Doc

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.

Yeah, another year and another round of griping from me on the fact that there is no one out there moving any deer. Yeah we had some shooting for the first couple hours opening day and then everything went silent. Just enough shooting in the morning to put the deer in survival mode, and then a few scattered shots through the early part of the day, and then silence. I checked the state parking lot just a ways down the road on the second day of the season, and it was empty. Thanksgiving Day....... Absolutely silent. This is getting depressing. Every year it gets worse and worse. Anybody else noticing this?

Well, I have no idea the actual time of events, or even what really happened, but I would imagine that there was some amount of time between when the shooter pulled the trigger and the time when any phone calls were placed. And then there is some time delay from when the call was placed to the sheriff's office and when the fire whistles went off. How much time that was is still not reported in the news and probably never will be. The old hunting hours on the 18th was at 7:03, so I suspect that if fire whistle went off at 7:00, the shot was likely taken during that 1/2 hour before sunrise. Like I say, it is all a lot of guesswork on my part, but everyone is talking about when emergency activities took place, not when the trigger was pulled which is what I am curious about. Of course that may never become public knowledge, but I'm just saying that it would be interesting to know.

Still no new details on the shooting. I am curious about the actual time that the shooting occurred to see how it may have related to the new hunting hours. One account said, "The Wayne County Sheriff's Office said it responded at about 7 a.m. to a report that a hunter had been shot in Savannah, just west of Cayuga County." So, depending on how many minutes it took to get to the body, and then report the incident to the police, and then the time it took the police to respond, the actual time of the shooting could have been earlier that the old legal hunting time. It will be interesting to see if that was a contributing factor. But I'm not sure that there will ever be more details reported in the news.

We went out to dinner last night and I was coming home about five o'clock. There was a drizzle all the way home and I can say for certain that the only deer I could see were in my headlights. With that drizzle, the daylight was completely gone and even the blaze orange would not have shown up. There are lot of things that can affect visibility, so there is no one situation that fits all when it comes to adequate identification. Yes, people have been cheating on the old legal hours. And some times that cheating ends tragically. Like I commented above, the dark conditions of a heavy overstory like hemlocks can make a difference and now I have seen what a drippy, drizzly day can do to available light. Throw some fog into the situation and it just makes everything even worse. A wide open hay lot is a very forgiving situation. Snow is great for shooting outside of sunrise and sunset. But of course the law cannot take all of these variations of situations into account. So it all becomes kind of an interesting condition and makes for an interesting discussion.

I still heard some shots before the legal start. I have no idea what the heck they were shooting at because it was barely light. But that is nothing new, I remember that there were always shots in the dark before too. I have to say that where I was, it was pretty darn dark. I was hunting in a very dense hemlock woods. I might have been able to see a deer in there if it was close enough. But it would have been a bit difficult to see the crosshairs through the scope. I know that if I had been on the edge of a hay lot or something there probably wouldn't have been any problem. But where I was, it was quite questionable. And that was with only a partly cloudy sky. If it had been a drizzly situation, I would not have really been able to shoot. I don't think I would have had much of a problem seeing blaze orange though.

So what do you all think about the new hunting hours (1/2 hr before sunrise to 1/2 hour after sun set)?

We are getting into the kind of weather where most of the bulk in my backpack is clothing. My hunts always start with a long climb up a "killer hill" behind the house. The hill is a guaranteed sweat-maker. The best way to beat that problem is to dress very light, and put the heavy coats and sweaters and such on when I get to the stand. I don't last on stand very long if I am all sweated up when I get there.

We always have a choice when it comes to subjects that pertain to our gun rights and the legal and political challenges to our second amendment rights. We can discuss and educate each other on the causes of and solutions to those challenges, or we can bury our heads in the sand and remain ignorant, silent and inactive. That section, if used correctly could be a major organizational challenge to the anti-gun and anti-hunting movement. Yes there have been abuses of that section of this site, but we have the choice as to whether to engage in those abusive discussions or not. But in my mind that section is one of the most potentially important parts of this whole site. It is a shame that we are scared or reluctant to use it the way I'm sure it was intended.

This winter I will be working on a "whole-house inventory" for fire purposes and as a guide for my wife to price out my items for sale in the case of my passing. I have come to my guns, and am looking for a reliable source for the gun resale values. Looking online, I have seen a bunch of sites that say they have gun values. They all are pay sites. I am wondering if any members here have ever used any of them, and do you have any recommendations as to those that are most reliable so that I do not subscribe to them and find out that they don't cover any or most of my guns?

Yeah, it seems that the Dems can't even spin the Biden administration in anyway that even half-sounds believable or positive. That may be the problem with any political discussions on this site these days. There is no way to cover-up or defend the Biden fiasco with new info every day on the Biden Crime Family and all the blunders in policy that looks for all the world like treasonous collusion with the Chinese and Iranians. There really is no counterpoint left for them to defend.

I sympathize with you on the loss of your hunting spot. I would hate to tally up all the hunting areas that I have lost over the decades. I have watched hundreds of stands taken up by new homes and camps and ringed with posted signs. It can really mess up your hunting plans....big-time. It gets worse every year. Even state land spots can be messed up by having someone move into a prize spot that you have all scouted out. It's just part of the hunt, I guess.

I'm not sure just how rare a three legged deer really is. I shot a 3-legged doe a bunch of years ago, and she was fatter than an old hog. I had seen her all through the summer, and was feeling sorry for her so I decided to purposely target her. As it turned out, there was no need to waste any sympathy on that one. She spent all of her time down in the thicket in front of the house and had a regular routine of coming out every evening to feed in a small field next to the thicket. While butchering her I found the heaviest layer of fat that I have ever seen on a deer. I figured the reason for that was that she probably never went up on the hill and kept her movements down to an easy routine down in the valley bottom. Nobody ever pushed her down in that thicket. She was likely living a life of leisure. The cut on the leg was about 4" down from the elbow on her left front leg, and a patch of black skin that looked like the bottom of dog's paw. When you think about it, it is possible to blow legs clean off or held on with a little skin that eventually parts. Also it is not completely rare that fawns laying in hay lots get caught up in mowers. I imagine that as long as they have 3 good legs, they likely have a reasonable survival rate. Tough critters aren't they?

Is it possible that there was another hunter in the area trying to brush out some shooting lanes for a stand in the pines?

I do not agree with that law, but if I am remembering correctly they justified the decision based on the fact that hunting them sporadically tends to break up the herds, scattering them to the point where it makes it more difficult for the DEC to trap large numbers of them and it tends to spread the population. At least that is what the story was back when they made general hunting of them illegal. Yes that sounds like a load of crap, and it assumes that the DEC actually has a hog-trapping program that is really active (which I doubt). I have yet to see a report that says anything about how many of them they have caught. Actually I think the numbers of the wild hogs was over estimated in the first place (any members here ever see one?) I don't really agree with the law, but I do not believe in hunters each deciding which laws they choose to obey.