IT'S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME

I'm new to making jellies and jams, but the older I get the more I like to eat.  And that leads to me tinkering with things like curing, smoking, dehydrating, and even canning.  The wild raspberries are ripe in northern Indiana right now, so I decided this was as good a year as any to learn to make jelly.

After the berries are picked, they need to be "steeped" to release their juice.  A potato masher helps the process a little.

Then the juice is strained off by transferring the pulp into a collander with a couple of cheesecloth layers added.  Letting this happen naturally, without "squeezing" the pulp, keeps the jelly clear.

The juice is measured, returned to the stock pot, with lemon juice and sugar added.

Once the sugar is melted and the mixture brought to a boil, the powdered pectin is added and the stock boiled to a temperature pushing 220 degrees.

Meanwhile, the jars and lids are sterilized.

Jars are then filled, air bubbles removed, and 2-piece lids are placed and centered.  Jars are returned to the hot bath for 10 minutes of processing.

The final product is a terrific tasting wild raspberry jelly that's going to taste darned good on a buttered biscuit sometime this winter when the snow is piling up outside!

MORE FROM THE ARCHERY SHOP

In the colder months my basement is a makeshift taxidermy shop where I put together full mount turkey deeks.  But when it's warm out, I'd rather be outside shooting my bow.  It's then that my basement gets reogranized into an archery shop.  This past weekend I put my nephew's bow back together after his string mysteriously came off (dry fire maybe?).  I then found a broken serving that needed fixed, adjusted a small cam timing issue, waxed string and cables, and installed new string silencers.  After about an hour of fiddling around, Brandon was back on the range stacking arrows.  I love this stuff!

One of the age-old debates that seems to kick up every now and then when I work on equipment for folks centers around what makes a better hunting arrow - a super fast lightweight arrow, or a slower, heavier projectile.  For my part, statistics show that the vast majority of Midwest whitetails, my chief fall target, are bow-killed from inside 30 yards.  Range estimation isn't extremely critical or difficult at those sub-30 distances, so in my mind, blazing arrow speeds aren't needed.  I'd much rather shoot a mid-weight or heavy shaft at slower speeds, which translates to better transfer of kinetic energy when the broadhead meets the deer.  The deadliest rig I probably ever shot was a 29 inch 2317 aluminum arrow tipped with a 150 grain Snuffer cut-on-contact broadhead.  That thing would shoot through a 55 gallon drum.  Slow, but MEAN!

Here's the simple formula for measuring kinetic energy:

Another often overlooked part of successful bow/arrow set-up is the flight of broadhead tipped arrows.  Broadheads must be spin-tested to the arrow, insuring that the arrow spins perfectly true with the broadhead installed.  If it doesn't, adjustments need to be made to correct the causitive factor (untrue insert face, one slightly longer blade in a replacement-blade broadhead, simple debris on the broadhead ferrule).  I make sure every broadhead arrow I put in my quiver spins on my caloused palm without any wobble of any kind.  I prefer feeling the spin to looking at it in a tester.

And given real-world conditions of poor releases, wind, flinches, twigs/grass in the arrow's path, etc, an arrow that is forward-weighted will perform much better than one that is balanced near its center.  In other words, the arrow should have a front of center balance of no less than about 8%, and somewhere in the 10 - 12% range is generally better (providing the arrow has sufficient spine to accomodate it).  The transition to 100 and 85 grain broadheads has created some FOC issues, since lighter tips reduce FOC, all things being equal.  But the advent of small, Blazer-type vanes has somewhat reversed this trend.  At any rate, anyone putting a bow hunting arrow together should take FOC balance into consideration. 

