By: Bears Butt

As dawn once again cracks the night sky, Sir Butt and Something find themselves in a very nice and secluded shelter surrounded by several clear and cold flowing streams. Something needs to be unteathered and so nestles his nose against Sir Butt’s cheek and gives him a push!

“Whaaa”! Exclaims Sir Butt in a startled and half awake voice. “Oh, it’s you Something! You must need to go”!

And up jumps Sir Butt to unteather Something.

Sir Butt then goes about his business and prepares himself a hot cup of tea, reusing yesterdays grounds for added flavor!

Before long, Something comes wandering back into the shelter of the tree canopy where they spent the night. It’s such a beautiful spot that they found for their nights stay.
Sir Butt spends almost all his time out searching for the nasty evils that are found here and their across the land of Common Ground. With his vigilance, there aren’t as many dragons as there have been in the past, but still enough of a presence that travelers fear they will encounter one as they go from their Point A to their Point B and they are all very pleased with the work Sir Butt has done to keep them safe.

Sir Butt realizes this and is more than happy to continue to travel and make safe the passages without pay.

As Sir Butt and Something begin their travel for this day, they hear running foot steps pounding the ground coming their way! Not knowing what the danger might be, Sir Butt draws Cache from His Account and sits upright on the back of Something, waiting for the danger to present itself.

—————————-

Please visit again soon for the continuing of this story!  Thanks!

Bears Butt

July 31, 2015

Written on July 31st, 2015 , Sir Butt
By: Bears Butt

SirButt

Sir Butt lives in the land called Common Land and travels from point A to point B, rarely stopping for more than just a few days at any one place.  His travels takes him through some of the most horrid of places inhabited by biting dragon flies and full grown fire breathing dragons!  He is constantly on alert as some of these beasts will hide with utmost skill and pounce on unsuspecting victims before they can even utter an amazed breath.

Sir Butt has some items always with him!  His sword called “Cache”, the sheath that Cache is stored in is called “His Account” and his trusty steed, always found between his legs when traveling,  “Something” and of course his shield made of pure silver and decorated with his name sake and year of commission.  Sir Butt!

For the mountain man rendezvous this year (2015), myself, Bears Butt, was asked by the Booshway if I could contact Sir Butt and find out if he was planning on making a visit to our fun and frolic event!  I have contacted him and he told me he wouldn’t miss it for the world and that he would be watching from “afar”, but would make a visit into camp sometime around dark on the Friday of the camp.  This will be wonderful!  I have never met him and I’m always away from the fire when he has come to visit in the past.  Maybe this year will be the year I get to actually see him.

As I understand it, Sir Butt comes to us with a great message each year and this year should not be anything less.  He is, as he says, “The all knowledgeable one”!  Words of wisdom come from people like him….most are dead…but none the less, we shall see (or rather hear).

In preparation for this event, I must remind you all that whenever Sir Butt takes his sword from its sheath there is certain reasons for concern!  He doesn’t do it just for fun.  Dangers are present and with Something always ready to jump into the action, he will charge forth with vigor and swing a stinging death upon the creatures in wait.

Some of you are very familiar with Sir Butt, some are not.  I encourage you to read the stories about Sir Butt in the category to the right and make yourselves familiar with this character of characters, the all knowledgable one.  The one with a singing voice only a mother could love.  But a brave sole his whole country loves with all their hearts.  And he enjoys his travels from one point to another to enjoy a festive drink of Ale from the center of town.

Bears Butt

July 30, 2015

 

Written on July 30th, 2015 , Sir Butt
By: Bears Butt

Jerky

To say I’m getting excited for the upcoming hunting season is sort of a joke.  You know when the excitement is getting the best of me when you see me pull out some ground venison from last years hunt and begin the task of seasoning and salting it in preparation to make jerky (see my recipe in the recipe category to the right of your screen).  Well, as usual I’m always trying to improve or invent something better and this year was no different.

I had loaded up the dehydrator with 5 1/2 pounds of my delicious concoction and still had a full 8 ounces of jerky meat still in the bowl.  My mind went into overtime to think of how I was going to make this raw meat into jerky….AH HA!  I’ll make some pemmican!

