Doc

Time to get on your feet and start still-hunting. Get that blood circulating. After opening day, still-hunting has always been the most productive method for me. Sometimes you still get cold but usually proper clothing and that very slight movement is just enough to keep me warm.

Most deer can survive and even do rather well on 3 legs. In fact one of the fattest deer I ever took was a three-legged doe. She even had a fawn that year. Actually if they have to become amputees, the front leg would be the best to lose instead of one of the rear power legs. However, I can't even begin to imagine the frustration with the gun problem with a huge "gift-buck" offering itself up to you.

My idea of aging is to sling it into the truck bed as soon as it comes off the hill and drive over to the processor. Usually before the day is out, I am on my way back to the processor to pick up the packages of meat. Yeah, I know that is heresy, but I have no walk-in coolers to do the hanging the right way, and I am still remembering the old days when it was standard practice to hang the deer from a tree limb in the front yard where it can freeze and thaw and freeze and thaw and dangle in the sun. And then people tried to call that food.....lol. So depending on the luck of the weather, your venison could taste somewhere between reasonable and rotted garbage. I have never had bad venison since we started the instant processing. Even when we were processing our own, they were reduced to little packages before nightfall.

This was a great year for having that nice white background that makes deer stand out in contrast. Not everything went bad. It often makes the difference between you seeing the deer first, or the deer seeing you first.

I know you can file a lawsuit over just about anything, but in this case I doubt it would ever see the inside of a courtroom.

The best: pheasant The weirdest: snapping turtle burgers ..... started but not finished. The second weirdest: pigeons at age 11, harvested in the hay loft of the barn with my homemade longbow. That was my first hunting harvest.

Perhaps if times got tough enough, and death by starvation started to look inevitable, I might resort to eating a coyote. With my luck that would probably wind up being one with a severe case of mange that had just finished rolling in a juicey, sun-ripened, dead woodchuck. But until then, I think I will pass.

You guys had better stay out of range of Runnings in Canandaigua. It can have the same effect.

Now, just to be clear...... Did you mess up those shots, or did God mess them up. Maybe the divine-intervention mode was turned off when those shots were taken. I'm sorry. I apologize. I couldn't help myself ..... The devil made me do it.

I don't know.... today we worry so much about the trauma of such pictures on the tender psyche of children that we tend to shelter them right to death. Sometimes a simple but graphic picture adds to the reality that carrying a weapon offers the potential for some real nasty consequences when done incorrectly. It is true that the realism of news events and video games and movies has likely de-sensitized kids these days. But still that image of that guy hanging by his foot on the fence, with the blood and meat flashed up there while the topic of the correct way to cross fences really, was a very powerful reinforcement of the subject. You can bore a kid into an unconscious stare with the drone of a long lecture on gun safety, but flash an image like that up and you instantly have their attention back. That old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words is never truer than in that situation. BUT.... You know what would happen if that was done today. There would be all kinds of parents picketing and jamming the school office about how their precious child was traumatized by such vile images.

I often wonder exactly when deer hunting turned into an animal husbandry project. You go through a thread like this one, and you would think everybody is hunting a domestic deer herd. Apparently the game today is manage the genetic composition of the herd, control the diet of the deer, and do all of these activities with the intent of growing big antlers to display on a wall. Well, everybody is certainly free to do whatever they believe in, but I have always hunted deer as I find them. They are wild animals that belong to everyone. They do not feed from a trough or come into the barn each night. Most of the fences that remain on our property or the state land that I also hunt, you can simply step over. I don't pick and choose, or think that I am having any great impact on these hundreds of acres of real actual wild deer. I don't spend hundreds (perhaps thousands) of dollars playing farmer and trying to grow a trophy. That probably would be fun, but has nothing to do with hunting as I have always defined it. I simply hunt deer and enjoy every minute of it as a time honored traditional activity of recreation that our family has casually enjoyed for generations. Do I want to have to worry about deer farming and trying to arrange a "crop" of deer such that I can grow big antlers? ...... Not really. I simply hunt based on existing opportunities. Am I doing it right and everyone else is doing it wrong? .... not at all. But I do try to keep it real and understand that we are dealing with wild animals where 99% of the results depend simply on Mother Nature no matter how we try to alter and control things. And, for me, that's exactly the way I like it. If I want to raise my meat, I will most likely opt for black angus. That at least is something I can realistically have full control over. So, before all the hue and cry arises, let me say that I am not trying to persuade anyone of anything. I am just commenting that we don't all look at hunting in the same way. I hunt wild animals as nature presents them to me. My focus is on changing myself to hunt better, not change the herd to make my hunting easier or more productive. And so while these threads about deer management are interesting, I always have this nagging thought in the back of my head that perhaps we are bit over-impressed with our actual abilities to micro-manage and control wild herds. And all the opposing opinions on these kinds of management topics tend to back up that notion that maybe our thinking and actions are a bit over-reaching our actual abilities. I may be wrong, but I really think that we might benefit from relaxing just a bit and just hunt.

