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It took a while, but I finally put my tag on a buck this year. My buddy bagged a nice 5 point on the opener, but I saw nothing but a squirrel. I did spend a few hours in the morning on the opener helping him with his deer, when I should've been in my stand, but I don't know if I missed anything when I wasn't there. Anyway, the day after Thanksgiving I went to my friend's nearby property to hunt. He was out of town for Thanksgiving and asked if I would hunt his 100 acres and make sure no one else was hunting there. I had exclusive hunting privileges Weds through Friday. I drove my truck into a back field and parked to wait for the sun to rise. I took a seat at one end of the field where I could see the whole field, as well as the wood line around it. Soon after legal shooting time, I saw a doe at the far end of the field just inside the brush of the woods bordering the field. It was 200 yards away. Scanning the woods behind her, I spotted this nice 8-point buck. The brush was obscuring his body, and I could only see his head and neck. The doe spotted me and blew a warning. She did it again a few seconds later. When she ran into the woods the buck was still there looking at her. I knew he was going to run, so I set my crosshairs on his neck and steadied my aim. The Kimber 84M in 7mm08 roared and the buck staggered, as he tried to run away. I lost sight of him after that. I drove the truck over to where he stood and found him not far from where he was when I shot. I was a 200 yard off hand neck shot, and the longest shot I've taken on a buck in the Catskills. I had to call my friend Chuck to help me lift it onto the tailgate of my pickup, as it was too heavy for me to do it alone. The buck weighed 140 lbs field dressed and has a nice symmetrical 8-point rack. It also has two little bumps where it was growing 2 more points that would have made it a 10-pointer, but they're too small to count. I took some time to fill my tag, but it was worth the wait.

What an afternoon. I get to my stand at 3:30 wind , temps were perfect. I hear a shot not too far away. Sounded like it was on my property. My neighbor gets back to me that there was a button buck in my corn field with the ass eaten out of it. Just standing there shaking. Seems like the yotes got this deer but didn't finish the process. Guys it was gross what I saw. He put the deer down. A good thing. So about 4:15 to my right I see two large deer. I have no idea if they were two bucks or a buck locked onto a doe. All I know is the buck started heading my way. It was a real nice 10 pt. Shooter goes off in my mind. I think that second deer was another buck but I never saw horns. So here he comes at 30 yards slight quarter to. I put a slug through the front shoulder and it exits through ribs. He goes down in front plowing up the leaves. I knew I had a good hit but he got out of sight. I get down and head for where I last saw him. Took a few minutes but I found him. Beautiful 10 pt. One tine was sligfhtkly broken and he had a scar on the upper part of nose. I thought that this could of been the buck that My neighbor and I hit opening day. Upon looking at the deer the back hoof was shot off. It was dangling and he was walking on bone. My neighbor and I agreed the buck on opening day was much bigger. I was thrilled to get this deer this late in season. 5 seconds before I shot this deer my brother texted. Telling me to shoot a big one so you can spend more time with your girlfriend! It worked!!!! Enjoy the picts.

A friend of my son had asked him if we would take him deer hunting some day. His friend Danny had never been deer hunting and wanted to get a deer. We took Danny out this morning with us. It was his first time deer hunting and my son put him in a 2 man ground blind with him to teach him. In the first hour Danny was able to bag a big doe. The joy and exhilaration Danny displayed was priceless. My son taught him how to field dress a deer and we helped drag her out. Take a new hunter hunting with you when you can. We couldn't be happier for him.

So, this year is my 41st bow season and I love it just as much now or more; definitely my favorite season and time of the year. But as I got older and after some shoulder injuries, and a shoulder surgery, this year was the toughest and sorest year I have ever had pulling back my bow. My Dr said that I need a full shoulder replacement but I'm trying to hold off on that. While bowhunting this year, I've seen a few and passed on some small bucks. Until last week, I finally had a mature 8Pt offer me a 10yd shot, following in a doe and my shoulder hurt so bad, I couldn't even pull my bow back on 3 tries. He eventually walked off with the doe having no idea I was there and all I could do was watch him walk away. Still a great close encounter but heartbreaking that my shoulder wouldn't allow me to pull my bow back. Next year I'm going to look at lowering poundage a little on the bow and try to time my cortizone shot better with bow season. Anyways, with my shoulder failing me, I took the rest of that week off from bowhunting to wait for the crossbow opener on Saturday. On Saturday, with about half an hour of light left, a different, smaller 8Pt offered me a 30 yd shot with the crossbow. I was able to collect my first ever crossbow harvest. 30Yd shot, double lunged, ran about 70 Yds and dropped. A decent 3.5 year old 8Pt. Love this time of year. Good luck all...Hunt safe, hunt hard, hunt ethically, and have fun out there!

