Camping in the Rapidam WMA

A buddy of mine and I are going camping tomorrow afternoon and through most of the weekend in the Rapidan Wildlife Management Area. Click the thumbnail below to get a map. It basically takes up parts of Greene and Madison counties bordering the Shenandoah National Park.


I just got my state wide freshwater fishing license and trout fishing license. It wasn't too expensive... $36 all told. The brook trout fishing at the RWMA is supposed to be great. I hope to land a few trout. Maybe enough to bring a few home with me for dinner with the family Sunday.

Since I got my license, I figured fishing would be a good hobby to get into with my kids. I got my two oldest fishing rods from Sportsmansguide.com. I got a great deal on some beginner's gear. Click here to take a look, in case you're looking for some cheap entry-level rod-n-reel setups for your kids.

I'm also trying to rope my Dad into coming down from Maryland for a fishing/camping trip later this year. Maybe drag a brother or two along with us.

My fishing gear is really lacking, but for this trip a buddy of mine is lending us some of his tackle. I bought a basic rod-n-reel for myself... a Zebco 33. I got mine at Dick's for slightly less than what BassPro has it listed for. It's a decent enough rod that I could hand down to one of the kids if I decided to upgrade later on.

As it stands now the gear I'll be dragging in with me is way too much to fit on my back. Soon I hope to be getting into more hiking/camping trips where I have to pack in all my gear. I know there are certain items that could be jettisoned with no worries, such as:

• Cooler full of homebrew!
• Camp chair
• Drop large 6 person tent in favor of a 2 person tent (saving about 8 lbs)
• Trim down on first aid kit - the one I currently have could easily service a family of six for a week barring major medical emergencies (go figure - I have a family of six!)
• Wool blanket (I have a sleeping bag)
• Hatchet (if my commando saw works out) (UPDATE: The commando saw was an utter failure. Go figure - the site I bought mine from no longer carries it.)

Other than the list above, I generally pack:

• An isopropyl cooker which folds up to about the size a large egg. My Giga Stove Titanium is very lightweight and extremely effective - one of the best camping gear buys I've ever made. I got mine at a local store for about 40% less than it's listed on the SnowPeak website.
• I only ever carry one fuel cell, which is very lightweight and easily lasts a weekend.
• My cookset is a lightweight stainless steel set (3 pans with lids).
• 2 titanium mugs. Very lightweight, but I could leave one if I had to.
• My plate and utensils are both lightweight. The plate could go if I packed some form of freeze dried food in pouches or MREs. But really, the plate weighs nearly nothing and takes up a negligible amount of space.
• 1 person self-inflating sleeping pad (only if I had to drop it. I love that thing!!)
• small coffee press (again - only if I had to. It's lightweight and takes up very little room)
• A bar of soap in a waterproof container.
• A small can of bugspray. It could go...
• some waterproof matches. One or the other between this and the flint.
• a flint and steel set (small). It would be more manly to keep this over the matches...
• a small whetstone (which could probably go)
• Roll-up, self-inflating pillow. Again - very lightweight and compact. It's not a necessity, but it has very little impact on weight or space and it fucking rocks.
• Buck knife. A must have. That bad boy stays above almost anything else!
• A zip-up journal pad with a deck of cards and pen. It could go, I guess.
• My trusty Fuji digital camera. Small and lightweight. It fits in a breast pocket with room to spare. It would be a shame to not take pics of the beauitiful places I like to camp. I have yet to find a camera that has a better size to picture quality ratio. Probably a keeper even on "hardcore" expeditions.
• 25' nylon rope. Never know when you might need some rope... pretty lightweight, too.
• Sleeping bag. Duh, gotta have it.
• A small LED lantern and a large LED lantern. I could choose one or the other. I'd probably choose the small one.
• 2 bandannas. Keepers for sure.
• Small hand-crank charged LED flashlight. Very dependable. A keeper even if I had to drop both lanterns to keep it.
• 5 plastic stakes. Very rugged. These have come in handy so many times that I couldn't ponder leaving them.
• Emergency insulation space blanket. Lightweight (like nearly nothing)... a keeper. A great insulator/heat reflector for the fire.
• a small roll of TP (for my bunghole)
• 2 gallon water bladder. Gotta have water.
• 2-3 nalgene water bottles

Damn. I think that's it... that's a lot of stuff.

