Doc

Hunt the high country or side hill areas so you are always dragging down hill. That is, assuming you are in hill and valley country. Do not ever reverse that!!! Another option is to pick up a younger hunting partner or two and some electronic communication. There might be a third option. If you can legally run an ATV on your hunting area, perhaps this is the time to consider getting one. There are two things we know for absolutely certain. One: the price of these machines will not be going down as time goes on. Two: you will never be younger than you are right now. Time marches on. Don't be stubborn, or someday there will be people trying to figure out the best way to drag you out.

Every time I even think about going to the state fair the temperature flashes up into the 90's and I start remembering that there is absolutely no shade there. It's like heading to the Sahara to have a good time. Not likely to happen.

I always thought a gift certificate was the perfect gift, but when it comes to things that are worth up to $50, I've already got everything. If I want it, I've already bought it. I checked with the wife last night and she is telling me the same as a lot of the replies on here, "get something else". I'm not a big fan of jerky, and the thing would probably find its way down into the basement where we keep all the other cooking implements that we never use. I guess the search goes on. These days $50 doesn't go very far. You should have seen me trying to spend a $25 card at Walmarts. I finally went over to the grocery side of the store and bought a pile of junk-food ..... Just what I needed.....lol.

All of my stands are at whatever height the ground is at .... lol. I don't do heights anymore. I have not figured out how to shoot a bow with both arms wrapped in a death-grip around the tree trunk. Back in the olden days before I finally evolved into a ground dweller, My stands were probably averaging between 15 and 20 feet high.

I stepped into one of those ground-nesting yellow jackets once. I knocked a couple of them to the ground with a swat, and I be darned if they didn't get back up and come right back on me, just humping away for all they're worth trying to get that stinger through my pants. That's when I decided the mean little guys really meant business and it was tie to leave ....... quickly. Normally I don't do "run" (haven't actually "ran" since junior high school), but I made an exception that day. By the way, thank heaven for engineer boots with the pant-legs over top.

I have a gift certificate for Bass-pro shops for $50 and wound up today snooping around for something at BPS to spend it on. I ran across a basic food dehydrator for approximately $50 and kind of thought that might be an interesting preservation method for fruit and vegies and such. Then I started wondering what you do with all thee little strips of dried up fruits and veggies. How do you cook with the stuff? Is it any good? is there any flavor left in these little dried up hunks of sh.. stuff. Anybody know anything about cooking using dried food? Do you have to re-hydrate it? What happens to the texture? What happens to the flavor? Any tricks or required tricks? Maybe a food dehydrator will be a waste of the gift certificate and I should be looking at bullets or something instead.

This is the answer! Eve some of the professional, well established, commercial orchardists have been warning that prices this year will be higher and yields will be impacted because of that flukey blossom forcing followed by hard frosts .... repeatedly this year. If you live in a valley bottom, be prepared to have this become a regular occurrence even when winter/spring is normal. That's not to say that you cannot grow fruit in valleys, but be ready for mire than your share of harvests being ruined frosts at bloom time. As Growalot said frosts settle into valleys.

I only target the very old bucks. You know, the toothless ones with the sway back, and bowed legs, where you can count every rib. A bit of blindness and deafness helps too. No buck is harvested before its time. If I can chew the meat, it was probably too young. Yeah .... right .... You believe all that, I've got this bridge that I will sell you. Actually, any deer that comes along, without any spots, is the one that I will try to take.....lol.

Hi-Tor is such a huge and diversified area that there is nothing definite that can be said about the massive swamp at the south end of Canandaigua Lake all the way up the steep hills, to the flat mixtures of abandoned ancient farmlands and large and small blocks of hardwoods and brushlots. And yes in years past, I have seen state parking lots that were over-run with cars and trucks. But I have also seen cars pulled over along the edge of some of the roads tat looked like they has a whole lot of elbow room. I often thought it would be a good idea to take two cars (one parked at the bottom on 245 and the other parked somewhere up on top), and still hunt super-slowly down the hill. I suspect that you might encounter very few other hunters, and anything you get would be a downhill drag. Of course there is the West River Swamp which I think holds tons of great deer, but are more of a challenge to hunt than most people are willing to undertake. I have seen the massive trails going into the swamp, but it isn't too far before you get to boot-sucking mud and pockets of deep water.

