Thank you for the chuckle Phantom. Thank you for stating the obvious 101 Does 101 know the date the first "celebration" was held and who Phil was named after? How about the town and state where it is held? How about the place in that town?
I'll save you the trouble of looking it up on google. Punxsutawney held its first Groundhog Day in the United States in the 1800s. The first official trek to Gobbler's Knob was made on February 2, 1887. It is said that Punxsutawney Phil (the groundhog) was named after King Phillip.
Thinking about Phil always brings back fond memories of the year my hunting buddy and I KILLED 374 IN ONE SEASON here in SW PA. Hunted 3-4 days a week and some Saturdays April thru Oct. Best day was 14 on two farms. Biggest was 22-1/2 pounds in early Oct. That sucker was living under a high voltage tower and eating all year before he decided to stand upright at 435 yrds when it was my turn. I got him mounted! Yep, you read it right. A buddy of mine was a part time taxidermist and when he saw the size of it he pleaded with me to let him mount it. He said he would do it for the price of the mold and materials. I gave him $50 on top of that. He bought the biggest GH mold he could buy and still had to wrap it so the skin fit better. He said he should have bought a beaver mold instead. Great looking mount. It has some clover in it's mouth and another sprig in its paw. Longest shot for me? 872yrds, September, early afternoon, NO wind, no mirage. Two shots. The first threw dirt on him and about twenty minutes later he came back out. Bad move! 6mm/284, Burris 6x18, 75 grn Sierra HP, off a portable bench set up with bags.
The pleasure was all mine, Flyersarebest. Poor Ol' 101 must be getting lonely. Maybe one of these days you can invite him over to Pennsylvania and teach him how real men hunt.
Thanks but no thanks! I'm not lonely at all. Worked in PA a few times. VA in Lebanon. Coast Guard station in Erie. Shot bunker trap at Chubb's place at Dalmatia, too. Damned sure don't need to hunt there. We've got plenty of great hunting right here in good old Missouri. Plus, I'm only 90 minutes from Sparta, home of the GRAND AMERICAN! I would think hunting with Flyers would be like hunting with someone from Texas, he's done it bigger and better than anyone else!
As far as bigger and better? Not true! I know one guy that killed over 400 in one year himself. That 374 number was for two of us. I just didn't have the time to go as much as he did. "Plus, I'm only 90 minutes from Sparta, home of the GRAND AMERICAN!" Now that right there is something to be really proud of. I was within 5 miles of the place once. I think we flew over it on our way to Vegas. Too bad the thousands of shooters that USED to go to the grand don't live 90 minutes from that place in IL. Maybe then they wouldn't get the PATHETIC numbers they have now and you wouldn't have to keep trying to post something positive about a place that you all know sucks. The original post was about a groundhog. From that YOU get to that place in IL. that holds a shoot in August. Quite a stretch. Now, if the Phantom would have posted about elephants then you could have made a lot more sense talking about that place. Since the WSRC is the BIGGEST WHITE ELEPHANT that was ever conceived.
I don't know what it is about this thread, but it's starting to remind me of the Possum Casserole Momma used to whump up every time she'd get mad at us. There was talk about elephants then, too, but it seems to me that they were of the pink variety. It was my brother's fault.
