We have came to the final week of genius hour, meaning that we have presentations coming up after the break.
- All our dreams CAN come true, if we have the COURAGE to pursue them- I want to talk about my presentation a little and how I want to do it, as in pictures, videos, etc. I plan too make a google slides presentation telling about what I learned and what I noticed change in, and how it has changed what I enjoy to do and to eat talking about venison or wild game in general. Getting better at shooting clays has given me something else to do that I enjoy and it will help me to obtain more wild game whether it be dove, geese, quail, ducks, pheasant, etc.. Wild bird meat is also very good and is nutritious in the way deer meat is.
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This is week 10 which means TWO weeks remain in this project. This week i plan on practicing some more and sustaining my goal of continuously hitting 25 clay´s in a row without missing. I have been able to hit my goal two weeks in a row now and I am happy with that but I want to be able to do it tree weeks in a row and be able to continuously do after the project. This past week I harvested a young buck, a good meat buck. With this deer we were able to get the tenderloins, back strap, and the hams (hind quarters) off of this deer. We will first eat the tenderloins or back straps from this deer. We will eat these two cuts either in the oven wrapped in bacon or on the grill. The hams we will most likely wrap and put in the freezer for another time. This weeks practice was different than other practice, what made this practice different was that it was snowing and I got to shoot doubles. Doubles is where you shoot two birds at one throw. what makes this more fun is that it presents more of a challenge making you have to react faster. Thats all for this week so until next time, good luck and shoot straight.
This week is week 9 ( I think not sure) I am excited to say that I have met my goal of being able to shoot 25 clay birds in a row, without missing. This did take lots of practice and persistence to meet this goal. This goal was met through hard work, failures, and practice but I am proud to say that I have achieved it. For this goal I knew that I would have to shot a bunch of shells and fail many times but with achievement comes practice and failure, because without those your not learning. I plan on continuing to shoot after this and getting better and better. I enjoyed the time I spent doing it and want to be able to get more people to it and learn how to better shoot a shotgun at a moving target. A lot of people shoot guns competitively but not as many shoot shotguns at clays. Most people shoot rifles and pistols and if they shoot three gun they will shoot shotguns. Another thing about clay's is that they are relatively cheap. For about three-seven dollars you can buy 90-180 clay's at Walmart. the expensive part of it is the shells and the gun itself. A case of shells which has 250 shells in them are anywhere from 60-120 dollars depending on the type of shells and the gauge of the gun whether it be a 20 gauge or a 12 gauge (most common ones used). The gun is where the real expenses come at ya. With a gun costing anywhere from 400 dollars for a decent one to 2200 dollars for a really nice one (there's ones WAY more expensive). My Winchester SX 3 cost 1200 dollars new and its not even anything special.
Well until next week enjoy your project. Week nine of genius hour is here leaving three weeks of the project remaining. This weeks blog is another "recipe" of what we do with the deer hams. Last week I wrote about a deer my dad had harvested, this past week we cooked all the meat we got off of the deer. Monday or Tuesday me and dad grilled the back strap. The way we did this back strap was take and put A1 steak sauce on them, and then take and put McCormick steak seasoning on them.
Then Friday we cooked the two tenderloins on a smoker with two Boston butts we were cooking for a party. With these tenderloins we pulled them out of the cooler and threw straight on the grill. We cooked these tenderloins over charcoal at about 230 degrees. These tenderloins were off of a younger deer which would typically mean that the meat would be more tender. But with these tenderloins we cooked them a little bit too long which made them a little bit tougher than usual, but they still turned out good. On Saturday I had went down to our cabin to check the fire and saw that we still had two deer hams left from that deer that dad had shot. So we decided to take those two deer hams and put them on the grill/smoker. We started a small fire to get some coals going to start the Big Green egg coals we were using to give it a smokier flavor. After we got the coals going we put the hams on the grill about 11:00 o'clock with the smoker temperature being around 215 degrees to around 250 degrees. After about two hours I flipped the hams so they would get cooked evenly on both sides. To give the hams flavor we make our own dip which consists of multiple ingredients. This dip is a vinegar based dip. We use white vinegar for the base and then add Texas Pete, black pepper, chili powder and many other ingredients. At about eight o'clock, around nine hours later I went and took the hams off the grill to let them cool off. They turned out super tender, proving low and slow is the best way to smoke meat. This is week eight of the genius hour project, which means that there are only FOUR weeks left. This being said it means the project isn't far from being over and everybody presenting. Now on to the project. This weeks practice started out a little rough first with rain pushing my practice back two days and leaving the yard swampy and muddy in low spots, secondly, with my gun not properly loading a shell into the gun. What the gun would do is, is fire but since firing causes grime build up from the spark igniting, it made the receiver not want to function properly. So whenever I would fire the shell wouldn't eject and I would manually have to open the receiver, eject the shell, then allow the receiver to grab another shell and load it into the gun. So after this happened i decided to call it a day and clean the gun. After cleaning the gun I then proceeded the next day to resume practice with a properly functioning gun. In this practice my goal was to consecutively hit twenty-five clays. I figured twenty-five was a good number because in a standard box of shells there are 25 shells. After missing two of the clays i Figured that would good practice for the week. That's it for this weeks practice now lets talk about self harvested food. 250 This weekend was opening weekend for rifle season in Davie County, we mainly hunt rifle with rifles so when the season was in I got excited. Yesterday was the first day so we went yesterday morning, I saw seven deer but they were too small too shoot and its still early season, and we have big bucks on camera. So with these deer being here we want to try and wait. Only thing is... you cant eat the horns. So me and my dad went back this afternoon to the place where this deer is. We had been sitting a few hours when some deer started to move. Finally at almost dark one good one presented a shot so he took it. After harvesting this deer we brought it back to skin it and take the meat. Out of this deer we got the back strap, tenderloins, and hams. Above is the meat from the deer. As shown you can see the shoulder and back strap.