What’s pemmican?  (In true mountain man lingo)  Wall sunny, lit me till ya.  Pemmican is a mix of raw meat frum a buffler er other four legged critter an sum dried fruit what’s found in the hills.  Sum like wild berries and sum like wild plums.  After the fruit is dried it is pounded up reel gud and made inta a powder.  That there powder gits mixed wit the raw meat reel gud and then the whole kibuddle gits dried same as other jerky.  Whin it’s all done dried up an ya eats sum it is reel gud with fruit and meat flavors blended tagither.  Sort a like eatin Christmas candy.

Well, I went in search of some dried fruits laying around the house.  Trouble is, at my house we ain’t got no dried fruits.  The bananas either get made into cookies or cake before they get dried enough to make into powder, or they get thrown out because of the sticky mess dripping down off the counter top.  Other fruits find the same fate when the flies are more numerous than the fruit itself.  I looked everywhere hoping to even find some raisins but none could be found.  My hopes were just about dashed when suddenly my eyes fell upon a box of Black Forest brand fruit snacks made with Real Fruit Juice with juicy burst centers!  I took a package out and opened it up….six little fruit wonders fell onto the counter.  These ought to work.

I got two more packs out of the box and proceeded to cut them up into small pieces.  The gooey centers made quite a mess on the cutting board and as the pieces got smaller they were really hard to cut up but eventually I had a small pile of the sticky little guys sitting there.  I poked and pried them off the wood cutting board and into the bowl with the meat.  Mixing by hand I tried my best to get the meat and the jelly pieces to blend together, but like common ends of two magnets they did not like each other.  So, what now?

I decided I would make little hand mashed rounds out of the meat and placed each one on a cookie sheet.  Then I took the little pieces of fruities and pushed them into the meat rounds.  They looked very similar to M and M cookies only raw.  When I had all the meat used up and on the cookie sheet, I popped them into the oven at “warm”.  I, being the smartest of cooks I know, also placed a thermometer in the oven to make sure the jerky got up to 160 degrees (F), propped the oven door open with a wooden spoon and walked away.  About 30 minutes later I peeked in to check the temperature…I was surprised to see it only about 120…So I “up’ed” the temp…On my oven setting it was set at 200 degrees.  That should do it and I walked away.  30 minutes or so later I came back and checked the temperature….again surprised it only read 130…I up’ed it again…240 this time.

Well, time got away from me and it was nearly an hour later when I went to check the temperature and wholy mholy it was 180!  The juicy little sprinkles were melted all over the cookie sheet around each of the meat rounds…NOT what I expected.  Well, what is done is done and I left it all there to finish drying but not before I turned the temp down just a tad.

Just before bedtime I turned off the oven and pulled out the cookie sheet.  There sat 7 little dried up rounds of jerky meat with some color splashed here and there in each one of them.  Had I done this back in the 1700 or 1800’s I would have been the laughing stock of the whole tribe.  Not only because it was womens work to make the jerky and pemmican, but also for my fool hearty attempt at putting fake berries in my pemmican.

Well, the next day, I found myself traveling into the woods with Weasel and Squirrel.  I gave them a condensed version of what I just told you about (well, perhaps they got a longer version of it) and then asked if they would like to be the Guinea Pigs to test it…..they both said they would give it a go.  I had only brought one of the seven rounds with me and so I tried to split it 3 ways.  It was very sticky on the outside as the sugary mess had poured out of the little beads of melted fruities and bubbled its way out of the meat like small volcanos spewing molten lava and it ran all down and around the meat leaving the sugar coating the little rounds and no way of touching it without getting it on your fingers….definitely finger licking stuff.

After eating our small portions we all agreed they were not worth making any more of them.  Pemmican it was not.  AND, you will not see a recipe in my recipe category about this.  I’m putting this one in a generic category.

