Life

New Finance Software – part thrice

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I’ve been trying some particular finance software packages and have a little more to report.

The iBank people did eventually get back to me, so turnaround time is reasonable. Speaking as a developer myself, if a customer asks how to or if you can do something and the software can’t, I’d put it down on the feature list for a future version. No promise it will happen, but it’s still valuable (potential) customer feedback towards improving your product. Hopefully they did that (no indication in their response that they did, but that’s not too surprising lest the person take it as a promise it will happen).

Trouble is, I’m finding that if iBank can’t handle my data import, I just don’t have the gumption to walk through 10 years of records to fix the problem. I don’t have that sort of time. One could argue that I should start fresh, but that’s easier said than done in terms of how I like keeping my data as well as having access to it. I mean, Quicken is dead to me so I need to get my data out of it and into a form I can easily manage and manipulate, not just some archived QIF that I can’t directly view.

So I’ve been spending a lot more time with Moneydance.

Damnit. I don’t want to like the app. It’s Java roots make it…. well… quirky. I can click to display a menu (or right-click for a contextual menu) then if I don’t select something from the menu it sticks around. Worse, it’s implemented as some sort of “floats above everything” hack and so I can switch to a whole other application and the menu sticks around! There’s so many other little interface quirks and strange behaviors, it’s driving me nuts.

But by the same token, there is a lot of stuff they do that’s right. For instance, I’m growing more fond of single-window type apps, and there’s no question Moneydance took a direct nod from Mac apps in how they approached and designed this, including using the “source list” on the left. So OK the interface itself is quirky, but the logic behind the interface is not. It’s actually pretty well thought out, in my book. It’s implemented as a “double-entry bookkeeping” which means things like categories are technically “accounts” and thus there’s a lot more interesting things you can do with them instead of just having a category be a simple label.

It seems to be doing everything right. It seems to provide almost all I want. OK, so no “envelope budgeting”, but it does do budgeting. There’s online support. It’s all there.

I’m still evaluating it, still going through docs, experimenting, exploring, but so far Moneydance appears to be the front-runner. The other thing? When I Google around for information, comparisons, reviews… no one is 100% awesome, but Moneydance gets a lot of love and not that much negative about it. Most of the negative I read deals with the GUI/Java-ness of it, and that it messed up their QIF import… but messing up QIF imports seems to be something that plagues everyone to some degree. Still, that bodes pretty well for Moneydance, to hear such generally positive things about it.

All this talk of accountancy. Makes me think of the Crimson Permanent Assurance

Find the Mystery Rocker

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Is it real? is it noble? is it viral marketing? Who cares. It seems like fun, and yeah, something about it seems legit (despite the slick editing).

Updated: They found the guy.

New Finance Software – part 2

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

In my quest for new finance software I figure I just have to dive in.

iBank

I started by downloading iBank. I want to like this app. I want to like it for it’s Mac-ness. I want to like it because it looks slick. In playing around with it for a bit, it does seem to be alright. I really like all the tutorial videos on their website, as that helps you get started.

I can’t figure out how to fully import Categories. That is, if you create a new data file, you’re asked if you want to start off with a set of Home and Business accounts. I tried that, and got a fantastic starting list. When I tried exporting my old Quicken 2005 data to a QIF then importing that, I only was given my categories. I didn’t see any way to get their categories. That sucks.

As well, Quicken’s notion of “Classes” doesn’t exist. I don’t mind if someone isn’t a Quicken clone — they should be better! But that way of being able to arbitrarily group things together is so useful. For instance, I could group all the “Christmas 2010” expenses together. iBank does have a notion of “smart accounts”, and it’s possible something like that could fill the bill. But you know… if there’s some way to make it work, some way to replicate it, couldn’t their QIF importer help out with that? I mean, I imagine a Class is well defined (due to the slash character in the Category string being a delimiter).

That’s another thing on the import. It just assumes the Class is part of the category. So now I have a ton of ugly-ass category names. Ugh.