Got my second ever b-day buck in 40+ yrs of hunting yesterday. Not the biggest buck in the woods, but I'm very happy with him. Lot's of yrs, I was already tagged out and couldn't shoot a buck on my birthday. Ya, I know crappy selfie, lol.

Great ending to Letchworth bow season. Finally caught up with one of the hit listers. 127in Now to find one of the other two. Good luck all.

Went down to my oldest son's property in Honeoye Falls to give it a try . I was in the blind at 2:30 . About 3:30 , a small racked buck with a decent size body showed up around 20 yards from me . I put the 20 yard dot on him and took the safety off . The safety made a click sound , the deer heard it and looked my way . When it turned it's head I pulled the trigger . This was the 1st time I ever had a shot at any deer with the crossbow . The deer bolted and took off in the direction that it came from . I found my bolt as the shot was a pass through . I couldn't spot any blood . I had called my son and he was on the way home . He told me to wait for him . Matt and Blake ( grandson ) came out and we started looking for blood . Speck here and there . Matt spotted it in the neighbor's woods about 30 yards onto that property . Recovered the deer and Matt should be butchering it right now . I doubt that I would have found the deer without help . Shot the deer on the left side with a Rage Expandable .

Nice big doe ran up the ridge at 7:15, she was dragged back down at 7:30.

Brother got it done tonight perfect 8 point slob! 30 yard shot rage broadhead probably saved us from tracking. Hit was back but out a huge hole in the deer. He went about 50 yards.

Found the deer this morning. Had to be at work at 9:45 so I hunted to 7:45 and got down to look. Found nothing until 8:25. The deer was right next to the road. It was a perfect shot but being so close arrow went through one lung and out the stomach. Not once did I find stomach content in blood. I just got home from work and backtracked its path. Only blood was where it bedded or fell. Crazy shit. First pict is entrance.

Opening day was not looking good weather wise as it was raining as I was getting into camp. So setting up my ground blind was a no go. Thankfully the rain started to taper off around 3 Am. The rain finally stopped at 4 Am. I set out a half hour early to set my ground blind up and waited for the fun to begin. Spotted over 20 deer with the thermal while waiting for the sun to rise and had 4 bucks chasing a doe in the distance as legal shooting time approached. One buck was clearly the dominant buck, but it wasn't one of the big bucks we had on the trail cameras, so I passed on it. As it got brighter out and the deer came in closer to around 200 yards, I could see the dominant buck was a shooter 8 pointer, so I decided that it was time to take action. He was perfectly broadside, but as I was taking the safety off, a truck came barreling down the right of way road and scared them away down a ravine. F'ing neighbor worked late, so he got up late and was flying down the road to his stand on a neighbors property. So as I sat there plotting the neighbors demise for chasing the deer away, they popped up around 300 yards away feeding under some thorn apple trees and saved the neighbors life. I picked a clearing they were heading towards, ranged it at 315 yards, dialed it in and waited. About 10 minutes later the doe appeared in the clearing, the 8 Pt buck followed and I dropped him. After the shot, the doe trotted about 20 feet and one of the smaller bucks jumped on it. To the victor goes the spoils. Another member of camp bagged a nice 7 pointer about an hour later. Since I was tagged out, I decided to coyote hunt over the gut pile we made 150 yards away in view of the camp. Nothing showed up that night, so I went out Sunday night at a location away from the neighboring hunters properties who were still deer hunting and dropped a male coyote at 1am. When it rains it pours. SJC

Big old doe 930 am shotgun got it done

I've been striving to put a 10 point buck on my wall for 53 seasons now and have yet to do it. Yesterday, my BIL in PA sends me this pic of a deer 25 yards behind his house he photographed from his 2nd floor balcony. He sees lots of nice bucks near his home, which is out in the sticks. He doesn't hunt anymore. His place is 5 hours away. I'm seriously considering hunting PA next year when I have retired. I'm getting desperate.

I thought I would share a couple pics from my stand I was in the other day. This was my view the other day from my ladder stand. If you look in the distance in the first pic you can see the island with my trash heap blind. If you enlarge the pic you can actually see the blind. The deer were in between these two stands. The second picture is another view from the stand overlooking my hill and across to the rolling farm fields across the road. I’ll hit the same spot Saturday morning.

Thanks guys! I'm blessed with such great hunting property and good neighbors. I will do a Euro mount on this one. Last count there have been 15 buck and 10 doe killed this season between the neighbors. My camp has 4 buck 2 doe in that count. Here are the big three we got. 2 and 3 out of the same stand along with 2 doe. First picture was from a stand 100 yards away.