Hunting has become a one day event for a lot of hunters these days. In some cases it is a half-day annual event. The days of the overflowing state land parking lots and the lines of cars parked along the roads seems to have ended. I imagine that depends on where you hunt, but around my neck of the woods, that's the way it has been for quite a few years. You know, we are so busy patting ourselves on the back for our improving safety records. I think it is simply that we are having fewer shootings because there are fewer hunters actually out there actively hunting.

Back in the olden days, I took my hunter safety training the Naples Central bus garage. And we were required to fire some .22 caliber rifles. One other thing that I recall about that course was a slide show that actually showed a deceased hunter hanging by his foot from a fence after having shot himself crossing the fence without abiding by safe gun handling practices. There were several other gruesome pics of hunting accidents. I have always said that these explicit pictures left a lifelong imprint of safety on me that was so much more powerful than some abstract mention of hunting accidents. Now just think a minute about how things have changed over the years. Loaded firearms, being possessed and actually fired on school grounds. Today, it is likely that you would not even be allowed to hang up a poster announcing a gun safety course somewhere else (especially if there is a picture of a gun on the poster). That was a mere 60 years ago.

By golly, perhaps for the very first time, we found something that we actually agree on.....lol.

The guy loves to get his butt kicked. It's pretty funny.

Another crying whining compost from the whimpering left. It is turning hilarious as this guy has become so distraught to the point of being broken and obsessive. It is truly comical to watch.

Total isolation is a great condition of hunting. It is few that can arrange absolute isolation from other hunters (Actually Damn Few). There are many who think because they are on private posted land that they have the land all to themselves. I have enough tightly posted land of my own so that occasionally I get those feelings myself. But tracks in the snow and occasional random confrontations have taught me that for my hunting lands that is merely an illusion. Those blaze orange images that can unexpectedly pop into the moving scope image are still a distinct possibility. But I do accept that there are places and conditions where other hunters are unlikely. Those are fortunate hunting conditions indeed. However my hunting habits are developed for the unexpected, and they are habits that are so ground-in that they apply regardless of the differences in hunter populations.

I have to say that my goals have changed over the years. When I first started, being able to tag-out was the goal. Back when I started, the herd was such that any deer taken was quite a feat especially with a bow. Next phase was consistently getting a buck or two every year. Then I moved on to wanting take a good mature buck, and was willing and had the endurance to do that. Now comes the later years where I start thinking a bit about the drag back home, and limiting my hunting range based on that concern. Now I am down to the realization that I really do prefer a good angus roast and we really only need one deer for some variety in our red meat consumption. And that deer doesn't have to be a big buck or even a buck at all. Yes throughout the years, the grand prize always was some ungodly huge slob, but only for a short period of time did I ever obsess on that. About the time that people started measuring their success with a tape measure, I started going the other way. I began to see how with many hunters it was beginning to become antler measurements at any cost. I watched some guys become so obsessive that all other aspects of the hunt faded away and recognized some of that in my own hunting. That is when I began to reassess the goals again. The harvests requirements underwent a relaxation and more emphasis has been put on the quality of the hunt itself. I have backed off on the frenzy of the hunt, and concentrated more on the entire totality of the experience. And that is where I am at now. I know that my hunting years and abilities are now starting to see limitation. And yes if I were to drop some huge monster I would be thrilled, but there is no necessity or urgency to do so anymore. So if someone were to proclaim no bucks, I would likely be right out front hollering, "Rip-off" as loud as anybody. But in reality, I would survive it just fine.

