Doc

Years ago, I decided that land was way more important to me than the home itself. So the first thing I did was buy acreage and live on it. I have to live somewhere, so I might as well live where I hunt. So today, the house and property have long-ago been payed off. Dad was right when he told me they aren't making any more of it. The price was ridiculously low by today's standards. Yes, taxes have gone up over the years, but they have gone up for the city and suburban folks too, and a whole lot faster. And yes, there was always the 45 minute commute each way every day. But it always served as relaxing quiet time. It never seemed to be any problem except on those ridiculous snow storms. I love the peace and quiet out here and the extreme privacy. It always worked for me, and my hunting land is mine to hunt and manage as I please.

I want a nice mild winter with maximum snowfalls of 2.5 inches.; We need some to keep the water table up and adequate, but I don't need to drive or wallow through feet of snow. I have suffered through some ugly winters over the years, and now I deserve a break from that stuff. I can barely make it up old Killer Hill behind the house, add a foot of snow, and I will be doing my hunting down on the valley bottom.

American Ruger, .270 caliber

It is interesting to sit back and read the reminiscing of people who really have bothered to stop at least once to take note of how the human condition and attitudes have eroded over time. Seems like the older we get, the clearer it all becomes. I appreciate the thoughts offered by Mr. Hartman from his tractor seat, and I also appreciate Grouse for forwarding that article on to us. It seems like a collection of good thoughts to ponder once in a while.

Looks good to me!

I will reserve judgement for a season or two. I want to see if the bow season becomes a hunt for nocturnal deer that are already in the survival mode that deer get into after the first day of traditional gun seasons. That of course will depend on how many people take advantage of the early gun season and the resulting pressure. I am also wondering how the mountain bikers and the hikers on the state land will take this ever creeping deer season. Usually they flee the woods when the guns start. I also hope that those non hunters are smart enough to wear the required hunter-orange clothing. I don't believe that the legal requirement of orange (or pink) applies to non hunters. As to myself, I doubt that I will take advantage of this new season. I do not enjoy feeling that trickle of sweat working its way down the middle of my back, or the whining sound of mosquitos when I am try trying to listen for incoming deer. Also trying to feverishly keep the flies from laying maggot eggs on the gutted deer before I can get it to a cooler of some sort cannot be a lot of fun. I also am concerned about the heavy full foliage on everything from the ground up. The deer are hard enough to see even after the leaves all come down. The same concern applies to safety issues of not being able to see other hunters, even those wearing blaze orange and that includes the concerns I have of being seen by other hunters with rifles when full foliage is still on the trees and bushes. I think a lot of these concerns are shared by other hunters or may become their concerns once they have tried a September hunt. So, like I say, the jury is still out. It is one of those things where we will have to wait and see how it all works out before I can argue for it or against it. Unfortunately once something lke that becomes law, it take an act of God to get rid of it. But we'll see.

Yes, most of my first sensing that there is a deer coming in is the sounds. My hunting has suffered because of carelessness in protecting my hearing. There are so many items in life that can attack your hearing. The radio is one, and then there is the chainsaw, and lawn mower and of course shooting, and so many other things that can gradually kill your hearing. My hard of hearing condition didn't happen with any one thing. It ha been an accumulation of things that gradually eroded my hearing to the point where I am considering a hearing aid. But the one thing that I have noticed is that old guys like me tend to not wear them most of the time. I kind of wonder if there is something irritating about them. I have heard complaints about background noise that they pick up. I don't know. I have yet to experience any of that for myself, but there sure seems to be some reason why so many people spend gobs of money on the things and then leave them in a drawer at home.

So when are the DEC signs going to be put up on state land that allows firearms for hunting?

Now that is the kind of treestand that I should have. With my fear-of-heights thing, I would feel real comfy in that thing.

I had a massive bowhunting data base that tracked deer sightings (from stands and anywhere on the way to and from the stands). I logged the areas of the sightings, weather, deer gender with a notation about those that I could not identify, hunting style (standing, still hunting, or just walking to and from the stand), time of day, date, results of the sighting even if I didn't even shoot, direction the deer were traveling. Every stand had a complete history when I used them. I could sort the results by almost any feature that I wanted that gave a pretty good picture of deer movements throughout the season. It also told me what stands were the most productive given the date and wind direction and other weather related data. It was a lot of fun and very useful.......... in the short-term. I stopped when I realized that all that data eroded with the passage of time. Over the nearly three decades, there was a huge ice storm that buried traditional heavy deer trails and significantly changed patterns. A mountain bike club established a thick network of bike trails that also were used by hiking groups and individuals. Hunting pressure had some impact as bowhunting became more popular. Some areas were developed for residences, open fields turned into impenetrable thickets which also impacted deer movements. It seemed that the data collected was only valid for a few years at a time. That realization made me end the log. It still has value as a kind of memoir thing as the data collected was so complete it was like a story about each deer hunt and sighting. It brings back a lot of great memories. But as a predictive tool, it just doesn't remain current. It was all fun, but in the end did not live up to what I was trying to do with it. It's too bad because you would think that 30 years of deer patterns and history of a particular hunting area would be a valuable thing. In this case it did not turn out to be true.

Would that be considered to be a "high shot capacity assault-crossbow" by our politicians?

I have heard all the arguments against lead bullets and lead shot, and am not certain that I agree with any of as being significant. I am certain that this bill is just another in a long list of hunter harassment laws that have become so popular in NYS. Many of us hunters have accumulated significant stocks of ammo, some representing many long hours of reloading. The anti hunters and anti-gun forces would like to strip us of any stocks of ammo and have us begin reloading all over again, especially now that ammunition has become scarce, even some of the components. This particular law is nothing more than another way to frustrate people out of the activity of hunting.

I am not afraid of changing patterns of deer with a few walk-throughs now. I am just not sure how valid any info gathered now will be when the fall arrives and deer have changed patterns because of completely different food sources or the coming of rut or other changes in the conditions and environment that shape the ever-changing deer patterns.

So there is a related question that comes to mind. Those that would not shoot a trophy in your lawn, does that thought change at all if we are talking about a food plot? Any problem with shooting a deer that has been lured to a food plot?

So I sit here reading all these so-called facts and figures from all our resident oil industry tycoons without a word about sources. Please excuse me if I happen to question the validity of it all. I can only go by the very public video clips of Biden declaring war on the fossil fuel industry. Guess who are the most likely victims of that kind of declaration of war. Why didn't he just declare war on the American economy.