a prairie adventure...

Well, my 8th grader (my older boy couldn't go because he got buried with homework) finally scored a turkey south of Chamberlain this morning on one of his dad's marginal, seat-of-pants hunts. It was about a 18 pound bird and we think a Rio Grande sub-species (SD has 3 out of 5 NA wild turkey sub-species; Merriams, Rios, and Easterns. Too cold for Osceolas and Goulds are too rare for other states to get for stocking). T used his 12-guage that he saved up his own money for and had Auntie buy it for him last black Friday at Wally Worlds.

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I just got to play with about a 5 foot long bull snake skin. Its been a long time since I've put up a snake. A guy from very remote SD has been selling tanned bull snake skins on ebay for $40+. I'm hoping $15-20 for a borax dried one. If so, that would be about 40% of the gas we used for our little adventure.

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We also found a couple things on our walk about this morning. T found a nice little white-tail shed (we saw both white-tails and mulies in the same area) and I dug a still functional cow bell out of a side hill. I wonder how many decades its been laying there. No one I know puts bells on any of their pasture beef cattle nowadays.

http://i1001.photobucket.com/albums/...pssuz8lccx.jpg

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