Bears Butt

July 27, 2015

Written on July 27th, 2015 , Uncategorized
By: Bears Butt

trailcamera

Headed for the hills today to move Weasels trail camera.  He had high hopes of putting it on what we call Grass Meadow to catch unsuspecting deer and elk that are using that area.  But!  Bears Butt has had just a little too much photo interpretation under his belt over the years and went in search of “water”.  At about 10 a.m. this morning, Bears Butt thought he had discovered a water hole in the hunting area and not too far from where Weasel had his trail camera.  I called him immediately!

Ring!  Ring!  Ring!….Hey!  Weasel, I’ve found water!…..I’ll turn around and come right back!

As it were, he had just left his home and wasn’t even a mile away when I called him and was back to my place to look at what I had found within a minute.  He agreed it sure looked like a water hole!

I asked, can I go?  YES!

And so off we went!  Our travels took us up Blacksmith Fork Canyon and I remind you about the Beaver Tree back when the turkey hunt was going on!  Remember?

BeaverChew

Well, nothing stays the same for long and now it looks like this:

TheBeaverTree

It appears the wind decided it was not safe to continue to stand!

On our way I saw a doe on a private ranch, but that was the only critter we saw except for a weasel crossing the road and a few squirrels.  It was a hotter day than it was yesterday but still nice when you get up in the mountains.

We also saw this on our way:

SpencerThisWay

A sign alongside the road directing “Spencer” to the camp!  Spencer must always be late to camp because this sign has been used a whole bunch.  Made of metal and all!  And then a little farther up the road this sign greeted us:

SpencerGoBack

We had a great laugh over that!

Continuing on our way, we made it to where Weasel’s trail camera was securely held and took it down for the move.  His plan:  I’ll take it to the water hole and put it there IF there is in fact a water hole where you saw what looked like water, otherwise I’ll put it in grassy meadow like I had planned.

Off we went up the “no trail land” up and over the hill ahead, down the ravine and up a very wide trail leading us to near where the water hole should be.  It didn’t take too long and Weasel was looking at his GPS for the water hole coordinates.  We passed it!

So, back we went and then up through the trees in a blind manner hoping to find our lost water hole that may or may not even exist.  We cut a trail made by cattle and decided to follow it.  Perhaps the cattle know where this water hole it.  Within a few hundred yards, there it was!  A water hole!  YEAAA!  But, there was someone elses trail camera looking over the water hole.  We waived and hopefully they get a kick out of our antics.  If not…Tough Crap fella…it’s public land!  At least we didn’t mess with your camera!

Well, we set up Weasels camera a ways down the trail so as to watch a different trail than the other guys camera.  We think we know something he doesn’t but time will tell on that one.

What is nice to know is that there is water where we didn’t think there was any and that the elk and deer are using it regularly!  Weasel has both an elk and a deer tag and hopefully we will be packing out an elk on the bow hunt in 3 weeks!  How would that be?  The excitement is building and life is good!

Bears Butt

July 26, 2015

Written on July 26th, 2015 , Hunting Stories
By: Bears Butt

I often come across quotes from others that intrigue me and so I decided I’d crate a category for those.  My first entry comes from a story titled “Fishing with Ghosts” by Robert Robinson and found in the August 2015 Fur Fish and Game magazine.  Mr. Robinson is talking about going fishing as he is getting older and fishing with ghosts is about people who have gone across the vale that he used to fish with.  He is talking about his own age and that perhaps in his working days he didn’t put his all into it.  His quote:

“Guess I didn’t row hard enough when the Pharaoh wanted to water-ski”!

 

Bears Butt

July 21, 2015

 

Written on July 21st, 2015 , Quotes I like!
By: Bears Butt

2015HayCrop

I guess it wouldn’t be right to just let the hay season go by without saying something about it.  July is not necessarily a month we look forward too, but once the hay is in the barn we are all very glad.  It takes all of us to pull off the hay trick each year and as we age it gets harder and harder.  Not sure what the future is going to look like.  At least we are not still cutting it ourselves like we did when I was in my 20’s, 30’s and early 40’s.  We used the 1948 John Deere tractor (that we still have and use once each year) and the sickle mower that came with it.   A 5 foot cutting swath!  It generally took 3 people to run the job.  One on the tractor, one pushing on the mower blade and one resting in the shade waiting for his turn at the blade job.

