Thanksgiving Weekend Adventires

As I pulled out of my temporary lodging here at Ft. Drum Wednesday, the day before Turkey day, there was at least 6 inches of snow covering everything and at least that much slush on the road.  I headed east once again for the Adirondacks for a weekend of hunting and what not.  Well the scenery changed every mile I drove as I approached closer and closer to Lake Placid and then onto Wilmington as that crazy white stuff they call snow got deeper.  I would say Wilmington and Whiteface Mountain received around 15+ inches of snow the night before.  Just like always as soon as I arrived to Wilmington I headed over to Steinhoff's Pub for a brew and something to eat.  Well I got so wasted that night that I fear there are still stories floating around about that night that I cant seem to remember.  But what I do remember was that damn porch in front of Scott's cabin covered in ice, slip, bam, ouch!  The next morning Scott and I hit the mountain thrashing through knee deep snow tracking deer up and down the mountain but had no luck.  We scouted the deer quite a few more times with no luck as well as we did a day of duck and goose hunting with a little pheasant hunting during the middle of the day.

 These were the tracks of a huge buck.

 A froze over beaver pond.

 Now for the unbelievable part, me, yes I, got in that water.  A few weeks ago I went out to the Ausable Marsh, a marsh alongside of Lake Champlain and scouted the area for some waterfowl hunting, and saw plenty of birds and great hunting locations.  So we rig up our decoys and head out to the marsh Saturday morning to find the whole damn thing frozen over.  At least 5/8 to 3/4s of an inch of ice.  So now what, um I guess we could break up a small hole to drop the decoys, uh, that could work right?  So in I went, kicking, elbow slamming and grabbing sheets of ice, sliding some large sheets under the rest of the surface.  Wow that was cold!

 That afternoon after an unsuccessful morning icy marsh hunt we move about a half of a mile over to the lake side of the park road directly on Lake Champlain where the surface was only frozen over near the banks and in between the reeds in only shallow spots.

The picture below is one of our decoy spread looking out from our blind towards the center of Lake Champlain and if you look close enough you can see the mountains of Vermont across the water.

This was an Impressive sight, the Ausable Chasm, with canyon walls behind the camera shot of hundreds  of feet straight up.

Back in the Adirondacks.

The week before Thanksgiving I headed back out to the Adirondack Mountains to meet up with some friends to do some fishing and hunting.  John R. and I drove east to Plattsburg where we fished the Saranac River where it spills into Lake Champlain.  Very cold standing in four foot of water fly fishing, and we had no luck.  For the next few days Scott and I hunted hard up in the mountains scouting for those big whitetail bucks and found may signs, but no deer themselves.  Along the way we ran into some other creatures and nice views.

Here Scott and I went out to some prairies between the mountains and Lake Champlain with Scott's dog Tucker, a German wire haired Griffon pointer and did some Pheasant hunting.  We came across at least 10 piles of feathers where predators must of had their feast, as I almost stepped on the fattest and slowest Red Fox and we also kicked up a Red Tailed Hawk from a dead Pheasant.

To Afghanistan and back...

I traveled to Afghanistan for a few months to join the Division Pathfinders of Fort Drum's 10th Mountain Division.  I saw god and bad, little and much, but I choose not to show those pictures here.  I will show two to pay my respects and honor a fallen patriot though.  Shortly before leaving Afghanistan we received a rocket attack that impacted just outside our building on our base and as everyone took to running towards the bunkers 6 of our pathfinders were hit with shrapnel, rocks, and explosive blast wounding all but ultimately ending the life of our 1ST Sergeant.  Here are a couple of pictures of our memorial ceremony.