Here's the simple formula for measuring FOC:

I once had a medical doctor friend that spent nearly $1000 on a new bow, rest, sights and so on.  But when bow season rolled around, he had 3 different shaft types in his quiver, with 2 different broadhead designs (some 125 grain and the others 100 grains) adorning them.  And nothing was overly straight or sharp.  I was dumbfounded, and spent 30 minutes lecturing him and another hour or setting up 4 matching hunting arrow.  If you're serious about shooting animals with a bow, pay attention to more than just your bow.  The arrows and broadheads are the only part that hit the animal, so no matter how pretty/fast/expensive your bow is, performance is measured at the broadhead end of your shot.

TINKERING

I like to tinker with archery equipment.  I got my first bow before I turned 10 - a Bear Blue Denim compound (I still have it).  I still remember my dad and brother trying to change the draw length for me out in the front yard.  Dad forced the limbs together while Ricky moved the cable ends to holes drilled in the eccentric brackets bolted to the ends of the limbs.  It came from Target in South Bend.  I shot it so much that dad realized I was serious. 

When it became obvious that I'd outgrown the Blue Denim, dad consulted with a cousin, Billy Joe Risner, who had his own basement pro shop, and was notorious for trying out the latest-and-greatest bow gear.  He directed dad in purchasing my first REAL bow, a Martin Cougar Magnum.  That Martin still ranks as one of the top 5 gifts of my life, and I still have it.  The craftmanship is exquisite, and every year I toy with the idea of setting it up and killing another deer with it.

Anyway, I've been hooked on archery since I was a little boy, and my affliction doesn't seem to improve.  I recently bought a new bow press that handles the modern parallel limb bows, and this week built a prototype draw board to help look at cam timing, cam lean issues, nock travel, draw force curve dynamics, and much more.  I'll eventually have my brother help me build a metal (welded) frame instead of the wood variety I'm experimenting with, but the fun is in refinement!

As an example, I put my Hoyt ProTec on the draw board last night, and used the draw lenght/weight data to build this draw force curve table:

It shows the bow has a pretty gradual build to peak, a wide peak top, and a fairly gradual shift down to the wall.  This curve doesn't show it, but the bow has a very narrow valley at full draw.  Taking peak draw weight (44 pounds) and subtracting holding weight (16 pounds) gives the let-off amount of 28 pounds.  Dividing 28 by 44 and multiplying by 100 gives the percent let-off of 63.6%.

I'll compare these numbers with those of my new Maxxis when I get a chance.  Note that I've shortened the ProTec up as much as the cam modules and cable/string twisting will allow, and backed the limb bolts out as far as possible.  I'm setting the bow up for a beginning adult archer that needs low draw length and weight.

THE 2010 LINE-UP

I'm not a "numbers" guy.  Honest.  When someone this spring asked me how many turkeys I've killed in my life, I honestly couldn't give them the number.  I have a strong guess (and it's not that many), but even now at only 39 years old, the events of years-gone-by are beginning to escape me.

So for the sake of posterity, here's the list of 2010 birds that now reside in my freezer, and in all cases but 1, at least 1 picture.

TENNESSEE

April 8 - A jake was the first bird to fall this year.  My trigger finger was itchy, and he was gobbling at a train going through on the next ridge over.  I shot him in the bean while he had his head stretched out.  No picture.

April 10 - Killed a good 3-year old as part of the Governor's One-Shot Turkey Hunt gala.  The hunter I was guiding killed a jake earlier in the day, and was willing to hang in there with me until I got this bird within gun range.  Video to follow!

April 13 - This was a 2-year old that should have been part of a double, but my good friend missed a chip-shot.  I happens to us all.  Chalk it up to tight chokes.  Video to follow!

INDIANA

April 21 - This was a 3-year old that came in silent to whack my tom decoy, and was my only bow kill of the year.  I shot him in the head at 10 yards, but only scratched him.  Well, I didn't know that at the time, but as he walked slowly away following the first shot, I decided to anchor him with a second.  That arrow, delivered at about 28 yards, hit him stern-to-stem.  I'd love to share the video on this one, but I hit the "record" button twice, and have all of 1 second of video.  I was almost physically ill.

