Doc

No! Don't do it. It needs the big screen experience if any movie ever did.

No, it really is not right for me to have even tried to answer this question since my motives, challenges, and expectations for hunting are way beyond antlers. Yes, the fact is that I am content with just about any deer. I like challenges in my hunting, but I am not really into the "my rack is bigger than your rack" game. For me it is more about the quality of the hunt and the overall experience than he quality of the deer. The two deer that gave me the biggest thrills and sense of accomplishment was my 1st bow killed deer, a mere buck with 6" spikes. And my second most impressive and fulfilling hunt resulted in a doe that I took at 8 feet with a recurve. The rack had nothing to do with either of those. So, I guess I measure success a bit differently than most, and way differently than the premise of the question. I like big antlers, but they really have nothing to do with why I hunt. And so I am disqualified from answering the question with the criteria specified.

From Canandaigua south, it's pretty darn hard to tell how much snow we've really gotten since that howling wind has not stopped blowing since it started to snow days ago. But right now we have and inch or two on the ground. How much that wind has blown off or evaporated is anybody's guess. Yesterday was kind of weird. I tried to go to Eastview Mall, and as I kept getting closer to Victor (going north) I was watching the sky in that direction that looked very black and ugly. Just as I turned onto 96 at main street Victor in the center of town and looked about 100 yards ahead west) and saw a literal wall of snow coming down. No gradual build-up of snowflakes but just a solid wall of snow with zero visibility into it. Actually it was damn scary and something that I have never seen before. I swung into the Corvette dealer and headed back, racing this weird storm. That wide open stretch between Victor and Holcomb had that wall of snow parallel all the way down to a couple of miles north of 5&20. That is when this thing caught up to us and was trying to cut us off from going farther south. I looked west into a big field, and couldn't believe my eyes. This storm was coming across the field, and it looked like a huge monster sand storm, flowing across this field. An absolute curtain of snow, tumbling across the field with huge cloud-like formations of blowing snow that looked to be 80 or 100' high. I was considering looking for a place to outlast this thing. All of a sudden, I was swallowed up into the middle of this, and visibility instantly went to zero. That is not an exaggeration. I got over to the side of the road, and sat there for a few minutes until it thinned out enough to see maybe 15 - 20 yards ahead. Realizing that even though I was off the road (I think), I was still in danger from other cars coming up behind me. So I started off again at a snail's pace. The wind was blowing so hard that it kept the road blown off a bit, and the blacktop was showing through reasonably well. At least good enough to stay on the road. About 8 miles of this crap, and it started to slow up pretty darn good. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.

I've got to be honest about all of this. You couldn't pay me to hunt in the urban/suburban areas. I just wouldn't do it. I watched that program a few years back called "Chasing Tail" or something like that. I have no interest in participating in that kind of fiasco. What kind of camo do you use? ...... Something with a rhododendron pattern. Do you use an old rusty Volkswagen bus for a blind? Do you wave at your neighbor when he comes out in his pajamas in the morning to get his paper? And when you shoot a deer and it runs over into the neighbor-kid's sandbox to die, do you have to wear some protective gear to shield against the screaming and crying kids that are throwing stones at you as you drag the bloody carcass away? That's hunting? Let the damn sharpshooters do it, I don't want anything to do with it. Besides, these residents who hate our guts and don't want us there need to live with the problems of car collisions, landscape damage, and Lyme ticks and such. My attitude is let the situation rot and fester until they are begging us to come in and fix their problem. All of a sudden, hunters will become their best friends.

Ha-ha .... Don't ask me. I'm still shooting XX-75 autumn orange aluminum arrows, and Game-getter aluminums....lol.

Someday I would really like to read the story behind that bear attack scene. That was very realistic and looks like it must have been pretty darn difficult to come up with. I'm not even sure that the bear wasn't some kind of computer composite creation.

There are plenty of reasons to hunt besides antlers, but I do remember a co-worker who on his first deer hunt downed a monster buck within sight of the truck. He never went hunting again. So, I suppose it is possible to get turned off when you believe you have already gone as far as you believe possible.

I am no big gun expert or anything, but that sounds like something that might need further investigation .... Maybe a second opinion or something. You never know when even the Remingtons might start acting up too, and probably at some crucial time when a second shot is necessary. However, I am not surprised about the Winchester's jamming. They are putting out some real crap these days. These pics were as found right out of the box.

It's a must-see flick. I won't say anymore about it than that since there are people here that haven't seen it yet.

Well, I guess I have to work on a spray schedule and get a sprayer that will handle 20'+ trees. These are all standard trees, so there is no reaching the top right now with what I've got. It is one very ugly problem. It's not any kind of big orchard, just three apple trees and a couple of pear trees that apparently are susceptible (but too young to bear yet). I'm getting a lot of apples, but not a one that is fit to eat. I know I am early yet, but I want to develop a plan over the winter so I am ready to go in the spring.

