Monthly Archives: November 2020

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And I’m checking out….

Two stories today caught my eye and I was afraid to see where they were coming from. The one thing that had people scared and unwilling to openly say who they supported in the last election appears to be the same thing they are supporting now, cancel culture. Black Rifle Coffee company is under fire for not supporting Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man who shot three people, killing two during a riot. As a company, made up of many employees and owners, they decided not to speak for everyone and said Black Rifle Coffee company does not support Kyle Rittenhouse. As a company they did the right thing. Knowing how these guys operate and their philosophy on business and life it would not surprise me if they came out as individuals and said they supported Kyle. Why the right thinks they need to do it as one entity I don’t understand. After all, they are a private business and they can do whatever they want. Isn’t that what the right has pushed since Reagan was president?

The amount of backlash and cancel culture bullshit that has taken place in the last couple of days leaves me sad and disappointed in the childish behavior of the right. They are acting like the same SJWs they have gone after for the past nine months. Even worse I watched a video by Heavy Duty Country on YouTube where he criticized the owner of BRC for donating to Obama back in the day and Tulsi Gabbard in the last election. As a person completely opposed to the democratic party at this point in my life, I am not going to criticize someone for donating money to anyone. I voted for Obama the first time around. After four years of the same old shit I voted for Jill Stine because she was not allowed to participate in the debates and arrested for trying to enter. I voted for Hillary because I figured a Blowjob was the worse thing we could expect from another Clinton Presidency. After four years of leftist bullshit in the news and cancel culture running rampant, I figured I would try to make a change. I pumped money into the Andrew Yang campaign, finally seeing a man that I could support for a change. After he was screwed over by the DNC, I threw money towards Tulsi Gabbard in hopes that she might be the VP pick. Again, the best of the left was tossed aside for the same old bullshit.

When Joe Biden was announced as the Dems pick as candidate I was done. They had so may opportunities for good people to get into office. People that could make a difference and make the country a better place. Instead they picked old money from old policies and did not consider what their voters really wanted. In the end none of that mattered because it looks like there was some real manipulation the in the votes and they had to cheat in order to get their guy in.

After everything we have been through in the last year, for the right to turn on their own, the best they have to offer, and start acting like the same shitbags they have been bitching about for four years, how fucking dare you. For the cowboy dickhead in Texas (heavy duty country) to complain about a donation to Tulsi Gabbard, a two-tour veteran in Iraq and active national guard, who is he to complain about supporting her campaign. What the fuck has Heavy Duty Country done for the country? The first thing he did in his video was plug his merchandise before trying to destroy somebody else’s business.

The second story is the fall of FOX news. A channel so scared at the moment they are willing to throw their number one anchor under the bus to try to gain BLM points before Biden dies in office. There isn’t much to say here. Tucker had been one of the only people willing to tell the public what had been going on for the last year. When they betrayed him, they betrayed the American people. I don’t know who I would want Trump to buy after he is out of office, FOX news or CNN. Either way it’s a sweet victory and funny as hell when you look at it. The right is starting to turn into the left and it only goes to show that no matter what side you are on, when the mob comes your way people act like little bitches and do whatever the mob says. Black Rifle company will stay in business. The simple-minded acts of a few losers won’t change that. FOX news will change hands again and who knows what will become of it. The republican party and the right, they are starting their death chatter unless they find a pair of balls and quickly. The act of eating your own should be left to the left. let them destroy themselves over the years and watch from the sidelines as they fall apart. To follow their example is to start your own self destruction.

In the meantime, nobody is getting my money. I don’t care if you are left or right. I don’t care if you are against the endless wars or pro-life, I just don’t give a shit because everyone is acting like a bunch of shitheads these days. When the right starts to fall apart in some desperate act of control then you know to whole system has fallen apart. I gave money to the trump campaign towards the end not wanting to see BLM take over and ruin a night out with the wife while they paraded through town hollering their bullshit. I wanted law and order. I wanted a free America free from racism. I wanted an American where someone could build something and make their lives better and the lives of next generations better. What do I get, BRC must be cancelled for not supporting a guy on trial for two counts of murder. Are you kidding me? Should they donate to his defense fund as well? Are they acting as lawyers? What exactly has any of these people who are refusing to buy coffee donated to the cause? My guess, nothing. What will the right get from me from now on, nothing. I am checking out. I’ll cut wood and carry water and whatever is going on in your sad sack world of BS leave me out of it. I have better things to do than complain about coffee. Oh wait, my cupboard is almost empty, I should order a few bags.