It's been about 13 years since I retired, and a big part of the decision to bail was that same kind of feeling. I was being choked with less and less self-directed time. As the cutbacks and downsizing increased, so did the unpaid mandatory overtime to make up for the missing bodies. And then they tried to make me carry a company phone so that essentially I was on limitless call around the clock. And as a reward for all this abuse, there became the repeated statement that I was topped out in my profession unless I went back to college for even more education, which was not going to happen at that stage of my life. so the compensation stagnated. That did it, I was out the door. But I remember thinking, where is all this going to end? What is in store for future generations? Well maybe this and other similar threads are now providing the answer. Yes I see that you have an even more time-consuming burden than I ever had with your Mother-in-law, but you did mention work demands as well. It seems to me that there has to be some way of living besides becoming a corporate slave. Somewhere through the years, we replaced working to live with living to work. Damn, you only get one crack at this thing called life. It seems that we owe it to ourselves to do it right. I was fortunate because all this stuff was beginning as I came into retirement age. So I knew exactly what to do. But I still wonder where it will all end with each successive generation.

As far as I'm concerned, it is all about challenge. Otherwise, I simply head for the supermarket to get some nice prime black angus. It just depends on how great a challenge one I looking for in their hunting. Those that handicap themselves the most get the most respect from me when they are successful. That was the lure of bow season for me and why I got involved. it all involved the choice of weapon that demands the challenge of understanding nature and the understanding of animal patterns and habits and strengths. All these things come into play, as you head back farther into primitive weapons. The more primitive the weapon, the more hunting and shooting skill that is required and hence the more challenge, and the more satisfaction and sense of accomplishment when it comes up to be a successful result. I had to get within 20 yards with the old recurve that I started out with. That guy with the spear had to get even closer. It would have been better if he could have done it without the bait, but of course perhaps it just flat would have been impossible. Other than using a rock or a knife, the spear takes challenge about as far as you can go. And success there is something that a hunter can take huge pride in. Each step back in primitive weaponry makes the activity closer to one human vs. one animal, one on one. It's not a team event joined into with a group of engineers and factory workers. It was his sole accomplishment, and I don't blame him for doing a little celebrating.

A spear ........... Your equipment can't get anymore primitive than that. Talk about challenge, and hunter-handicapping .... that IS the ultimate. A truly great accomplishment. However, when considering whether it is a smart thing to try, I have to say that it takes more guts than brains. I know I would never do such a thing, and that decision has nothing to do with political correctness or some concern over the brutality of the act. It simply seems to be the wrong thing to do with something that can eat you.

Dumb Question: Anybody know why they call that bird a Green Heron when there isn't a spec of green on it? I have one that hangs around my small pond in the woods behind the barn. For a long time I called these birds a Bittern, but eventually decided that it was indeed a green heron.

Ruger American in .270 caliber. Seems to do the job nicely.

I would like to express my sincere condolences to you and your family.

Yes, back in the days before I evolved and came down out of the trees, Baker was the only game in town. I added all kinds of chains and other attachment features but never felt safe in it. So I began building welded up treestands with 36" x 36" platforms that were chain-on with jack screws. When installed they were a piece of the tree, not going anywhere. Then I still got to the point where I would have had to shoot my bow one-handed because I became afflicted with fear-of-heights .... I couldn't let go of the tree. Finally had to give up the monkey impression, and get down on the ground where I belong..... lol. It's been a much more pleasurable, relaxed and calm hunt from that day forward.

One thing no one has offered up is any documentation or public statements from the DEC or any other credible source that shows that bowhunters are anymore prone to passing does than gun hunters are. As far as I know, they have not ever justified their decision to make bowhunters shoulder the population control experiments. My suspicion is that the DEC wants bowhunters replaced by or supplemented by the more efficient firearms hunters in that segment of the season in order to increase the general deer take.

