Doc

This is a typical case of conditioning the deer to aid a kill. That is the line that I draw to define where I will not go with my hunting practices. I have too much respect for the species to resort to training them to give themselves up. It is too much like fasteddie's example with the goats. That sort of stuff starts to take the hunt out of hunting for me. There are other practices that people do in the name of hunting that cross over my personal limits, but all these things are personal lines that I have drawn for my idea of hunting. Others may draw their lines differently and as long as the practices are within the framework of the law, they are entitled to their own versions of hunting.

It gets real ugly when you get more than 2 feet of snow.

The only experience that I have had with bees, other than being stung, was the bee-tree that I found a few decades back at the top of the hill behind the house. It has long since been empty. It was a short stunted red-oak tree that had a split in the side with honey globbed around the hole, and bees flying in and out. I never found another wild bee-tree before or since. I guess there is a shortage of wild honey bees, so I am glad there are some bee-keeping enthusiasts like you around. I see hives around all over the place around here. Apparently bee-keeping is a pretty popular hobby. Ha-ha-ha.....I have been known to steer around honey bees when I am mowing.

Yeah, baiting is one of the many things that cross over the line for me. That feeling goes above and beyond the constraints of the law. One of the things that I am not into, is anything that attempts to condition the deer to make my hunting easier. I like my prey to be as natural and "untrained" as possible. Part of hunting for me is finding and understanding currently used food resources......Not creating them. However, I know that that is just one of my own unique personal requirements. I remember once reading about a Texas deer hunt with an automatic feeder where the guy claimed that the sound of the timed feeder dispensing bait triggered the deer to come in to the feeder. He knew where the deer would be coming in and even knew when. His feeders had literally trained the deer to assist his harvest. That sort of thing is not anything that I really want to be involved with in my hunting. That is not a knock against those that do use such tactics where legal. It is just the sort of thing that my personal "fair chase" limitations will not allow me to take advantage of.

I'm wondering if I should plow and uncover that slick ice again. But likely I will have to eventually. It is an interesting predicament. I thought it was kind of neat living that far of the road. It's not all that neat this year.

Now that's just silly looking.

I guess I am fortunate enough to still afford some real beef and pork steaks and roasts when I want meat, and don't have to rely of wild game for survival. So the only motivation I have for hunting is to measure my abilities against a deer's abilities. Not some guy's manufactured product against the deer. That all is just another way of saying, "I need the challenge if I am going to hunt". That is what made me get into hunting in the first place. How far am I willing to retreat on that challenge....well that is where the question really lies. It is a tough balance. At 81, I'm not going to lay out on an overhanging limb with a knife clenched in my teeth waiting to drop down on the back of a deer. But I do draw some lines on what I will do to get the job done. I was just curious as to what kinds of limits people put on their hunting to satisfy their version of "fair chase". But I know we all hunt for different reasons, and that is why I posed this question. There really is no right or wrong answer. We all do what we want, the way we want to do it and that is the way it all should go.

Well I have a problem that I have never experienced before in the 49 years that I have lived here. The snow has come in such small but frequent amounts that I just kept driving over it. No need to plow out an inch or two. Well, what happens when you do that week after week, and the temperatures stay cold is that there gets to be a build-up of ice. I would say that there is about 4 or 5 inches of nice shiny ice. Unfortunately the driveway is about 1000' long so the amount of salt required to melt that much ice is way out of my budget. And you cant plow ice. I'm hoping for more snow on top of the ice so I can drive in and out. It's an interesting problem with no significant melting in sight.

In the original post, I emphasized the fact that the deer absolutely could not resist the product. Sure this is all theoretical. At least at the present time it is. But the question gets more at the importance of challenge in your deer hunting. More and more each year we scheme and plan different ways of erasing as much challenge as possible from our deer hunting. It almost seems like we would condition or train the deer to come to our shooting spot, we would do it. I am just curious as to whether you all have limits based on a code of fair chase that place self-limits as to how far you are willing to let science and technology do the hunting for you. How much of my hunting success am I willing to hand over to some nerd in a lab coat or sitting at a design computer? It's a question I that always seem to be wrestling with whether it is a choice of some new super-duper weapon or some new chemical attractant that someone has put on the market. I know that I have pushed that limit around a lot farther than I wish I had over the years. I often wonder where the line is for me.

Let's say some chemist in a lab somewhere came up with a product that deer absolutely could not resist, and it didn't violate any existing NYS baiting restrictions. Would you use it?

We are not helpless in this fight. Here is a headline from the Sienna poll people that shows some light at the end of the tunnel if we can just get out the upstate vote: Hochul Job Approval & Favorability Ratings Up a Little, Remain Negative; Only 33% of Voters Would Re-Elect Hochul, 57% Want ‘Someone Else’ We need a good candidate and a bit of activism regarding voter turn-out. We can reverse this nonsense, but it will take a little work on our part.

Does he skin them out and sell the hides? I know the prices are way down, but it might be a way to pay for the ammo....lol.

This kind of behavior from a forum owner is really quite bizarre. I am wondering if something happened to him. None of it seems logical.

