Doc

Yeah, perhaps it is more the title of the thread that I disagree with than the content of the artile. Actually hound hunting is quite far along the time scale of hunting.

All this fighting is great until the guy that goes down never gets back up again.

Maybe I wouldn't have dreaded sighting in the old Ithaca 12 Ga. so much if I had been using a Lead sled. Now, I don't have any guns that punish me that much, so I use the open set-up with sand bags for checking out the rifles. As far as repeatability, I have 100% confidence in the bags.

If you had tried to get out of the car, you might have found out exactly what the cranky old bird really had on his mind.

What we have to do is to cheapen up heat seeking technology and self-propelled arrows. Now that would be real hunting ..... eh? Let's take his "anything goes" philosophy to it's logical conclusion.....lol. That would almost be as much fun as that computer hunting they tried to get legalized a few years back. That kind of fits real well into the "anything goes" hunting philosophy.

Yeah, there isn't a lot of compounding going on if the interest is annually pulled and spent.

Probably not too many people here remember putting up hay loose in the mow. I was that 5 year old kid that was up in the mow tramping in the hay. Yeah ...... The kid with hay fever coated with chaff stomping around in the air so full of dust that you could hardly see through it. Oh yeah, I worked for one of he neighbors bagging oats on the combine, choking and sneezing. We were a hard-core farming community with big houses and lots of family members in each house. Yeah everyone up and down the valley had those huge houses with several adult family members and even family units under the same roof. We had my grandparents living with us until they all passed. No, we wouldn't think of packing them off to a nursing home as long as we had a roof to offer. In some ways, that style of life was a lot better than today. We took care of our own.

There was a time in America when most rural folks lived that way. Kids were created as a tool for family subsistence. Why do you think all these big old farmhouses looked like they could house several families. That wasn't because they enjoyed cutting firewood to heat unused space. We didn't always live a lifestyle where kids grew up and then headed for opposite ends of the country/world. There was a time when several generations of people lived in the same house.

Thanks for the info. Years ago, we used to boil sap using one of those big galvanized wash tubs, but stopped doing that when somebody mentioned that it might not be a real good idea. Actually nobody got sick, but that doesn't mean that it was a good idea. Also, I did come across an old broken down sugar shack that had a huge galvanized tank over the fire pit. The outfit was a fair sized operation. I knew the guy that ran the outfit, back in the 40's. However, we used to do a lot of things that have since been proven to be not so healthy .... lol.

I knew this would be an interesting topic. When I bought my lifetime hunting/fishing license a few years ago, I hit the jackpot. I got it for the grand total of $50. The state lost money on me the very first year that I bought it, and I know they haven't made a cent off of me. But of course that was a special circumstance that doesn't represent a whole lot of people. But for me, it was an offer I couldn't refuse.

Question ..... Is it true that if you boil using a galvanized wash tub, there are some kind of toxins or something released into the syrup from the galvanized coating?

My gosh she is going to bite her chin!

If I had that attitude that I need every advantage that I can get, I would be a regular around the canned hunt game farms. I certainly would not be messing around with some bow or some air rifle either. Could be that attitude wouldn't make me real popular with the game wardens either. Yes, we all hunt for our own reasons, but those that adopt the "anything goes" attitudes really aren't the hunters that I have much in common with.

There was a time when I believe I could have. But then I wonder what it would be like to reach my age and still have to hunt for my food and go out and lug firewood. I suspect it is on thing to go hunting because you just want to vs. doing it because you have to. Most people don't burn wood because they have to. If you have lived long enough to reach old age, things like ready access to doctors and hospitals and pharmacies take on a bit more reality than they did years ago. That spirit of invincibility now focuses on putting on just a few more years .... ha-ha-ha.... No I have gotten very used to going hunting when I want to . The idea of turning up the thermostat to get through these winters is far more appealing than cutting, stacking and feeding firewood into a stove or fireplace. And if we have a bad hunting year it is always comforting to know I can jump in my car and go into town for some grocery shopping.

