ooo,ooo! i have a funny beaver story! i inherited a beaver jacket from my sister. mom had bought it for me, gave it to her, she willed it to me. dsis had put a lining in it because it came without. i wanted to get it cleaned and went to a well known dallas furrier. i showed him the jacket and said i wanted to get it cleaned and/or trade it in on a new one possibly. he asked me how much i paid for it, and i said 35. he said they were going for 4 now so 3500 was a good buy! thirty-five hundred, o, i know i screamed. no, 35 dollars! it didn't have a lining!

LOL my little guy is going to grace the bedroom wall.. I can look at it with wonder every single night.. (wonder what on earth possed him to buy this for ME?)

my sister and her husband have Syd hanging in their living room - Syd is the butt end of a white tail dear - the butt opening is the mouth - the white tail hangs down like a beard and the taxidermist created a nose, eyes and ears for the thing - it's really quite clever art work. They also have wolf, beaver, mink and other pelts hanging on the door frames from room to room along with two bear mounts and mounted fish on the wall. They love the north woods.

We're not the woodsy kind at our house. The boyfriend comes from Denmark, where there are very few hunters and gun control laws are very stringent. So, naturally, being a science and computer geek, he doesn't go in for the great outdoors, except our jet boat and watching cars on Top Gear. However, one of his colleagues travels all over the world to hunt. A couple months ago, he went up near the arctic circle on a polar bear hunt. (The locals say the bears aren't nearly as close to extinction as we're led to believe. I dunno.) Anyway, he's done very well with the company he owns on the side and the cattle he raises, some of which are used in the state rodeo, so he goes somewhere one or two times a year on these hunts. They added a wing on their house a couple years ago, which is basically a long 2-story hall, with an open apartment on the far end for entertaining or overnight guests. When we were there last, the walls were about 1/3 full, and he said that they only had half of his collection up, because the other half still hadn't made it into the country. He's got the head of a 3000 pound animal over here, an full stuffed mountain goat over in the corner, an antelope over there, and all these other various heads. It's AMAZING, but I think it'd be a little creepy to live there & walk around in there at night. :)

a little? just a little???

no offense to anyone on here, but i am totally anti-hunting. my own daughter went out with her bf and she shot a wild boar, right between the eyes. later, she dressed it herself. she said the boar charged her so it was him or her. i said she should have stayed out of HIS house and he would have left her alone. no excuse.

I'm not into hunting either - however I've been known to stand on the dining room chair in my nightie and use my air rifle to pluck rabbits through the window that our in the back yard chewing up my garden. With all the leash laws in the community the dogs and cats that used to roam are no longer able to keep the rabbits away. I learned how to shoot a gun when I was a little kid and had gun safety training when I was in the sixth grade - I hunted deer a few years after that and got a few and ended up with buck fever in the long run and quit hunting. I appreciate and respect parents that teach their kids the right way about guns and safety. When my son was young and wanted a BB gun he had to learn the rules of gun safety before he could get one and the biggest rule was he couldn't aim his toy guns at people - if he did then he was grounded from his toy for ten days and he would have to wait that much longer to get a BB gun - SAFETY FIRST.

I'm not into hunting myself either, but I have a great respect for people who hunt. I kept Dusty away form all guns, except squirt guns that looked nothing like a real gun, until he was 8, when he was old enough to understand the gravity and responsibility that comes with them. We got him a pellet rifle then, and if he ever picked it up, it had to go straight outside. I told him if I ever saw him point it at a person, he'd never see it again. It was never a problem. (Yes, I was a strict, mean mommy.) He's been hunting a few times, but only with the one person I trusted to teach him safety, responsibility, and respect for the environment he was going into.

My dad was a helicopter sniper in Vietnam, and we always had guns in the house growing up, but I was never even curious about them. Dad told me I had to know how to handle one, when I was in my early teens, so I learned to shoot a big bad a** military style rifle, then never had any desire to be that close to one again. My ex-husband bought a Glock when Dusty was a toddler, but I wouldn't let him bring it in the house or flash it around because of Dusty. He had to have it, then only ever shot it twice.

We have guns. I taught my boys early on ..we had an x marine teach them all aspects of safety. As a single mom of teens it was easy to take them out and shoot cans, watermellons stuff like that. My daughter learned at 8 with my .357 mag no one hunts in my immediate family but everyone enjoys shooting. My daughter was in the army guess she was always comfortable with guns. We moved here and I saw my neighbor walking by so I said Hi! introduced myself he had to move his gun to his other hand to say hi. Target practice. He also practices bow shooting in the front yard a few times a week. I have always worked with wildlife rescue from raising squirrels, to baby birds then onto cats and dogs. I love critters.. running around in their own habitat. I have no issue with fishing though. its a ... fish.

Went to the farmers market today after clinic it wasnt too hot which was good. Took the man to the dam to fish and will head out in a bit to go pick him up. Sure hope he is ready as the brat needs a nap or she will be cranky!

OK now, you folks are being entirely too quiet about the swap in here! Still got 2 participants MIA.

So, I'd like to know all you active people's suggestions on a due date for the next swap. I was thinking about it & if I leave sign ups open 30 days & then give 60 days from then for the shipping deadline, that puts us in October. Would that work for everyone?