Doc

State land hunting has become the victim of rumors, old wives tales, and just plain BS in general regarding safety. The word is that state land is all shot out and that all the crazies hunt there (as if privately owned land automatically makes all the hunters there any more safety conscious). It is also assumed that all state land is more over-run by hunters than private land and a decent buck cannot be found there. That story has been sold completely, and people totally have swallowed it. Well all that may be true in some public hunting lands, but where I hunt (8N), I am over on state land being bored to death, feeling kind of lonely listening to some crazy shooting across the road on private land where guys are filling the air with lead. It sounds like they are all clustered around one ravine shooting at each other, and even though it is some of this mystical "private land", you couldn't pay me to walk over there and hunt. Yes, I do remember when it seemed like there was a guy behind every tree over on the state land. And maybe that did pose some kind of potential risk although in all the decades that I have been hunting there, there has never been a single shooting incident. But anyways, we could use a bit more pressure to keep the deer on their feet. But it seems that everyone is absolutely convinced that all state land is a "no-man's land" and those that step foot on it will likely be killed before they get out of the parking lot. Ignorance rules!

I'll be honest, I did a lot of butchering over the years, and frankly, I am just tired of it. I don't see it as a fun project, in fact it really is a pain. So, I am not so poor that I can't pay a little bit to let someone else do it for me. I got a good processor, and have had no complaints in the few years that I have been using him.

There is something about being able to pick the particular hair on the deer that I intend to hit that adds an element of confidence. Well that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. I just like the precision. However, I can understand that there are probably a lot of guys who have a lot of experience and confidence in their shotguns. Also, in our case the rifle law is relatively new. It is very possible that a lot of people may have just invested a pile of money in a new shotgun, and they are not willing to turn around and buy some new rifle now as well. My big thing is that I got tired of turning my shoulder into hamburger every time I wanted to do some shooting with my deer gun. I don't like that and now I don't have to put up with it anymore.

Quote: "I have been seeing loads of deer in the field just before dark driving by." So, when these deer went driving by just before dark, what exactly were they driving?

If a deer shows up and I have a tag for it, I take it. I have been burned thinking I can always get a doe whenever I want. Most of the time it turns out that after opening day, all the deer go into some unknown underground cavern never to be seen again until after the season is long over.

I've lost my "sneak"! I just spent over 3 hours going through the best hidey-hole that we've got. It was one of the few times that I have had a sustained perfect in-my-face wind direction. Managed to miss all the twigs with my clumsy feet, and still at the far end, I got picked off by a couple of huge deer. Maybe I just can't see anymore .... ha-ha-ha. I'm staying out of there until we get some snow so the critters stick out better. Actually, there was a bit more shooting than I have heard on recent Thanksgiving Days. Must have been the nice weather.

Quote: "How do you walk?" Generally I move from one loudly snapped twig to the next.

I'm sitting here listening to the wind howling out there (what a surprise that is .... lol). Sounds like great day to still-hunt. Got a steady south wind, and I have a few good ways to work with that.

I knew it was going to be another quit day when I only heard 3 illegal shots before sunrise. There was another thing that I paid particular attention to. Since the law was changed allowing rifles, I have not heard one of those rapid-fire, 5-shot, volleys. Something about the switch-over to rifles has eliminated that nonsense here. I'm guessing it is the higher powered scopes that people usually put on their deer rifles these days. They make it hard to re-acquire the target or even think you are re-acquiring the target.

It is kind of scary that so many people are running around out there dressed in camo during gun season. I have heard all kinds of attempts at justifying such nonsense, but have yet to see one that justified risking life and limb over a deer. Also, unless you are in dead flat country, being 20' in the air in a tree stand is no protection either. Aside from the obvious benefits to your health and welfare, I find it useful to be seen, to keep people from accidently setting up too close for safety, or in ways that cut deer off from approaching my stand. How important is that deer anyway. Is it worth having an arm or leg blown into a shattered mess of clots and bone fragments, or worse? Are you really that desperate to get a deer. Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but I have to say, that's not dedication to the hunt, it's basic stupidity when you consider what's at stake.

Drives: very effective hunting method that can be fun. I participated in a lot of drives in my early years, and then I decided that my hunting was not going to be a "team activity". I have changed in recent years to consider my deer hunting to be an individual activity that measures only my individual abilities as a hunter. That is just a personal approach to my hunting, and not an indictment of those that participate in organized drives. I will say that our drives used to be a lot of fun, and we took a whole lot of deer, and we definitely moved a lot of deer that would have stayed bedded in the thick stuff for the whole day. So even those people quietly sitting in the woods got their portions of the deer that otherwise would not have even been seen.

We all have our ideas of what should go into what season. Unfortunately while a lot of these opinions may make perfect sense, it must be remembered that very few NYS legal decisions are based on any kind of sense and reasoning. The fact is that those that make the most noise get things the way they want them. And those that want to invade bowseason with all kinds of weapons are the ones making the noise now. So when it is said that muzzleloaders will eventually be included in bow season, you can pretty much take that to the bank. The DEC is pushing it and so, it will happen eventually, whether it goes bang or not or whether it makes sense or not, or whether it is "clear and simple" or not, is irrelevant...... lol. And over the long haul, I do not expect it to end with muzzleloaders.