Disgust with poaching by a huge percentage of hunters goes without saying. That message never has a shortage of supporters. Believe me, there are plenty of anti-hunters who are quick to pile onto that message and attempt to link poaching with hunting. We even have hunters who for some unknown reason would like to have all hunters tarred with the same brush as poachers. To me disgust for poaching does not need us running for cover or welcoming any connection between poaching and hunting. I am tired with being stirred in with lawbreakers and always being on the defensive as if I had done something wrong. My attitude is that there is nothing gained by restating what I consider to be obvious. Poaching is an offense against hunters .... period. And if someone wants to look at this story and point out what happens when wildlife is mis-managed, I welcome that half of the story that never gets told enough.

So the annual interest on the $765 lifetime license fee (for those 12 - 69 years old as an example) makes up for the revenue missing from those hunters that otherwise would have bought all the individual licenses each year? I'm just asking. I haven't done the math, so I don't know. I'm not trying to be that precise anyway, I was just curious if it all adds up. I've never seen the management plan actually laid out anywhere.

Quote: "What Would You Buy If You Left NY?" A quick ticket back.

I think that most gun control advocates see the problem purely as being the gun, and fail to make the connection to the person pulling the trigger. The guy who said that they wanted to learn how to shoot, but had no interest in owning a "gun", clearly shows a dissociation between the gun and the shooter. To that one, the gun all by itself is evil, even when it is sitting locked up with no one around it. And then there was the other one who does not condone firearms for self defense. Those people apparently don't realize that when seconds count in life threatening situations, the police are just minutes away. In other words they believe that government law enforcement agencies are actually going to save your live if you just wait for them to arrive. The fact is that such confrontations are so frightening to consider that they simply have blocked reality right out of their minds. I don't know how you combat such irrational thinking as that. I guess you simply can't.

We went to NYC once with another couple. It was interesting, but once was enough. I have not had any desire to ever go back for any reason. It offers me absolutely nothing. It is not my kind of environment or lifestyle.

Does anyone here know for a fact how the revenues from lifetime hunting licenses are handled? Are they placed in a unique interest bearing account that actually grows over time? Are they stirred into the annual budgets and treated like one-shots that are spent annually? Are they stirred into the DEC over-all budget including environmental expenses, or re they used for wildlife/fishing management? I have not found anything specific or official that states where this money goes. My thought is that if these lifetime license incomes are not invested for long term use in accounts that keep up with inflation (and then some), they are not as valuable an income source as annual license purchases that come in every year. I know how I would manage these funds, and how I am hoping they would use it, but has anyone run across an authentic and credible accounting of how these lifetime license funds are managed?

And as far as I am concerned that is the proper way to handle that problem rather than legally jamming it down people's throats. I am a big proponent of the DEC taking on a very visible education campaign on ARs, and the taking of does, and any of those kinds of controversies. To often the first thing that everybody jumps for is some legally binding restrictions even before a decent campaign of jawboning has been tried. It's time for the DEC to stop taking the "we vs. they" approach to every issue and try a bit of working in conjunction with hunters. Not everything has to involve force.

This is a pretty subjective question you have raised here. Back in my recurve days, I was hearing of guys successfully getting deer with 35# long-bows. I always thought that was a bit light. Obviously the lighter the draw weight, the more precise you need to be, and the more perfect your shot has to come off . So there always is a bit of controversy when you start talking about the minimum draw weight. So I can offer yet another subjective measure that we always used: Use the highest draw weight that you can consistently handle accurately. Always use razor sharp broadheads, and keep your shots within your proficiency range. Those are pretty soft answers, but I don't think the answer can be stated as some text book finite number.

All of this kind of nonsensical legal proposals are simply additions to the campaign of gun owner harassment. None of them will have any impact on gun crime and they all know it. They are interested in gun control, not crime control, and don't let them fool you about that.

I am so irritated that I didn't take a few minutes to get out with the camera. Driving to town and back, I saw some real wildly beautiful potential pictures and just too busy to think to grab the camera. Some great shots gone that I will probably never get to see again. Thank you to those that did take the time to take and post those great pictures.

I assume that skimming past the "trapping" topics probably didn't cause you any undo trauma as well as whatever other topics of subsections that you have no interest in. So what is it about skimming past the politics section that causes you all so much grief and aggravation. Do you want us to get rid of the trapping section and all the other ones that you would rather not have your accessing system bother you with? The political section is merely one more of a whole pile of subsections that you all deal with everyday on a regular basis with no complaints.