Then a strange thing. I tried playing around with the budget feature. The wizard/assistant walks you through. Oddly, the screen that lets you select the accounts to budget, when I went to the next screen it selected the inverse! For instance, if I selected checking and deselected savings, then on the next screen it assumed I wanted savings! As well, it failed to put all the categories into the list. It was just strange.

Granted, the import didn’t go all that smoothly. Most of my accounts went OK, but my main checking account, with some almost 10 years of data in it, was all messed up. I don’t know where to begin trying to fix it. I just remembered something about how there can be confusion if there are same names, like a category “cash” and an account “cash”, so I may need to do some renaming and try again.

I think what may happen here is I may have to decide if historical data is something I need to keep. I really want to keep it. It wouldn’t be horrible if I lost it, but from time to time I do like going back and being able to review charts and reports to see how things have been over the years.

I’ve sent some support email to IGG Software. We’ll see.

Moneydance

OK. I’m immediately hating Moneydance. It’s a Java app.

Granted, it actually blends into the OS fairly well, but there are still things that don’t quite work right. But well… if it has all the features and power and so on, I could deal with it. Still tho, it won’t win any awards for aesthetics.

I see it doesn’t do Envelope budgeting. There’s a way you can kinda finagle it, but man…. well, it’s not a deal-breaker, but I really wanted to try to start using this form of budgeting.

I used the same QIF file and imported it into Moneydance. First, it was MUCH faster than iBank. I don’t have numbers but I’d say Moneydance took a matter of seconds, iBank a matter of minutes. I need to look deeper to see if the import actually went smoothly, but at least I can tell the balances all look correct, so that is a good sign.

But here’s one difference. iBank doesn’t assume the QIF format is the be-all-end-all. For instance, it asked me to confirm that each account was the type it said it was and allow me to correct it. Moneydance just accepted it all as-is, and I can’t find any way to change them after the fact… but then, maybe there’s no need and I’m just being nit-picky about how I want to do things.

Hrm…. one thing I need to evaluate in all of them. How they handle loans. For instance, when I pay my mortgage, Quicken remembered it as a special transaction, so when I wrote the check it knew how to track the loan, which portion went to principal and which to interest. I wonder if these will be able to handle that. I should HOPE so, but might I have to go back and make a new account “x” transactions into it so it tracks it all correctly? not sure if that’s all in the QIF.

Moneydance seems to have something called “Tags”, which seems to equate to Quicken’s “Classes”. That’s good.

I like how with all these different groupings it totals up things with those categories/tags. That’s nice. You can just see at an easy glance how much you spent on something.

But man… the interface bugs me. Maybe it’s because I spend so much of my day writing software….

Help. Moneydance sends you online to load up a PDF. Simple enough, and looks to cover all you need. iBank’s is integrated, very Mac-like. One thing I like is that well… the general way to do Mac help is to ask questions and get specific answers. But for something as complex and feature-laden as an app like this, you really need to read. I’ll give the iBank guys some credit here for doing something very Mac-like but also very readable. I am curious why Moneydance couldn’t include the PDF as a resource within the app distribution itself and just load it up locally.

Geez. It’s really crazy that the fact Moneydance handled the import, didn’t have glaring strange bugs, and has tags/classes support… that makes me want to use it over iBank. But the fact it looks so damn ugly… I want to not use it. *sigh*  Function or form, I’m torn. 🙂

Moneywell

And so, let’s try Moneywell.

It is great all these apps provide free demos!

My initial impression? This is not an app about allowing you to manage your finances how you want to. This is an app that is geared towards personal finance that uses a budget, and specifically the envelope (bucket, in their terms) method. I think there’s nothing wrong with this, if this is what you want to do. But I don’t ONLY want to function in this rigid way of doing things, mostly because while I like the concept of envelope budgets, I don’t want to be forced into it.

Well, I think it’s slick looking and it looks like they do a very good job of managing finances using this particular approach.

But it’s not for me.

Plus I’m not sure how well it’ll cover everything that I need. But I just don’t feel much gumption to dive further into the app because of the aforementioned “mode” that it works in. Again don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great what they’re doing, it’s just not for me.

SEE Finance

And so, let’s try SEE Finance.

