The Taurus PT809 Pistol

I recently purchased a self defense pistol as a birthday present for my wife. She has been carrying a Ruger MKI for most of our married life in .22 long rifle. I load it with hyper-velocity rounds for her, but those are still not really a self defense round. She just does not like shooting the .45 acp I carry and felt more comfortable with the Ruger .22 pistol.

I have been looking at several large capacity magazine 9 mm autos and settled on the new Taurus PT809 as the most gun for the money. This is a modern polymer/steel pistol with some really neat features. It has a right side and left side magazine release, slide release and safety/decocker, in other words it is fully ambidextrous. It comes with three different sized interchangeable back straps to fit the grips to the shooter. The front and back of the grips are checkered and grooved for a non-slip grip. The pistol has a front rail for lazer or light attachment along with a wide smooth faced trigger and a polished feed ramp. Three dot sights are standard for instant sighting in low or normal light situations. Along with a magazine that holds 17 rounds the pistol has a beveled magazine well for secure and fast loading. The metal parts have a Tennifer finish which is supposed to be a high tech kind of case hardening that is more stainless than stainless steel.

In this day of bargain box store ammo I have noticed in some lots of ammo failure of some rounds to fire. This usually means waiting a few seconds, clearing the round and running it back through the next magazine to see if it will fire. The Taurus PT809 pistol has a unique second strike ability, if a round fails to fire just pull the trigger again and in most cases the round will fire. This could be a life saver in a bad situation. I however recommend that you only load the best and most reliable ammo you can obtain when you are counting on the firearm for self defense. Save the bargain brands for plinking and target practice.

All in all after shooting this pistol and having my wife get familiar with the way it shoots I am impressed with the function and accuracy of this little gun. It came in a hard case with two magazines, a mag loader, bore brush, lock key and three grips all for around $350.00 at most box sporting goods stores.  You could spend a lot more for a lot less gun.  As always I had to buy this gun with hard earned money just like you do and I get nothing for this review.  It is what I have my wife carry so you know what I think about it. 
Good shooting, Wild Ed

If you would like to read more about the Taurus PT809 here is a link to the Taurus website http://www.taurususa.com/product-details.cfm?id=602&category=Pistol

Happy Birthday to Julie!

Happy birthday to the amazing gal we know as Julie Zickefoose! She is known the world over by a variety of names, and by her many wonderful works. Crazy Dog Lady is just one of the names she goes by—and proudly—since she has bonded with our Boston terrier Chet Baker about as strongly as the white is bonded to the rice.

She is the Science Chimp who leads the science club at Salem Liberty Elementary and gets young f0lks to tune into the amazing living things all around us.


She is the living embodiment of Scooby-doo's friend Velma, shown here with Daphne solving a mystery involving Old Man Wiggins.

She is called Mommy or Mom by a couple of the sweetest kids ever to wear dorky hats.


Crazy Bird Lady is another moniker. When this red-headed woodpecker showed up at our feeders last winter, Julie immediately hung a bird house up for it, held in place by bungee cords. The woodpecker, recognizing that this was the CBL, immediately moved in for a week-long stay.

She is rarely referred to as being tall—at least in physical stature. Yet she is a towering tree in terms of wisdom and talent. Here she is cracking us up on Easter Sunday while posing for a photo with my mom, Elsa.


Years ago, when we were first talking by phone about an art project for Bird Watcher's Digest, I found out that Julie was a musician, which made her vastly more fascinating to me. So I courted her with my best rawk song.

Now Julie plays in a band with me and several other special people: Craig and Wendy (Jessie and Kage not pictured, but equally special). We Rain Crows have fun always.

She plays the pennywhistle like a pro—sometimes morphing it into a jazz stick when the mood strikes her.

And she's not above throwing down some sweet dance moves, as she is doing here during a Hog Island seminar.

Crazy Turtle Lady is another nom de nature. As is Crazy Bat Lady.

