Sausage time is here again

 You might remember that in last year's hunting round up I talked about sausage day. Sausage day 2021 was last Saturday.

We started with about 180 pounds of venison

Then added about 30 pounds of pork fat. You have to add fat to the venison or the meat will dry out and taste terrible. We used fat back so the first half hour is spent taking the skin off the fat. Everything gets ground once separately, then the fat and venison get mixed together, spices added and mixed and then ground again. We use a medium grind which leaves the sausage with a little more chew to it.

We have a little bowl that scoops just about one pound at a time which we pack into 1 quart ziplock bags. Thats what I spend most of my time doing. I don't know why that has become my job but apparently I'm pretty good at it.

This year's take was supposed to be split 8 ways but one guy didn't want his share, he had too much meat in the freezer already. Split 7 ways we ended up with 32 pounds apiece with a few pounds left over to give to some landowners who had helped us out during the season. Giving back to the landowners is an important part of hunting.

Considering I didn't take any deer at all in 2020 it was nice to come home with sausage. That's one of the nice things about hunting with a group...

Gunsmithing

 

This is the lock on my Tradegun. Take a look at where the flash hole into the barrel is. See how far forward it is in relation to the pan? The gun doesn't fire well, it'll go off sometimes but really just when it feels like it.

Previously sometimes it wouldn't even flash but I polished the frizzen which had a big gouge in it and also polished the pan. I'm kind of proud about how the pan came out, its really smooth. That made a big difference in getting the priming powder to go off but didn't really help the gun to fire.

So I decided the barrel needed to be better aligned with the bottom of the pan. This is kind of a big ask, either the barrel needed to move back or the lock needed to move forward. I decided it would be easier to move the barrel back, the inletting is less complicated and it won't leave as obvious gaps.

I don't have any pictures of the work in progress but I used my Proxxon rotary tool with a variety of milling bits to take out wood a little bit at a time. A lot of what I took out actually appears to be epoxy. It looks like the original builder of this gun might have moved the barrel forward, for what purpose I have no idea...

Here's where we're at. Notice how the touch hole is much more centered. I ended up taking out way too much material from behind the barrel but I've got barrel bedding epoxy I can use to fill in the gaps. I did that when I fitted the new stock onto my .300 Savage and that's held up perfectly. I kind of want to shoot the gun before I do the reinforcement but I don't want the recoil to break the stock. I might go fire a couple shots with just a powder charge and a wad to hold it in. If it'll go off reliably I'll know that my changes did the trick.

Spring on the horizon

 Here it is the first of March, the days are getting longer and the temperature is rising in north central MA. With days above freezing the snow is rapidly melting and, as there is no real freeze in sight the season of grooming snowmobile trails is rapidly coming to a close.

This Tucker Sno-Cat has spent the season grooming the Ware river rail trail. We call this one the "Southern Tucker" because, until recently, it groomed Rutland State park at the southern end of our trail system. This year it was technically the Northern Tucker and the Northern Tucker moved to the south. I don't know why, I don't dare ask. You might remember my writing about the Northern Tucker a few years ago.

Anyway Chris has been running the machine but last Saturday he was going to be away and since we figured the trails would close soon Ben and I took it south so it will be easier to haul to it's summer home.

Like the Northern Tucker this machine has a Cummins 6BT, back in 2019 I wrote that the other machine had 135hp and I don't guess that this one would be any different. I did find that this one has Dana 70 axles (70 is stamped right into the case), interestingly the rear one is upside down but I guess that makes sense since the engine and transmission are mounted backwards. Remember the machine has two rear axles since it steers by pivoting the axles, the machine doesn't articulate, the axles do.

Like the Northern the Southern Tucker has suffered the neglect of "Its not really my machine" from its operators. The first thing I noticed when I got in the cab is how badly it smells. When I took over the ASV the very first thing I did was to clean out every mouse nest I could find and then scrub every surface with Simple Green cleaner. For the summer I put small squares of denim, soaked with peppermint oil inside the cab, it seems to work, the machine smells much better. I mentioned to Ben that I've put them in his machine too, it also smells better. "Keep it up!" he told me. He's lucky to park next to me, I happened to have an extra square and he benefits...

Running a Tucker is interesting when you're used to a fully hydrostatic 2 track machine. Tucker uses a conventional automatic transmission so you feel it shift. The machine also creeps when it's in gear which the ASV and Pisten Bully don't do. 

The rear two wheels on the rear driver's track show an all too common problem. They're urethane coated and the coating is falling off. This is at the end of our trip, there was more rubber on there at the beginning. We spend an inordinate amount of money on tracks and wheels on the two Tuckers the club owns. In fact this is the first year I've been hanging around with these guys that we haven't had to at least repair a track...