You know, everyone offers free downloads and demos. Everyone deals with it differently, from transaction limitations to timing out. SEE’s approach seems to be that you’re full-featured, you just get nagged for a few seconds every launch. Whatever the limitation is, I think everyone provides a reasonable way to use and evaluate the software… at least a cursory look. I have wondered if 30-days of iBank would be enough time for me to adequately evaluate it, being able to go through all my monthly bills and so on. We’ll see.

Looks like a Mac app… tho, some interface bits seem off. Again, the developer in me.

OH! I love this! I started it up, OK let’s start by importing the QIF. It says “Here’s all the categories we found” and lets me do some editing of them. The best part? I can choose to “Import and delete existing” or I can “Import and merge with existing”. NICE! I chose to merge.

Then it import does a bunch of stuff to help me try to reconcile the import and set everything as I want.

I can see they put a LOT of effort into the import process, more so than anyone. Kudos to them there.

But the kicker is, you import once. How does everything else work out?

OK… I’m looking at the GUI a bit more. Wow, they do do some stranger stuff. cmd-N for “New” is in the Edit menu. Looks like that means “New Transaction” but gee… that’s not the best way to do it. View menu isn’t standard. Transactions menu is really overloaded.

Man, I wish I could put my checking account at the top of the source list… it’s what I use the most, so having to hunt through everything in the source list isn’t fun.

Geez… no way to sort by my check number? Oh wait, there is it… I see the gear button so I can add it. I do like being able to customize the columns. But the table feels really cluttered and overloaded. 2-levels isn’t a bad thing… or maybe just a little more whitespace for the cells.

It’s not bad… but it still seems well… like it’s developing. They even version it at 0.9.12.9, so it’s not even a 1.0. Still, it looks to have great promise. If everyone could handle imports like they do, that’d be awesome. That is a gem of this app, no question. But again, you import once… and while making the switch is a very important thing, it’s all that comes after it that matters more.

What now?

I don’t know.

Moneywell is out of the running.

SEE Finance well… while it’s more Mac than Moneydance, it actually doesn’t feel as right. Moneydance doesn’t feel very Mac, but it does feel better thought out in the user interface. Moneydance also seems like it’s got a lot of power. iBank is slick, but running into bugs and being the only app that couldn’t handle the QIF import…. well, let’s say it’s a mixed first impression.

I’ll see how the IGG guys reply to things. Customer Support matters.

I’ll probably continue to evaluate Moneydance and iBank and see how it goes.

I love using a butcher

/ hsoi / 8 Comments

We used to buy all our meat at the grocery store. It’s not bad, but, I’ve found there’s better. 🙂

I guess I started using Johnny G’s Butcher Block for deer/hog processing. I started trying them for other things.

They’re really good.

I do love the fact that everything is a “whatever you want”. They can do whatever, however. I like that. It’s never a problem.

Their bacon? Some of the best I’ve had. It’s well seasoned and cut thick, great for using in cooking (e.g. wrapping stuff).

Their beef jerky? One of the better ones. A wonderful meaty, salty, smoky flavor. Good texture. Heck… one thing I guess that’s cool about becoming a regular is when I went in to pick up the hog meat, I went in there with Oldest and Youngest. The owner, Grover, was there and apparently just pulled a bunch of their jerky out of the smokehouse. He gave each of us a big strip of it, no charge. Just because. That was cool. Try getting that at some big-box store. 🙂  I know it’s a little thing, I know it’s just good for business, but that’s what I like about it.

They do great processing work. Turnaround times are reasonable. Prices are acceptable. The seasonings they use in making their pan and smoked sausages is really good. I also love how they smoke stuff… turns out with a great flavor.

I’ve bought a hindquarter of cow from them before, which turned out really well. I just filled the freezer with all that hog meat (and it already had deer meat and other things), but as soon as we make more room I’m going to buy probably a half a cow from them. I do love that they’ll do it exactly how I want. Local beef, grass-fed, cut and prepped as I want, aged a couple of weeks. And the kicker is? The price really isn’t much different from buying at the grocery store. Oh sure, it’s a much larger up-front cost, but over time it all evens out. Even if it is slightly more, the service, the quality… it’s fantastic.