Yet another good reason for posted signs. They are boundary markers that can avoid these kinds of disputes.

Each weapon has it's time. Now it is time for you to exact your revenge on all those deer that were just out of bow-range .... Ha-ha-ha. Enjoy whatever season that is put in front of you. My nice new rifle also has its fun aspects. I enjoy it all. As Fred Bear used to say, "Be a two-season hunter". The old guy had it right.

Work???? ..... Work????? ....... Oh yes, I remember that now. I used to do that every day for all those decades. Ah, but life is good now .... Ha-ha-ha.

So perhaps it is not just my imagination that every year the hunter participation gets to be significantly less and less. I have seen some huge changes in deer hunting season attendance that is starting to look like an accelerating downward spiral. I usually have my annual thread that I write on the subject here, but this year Dom beat me to it. I also have noted that of the few that do still come out, most of them are 1/2 day hunters. There comes a point in the day (somewhere around 10:00 or 11:00) where there is less shooting than on the average day during small game season. And now with our Saturday opener, you would expect Sunday to be a real popular day of hunting since almost everyone has that day off. Ha... not so. Sunday was really dead. No wonder the DEC is trying to learn new ways to slash and burn the NYS deer herd. They are actually getting panicky and trying desperately to find new ways to take more deer with fewer hunters.

Ah yes..... yet another thread that has turned to flaming, hate, and vitriol. We seem to be attracting a new breed of member who joins for the fun of personal attacks. Aren't hunting forums wonderful places with all the friendliness and camaraderie that we have come to expect between hunters.

Ha-ha-ha ....... sounds like some hunter has been offering some good eats to the local herd. Oh, I know ..... It was bait for squirrels not deer.....right?

I didn't have a whole lot of luck with that link, but I assume it was about a perceived shortage of hunters in region 8. I will say that in our valley in region 8, I was struck with the shortage of shooting. From what I have seen there, it is not due to a shortage of deer, so the quiet opener must have to do with something else. Even all the shots before legal shooting time was not up to the usual standard ..... lol. I'm sure there are a lot of deer that are not even aware of a deer season being I progress. I can't speak for the rest of region 8, and can only report from one very small part of it. I have seen a steady decline of hunter participation over the last decade or two, or three, and particularly in the last few years. And Sunday was absolutely dead. But that's all ok. I'm sure the bowhunters in those first two weeks straightened out the population numbers just fine with the "doe only" burden. Maybe that's why the shooting in our area was so slight. The bowhunters shot them all .... ha-ha-ha. Way to go DEC. Another display of absolute brilliance .... lol.

Probably one of the most cruel wounds would be anything that destroys the deer's ability to eat. They will not bleed to death, but instead suffer a very long lingering death by starvation. Another lingering type wound is a shot that destroys the windpipe.

Did you ever wonder what the purpose of a special bow season was when it was created? The bow is an extremely close range weapon that requires a relatively calm deer herd. Unlike guns, there is no percentages in ripping off a 5-shot volley at running deer at extreme yardages. It just doesn't work tat way. And so, it was deemed necessary that bows be allowed before guns so that deer could be patterned, allowing archers to get within the necessary close distances to have a reasonable chance at harvests. Bowhunting relies on the fact that the woods are not over-flowing with masses of hunters and the great orange army. Now some people choose to call that selfish, or as you put it, "greedy". However, it is simply self-preservation of the sport. It's a shame that people don't understand that, or that they simply choose to mischaracterize the bowhunting mentality just as a way to demonize the sport and those that participate in it. But I guess that's just human nature unfortunately.

Well, I think they may have stepped over the line a bit when they blew up the Russian plane. They forgot that it is not wimpy old Obama that they are dealing with. Apparently these ISIS guys are not really all that smart, but I suspect that they have bitten off a bit more than they can chew. The rooskies don't have a whole lot of nice rules that they go by.

Nope...... it'll never work for me. I don't do "run". I haven't for years ..... lol.

The snow tells the story. I have seen hunter tracks in the snow that showed that guys will walk up to the posted line and then turn around and go back. I would say that in 95% of the cases, people show respect for the signs. Yes there is always a jerk or two occasionally that will ignore the signs, but I have to say that almost all the time, they work as intended. One little trick that I have seen in the snow are the guys that will walk along a posted line. I have no doubt that if these guys saw a deer on my side of the line, they would shoot it and do the sneaky dash over to retrieve it.....lol.

So, all the armchair deer management people seem to think that the best thing that could be done would be to cut gun season, maybe all deer hunting season lengths, put more restrictions on how many deer you can take, restrict what deer you can take and just generally restrict as many deer hunting opportunities as possible. And here I sit in a WMU where they just restricted two weeks of bowhunting to antlerless only because there are just too damned many deer. When are you people going to get off this "one-size-fits-all" kick and recognize that all these restrictive ideas that everybody is pedaling are exactly the wrong thing for a lot of places. You can't sit in a deer-rich environment and issue ideas about what should be implemented across the state, no more than you can credibly hunt deer-starved areas and talk about statewide actions to boost deer populations. There are places where AR, OBR, short seasons, long seasons, short seasons, and all of these deer management fad-of-the-month ideas may be reasonable ideas. But understand that when you say that NYS needs ...... whatever, most of the time you are talking out of that dark and unsanitary body orifice.