I have a special kind of respect for you guys that didn't sell out to the tech craze of the 70's like I eventually did. And the same for those who have discovered a love for doing it the old-school way. It is what archery season started out as and was established for. Back when the original archers worked to form a season for their particular form of deer hunting challenge they understood the value of handicapping themselves. It is good that a few still are preserving those ideals.

So with that point settled, back to the original point that I was making regarding the decision by the DEC to assign the task of thinning the herd to a season that has the least chance of success. Or even more peculiar is the choice to leave the fix completely out of the more efficient season. What really was the motive behind all of that. There is something going on there besides tackling a population problem. I think the threat to insert muzzleloaders into bow season (something they have wanted to do fir a decade) may be a clue as to what it really is all about.

Being a moderator is not an easy job. It requires scrutiny of the entire site including a lot of parts of it that you as a moderator would rather not spend time reading. And no matter what you decide there will be members that complain because something didn't get removed or edited and others that will claim to be unreasonably picked on. Its the same old thing between those that have authority and must occasionally exercise that authority and those that don't. As far as somebody getting away with something that another gets hammered for, just understand how many words have to be read daily in order to catch everything. It really is an impossible task. It's a thankless job that puts a target on your back that everybody likes to take a poke at ..... hence this thread. I threw in the towel a while back because it became obvious that you absolutely cannot and will not please everybody. And many times I felt more like a babysitter than a site moderator. The time effort and abuse simply was not something that I felt I should have to put up with. I am thankful that the other moderators so far have not made the same decision that I did. None of the mods need the grief and aggravation that seems to automatically come with the job. So instead of nit-picking and trying very hard to criticize, how about a bit of respect and appreciation for the tireless efforts that these guys put forth on your behalf. Bear in mind as you are typing your gripes, that without these guys, this site would be a zoo. The site administration provides a service, and believe it or not it is for your benefit. How about we be a little understanding about the size and difficulty of the job of keeping you all happy.

I remember all those decades of white knuckle drives for more than an hour, in the dark, out there before the snowplows, through the white-outs when I wasn't sure whether I was pointed down the road or about to head cross-lots into a hay field. Given the choice, I'll take a bit of humidity and trade the air conditioning bill for the heating bill. Yeah, I like the fall, but really have no use for what Fall is the pre-cursor to. The older I get, the less tolerant I am of winter.

No treestand harness for me anymore. I came out of the trees years ago. I'm on the ground, eyeball-to-eyeball now. Can't fall out of the ground .... lol.

So, did anybody see any caterpillar infestations this year ..... tent caterpillars? ...... Gypsy Moth Caterpillars? I didn't see a single one this summer. Not even one. I am used to seeing an annual attack on my fruit trees of one or the other or both, but not this year. Also, I thought I was going to escape the Japanese Beetles this year. They were late, but they eventually showed up. I beat them back again this year.

It is used in urban and suburban areas where firearms are not allowed. That's not exactly comparing apple to apples. Yes, the cities have nearly domesticated herds of deer which could be hunted with a cube of sugar and a club. But when you are talking a wild herd as they are in the areas effected here in NYS, trying to control populations with bows is an impossible task.

Well gun season hasn't changed a whole lot, but the real growth in hunting shows has been the ones that involve bowhunting. I remember when bow season was an oddity, a few of us guys would show up at work and the stories began to break out. It was a big deal if somebody saw a deer, and huge when somebody actually got a shot. And on the super rare situation where somebody actually got a deer (any deer), that story would survive several seasons. Today nobody wants to hear about the "almosts". And any deer that are taken have to have that first question, "What did it score?". And if the number isn't high enough, well, it's almost like it never happened. And if you say you got a doe, the group breaks up immediately and heads back to work. No wonder nobody wants to shoot does .... LOL. But as far as the 170" buck that you are talking about, it is these staged and scripted TV shows that I blame for that attitude of taking smaller deer being something that you feel you need to apologize for. Yes, that is the one thing that I have learned from those shows ..... They have the power to shift attitudes, ethics, and expectations in ways that are not necessarily good for hunting.