Another thing I just discovered? They can do things for my dog. 🙂  I can order say 40 lbs of chicken backs and necks for not a lot of money. I’ve been thinking about doing the raw thing with puppy, once all the water buffalo meat runs out. That would be a good deal.When I picked up all the hog meat, I also bought a big beef bone for doggie. Oh my… I think I gave her the best treat in the world. Usually she stays outside for no more than 20 minutes at a time then wants in. She’s been outside for 2 hours just working that bone… no signs of wanting to come in. Daddy did good, I reckon. 🙂

I’ll still shop at the H.E.B. for most of our groceries. But meat? Can’t recall the last time we bought any there (other than hot dogs). Either I’ve killed it myself and had Johnny G’s process it, or I’ve bought it from Johnny G’s. I really like this butcher thing.

New finance software?

/ hsoi / 9 Comments

I use Quicken 2005 for the Mac to manage my finances.

It’s a love-hate relationship.

Quicken has been a long-standing icon in the field of finance management software. Long ago it was really the best player in the market. But then, Intuit started to not care. The Mac product languished and suffered, lagged way behind the Windows counterpart. There was all this talk of a new version that would cure all ills, and sure enough a new truly “native” app came out, but its feature set is way too small — “essentials” they call it, and I guess if all you need to do is track your checkbook and credit cards it’s fine. But if you do more, like I do, it doesn’t cut it.

Let’s not forget how crappy the interface is. If nothing else, the fact it wants to use cmd-A — a reserved keystroke for ‘Select All’ — to bring up the Accounts window? Argh. And then there’s still no way to Select All to ease editing. Arrow keys are handled in a non-standard way. Oh, the list could go on. So it’s just a pain to use, but there’s really been no good alternative. And as much as you want to hate it, there’s no question they had the legacy behind them that enabled the software to really have a lot of details right. Sure, the user experience might suck, but they knew how to do reports, graphs, and really generally manage money in the right way.

While it’s obviously the oldest piece of software I own and I’ve had zero reason or desire to upgrade well… if the rumors are true that PowerPC emulation “Rosetta” is going away in Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” then Quicken 2005 will no longer work for me and I must upgrade or switch. Trouble is, upgrading to the latest Quicken is not an option.

So what is?

I’m starting to look around at alternatives and here’s what I find:

I’ve been spending the past few days reading up and trying to see what might be right for me.

I have no idea. 🙂

For every report of X is good, you get a report that X is bad. That Y imported all my years of Quicken data without a hiccup, that Y totally botched everything up. That Z lacks this feature, that Z is great because it does this.

It’s really just hard to tell what will or won’t be good, and I get the feeling that no matter what I try, I’m somehow going to be left unsatisfied. That the process of switching is going to take months. That I might download and try an import, but then I’ll probably need to use both Quicken and the new software side-by-side for a while to see how they do.. at least a month, maybe more, to run through the normal course of monthly bills and transactions to see how it does for things.

Some preliminary biases.

iBank I want to like. It seems cool. It’s truly a Mac app, with Mac people, and trying to be Mac. I like that. I like the fact it’s a small shop and trying hard. But with that, it also means that they’re a little slow to get things developed because finance software is non-trivial. Still, iBank 4 appears to strive to address many of the complaints I’ve read about, so maybe by now it’s become rather robust enough that it’d be good to use.  I also really want to try out this “envelope” system of budgeting.

Moneydance I don’t want to like because it’s Java. Not that I don’t like Java, but it means there’s going to be weirdness in how it works and exists. But it’s also a bonus that it works on Windows and Linux because you know they are striving to write for a large audience, and with a larger audience that means a lot more coverage, a lot more dealing with bugs, features, and improvements and so on. They sound like a responsive company and trying to do well. A lot of people also like how well Moneydance handles reports and investment tracking, so that’s a plus. I’ve dealt with Quicken’s strange interface issues for years so I’m sure I could learn to live with this.

Moneywell seems cool, but I’m not sure it has enough of the features I need, like investment tracking.

