Mustangs Rule
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2021
- Messages
- 1,178
Two months ago, I got my second knee replacement. I wore my knees out hunting and hiking the steepest country. “Big Steep” has been my specialty and scouting season is always eleven months long.
Trying to avoid surgery, I did all the strengthening exercises for my left knee. Except for steep country I could walk forever, but I wanted to be unlimited and craved again hunting places where gravity kept the crowds away.
Mt left knee surgery went bad from the start.
Because I am old, 78, they did a spinal block instead of general anesthesia. Next, they gave me a non-opioid pain meds, which did not work. I woke up feeling paralyzed from the waist down then went into screaming pain once the nerve block wore off.
I got and used my allotted opioids up in the maximum prescribed burst. It took some nightmare time to get the pain under control till I could kind of sleep, but after came a period of ghoulish weakness.
Getting a near full range of flexibility back after a full knee replacement involves taking advantage of a narrow initial Physical Therapy window before the scar tissue gets stiff. Once the scare tissue forms tough, the knee joint gets stiffer and PT is so much more painful.
Because of so much unnecessary pain, I missed the first week plus of that window. My Physical Therapist, who helped me through my first knee replacement was concerned that I might need to go back under anesthesia and get my new knee scar tissue “cracked” loose and start over. Think hell!
Then things went from bad to worse.
From the “waist down block” and from a pelvic floor contraction due to extreme pain, I could not hold my piss, my feet stayed numb and tingly. Next, from reduced blood circulation other problems were happening.
My Physical Therapist has been great. She talks about what the doctors don’t mention, but is in the fine print when you sign the pre-surgery paperwork.
With a smile, she assured me, that while it might take two months, “everything” will be back to normal, on it’s own, except for the flexibility of my new left knee. I have to earn that myself, with 3 or 4 extremely painfully degrees of bend gained with each PT visit. My home work stretching schedule needs to be unrelenting and is so painful. She said if I did not feel like my knee was breaking, it was not stretching enough.
She suggested that I keep a goal in my head. “Think about still doing something physical that means so much to you especially going into your 80’s, or losing it
I grew up on a dairy farm in Connecticut about 45 minutes from New Haven, home of Winchester. To the north was Hartford, home of Colt. As soon as I got my drivers license at 16. I was visiting their museums and taking factory tours. Winchester and Colt are part of my DNA. I have three of each.
Winchester had their last wave producing fine controlled round feed model 70 rifles in New Haven, Connecticut around the turn of this last century, from late 1990’s to early 2000’s.
During that production window I bought my walnut stocked and beautifully checkered stainless steel Featherweight model 70 in the 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser.
I also got one of the rarest ever Weaver Scopes made in El Paso, Texas. When Weaver went out of business, a former employee started the Weaver Scope Repair Service. His bought out all Weaver stock and he had just one stainless steel fixed 4x scope with a straight front, no bell. So compact, so slick and bright.
With a Whelen sling and Lapua brass, what a Zen-Combo, so strong, so tight with Olympic competition level accuracy. I had the muzzle crowned. I shot my first ever one hole 3 shot group with it at 100 yards off a bench. Also, it still had that timeless self cleaning “made for war” Mauser Style trigger which I had tuned.
A saddle maker, made a harness grade leather saddle scabbard for this rifle, custom fitted for low smaller vintage scopes. For 28 years my wife and I lived half way up a 9,000’ Sky Island Mountain overlooking desert. I bought the Swede, about 20 years into my time there, It became my light, bright and beautiful Desert Deer Hunting “Light Saber”
My wife and I moved away when she had cancer and other health problems requiring much more medical care than was available where we lived so remotely. We moved to the Pacific Northwest, with lots of doctors and elk but no Golden Desert Burro Deer to hunt.
Inside my new horse barn, there are17 pairs of small Desert Burro Deer antlers. Most are 2x2’s and 2 x 3’s. On some I hang my horse tack. Knowing how much you guys love big antlers you would laugh at all of these.
But each and every set is a trophy to me. They are all from my solo desert wilderness tracking/trekking hunts. Some went on for days, sleeping under the stars in a soft sandy wash when darkness came.