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Being Elmer Fudd

This year, like previous years, I have failed to drag a deer home during hunting season. I thought things would change having bought my own land and seeing deer non-stop since the move. While I could come up with a list of excuses as to why this is the case there is one thing I have to admit, I am not good at this. I could go squirrel, quail, or turkey hunting and bring something home without question, and some would say these things are harder to do. I could say this is similar to fishing, I can catch blue gill, crappie, and sun fish until the sun goes down, but you won’t see me pulling a bass out of the water any time soon.

This year, like most years, not only have the deer eluded me but they have come to taunt me as well. A few years ago, I was fed up after a week of spending hours out I the woods with squirrel barking their insults at me and decided it was time to teach them a lesson. I went out with my shotgun bringing small game loads and filled my bag in an hour. I ran through the woods taking our every barking offender that dared to show their furry face. Walking back to the car I came over a hill to see two large does starring at me from thirty feet away. A clear and open side shot perfectly positioned and me without a slug in my shotgun. They looked at me for over a minute before turning away and running into the woods. In the end that bag of squirrels had the last laugh.

This year the mocking is even worse than before. On opening day, I went out to the spot I had decided on and brought one of my trusted Mosin-Nagant 7.62x54r bolt action rifles. This one had the smaller scope that was easier to use. The cold windy rain didn’t discourage me from marching out and claiming my prize. As I reached the back of the property, I set up next to an abandoned outhouse in the middle of a small field and waited a minute until a large doe walked out of the woods and looked at me. I raised my rifle and looked into the scope to see nothing but fog. Both sides of the scope were completely fogged over and sine it was mounted on the rear sight I couldn’t use iron sights to make the shot. On opening day, the deer got the better of me.

I set up a pop-up blind near that spot knowing that the deer move through that area. It’s not uncommon to see anywhere from two to seven deer moving through into the swampy woods behind the property. The first day I had the blind up a doe came out of the opposite end of the woods. A tree blocking my shot as its head looked around, then turning around to only give me the ass end before disappearing. The next morning, I opened the windows of he blind to see a set of tracks walking up to the blind and a pile of fresh doe scat sitting in front of it. At this point the score might be deer 3, Fudd 0.

Other odd things have happened since then. I went out to my car and found tracks and doe scat next to the drive and passenger side doors, no joke. Later in the morning when I go out to feed the chickens a doe and yearling will march through the small field behind our house in full view not giving me the time of day. It wasn’t long before I moved my pop-up blind again and realized I had to do something differently.

I spent an evening following the deer trails on the property and found four scrapes, a place where a buck marks a tree and clears the ground to pee on it. Its like a truck stop bathroom way of telling does, for a good time meet me here at this time. This buck was wanting to get some and I was willing to meet him at one of his spots. The next morning, I went out early, an hour before day break only to hear the snort and rustle of hoof prints as the buck ran off leaving me rejected and disappointed. Before heading back to the house, I unzipped my pants and left my own, for a good time call, on his clear patch of dirt next to the scraped-up trunk of a young tree. He has yet to call me.

For the last week and a half, I have heard the distance rings of shots across the land as my neighbors thin the herd and fill their freezers. At the local hardware store, I hear a young man talking about his brother getting two does in the first week and how his brother was disappointed about not getting a buck. The old man behind the counter says “how come? It only got antlers. They don’t taste any different.” My neighbor tells me today about our over neighbor bagging a big buck for the first time in a few years, likely my romantic rejection. Then he goes on to tell me that he usually bags three to four deer a year. Meanwhile, in Matt land, I can not bag one. There is always some detail I miss. I don’t go out early enough. I don’t stay out late enough. I brought the wrong gun for the weather. I put my blind in the wrong spot. I use a blind where I shouldn’t. Granted, I didn’t start hunting until I was 32. I didn’t start deer hunting until I was 34. After six years you would think I would have learned something. This is one sport/ hobby/ pastime that has a lot of trials and even more errors. I am worse that buckless Yooper in Escanaba in Da Moonlight. There are a few days left. I might be able to pull something off, but my hopes of filling the freezer or using any of my ammo for something other than target shooting are low. The deer mock me, they taunt me, and at this rate they know that my place is one of the safest in the area. Right now, they are going around telling their friends to go hang out at the fudge suckers house, while you’re at it crap next to his car. I’m guessing this is the deer equivalent to egging a house.