SEE Finance… hard to say. Haven’t spent much time looking at it yet.

GnuCash. Well… I like open source and all, but I’m not sure I want to bother going here right now. But the open source advantage is undeniable because it makes me wonder about one very key thing:

Exit Strategy.

See, if I need to move away from Quicken now, what about in the future? What if whatever I choose ends up going belly-up and now I’m left hanging? Is there a good strategy for being able to get all my data OUT of their app so I can move it somewhere else? That perhaps uses a better solution than QIF files? To me, this is key. Sure once I find the right software I’ll be a loyal customer until I’m given reason to not… but having worked in professional software development for over 15 years I know that data is king to the customer and we need to always allow them to preserve and move their data around freely. That things can happen that cause us and our apps to have to come and go, but we can’t let the user’s data become inaccessible. So what’s their strategy? That will be a very key factor in my decision.

Another small point is being able to do multiple totally separate accounting practices. That is, sure this is mostly for personal finance, but I also want to be able to track Hsoi Enterprises LLC financials there (i.e. small business). That means I can have totally separate data files for personal and for business. That means I can at least do simple and basic things for taxes, reporting, etc.. And that I can export the data in a way that my accountant can handle it.

I know about things like Mint.com too. But I’m going to be honest. I’m sore at Intuit. I don’t feel they’ve treated their Mac customers right for many many years. I feel they jerked us around, neglected us, treated us like crap, and all out of the arrogance of “where else you gonna go?”. I really don’t want to give them my money any more. Plus, something about putting all my personal finance information in one place like that… just waiting for a data breach. Call me paranoid, but I just don’t feel like I want to do that. YMMV.

But whatever I do, I need to start doing it now. It’s going to take a long time to evaluate stuff. Heck I just thought… what I might do is continue doing online research and settle on the top 2 or 3 apps. Then download and run ALL of them simultaneously and see how it goes. Yes it will mean a month or two of pain because my bill paying sessions may take 2-3x as long to deal with, but this may give me a better chance to really compare these guys head to head.

We’ll see. 🙂

If you have any experience with or comments about these, please comment.

The Texas Rollergirls

/ hsoi / 12 Comments

I remember watching roller derby on TV as a kid growing up. It was fun, but I don’t think I ever really understood the game, the rules, or what was going on. It was just…. fun.

I know roller derby has been growing in popularity again, especially here in Austin. I was talking with my buddy W about it as he’s gone a few times and really enjoys it. Plus, Daughter got wind of it and thought it looked pretty cool. So, last night W, a friend of his, myself, and Daughter went to check out the Texas Rollergirls.

Oh man, that was fun!

The rules and basics of the game are simple enough, but it still allows for competition, strategy, and a load of excitement. I think that’s what I liked the most was the constant action: the game is designed to move and keep moving.

I was impressed with the endurance and toughness of the ladies. No question it’s a tough and demanding sport, but you could also tell everyone out there was loving what they did. I think that must have been evident to Daughter because she was so excited and loved every minute of it. She even got to get a picture with and talk with Acute Angel after the bout. Angel told Daughter about the Derby Brats, and Daughter is interested in checking it out! I have no problem if she wants to do it, tho Wife is a little unsure. Next session isn’t until Fall, so I guess the meantime it’s buy her some rollerskates and safety gear and see if she falls in love with skating.

Oh yes. I’ll be going back. Take the whole family too.

We now know about Sasha’s past…

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I haven’t written much about our dog training because well… I just haven’t. But we haven’t stopped. We’re still working with Sasha and the new (well, she’s not new any more) trainer. We’ve done a lot of the basic obedience, working on her territorialness, and teaching her how to be calm on command (“settle”).

What’s really interesting is the recent turn of events. If you remember, we took ownership of Sasha around 8 months of age. She had another owner for 4 months prior. We had a lot of questions about what went on during those 4 months because the time from age 2 months to 6 months can be a very vital stage in a puppy’s development. But we resigned ourselves to never really knowing what happened apart from the few things the breeder told us.

