I sure was not expecting to see this. I met Tom many years ago at the VA D1 convention in Bland at his familiar tailgate setup. Have seen him many times since at various conventions. He has been a regular at our NCTA Convention for many years.
Sure hate to hear of his passing! He will be missed for sure!
I am on my County P & Z here in Nebraska. We are in the process of setting regulations for Data Centers. First off a moratorium is set to be put in place by our commissioners after our recommendation in a week or two giving us time to put in place regulations for our area. I retired from my full time job in Jan and after a couple surgeries I have had a lot of time to make phone calls to many "experts" in the tech world.. and have spent a lot of time online researching these data centers. I am coming to the conclusion they are a necessary evil...... There are kazillions (lots and lots) of transactions on the world wide webb every second. Who is driving the need for such centers..... I am pretty sure the answer is WE ARE ! If you breathe and have a heart beat you are a part of the cause for the need for such centers. They will be built somewhere. Can we stop them....probably not unless you and I want to live in a cave and do nothing.......... That said there are different ways they can be built..... different ways to satisfy their cooling demand....and different ways to feed their appetite for electricity with the technology we have today. Technology of the future will probably be way different. I will say in my observation of many comments and from hours and hours of research.... maybe days and weeks even... there are a very high percentage of comments that are based on one's emotions and fears that are simply a bunch of BS. I find it ironic when someone comes to me and expresses their opinion of data centers they have no clue how servers or the webb works. But yet they want all the fancy gadgets and instant services the webb provides and they want even more of the very thing they are against.... if they researched how things work and give some thought to the needs we want today they possibly could be a part of the process to accomplish great results for our wants and needs. Maybe the way we are heading with all this technology will cause the destruction of mankind,,,, and yet it has the potential to do some great things for mankind. .......... Kinda of like what has happened since God created Adam and Eve.... there is good and bad in everything. Hopefully we as a species are smart enough to figure it out and not get too much wrong....
Storing early potatoes usually not greatly successful. For the skins to thicken up you need the foliage to die down completely. 45 to 50F would be temperatures to shoot for with low humidity and dark.
I’m a fan of heavy drags and heavy long chain. A lot of trappers opt for the lighter setups till you get a runner and you're 300 to 500 yards into tracking him then that voice in the back of your head starts talking to you saying “ you should have got the heavier drag and chain dummy” ! JC Connor makes top notch equipment for sure you’ll be pleased !!!
Use to sell black rat snakes for $10/foot if the were over 5 feet Dont know what the guy did with them. This was late seventies early eighties. That was a lot of money. Me and my brother would wrestle each other and the snake trying to "claim" it for ourselves. Dad would usually make us split the $$
You don't need to soak them. As mentioned above, use a spray bottle to get the leather moist. You can easily pull the hide this way and that to re-gain some size and will help with pliability. If the skin is cased, you can put the pelt on a stretcher and tack the base and tail to the shape you want, and don't forget a wedge! After tanning, the pelt might not fit the original sized stretcher you used when the pelt was green, so a size smaller may be required, as tanning can reduce pelt size by as much as 20%, (though re-hydrating the leather will allow you to regain some of that). If the pelt is skinned "open", after doing the above, simply re-tack it to the desired shape and let dry.
Depends on the type of set. Snow sets I do like Shakey, if I have those conditions, fressh fluffy snow, I don't dig anything out, in fact oftentimes I have to pack more snow in, simply to get a solid base for the trap without it sinking out of sight. I usually dig my trap beds similar to what Boone describes if I'm not dealing with a lot of freezing, but most of the time I am dealing with freezing or bad freeze/thaw. So then they may be shaped similar (I like the center of the trap to be suspended, so I'm not fighting it rocking, also why I remove the big wolf swivels from the D rings on any wolf traps that come equipped with them and replace them with something smaller) but they are dug bigger, so I can fill them in with waxed sand and have the trap completely incased in waxed sand. Unlike waxed dirt, waxed sand is a dream to bed in, give the trap a twist back and forth, and it is solid, much easier than bedding in native dirt, even. But if you are setting blind sets or similar, where they are just walking through, rather than working the set where a lot of foot movement is the goal, well bedding rock solid isn't as important, they are ethier going to hit the pan or not. If they step on the pan, you have them, if they step on the jaws or levers, it doesn't matter if they rock or not, because they aren't going to step near there again regardless. Either putting the pan EXACTLY where they are going to put their foot, or guiding, becomes key here, not bedding.
I'll admit I often don't cover my traps as deeply as I should, they are often covered just enough to hide the trap. This is because I am so often dealing with freeze/thaw and want as little as possible to freeze into a crust over the trap. Even when I'm not, habit causes me to bed them shallow and cover shallow. Something I need to work on.
I've had tremendous response in front of cameras with beaver tail oil in the summer. But much less response in the winter when I am actually trapping. So for summertime coyotes it should work.
But I don't consider beaver tail oil really loud or obnoxious, kind of a pleasant odor to me. Certainly not like the stuff Boone is using (lump jaw puss is a new one, I had never heard of anyone using that for trapping before) but they will roll in it extensively in the summer. So maybe try it on some sets, and something more obnoxious on others. Let them tell you what they prefer.
Very nice #48 complete with original chain and ring. All teeth intact with nice flat pan, $125.00 plus flat rate shipping or will trade for 2 oz of silver. Bars, bullion, rounds or coins work for me. Will consider old US paper currency.
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