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Doc

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Posts posted by Doc

  1. So as I was feeling sorry for the ice fishermen who have had so little ice this year, it occurred to me that there has to have been some bonus open water fishing available for those hearty souls who have dressed up warm and got out into the lakes and streams. Has anyone here taken advantage of the mild winter this year? Any luck with the winter fishing opportunities?

  2. I have noticed a lot of "one-time" pictures of deer. You fool them once but never again. Big bucks and older does seem to be in that category. Yes, there are some that seem to ignore cameras time after time, but the older deer do seem to avoid the cameras eventually. Has anyone else made that kind of observation?

  3. On 2/20/2024 at 9:20 AM, First-light said:

    My buddy set up three cameras on the lease property. They are pretty neat and take great picts! Adjust everything from you phone. There are 5 of us that recieve the pictures. Just have to ad an email and download the Ap. 

    IMG_5114.JPG

    IMG_5115.JPG

    I am impressed by the picture quality.

    • Like 1
  4. 4 hours ago, Four Seasons said:

    Not sure why anyone that hunts anything is missing out on anything. You think a guy that only kills 120in deer or better misses any part of the big picture of hunting?  Hell No. They actually get more. They get the thrill of beating one of the smartest animals in the woods one on one on their turf. They get a great rack to put on the wall along with the most meat an animal can offer. The only person those kind of hunters that succeed need to impress is themselves. Who gives a crap about anyone else. That’s on their insecurities.  

    I was talking about the total experience of deer hunting, not just the harvest. There is more to hunting than just numbers and meat. I believe that the whole idea of a scoring system for antlers was devised to put hunters competing against hunters. It is really for the benefit of hunters impressing other hunters with their accomplishments and a numerical method of pitting one hunters harvest against others.

    One of my best hunts was down in PA., where I came home with a small doe. She didn't score very good, but we all had a great bow-hunt. Another great hunt was my first bow killed deer. Talk about a score .....Lol....He had two 5" spikes and his antlers have a prominent place on the wall and is the one mount that brings back the best memories of all the other mounts. What I am trying to say is that there is a whole lot more to hunting than simply numbers and scores. I have known the people that go at their hunting like their life depended on it. I guess if they want to go at it like that, that's their business and that's okay as long as they don't start with the preaching and trying to make it my business.

    • Like 1
  5. On 1/29/2024 at 9:27 AM, First-light said:

    Checking my traps yesterday two deer let me get 20 feet from them on the quad. I agree with you they get used to it and doesn't bother them. 

    I have witnessed a lot of deer reactions that can only be explained as being "curiosity". A lot of that has to do with ATVs. Sometimes they will just stand there and stare at you.....as long as you don't get too close. Sometimes they just act like a farmer's goats. Maybe they just feel that anything making that much noise cannot be a threat.....lol.

    • Like 1
  6. It's pretty obvious that we all have different ideas as to what we need to get out of our hunting experiences. If a hunter needs to hunt for numbers, measurements and other such contrived ways of impressing others, it is entirely possible that they are the ones missing out on the real pleasures of hunting. 

    • Like 1
  7. Beware of the evil black flies. They have been known to drive people mad. I experienced the black fly torture up in Canada, and can say that if it weren't for the constant cloud of smoke from cigars, I probably would have become a victim of black fly insanity. Today with the advance of repellant, perhaps it isn't so bad, I don't know. But I would suggest that you take the black-fly warnings very, very seriously and take whatever precautions you can find. Perhaps a head net might add some protection, but those critters can find ways inside your clothing. I had bites on my chest and I kept my shirt on and buttoned up.

  8. On 1/19/2024 at 10:24 AM, airedale said:

    Those tree butt growths are called burls and they can get big and be worth a lot of money if they are not rotten especially from Cherry or Walnut trees. The grain inside can be beautiful. makes for great decorative items such as handgun grips, knife scales etc.

    Al

    2024-01-19_101846.png

    I have heard that in some cases, lumber companies like to dig up the roots of large walnut trees for the crazy grain structure underground.

    • Like 1
  9. 6 hours ago, Moho81 said:

    Great idea, I just started in the reloading world so I can document everything pretty easily. Right now everything is scratched out on paper but I like @Doc idea of an excel spread sheet. 

    Spreadsheets were made for this kind of application. The sorting abilities and the ease of storage and back-up make the data easy to keep track of. It's also easy to transfer existing pencil and paper data into the more formal electronic database.

    • Like 1
  10. 3 hours ago, Larry said:

    The Black River at Dexter is good and the Seneca river is good to

    I was wondering about the Seneca river, but I read about some pollution issues in the fish there in certain areas. Any truth to that?

    Where on the Seneca River are you finding the catfishing the best?

