I have been quite busy for the last week. I ahve not had a chance to update the blog here so I will try to get everyone caught up now. I have been doing well with my efforts to quit smoking. I am up to day 22 and still doing good. I have been posting my weekly article to clique Clack food and working on a couple of new articles for the Campfire News. The May issue will be out soon and I will let everyone know when it is available. I have also spent a good amount of time in the forums on Talk Hunting. I spent the weekend with my wife, inlaws, and grandson in Washington. My grandson is 8 months old and is so much fun to play with. I had a blast. The weather was crap but I had a great time.

I saw close to 100 Elk on the drive over. three of them I know were bulls. One had a good start to next years antlers, while the other two were still sporting their spike racks from last year. I spend some time checking out my timber patch on my place in Washington. I  have a lot of under brush to clean up but there was very little downed tiber from the winter storms.

I have gone fishing 4 times so far this spring. I have not caught much yet, but I have had a good time being out wetting a line. The weather is getting better here in Idaho and the fishing is starting to improve. I have also had to pick up a bunch of garbage left behind by some inconsiderate jackass. I am tired of having to pack someone elses garbage home to put in my trash. Why is it so hard for people to just pick up after themselves? I stopped for a short time at Wilson Spring Ponds in Nampa. The ponds are right across the street from the Fish and Game office. There are trash cans and restrooms there and I still had to pick up garbage to put in the trash cans.

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Today was a pretty good day. It was a bit cloudy and threatened rain most of the day, but the temperature was not to bad so I decided to go for a drive in the Owyhee Mountains. I drove up to the Black Mountain Wild Horse Management. Area. I did see a couple of wild horses, but there were some ATV’s running the trails that kept the horses moving so I could nt get pictures of them. I also came across a group of ranchers that were moving a herd of cattle into the area fro grazing. Several riders on horse back herding the cattle along.  If not for the two trucks they used to haul the horses out of the area it would have looked like an old west cattle drive.

I also took this opportunity to fire a few rounds of ammo through my 14 inch Contender 22 Long Rifle barrel, my 10 inch Contender 22 Hornet barrel and my Ruger Black hawk 357 Magnum. I did not do a proper target shooting tes, nor did I even have any real targets. I found some rusty cans and broken cable spools lying around the area I test fired them to use for targets. I intend to do a proper review with good targets from a good solid rest to check accuracy and I also intend to chronograph the  guns at that time as well. i did check my range using my Bushnell Sport 450 Laser Range Finder that I reviewed previously. The range was 25 yards and from a standing position with no rest I was able to hit the rusty cans with no problems. Even with the scoped 14 inch 22 LR barrel which is quite hard to hold steady without a rest. There was still plenty of snow high in the mountains. the roads were also still soft so I was not able to get as high as i would have liked. Last time I hunted deer in the Owyhee’s I saw a lt of sign, rabbits and even some turkey sign. I was hoping to get back to that area but I could not.

This last weekend I went to my home in Western Washington. I drove over on Friday and for the most part it was a good trip. I ran into a lot of snow on the Blue Mountains in Eastern Oregon. I saw a few Mule deer along the freeway going up the east side of the Blue’s. Once I got down the mountain to Penddleton the weather was clear and sunny and a nice drive all the way to White Pass over the Cascades in Washington. From the top of White Pass to Glenoma it was mostly cloudy, but not much rainso still a good  drive. I saw two heards of elk between Packwood and Randle. Each herd had thirty to forty Elk in them.

Saturday was spent moving furniture and appliances for my in-laws. It was a busy day of hard work, but was a lot of fun. I did some other work around the house that evening  and we had a really nice dinner as well.

Sunday was a good day for the drive back to Idaho. It was sunny and warm the whole way. The wind was not to bad, and there was no snow on the roads.  White Pass has a lot of snow yet so the spring skiing is in full swing.

Well that is about it for the weekend. This week the weather is supposed to be good so I am going to try to do a bit of fishing after work this week and I am going to get out this coming weekend and do some shooting and Turkey scouting as well.

Jeff