My Sons 11 pointer, with a split brow. Seems only pic that would load is of him caped out.

I thought I was filling a DMP with a Doe , guess not !

One of the biggest does I’ve gotten, she really needed slim fast.

A quick review of this little Super Lite rifle, I have messed around with quite a few firearms in my lifetime, but this Howa has really grabbed me. I knew I was going to like this rifle from the press it was getting, I could tell Ron Spomer was taken by it. When you pick this rifle up and get a feel for it that is when it hits you, 4.7 lbs is unreal. I purchased up a Winchester model 70 "Featherweight" just a short time ago, it only weighs a tad over 7 lbs which is fairly light for a walnut stocked bolt action. Side by side compared to the Super Lite it feels like a heavy barrel varmint rifle, lol! I have just it's scratched the surface and only used it hunting for a couple of weeks but so far I love it. For carrying and hunting the woods this rifle is tough to beat and for me personally it is unbeatable, it is like handling a wand. The accuracy I have been getting had been very good for a pencil barrel and pretty much mirrors what Spomer was getting group wise and that is with factory ammo. I have yet to shoot my handloads but I am confident they will be at least as good as the factory load I used to sight in and hunt with and more than likely even better. The detachable magazine is great, convenient and handy, I like them better than the blind detachable floorplate magazines most bolt action rifles have. The Howa trigger is a two stage and very good, once the first stage is taken up the second is light and crisp, as good as it is I still prefer a single stage because that is what I have used all my life. As for the 6.5 Creedmoor cartridge I took a medium size Doe and as expected it performed great. I think the 6.5 caliber is just about perfect for Deer hunting. Now that the season is over I have made a couple of changes to the rifle, first off I removed the one piece bridge base and replaced the scope mounts with two piece Tallys that are a bit lighter and lower. The 1X5 gloss Leupold was borrowed from my 375 H&H, so I picked a matching bronze cerakoted Leupold 1X5 for the Super Lite and put the gloss 1X5 back on the 375 H&H. As mentioned above I have tried to keep this rifle as light as possible, even the sling is the lightest I can come up with. pretty much set up the way I want now. I will give a report on how my handloads shoot down the road. Al

This is a 7 pointer I took on 11/21 , I also shot an 8 with the crossbow and my 15 yr. old son shot an 11 pointer this past weekend on 11/25 but having trouble loading a pic of his buck, I'll keep trying.

This weekend was pretty slow. Saw a few Doe and 1 nice 6 pt too small for me to shoot. So few weeks a go my brother is bow hunting and a grey house cat comes along with a Doe in tow. The Doe followed the cat. I brushed it off but on Saturday morning here comes the grey house cat with the 6pt following it. Weirdest thing! My neighbor shot a Coywolf Sunday. Weighed 60 lbs. Big dog!!!! The guy holding it is over 6'.

Shot this Doe yesterday morning. I saw 12 in all. Some real big ones with fawns in tow. Last three that came by I took the Mom. One fawn ran off the othered stayed. She kept walking back to me and the dead deer. At one point she came within 20 feet. After the third attempt I threw a stick at her and ran a few feet after her. She got the message and left.

Shot this 4 point this morning at 9:00am on the ground. This late in the game meat matter more to me than unedible horns. Thank you Jesus for this deer

My neighbors hang out! What a great time!!!!

Well I cut to the chase tonight and took one of the Does I have been seeing all Fall with the Howa Superlight 6.5 Creedmoor. Nothing great but I got something to put into the freezer. About 125 yds, threaded the needle though some small openings and that was that. Now I can look forward to some Squirrel hunting. Al

I think the hunters who aren't willing to adapt to changes are the ones struggling. The stump you sat on for 20 years straight and saw a deer opening day may be a thing of the past. Adapt, move, hunt new land, hunt new ways. I'm not sure why people think there has to be a bunch of hunters in the woods kicking deer all over the place in order to see one? Deer are still out there being deer, they will move more with less pressure therefore negating the fact there needs to be a pile of people walking around. I prefer quieter woods personally. It may sound selfish or blatant but I don't care if the guys that hunt one weekend a year stop hunting or not. They aren't true hunters anyways. The issue I see negatively impacting the sport is land access. There are a fair amount of state lands available but not really for the amount of guys that utilize them. The issue to me is the big money land leasing that is everywhere. It seems impossible to get permission most places that used to be easy to hunt on. You have 30 trucks hunting a piece of state land with 15 deer on it, while the big money lease next door with 3 guys on it has 40 deer eating in a field opening night. I know some of this is coming off as just complaining. I think the honest truth is the hunting shows have ruined hunting in more ways than one. But.... I'll adapt and continue to kill deer wherever I have to, I'm a good hunter, put me near deer and I'll figure out how to kill one. Sent from my motorola edge (2022) using Tapatalk

PA cams still firing, following 3 doe, cam is 1 hour behind, since this 2 spikes and a 4 pt have followed same trail.

