Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Birth of a deer camp

Is anyone using a 444 Marlin ? If so pm me I have a new box of Remington Corelokts ( I may have another I will have to do some searching) that you can have. I bought the gun several years ago and sold it before firing it so I have no need for the ammo.

Had to work yesterday. Today, I hauled the boat up 'nort to put in storage. I figured since I was up there I should do some house keeping on the deer stands.

Here is the stand Jeff ane Eric built. Jeff said he's going to wire on some shooting rails because it's getting pretty late to nail them on. I agree. Very sturdy stand, even in the high winds we had today.

If you look just to the right of the steps, you can see the remnants of an old stand I built in 1994. The spot still seems to be good. Several trail and old rubs are in the area of the stand. It looks promising.

On the path to the stand I found this


I headed back to mine next and for some dumb reason didn't take a picture of it. I did pull the trail cam from it so we can move it to a different stand site. I put a chair up there and hauled out some older chairs that some other dude left from who knows how many years ago? And put on a rope to pull up the guns.

Hey! Is this thing on?


Had a familiar face there...

notice his neck starting to swell a bit.


A few new faces too...


It looks like this guy is trying real hard to be a 7pt.
[img]http://i474.photobucket.com/albums/rr102/tzone777/020-4.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i474.photobucket.com/albums/rr102/tzone777/019-3.jpg[/img]

It was a long and awesome weekend.

and take the Vikings with you.

jeez, Tom, Eric's gonna cream his jeans if that buck comes past him! Sure would like to see him notch his first tag.

Great pictures tom.

Jeff, if you are gonna wire a rail on, another suggestion or option is to grab a handful of small ratcheting straps and ratchet strap the rail on. You can get it nice and tight and it will flex nice with the wind without fatiguing the metal and breaking like sometimes happens with nails or wire.

One thing we figured out over the years building these types of stands on our own property is that screws and hard nails like the hardened ring shank pole barn spikes aren�t the best because they cant flex or bend very much at all, they snap. And you might not realize it right away because of course they break between your board and the tree.

Heavy pole barn nails that are the smooth shank or just heavy framing nails work well because they can bend a lot and not break.

here's a picture of the reloading bench at camp



One of my very first hand loads.



264WM, winchester brass, bullet is 130 gr barnse TSX flat base. Seated to cartridge overall length of 3.180, primers are remington 9 1/2M.

This one is charged with 65 gr of IMR 7828


I have 3 charges to test, half a dozen of each charge. 60 gr, 62.5 and 65.

I hope the wind settles down one night this week so I can get out to the range and try these.

Those .264's sure are sexy aren't they?

Yep.

It just broke my heart that the wind decided to absolutely howl all weekend. The boys helped with each step of the process and they also were pretty bummed that we couldn't test over the weekend.


I've got a pretty wide spread from 60 to 65 gr dont I?

Oh well, I'm a rookie.

You'll be fine with that spread.

Is it still windy there?

It was windy this morning driving to work, not as bad as yesterday though.

The forecast shows wind calming tues/wed.

Dave, you using that hammer to seat the primers?

Yes.

Bullets too.

Just tap them in and check em with the tape measure. About 3 inches is close enough for the 264.

Which buck?

I don't shoot a lot of bucks, so if the 7 comes by I don't know if I can hold off.

I could almost guarantee there is a spiker around too. We saw one in the ditch, Andy thought it may have been a 3pt.

That wind has been somthin' else eh? I found an old stand yesterday and climbed up about 3 steps. The wind started rocking it and climbed right back down.

Yep, you got reloading down pat.

I can not believe there's a tree with a leave still on it with the winds we've had and yet the neighbors maples still have over 3/4 of their leaves.

Rain/snow mix in the forecast for the northern part of the state the next couple of days.

Itching to shoot these...

I can't stop it. It's taken over my soul, my mind, and my house.

No use holding back now boys and girls... WHHHHHOOOOOOOHOOOOOO. It's on baby!

Looks like the rut is setting in nicely to the west. Been on the DL for a bit here. Got wired up with a new pacemaker last week so hopefully I'll soon build enough pressure to engage when the time comes....Rut On!

yes,as a matter of fact,you do have a rather wide spread.More than I would.
I dont know what the recommended starting load for your situation is,but I normally wouldnt increase by more than 1 grain at a time.A 3 grain jump (from 62 to 65) could get you in trouble.
For instance ,my load for my 243 at present is 37 grs of 4320,and a 95 gr nosler.It is an extremely mild load,and I would be comfortable increasing the load 3 grains, 1 grain at a time .