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The Collapse Experiment Redux

I sold my house today. The 1911 stucco Dutch three bedroom that I called my home for 15 years is now in the hands of a tiny Mexican woman who paid for it, in cash. I walked away with not much but something after paying the remainder of the mortgage and dropping the price more than 15k. I had the monthly payments paid up until January first and now I no longer have to worry about another house payment. A burden is lifted and my life of paying rent to a mortgage company for a house that I really didn’t own is over.

From the memories of that house are the beginnings of this blog. Years of gardening in the back yard. Learning how to compost just about anything. Canning, root cellaring, and cooking my first squirrel to include in the bundle. While trying to learn how to grow my own food I over did it with the backyard harvest, with the surplus going to co-workers because I ran out of canning jars to use. It wasn’t always good though. There was the purchase of my first shotgun after a police officer was killed a block from my house. There was the girl shot in front of my house walking home from school. The day a baseball size bag of crack cocaine was thrown into my back yard while a man was running from the police. There was the night three guys threatened to teach me whose neighborhood it was. Then the endless list of stabbings, break-ins, shots fired, meth lab explosions, hit and runs, graffiti, and crackheads knocking on the door at 3am asking for money.

Now I have no reason to ever go back to that neighborhood ever again. The house is no longer mine and is hopefully in the hands of someone who will appreciate it more that I have.

Considering the craziness that is 2020, the house that my wife and I bought this summer is more suitable for what we wanted to do. Our early 1900 Dutch houses were traded in for a 1926 barn house sitting on 15 acres in a town with a population of 250. Deer season is in full swing and if there is anything I learned in the last week its that these deer are not the tame, stupid and deaf variety that I hunted in southern Michigan, the type of dear that one could walk up on and they would stand in front of you dumbfounded as you pointed your shotgun. The deer in the north can hear you from half a mile away and you won’t see them the rest of the day. Snow plows are rare on the highway, as I learned today driving through a blizzard doing 35MPH. on a positive note, the hardware store had a new fuel line not only for my chainsaw but also my snow blower, both I bought second hand at estate sales before moving up here. The chainsaw I picked up for $40, a 1970s McCulloch pro master 610, and according to the YouTube videos I found on it I picked up a beast for a cheap price. The snow blower ended up being at a sale on day two which meant it was half off. The $70 of equipment I bought was fixed with $3.50 in parts from the hardware store.

The fifteen acres we own has room for small fields of corn and soy, a garden, fruit trees, and grape vines. Across the street is a no wake lake filled with trout and bass. Deer will be my biggest pest when it comes to the gardens, a fair trade from the crackheads who would break my fence and look over my tomato plants making sure it wasn’t weed they could steal. The chickens have been safe so far in their new coup and run that I built. If need be there is an outlet nearby I can plug a heater into. Freezing water has been an issue lately and I have yet to hear any good solutions that that problem. There is the pond that feeds the wildlife and plenty of firewood to be harvested from out woods. The birch trees are filled with Chaga Fungus. Outside the land is quiet. The rooster has learned how to push his voice beyond the backyard of a city lot and far into the dense woods of northern Michigan. On the way to work the other day I watched a group of sea gulls attacking a bald eagle over lake Mitchell. Signs on the side of the road warn of black bears for the next three miles. A sign going into town reminds drivers that horse and buggies are common in these parts. This is our new home. Neighbors wave from a distance. Piles of rocks sit randomly along the side of the road. Every yard has a deer stand. Here you can only be bored if you try. Here you get out of the land what you put in, if you aren’t willing to put in the time and effort you get back as much as you put in. in this place it isn’t the job that defines you its what you want to get out of it.

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