Doc

As a general rule, I only do one all-day stand per season ..... that is opening day of gun season. After that it is mostly still-hunting. Bow season is 3 to 4 hours in the morning, and the same late afternoon. My still hunting looks a lot like moving stand hunting. I take a few steps from one bit of cover to the next really slowly, all the time scanning every little feature out ahead and off to the side, and then I sit for 15 minutes to a half hour. Then I do the same thing to cover another 100 yards. I guess you might call it all day moving-stand hunting. But on the gun season opener, I stay planted in a well constructed blind. Theree is enough hunter activity on that day to keep deer moving to me, when the hunter patterns are in place. After that day, it is time to actually do some hunting to find the deer.

But we are not talking about other states, and I don't believe that bowhunters are the only ones who are "selective". I do believe that bowhunters are the easiest to intimidate and steam-roller over. I do believe that the DEC is cognizant of the fact that they might be faced with a fecal-storm of enormous proportions if they mess with the gunner's seasons in such similar ways, and so bowhunters make an easier target. I also believe that the final phase of their motives is to set up further precedents of firearms in bow seasons in preparation for future incursions.

So what is the situation on your new land? Do you have a fair amount of acreage so that you have a lot of other good viable stands? If you were to let this one and perhaps only opportunity for him to hunt at home slide, how badly would that impact your hunting success? How eager are you to start off your new purchase with a neighborhood feud? Are you interested in shutting down any possibility of a friendly reciprocal right of retrieval agreement that would benefit you as well as him? And also, understand that he is perfectly legal until he steps foot on your land to retrieve a deer shot on your property. I think these questions indicate what way I am leaning ..... lol. I tend to make agreements with neighbors that eliminate tensions and keep good cooperative attitudes with neighbors. It usually works out to my benefit in the long haul.

Tax incentives are simply picking the pockets of all tax-payers to reward hunters. And from what I have read here, it would take some pretty healthy incentives to convince landowners to open up their properties. Probably a ridiculous percentage of tax revenues just to enhance hunting. I have to be realistic and say that it likely will never happen. It sounds like hunter subsidy even by those that don't hunt. At some point we have to stop thinking about raiding the public money for every little wish and want. As far as liability protection, I believe they already have made significant changes along those lines that have pretty much made frivolous landowner liability suits a thing of the past.

As far as I am concerned, a man's home is his castle, and that includes the land that he owns too. There is no way that I would ever come down on the side of trying to "force" open a landowner's land to hunting under any conditions. I don't even like zoning! But even incentives have to have some significant possibility of working or they are not worth the cost of the legislation. From what I have heard in this thread and even from my own personal feelings, it really sounds like there is little hope of opening up private land without significant financial reward for the landowner (leases and such). It appears that there really is nothing that the DEC can ever do that will open any significant amounts of land. So if we are expecting the DEC to do something, I think we can forget about that notion.

This should be required reading for all voters! We do indeed all have very short memories. I must confess that much of this nudged my memory a bit. I remember all of it now that I have been reminded.

I think Grow has made an excellent case for the fact that the DEC has acted in a heavy-handed, extortion-style way with threats against the bow season if compliance with an obviously flawed regulation doesn't happen. I find that kind of action aimed squarely at bowhunters only to be a bit of a discriminative act of selective harassment and inappropriate use of extortion. I have further issues with this bowhunting-only issue of deer population control. There is no logic behind using a season that involves the least effective deer hunting weapon as their only new population control plan. To me that hints at lack of commitment to the effort or mixed motives. I also am aware of a decade long desire of the DEC to shove muzzleloading into archery seasons. That is a matter of record. This plan coincidentally has exactly that result as an end product to a natural and predictable outcome. Bowhunters have been charged by the DEC with an impossible task of controlling doe numbers strictly within bow season. Failure to do that impossible task will result in a style of firearms being inserted. Sounds kind of "wired" to me.

If the DEC was truly serious about cutting doe populations in those "trouble areas", are you people so naïve as to think they would relegate the effort to the season that uses the least efficient weapon? Why do you suppose that the regular gun season has been ignored in their grand scheme? Come on, do you really believe that they can leave deer population control to bowhunters only? It is an ignorant half-hearted plan that likely has more to do with cramming firearms into bow seasons than it does with having anything to do with deer numbers, and you people are buying right into it.

I have finally got most of the spring and summer work under control so I can begin to get ready for the up-coming bow season. The big holidays and family gatherings are done and it is now time to get my mind ready to prepare. All I'm waiting for now is the damned heat to back off a bit. Hard to concentrate on shooting with that trickle of sweat running down the center of my back.

