.

And it might just work in Texas, since almost all of our land is non-public (private) land and there would be fewer other hunters out there in the bushes. All the same, I would not want to be one of those other hunters.

I would not want to hunt with Dick Cheney either, even if he is not legally blind. He is blind in other ways.

fritz

I am sure that most of you have heard of the raids on Swift & Co. plants in 5 states recently.

In my paper today, there is a story of the "hardships" created in the town of Cactus, Tx. by the arrests of 295 workers at the plant there. Guatemalan immigrants. Read that as ILLEGALS.

Seems there was a slow day at the tortilla store. I am not surprised. My only reply to the stores that cater to the illegals is----tough tacos!

But not all residents of Cactus are upset by the raid. A city commissioner was quoted as saying, "The illegal immigrants are using intimidation saying, and the media are as guilty as they are of saying this, that their civil rights are being violated. If you are breaking the law and you are not a citizen of the United States, you are not eligible for any rights. They committed a crime when they walked across that border."

Why in hell has it taken this country this long to see this, and not have the balls to do anything about it until now?

Did the elections of 11-7 have anything to do with it?

In a related matter (on the elections) another republican incumbent has bit the dust in the run-off election for 23rd Congressional District (Tx) between the democrat Ciro Rodriguez and the republican incumbent Henry Bonilla. In the 11-7 general election (a special election required because of the Supreme Court ruling that Tom Delay's arrangement of the districts was unconstitutional) Bonilla had more votes than Rodriguez, but not a majority. After the election on Nov. 7, it seems that the republican lost a lot of his early support. But it probably had nothing to do with the voting on 11-7.

Or did it?

fritz

I hear that there is a bill going to be introduced in the Texas legislature to allow blind people to hunt in Texas.

What next, blind driver's licenses?

Well, when I think about it, it probably won't be any worse than hunting with Dick Cheney.

fritz

Very interesting, Tony

The other day mrs fritz (who is a public health nurse) mentioned the numerous birth anouncements in the newspaper. It seems that about half, at least in our part of Texas, are listed as only the mother.

I guess it is the sign of the times. A time when marriage does not mean anything anymore. A time that means that anything goes. A time that convenience takes precedence over responsibility.

It is a time that I wish I didn't have to live in. But what are my alternatives? I can only hope and pray that there will be a reward in Heaven for me and mrs fritz, and all the others that deplore that type of behaviour.

fritz

Hey, this sounds like the kind of cooking I have been doing this week with mrs fritz out of town till friday night.

But I use rum instead. After awhile, it don't matter how the chow tastes. After awhile, it don't matter what time of day it is.

After awhile, I go to sleep. At least it keeps me out of trouble, and I don't wanna start no trouble anymore.

"Off topic- my Yorkie has ferocious silent farts, which are way out of proportion to his six lbs. What to do?"

Take the dog with you to Hawaii. The two of you could form a combo and put Don Ho out of business.

goot nite,

fritz

This sounds like Vietnam in reverse. We started out supplying "advisors" to the South Vietnamese, then took the whole war upon our shoulders.

So now, are we to assume that after taking the war upon our shoulders right away, that now we are turning it over to the locals?

confused fritz

Is it possible that since you have been claiming the insurance premiums as a deduction, that now any income from the insurance company is taxable?

Just a wild guess, I am not an accountant. Nor do I know if you even used the insurance premiums as a deduction.

FC, insurance on home and car is different than business insurance (unless you use your home and/or car in your business).

fritz

Welcome Eric,

I think you'll enjoy this place, and I can assure you that at least several of us here have bad hearing. I attribute mine to years of shooting without ear protectors.

fritz