There is one thing I love more than cars (i know, hard to believe)

And that is hunting……..

Thanksgiving (and usually xmas) week every year is spent hunting up in South Dakota with family.  Every year my wife and I (and the polar bear of a dog) head up for some deer and pheasant hunting.  Having family up there is really nice in regard to land access, and great hunting grounds at that.  Left late friday night, and were up early on Saturday to head out for some scouting.  I typically pull a doe tag for the meat every year, but after the last 2 years of seeing a lot more bucks than does, I think I may have to put in for multiple licenses next year, lol.  Tuesday morning I had a deer in the cooler, and we spent M-F hunting birds.  The bird hunting was a little tougher this year with the crops still in the ground, but we still got a lot of birds.  SD is going to enact an emergency 5 bird daily limit / 25 possession limit to allow for the decrease in rooster harvest this year.   My big goal this year was to get Valerie on the shotgun.  We pulled out the clay pigeons and after some gun handling/positioning work, she started knocking them down like crazy.  Eventually we had to start tricking her a little bit with the thrower as she was getting too good, lol.  I think she found a new hobby.  With some skeet work this year, she should be ready for birds next year.  The O/U 20ga is just perfect for her.

First we had to start with some prairie dogs.  The .17hmr makes short work of them.

Little buggers are destructive.  They completely chewed down through this 4 inch fence post.  I guess they were determined to put their front door there.

The modern day mule makes hunting a lot of pasture easy.

Valerie the first day on the shotgun.  We’ve got some work to do……

My nephew Wyatt shooting the .22  He is already getting to be a heck of a shot.  Shooting empty shotgun shells off the tire.  He even plugged a few p-dogs over 100 yards out with the .17

Valerie on the clays (big difference after fixing her stance, etc)…..now you see it.

Now it’s in a thousand little pieces.

And you can’t just throw away oil from frying that thanksgiving turkey……(well you can, the jug is sitting right above the trash pit).  Wyatt thinks it is fun to put colored kool aid in the jugs and shoot them.

Might as well let the .243 do some talking, lol.  Impact……(I love cameras with continuous shoot mode)

I am sure every raccoon in the county was checking out that dirt pile after dark.

Hunting with Tia.

Tia found a rooster, and appears to be fairly proud of herself.

After a long hard day of work.  It is tough work trying to keep up with a 3 year old lab.  Tia isn’t a dummy, she lets the lab get down in the thick stuff while she watches from the shorter stuff, lol.

And what 14lbs of pheasant jerky looks like (I won’t tell you how many lbs you have to start with to get 14lbs, lol)