  11. 3 hours ago, Larry said:

    I have a load data book I keep all my reload info. in and what book I got loads from. I shoot everything over a chronograph or ballistic radar. I write down everything.

    There you go. If you go to all the trouble of testing, write it down (or type it into record somewhere. Knowledge gained quickly becomes knowledge lost if it is not recorded in some orderly fashion.

  12. Don't you all think that first you have to have a discussion about what features make any of the calibers better for taking deer? Then the discussion about what caliber satisfies those features. Such things as trajectories for the distance shooters. Terminal energy, meat damage, etc., etc. might be part of that discussion and probably a whole lot of other features that I'm not thinking of right now.

  13. What a great Father and son adventure. That is a trip that he will remember all of his life. Wherever you decide to go, take plenty of pictures and be sure to share them with us here. I would love to see pictures of that trip. Even if you don't get a single fish, the hiking and camping will be a fantastic thing to experience.

     

  14. 9 hours ago, airedale said:

    A Catfish story, Back in the late seventies I was passing the winter doldrums reading an outdoor magazine and came across a fellow's can't miss Catfish doughball bait recipe. Being bored I decided to make up a batch of this wonder bait as I had all the ingredients in the kitchen. I can now only remember two of the ingredients, Bran flakes cereal and honey, there were at least three other things in the recipe. Anyhow once mixed good up it had the consistency of clay, the batch was made up into a softball size ball and wrapped in cellophane and put into the freezer where it was supposed to keep for very long periods of time.

    Back in those days I hung out with a gang of guys that would make a couple of trips up to Dexter NY just to the west of Watertown, we would put a boat in the Black River and head out toward the marsh. There were several good spots to fish from the bank and we would pull in and tie up the boat and still fish. Probably the best place I ever fished, the variety of species caught was something, Bullheads, Carp, Smallmouth Bass, White Perch, EELs, and Catfish  and the bite was non stop.

    So on one of those trips I brought that ball of bait and had it in my tackle box, I was catching fish like mad on minnows and crayfish so I did not have any on my rods for bait. One of the guys walked by and saw it and asked about it, I told him it was can't miss Catfish bait. he asked if he could give it a try and I said go ahead.

    Wasn't a couple of minutes and he reeled in a nice Channel Cat about 17 or 18 inches long. He baited his hook again and boom another one about the same size. So that bait now had got attention from the other guys and they started baiting their hooks with it. To make a long story short 19 Channel Catfish were caught on the ball of dough before it ran out, most were small about like over sized Bullheads but one was a whopper.

    Now I never could duplicate that recipe, the wife tossed the magazine months earlier and I just could not remember the exact ingredients, as hard as I tried nothing I made had the results of the original recipe.

    Al

    I need to have that recipe.......lol.

  15. 4 hours ago, airedale said:

    I don't know much about western NY waters so I can not give you any advice, I can say I like fishing for Catfish and enjoy eating them. There are all kinds of different baits for Catfish, some are real concoctions. Back in the early sixties my Dad and some of his friends would set out a trot in Oneida lake and catch some whoppers, hotdogs was their bait of choice. Back when I worked in a Rome Sporting goods store we sold bait for fishing, back then Griffis Airforce Base was in full operation and we had many of those guys for customers. We had a couple of boys from down south somewhere that were experts on Catfish. They had us order extra large size golden Shinners which they would drift fish under bobbers. They used a small row boat to head up Oneida lake tributaries like Fish Creek and Oneida Creek and fish over deep holes. Those two would pick up their bait at the 6pm closing time and head out and fish all night, they would pull into the store in the morning to show us their catch and man they caught some real whoppers and plenty of them.

    Al

    Thanks for the info. I am a catfishing newbie. I only have caught 1 catfish in my life, That was out of the Barge Canal over by Port Gibson. I remember the meat as being white and delicious. So I would like to find a more reliable source close to home.

    I could use all the advice I can get. I am confined to shoreline fishing only because I have no boat. 

  16. Where can a guy go to catch catfish in Western New York from the bank? This coming summer, I want to target catfish, but maybe that's not a realistic goal here in NY.

  17. Are the fish in the canal safe to eat? Anyone know? I am thinking of trying a few spots along the canal to see if the fishing is any good. But there is no point to it if I can't eat what I catch.

  18. The older I get, the more I appreciate these detailed records. They actually bring back a lot of the hunts that otherwise would have been forgotten. It all sounds like a lot of work, but it didn't seem be as I was accumulating the data. And it gave me something to do in the dead of winter. I kind of like record keeping. The above spreadsheet had so many analytical features that it was consulted for years before I went out hunting. Certain weather conditions helped me figure out which of the stands would be the most likely to produce. It all was pretty useful. 

    I can see where strict records keeping would be useful in your dog-training activities. I'm sure there are other things that lend themselves to detailed records. 

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