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HOW RURAL IS RURAL?

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I live on 20 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia, north of PathfinderNC's place. The elevation is 2500'. My house was built in 1850 and the "new" addition was put on in 1870. I have several spring branches (small streams) that feed into a nice creek. It is 7 miles to the nearest gas station and 17 miles to the nearest Wal-Mart. I have several places to shoot.

Almost Heaven.
 
I'm very blessed to live on 30 acres of forests and fields, surrounded by hundreds of acres of pastures and forests, lakes and streams. When I was a child I ran a trapline that took me an hour and a half to run every morning before school. Didn't catch a lot of great fur, mostly possums and 'coons, sometimes a red or gray fox with a hole set. Once a muskrat, but I used that pelt to fashion a hat! Used a rusty colored groundhog for the top! But now, although the land is still wide open, rich folks are coming in and building McMansions overlooking my former stomping grounds, and others are paying big bucks to create hunting clubs on land that, as a child and young adult, I considered mine! I'm glad that every day, thru out the seventies and eighties, I hiked, hunted, shot, fished and trapped that beautiful land, with the Blueridge Mountains rising up, right there, so that it's not just a memory, but actually part of who I am! I still stealthily go into my childhood haunts, but, unlike when I was young, I fear confronting humans!! But, I still have our land, and besides, I'm not as young as I was then!!
 
The view from the deck of my home on 5½ acres in Pennsylvania....
 

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I lived in Muscle Shoals while I was working for the power company, nice subdivision but no room for a shop and only a small garden. I built bows out in the garage, at least 50 of them, and thought "one day I will have a "real" shop".

My wife was always looking for us a more rural place closer to her family's land in Greenhill Al about 20 miles away. Every time she announced "I found us a place" I would look at it and find a major flaw in the location or the house. One day she said it again, I thought it would be another wild goose chase but drove over to look anyway. It was a house being built at the end of a dead-end road about 5 miles out of town, the builder had it in the dry, there was room for a shop and a huge garden plus it backed up to hundereds of acres of forest land.

The house we looked at was full of folk planning to buy it, it didn't take me more than a few minutes to realize I better move fast if I wanted the place. The builder was on sight, I asked what he wanted for the house, he said $184,000 which seemed out of my price range but I figured if I sold my paid for house in Muscle Shoals I could swing it. I told him I wanted the house; he said "let's go draw up a contract "and we did. While we were signing the papers the phone in his office rang, he told the caller "Sorry, but I am in the process of selling the house right now", the caller wanted to sign a contract on the house.

I have the house and 4 acres of woods, A couple of years after I moved in, I had a 28X30 shop built, half for tractor, yard and garden stuff and half for that "real" shop I had wanted for so long.

I love my shop;

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My wife died 9 years ago; I sold the camper after she passed, going out alone wasn't for me.

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I never hunted deer on my land until the last couple of years when getting old age body parts fixed limited my mobility temporally. On a good year with a good acorn crop I may see 50 deer on my land, lately I have been putting a few of them in the freezer. I have planted a food plot for the deer for at least 15 years just to watch the deer, now I hunt it some. I hunt with traditional archery equipment and B/P mostly, if the freezer is empty at the end of the season the modern stuff comes out. The deer become mostly nocturnal a few weeks after the deer season starts.

It seemed strange at first hunting 50-75 yards from the house but I have grown to like it, since I had my hip replaced, I can't drag a deer anymore, my tractor with a front-end loader sure comes in handy for this task.

Here is the view from one of my tree stands below my house, you can see my house in the background.

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The hollow below my house where the deer travel;

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My food plot from a ladder stand I have below the house.

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Outstanding. Semper Fi.
 
My brother in law recently passed has a farm of I believe659 acres. He left it to my niece and nephew who will continue his legacy and keep it in the family. My nephew quite the young man has built a couple of flint locks under the tutelage of Herschel House! This farm is only 10 minutes from the historical Ohio river town that I live in. My son and I hunt this piece of Heaven
Very nice. I tell people every day that I would rather live in a tent in the mountains than in the fanciest house in a city. Semper Fi.
 
And, therefore cannot legally use lead balls or bullets.

Thank you Governor Newsom. 🤬
I know how you feel , but I1m sorry to say it wasn1t him. other idiots quite a bit befoer his time Mostly brought by our tax dollars from U.C. students studying california condors, but with lies . most of the lesd the birds ingested was picked from paint on a structer they roosted on.
The fiasco was documented and truth came out but reporters /media were somehow invested with a tear jerker story and ran with it, just like the Spanis American war Hearst newspapers could not let a poorly designed battleship blow up without selling millions of newspspers, hence the cry ( remember the Main). Blew up in Havana harbor all by itself with no help from spain or the people in Cuba.

Buzz
 
I have always lived in "RURAL" settings . To start with , S. W. Pa. coal region , couple miles north of the W.Va. border. As a 6 Yr. old kid. ,my blessed Mother wouldn't put up with my whining , " that there was nothing to do" , and would put me out the back door saying "go entertain yourself." If my Dad was home from working at the coal mine , I'd pester him , If the neighbor kid was home , we armed ourselves w/ BB guns , and in a couple minutes , be in a neighborhood abandoned farm , of 80 acres.
Left home at age 18 to work my way through technical college in Pgh. , Pa. . Worked anywhere I could , 3 PM to 11 PM shift while in school. None of my Pgh. , Pa. experience was "Rural" , but I met and married a city girl , Reg. Nurse , that hated the city. Upon my graduation , plus one year , we traded my old used junk yard bought Ford cop car for a better vehicle , packed up our meager belongings , and headed for the mountains of central Pa. , where my extended family lived. I found we had moved near 100's of thousands of acres of State public use land.
Thus , my second chance at living a "Rural" life style. Rural has been good. Now , I'm still , just an old coal miner's son..........oldwood
 
I would give anything to have a few good acres of my own in the country. I mean around 20 acres would be happy with 8 or so. I drive 1 hr to turkey hunt 2 1/2hrs for squirrel which is national forest which gives me 26,000 acres to roam. Ya I barely cover 20 plus when I go. It's a great place to be in the woods though.
 

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