I had chances for bigger bucks, but just could never bring myself to shoot them. Doing that seemed like robbing the desert deer herds of their critically needed genetic treasure chest. “May their tribe increase” I mumbled as I brought my rifle down.
At least twice, a day for two months, with one more to go, I engaged in some form of prolonged knee stretching with does no harm but hurts like hell. And I have to not just sustain that stretch, but right when it hurts the most, fight for another degree of bend in the ever tightening scar tissue.
That’s when I imagine I am again crossing desert flats and going into some as yet unexplored wilderness Sky Island Mountain with my Winchester-Swede.
In my native New England, when hunting deer or grouse, twice I saw a pattern in the forest floor. It was two medium sized craters, obviously from ancient trees that died and rotted away.
Between them was a huge sunken area the size and shape of a house. Actually it came from a colonial house that also rotted away.
Before the Caribbean white sugar cane trade began poisoning the world, New Engender colonialists ground up Honey Locust pods. That was their healthy sweetener.
And when they built a home, they flanked it on either side by planting what were called “Husband and Wife” Honey Locust trees. So cool to see that.
Desert Mesquite trees are the smallest members of the Honey Locust family of trees. Imagine how exciting it is to be afoot on a Desert Burro Deer tracking/trekking hunt and discover a hidden grove of these small trees. On the ground are endless tracks from Desert Burro Deer and Desert Bighorn sheep too that have come here to feast on the sweet Mesquite seed pods.
Before I croak, I want to hunt just one more of these ever so sweet tasting little desert bucks.
If a hunter learns the ecology of desert wilderness, big rifle scopes, long range rifles and heavy spotting scopes are unnecessary. Just be in the right “plant place” waiting, and the game animals will come to you.
Most of my Desert Deer I have shot at well under 100 yards, and I took my Desert Ram at 125 yards. If I waited another 10 minutes he would have been in my lap. I was waiting for him, hiding near a grove of tall ocotillo cactus that bloomed with red flowers after a late fall rain. The deer and wild sheep love the tender green leaves.
Oh and it is such terribly poor hunter ethics to shoot any dry country game animal over a rare drinking hole. Even pestering such a critical area, by building a blind or installing and visiting a peeping tom trail camera is not in the interest of game animal survival. Especially their young,
Fortunately my desert deer wilderness hunting grounds were in real deep and often so steep that the “molesters” stayed away. Who knows what wilderness tragedies await us with the “Road less Rules” being discarded. I loathe what is happening to out public land. It won’t be sold, just leased out forever with no environmental protections and ruined.
Last week, I got my knee to a 120 degree bend ! I could only hold it for a few seconds. Not enough to get in and out a small car easily, mount a horse with grace or lift my leg high enough, fast enough to avoid a small rattlesnake. They are the ones to really watch out for, as they defy our expected situational experiences.
My circulation has come back everywhere. I can feel my toes and I am not pissing all over myself anymore. Life is good, life is great. I have three more weeks of painful PT for my knee and then want to get back in shape.
Next spring I will put in for a non-res desert deer tag. Might take two years to get drawn. (Once those tags were OTC)
Would be nice to have that desert deer tag as an 80th birthday present
I face my painful stretches with good cheer now and am having fun looking at my desert deer hunting gear. Clark Treks, desert ankle high leather boots. Tough Carhart canvas pants, my canvas leather trimmed large ruck-sack, and my 6x30 vintage binoculars. Their depth of field is so great that once each eyepiece is focused to each eye, they never again need to be adjusted. They even lack the normal central focusing mechanism. Strong, simple, light, lighting fast.
I finally got out to the range last week with my Winchester-Swede. Been working up a load with the 127 grain long range tipped Barnes X bullet at 2840’/sec. The Swede really shines in a new strong action. Also have 140 grain Lapua all copper round nosed bullets loaded for the thick juicy Bisagra cactus tangles.
I set my target at 300 yards and easily maintained a “Minute of an orange accuracy”. I like to shoot fast.
Two young shooters came by with gun cases that looked big enough for skis. Both rifles were so long with suppressors.
We were in totally different worlds.
They looked at my Model 70 Stainless Featherweight and freshly oiled leather saddle scabbard, and they seemed to get confused. Never heard of a 6.5x55.