Let’s hear it for the Internet. A few weeks ago I get an email from Sasha’s previous owner! You see, when he returned Sasha to the breeder they said she’d become a show dog. Well, a few weeks ago he happened to be thinking about her and figured he could Google to see if perhaps she was listed in any dog show results. Instead, he found my blog and based upon what I had written knew it was her. He wasn’t sure about reaching out to me, but because he’s always dealt with recuse dogs and wondered about their pasts, he figured now being on the other side of that coin he’d contact me so he could fill informational void.

We’ve been exchanging some emails, with him telling me a lot about her past, including sharing pictures. It’s been very useful and answered a lot of the questions we had. We gave all of this information to our trainer, and it’s creating a new course of action for us in terms of behavior modification work. All good. It’s still going to take months of work, but we’re dedicated to this dog. She’s awesome… it’s just that well… “this one goes to 11” and we sometimes just need her to turn it back to a 10. 😉

Here’s a puppy picture her previous owner shared with us. Ain’t she cute?

If you need tree work done in the Austin area…

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

I just had some tree work done at my house. Took one tree out, some serious trimming on another that was causing constant roof and fence issues for myself and a neighbor. I am pleased with the work: the job done, the cost involved, how long it took, etc.. I wanted to give some credit to the guys that did the work. If you’re in the Austin area and need tree work, give them a call at least to get a bid:

Don Glass of Arbor Logical Tree Care: 512-368-6523

Silvester Rodgers of Awesome Tree Service: 512-466-1169

Technically two companies, but they work together. Call either one.

They have almost 50 years experience between the two of them, are arborists, and from the looks of the services offered can handle almost any tree need you have. Estimates were free, so there’s no downside to contacting them when you need work done.

I write this because everyone bitches when things are bad, but people aren’t so quick to provide support and complements when due. I try to give both: if it’s bad, say it’s bad; if it’s good, say it’s good. Let people know there’s good out there. 🙂

My son’s first hog

/ hsoi / 11 Comments

Oldest just passed a milestone — he bagged his first hog; in fact, he bagged his first anything. And it’s a doozy.

The Big Weekend

I’ve been trying, struggling to have a weekend hunt with my long-time friend Charles, of Tactical Gun Review. Something always comes up, usually on my part, and we can’t get together. Charles has a deer lease in the South Central Texas area, but what makes it a great lease is not just the property but that he has year-round access to it. Outside of deer season you can go fishing, dove hunting, turkey hunting, and yes… hog hunting. A few months back we set this weekend on our calendars as a “must do” and it happened. It wasn’t going to be just us tho, we brought our older sons with us as well, who have known each other for just as many years as Charles and I have known each other.

The goal for the weekend? Have fun. If we could bag a hog? even better. And while I would have loved to have bagged a hog myself, what I really wanted was for Oldest to bag one. He’s been out in the field with me before, sometimes a bust, sometimes we got something, but it was always me that did the work, he was just a spectator. This time, he was going to do the work. 🙂

Friday after work I packed my car with food, some clothing and essentials, a few rifles, and away we went. On the rifle front, I originally wanted him to use the 6.8 SPC. The whole reason I bought the 6.8 was for kids to use it because it doesn’t recoil that hard, shorter and thus easier to manage, plus some time ago I bought a powerful red LED flashlight to mount on the rifle precisely for hog hunting. But I changed my mind. Instead, I had him shoot the Savage bolt-action in .308 Win. My reasoning? It was a simpler manual of arms to operate (no gun, light, etc.), and that .308 would provide a much wider margin of error. Being as this would be his first time, he’d get excited, heart pounding, might rush things… never know. I figured the .308 would work out better for him. Prior to the hunt I had him work the rifle dry at home: get a feel for the trigger, learn how to work the bolt. He learned how to work the gun, but he had never live fired it. In fact, he’s never shot something as big as a .308; he’s had aversions to shooting rifles larger than a .22 LR because he doesn’t like the noise, but acknowledges that if he wants to bag something he has to. So, this was into the fire feet first. 🙂

First Night

We arrived Friday evening but with more than enough daylight to get us into the blind and wait. We parked our cars, pulled out the rifles, climbed into “The Beast” (an old Toyota 4×4 Charles keeps at the property for getting around) and headed for a stock tank on one side of the property where hogs had been seen. Unfortunately the pop-up blind blew into the tank, so we just plopped down on stools under a tree and obscured by tall grass. We waited. Night fell, but with that “super-moon” out you could see a lot going on, it was so bright.