My brother-in-law hunts his deer with a .243, and has never had a problem getting the deer down. Of course he is deep into competition rifle shooting and always hits the deer exactly where he wants to. I hunt with a .270 and cannot find any significant recoil. Does my .270 kill the deer any deader than my Brother-in-law's .243?.......Probably not.

So this forum is indeed doomed to a slow death. With no new members coming in to replace those who die or leave, the numbers will continue to dwindle, with the only new members being hackers. That would explain the lack of participation here. I remember all those newbies that used to post and respond to posts back in the days when this was a growing forum. Now it is just a handful of us old-timers that do any posting, and any responding to the few posts that we have. That is sad. I've been here 15 years, but I wonder how much longer my membership continues to make any sense. Without Owner participation, this forum is doomed. Why it hasn't been turned over to someone else, I can't imagine. For the Owner to just simply abandon the site and all the people in it, seems like a most irresponsible act that is a slap in the face to all the hunters that have counted on this form of communication between outdoorsmen and women.

Yes, who else is actively fighting for our 2nd amendment rights. I also belong to SCOPE for the same reasons. For me it is just putting my money where my mouth is. Yes, the libs have done a good job of painting the NRA as an evil enterprise, and that just gives me yet another reason to maintain my membership.

Really?

There is a common thread of challenge in all forms of shooting. But the mental and physical demands of archery seem so much more rigid. The unbending rules of form consistency, stance anchor position, release, follow-through and all the little rules of absolute consistency are all so critical in archery. A lot of the challenge came from my years of tournament shooting when I became enthused with the idea of putting arrows into the same hole. Never realized but that was the imagined goal. But I still remember that old hickory stave that I fashioned into a fairly decent long-bow, and the shooting challenges that started me off on a lifetime of archery fanaticism. I still idolize the more famous archers like Darrell Pace, Fred Bear, Howard Hill and Stacy Groscup and others that did amazing things with rather basic equipment. And up until I got involved in tournament shooting these were the people that I tried to emulate. Of course the tournament stuff is where I really got hung up on the thought of perfection. I never got there but the pursuit of perfection became fanatical. It's been a grand journey through all the phases of archery and I enjoyed every minute of it. I am not saying that all those other weapons of shooting can't be attacked with the same kind of fanaticism. I have brother-in-law who goes through a lot of the same kind obsession with his guns. But archery was the thing that I began obsessing about, and it has been a lifetime obsession from age 10 to today.

I'm confused. I read on here somewhere that this site was no longer accepting new members now that Burmjohn has come up missing. And yet, down at the bottom of the main forum index page I find little circles with letters inside that indicate members that have been on the site in the last 24 hours. If you hold the mouse over those circles, you will get a drop down window that gives the name and date of joining. I did that with all of them, and found 17 members who have joined since January of this year. There were several who joined since today. So, according to that we have members still joining all the time. Does anyone know people who have joined recently?

Actually, I really like archery, just for archery's sake too. There is something about manually holding back all that force, and then letting go of the string and seeing the arrow go into the target (or not). At one time I was deep into tournament archery. I was never really super good at it, but it was just fun. Like any sport, it was the challenge of developing a skill that was difficult to master. I always enjoyed the 80 yard shot on the NFAA field archery course. When I shot it with a recurve, I had to have a prism sight pin just for that shot, so I could see the target around my fist.....lol. Hunting was really a natural offshoot of archery. I was bowhunting before I ever owned a gun......shooting pigeons in the barn at age 10.

So what was it that fascinated you about shooting a bow? I remember poking around up in the shop over our garage where I found an old draw knife way back when I was about 10 years old. I took my trusty hatchet and went up on the hill where I hacked down a hickory sapling, and used that draw-knife to fashion something that looked like a pretty good version of a longbow, and built some arrows out of willow branches. The bow worked fine, but the arrows didn't fly all that well. Of course the question comes up as to what the heck I did all that for. There was nobody in our family that was into archery or bowhunting. No magazines or books or TV programs for encouragement. But as soon as I saw that draw-knife, that was the first thing that came to mind was that I had to use it to make a bow ..... lol. There was just something about a simple bent stick being used to propel another stick at a target that was and still is fascinating. It had nothing to do with getting a deer or hunting anything at all at first. I suppose all of that is not all that strange because quite a few kids get involved with archery and never really do have any thoughts of hunting. It's just a challenging activity. So how about the rest of you? What was it that was the big fascination with shooting a bow?

No, that's alright. I just wanted to encourage you to keep on posting these. They are hilarious.

Robby- Where the heck are you getting all these. They are all great!

I came down out of the trees a quite a few years ago. Mainly due to a "heights-thing". But I also discovered the excitement of dealing with deer in an eyeball-to eyeball situation where things are put kind of in their favor. Yeah I'm sure it has impacted my success, but the added excitement has kind of increased the whole deer hunting experience. By the way check out the poll. That's a forum feature that we haven't used in quite a while.

This is a question I asked way back in 2010. Well, there were a lot of interesting responses, & we have a whole different bunch of people here now and 15 years have passed, so I was interested to see if anything has changed