They considered 300 yards to be short range.
Then I said; “You just have to get to where the game is going before they get there!”
That really confused them.
MR.
Trying to avoid surgery, I did all the strengthening exercises for my left knee. Except for steep country I could walk forever, but I wanted to be unlimited and craved again hunting places where gravity kept the crowds away.
Mt left knee surgery went bad from the start.
Because I am old, 78, they did a spinal block instead of general anesthesia. Next, they gave me a non-opioid pain meds, which did not work. I woke up feeling paralyzed from the waist down then went into screaming pain once the nerve block wore off.
I got and used my allotted opioids up in the maximum prescribed burst. It took some nightmare time to get the pain under control till I could kind of sleep, but after came a period of ghoulish weakness.
Getting a near full range of flexibility back after a full knee replacement involves taking advantage of a narrow initial Physical Therapy window before the scar tissue gets stiff. Once the scare tissue forms tough, the knee joint gets stiffer and PT is so much more painful.
Because of so much unnecessary pain, I missed the first week plus of that window. My Physical Therapist, who helped me through my first knee replacement was concerned that I might need to go back under anesthesia and get my new knee scar tissue “cracked” loose and start over. Think hell!
Then things went from bad to worse.
From the “waist down block” and from a pelvic floor contraction due to extreme pain, I could not hold my piss, my feet stayed numb and tingly. Next, from reduced blood circulation other problems were happening.
My Physical Therapist has been great. She talks about what the doctors don’t mention, but is in the fine print when you sign the pre-surgery paperwork.
With a smile, she assured me, that while it might take two months, “everything” will be back to normal, on it’s own, except for the flexibility of my new left knee. I have to earn that myself, with 3 or 4 extremely painfully degrees of bend gained with each PT visit. My home work stretching schedule needs to be unrelenting and is so painful. She said if I did not feel like my knee was breaking, it was not stretching enough.
She suggested that I keep a goal in my head. “Think about still doing something physical that means so much to you especially going into your 80’s, or losing it
I grew up on a dairy farm in Connecticut about 45 minutes from New Haven, home of Winchester. To the north was Hartford, home of Colt. As soon as I got my drivers license at 16. I was visiting their museums and taking factory tours. Winchester and Colt are part of my DNA. I have three of each.
Winchester had their last wave producing fine controlled round feed model 70 rifles in New Haven, Connecticut around the turn of this last century, from late 1990’s to early 2000’s.
During that production window I bought my walnut stocked and beautifully checkered stainless steel Featherweight model 70 in the 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser.
I also got one of the rarest ever Weaver Scopes made in El Paso, Texas. When Weaver went out of business, a former employee started the Weaver Scope Repair Service. His bought out all Weaver stock and he had just one stainless steel fixed 4x scope with a straight front, no bell. So compact, so slick and bright.
With a Whelen sling and Lapua brass, what a Zen-Combo, so strong, so tight with Olympic competition level accuracy. I had the muzzle crowned. I shot my first ever one hole 3 shot group with it at 100 yards off a bench. Also, it still had that timeless self cleaning “made for war” Mauser Style trigger which I had tuned.
A saddle maker, made a harness grade leather saddle scabbard for this rifle, custom fitted for low smaller vintage scopes. For 28 years my wife and I lived half way up a 9,000’ Sky Island Mountain overlooking desert. I bought the Swede, about 20 years into my time there, It became my light, bright and beautiful Desert Deer Hunting “Light Saber”
My wife and I moved away when she had cancer and other health problems requiring much more medical care than was available where we lived so remotely. We moved to the Pacific Northwest, with lots of doctors and elk but no Golden Desert Burro Deer to hunt.
Inside my new horse barn, there are17 pairs of small Desert Burro Deer antlers. Most are 2x2’s and 2 x 3’s. On some I hang my horse tack. Knowing how much you guys love big antlers you would laugh at all of these.
But each and every set is a trophy to me. They are all from my solo desert wilderness tracking/trekking hunts. Some went on for days, sleeping under the stars in a soft sandy wash when darkness came.
I had chances for bigger bucks, but just could never bring myself to shoot them. Doing that seemed like robbing the desert deer herds of their critically needed genetic treasure chest. “May their tribe increase” I mumbled as I brought my rifle down.
