1 Month

Since I posted my last, well, post? Sorry, school was getting very hard, don't know if I managed to pass all my classes yet, but I decided I should at least say something. I did go to Erie between this gap of time and managed one little fish, and by little I mine no more than 8 inches, but my friend did get his first steelhead on the fly. It was a good day, kind of like a parent watching their kid catch a fish. We have both worked very hard on fly fishing and have had a ton of laughs watching each other fail, but when you finally get to see them catch something like that it is awesome. We lost about 10 more fish, bad knots and sharp rocks, but we still had a blast. We will be going up the 21st of this month. We were supposed to be going for 3 days but it looks like that will be changing. We are also going to try and get out and do a a little wild trout fishing again, and after that hopefully another trip or two to Erie and maybe one to Ohio. Something that I really want to throw out there throw out there though is the shooting in CT.

I am sure many of you know what happened, and if you don't you must be living in a box and I have no idea how you managed to find this blog. A man named Adam Lanza killed 20 kids, and 6 adults when he shot up a school. At this moment they are unsure why he did it, they believe he might have been getting even with his mother, but they also think he might have been mentally unstable. This is a terrible tragedy that occurs more and more every year whether we like it or not. As much as I hate to say it, I do believe better control over guns would help a lot. Many of these shootings were people who lost it or had previous mental health issues. We either need to make sure that guns do not end up in the hands of people like this or make sure they have the proper treatment. Now when I say we need more control over guns I am NOT saying take all the guns away. I do believe that the background check should include past family history of mental illness and mental illness on that person. I also do not think there is any reason to have semi-automatic rifles that have 50 round clips, or really more than 10. I do understand that he did not shoot anyone with a semi-automatic rifle, but he did have one in his vehicle. For some reason, maybe the cops got there in time or maybe he just had enough, he did not get the Bushmaster he has in his car. If he had gotten hold of it I fear that the death toll would be far greater than it was. I do hope stricter laws come from this. As someone who has nothing to worry about background wise I do not believe there is a problem with this. If waiting an extra day or two to get my gun, will stop even one school shooting, I would be completely fine with that.

Now to address the people that instantly attacked the NRA for this shooting. I do hope you realize that the NRA has absolutely nothing to do with this shooting. The NRA fights for our right as Americans to have guns. They fight for our Second Amendment right for a reason. If the government was to ever get out of hand, as Americans we have the power to fight back because of it. You may say that such I thing will never happen, but I would rather have my gun in case it did. Back to the NRA, if the they budge and decide that they aren't going to fight for semi-automatic rifles anymore they backed down and made them look weaker. This is a stepping stone for anti-gun activists to fight to get ride of all guns, this is why the NRA is fighting for all guns. To blame them because they are trying to protect the rights that this nation was founded upon is ridiculous. Maybe you should place the blame on Adam Lanza, or maybe no one at all, especially since it isn't helping the families who were affected by this. Feel sympathy first and then fight for what you think is right.

And now on to something that aggravated me just as much as people bashing on the NRA was the people bashing on Mass Effect for causing this. When this originally happened they gave out the wrong name, they gave out Adam's brothers name, Ryan. People immediately went on to his facebook page and saw what he had liked and started attacking it. Mass Effect was the big one since it was a shooting game. Of course most of these people had no idea what they were talking about. Mass Effect is a game about aliens who are killing the humans, I was never a huge fan of the game so I don't know to much about it. I do know that these game is nothing like real life, the guns and creatures are all made up. In this game you are fighting to help the human race, not kill it. People just want to run and blame things when something like this happens. If you do not even know what it is you are blaming, how can you possibly blame it. Everyone on their(Mass Effect's) facebook page made themselves sound like a complete ass, and it was even worse when they found out it, oops wrong guy. Now you have tried to destroy a game that has no relationship whatsoever to the shooter. Get real, these people are blaming everything that they can just because they don't like the thought of someone actually being mentally ill and doing this, there just has to be another reason for it.

