Doc

I never did get out with a guide. I am having a hard time finding time to do any fishing. I'm still hoping to find time to get out.

Yeah, mosquitoes are keeping me from shooting right now. This rain has been keeping the swarms gaining in numbers, and they are hungry.

I just saw a fawn dead on the road a couple hours ago just south of Canandaigua. It's a sad thing to see.

Hammondsport got hit too. I guess I got lucky and it went around us. We had a short gusher but no flooding.

Is that from flooding?

Where does all this teen suicide come from? It seems that there are things that teens anguish from that we adults are not fully understanding. If we did, maybe there are things that could be done to prevent this scourge. I do not even remember any rash of teen suicide back when I was that age. What has changed?

Got the garden in today. I was convinced that we would not have a garden this year. I am hearing it pouring down rain right now. Hope it doesn't wash everything out......lol.

This little one was obeying one of the deepest instincts that deer are born with. It's not something that they reasoned out or are taught. It just is somehow imprinted in their brain at birth. I snapped a couple of pictures of this critter before I backed away and let nature take its course. The strange thing is that I have also seen versions of this same behavior in adult deer, where they were willing to sit tight at close range and let me walk right on by.

We are only a couple weeks from June, and the next week looks like some kind of rain everyday with highs in the 50's. I've got standing water in 4 spots on the lawn where I cannot take my zero-turn mower without getting stuck. Of course the grass loves it and is getting close to a foot high. The lawn looks like crap. And usually we have the garden in by now, but right now it is a mud-pit. With rain every day and night it is never going to dry out. And with temps staying below 60 degrees, the soil temp is not going to allow anything to germinate anyway. I have experienced this once before and almost all of the seed rotted because of the cold and rain. There I feel better now having got that all off my chest.....Ha-ha-ha-ha. Anybody else finding this weather to be challenging?

I remember some of the ugliest bows from back in the old days of compounds. I had a buddy that bought the early Allen offering. That was certainly nasty-looking compared to any recurve or longbow. But my first compound was not much better. It was the Bear whitetail. It had limbs that could be used as prybars if you had a need.....virtually indestructible. However, I did take a lot of deer with that old bow. After a bunch of years, I finally sold it for more than I paid for it.

Anyone else ever get attached to an old favorite bow. I mean really attached. For me it was my old 50# Bear Kodiak recurve? Beautiful wood and glass lamination combos, no stacking, killed a lot of deer, it was kind of a work of art. After a bunch of years I finally saw a bit of glass lifting off the top limb and had to retire it. I almost shed a tear when I saw that. I've had some compounds that I really liked including my current 26 year old Mathews MQ-32, but no bow ever compared to that bear Kodiak. That one was my favorite.

So, where do you bowhunters anchor. For me I anchor under the center of my chin with the string touching the center of my nose. It provides a two point anchor that keeps my head from tipping to one side or the other.

Have you considered a couple of strands of heavy-duty electric fencing around the bees? Might be good insurance. Maybe a solar unit if the hives are too far away from any electric source. All it takes is one visit, one night from one of those critters and the whole deal can be ruined.

Shed hunting can be frustrating when you get to see the racks of some of the deer that eluded you all through the season....Ha-ha-ha-ha.

Any special events or activities planned for this special day in your life? I hope that you have a great day today. Do something fun to celebrate.

I am always amazed at the capabilities of these ATVs. I have pulled some pretty large logs with mine, and compared to the HP of some of the machines available today, mine is just a baby. One of those pictures above shows the ability to climb the snow piles to push snow over the top and make room for more snow piling. Don't try doing that with a 4WD pickup truck....lol. I have the ability to turn around right in the middle of the driveway, or push snow sideways anywhere in the driveway. It has maneuverability that no truck has. I do not know the capabilities of the bigger side-by-sides in the maneuverability category. The only drawback is in wet snow depth. But I have found that a lot of trucks have limits too. One storm that I couldn't even begin to clear was a 36" dump in March back in the early 70's. Nobody with a truck would even discuss it. It took a payloader to clear a skinny one lane trail up the 1000' of driveway. Everything has its limits, but there has only been a few times when I had to call in outside help for snow removal. I hope I have not jinxed myself now.