In the fields of nature writing, painting, and sharing, she is outstanding. And out standing.

And sometimes she is also out lying in her fields of endeavor.

And she is the best person I've ever met at self-actualizing. She is rarely happier than when she is alone in her little kayak, floating among the birds and butterflies and turtles. Now if only she could bring Chet Baker along in the boat....

We love you, Jules! Happy birthday from all of us. We bask in the wonder of all you share with us, and consider ourselves so lucky to be a part of your world.

Homemade Sausage East Texas Style

I belong to a blackpowder shooting forum that is mostly just a bunch of good ole do it yourself country boys. Now don’t get me wrong there are a few city dudes and even a few foreigners but we all pretty much get along with just a flare up once in a while. I guess what I am trying to say it is more than just a forum where you go to ask questions and get answers on anything related to blackpowder shooting. It is kind of like a family group. If you ever heard the old saying “hang around old guys cause they know stuff” there are a lot of old guys that are members of this forum. If you would like to visit and see if you fit in feel free to stop by, you might even learn something.

One of my buds on the forum goes by the alias of ET or East Texas. He has lots of gardening, canning and general homestead living skills and is always sharing them with others. A lot of good information is available that ET has placed in the Do it yourself section and I got his permission to pass on one of his best to you guys. You know how well I like to BBQ and how I love smoked sausage. Here is East Texas version of homemade sausage written as only ET would tell it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have, Wild Ed



HOMEMADE SAUSAGE, DO IT YER OWNSELF
By East Texas



Well, I like sausage! It can be made out of just about any meat you want, chicken, beef, pork, or venison, or out of any combination of them! Now my favorite is venison and pork! A pigs ass is always gonna be pork, but some pork, is leaner than others! I like to use the wild hogs, because there is less fat on em! If your doin venison yer gonna need some pork, because the venison is very lean also, practically no fat on em, so the meat will be very dry unless ya add a little pork to keep it a little juicy! Now don’t get me wrong I like my sausage to be a little dry, I hate greasy sausage! Like what you city slickers with yer skinny city shoes buy at the wally world! So heres how I make mine.


Now first thing I do is break out the meat grinder, I have one of Cabelas, one of the best 100 dollar bills I’ve ever spent! I also have a couple of the old hand grinders in different sizes as back up and grind up the meat of choice!

My [perfect] mixture is usually gonna be 75% venison to 25% pork.    Now while I’m grinding all this meat I take my sausage casings, and start soaking them in warm water.  You can get a package of sausage casings at most meat markets and a lot of grocery stores carry them also they usually run between $3.50-$5.00

While the casings are soaking I grind all the meat and keep sticking it in the fridge until it’s all done!

Now let me pause right here fer a second to say, GERALDO, GET YER EYES OFFIN MY PUDDIN' CUPS!  Now when it’s all been ground up, I break out the meat mixer, again Cabelas seein the trend here?  You don’t have to use a meat mixer, you can do it by hand but believe me, it’s worth the money to have one.

Now I use the highly accurate and scientific method of gettin the proportions of meat correct, its one handful of pork to three handfuls of venison! When it’s mixed up to my likin, I start adding seasoning. I sprinkle it in while turning the meat in the mixer and get it all mixed in, now seasoning is something ya kind gotta do to your taste, I like the basics,salt,pepper,[coarse ground!], and garlic, lots of garlic!

Now if ya want to make breakfast sausage or pan sausage as we poor folks like to call it, you might want some sage or whatever seasoning suits yer taste! Fer pan sausage you won’t need the casings either. Anyway you can experiment on yer own!

I added Sage and Red Pepper flakes to mine. Wild Ed

 

Now you should have a pile of sausage ready to stuff!