At least twice, a day for two months, with one more to go, I engaged in some form of prolonged knee stretching with does no harm but hurts like hell. And I have to not just sustain that stretch, but right when it hurts the most, fight for another degree of bend in the ever tightening scar tissue.
That’s when I imagine I am again crossing desert flats and going into some as yet unexplored wilderness Sky Island Mountain with my Winchester-Swede.
In my native New England, when hunting deer or grouse, twice I saw a pattern in the forest floor. It was two medium sized craters, obviously from ancient trees that died and rotted away.
Between them was a huge sunken area the size and shape of a house. Actually it came from a colonial house that also rotted away.
Before the Caribbean white sugar cane trade began poisoning the world, New Engender colonialists ground up Honey Locust pods. That was their healthy sweetener.
And when they built a home, they flanked it on either side by planting what were called “Husband and Wife” Honey Locust trees. So cool to see that.
Desert Mesquite trees are the smallest members of the Honey Locust family of trees. Imagine how exciting it is to be afoot on a Desert Burro Deer tracking/trekking hunt and discover a hidden grove of these small trees. On the ground are endless tracks from Desert Burro Deer and Desert Bighorn sheep too that have come here to feast on the sweet Mesquite seed pods.
Before I croak, I want to hunt just one more of these ever so sweet tasting little desert bucks.
If a hunter learns the ecology of desert wilderness, big rifle scopes, long range rifles and heavy spotting scopes are unnecessary. Just be in the right “plant place” waiting, and the game animals will come to you.
Most of my Desert Deer I have shot at well under 100 yards, and I took my Desert Ram at 125 yards. If I waited another 10 minutes he would have been in my lap. I was waiting for him, hiding near a grove of tall ocotillo cactus that bloomed with red flowers after a late fall rain. The deer and wild sheep love the tender green leaves.
Oh and it is such terribly poor hunter ethics to shoot any dry country game animal over a rare drinking hole. Even pestering such a critical area, by building a blind or installing and visiting a peeping tom trail camera is not in the interest of game animal survival. Especially their young,
Fortunately my desert deer wilderness hunting grounds were in real deep and often so steep that the “molesters” stayed away. Who knows what wilderness tragedies await us with the “Road less Rules” being discarded. I loathe what is happening to out public land. It won’t be sold, just leased out forever with no environmental protections and ruined.
Last week, I got my knee to a 120 degree bend ! I could only hold it for a few seconds. Not enough to get in and out a small car easily, mount a horse with grace or lift my leg high enough, fast enough to avoid a small rattlesnake. They are the ones to really watch out for, as they defy our expected situational experiences.
My circulation has come back everywhere. I can feel my toes and I am not pissing all over myself anymore. Life is good, life is great. I have three more weeks of painful PT for my knee and then want to get back in shape.
Next spring I will put in for a non-res desert deer tag. Might take two years to get drawn. (Once those tags were OTC)
Would be nice to have that desert deer tag as an 80th birthday present
I face my painful stretches with good cheer now and am having fun looking at my desert deer hunting gear. Clark Treks, desert ankle high leather boots. Tough Carhart canvas pants, my canvas leather trimmed large ruck-sack, and my 6x30 vintage binoculars. Their depth of field is so great that once each eyepiece is focused to each eye, they never again need to be adjusted. They even lack the normal central focusing mechanism. Strong, simple, light, lighting fast.
I finally got out to the range last week with my Winchester-Swede. Been working up a load with the 127 grain long range tipped Barnes X bullet at 2840’/sec. The Swede really shines in a new strong action. Also have 140 grain Lapua all copper round nosed bullets loaded for the thick juicy Bisagra cactus tangles.
I set my target at 300 yards and easily maintained a “Minute of an orange accuracy”. I like to shoot fast.
Two young shooters came by with gun cases that looked big enough for skis. Both rifles were so long with suppressors.
We were in totally different worlds.
They looked at my Model 70 Stainless Featherweight and freshly oiled leather saddle scabbard, and they seemed to get confused. Never heard of a 6.5x55.
They considered 300 yards to be short range.
Then I said; “You just have to get to where the game is going before they get there!”
That really confused them.
MR.