You guys all have your tackle boxes and fishing gear all organized and ready to go. Guys have been trying for the crappies down in the old West River Marina down by Naples. And the bullhead will be biting pretty darn soon. And of course we are right on the eve of trout season. I'm all set.

Ever wonder if CWD is as devastating as is popularly believed, why are the woods not littered with dead deer bodies everywhere. I do not know why the scare stories are so popular to pass on, but a little common sense goes a long way toward calming all the panic.

Here's a sign that I have to put out in front of our driveway.

I have noticed that funny looking shape on the end of two of the tines in the picture. I have seen that same shape on the tips of a few of the antlers around here. Does anyone know what causes that weird disruption in antler growth so often? Is it some kind of injury or something that occurs at the end of antler growth sometimes?

So how has your winter been so far this year? Here in Bristol, I only had to plow once all year, and that probably wasn't really necessary. That time the snow-dump was only 6" or so. I probably could have driven through it. It has been colder than recent years but it seems that the snow has gone all around us, but mostly not here (so far). We did have some nasty ice accumulations on the driveway for a while. So how did winter treat you all in your section of the state. I know that with the lake effect of NY off Lake Ontario and Erie, snow levels vary all over the place depending on wind direction. However, beware of March snow. Some of the nastiest storms that I can remember have happened in March.

If I had to guess (and that's all it is), I would say that it is badly distorted picture of of a fox, dog, or coyote with possibly the far right leg extended forward, blending in with the neck and snout of the head. Terrible motion distortion.

The one thing that I would like to do before I croak would be to make, by hand, my own longbow and arrows with knapped broadheads and take a deer with that stuff. I don't think that it will happen, but everything on a bucket list does not necessarily ever happen.

For those that do not know what a "Bucket List" is, it is a wish-list of things you want to do before you croak. I am curious as to what outdoor activities (Camping, trapping, hunting, fishing, hiking, etc.) you want to do at some point during the rest of your life that you so far have not done.

In the 1980's, a group of 4 of us bowhunting coworkers decided to go on a moose hunt. We drove everyone in the office crazy with our attempts at the perfect cow moose call, for about a year. We studied topo maps and researched every moose hunting magazine article we could find. Well, finally we did it. We went up to Shining Tree, Ontario Canada. We were required to use an outfitter so we had them get the licenses and we booked a cabin (which we didn't actually use) for a week's hunt. From the camp, we drove many miles on an old dirt road. Unloaded the canoes and gear at a very remote lake. We went to the end of that lake and portaged about 150 yards into another lake and went to the far end of that lake. We were in deep. So that evening we set up two tents and all the things that we needed for a wilderness camp. That night we were all sitting around the campfire in the pitch dark, many miles from any civilization, Yacking about the usual B.S. that hunters talk about at a campfire.... Oh but wait.....There was a nasty little prank that was brewing long before we ever left home. Our dog loved to play tug of war with an old bath towel and while she was yanking on the towel, she would start with this gosh-awful loud snarling and growling like some sort of deranged rabid wolf. It was scary. But it gave me an idea. I had this small portable battery-powered cassette tape recorder. So I put about a 15 minute empty segment on the beginning of the tape and then started taping a bunch of this loud wolf-like snarling and growling. Yeah, you're probably already guessing what I did..... Back to the campfire. I said I was going to take a leak, and I left the group and went off into the darkness with the tape-player. I turned the thing on and returned to the campfire. The 15 minute blank section of the tape let everybody forget that I ever left the campfire. Suddenly, there was a loud horrible wolf-like snarling and growling coming from out in the pitch black darkness not far from the camp. Panic set in as everybody scrambled for knives hatchets and any weapon we could put our hands on. By the way this was an archery moose hunt so there were no firearms in camp. I did my best he-man John Wayne act and volunteered to lead the way out to see what this creature was. When we got to the tape-player, I dove on it and turned it off. It took a while before everyone caught on. I guess it was my rolling around on the ground laughing that kind of tipped them off. It is surprising that they didn't throw me in the lake.