Doc

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.

For me it was all part of the hunt for 28 years. I don't believe there was a single hunt of scouting trip that was not included. I didn't stop until it became obvious that you cant analyze data that is 30 years old with data that occurred a few weeks ago. It all worked good for a few years, but when changes on the land started happening, the differences were coming fast and furious and totally ruining my database for overall analysis.

You guys all realize that we have a lame-duck president, accountable to no one. And now you are catching on to what happens when you get a flaming socialist in that kind of position. There's quite a lot of havoc that can be raised with people's rights when a leftie finally gets into this position of free untouchable reign. But it is funny listening to the leftist apologists defending this stuff.

It has to be a human nature thing.

For almost 30 years (1982 -2010), I collected the following data and kept it in an Excel spreadsheet: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ LOG NO DATE LOCATION NO NO. SIGHTED TIME (AM OR PM) WEATHER clear cloudy rain snow TEMPERATURE cold cool warm hot WIND DIRECTION WIND VELOCITY heavy breezy light calm ENTRY DIRECTION EXIT DIRECTION HUNTER ACTION none passed shot RESULTS none kill wound miss deer spooked deer walked on HUNTING STYLE standing still hunting scouting going to stand coming from stand HUNTER NAME BUCK QTY DOE QTY UNIDENT QTY LOCATION CODE STAND NUMBER CLOSEST STAND NUMBER MODAY (Four digit month/day indicator) UPHILL OR DOWNHILL REMARKS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I also had a spread sheet identifying 9 distinct areas of the land that I hunted so that I could get a macro-look at trends. These areas took in both sides of the valley each hill, side-hill, and top and unique areas within each. There was another linked spreadsheet that described and located all of the stands I ever created or used. That was so that I could refer to a number in the main database instead of long descriptions. There were 114 entries for stands. Each stand had a complete description, with preferred (and secondary) wind directions relative to trails and traditional deer entry directions. And there were maintenance data to indicate whether they could be used as-is or needed work or were in fact destroyed or unusable. THE ANALYSIS: From all this data, I developed macros that would- -Select and list stands based on forecasted wind directions. That meant that in the morning I could print out a list of stands depending on what the weatherman had to say that morning. - Analyze the performance of each stand in terms of percentages of times that each stand produced a sighting of bucks, does, and unidentified deer. - Analyze the performances of each calendar day of the season through a special number that I used for month and day (MODAY). For example November 20th would use a MODAY of 1120. It had to be numerical in order to be mathematically useable. That gave me a graphical look at deer movement and sightings as the season progressed so I could determine if there were trends in deer movements and patterns at different times of the season due to things like weather, leaf-loss, food source maturity, etc. It was a fun project that was quite useful, entertaining and left a complete record of memories and experiences. In 2010 I discontinued it. What I found was that information that gets too old can lose it's accuracy over time because of land changes. For example, we had a severe ice storm that changed trails and patterns of the deer. Food sources changed due to maturity and new over-story of some of the areas. What was true in 1982 was totally different in 2010. There was a change in land use as the state land that I hunted became interlaced with a maze of very active mountain bike trails that were also taken over by large groups of hikers. Huge areas were basically removed from daytime deer movement. In other words, old data was becoming a pollutant to the data base. Conditions and patterns suggested by activity in the 80's looked absolutely nothing like what was going on in later years and were skewing the analysis. This is an important aspect to remember when using data for analysis purposes. However, the exercise was well worth doing, because every entry is so complete, especially with the remarks column that each hunting and scouting trip brings back those memories even better than a hunting diary. It is a great document that I will always treasure.

The thread is about this new contraption and the possibility of it being considered to be a weapon for bow season. Probably the relevance is a bit over your head.

No relevance to this thread or the quote you are referencing, but an interesting thought nonetheless.

NYB is irrelevant. Bowhunters are completely unorganized and have no political voice at all (that anyone is still listening to). We did a good job on that. So it is really of no concern whether NYB likes it or not. Outside forces are now free to steam-roller over bowhunters at will.