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Cheap, Local Fishing

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  Custer disliked being surrounded by all those Indians. He disliked it as much as I do like being surrounded by more lakes to fish than I will ever get around to. See that preposition right there at the end of that last sentence? Watch out, they’ll kill ‘ya. Cheap as I am, I am never so cheap as I am right before Christmas. Partly, it’s based on my kind disposition: I don’t like disturbing the moths in my wallet. The other reason would be the high cost of Christmas items at the Dollar General Store these days. My wife is pretty picky to have come from such a long line of hash slingers and dishwashers. It took $6.78 to get out of there with a present for her this year. It’s pretty, though, and not even all plastic like last year’s, which she liked so well it made her cry. It’s true, I guess, that it’s the thought that counts. What it did do, however, this year’s gift, I mean, was cause me to pare back my fishing budget here at the end of the year. I’m staying close, and off the hig...
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First Rule of Muzzleloading: Reload Immediately

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  The first rule of muzzleloading hunting is to reload. Immediately. Now. It didn't use to be that way. It used to be the second rule of muzzleloading hunting. The first rule used to be, "Keep your powder dry." Every mountain man knew it. Wet powder, no explosion; no bullet propelled. Indians, grizzly bears, win. Every time. People understood that back in the day and went to extreme measures to keep their powder dry. The old rule of muzzleloading does not apply to the modern version of same. Modern, in-line, muzzle-loading rifles "hide" the powder and ignition system from all moisture, even torrential rains. Not long ago, I saw a fellow on TV selling a product, dunking his muzzleloading rifle, on purpose, into a small tank of water. He held it there for a good five minutes, then withdrew it and fired a bullseye with it, just to show he could. It was a stunning demonstration to an old guy like me who cut his muzzleloading deer hunting teeth on an original p...
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Old Guns: A Trip Down Memory Lane

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  We did it a different way “back in the day.” I’m talking about muzzleloading for deer. You’ll notice (some of you) that I just made a verb out of a noun. Don’t try that at home, kids. It’ll affect your ACT scores. Yeah, we’re taking a trip down Memory Lane, again, but with a purpose; a tip that hopefully will affect your modern game in a positive way. Here it is: Do not, absolutely do not, approach a downed deer with an unloaded muzzleloader. Deer downed with a bullet driven by the less powerful black powder employed by the ancients, get up and run away, often, even with hits that prove, later, to be mortal wounds. Ask me how I know. I am an ancient. Hits with modern smokeless powder almost always prove to be accompanied with total bullet penetration. Not so with the ancient black powder said to have been invented by the Chinese to accommodate their love of fireworks. Leave it to the evil white man to see its potential use as a propellant for chunks of lead fired down tubes of st...
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The Family Business

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  My “baby” brother, Vernon, once fished for rainbow trout in a swimming pool in Japan. It was the only fishing water available on the Navy base where he, my other two brothers, Mom and Dad, lived at the time. Desperation calls for extreme measures. The fishing was good, close to being the legendary “fish in a barrel”, and the rainbows fought like other rainbows the world ‘round. These, maybe a little off-flavor on the table. There are no picky eaters in the Vollertsen family, nor slow ones. Anyway, Vernon’s request this past winter for me to organize a fishing trip for the two of us in Canada in September was the second such family request I had received this year, the first being from Pam to celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary in July. Vernon had fished with me growing up Key West to New England, Virginia to California, but never Canada and he wanted to go. Organizing family fishing trips to faraway places might be a dirty business, but somebody has got to do it. Sign me u...
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One Last Fishing Trip Before School

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  It was Leon’s idea, and it was a good one. Never miss an opportunity to take a kid fishing, and “charity” begins at home. Leon Mears, of Mannford, and I have grandsons, Barrett (“B”) Andrews and Lane (“Rooster”) Webster of Sand Springs, playing on the same youth league baseball team. One day towards the end of this year’s season, at the ballpark, hot July, Leon suggested we take the boys fishing before school started. We agreed that right before school started in August would be an optimum time. The year’s last freedom for a couple of twelve-year-olds, an essence Leon and I understood well, still being twelve years old ourselves. Last week, we picked a day to meet at Keystone Ramp on Lake Keystone. A fishing trip with Leon as captain is really a “hunt” of sorts. First you hunt live bait with a cast net, and then you hunt secret brush piles with a depth sounder/fish locator. Trips with Leon are always fun for me outside the angle of actually catching fish. I can’t ever remember a ...
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Chasing the Big Ones Up in Canada

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  Editor’s Note: Conrad Vollertsen does nearly all of his fishing and hunting in Oklahoma but will occasionally slip across the border into Canada in July and August where the air is cool and pine scented, and the lakes are stiff with fish big enough to break an arm. The following is the first of a two-part series detailing such a trip taken this past week. It was my favorite kind of day to fish up North: A light, misty rain blowing in gray, tail-dragging veils across broad areas of a rock-ribbed lake whose skyline had gone jagged with dark, black spruce many millions of years ago. Listen. Hear the loon? Up North, up in Canada, up in Ontario, such weather puts fish, big ones, on the prowl. Rain? Who cares. Let ‘er rip. My friend, Brian Loveland, and my grandson Lane Webster, both of Sand Springs, were catching fish, too, while I spent most of my time positioning the boat towards their success and handling the netting chore when it came. It was as much fun for me doing that, as ...
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Little Acorns

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  “From little acorns, mighty trees doth grow,” the poet said. He meant oak trees; I mean cottonwoods. Nothing grows quicker, bigger, from a smaller point of origin than my grandchildren, but, still, the poet’s point is well taken. I saved a cottonwood sapling in my yard alongside the driveway, the same diameter as my little finger, from certain death about thirty years ago. I paused to look at it as I rode up on it sitting on my lawnmower. It had not been there the week before, seemingly, but now there it was, no more than two-and-a-half feet tall, maybe three, thrusting proudly towards the sky while leaning its length out over the driveway. I had long wanted a cottonwood in my yard, already choked with oaks, to feed the squirrels leaf buds in May, and attract orioles who like to nest as high as sixty feet above ground. Everybody needs an oriole or two in their yard. Short scrubby oaks won’t bring them. Here I had one, unexpectedly and overnight as it were. I thought God had forgo...
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