David Ruppert

Every year out in Bryans Mill, all of the land owners and permanent residences get together for a blowout weekend. It’s the one time where almost everyone shows up. For some reason, beyond my comprehension, it happens during opening weekend of squirrel season.

Why I’m not so clear on its timing is due to the fact that almost nobody hunts squirrel. It’s simply an excuse to head to the woods, leave the women and children at home, and blow things up.

This year was fairly quiet for the rest of the land owners out there. We did run in to a few of them, which in turn led to a 20 mile hike up and down dirt road by a literal convoy of UTV’s until 3 in the morning. But other than that . . it was a surprisingly civilized squirrel camp.

Chris and I brought out several friends this year to join in the general anti-hygienic, overly inebriated death and destruction.

I didn’t shoot too many photos, but did manage to catch a few while we played ‘war’ off of the back porch.

Many of us don’t get an opportunity to pull out the guns on a regular basis, so when the opportunity’s presented, most of our friends go significantly overboard. Which, honestly, is one of the reasons we get along so well.

Brian’s shooting his Caltech pistol.

From the look on Brandon’s face, Chris just said something highly offensive.

Scott sits down with Chris’s .35 Remington. Ear protection is a necessity with this one.

He looks happy with his shot, though he’s probably just glad it’s over with. Trust me, he’s fighting back tears.

Josh sits down with his 22-250.

While I was trolling up and down the deck, this little guy got right in my way and wouldn’t move. Soo, I took a picture. If you can see his lips, he’s saying ‘cheeeeeessee’.

A little later in the day we headed down to a different part of the property to shoot a little skeet. Don’t worry, they’re biodegradable skeet. We’re totally green.

And at the end of the day, this is where you can always find Brandon. Sitting in his chair, filling up his damn BB gun. He’s totally addicted. It’s a little sad.

I have a very clear memory of very few things these days.  It’s incredibly frustrating.  If you asked me what I had for lunch yesterday I would spend the next 20 minutes fixating on it until I finally threw up my arms, blurted out a slew of offensive epithets and slumped my head down in disgust.

Crap, now I can’t focus.

Maybe I went home.  Noo, that doesn’t sound right, I was busy yesterday.

Boston Market . . BAM.  I remembered.  Take that abnormally early memory loss.

With that in mind [at least for a few more seconds], I do have a very clear memory of a few of what I like to call ‘true life highlights’.

This particular one centered around riding a friend of the family’s three wheeler some . . sheesh . . 25 years ago?   Some day this memory might be superseded by the birth of a son or my first lottery win, but that’s unlikely.

The fam was in snow-coated Iowa visiting my dad’s childhood friend while my brother and I were outside destroying his sons three wheeler and snowmobile.  What I remember specifically was removing my gloves to get something out of my pocket, tossing them on the ground and my menace of a brother burying them in the snow by driving over them on the three wheeler.

Pfshh.  Ass.

I remember not caring much because, after all, I was actually splitting time between hauling ass on a treacherously unsafe three wheeler . . and hauling more ass on a snowmobile that weighed 10 times what I did . . and unfortunately was worth 10 times what my life was worth.

It . . . . was . . . . AWEsome.

I picked up the gloves, undoubtedly shot my assface brother the infamous double finger and ran inside to dry them out in the microwave.

For future reference, microwaves are not meant to dry things out . . they only warm things up.  The gloves were better than before, but only for about 3 minutes.  But whatever . . I was back on that three wheeler hanging on for dear life.  I couldn’t have cared less.

Since that day I’ve wanted a three wheeler . . dangerous oversized single front tire, incredibly tip-friendly, illegal to manufacture and all.

So . . after looking through craigslist ads for the better part of my early 30’s, I came across one a couple of weeks ago.  A 1979 ATC 110.  It’s not the 200 Big Red I’d longed for since that day in the early 80’s, but it’s a start.  And . . really I’m just starting my collection, one of these days I’ll have the coveted Big Red.

This one is in surprisingly good shape for a 30 year old death machine.  I had to order a new gas cap, front tube and some handle grips . . but now she’s ready to roll.

But, let it be known that ridiculously large tires are NOT a suitable replacement for a suspension.  Mmmmmyeaaahhh.

She shall live at the cabin.  All will fear her.  And I shall call her the ‘Widowmaker’.

Shortly after we got the property, Chris bought an EZ-Go Workhorse gas golf cart to get around.  Cause, lets face it, walking blows and coolers are heavy.

A couple of months in to it, it became apparent that the little golf cart that could . . . couldn’t.  The ‘golf cart of lifted golf carts’ became a larger, more difficult-to-store Barbie Jeep.

So the search for a new mode of transportation began.  We wanted something that could carry the family around . . and that meant either two rows of seats, or two carts.  As luck would have it, two rows of seats is cheaper.

The Mule.  TA-DAAAA!

It’s a ‘07 Kawasaki Mule Camo 3010 Trans 4×4.  The ‘Trans’ is because it will convert from a two seater with a large bed to a four seater with a smaller . . cuter bed.  We opted for 4wd because it’s cool.  We opted out of the diesel because we’re cheap.

Sooo, we gassed it up, strapped on some Top Gun Ray Bans and headed out to show off what had to be the manliest of all glorified golf carts.

Within a few minutes we got stuck.  Damn.

Tires were in ruts, carts were on their sides, egos were sufficiently urinated on.

Within a day I was busy Googling things like “hell yeah utv” and “largest lift kit for girlie Mule”.

We started by some basic ‘pimping’ in the form of a gun case [to hold the bolt action 20ga snake charmer], hatchet and shovel.  All necessities should Red Dawn ever come to fruition.

We decided on a 2″ lift, the largest they . . . uhh . . make? I know, that’s what I said too.

Yeah, he’s reading instructions. Yeah . . . we’re in trouble.

We also decided on a Viper 4500lb winch.  We eyed up some nice Warns and the like, then saw the price, laughed and moved on.

The winch came with a mounted switch we put just under the steering wheel along with a remote that we mounted just off the front fender.

Lastly we opted to add a Hi-Lift to the front of this bad boy. Notice the crushed empty beer can. Everyone knows Mule altercation can’t happen without a nice can of go-go juice.

It required welding some bolts on to the front bumper for storage.

It took a couple of nights, but all in all things went fairly smoothly.

The result, a more expensive glorified golf cart.  Brilliant.

We see some cool stuff out at the property. Cottonmouths, rattlers and copperheads unfortunately make the list. As of the past few weeks, there’s been a number of large hogs tearing up the trails.

Several weeks ago we ran into this snapping turtle waddling down the road.

I inched a small stick in front of him. He snapped. I tinkled ever so slightly. We left.

A few weeks ago, we were packing up and I started to clean out the Mule. This caterpillar was crawling around some folding chairs we had sitting in the back.

One pine down, snapped right in the middle. Not too bad.

We were able to deck to roof, add Tyvek, and drop the windows.

Now it’s time to go hangout with the boys at the river.