Good luck everyone and most importantly stay safe. Thanks to our insurance company I will be sitting out another year. Hopefully next year will be the year I can return to hunting. It has been a long haul for sure but at least we have been able to re-build. Stay safe and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I saw 9 different bucks tonight in a 2 hour sit. Biggest was a 12 pt that was beautiful. Had a big 8 and a 6 meet up and walked off together. It was a great night!

This evening I brought the buck decoy, this was the only deer I saw, puffed up to it and circled it twice.

My son scored on a big wide 6 pt with 10 minutes of shooting time left. He only uses a compound bow and made a perfect double lung shot. We waited an hour and only had to follow the blood trail about 45 yds to make the recovery. And of course old Dad had to help drag him out lol.

Selkirk 4B ! My backyard !

It is obvious to me, the board set up the way he wants it, I have no problem with the way this board is set up other than needing some strong moderation. If members have such a big problem dealing with that hit the road, there are other choices to make you happy, quit coming here to stir the pot, the board is what it is. Al

What can you say, sad indeed but I can not blame them for fleeing a state that not only sucks with their taxes on business, but a Democrat government basically against everything you manufacture and behind the scenes probably cheering. At one time NY was the country's top state for firearms manufacturing. Ithaca Gun Lefever Arms Baker Shotguns LC Smith Utica Savage On October 21, 2020, Kimber Arms management announced the corporate headquarters is being relocated to Troy Alabama Now Remington, All Gone! Al

For me it has nothing to do with the other site per-se, it is some the members that left here that to be honest I have no use for and do not want to associate with period. All the back biting, sniping cheap shot artists and trouble making political trolls are gone and I for one am glad of it. I totally agree with Four Seasons, this site has never been better and I enjoy and like the members that stayed. Numbers do not mean a thing to me, it is all about content and I like this site's content without all the bull!! Al

I'm on both. Why not? I like both, but too be honest, even though FS says this sight is the best it's ever been, I have to disagree. Can't say this forum is flourishing with content and new members. I often go back to read through old threads on this site. So much info and great advice for past yrs.

I joined this site in 2010 and have enjoyed it ever since. I have both received and given many likes to posts on the forums and I particularly like that the focus is on New York State hunting. I contemplated joining the other site but chose to remain loyal to this one as it has never done me wrong and I have actually made some new friends here. I have browsed the other site and found that many of the members there are former members of this site whose posts I enjoyed and I miss them. I wish they would return here. Regardless I will stay here and I continue to enjoy reading the posts and posting some of my own.

I’ve been on this site from the beginning. I see no need to posts the same posts on 2-3 different sites. This site is now the best it’s ever been. Without the need of more then 1-2 mods let alone the need for 5-6-7 mods on other sites.

https://youtu.be/KYTbaLTBu8U?si=ioHFVifWpJ2kRicq We were very thankful this Thanksgiving for a good buck and good footage- I was lucky and just turned on my camera in time to get the shot! Good luck to all of you the rest of the season! Thanks for watching!

I have been around hunting for more years than I care to admit to. I have seen changes that most of today's hunters have never seen. Yes the deer do tend to run bigger and for those with the right kinds of hunting opportunities can have some pretty good consistent success. New high-tech clothing can allow hunters to flop down and basically camp out in stands all day with the deer bedded up a few hundred yards away. We even have little portable huts to keep the snow or rain and wind off of us so there is no reason to get up and walk like we used to do after the first couple of hours would drive us from our stands. That is what used to get the deer moving. It used to be that hunting land was just about everywhere. And the perceived deer numbers were high enough to keep everyone coming out year after year. Today there is hunting land shrinkage. Posted signs everywhere. Good hunting areas being shut off. It is not a situation that would fill new young hunters with a whole lot of confidence. Too many days sitting in frigid stands without seeing any deer all day long. It is not the kind of experience that makes a lot of new hunters eager to suffer through without even a flicker of a tail. And then we have the constant staged TV shows that have made all hunters feel entitled to a big buck. Yeah, bucks-by-the-numbers have set expectations a lot higher than reality. Hunters don't want to hear about doe harvests. They aren't even satisfied with a buck if the numbers don't match up with the TV programs. That is whacking hell out of our numbers also. Now the idea that you have to be perched up in a treestand has taken hold with everyone convinced that there is no other way. That has also encouraged the few people that are left to stay put. They are stationery, and the hunters are stationary. And that's the way the day goes. Not really all that exciting. The last thing that I have seen is what I call the "half-day" hunters. Opening day they come out and somewhere around noon they bail out of the woods never to return for the rest of the season. Yeah, they keep the license sales looking decent, but the actual participation ......not so much. Yeah, hunting is not what it used to be. I suspect it never will be and I guess there are some that are just as happy that it is not. It has become something that I can't even recognize anymore. But it is becoming a very silent woods and getting more and more boring every year. Maybe the woods will get quiet enough so that gun hunting will have all the benefits of bowhunting without the deer being sent into their nocturnal movements in a survival mode with that opening day burst of gunfire.....Ha-ha-ha-ha. Then we won't need any numbers of hunters to get the deer back up and diurnal again.

