A year ago at this time, I described Lazy Boy, a stand site that my son wanted to develop for deer and turkey hunting. He’s about to go through his last Yute Season, and it’s time to start planning for the future. We went out to Lazy Boy on Sunday and set up a ground blind for next week’s Yute Opener. Angus has been out scouting several times to this site on his own and seen deer every time.

Want a deer blind in a hurry? Take a 12 foot section of that die-cut or burlap blind material, a bag of spring-loaded clothespins and a 50 foot hank of what they call “camper’s cord.”   Find three trees in a rough “V” shape and run the line between at about waist height.  Use an adjustable jamming knot on the first tree, then run the line to the second tree and around the outside and then tie off with a double clincher  to the third tree.  Use the jamming knot on the first tree to make the line taught.  Now use the blind material and hang the blind material on the line using the clothes pins every 2 feet or so.  Put a folding lawn chair or two in the center and you’re done.  I’ve done this so often — often in the dark– that I can pull this off with a single section of die-cut in under 5 minutes. 50 foot of cord to hang 12 feet of blind?  Remember that you can run the line as far as you want to make the “V” .  You only put the blind material close to the apex, and it does not matter if you are putting the blind in front of or behind the center tree.

That is what we did at Lazy Boy, although I stretched it out and used 3 sections of die-cut.  The site is great, because the hillside behind obscures the blind , and there was plenty of room to put chairs out for both of us. After the blind material was hung, Angus and I went about gathering up old cedar boughs and such and brushing the blind in. I took some pictures so you can see the improvement before and after the brushing-in process.

The M44 “Yute Rifle”

Angus and I finally got his M44 Mosin Nagant figured out.  This is after years of monkeying with the thing. I include a picture of Angus with the rifle back in 2006.

The idea here was to find a rifle that Lil Angus could shoot while he was small.  In those days his brother was shooting an M1Garand.  I bought a M44 for $70 from Aim Surplus and sawed off an inch of stock.  I also ordered another stock off Ebay, so that when he got older, he’d have a nice rifle.

That was the theory anyway.  The plan languished for years.  Oh, Lil Angus could shoot it just fine, but it was a minute-of-bushel-basket kind of proposition.  The idea was to take the 7.62X54R round and download it to 30-30WIN levels.  However, I tried a bunch of bullets over the years and could not get anything but a spray.

This year, I bought Speer .311 180 grain bullets as a last resort.  AH! Success!!! The rifle needed a serious adjustment, it was now shooting 8 inches left at 20 yard, but I used a nail set and knocked the front sight far enough to get it printing a 1 inch group an inch high just above the bull.  That is good enough for Lazy Boy, where the shots will be 50 yards and under.

If you are contemplating hunting with a Mosin Nagant, be careful with bullet choice.  I slugged mine as suggested, and one came back as a .308 (this one) and others have come out in the .310-.311 range.  Suffice it to say Soviet manufacturing was a bit rushed in those days. I tried .308 bullets and .311 bullets and nothing seems to work.  I was about to call this project a failure.  The original plan was to have it function at 30-30 WIN levels.  The current load is about 5% off-MAX using H4895.  The case configuration is a bit like a rimmed .308 WIN.  I picked the M44 for Angus, back in 2006,  because he was into military rifles. The swing-out bayonet just way-cool for a kid.

Besides this, the extra stock was cheap, and so I did not feel bad cutting the first one off.  In the configuration, he will be using this weekend, the full-sized stock is on. The shortened one is in the closet awaiting grand kids.

We tried for years to find something to work.  He finally gets his chance with one season left to go.

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