It took us at least a week of hard work daylight to dark to get it all cut.  Then Bob would run the power rake and rake it all up before a custom baler guy would come in and bale it.  We could count on about 3 weeks of intensive farm work to get the hay into the barn.  It kept us all together, taught us how to work hard and to complain was not an option….allergies?…no such thing.

As I sit here typing this my wrists are aching from picking up the bales I picked up.  My fingers are sore from the strings of the bales.  My back feels like it has a kink in it that needs to be popped back into place.  My eyes are puffy from the hay chaff, lungs filled with the same stuff and I think if I coughed hard enough I’d spit out a bale of hay.  I have lost 10 pounds just working the past 2 weeks.  And you know what?  I’m the second youngest of us dinosaurs that call this farm ours.

HayIsCutAndRaked

It always looks good as each phase of the job is done.  First cutting, then raking, then baled and finally hauled and the fields cleared and ready for irrigating!

HayLookingEast

Each day we hope and pray nobody gets hurt or worse and I’m certain there have been some closer than we know calls on that one.  So far the worst accident we have had in about 40 years was when Tracker was stacking the wagon and stepped back and off the stack of hay breaking his hip.  That was a bad deal and took him months to heal.  I think he still walks with a slight limp to this day.

And yet the farm still looks good and we continue to do the same things year after year.  I’m not so sure our children want to consume there years with dealing with the farm their entire lives and we are trying to get it sold.  We know deep down in our soles that if we ever do sell it we will kick ourselves in the butts for selling so cheap.

But, as for now, we have a BIG meal planned for this afternoon and the ladies and others have been preparing it for days.  Roast Beef, Roast Pork, Mashed Potatoes with real drippin’s gravy, salads, deserts and lots of beer!  That is the payment for a years worth of work beginning in the late winter with the ditches, fences and assorted stuff that “just happens” during the winter months.  There is always something on the farm that needs attention and always someone willing to step up and take care of it, perhaps reluctantly, but still when something needs to be done we get it done.

During the haying season we are ALWAYS glad to see the last load of hay leave the field…that means the hay season is over and this year that happened this morning.

LastHayBuyersOfSeason

We tied it down the best we could and hope they made it back home with all the hay they left with and no accidents happened.  They had an hours drive down the freeway!

Thank you all for your help through out the year and I sure hope I see you at the “Farm Dinner” today!  A big thank you to the hay buyers who take advantage of a discount per bale by picking up their hay in the field!  It saves us from having to pick it up and then put it into the barn and then pick it up again in the winter to sell it out to someone who couldn’t take advantage of the discount.

Thanks again!

Bears Butt

July 18, 2015

Written on July 18th, 2015 , Uncategorized
By: Bears Butt

BerzBut

A short session in the field last night.  I think I shot about 60 arrows, give or take and then tried 3 at 50 yards.  The first of the 50 yarders hit the bale, the other two went into the dirt…I quickly gave up that shooting for fear of ruining arrows.

But the short game was much like it has been of late.  Muscle building.

July14

All ringie-dingie!  And only two of those outside the black rings!

July14End2

Not bad for an old guy!

My biggest problem now is keeping them consistently grouping like these two ends.  Also, my upper target game needs to come together like the lower one has.

There probably won’t be any more archery posts until after the hay is in the barn.  A big day of raking today, baling begins tomorrow as well as hauling the bales to the barn!

Bears Butt

July 15, 2015

Written on July 15th, 2015 , Archery stuff
By: Bears Butt

BreksGroup

Well, well, well!  Guess who is coming over to archery?  He made a simple trip to the farm to check on something, found me shooting my bow and decided to give it a go!  This group was one of his first ones with my recurve!  Then the next day he showed up at Weasels with a bow he bought used from a guy!  Not sure that was a bow he should have bought, but he did it anyway.  Since then I have not talked to him about bows or anything but I’m sure he is hooked.  There is something rewarding about flinging an arrow down range and actually hitting what you want to hit…instant reward.

Well, the farm has had my time lately and will continue to have it until the hay is in the barn.  These pics are from a couple of short trips to the field with the bow.