Just heard this buck was taken down the road from me. What a stud!

When I was young the woods were full of hunters and the deer were small. I used to long to find woods to hunt that weren't filled with every neon orange wearing nimrod on God's green earth. And they wore that full body orange suit to avoid getting shot by one of those other orange clad guys who was as dangerous as a lit stick of dynamite. To see a good-sized buck while hunting was as rare as seeing an alien space craft landing. Every spike buck in the woods was killed by the end of opening day. Big bucks only survived on land that was not open to hunting and they fled to that land the minute the first shot was fired, only to stay there for the rest of the open season. The old days weren't as good as most guys seem to think they were in my opinion. Today there are far fewer hunters and I also notice far fewer shots, but I also believe the shots fired now are coming from hunters actually shooting at a deer and only taking one shot most of the time. Maybe the price of ammo has something to do with that. Today I can find lots of land to hunt, and lots of 6 and 8 point bucks to hunt for. Less pressure from hunters means more opportunity to really hunt the way I want to hunt, utilizing hunting skills that won't get ruined by some guy in the woods wandering into the area without a clue, smoking a cigar, suffering from a hangover and smelling like his car's air freshener. Fewer hunters in the woods is also the main reason we hear of fewer hunting accidents every year. There are many drawbacks to fewer hunters in the woods, but there are also many positives for the guy who is a real hunter, one of the 1% who really takes the sport seriously and goes about it professionally. There are advantages and disadvantages to everything, but I prefer to look at the advantages and make them work for me. I for one, am having more success each year, and bagging bigger bucks now than ever in my life, and I'm doing it with real hunting skills, not so much with dumb luck like it used to be when that's all you could hope for. Sure I worry about the sport dying, but it won't die for me and if others choose not to do it anymore, that will be just one more poor choice younger generations make. I'm just glad hunting was something I could do my entire life because it has truly enhanced the quality of my life all along.

Jet sled is the way to go. I'm a few years older than you and use one. You can drag them over any terrain and they even float if you have to go across water. When my son and I shot black bears in Maine a few years back, the outfitter used a jet sled to drag the bears out of the dense Maine woods. In addition you can use one for hauling gear into the woods. Also they are not that expensive and last a lifetime.

Finding even a good amount of blood does not always equal a fatal shot or even a debilitating injury. Deer are tough and can survive an injury that bleeds bad, from the way this episode sounds it was just not a good hit as what was first thought. Speaking of blood trails I was clued in on supposedly a really great blood tracking tool made by Primos. A light that when shown on blood in dim light will make it stand out and glow, the guys telling me about this thing were really fired up about it because it works so well. I believe these lights have been around for some time but I personally never paid too much attention to them but after listening to these boys on how well it works I did a little investigating over on Amazon reading reviews. Same thing over there the reviews were raving. So what the Hell, another gadget in the hunter's toolbox is on the way but from the way, it sounds it is a winner. Whether it works or not I have a good tracking dog that I have total confidence in so I am covered. Al

Was out last night, baghed a doe. This morning had a doe walk up to about 10' away from my stand. I'm watching the thing wondering if it's going to sniff the ladder when my backpack fell, hit three rungs on the way down, and scared the deer absolutely shitless.

Shot the oy deer I saw yesterday, a medium sized doe. Normally I would pass on the thing, but spent so much time in stand it was after 3PM I felt like I had to make a move otherwise I would regret it. Have family obligations so cannot get out for the next week. When I was field dressing in the parking area another hunter came by and expressed regret that both he and his GF had passed on her in the morning and they hadn't seen anything since. One of those days I guess.

Packed and ready for tomorrow opening day of gun. I decided to take my Remington 1100 for the first day Good luck to all going tomorrow

Little hard to make out but had some buck doe hanky panky this afternoon.