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Ran down to Ohio for a PM/AM hunt. Partner still has his buck tag. Well, had. He shot a buck this AM we have a lot of pics of. Nice 5x4 9 with a broken G2. Saw quite a few deer. I have almost no interest hunting here in NY but will get out next weekend for sure. That’s makes four bucks for us this season. One each in Ohio and Missouri.

Had a good feeling about today. Light west winds low 30's saw a Donkey of a doe with two yearlings. Did not offer me a shot. This was morning. Had to go in deep to a stand that I just love. West wind is best and it paid off. I was in by 2 and heard deer around 3:45. Got up and got ready and a big doe headed right to me. Shot through shoulder she went 20 yards. I'm very hyappy!

11 deer in the beans again tonight with 4 being legal bucks but nothing showed from the hit list and nothing as big as this girl. End of the Northern Zone Rifle. On to the week of Muzzy here and then spend the last two weeks down at Letchworth to close out the season.

Here’s a picture of one of our shelves, and there are four shelf sections in total, full.

Rare white deer spotted in West Seneca (wkbw.com)

Was fortunate enough to fill my freezer this afternoon 4:10 nice fat doe. I’m happy for the harvest

I do quite a bit of shooting especially with rimfire firearms, paper targets are great for testing for the accuracy of a weapon and the accuracy of ammunition. Once I find the optimum combo for a particular firearm, paper targets can get boring for me. I love plinking at various reactive targets, commercial metal gongs, plates, bells and spinners and I also come up with ideas of my own or borrow from others. Charcoal brickettes, necco wafers, small clay birds, various leftover garden crops etc etc. A buddy of mine made a suggestion to me about using lollipops aka suckers, said to myself that is a great idea, challenging, cheap, very reactive and no mess to clean up, biodegradable. A little late this year to really get at it but I set up a small sucker target with half inch suckers and think this is going to be fun and challenging. 25 yards pretty easy 50 yards you better have better than average accuracy, at 75 and 100 a tack driver will be needed. Want to add this would work great for pellet and BB guns at shorter ranges. The prototype Al

This was yesterday’s hard work. 10 quarts (quart plus pint jars) of canned venison, plus 21 pounds breakfast sausage, 1 pickled deer heart (from other day). The tenderloins and backstraps in the freezer. Also kept the liver in case someone asks for it. : )

That thing is probably over a hundred years old, I think my great grandfather made it. Him and my grandfather put lots of beef cattle and hogs thru it. Years ago, you could find places to sharpen the knife and screen. Now, I just buy new ones (#12) when it starts plugging. I think the 3/16” screen and a knife cost around $30 from Amazon last year. I put about 75 deer thru the prior set, before it started plugging. I don’t freeze the meat first, but I do remove as much of the fat and tendons as I can. It will grind the meat almost as fast as I drop it in. Most of my butchering time is spent trimming the meat off the bones and trimming out the fat. It also takes a little longer to vacuum seal the packs than it does to grind. Fortunately, my wife takes care of that part for me.

Let a small doe go then shot at a bigger one just about a half hour ago. Giving her a little longer then going to look. Wish me luck. Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

My first experience of hunting in NC. Nothing moving so far but it's early yet. Good luck to anyone going out. Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

Look at this beast. Sadly killed by a car.

i think a few less hunters but also think as far as not hearing the shots hunting is diffrent back in the day brown was down and deer drives were the norm both resulted in way more shooting... plus more accurate fire arms/rifles back in the day smooth bore 12 ga with foster slugs empting the pump gun at 100yrds was commom

I just pulled my cards today. Have a lot of nice Bucks and Does. This 10 pt is lucky! This was Veterans weekend and my two Daughters came up. Teddi and I crossbow hunted together. I remember Saturday morning she missed a small buck and we hung around. I looked at my phone saw it was 9:30 and said to her another half hour? OK dad. We left and look what showed up! I went to shoot at this buck days earlier but my release failed. As far as I know he is still out there.

Simple long arm photography trick, older than dirt.

I have to agree that the media and the FBI and the Democrats long list of dirty tricks have done a very thorough hatchet job on Trump. I hate to see their foul tactics rewarded by turning on Trump now. But we do still have a very popular potential candidate in DeSantis that so far has not been worked over by the leftist forces. But here is the problem. Trump is not a politician. As a total outsider he still wound up with an amazing amount of almost genius moves that brought the country back to it's prime. Economic perfection. Foreign affairs perfection. Things were pretty darn good and all this from a complete outsider. He definitely "made America great again". I believe that history will show that he was probably the best president we have seen in years with what appears to be a natural instinct to handle running the country. But he had a popularity problem because of his personality. Definitely a lot of it self-inflicted with a lot of help from the lefties who have perfected a talent for playing the dirty game of politics. Unfortunately the voters treat elections like popularity contests without a care abut a talent for running a country (example: Joe Biden). DeSantis has shown some of the same kind of talent for correct decisions on a state level, but will this translate into the kind of instincts that were natural to Trump? I don't know, but we will be needing the best team that we can nominate if we are to dig ourselves out of the total wreck that Biden has buried us under. And are we certain that the same kind of dirty tricks from the media and the Dems will not bury DeSantis as was done with Trump? They are damned good at it. Well the jury is still out We have to choose the best nominee, but we have to get him elected too. Choose well, or risk an additional 4 years of Biden. That's a terrifying thought.

