Doc

I used to try to keep up with the Jones's for years.....especially when I was into tournament field archery. I have expensive bows hanging all over the walls downstairs and drawers full of all kinds of gadgets and go-fasters. Then I remembered that the bow that I took most of my deer with was an old bear whitetail. What a nasty old bow, with limbs you could use as crowbars and more cables and pulleys than you could count. It was a super slow thing that shot the arrows no faster than my old recurves. But it was just as accurate as the fancy bows that now hang on the walls. And it killed deer just as dead. All of this occurred to me in 1999 after I bought that fancy MQ-32, and I haven't bought a bow or arrow since. I suppose that if I had stayed in tournament shooting, I would still be adding bows to the wall......lol.

We need more of this kind of thing to expose kids to the outdoors.

Buckle

Here are some of the pictures that show the diversity of my hunting grounds from the swamps and thickets of the valley to the open Hardwoods of the hill. No farms or agriculture of any sort. Challenges?.....yes. But a good variety of habitat that has something for every critter. So, what does your hunting turf look like?

Here's another Nocturnal guy from back in 2013. This one showed up just behind our barn...........ONLY ONCE! He must have got lost....lol. Never saw him again. Never got another picture of him again. Never saw him in real life. No heavy mass. No points randomly all snaggled all over the place. Just a very nice symmetrical set of antlers. Measurements and numbers????.... who cares? Classical perfection????.....You bet.

I hunt with a 1999 Mathews MQ-32 bow. There are another 11 assorted bows (compounds and recurves and a long bow) hanging on the wall down in the basement, all top-of-the-line bows in their day. Easton aluminum, arrows Mostly autumn orange XX-75, with game getter back-ups. Bear Razorhead broadheads Cobra ring-pins (4) sight heavily modified Tru-fire wrist release Nothing new since 1999, w/everything still serviceable and killing deer.

I don't "talk smack" about the way anyone hunts. As I have said many times, hunting is an individual activity motivated by whatever each of us feels it all means to ourselves. There is no rule that I am aware of that says that everyone must get the same satisfactions and fulfillment from hunting. My comments reflect my own views on my own hunting and my own personal satisfactions, which was what I wanted to hear from other members when I began this topic. Something besides proclamations that that if you don't do it my way you don't even know what hunting means. I never saw controversy in the simple question that I asked in this topic. I have no idea why the topic took this turn. I'm sorry if you mistakenly took any of my comments as a challenge to your personal motives and satisfactions in your hunting. That was not intended.

Well then, where does all that muscle disappear to immediately after the rut is over?

No snow plowing for me yet this year (1000' driveway).......Yee-haw! I know it won't last but I am really getting to be a big fan of this global warming. Lets start buying more gas-guzzlers and aerosol cans of stuff.

Maybe I really don't want to know this, but what is it that makes the neck on a rutting buck swell like that? What is it that they are filling up with? Anybody know?

That guy in the video was pretty damned good. But where was the scope or the sight-pins......lol. Just shows you how effective instinctive shooting can be.

What happens to your eyeball if the elastic snaps? I think that was the question that always kept me from getting one. Maybe safety glasses are the answer.

That was interesting looking at all those old names. A lot of those people used to be pretty prolific posters here with fantastic topics. Where did they all go?

For some reason, I never thought to use the tongue before. I've had sheep tongue back when I was a kid, and I seem to remember that it was pretty good. I have no idea why I haven't tried deer tongue. Thanks for the idea. Next year I'll give it a try. You got any good recipes?

prehistoric deer antlers - Google Search Here are some that nature created that went a bit too far. Unfortunately, their antlers eventually proved to be a genetic hazard and none of them could sustain that trait of over-sized antlers.

Ha-ha-ha-ha.......So there does come a point where genetically manufactured deer can be made to look quite ridiculous. I think there is a point that is too far. Some of these have reached that point.

Nice crop of deer coming up in your area. I'm not seeing a lot of survivors in our area. But I have no cameras out right now and I haven't been wandering around the woods all that much lately. Usually I see them walking around in the yard almost as soon as the season ends. Not this year.

Aw....Come-on and smile.

Not many here have been members long enough to know the history of its origin. This forum was started by Burmjohn at a time when an existing forum suddenly shut down leaving a pile of us hanging without a New York State hunting forum. For that I thank him for the years of interesting discussions and interfaces that he made available for us to use. Now we find that he is no longer in contact with the forum for whatever reason. Most of you have made an assumption that he has just arbitrarily abandoned the site. But none of us know the actual reason for his absence. As for myself, I am not in a hurry to judge without any facts. I can only say thanks for the 13 years that we have had the site. It was a good thing that he picked up the ball when no other New York State hunter was willing to do so. Now let's see if the current members are adult enough to keep things going along smoothly without so much of the petty and small-minded bickering that makes the atmosphere here so strained and unfriendly at times. We don't really need all the static.

So that's where red squirrels come from......lol.

I have to admit that when I heard my dad describe me as the outdoorsman of the family, that I did feel some pride from that. But that did not become the driver for my reasons for hunting. Frankly, I have to say that now-a-days, the best that you could ever get from most people is a polite, "That's nice". My reasons for hunting are personal and within myself. My accomplishments are internally valued. Do I need the approval of others in order to enjoy hunting?......Absolutely not. If I did, I probably would not be into it because there really isn't a whole lot of approval for hunting going on these days. I never needed recognition from anybody for the fish that I catch or the trapping successes that I had as a kid. None of these things has anything to do with anyone's approval but my own. These things are between me and nature's creatures and my ability to best them. That's where my satisfaction comes from, not other people's approvals or out-doing other hunters. I don't need scoring systems and such to measure my satisfactions and fulfillment. I don't compete against anyone but the critters that I take.

I am starting to wonder if something has happened that he lost control of the site. Nothing else makes any sense. Maybe something crashed and burned or something. I don't know.....I'm just trying to make some sense of his abandonment.

Yes, hunting areas have seen a lot of changes over the decades. You are right, it has morphed into situations where money has kind of locked up gobs of hunting land with huge leases and or clubs, or simply those that want to keep people out. That does make it a challenge for existing hunters and also new ones that want to come into the activity. We even have those that see hunting as an agricultural activity, buying up tractors and fitting and seeding equipment along with the huge tracts of land. Who the heck ever thought that that would happen. few parents can or will do that to get their kids involved in hunting, and yet the TV programs and magazine articles tout this activity as almost a "must" for deer hunting.

So are there those among us that hunt for the "recognition"? Is it all about "bragging rights" for you? Do you see the activity as a competition with other hunters? Do you need the recognition from the rest of the hunting community? It seems to me that I see a lot of that sort of need for recognition with a lot of hunters. How many of you have that sort of thing as a part of your reason for hunting?

I don't remember hunting being so competitive between hunters. For most of my hunting years, I was totally unaware of an antler scoring system. I have no idea when that all started. It seems to me that when people started talking about the scoring of antlers, the heavy competition among hunters began. Instead of competing against the deer hunters began competing against each other. Yes there always was the guy who took the big 12 pointer, but nobody bothered to reduce the act down to some kind of mathematical achievement other that the number of points. Most of us made up our own goals and satisfactions and didn't really need ways of keeping score as to who was the "greatest hunter" in our group. It was a lot more enjoyable back then too when the competition was between a hunter and the deer he was hunting rather than hunter vs. hunter. I wish there was some way to get back to that more personal motivation for hunting.