Doc

It will keep you out in the field during a season that was designed for bows, but you will be playing in a different "game". When you are unable to remain proficient with your vertical bow, picking up a xbow will not mean that you are still bowhunting anymore than picking up a gun would mean that you are still bowhunting. It's a minor point, but just a clarification of what the xbow is really doing for those that have lost the physical ability to bowhunt. I believe it is a common mis-statement when people say that the crossbow allows one to bowhunt past their physical capabilities. It simply allows one to use a different weapon during bowseason. My answer to that scenario is that when I am incapable of bowhunting (as will happen some day) my hunting will rely on my .270 and I will hunt in a season that was designed for that.

There is not one element in your argument that does not equally apply to the justification of guns in place of bows. I know about the "bang" argument, but if we are concerned about the potential for bowhunters not mastering their weapons, then we are perhaps saying that a bow is not a proper deer hunting weapon because there are some people who will not master the weapon. We cannot say that just because a weapon can be used irresponsibly we need to allow more efficient weapons. I think you can see where that logic would lead us.

It's not "completely different" you said you should be able to do something simply because you want to, and it should be your choice. And I am telling you that there are rifle hunters and shotgunners who want exactly the same thing.

And, when you become DEC Commissioner or someone who has the power to mandate such policy, I might even back such a proposal. But until then, I have to deal with the realities of what's on the books and what history tells us is most likely to be our future. Already we have moves toward mixing the seasons. We have muzzleloaders being stirred in and being threatened to be included as well as special rifle seasons being added to bow seasons. I see no indication that your proposal will ever see the light of day. In fact, there is more evidence that people will be (and are already) questioning why there is a special bow season at all.

So now we have to try to fool kids into thinking that all hunting involves nice warm pleasant days watching all the pretty colored leaves and enjoying the solitude of a dead-quiet woods. How long do you think that little charade is going to last when they get a taste of the real thing .... lol. My thinking was that if you really thought a special youth season paid off with new recruits, the attention should have shifted to how we get as many adults as possible to mentor these new recruits. And you don't really do that by placing the season such that mentors have to decide whether they want to do that or go hunting themselves. You never get the maximum numbers of mentors when you are forcing them to pass up a good hunting day. The youth hunt should be a real special season that doesn't compete with anything if you are serious about maximizing the number of mentors.

Expectations ....... The hunting shows on TV and videos set newcomers up for failure. They illustrate typical hunting scenarios as a little slice of heaven where the weather is great, the deer are plentiful and always big. Antler scores are emphasized, and the ease with which trophies are harvested are always exaggerated. Sitting on the couch in the living room never gives any indication of how uncomfortable things can really get. All of this TV representation of hunting makes the realities of hunting hit a lot harder when the newcomer finally sits in that blind and has a few hours to decide he never wants to do this again.

My ability to range distances simply using my own senses varies from one day to the next, but never is good enough that I would risk a bow shot without having done some preliminary ranging with my Nikon rangefinder. I have seen studies that show how terrible humans are at distance estimation. Here in our hunting areas, when using rifles and even a shotgun, distances are usually so close that it doesn't pay to pack a rangefinder (most of the time).

Compared to past years, this is a phenomenal stat. Maybe we should take a minute to pat ourselves on the back a bit. It would be interesting to know just what accounts for this. Is it some huge improvement in hunter safety training, or maybe safety being publicized better, or is it the shrinking hunters, or more blaze orange or any of a number of other things that might influence that number?

If you had the occasion to witness one of these attacks by dogs, you might start wondering yourself just how much has really changed between wild wolves and supposedly domesticated dogs. The behavior sure wasn't typical of the typical lazy dog flopped out on the living room floor. That switch got turned by something from their primal past, and they definitely were not acting very domestic.

Or, maybe he was just using terminology that best describes what happened in laymen terms. I have no problem with describing a situation of killing without consuming as sport killing. It probably is not a term that I would use, but the point made was that the killing that day was not for sustenance but simple killing for killing's sake. That's not "anthropomorphizing, that is simply an attempt to be descriptive. And like I said, I have seen dogs do it and I think that the term "sport killing" might be what first comes to mind. How accurate is that term? I don't know, but it sure does convey the results.

