What a week

It has been a very long week. We have finally been getting some rain. Too late for the corn crop but it will help the soybeans. Much better off than some in that department. West of here they are baling up the corn because they aren't going to get a harvest. I haven't mowed my lawn for a month. I have to do that soon. The weeds are growing, but not the grass. That makes it look really ugly. Starting to get tomatoes and cucumbers out of the garden. Will have a good potato crop, because I watered them. Bad year for a garden. Nothing came up. A lot of people had that problem this year.

Loaded up some .223 shells and shot a few groups with my AR. Wow. One group measured 0.33 inches. At 100 yards with 5 shots. The higher loadings were around an inch, but showed pressure signs. I will take the accuracy over the speed in this case. I loaded some more to see if I can repeat it, but I haven't had time or good conditions to shoot. If I can repeat it, it will be about the easiest load development I have ever done. I will post a photo if it works out. Load was 26.0 grns Varget, 55 grn. Nosler Ballistic Tip, CCI primer, Federal case. I could post links to Hodgdon and Nosler etc., but if you don't already know you probably don't care. Varget is a pain to get in a .22 case, but I don't shoot that many rounds. It will be my coyote load.

I got licenses for Black Hills deer, 3 fall turkey licenses, a two tag West River deer license. I will also get an archery deer license and probably at least one East river tag and a blackpowder tag. Potentially 7 deer if I get all of them, which I won't. It ends up being far more deer meat than I can eat, but I don't hunt only for the meat. That reminds me, I have to get dog food. My mutt has been dining on the deer sausage that I made for the last couple days because I'm out of food for her.


It is shaping up to be a huge year for pheasants. We had a 40 year high in population last year, and as far as I know, there will be even more this year. I have not seen any projections for this year yet. The Canada geese had a good hatch this year, the first around here in about 3 years. A lot of them have left, taking the young up into North Dakota. I don't know why they do that, but there is always a noticeable decline in goose numbers right before the season opens. They have tracked geese that nest here and go all the way into Canada after the young can fly.

This is shaping up to be the best year for hunting that I have had in a long time. My brother has left for college, so I might not hunt as much as I had when he was here.

We froze a whole bunch of sweet corn. It turned out OK, but I want to do better. I think if I drained the juice out of it, and put butter in it and a little salt, it will be excellent.

I have about a 30 pound watermelon in the fridge at home. I think it is time to see if it is any good.