Doc

Look, we need one more gun control law that will put to bed all this assault rifle controversy. Obviously many in the public believe that appearance features are what makes many of the weapons in the hands of criminal much more lethal than old-style gun designs. So lets just pass a law that requires that all guns be painted pink, rendering them obviously harmless. Create a pansy rifle, and it really won't matter that it has a horrible pistol grip or a thumb-hole in the stock. Since laws are being passed based on appearance features rather than function, the new pink paint would render them harmless.

You are assuming that it would actually be more. It could be that the simplification would actually be less for all.

Imagine a farmer who has a chunk of his annual income that comes from some nice prime black angus or Hereford purebred beef cattle reading about this stupid study. Or maybe a dairy farmer who has to tolerate slaughtered cattle because of some newly introduced cougars which would undoubtedly be completely protected while the DEC tried to establish a thriving population. Expand that to those who count on their sheep, hogs, horses and any other convenient farm livestock that are suddenly on the menu of these introduced kitty-cats. Pets, hikers, mountain bikers, kids, you name it they could all become an entrée on a mountain lion's menu of convenience. You don't just throw a bunch of these things into the wild without some unintended consequences. There are a few other considerations beyond just having a new species to hunt. But these brilliant scientists have studies that show that it would help decimate the burgeoning deer population. Do these mental midgets ever step outside their cubicles?

I don't know exactly how many times that I and many others have said, "If only I had had a gun instead of a bow, that deer would have been mine." I feel confident shooting at deer with ranges up to 150+ yards well rested with my scoped .270. Many others can do much better with their deer rifles. My maximum range with a bow is 35 yards, and I really prefer 20 yards. How on earth can anyone compare the two when it comes to efficiency. Is it really true that early deer are easier before the guns start banging? Not if you know how to use the pressure from other gun hunters. If I want to reduce any segment of the deer herd, realistically, I would take my .270 and let the other hunters move the deer for me with their movement and noise and their filling the woods with scent. I can't see how anyone could possibly argue that point. Hang around a deer processor some opening day of gun season and see just how effective modern firearms really are compared to bow kills. I see them corded up like firewood every time I cart my deer over to our processor, and that is not just opening day. Any day in bowseason ........ not so much (or even close)

We all just love paying extra fees don't we? Why is there not just one license that allows you to hunt? Seriously, I don't mind fees if they can show additional costs because of the additional activity. But what is the additional cost for muzzleloading or bowhunting or whatever. I see it only as more bookwork and expenses involves in all the separate tracking. What ever happened to making government agencies justify fees. Nobody cares to make these people financially responsible and accountable? Maybe they have numbers and whatnot that show that it is cheaper to break all these variations into separate entities and individual tracking and paperwork. But seriously, I would like to see it before ridiculing those that wonder about separate fees - no matter what the size. Just because it has always been done that way doesn't mean it is the "smart" way.

Yup!..... There goes our worshipped scientists again with another hair-brained scheme. Isn't it amazing how these lunatics (supposedly some of the best minds that our tax-funded study money can be spent on) seem to keep coming up with these brilliant ideas. By the way, where is the best cougar habitat located? my guess would be the central Adirondacks where the deer population is the thinnest.

There is a pretty good chance that if the doe days were implemented in the season that has the most effective results, it would turn out that this magical 2 weeks, would be more like two or three days. Doesn't it seem odd that this emergency overpopulation problem that plagues those targeted areas was never discussed or proposed to apply in a season that had the best odds of having significant success? Just how serious are they really when they apply the solution only in the least effective season. That's the real question that nobody is asking.

All this stuff is complete nonsense. Until you put an antlerless only day or so into the regular gun season, you will never see any significant change in doe take. Either they are serious about removing does or their not. But let's get real. no matter what you do to bow season, it is firearms in the season designated for them that are the only thing that will make any difference. Anything else is simply window dressing with no real motives that seriously involve population control. By the way, is their any surprise that these so-called surveys are in favor of trashing the bowseason. The majority of respondents could care less about bowhunting season other than the fact that they might now get a good chance to grab a piece of it.

You are absolutely right. In a few years the DEC will cram their muzzleloader season into bow season, but it will have nothing to do with whether bow hunters were able to bring doe numbers down or not. For at least a decade, the DEC has been aching to get any kind of firearms into bow season that they could, and have even been successful to some extent in doing so. Now they have concocted a scheme that justifies exactly that, and there is no doubt in my mind that they will push that scheme just as far as they can with or without the bowhunters humble submission. I don't believe that the DEC thinks for a minute that bowhunters alone are able to control doe numbers. That is just their cover-story. And it appears that they are selling that story to some.

It sounds like the guy has a lot of time and effort put into building this stand. He may be a bit hard-nosed about removing it or not using it. It may become more of a nasty situation than any of us are visualizing. If it were a portable stand he probably would be a lot more likely to move it without any kind of problems. It could be that he had a special arrangement with the previous landowner.

There's nothing wrong with the show that a few standards on safety wouldn't fix. The only problem they have is the effect of baiting a few numb-skulls into taking some very stupid, ill-conceived risks with enough money at stake to tempt the weak-minded into taking high risk gambles with their lives. Actually, there are a lot of very talented people that are on that show, and are very entertaining. They simply have to implement some filters for acts that perhaps are ill-advised for live TV programming.

My DMPs are all free since I bought my Lifetime License. I'm not sure if there are unique situations where that is different but for me they are freebies.

Wind direction will be the most frustrating parts of any hunt. Nothing can irritate you like watching the wind switch 180 degrees a few times while you sit there using plans based on a weatherman's predictions. I hunt in narrow valley areas with high steep hills, and they definitely will do some weird things. I have one blind next to a 150' deep rock walled ravine that twists its way up the hill, Anywhere around that ravine will have constantly changing winds. And some of the biggest bucks in that area use that for a bedding area because there is no approach to that area that will not give them a scent warning before you get within shooting range. The good old milkweed seed test wil show you what you are up against and it can be a very frustrating story. There are also areas where the wind can be in one direction all day long and then late in the afternoon, the thermals take over. I don't know about flat land. There is none down out way ..... lol.

We had a young coon in the driveway that was staggering around, wobbling from side to side, falling over and laying down and then getting up and just generally looking very uncoordinated and totally screwed up. No drool or foaming at the mouth, but also not a bit afraid of the car as we drove up the driveway and pulled right up to him. Rabies???? .... Maybe, but I also understand that distemper has those same kind of symptoms.

With some of the stupid things that they do on that show, it was only a matter of time before something dangerous like this happened. I really do expect that some day there will be a fatality of some kind.

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.