Brick Fight

I carry a Mk. 23 and inflatable decoys in my image.

It's really ambitious. I hope the best for it. I'm playing assloads of Stardew Valley right now. It basically takes SNES Harvest Moon and expands it by adding tons of new features, combat sections, and removes Harvest Moon's being able to miss objects. It's relaxing and addictive. This is all keeping me occupied before The Division. I played three of the betas for it, and I really like what they're doing. The Dark Zone is a really neat idea for PvP, and our group ate up Borderlands so the PvE co-op is getting us right away. I think they balanced the shooter mechanics with RPG number games well, and I just hope it stays interesting to play.

The Amish here all called "Pennsylvania Dutch." So everyone assumed they were Dutch. Then other people came out with "They're German, because we confused 'Deutsch' with 'Dutch.'" Then, if you go and try to speak German to some Amish, they'll talk back in either Dutch, German, Swiss, or some weird combination of any three. Then it's out that Pennsylvania Dutch just means actual Dutch, and we've just been extending it to mean Germanic Pennsylvanians (Non-Amish too). It's weird.

Hunting seems like the solution for the immediate local problem. Get them off of farmland, cull local populations, etc. The problem is that indiscriminate (in the sense of hunting in a way that doesn't target long-term population control) killing creates a problem in that you're not really targeting their breeding or their overall population. So I've been reading about their introduction into the wild. Several different species of hog were transferred to the wild, but the most famous one that we're talking about is the Eurasian boar. The term "boar" may be misleading, as we normally think of the armored tanks hiding deep in the jungle when these guys share more with domesticated pigs than anything. They've been introduced into the wild intentionally and unintentionally for over 100 years (It's been illegal to do so for several decades). They breed early, quickly, and often, with roaming adult males mating with "communes" of females. The more I read about the issue, the more law enforcement might be one of the most important parts to keep people from illegally releasing the animals. So the problem with the aerial hunting on my end is that unless they're specifically targeting to reduce the numbers, it seems like wasted effort and resources until I'm proven otherwise. There are ways of controlling this type of thing, like introducing reproductive suppression or territoriality.

Apparently this is why baying the hogs is becoming illegal in certain areas. They've killed and maimed lots of dogs.

I think framing what we perceive of the subject helps, because several different people are going to look at "aerial automatic hunting" and are each going to envision it in several different ways. Someone may think about the heli scene from Full Metal Jacket, just some guy firing indiscriminately at groups of animals. Other people may be seeing it as someone carefully putting the rounds down on individual targets with degrees of success. I've been watching videos, looking up different methods, and checking on businesses that hire out their services and do hunting tourism, and haven't made up my mind on what the trends point to.

Go for it. Wanna talk about guns in gun thread.

Should probably move this to the zoology section.

I love PA, but fuck we need better food here.

Eh, I just want one. Seeing Fury Road for the first time the other day probably had something to do with that.

I think at this point The Republicans are doing damage control. Best case scenario, they can kick out Trump in the convention and he doesn't run independent. Anything else is just damage control

I'm buying an SKS tomorrow, I think. It's a Zastava M59/66 with all of the grenade launching attachments. Kinda tired of not having one.

Haven't read anything on it, I'll take a look. I've only heard of it in the sense of shooting endangered species, and people performing illegal actions to introduce problematic animals to different areas. I was saying it was illegal to translocate them, as in moving them in order to make it worse. It's not a method to fix a problem, it's a method to intentionally make it worse. And if you make peace with the ethic points, that's fine. It's just something we disagree on until I see evidence that automatic aerial hunting specifically has been an overall useful part of the conservation effort.

The problem on the ethical side is the assumption that automatic means more effective. I don't have any real data to prove it being more effective, but anecdoatally If I said "automatic hunting" to my drinking buddy Game Commisioner next door, he'd start raving about all of the angry, bullet-riddled animals from semi-auto he's had to deal with here (illegal in PA, mind you) and at his previous job in Utah. Animals aren't guaranteed to go down just because a bunch of bullets hit them. That, and it's a big part of tourism hunting, which through no instance can I recall it ever having been a positive influence anywhere in the world, especially since there are cases of illegally translocating these animals for hunting purposes. Until I see that automatic aerial hunting is as efficient, or more, than what wildlife agencies recommend, it can be an overall hindrance to efforts.