July7Group

My practice if two fold:  One, to fling arrows and try to hit what I’m aiming at.  That is a given.  Two, is to get my strength up pulling that 55 pound set of limbs.  I might be doing it wrong, but my strength building is being accomplished by drawing back and holding the bow until I begin to shake.  Then I concentrate on my point of impact and release.  Each time I shoot, it is the same routine.  The last time out I noticed how much easier it was to draw the bow back.

July12End

July12End2

July12End3

Did you happen to notice the middle group is at a different target?  Weasel made a comment the other night about teaching my muscles to only shoot at the lower bale.  I had not thought about that and so I moved over and shot at one of his 3 spot targets which is on the upper bale.  My point of concentration on the 3 spot target is that triangle portion of white between the 3 circles.

Do you like the yellow circle in the single spot target?  Ya, me too, but unfortunately for me it was Weasel who made it all go away.  I can only hope that someday I could actually make a target like that myself.  Until then I’m just happy to be hitting inside the rings (most of the time)….there is still that one haunting arrow in each end that doesn’t want to play with the rest of the arrows (middle target above).

Bears Butt

July 14, 2015

Written on July 14th, 2015 , Archery stuff
By: Bears Butt

Backto8Inch

It’s been a very busy time lately what with the 4th of July stuff going on in town, the farm stuff getting ready for the hay season, visitors camping on the farm and unwanted fishermen hitting the pond etc. etc. etc.  I finally had a moment last night to go down and test out some new arrows Weasel bought me.

We actually did a trade.  I won an arrow rest at one of the Brigham Bowmen 3D events and I certainly don’t need it for my bow.  Weasel could use it on his new bow and so we worked out a deal.  He would buy me 6 new arrows and I would give him the arrow rest I won.  We both win in a situation like this.

When asked what kind of arrows I would like I told him “arrows that could double as target arrows and hunting arrows”.  He studied the books and came up with Gold Tip Warriors as the arrows of choice.

WarriorArrows

These arrows are carbon shafts in 500 spine and they call them 3555’s.  They weigh 7.4 grams per inch and he had them cut to 28 inches.  Then he put inserts in the ends and 100 grain field tips screwed into those.  The object is to shoot an arrow of proper flex (spine) and a field tip weight that is equivalent to a broad head I plan to use while hunting.

I looked at these arrows for several days and wished I could have gotten out to shoot them right away, but that didn’t happen until last night.

I checked my brace height of my string once I had the bow strung and it was still at 8 inches.  8 inches is the mid point of the recommended brace height for my bow.  Not that it is the right brace height, but it works even though it is noisy.

With my first arrow nocked and ready, I was a little bit apprehensive about taking that shot.  I wanted the arrows to fly straight and true, but there is SO much about arrows that I don’t know and SO much more about types of arrow materials, fletching lengths and shapes, grains per inch weight, nocks, inserts, tips and the list goes on and on….it just plain gets crazy trying to figure it all out.  Well, I took a deep breath and drew back the string to anchor.  Concentrating on the yellow circle 20 yards down range I released the string and to my surprise I watched the arrow flying perfectly straight all the way to the target!  No wavering at all!  YES!!!

For the rest of the evening, even though it was a short one for me, the arrows continued to fly straight and true.  They went exactly where they were pointed and even though not always where I wished they would hit, they did fly straight!  Here is one end that made me pretty proud.

July6End1

All in the circle and all looking pretty straight sticking out of the bale.

Later on and just before I got too tired to draw the bow back, I shot this end:

July6

Three in the center all touching one another and the other 3 in the outer rings with one just missing the outer ring by a hair.

I like these arrows!

So for you new arrow shooters out there who have a similar set up to mine….Samik Journey 64 inch bow with 55 pound limbs, drawing about 27 inches….try out some 3555 Gold Tip carbon arrows with a 100 grain tip.  They aren’t too expensive and for me they fly pretty much like darts!

Bears Butt

July 7, 2015

Written on July 7th, 2015 , Archery stuff

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BearsButt.com | Stories, Ramblings & Random Stuff From an Old Mountain Man

Just some of my old stories, new stories, and in general what is going on in my life.