First time canner here. First batch is on the stove right now...

Great question! Until last year I would not have been able to answer it myself. lol After having a freezer go down one time to many, my wife and I decided to can venison as well as everything (almost) from our garden. Our kids and friends thought we were nuts a few years ago when we started canning so much in preparation for any shortages. Stories from my grandparents about the Depression came flooding back to me during the whole Covid where the hell is the toilet paper thing. Now if the power goes out or food shortages hit we are very well positioned to feed us and our friends and/or family. And, as far a venison goes; until you have tried it you can not believe what you are missing! It is melt in your mouth tender (even the tough cuts like leg meat) and the flavor like slow cooked pot roast. It makes awesome stew, soup, enchiladas, etc. I'll admit the first time pressure canning we were sitting on the edge of our seats the whole time worried we might blow the house up, but now my wife is an expert at it in my opinion. Oh...and nobody we know are laughing at us now! Our Thanksgiving dinner with the exception of the turkey all came straight from our homestead.

Dropped this female in the same spot as one I dropped Oct 29th.

Took a buck tonight, however the meat was not any good. He had been shot previously in the left shoulder. Stinky and puss oozing out of wound. That is the 2nd one I have gotten like that in 5 years. Too bad, he was a nice buck

To be honest my kill drive is down this year . Alot going on at home and work . Slow start to my season hasn't helped. Now I'm getting over covid .I could have gone this morning except for the cough problem. Then my thought at 5 am this morning was how are you going to drag and load it into the truck by your self. Then butcher and process. Perhaps I can get out this week if I feel better.

I could only hold out for the first two hours after sunrise, in my swamp-edge hang-on stand this morning. That little thing is not made for sits longer than 2 hours in good weather. No action at all there early this morning, not even a squirrel. The wind was gusting close to 30 mph from the SW, and the light scattered rain started getting heavier around 9:30. At that time, I made the 400 yard move, to my two story truck-cap blind. I’ve never killed anything from downstairs of this one, but did take what was likely my largest-ever bodied buck (43” chest girth) from the upstairs with my crossbow, about 6 years ago.lol I shot my gun-season buck last year from another blind, here at my parents place. He ran past and died within 50 yards of this one, after taking this 20 cent, 16 ga Remington slugger from my old Ithaca. That slug never exited his rib-cage. It fell out from under the hide, when I skinned him. It knocked chunks of busted rib all the way through, so that there was a decent, 75 yard long blood trail on the snow, spraying from both sides. I’d be happy if my old Ithaca 16 gauge could get it done on a unicorn with a single 3-1/4” spike today. I’ve gone thru a quart of cider and my last snicker bar this morning and I am now completely out of provisions. I guess that I should have rationed my supply better. Hopefully, the rain lets up soon, so I can make it to lunch with my parents, without getting too wet. This blind has the solid end facing the prevailing wind direction (SW), and is super comfortable on horizontal-rain days, like today. My tree umbrella is nearly useless in those type of conditions. What’s best about these two-story models, is the instant that the rain stops I can go upstairs, where there are no “blind spots”. I still need to break in the first floor of this one, with a deer kill. So far, I have only killed squirrels from down here. There’s been about a dozen deer and a coyote killed from the upstairs of the similar one, that I have at home, and about half of that from it’s lower deck.

Doesn't matter who runs for the GOP, they'll lose as long as the Emergency mail in ballots are being used and COVID election laws are in effect. That's the only way the Dems win elections, So their not going to go down without a fight.

Calling for 50-55mph gusts tomorrow, anyone going out; Plz stay safe and away from dead ash trees.

That’s a white deer with staining. Also that is Erie. West Seneca and the Seneca white deer are not even close to same location.