I know that me and rapid-fire running shots are pretty much useless. So the likelihood of me making any kind of "Hail-Mary" running shot through the woods really is a complete worthless attempt. I am completely converted to scopes on all my deer guns, and I am now used to looking through a scope and accepting the greatly reduced field of vision and understanding that as I swing that little circle of view through the woods, it is unlikely that I am actually doing a very good job of checking out the area behind or around the fleeing deer that I am flinging lead at. I would never want to be swinging that little sight-picture through the woods and at the last minute seeing a sudden flash of an orange suit at the same time that the trigger finally goes off. I don't know, that is just a personal limit that I put on myself. I put everything into that first steadied shot and assume that I have delivered a lethal shot. Unless the deer stops for another carefully executed shot, I am afraid that my tracking skills will have to finish off the job. Others may have better developed skills at running shots, but for me, "a man's got to know his limitations". And for me the limitation is that a running shot is a wasted chunk of lead unnecessarily flying through the woods.

Nobody wants to kill anyone's pets. But there is a need for people to grow up and accept the fact that pet ownership does indeed come with some responsibilities. I really don't think that is a very difficult concept to understand ...... for most people.

I have to be honest, I am completely ignorant on what does or doesn't cause or promote CWD. So I am willing to let those whose business it is to be up on such things establish policy. I know there are plenty of people who have cherry-picked their own studies and resources and whoever will back up whatever position that might favor their own personal agenda. Since I haven't the time, energy, resources or ability to conduct my own study, I will let the real scientists and biologists fight it out among themselves, and hope that those charged with the responsibilities for administering policy take those responsibilities seriously. Frankly, I don't have any reason (real or theoretical) to think that they don't.

So the topic got extended beyond what it would have otherwise been. And a point was made that there are real reasons for those dogs not to have been allowed to become "free-range" pets. I will take responsibility for going off in that direction and pointing out indeed some of these incidents happen because too many pet owners refuse to accept the responsibility of pet ownership. And yes there are perfectly good reasons for proper stewardship of your animals. Not really trying to excuse this guy's actions, but merely pointing out that these dogs would likely still be alive if they had been properly controlled. And yes the discussion did move into why animals should be controlled....Which shouldn't bother anyone unless they are bothered by the responsibilities of animal ownership. Yes, these topics do grow and evolve beyond the original post. That is completely natural, expected, and normal for forum topics. It is what allows a discussion to mature and be examined from more than one standpoint.

Unfortunately, that is a question that we will never answer. We will never know how the addition of all these recent new legal rifle counties have impacted deer takes or safety numbers. None of that kind of info is being collected by the DEC. I guess they don't want to know.

Understand that at the time, the sheep represented a good chunk of our family income, and that it was dogs allowed to run loose and uncontrolled that forced us out of business. I think attempting to salvage the family business was worth a week of effort. You also need to realize that we were not into a "revenge" mode, but simply trying to salvage some small part of what was left of our business. That is the problem with people who never give a second thought as to what their fuzzy little pets that they have turned loose on their neighbors are doing as they belittle the potential consequences to those around them. These are people who either callously don't give a damn, or think that their pets are incapable of the instant personality change that can come over even the most obedient and loving dogs. I should also point out that taking a nice picture of the offending dogs does very little to stop the carnage. You will not find any sheriffs deputies these days that can or will go door to door across the county with a picture of some dogs trying to locate them. It is far more practical to anchor the offenders right there on the spot and put an immediate end to the threat.

It is amazing how wild some of these "house-pets" can be when they get out from under the control of their owners. The dogs that got into our sheep did so a couple nights in a row. And so we spent the next week with rifles up in the hay-mow, and they never came back until the very night that we gave up. These "house pets" had little trouble reverting back to their historical predator instincts. We were damned irritated that some thoughtless, irresponsible, S.O.B. put us in that position. But yes, we had every intention of shooting these "house pets" that had owners who thought it was great idea that there dogs had the freedom to run free and engage in their carnage on our flock, in the fenced-in barnyard on our property. No we didn't get a chance to end the situation ourselves. As it turned out we didn't have to. Another farmer had better luck than we did. So yes sometimes I do come off as a hard-case when people attempt to justify irresponsible dog ownership. I have no blame to assign to the dogs themselves because they are just doing what they instinctually do. It is a shame that the animals have to pay for the lack of responsibility of their owners.