You bet, I have answered this question so many times that there really doesn't seem to be any reason to repeat myself. And never any rebuttal because no one can refute what I am saying. Back in the days when it still mattered and could have made a difference, I was on the wrong side of the compound issue. I was for inclusion of compounds. Like the majority back then, I was not listening to those who claimed that mechanizing bowhunting was setting some precedents that would eventually lead to a changing of bow season to the point where the title "bow season" would lose all meaning and identity. So now we sit back with a little history at hand to provide proof that their fears have been borne out. I can now say that I was wrong and they were absolutely right. The compound did indeed form the precedent for the crossbow. No question about that now. We watched all the pro-crossbow arguments and if anyone was paying attention, "precedent" was always the trump card. And here we are, beginning chapter 2. What will the crossbow be the precedent for as we continue to de-archery bow season. Oh, we have plenty of things coming at us. Already on the horizon is air-guns and air-bows and anything else that technology can dream up. Lines have been so blurred that now the DEC threatens to add muzzleloaders into the season as though it no longer matters that firearms are being introduced. We have rifles already introduced and intermixed into a couple of days of bow season. And why not. That change already has been added to the growing list of precedents. As lines get more and more smudged, the differences between archery seasons and gun seasons get less and less defined. Bow hunting is being evolved right out of existence as more and more people begin to ask, "what is really the reason for a 'special season' and 'special regulations' for weapons that don't really need it anymore?" Is there any reason for special seasons? More and more people are beginning already to ask that question, and perhaps rightly so. Special seasons? ... special rules? is that getting to be an obsolete idea? At one time bow season was a rather benign low impact form of hunting that drew little attention. The idea of some special seasons and rules actually had some necessity and justification. That necessity is being erased a piece at a time ..... one precedent at a time.

There are a whole bunch of rifle and shotgun hunters who WANT to force themselves into bow season also. Should they too be allowed into bow season simply because they want to? Should that be their choice?

I have witnessed this kind of behavior before as a kid. We had sheep, and a pack of dogs (close relative of the wolf) had quite the time running through the township, visiting each of the sheep producers and engaging in an activity that could only be described as "thrill killing". There was no indication of them eating any of them as they went from one to another doing enough damage to kill them. No these were not wolves, but they are the same biological family of canidae. So when people use this same kind of terminology that was used in this article, I have no reason to be critical. I know that "sport killing" is a potential mind-set among this genetic family of predators. I have seen the same thing with dogs vs. deer. No intention to eat the prey, just the thrill of the kill. It is a "pack-thing".

I don't think there is any one set of attitudes or features of a crossbow hunter that applies to all owners of a crossbow. Just like any of us, we're all individuals. Anything that you may think is characteristic of all crossbow hunters is bound to have plenty of exceptions within some individuals. But sometimes it is interesting to contemplate why the sudden interest in alternative weapons in bow seasons. Like I say there is no one answer for all, but some of the potential motives do say a lot about where the sport is heading.

So what's the story now. Is this lack of taking does something that has just recently happened? Why is it now that everybody only wants to take bucks? Is this a generational thing, or a TV inspired phenomenon? It's all a mystery to me, because if I have a permit in my pocket, unless it's a fawn, no antlerless deer gets safe passage from me. Also, the hunters that I know feel the same way. So who are all these buck only hunters? Where is that idea coming from?

I don't know. That's what they said about the youth rifle season stirred in with the early bow season, and so far, nothing has happened. But I do get your point. It could be a much more lethal thing if done on a much larger scale. However, I still avoid those days by staying home.....lol.

Wisconsin's CDAC sounds a lot like our Citizen Task Forces that establish harvest targets for our WMU, with the same anti-deer biases and business financial interests. But anyway, If you want to severely cut deer numbers, there is little argument that "doe only" harvests are the way to do it providing you make a real honest effort and use the proper season where such an effort has a chance of working. Not the silly pretend-effort that our DEC tried with archers only. Seriously, it makes a lot of sense to remove the breeding segment of the deer producers if the object is to eliminate as many deer as possible. On the other hand, the discussions about what numbers the deer are currently at and what those numbers should be become a much more serious and intense discussion when such slash and burn tactics of population cutting are used.