In conclusion, for god sakes take a minute to feel some sympathy towards these people before you start attacking one another. If the man was mentally ill, the game and the NRA would have nothing to do with this. If the man wasn't mentally ill, they still wouldn't have anything to do with it. As people we make choices, as much as you think are choices come from are surroundings they don't. Ever wonder how kids can be so different from their parents? Because they make a choice, whether it is right or wrong they make a choice so blaming other people for someone else's choice is just plain stupid. If you disagree on something leave a comment, I am pretty open minded and will definitely think about it and comment back. Also sorry for the rant, but it has been all over facebook and twitter since it happened and I feel like I needed to voice my opinion somewhere on the internet.

Some birds and a post

School and more school, and more school, I am done with this. I never get a chance to update my blog because as soon as I am done hunting, I am doing school work. Well to bad, I said screw the work I am putting some pictures up and the homework can wait.

We went out pheasant hunting today and I finally managed to get my limit, first 2 birds of the year for me. Let me tell you, after 5 or 6 hunts with about 15 misses I was just fed up. Well to be truthful it was about 2 hunts with that many misses, the other hunts I couldn't even get a shot, but regardless I was just not happy.

We got out petty late for our normal day of hunting, started around 9 or so. We spotted one pheasant in a field and watched it run in the weeds. So we turned around and went after him. It didn't take long for our dog to get on to the trail and put him up. My brother and I both shot at it, but didn't do to much damage because he was still trying to fly away. Didn't get far though, dog grabbed him up and when she brought him back we realized both of his legs were broken pretty badly, he didn't really have a chance. We walked around without seeing another thing for a while and my dads hip started to bother him so we were about to call it a day when my brother saw a pheasant. We worked our way to him and jumped him, we landed 3 shots on him in about 1/2 of a second. He was dead before he hit the ground, real dead let me tell you. We ended up jumping 4 more in the same area and my brothers go 2 of them. Not a bad day, I was just glad to get my limit finally.

My dog felt line being in the photo

Just a normal day of hunting

Lunch time

We want to eat, she wants to hunt

4 birds, good day

Dinner!

Math

I forgot how many trout I had caught this year. I had to go back and look through all my old blog posts and add them up, so far I have 105. We are planning on 3 to 4 days in Erie before the year ends so hopefully I will be able to catch 45 steelhead/brown trout. That is 11.25 fish everyday and the most I have caught on one day is one. That means I will have to do about 12 times better each day to accomplish this, man this is going to be tough. I also noticed that a lot of my posts in the past have had some serious spelling and grammatical mistakes, I am going to try very hard to make sure that doesn't happen as often. I guess this might be the reason I am majoring in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology and not English.

Fishing and Hunting

Went out Friday for some pheasant hunting and didn't see a thing. It sucked, and I am so unlucky when it comes to pheasant this year. My brothers and dad went Saturday and they got 3 and kicked several more up.

 I was out fishing with my friends though who came back for a weekend from college. It was a pretty bad day of fishing. My friend caught 1 trout, and after about 20 more chubs we just decided to fish for them. We ended up with 50+ chubs and 1 trout, not to fun, but at least I got to go out and fish with my friends again. Our next trip will be to Erie for steelhead over Thanksgiving break in about a month. They took a few pictures, hopefully I can get them and put them up on here.

Been hunting

Between hunting and school work i really haven't had time for the blog. I will tell you how it has been though. Terrible, I got one shot at a pheasant about 40 yards away, had to shoot a rapid opossum and am failing a class. Hopefully I will be heading out tomorrow hunting for some pheasant after school, and then Saturday I will be going fishing with my buddy who is coming home for the weekend. Hopefully I will get some pictures or will have some stories to post.

Camera

Got to fool around with my camera for a little today.

College

It's impossible to have the perfect balance of fishing and studying. My grades were pretty bad the first couple of weeks and I have been struggling to keep them up, this has caused me to not fish a lot. I did make it out one time though. My friend and I went out trout fishing, only caught 1, he caught 2. It was a pretty crappy day. The fish had only been in there a day and were stacked on each other, very hard not to snag. My buddy is coming home 2 weeks from now and we are going out for a few hours to hopefully catch a few. I also haven't been able to really go out and use my camera, if I am not at school or studying for it, I am usually sleeping, I wish college was how it was portrayed in movies, definitely isn't though. Also I may be going out tomorrow hunting for some grouse, don't get your hopes up though, pretty tired and not a huge grouse population around here. I will definitely be going out next week though, opening day of pheasant, can't miss that.