I don't understand what your reasoning is, here. He never said either of those things excluded each other, and has some reasonable points that different hunting methods are better than others. I did some reading on this years ago when I first heard about it, and these are the methods I've read about specifically: Snaring and trapping: Argued by the Texas Animal Damage Control Service as the most effective methods that account for over half of the culling of the boar population. At this point, it seems to be property owners' preferred method due to effectiveness. Fencing: There's no way to measure effectiveness that I've seen carried out on this, but there are suggested fencing techniques that seem to work. This is one of those "Evidence of absense" cases until someone compares properly fenced property to non. This one obviously carried logistical nightmares due to terrain and land size, too. This has an added effect though of keeping farm hogs on farms, as one of the most common cited reasons for their stable-to-growing populations are escaped pigs (the other being illegally introducing them to new environments). Aerial Hunting: Still debated on its usefulness. It's seen as a way of monitoring herds and being able to give chase, but killing an animal is really hard, and flying a plane/helicopter to allow for accurate shooting is really hard. The former requires a well-placed shot, and as any GC will tell you, there are animals that you can pump rounds into all day and not reduce their lifespan too much. Flying a plane carries the same restrictions as it always does vis a vis weather, lack of vision in dense terrain, and requiring ground parties to coordinate with. Then there's the issue of flying well enough to not freak out a pack or being able to give someone a good enough shot (which is why they seem to recommend things like shotgun slugs over any other kind of weaponry). The TADC puts this as much less effective than trapping and snaring, and more useful than traditional hunting or baying. Poisoning: Currently, there are no approved methods of poisoning hogs. Some methods are being trialed while certain chemicals are being tested and developed. The most promising methods involve taking advantage of their digging instincts to poison things like potatoes to specifically target the hogs. Hunting itself is apparently not helping the overall problem greatly. There's nothing to say it hasn't helped individuals protect their property by diverting the population, but what I've read says hunting needs to cull around 50-70 percent of the hog population per year to properly address the problem, but hunting has overall done around maybe 20% per year. It's not ineffective, but it's obviously not the single solution. There are low-cost, high-payout options in animal population control that can result in a better long-term solution. Hell, Kansas and Arkansas outlawed forms of hog hunting due to cases of people illegally introducing more of these hogs into the environment.

I think I retire from peep-sights that aren't raised in some fashion. Being right-handed but left-eye dominant is not good times with those. It's why I'm not particularly a fan of my Mauser's incredibly fine sights, either.

This is what a lot of people don't understand about tone management. You can't keep up intense tone over a long period of time and not turn off most people out there. It becomes absolutely tiresome to the average person who can forget to just come home and care. When anger is the new hotness, you can get those people who will be angry when they are introduced to it. Maintaining rage like that is just fucking hard when you've got so many other things to do, and are a well-rounded human being. The right-wing media and poltical machines are being eaten alive by their own Bush-era monsters right now. They thought there'd be no way their angry supporters would stop Freeping and sitting mad in their houses. Then they start fights with the FBI, elect people outside the party comfort zone, and change the prominent right-wing discussion to disastrous things like 6 page budgets and 10% flat tax. The Dems ran into this with trying to appeal to both young liberals and the old Southern racists, which irrevocably changed the party in the '60s.

I think it was Rand Paul's folk who tried to get his supporters in delegate positions to shift things in his favor years back.

Been researching the nomination process for the Republican party. Apparently they can veto a Trump nomination if he has less than 50% of the vote. I'm guessing this is why Carson/Rubio/Cruz are still in despite all. If they left, their voters could go Trump, but if they stay, that's less delegates for Donald.

Me saying simply only saying billionaire was intentional.

Oh, definitely. The man is a billionaire and had a massively successful show for reasons. I think his run is a huge joke, and is most likely a media stunt for his own sake. I was just talking about the media's hand in this. Trump appeals to a very visceral part of the US Voter's mind. He doesn't dance around anything, he gossips like a motherfucker, he doesn't play anything close to his chest. When someone asks a question, by god he gives them an answer, even if it's shit he makes up right there.

I have a problem period with rich hunters blowing out windows and killing pets in our neighborhood while I was growing up.

It's funny, if a little frightening to see how unstoppable Trump is, despite having the obvious weaknesses in pure statistics. Someone like Trump rarely gets this far. For years, both sides of the media love to wheel out nutbags that their base would hate or love, but are safely powerless. They're usually 100% harmless to the political machine at worst, and good at keeping a small devoted base at best. Trump was shown on Fox as a hero speaking against "political correctness" and liberal media outlets showed him as an example of why their base should continue to hate Republicans. He became a ratings booster, and the media helped legitimize him to their own ends. He wasn't taken seriously, but then the Republicans fucked up hard. Their penchant for having massive primary races that were being used to gain media exposure for the candidates' careers backfired. All of a sudden, running a 20-30% poll might help a candidate win because he's up against two "frontrunners" who are polling 20% range, and a shitload of others polling a cumulative 20-30%. The media is still going: "It's happened with people like Palin and the weird Pizza Guy who want to sell themselves, but they all eventually bow out. They're unelectable and the party structure doesn't want them, so let's run a reality show for ratings. We've done it with weird little outsiders before, but mostly just jabs here and there to make it interesting. Surely one of the sixteen nominees taking votes away from Rubio/Cruz will bow out eventually. They'll show sense and realize that even their single digit polls will send their party to ruin by helping Trump, right?..." *Trump wins some states with less % than Bernie Sanders* "....right?" It was a perfect storm of bad Republican decisions and their media circus that created a viability in Trump. I don't think the media can do much more to fix it at this point. Even Fox is just trying not to mention him while retaining their viewership. The ball is in the Republican leadership court. They've got to pick Rubio or Cruz, and cut the rest of the chaff completely if they want a chance of salvaging the situation.

Doesn't the Johnson rifle also share one or two minor features with the AR-15 or AR-10? edit: Looked it up, all I could find was the barrel.