Actually, the easiest way to do that is during a season where they already have the most efficient equipment to really do the job. That would be the regular gun season. If they were really serious about that little "doe only" fiasco, and if they truly wanted the doe population whacked on, they would have done the real obvious solution which would have been to devote a few days of gun season to "doe-only" harvesting. The deer population control has absolutely nothing to do with crossbows, or bow season. I know it, you know it, and the DEC knows it too. So no, the crossbow is not the salvation of overpopulated situations or even close. However, if that is what they are pinning their hopes on, they will be real happy to start working firearms into the bow season as they are threatening. While that is something that bowhunters would really hate seeing, I do believe that that is the DEC's end game. The crossbow push by the DEC is more likely motivated as an initial interim conditioning step to break down the bowhunter resistance as they work toward the time when the mix of firearms and bows is maximized.

That is right. Those of you who think full inclusion of crossbows will end all the conflict had better think again. We have a lot of stuff coming downstream to supply jealousy and needs for a claim-jumping mentality. There is the atlatl, and now we have an air-bow. And the air-gun forces will be looking for inclusion as well. And of course the muzzleloaders want to shoehorn themselves into the bowhunters time-slot. And look at the poor handgun shooters they need a time to do their thing. And then there is the majority of hunters ... the rifle and shotgun shooters. I'm sure they would like their chunk of that early season. Do it for us older gunners who don't like the cold anymore or who could slip on the snow and break a hip. We don't need all this chaos and rancor. Full inclusion for everything. No more exclusivity. No more favoritism. One season .... one set of regulations, and use whatever you want.

But you know that will never happen. That would be contrary to all of today's thinking. We are in an "anything goes" kind of hunting mentality. We are more likely to see special seasons of all sorts dissolved, and any niche hunting being less and less accommodated. And maybe that's the way it should be. Maybe those old-timers that carved out a "special season" for bows only were wrong and should have known that eventually people would be coming for their special set-aside time of activity. Perhaps they should have been able to foresee the natural tendencies of people to always want what others have. The only solution to keep peace and harmony is to dissolve all special seasons and just have one "anything goes" season. Instantly all incursions and take-overs and discord goes away. Yeah, that will be a hard-sell too ..... lol.

That is what is different between bowhunters. Those that first fought for a "special" bow season really enjoyed the challenge of that particular weapon. It was all about the love of the bow and the fantastic feeling of accomplishment that those unique hunters got from successfully taking on the challenge. It really was all about the bow. Now "bowhunters" are predominantly all about the kill regardless of what weapon is used. There has been an evolution of mindset more than equipment. The mentality now is, weapon be damned. Just give me a piece of that early season and whatever I can find that will whack a deer with the least amount of effort, challenge and skill. Two completely different schools of thought and attitude. And in today's technocracy, guess which one is winning out.

Too late. The genie is out of the bottle. But perhaps back when the decision was made maybe we should have had a little more foresight and addressed the issue when that choice was still feasible. Yes, in retrospect, the choices made disregarded any views off into the future as so frequently happens. Today it is all about getting the first crack at the deer herd using whatever weapon makes it easiest. And given what the mentality has evolved into, and the effective ever increasing dropping of equipment restrictions, there really is no reason to pretend that bow season has any real restrictions required at all or any special significance that differs in any way from any other deer hunting season. And so, the DEC and other hunters see bow season as a wide open segment of the hunting year that everyone is scrambling to bulldoze their way into. The handwriting was on the wall back with the legal acceptance of the compound, but only a few could actually see it.

I love the use of the term "stole", because it is the perfect word to describe what is being done to bow seasons. And yes, I can speak authoritatively on the subject because I have been on both sides of the fence. So now having seen the results, and having seen the old-timers proven right, I am perhaps more sensitive to this idea of hijacking seasons. But you are absolutely correct to use the term "steal", because that is exactly what is being done to bow seasons today, once again. Actually it is not "once again", it is simply a continuation of what was started back when compounds were allowed to set the precedents for what is going on today. Everybody casts a jealous eye on that season and wants to shove their way into it. And by golly that is exactly what is happening.

I don't know a lot about motoring around the Adirondacks, but I assume that you have checked out the legality of going wherever it is that you intend to ride.

I now have another 5 big piles of brush to burn next winter, but the heat made me quit. My blood hasn't acclimated to that kind of temperature yet ..... lol. I'm afraid it is all going to coax out the buds on my fruit trees early again and then start in with the frosts. Fruit production in valley country of western NY is a pretty tough thing to make work. This year has the look of another wipe-out ..... again.