 

So now I break out my sausage stuffer, nope not Cabelas   harbor freight! It’s a 5 lb stuffer, meanin it holds 5 lbs at a time. It comes with different size nozzles but I like the largest one cause I like big ol fat sausage, not the skinny city slicker sausage that ya buy in town!   grab a tub of butter and grease up the nozzle good then start feedin the casings onto the nozzle

Now just sos ya understand, ya keep shovin the casings up on the nozzle till ya get to the end, then tie a knot in the end. Start pushin the handle of the stuffer down and it will start filling up the casings, you’ll develope a feel fer how fast or slow after ya bust a hole in em a time or two! (?^ when yer finished, you should have something that looks like this!

Now let me pause again fer a second to say, GERALDO! QUIT EYEBALLIN MY COLD BEER!  now I had a few pounds of sausage left over  after I ran out of casings, so I’ve got some sleeves that I get from the meat house I use to put my ground meat in and I just marked them pan sausage and fill them up with what was left   I use green zip ties to seal them up and red ones fer ground so in the freezers, I can easily tell the difference!   

Now I got a couple of holes in my sausage too, I had my buddy Rob helpin and he had never done it before, so we had a little learnin curve goin, but all in all we did pretty good! I figger we made between 80-100lbs of sausage!  Now it’s ready to put in the smokehouse, or the freezer, and can be smoked when it’s cooked!   yo can figure a 1 lb sausage pack at the store is gonna cost ya about 3-4 bucks, I got about 50 cents worth of lead and powder, 5 bucks fer casings and about 7 bucks worth of seasonings fer a total of roughly, 13-15 bucks fer say 90 lbs of sausage, that’s pretty cheap, btw, its GREAT tasting sausage and you can DO IT YER OWNSELF!

Kenai Fjords Birding Cruise Part 1

Along the road from Soldatna to Seward.

In mid-May, Julie and I were invited to be the keynote speakers at The Kenai Birding Festival located in Kenai, Alaska, on the Kenai Peninsula. Do you know what the name of the local bird club is? The Keen Eye Birders! I'd never been to this part of Alaska and Zick had never been to Alaska at all, so we said "heck yes."

Our journey to Alaska was going to be long, even before the fog-canceled flights in Columbus, Ohio and Atlanta, Georgia made us re-direct our trip via Dallas. But a mere 20 hours later we were trudging zombie-like out of the Anchorage airport and into the waiting arms of Janet Schmidt from Kenai National Wildlife Refuge and our friend Tricia Grenier and daughter Vivi who met us at the airport with snacks and gifties. A meal and a beer later we headed out on the three-hour drive to Janet's home in Soldatna, AK. Once there we slept the sleep of the undead for a few blissful hours.

The next day, as a "welcome to Alaska", the festival's organizers had arranged for us to go on a Kenai Fjords boat trip. We got up early (easy coming from the eastern time zone!) and drove down to Seward to meet the boat. Along the way we saw many coll things: Dall sheep, mountain goats, moose, and a distant brown bear, plus a mess of bald eagles. We also heard the ethereal fluting of varied thrushes. The scenery was just stupendous: deep forest giving way to soaring mountains covers in snow.

Dall sheep with lambs.

We made it to Seward just in time for our departure and a short visit with a representative of the cruise company Kenai Fjords Tours. Our boat was a very stable, diesel-powered catamaran with plenty of outside deck space for viewing, birding, and photography and an inside cabin below where you could get out of the wind (it was chilly on the water despite the sun). Inside was also where the food and hot coffee was!

Seward harbor.

Oohing and ahhing at the scenery in the fjords.

Right outside the harbor we began finding lots of birds and wildlife. I'll share some of the wildlife highlights in this post, and some of the birds in forthcoming posts.

Mountain goat.

We learned from the captain's narration that mountain goats come down in May along the lower sides of the fjords to forage on the new growth. Once your eyes adjusted to discerning between mountain goats and snow fields (goats are a bit yellower) it was easy to spot them along the nearly sheer cliff faces.