This week is week seven of Genius hour, which means that we are over half way through this big project. So far this project taught me more than what i had just planned on. This project has helped me learn to type better and more efficient, and also taught me more about time management and how you shouldn't wait until the last day to try and do something or to turn it in. I hope everyone is happy with how their projects are turning out and they are learning new things everyday. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence. Over the past few weeks I have learned that you should build upon your mistakes and acquire more knowledge from what you messed up on or did wrong. Also if you are persistent with what you are doing with your project you will succeed at what you are striving for, if you are not making mistakes and not having hard times then you must not have tried to do something very hard. If you make mistakes and overcome them you are learning something whether it be vital to your project or if it is overcoming something in everyday life. Only you can over come the hurdles in you life because everybody isn't always gonna be there to do it for you.
Now onto some project related stuff, This week I wanted to try and hit 25 out of 25 or close to it. Only having three shells in the gun at once wasn't starting to become a hassle when after three shots you would have to reload, so in order to be able to hold more shells I had to remove the plug from the gun. What is the plug you might ask? The plug or a magazine plug, usually made of plastic or wood, is inserted in the tubular magazine and limits the number of shells a shotgun may hold. Taking this out allows me to insert four shells into the magazine instead of only two which allows me to hold five shells instead of three. Welcome back to week six everybody we have hit the half way way point and are in the last half. I hope everyone's week has been going good and I hope the same for your projects. This past week has kept me busy and non stop going, which sadly means i didn't get to practice! But I should have some more recipes coming up before too much longer due to the fact that deer season has come back in and I have been in the woods morning and afternoon for the past two days trying to get a deer.
Well... until next week! I hope everyone has a good week and is able to get some work in. Blog Post #5
It is week five of this genius hour project which means were getting close to the half way point of the project. I hope everyone's projects are going good and everyone is learning new stuff about what they are doing, I know this project has helped me greatly on learning to shoot a shotgun better. On week 3's blog post I said on week five I wanted to try and hit 12 out of the 15 thrown. Seeing how its week five I guess i should say the results. This weeks practice I was able to hit 15 out of the 15 thrown! With this being said I guess I need to set my goals higher and try and hit the 20 out of 20 which is what you are aiming to shoot in competition. The way you are scored in competition is, each bird (clay) is worth 10 points each a 200 is a perfect score and means that you hit all 20 of the birds thrown. This is not always an easy task, it all depends on if you are comfortable with the gun, you have practiced, and how well you can perform under pressure in front of a crowd of people. Weather, like most other sports plays a major role in how well you can perform, rain, wind, snow, it all plays a major part in how you perform. Cleaning your gun also plays a big task in whether or not your gun can perform at its highest potential and whether or not your shot pattern will stay relatively the same, and if your gun will fire and cycle like it should. Until next week hope everyone's project goes well. "A Hunt based only on Trophies Taken Falls Far Short Of What the Ultimate Goal Should Be" -Fred Bear
All shotguns have some of the same basic components. Starting from the end nearest to the shooter, there's often a stock that allows you to steady it against your shoulder muscles. Some manufacturers put a recoil pad at the end of the stock to help dampen the kick you feel when you fire it. There are some shotguns, usually "assault" or home defense style, that have foldaway stocks or no stock at all. Moving forward from the stock, you'll find all of the parts associated with firing. This includes the trigger that connects to the sear and hammer. Some shotguns have a pistol grip that extends downward below the trigger.The hammer activates the bolt assembly and firing pin, which rests against the cartridge to be fired. Now we're at the chamber, where the loading, unloading and firing happens. The chamber can be accessible from the side or the top. Connecting to the chamber is the barrel, which is the long tube that the ammo travels through as it leaves the gun. Some shotguns have a magazine connected to the chamber -- this may take the form of a second, shorter tube below the barrel or else a drum or rectangular cartridge that snaps into the barrel. There may also be a fore-end (a sliding handle widely known as a pump) attached to the shorter tube, which is used to partially automate the loading and unloading process. On the top of the barrel, you'll often find a bump that's used as a crude sight. All shotguns have some of the same basic components. Starting from the end nearest to the shooter, there's often a stock that allows you to steady it against your shoulder muscles. Some manufacturers put a recoil pad at the end of the stock to help dampen the kick you feel when you fire it. There are some shotguns, usually "assault" style, that have foldaway stocks or no stock at all. Moving forward from the stock, you'll find all of the parts associated with firing. This includes the trigger that connects to the sear and hammer. Some shotguns have a pistol grip that extends downward below the trigger. The hammer activates the bolt assembly and firing pin, which rests against the cartridge to be fired. Now we're at the chamber, where the loading, unloading and firing happens. The chamber can be accessible from the side or the top. Connecting to the chamber is the barrel, which is the long tube that the ammo travels through as it leaves the gun. Some shotguns have a magazine connected to the chamber -- this may take the form of a second, shorter tube below the barrel or else a drum or rectangular cartridge that snaps into the barrel. There may also be a fore-end (a sliding handle colloquially known as a pump) attached to the shorter tube, which is used to partially automate the loading and unloading process. On the top of the barrel, you'll often find a bump that's used as a crude sight. |
AuthorI started shooting clays 3-4 years ago and hunting for my own food around 5-6 years ago. |