That's why it's best to hike-camp with a buddy. You could share a tent, cooking gear, lanterns, camera, matches, and other stuff and split that gear between the two of you. That means after the communal gear split all you have to carry is your own sleeping bag, food, water, and knife. It makes the weight distribution much easier to handle.

Busted Camping

So the last camping trip I told you about was a bust. Everyone that said they would go at one point backed out for some reason or another. I told my wife that I'd be going by myself and she looked at me like I was the Unabomber or something. Like a shack in Montana and a manifesto was in my very near future.

It wasn't like I was going into the Alaskan tundra by myself or anything. I was going to camp out on my folks' property. In the end I, too, backed out... on myself, I guess. I should have just gone.

This means that the first New Years Resolution that I've made in a decade is a bust. The resolution was to go camping every month. Previous to that, a decage ago, I had made a resolution that I wasn't going to make any more New Years Resolutions. I stuck to that one for a decade. This one lasted a month and a half... pathetic.

In any event, I am going to get this resolution back on track. This time I don't care if everyone backs out, I'm freakin' going.

Changing gears, tomorrow morning my brothers and I are going out rabbit hunting again. This time it'll be me and two of my three bros. Previously it had always been me and one other brother. And this time I have some sweet boots to wear instead of my Adidas sneakers. As awesome as those shoes are, they're really no good in the muck.

Changing gears again - I have been drinking my Nut Brown Ale - the one I kinda screwed up on and to which I had to make corrections. It's freaking delicious! I mean really good! You can taste the higher alcohol content which, in a heavier ale, I think is good. Fresh, rich, complex, and packs a punch!

<borat> Very nice! </borat>

Rabbit Hunting

My brother and I went rabbit hunting this Sunday morning. I was at my brother's place out in the Stony Point area by 6.35 AM and we were on my parents' farm by 6.55 AM. Sunrise was 7.18 AM.

This is only the second time in my brother and I's lives when we've hunted anything. I have read some tips and tricks online and this is the only body of knowledge we have to draw upon. We may end up going to Bedford to hunt with my brother's father-in-law. He is a skilled and very experienced rabbit hunter.

In any event, we parked the car on the side of the driveway, gathered up our Remington 10/22s, and headed out. We walked a couple of brush piles, some woodlines, and a fenceline with no luck. We then headed out to the back 40 of the property where there is a buried natural gas pipeline.

This pipeline translates into a straight strip of cleared land in the middle of what would otherwise be a continuous patch of woods thousands of acres in size. We were encouraged when we saw some rabbit scat in three different places. We also came across a beaver dam and other clear signs of beaver activity.

There were a number of small trees that were obviously chewed off by beavers and we also observed a number of animal trails centering around a creek and the small beaver pond.

We were walking on this buried pipeline and I just happened to stop. When I did, I heard something behind me. Just as I turned to my left, the rascally little rabbit bolted for the woodline right in front of me. I had practically stepped on the guy!

I snapped up my 22, aimed, shot, missed and determined that the next shot(s) would have to be unaimed. All of this in less than a second. My first shot barely missed. Basically I misgauged the arc the bunny's jump and the bullet went just over the back of the rabbit's neck. The critter was just coming down from a hop - had he been on the upstroke of the jump cycle I think I would have hit him.

After the first shot, the rabbit was into the woods (fast!!) and I realized I wouldn't get another aimed shot, so the good ole Remington 10/22 went into "lead hose" mode. Yes, I went all spray and pray on that bunny's ass, but to no avail! I fired six more shots as fast as I could pull the trigger. None of the rounds missed by much - I saw the leaves leaping up all around the bunny. But, alas, he got away.

Meanwhile, back in the warren, there's a bunny with a war story that he'll be able to tell his baby bunnies for the rest of his life. ("There were bullets everywhere! I dodged left and right and then turned around and flicked that jerk the bird!")

If anyone has any rabbit hunting tips, I'd love to hear them. Like I said, I'm a total hunting newbie. This was only my second time hunting anything and it was a vast improvement over my first outing where I didn't even see a rabbit much less shoot at one.