Spectacular views lay in all directions from the boat, even from the stern. And then the water around us came alive with a pod of marine mammals

Orcas appeared in small family groups and larger pods. Our captain knew many of them by name, using their fin shapes and other markings as ID clues. This was a lifer mammal for me. We later had one breach in front of the boat, but it happened so quickly that no one could get a shot.

Sea otter.

Otters were encountered in several spots, often floating on their backs cracking open urchins.

As we got farther from the harbor, and into some of the protected waters of the fjords, we began encountering small flocks of birds. I'll get more into that in the next post.

The Turkeys Come Home to Wildwoods

My brother and I along with our wives have been feeding and protecting a few wild Rio Grande Turkeys up at our place at Lampasas. There used to be a lot of turkeys on the place and the surrounding ranches.   When we were kids we often saw them, but for at least a decade they have been gone except for a passing gobbler looking for a hen once in a blue moon. I can remember when they used to roost in some of the taller older trees on the ranch. Last year three gobblers and a couple of hens found our feeders. We starting putting out a variety of foods that turkeys like to eat in hopes of holding them and restoring them on the place. We have not allowed any hunting of turkeys on our place and have been trying to keep them from getting shot by holding them on our acreage as much as possible. We lost one of the gobblers deer season that was killed by the landowner next to us. We have been hoping to get them breeding in the area and get a foothold on bringing them back in numbers to the ranch.


This weekend we all went up and did some work at the place and plowed a new food plot. My brother had drilled a water well and wanted to set up a sprinkler to be able to help the food plot along so we plowed it close enough to the well to try to get a start on the crop.  We are hoping the deer and turkey will have something extra to see them through hard times.

After a day of hot work we changed out the memory cards in the game cameras and could not wait to get home and load them on the computer to see what visitors had come by the feeders in the last week. We thought you might like to see some of the unusual critters we had this week. Hope you enjoy them as much as Mike and I did, Wild Ed

Phoebe's Sweet 16

Sixteen years ago this morning my life changed forever.
That was the day that Phoebe Linnea Thompson came into the world.
This photo (above) shows us on her first day back at home.
Man I was SO in love! And I still am.

Through the years, Phoebe has grown into quite an amazing young woman. Oh my, was she super adorable as a little girl. This is her first day of preschool. She was holding her pacifier in her right hand, behind her back.
Try as I might, I can't convince her to go back to the pixie haircut. Who can blame her? If I had hair that gorgeous and red, I'd wear it long, too.
Heck, I'd settle for just having HAIR!

See what I mean?

Phoebe is many things as a person. She loves flowers:
She loves birds. In this image she's loving up a fledgling eastern phoebe that Julie was rehabbing.


Phoebe loves a good session of dress-up—especially for Halloween.
She was the best Red Hat Lady ever a few years back.

And recently she's gotten into acting in plays at her high school.
She's a natural ham—we wonder where she gets it.

She loves her Pittsburgh Pirates (a trait she inherited from her dad).
This is Phoebe at a Pirates' game with my dad. We were celebrating Dad's birthday on that day. How I wish he could be here for this day.

Phoebe was not YET a crazed Pirates fan. That came later.
At Pirates' games the Pirate Parrot always seems to find Phoebe. She's one of the more radiant female fans, and her bodyguard (in fedora) also seems to enjoy the attention.

My girl helped me do a book once.
And she often has a long line of autograph seekers queued up to meet her.

Phoebe loves Chet Baker to the point of tormenting him.
But he adores her, as does everyone else.

We all love our tall, gorgeous redhead and we grab every opportunity to hug her (as her mama Julie is here), pull her close...

and we try to snap a shot or two. Because we know she will not be here with us for every day too much longer. She is bound for other places, and an amazing life.

No one in our family adores Phoebe more than her little bro-ski Liam.
I am most proud of the big sister that Phoebe is. She is old and wise and kind beyond her years.

She is a dreamer, this amazing young soul.

Phoebe, my precious little bird.
Once I held you in my two hands.
Now I hold you with my whole heart.

Happy birthday to you, my darling daughter!