We never saw any hogs. Some deer, an owl, lots of other critters. But alas, no hogs. We piled back into The Beast and checked out some other tanks, parking The Beast well away from the area and stalking up on it. It was obvious there was activity, just not when we were around. Ah well. We eventually headed back to the cabin for dinner and hanging out around the campfire drinking beer (boys – root beer, dad’s Dogfish Head brown ale) until the wee hours.

Saturday Morning

After a few hours of sleep we headed back out. Charles put Oldest and I at one of the stock tanks we visited Friday night, while he and his son headed to another area. The sun came up. A turkey was calling and showing and we watched him for a while. Then across the stock tank, probably 100 yards or so away, 2 does. No, 3 does… 4… 5… 6. It was nice to watch all those does grazing, but darn that the season is well-over. 🙂  After maybe 15 minutes or so we noticed the does spooked and took off. Seconds later we see why.

Hogs.

We were atop a high bank on one side of the tank. The opposite bank was probably 60 yards away, then up that bank 35 yards or so starts a tree line. Deep within those trees we saw all these little black masses running across the way. Yes yes yes! Hogs! But they were way back in the trees running in a manner that took them directly away from us with no chance of a shot. Oh man!

“Son, get your gun! get your gun! get it up! get ready!”

I of course went for my gun too, but I put it down. This was for him. Yes I’d love to get one myself, but this was for him. I was going to be the eyes, the coach.

Come on piggy… come on… please don’t run off…. yes!

We see the pigs turn and one by one start to run into the area. It’s a stock tank. Water. Plus there was a corn feeder at the far end. Food. A perfect ambush spot: at food and water. A swarm of piglets runs out. I don’t know… 30, 40, 50 of them? A lot. They all headed right for the feeder. Adults follow out of the trees but head down to the water.

YES!

One goes to drink but is head-on facing us. “No son, can’t” Come on… turn… turn…

More big hogs come down to drink.

“SONSONSONSON! There!  That one!”

A big one. Drinking. Perfectly broadside. And… holding still. You see, hogs almost never stop, they are almost always in motion so windows of opportunity for a shot can be hard to come by. But drinking? He stopped, he was still. Perfect opportunity.

“You got him?”

“Got him.”

“OK, let it rip!”

And the rifle roared.

He got him.

The hog ran for maybe 25 yards, did a circle and dropped.

High fives all around.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Oldest so excited. 🙂  He was wired. Electrified!

Once we confirmed he was down, and of course all the other hogs scattered from the sound of the gunshot, we left the blind and headed over to see him.

I thought he was maybe 150 lbs? But I’m terrible at such estimates. We snapped copious amounts of pictures. We sent text messages to Wife (and kiddos back home), to Oldest’s grandfather and uncle (Wife’s family, life-long hunters). Much happiness.

While waiting for Charles to come get us, another hog came through the trees! I snapped up my rifle and knelt down, got a bead on him and was prepared to take the shot, but a clear shot never presented itself. Either the hog wasn’t positioned well or there were trees/brush in the way. Eventually the hog got close enough, noticed us, and took off running. A second hog would have been nice, but no matter.

Heaving this big boy into the truck was a chore, even with a winch. But we got him back to the cabin, hoisted him up and weighed him.

Just over 250 lbs..

That’s big.

We gutted him (I got more practice at cleaning an animal) and while looking at the organs I saw the heart. The bullet had fully penetrated the heart. Right through the shoulder — and the massively thick “shield” (and his was a formidable one), right through the heart, and complete passthrough. Based upon how the entry and exit wounds looked, it looks like that Barnes Bullet functioned as advertised. This is why I love Barnes Bullets. For the record, it was a Federal Premium P308H Vital Shok (165 grain Barnes TSX). I figure he was shot at about 60 yards, so he got hit with that 165 grain bullet going about 2500 fps and probably hit with 2300 ft/lbs or so of energy, with that Barnes Bullet expanding and dumping almost all of that energy inside the body.