And then there is always reality that creeps in when you know that hunters feel put-upon....lol. We can't even get a majority of hunters to report their kills.

I've got to say that likely a "buck only hunter", probably the first minute of the season, would sit down and fill out their doe tag whether they had shot one or not. So the only thing accomplished would be that the DEC would be reporting a higher doe kill than reality. I guess that would make everyone feel better, but the real result would be to screw up all the DEC calculations even more than they already are. Maybe it might be worth a try, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

If that was the logic used by the DEC when they decided that bowhunters alone should be controlling deer populations, then they are as screwed up as I suspected they were. And those that are clinging to hopes that crossbows are going to make any significant difference really are engaging in wishful thinking. If you want to make significant increases in doe-take and are truly serious about that, then all of your options should at least include the regular gun season. Any solution that does not include gun season is really only a half-measure that is purely window-dressing.

As I understood it, the opposition to the 2-week doe only season in bow season wasn't because no one wanted to shoot does. It was because of the ridiculous notion that deer populations should be (or even could be) controlled only by bow hunters, alone. Perhaps if the DEC was really serious about taking does, a day or two of the regular season could have been made "doe only" and maybe then they would have gotten the result they were looking for without singling out archers only for the task of cutting doe populations. But either way, that doesn't change the situation with hunters being locked out of private lands and the result of strangling the growth and maintenance of the activity of hunting.

So anyway, we all recognize that the growing access problem is strangling hunting, and we demand that the DEC do something about it, but landowners are unwilling to open their land under any circumstances (usually for damn good reasons). So are we then resigned to the fact that nothing can be done and that the future of hunting is doomed? It sounds like it to me. I don't see any realistic options.

I can't shoot with that trickle of sweat running down the center of my back ..... lol. This 90 degree, high humidity, crap has got to cease!

So, to the landowners who have posted their land, what would it take to convince you to open your land to general hunting? Is there anything that would convince you to take down those posted signs, or enter into a cooperative plan to allow general public hunting access. We have repeatedly heard that the biggest danger to hunting and wildlife management is lack of land access. We all want the DEC and legislators to get landowners to open their land to the general public so that deer management can be achieved. What effective kinds of incentives or laws would you all support to make this happen?

So now you see why a few bowhunters want to be a bit more strict about what is included in bow season. The above attitude is much more prevalent than might be imagined. Anyone interested in maintaining a bow season, should read the above-quoted post and understand that there are a significant number of hunters who do not understand bowhunting (perhaps a huge majority), and do not understand why any weapon is excluded from bow season. Less interest is being shown for the quality or style of the hunt than for simply killing deer in any way possible. That is an attitude that is growing every day and becoming more and more popular among the general hunting population. This idea that the character, style and design of weapons in bow season are unimportant continues to strengthen this notion of no special seasons. It is not the first time you have heard it, and it definitely will not be the last as each incremental weapon is shoved into bow season.

Typical anti-hunting article ..... Anything but hunters, right?

Unfortunately, it is all tied together. Politics runs the gun laws. Gun laws influence hunting. Too often we think that we can ignore politics and just hunt. But at the pace that gun laws are influencing our choices in hunting weapons and accessories it doesn't really work anymore to bury your head in the sand and pretend that one doesn't effect the other.

What is the primary purpose of the boat? What kinds of waters will it be used in? Big lakes or small creeks and rivers? Parties? Power or finesse riding? Trolling? Working around heavy weed beds and tight log infested bays?

When they find themselves feeding on certain crops or food sources, I'm convinced they will have a preferred bedding area nearby for that location. There are features of certain bedding areas that they prefer involving cover, wind currents, visibility, escape features. But I also am sure there are many places in the woods, thickets and brush-lots that provide those features and not just one special spot.

If you have any of the land that is tillable, canvass the area for any farmers that may be interested in leasing the acreage that is suitable for farming. You might even pick up money to help pay the taxes. Cropland is also good for the critters.

Yeah, my lawn is starting to get that "tan" look with those stupid weeds poking up 8" to 10" all over the place. The only really green areas are a couple of dark green lines tracing out the leach field. I took my new shiny John Deere zero-turn out for a 2-hour ride to clip those weeds down. It's a fun thing to ride. kind of like a carnival ride when you crank the accelerator and zip around the trees and bushes .... lol. Yeeeee-ha-a-a-a

Another fantastic place to visit! We've been there a couple of times already, but not for several years. Never been there when they had the Civil war re-enactment going on. I imagine that was spectacular though.