Of course it's illegal, and that makes my point exactly. An underpowered weapon is inappropriate regardless of whether it's a gun or a bow. And my point is also made that I am not concerned any differently about ill-equipped bowhunters than ill-equipped gunners. But the discussion here is in fact about the .223 as a deer hunting weapon, is it not? As I said before, I would never go bow hunting with flu-flu fletched arrows and field tips, and the same reasoning makes me understand that there really is no reason to be deer hunting with an ill-advised caliber rifle. I think the flu-flu/field tip analogy should make it plain why I don't use those in my deer hunting, and why I don't use a .223 for deer hunting.

I have a serious scab problem in my apple trees. I am looking for a treatment program that has a high probability of working. Anyone got any experience and cures for this disease?

Lol ...... Killed, cleaned, and cooked all with just one squeeze of the trigger. Just kidding. I don't know anything about a 300 Win Mag. Never shot one and probably never will. But from what I have read, they do have a rep for being a bit on the "mean" side.

And people ask why some hunters keep journals....lol. That was some fascinating reading.

Deer are having a great year so far. These are in good rig, and some normally ugly winter weather has been stalled off and is behind them. It all means more preserved winter fat to help them out later. Life is good!

And yet, this was the year that the DEC thought it was absolutely a panic situation of overpopulation that required an emergency style ramrodding through of the antlerless-only two weeks of bow season. Is it ventriloquism that they use to speak out of both sides of their mouth at the same time that way?

How about a school that applies at least a minimum amount of common sense and reacts accordingly. I mean really ..... That was not an over-reaction, but a stupid reaction based on nothing.

That is exactly what it is. It is a gas powered spear-gun.

I also believe that jail in general should be purposely a very horrible place to be. It needs to become a punitive, unpleasant experience such that once someone gets out, it becomes very clear to them that they don't EVER want to go back. Death penalty? ...... Whenever there is no doubt of guilt, execution should be used. Yes there will be times when crap happens. But the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy seems appropriate to me.

Actually, I kept hunting logs long before PCs became a household item. Just a simple notebook, but I never really trusted my memory to handle all the little details of every hunt. But when spreadsheets came along, I discovered the ease with which patterns that were rattling around randomly and unrecognizable in my memory could all of a sudden become organized and stand out and become obvious. All of a sudden, I had something new to apply to my hunting knowledge. Why wouldn't I use it? My problem is that I tried to make it analyze some things that were based on a fluid base.

I am not sure how many generations it will take before this happens, but I to believe that they are diligently working toward that goal. Why?.... Because they are continually upset that all these "special" seasons (read that to be bowseasons) have complicated their ability to beat on the deer population when they feel the need. I do think they are working on making bow seasons into "any weapon" seasons as fast as they can. Who will stop them? ..... The NYB? .....ha-ha-ha.

Those days are still here for most hunters. However, some of us try to take it a bit further in terms of understanding all the confusing things that we see, and try to answer the question "why". I was always curious as to why a deer would show up at one location instead of another. There was always the desire to make some sense of it all. I always knew just enough to recognize that nature does have patterns, but never enough to understand and predict those patterns. And then along came a technology (Maxiplan then Excel) that kind of sparked my interest all by itself. It was a natural outfall that I would try to connect these two interests and make them work together as a hobby, and a learning tool to add to my other interests. And then there is this stage in my life where I can see the end of my participation in hunting, and I find that all the data collection of years past now serve as a memory jogger that brings a lot of those experiences back to life for me. It becomes numerical memoirs. I truly loved every minute of that data collection, and today I love all the memories that those numbers collected and preserved for me.

Aside from just recording memories, the data collection and analysis was primarily aimed at establishing local trends, and deer movements and patterns. It is unbelievable just how much a parcel of land can change and how the patterns change along with the habitat. I watched wheat field turn into brush-lots with 4" maples so thick that nothing green ever grew there again. I watched oaks mature to the point of bearing acorns in places where acorns never were. I watched edges of fields move hundreds of yards. I saw state land that was part of my hunting grounds become consumed by new uses of intense mountain bike trails with a web of these trails covering many acres of what used to be prime undisturbed deer grounds now sending the deer into primarily nocturnal movements and constant on guard existence. Large groups of hikers have also taken over this maze of trails. Some of the grounds that comprised some of the records were subdivided into posted properties. On the other side of the coin, areas that used to be ag fields may now be prime brushy bedding areas. Oak stands that were primarily saplings may now be dropping acorns like crazy. A next door neighbor may have a food plot that he put in. All of that along with the changes that you mentioned all impacted the purposes of the log and the analysis that was being performed. So when you are trying to establish trends and patterns by stirring in data of changing places that don't have the slightest similarity to what they used to be, all conclusions are polluted with irrelevant and misleading inputs and outputs.

Yeah, I don't like to hear that crap from either side of the fence.

Oh now there you go trying to apply logic. Now think like a DEC upper management person and you will start getting a feel as to how it will all really turn out.