The Rest of the weekend

After we dressed the hog, we put him in a walk-in cooler because we were tired and not in the mood to clean him fully. Went fishing, and Oldest caught a nice bass. Best I did was get some nibbles and got one on but he jumped and threw the hook. Charles landed a nice one, and his son did too. But fishing didn’t last long as it was getting hot and we were all tired and hungry. Back to the cabin, eat, nap.

Upon rising, Charles and I went back to the task of cleaning the hog. That was a chore. Son, next time you need to shoot a small hog. 🙂 I’ve never shot a hog this size or dealt with one this size this close up. It was constantly amazing to me how thick his shield was. The entire side of this hog was just armor, thick, and very heavy. You need a solid and strong bullet, all hail the mighty Barnes. We spoke with the ranch manager and he contacted a local guy to see what we could do with the head. We’re going to see about having a European mount done. We don’t need to make a trophy out of everything, but this is not just his first but yes it is a big one. Might as well have something more than just memories. 🙂

We went back out that evening but we didn’t see anything. Charles and his son did have an opportunity, but the hog ran off and they were unable to connect on the running shot (it’s not easy). Oh and Charles’ son had a bummer earlier. While we were cleaning the hog, Charles’ son was still out in the field. Hogs came by, he stalked up, knelt and took aim and… click. The round didn’t go off. Bad primer? hard primer? who knows, but no bang. He was quick enough to work the bolt and chamber a new round, but alas by then the hogs were off. Bummer that he didn’t get the shot off, but he did everything right from staying in the field to stalking to remedying the malfunction. I say that’s well-worthy of praise!

Had to get home early on Sunday so we left before sunrise, leaving Charles and his son sleeping in the cabin. Bummer we had to go so soon, but we were both tired and drained and ready for a shower. 😉  Charles has the bigger cooler and will drop the meat off on his way home. I’ll take it to the butcher in a few days and we’ll have lots of sausage in the freezer.

My take

I’m so happy.

Oh sure, if I bagged one that’d be nice… but this was so much better. It’s great to see my Son so excited, so ready, so happy. But also, so disciplined. He took instruction from me so well, from studying anatomy charts, to listening to me talking about visualizing success, imagining the hog there, calming yourself, finding the target (“Aim small, miss small, right Dad?”), don’t take too long but also don’t rush it, smooth trigger press. He did everything right, and it paid off.

What all did he take from this? I don’t know. He doesn’t really know either, other than the immediate payoff of the joy of the accomplishment along with lots of meat. As his uncle congratulated him, “You put dinner, lunch, and breakfast on the table!”. I’m thinking more about the long-term. Will there be something in his life that will be able to be traced back to this weekend, to that moment? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Meantime, I have guns to clean. It’s all sandy out there and there’s grit and sand in everything. You work the bolt on that rifle and it just grinds and makes me cringe. I can’t expand/collapse the stock on my 6.8 without it sounding like sandpaper. I think that was the only bummer of the weekend was all the sand and dust everywhere.

I must give big thanx to Charles. His support and generosity made this all possible. Thank you, my friend. Y’all go visit and support his site, Tactical Gun Review.

Son, you did good. I’m proud of you.

Iron and the Soul

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Found over at RossTraining.com, a reprint of an essay by Henry Rollins.

I have never met a truly strong person who didn’t have self-respect. I think a lot of inwardly and outwardly directed contempt passes itself off as self-respect: the idea of raising yourself by stepping on someone’s shoulders instead of doing it yourself. When I see guys working out for cosmetic reasons, I see vanity exposing them in the worst way, as cartoon characters, billboards for imbalance and insecurity. Strength reveals itself through character. It is the difference between bouncers who get off strong-arming people and Mr. Pepperman.

Muscle mass does not always equal strength. Strength is kindness and sensitivity. Strength is understanding that your power is both physical and emotional. That it comes from the body and the mind. And the heart.