Hey all! Just wanted to update and again thank everyone for the input. Got up to the area Friday morning and hit the forest roads. I took the opportunity to check out several areas I had marked while e-scouting based on topography and relation other visible land features. That along with the fresh snow gave us a good starting point for the opener on Saturday. We worked several of the State Forests on the eastern side of 7R. We also tent camped on state forest land at an established primitive site. Yes it was cold, but I still have all my fingers and toes so how bad was it really? Lol. There is a bunch of hunting access but the significant amount of pressure from other hunters, especially along the roads, became apparent opening morning with several hunters stumbling through our sets. Additionally, I must have watched 30 vehicles drive down the main road during my morning sit. That was at a smaller state forest, I could only imagine the amount of hunters the larger tracts get. No biggie though, we just followed the sign deeper. Saturday afternoon, I have to admit that I missed a doe. I had just set up and packed a lip. As I turned forward to settle in, I instantly saw her at 20 yards, staring right at me. She had skirted a thick group of scrubby pines- a small spot of concealment which I was certain I would see deer approaching from either side- guess I was wrong lol. I was expecting a 100-125 yard shot on a banger of a run I found that morning. There was a a perfect branch in front of me to rest on for that shot. Unfortunately, it was too high of a rest for a 30 yard shot, forcing me to raise my body to put the crosshairs where I wanted. However, I did not execute well and ended up shooting high while she was quartering to. Long white hair, very small cylindrical bone, and no blood, even with the snow. Tracked several sets of tracks that could have been her for about 3 hours including the grid I searched and found nothing else other than at site of impact. I am almost certain I hit her tail (smh). Got down on myself for missing such a close shot but it also made me want to hunt harder in order to make up for my mistake. Sunday morning we noticed deer moving across the road as we were driving in and decided to wait until light to try to make a move on them. No luck catching up but the effort was fruitful in that it brought us to a great ridge with tons of sign. As the winds picked up later on Sunday I decided to take advantage of the noise and movement from the wind and walk some new ground. Again, we got far off the roads and found sign, some being very fresh, but no luck linking up with any deer at that time. Monday morning brought me back to the general area where I had shot on Saturday afternoon. I saw two doe across a small stream/ravine about 80 yards from me shortly after first light. It was incredibly thick where they were and I was unable to take a shot. Went back out to the truck around 11 for a good ol’ cup a noodles and planned on returning to that same spot for the afternoon. As we were finishing our lunch, a truck with three hunters pulled in, parked 50 yards past us and went into the woods we just came out of and we’re planning on going back into. Didn’t feel like getting into it with them and also we weren’t technically hunting at that time so what could I say? We decided to just move somewhere else. That afternoon I found myself at the aforementioned ridge we found Sunday morning. I sat on the southeastern side about 200 yards from the top of the hill, with a shear cliff behind me, and was seated in a gnarled up group of blowdowns. The wind was in my face and I was expecting a 30-100 yard shot given the sign I had found. After sitting a couple hours, the fresh air had me ready for a nap. I felt my eyes starting to close longer than they should every once in a while until I heard some crunching coming my way. As I scanned I saw a lone doe working her way toward me. A little too toward me, as I ended up shooting her broadside at 15 yards. She had no idea I was there before the shot. She ran 15 yards before she stumbled and slid another 40 yards or so down hill- further away from the truck unfortunately but I can’t complain. What’s another 40 yards when you’re almost a half mile from the truck anyway? I then tagged my deer and then texted my buddy to let him know we had meat in camp for dinner. As soon as I got back to my set up I heard a shot from about 200 yards away. It was my buddy- he shot a doe as well just down the ridge from where I was seated. All in all, great trip. A challenging adventure but with that comes experience and hopefully even more success in the future. I will note, there are some serious hunting folk in these parts as is common on much public land. We were friendly with the groups that stopped by and met some great fellow sportsmen. However, best to be safety oriented so wear your orange and watch out for deer drives (common) around the area (saw some potentially sketchy situations and heard of some nightmares from others we ran into). Either way glad we checked it out! Special thanks to @Kmartinsonfor the help! Dude is wise to the ways of the woods!

I didn’t see anything today either. I hunted my food plot court at home this morning and the clover plot over at my parents this evening. I’d say we are definitely in the post opening gun week slow period now. They are all dead or in the thick cover by day and only come out at night. I’ll be hunting my stands in or on the edge of the thick stuff the next couple weekends. They might be coming back out in the daylight by the last weekend of gun, but certainly by late ML and Holiday ML. I think I have plenty of meat now, because the tiny-tined dmp tag buck from Thanksgiving morning had a more on him than I expected. Maybe 35 pounds of grind plus 9 small roasts and (4) one quart packs of back straps, and that was after trimming off a lot of fat. There’s probably room for one more average sized deer in our big freezer, but anything after that, I will be giving away.

Our avowed communist AG has spoken! Keep voting for these un-American reds you fools. Robby

Nothing like hunting with a good Dawg, a few of my favorites from the last 50 years.

They don't do anything unless you will sign a statement and be a witness in court. I dont need that drama with my neighbors. I still get plenty of opportunities

I have become fond of shooting Ritz crackers at 50 yards. They react well and I don't have to pick anything up, as the birds will eat all of the pieces in no time.

These tyrants know the courts will take years to rule on these unconstitutional laws. Meanwhile they wield them against us like a bludgeon. It's a sign of a totalitarian, statist society.