KANSAS

April 26 - The first Rio of the year fell as part of a double.  My hunting buddy on this trip was Bob Allen, 4-H agent in Clark County, IN.  Bob and I roosted this pair of 2-year old birds the night before, and got right between them and a longbeard with some hens that roosted on the opposite side of the field.  They strutted so close to one another when they got to the decoys that we almost didn't get to shoot.  Luckily, it eventually worked out.  Cool stuff!  Video to follow.

Bob killed his second Rio that night, within 200 yards of where the morning pair fell.  No picture, but video to follow!

April 27 - The second Rio was a solid 3-year old with good color.  I'm not sure how far he came to get to us, but a jake actually walked him in, and the jake came from nearly 600 yards away - we watched him come every step of the way.  The jake bred the hen decoy, fed around, came back to snuggle with the hen decoy, fed again, went away, came back, then went away again.  I kept him gobbling most of the time, and when he came back for the 3rd time, he was towing this longbeard behind.  Sorry, no video!

So that's it.  Six birds for the year, 5 of them longbeards.  Bob can tell you, when my 2nd Kansas Rio hit the ground, I was fired up.  Shooting turkeys never gets old!

UNSUNG HEROES!

Spring turkey season brings to hunters a natural fixation on those hard-gobbling, long-spurred, thick-bearded male birds.  Gobbler induced wonderlust drives my spring travels across a good part of the Midwest each year, and I know I'm not alone!

But to be perfectly honest, I enjoy watching hens almost as much as toms.  Since you can't shoot them in the spring (unless of course they have beards), there's no anxiety associated with having them in the decoys.  Just like toms, they have a pecking order instinct that often causes them to do mean and nasty things to the decoys.  They can be mouthy, nervous, and in some cases, downright psychotic.  And besides, they're just plain beautiful. 

Here are a few hen shots from my recent trip to Tennessee.  Hen turkeys - the unsung heroes of the spring!

They really are fun to watch!  And almost everything I've learned about calling turkeys I learned from wild hens.  They're great teachers - and entertainers.  So when you head to the turkey woods this spring, rejoice in every hen you see!

IF 1 BEARD IS GOOD, 2 MUST BE GREAT!

Here it is, the first confirmed Thrill Kill of the year!  It was made by Greg Thomas, a 2010 decoy buyer from Tennessee.  He bought a TK hen a few weeks ago, then decided he'd like a TK tom deek to round out his spread. 

Well, turns out Greg is a good sport, because when UPS delivered the red-headed longbeard last Thursday, there were a few, um, issues.  The box had been smashed, the wooden base had been forced through the box, the decoy's head was bent way out of place, and the tail was cracked up.  Greg did a little in-home surgery and got the decoy into fighting shape again, and the pictures below show he did a great job. 

So congrats to Greg on this awesome Tennessee double-beard, with a bow (at 14 yards)! 

PREPARED TO LAUNCH!

Anyone remember the Beggin' Strips commercial where the dog is about to blow a gasket 'cause he smells bacon in the house?  (hint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CErapf79rqM&feature=related).  I sorta feel like that now that my first turkey hunt vacation of the year is close enough to, well, "sniff".  I've been working overtime in the basement, trying to keep up with decoy orders, plus have enough new stock to use for myself this spring. 

Here are the last 2 mounts I've built.  At the time these pictures were taken they still didn't have legs, but I've since remedied that minor issue and these bad boys are ready to do their thing!  They're very similar, except for slight differences in overall body size and head posture/position.  The one on the bottom will be staying with me!

And I'm currently working with the owner of BagRBuck (http://www.bagrbuck.com/) to incorporate a tail mechanism that goes from down and folded to up and full strut with the pull of a string.  It's going to be slick!  We actually meet near Nashville next Wednesday to finish off a couple of prototype deeks, with hopes of getting some live hunting footage to use in product promotion in the coming year.  I'll definitely blog it, so keep your eyes open.

Best of luck to everyone this spring - those of you that have already started, and those of us that are prepared to launch our 2010 hunts!