That appears to be lot more fun than what I am doing (replacing a roof on the old house....!) I'm jealous!

Pete

Watched your video on youtube. I've always been limited to 3 shots when waterfowling, dove hunting, etc but many times felt like I shoulda saved that 3rd shot. (especially with the price of non-toxic loads). What are your thoughts on 5 shots? Is it beneficial ? Thanks for the very interesting post !

Busy spring, I've been out bird hunting and harvesting caribou. Last weekend I harvested 4 geese on the first day, boy the wind was blowing. I was feeling a little rusty as I did not hunt birds last spring.
Second day I woke up early and hit the blind. I did a thorough clean on the Stoeger 12 gauge. The first few shots were smooth as butter, I left the blind with the shotgun and walked about 50 yards, some birds came so I got down and waited. They flew right over me and Boom! The bottom side of the metal part of the shell blew off completely, while the cylinder part of the cap stayed lodged in the barrel. My ears were ringing bad and I was a little shook up!
This is the first time I have tried Winchester Blind Side ammo, and probably the last. I did some research and found out these "blow ups" are more common then I thought with that ammo. My action was all busted up, I think if I had a pump action gun it should have been a lot worst. So I just hung out the rest of the day and called in geese for the other guys.ul
3rd day I took a ride and harvested 4 bull caribou. It took me 1hr 40 minutes to butcher with a couple of 10 minute breaks. A little slow for Nunamiut standards, but I had nobody to race so I took my time.
Be careful out there and hunt safe!

That is crazy about the shell blow up! Very scary, I've never heard of that happening.

Nice work on the goose and caribou harvest!

Ben,

Protect those eyes and your eyesight. I had a bad cartridge in a .308 explode on me in 2007. Blew off the L side of the rifle and I ended up with wood splinters, shards of brass and bits of burned gun powder imbedded in my cornea. They saved my eye, but it was some very expensive and very painful surgery. Had stitches in my eyeball for months. Not fun.

I was not that good looking to begin with. The accident only made me look worse....!

Pete

Yeah it's no fun when you feel the blast pressure when that happens! It'll shake a guy up pretty good. I'll try to get a pic of the shell stuck in the barrel, first I have to find where I threw it into the tundra where I was hunting. Lol I use over the glasses ansi rated shades when shooting anymore.
The first time it happen in 2013 I had a 22-250 blow up on me. I looked like you in the picture minus the red eye. Shrapnel to the face and a bruised right cheek from flinching so bad I slammed the stock into my cheek, natural reaction. Now that blast was not fun at all!

I want to order a new gill net for fishing season. Anyone know where I can order one?

What size mesh ? how long? pre hung? or ready to hang? not sure about other areas but unhung ones here all run 50 fathoms in length actually they are 55 or 60 but hung to 50 you can start with LFS if you want already hung you may have to look locally then what the local market is will set the the price here a 10 fathom red gear ready to fish is around $125 King gear is more

Thanks otter, pre hung would be nice. Prefer the 5 7/8", 50-100 fathoms.

Where is Len?

malukchuk Donalsons or however you spell it in anchorage has pretty fair priced prehung nets.

Donalson's is technically just Anchorage LFS, but if you want pre-hung gear that is done by the individual shop so they might have something different than one of the other LFS. LFS is kind of the primary choice, with them taking over Homer but there are still a couple Redden left and you can always go straight to Seattle. It's not immediately clear to me what you are looking for, but I can tell you that any personal use nets Donalson will have (and they do have some) will just be 10 fathomers as that's what is legal in South Central, and they won't have a 5 7/8 unless they hung it for people to fish silvers in Kachemak Bay. If you actually want 50-100 fathoms, that is, one or two full shackles you might be able to find them, but brand new will be very expensive, and any "stock" gear they have in Anchorage will be to Bristol bay or Cook Inlet standard specs. (29 or 45 meshes deep) Homer or Cordova LFS would maybe have some 60 mesh deep ones (due to PWS standards), but again I highly doubt they will have 5 7/8 just because that is fairly custom in modern day gillnetting (ie. not standard red gear). In fact I am 99% sure Homer has no pre-hung new gear but they might possibly have unpayed for stuff that they are tired of sitting around in shop. (usually garbage lines though) You can find cheap old silver/king gear left and right from PWS guys though as its fished very little now days.

If you want to have something built to spec the other big cost variable is leadline weight and number of corks. 200lb/100fm leadline is around 2$ a foot if you don't have good account discounts.

I can almost guarantee you wont find the 5 7/8 inch gear any place in Bristol Bay the biggest they use here is 5 3/4 for silvers and even that is a bit on the big side of things Like Joe said 50-100 fathoms prehung is gonna cost you a lot of cash and then there is the whole shipping issue

We use 5.7/8 " here for chums and silvers, most hang their own, Kwikpak in Emonnak might have pre-hung ,wont be cheap,about $1200

Had a interesting afternoon yesterday, was working in the yard and I heard a woof and looked out on the river and saw a brown bear on a ice flow about 50 yards out in the water,soon as it saw us it swam off and right towards us. I went in and grabbed the 7 mm mag and watched it come right towards the yard with the chained dogs going crazy.

I hollered and chambered a round as it hit the mud beach and turned it away from town, I sent a couple rounds under his feet to keep him moving.He went up the creak behind the house near my bee hives.

They said another one got off and ice flow closer to town and ran up through it.

So later before dark I went down on the beach to check, I saw a moose out on the beach that looked afraid to go back into the willow.
I might regret my humility later this summer.

Here you can see the tracks going by the smoke house, the kids play on that swing almost daily,lucky it was a school day there were about 12 there the day before.

Thanks for the information guys. UP here our net needs to be less than 6 inches. I do have a king net already. The other net I have has a few holes in it. I am not to worried about the price. Freight would be easy for me I have an account with NAC and good friends that work for Lynden.

Hanging net would be a good thing to learn. A search of YouTube was pretty good. It's just clove hitches at the proper intervals, and what I saw on YouTube seemed like it would show those things.

How deep? The vast majority of stock gillnet gear any of the shops may have on hand for commercial guys will be 5 or 5 1/8. 5 7/8 is generally big enough to be thought of as king gear if anything in most of south central.

There are a LOT of variables, but I can tell you that a 60 mesh deep, 5" midweight net hung on 200# leadline with a 1/2"corkline, 24" centers, poke and tied on a weedline will be in the neighborhood of 2500$ per shackle anyways. You almost certainly don't need all of that and could have a cheaper net built. That happens to be the specs for the last net I built from scratch. Lines last for decades and can be re-hung on over and over.

are those stretched measurements or open measurements?

Mesh size is measured stretched tight knot to knot. Net length is a bit variable due to fishery/personal preference but as a general rule of thumb you need twice the stretch length in web for the length of your net. I.e. Approximately 100fathom of web for a 50fathom shackle.

I go by stretched length as well, I have ran into people that measure with open meshes.