Doc

I agree. If things get much more complicated, a whole new cottage industry of hunting lawyers will be springing up. Already there are so many new laws on the books that literally no one understands or knows them all. And that includes ECOs, judges, J.P.s, and most of all the ones who are supposed to be abiding by them .... the hunters. And then to make it all the more impossible to be a 24/7 law abiding citizen, there is the interpretation of the laws that no one seems to agree on. Some of the crimes you may commit may not even be interpreted until you have already broken them and you get your day in court. And these days, the answer to everything is to pass a new law. We all want EAB, AR, and all the other alphabet soup that makes up everyone's wish list to support their armchair deer management schemes. Just what we need ..... more laws!

Now wait a minute. We just got done tar and feathering a new hunter with 5 or so pages of telling him what a scumbag he is for not abiding by the legal hunting hours that I assume had slipped by him. You know the old rule: "ignorance of the law is no excuse". So, everyone should have a copy of those volumes of Environmental Conservation Laws purchased and committed to memory as well as constantly checking and memorizing all new laws that are passed every year...... right? A bit of sarcasm here, but I think you all know what I am getting at.

Well, this thread should put to bed any more of that goofy argument that legal hunting hours should be changed to 1/2 hour before sunrise to 1/2 hour after sunset. It appears that the opinion is close to unanimous that when this guy shot exactly 1/2 hour after sunset, it was obviously the reason for the gut-shot deer. I'm glad that one is finally settled.

So, you care so little for the deer that you head out into the woods with such poor shooting skills that you are wounding "Many" deer (your words). Perhaps you should have your own 4 or 5 page volume of comments about how disrespectful it is to use a weapon that you apparently have very little proficiency at or any interest in improving your shooting skills. Look, that holier-than-thou attitude works only if you really are holier-than-thou. Otherwise, it simply shows up as just plain old hypocrisy.

Well, I guess the proof is in the pudding. The fact that none of our resident libs have stepped up to the plate to attempt to refute the facts and figures of this video clip kind of shows that in the face of facts their emotional arguments simply cannot stand. They are staying away from this one like the plague ....... lol.

Actually, we have had no reports of rattlesnakes in the area in many decades, and yet the rodents are kept under control by many different predators and predatory birds, and even the harmless black snakes and other harmless varieties have taken up the slack. It does not require venomous snakes to keep the rodent population under control. As I said, we do not have an identified population of rattlers, and I can still make my way through the rodents quite easily. And speaking of rodents and other such critters, I am sure they all have some use in this world, but we still treat them like vermin to be exterminated, and the world is not harmed one bit. The planet survives the removal of those species without harm or notice. It's kind of like how beneficial spiders are for controlling some bugs, but we still would squash any brown recluses that we find ..... lol. I don't hear anybody saying how we should be protecting black widows because they control bug populations.

One of the many things that grind my gears are those people that I have given hunting permission to, who begin dragging along, cousins, nephews, buddies from work, and all kinds of other people without ever asking permission from me about it. My Dad had that happen years ago. After inviting a couple of friends from work to hunt our property. Next thing we knew, the driveway started looking like a parking lot. And then after a few years, the original invitees no longer were showing up, but this army of unknown people filled the property. That ended opening up our farm to those that would take advantage of it. I had a nearly identical scenario, and up went the signs, each visitor was told not to come back, and no one ever got an invite to hunt there other than relatives with the express instructions that they were not to invite anyone to come with them. I wonder how much access is denied because of that very same situation..

And speaking of irony ....... This is one I came across one day when I was exploring an old abandoned cemetery in South Bristol. Kind of creepy.

I wonder how many times the same comment has to be repeated over and over before the point has been made that shooting-hour restrictions should be obeyed. We're into 4 pages of telling this guy what a scumbag he is for shooting after hours. Is that enough, or should we do an additional 4 pages. What does it take to make him leave and never post here again .... I assume that is the goal of all this piling on. Hey, maybe if we make him feel bad enough he will quit hunting altogether. Maybe then we can all feel great about our little contribution to law and order.

It is weird to watch the little feeding frenzies that occur periodically on here. There must be some little surge of personal worth or superiority that people get when they get a chance to lay on the grief to those that have had a lapse of judgment or a stroke of bad luck. I wish I could say that it is all comical, but I see it more as a detriment to the forum.

Fortunately, the rattlesnakes in my area have always been a target of extermination over the centuries, and so I will not likely ever be bitten by them here. I see that as a fortunate thing. In fact, I don't even want a "risk" of being bitten, or even that concern, and frankly I am not disappointed that that risk has been eliminated. And amazingly enough, the world has carried on quite nicely without them. I hope it stays that way. As far as the coyotes are concerned I have no serious issues with them ...... yet.

It's true, allowing neighbors to hunt your land can also serve as a watchdog service keeping the hoards of trespassers off your property when you are not there. It probably is a good idea to keep on the friendly side with the locals when it is property that you are a non-resident landowner. However, I have to admit that this guy's first act of hunting doesn't exactly make him out to be of the best of character or someone that you should be making any kinds of deals with .... lol. Perhaps you had a moment of intuition that led you in the right direction.

If the world was suddenly completely devoid of all poisonous snakes, the world would be a much better place to live. They rank right up there with mosquitos and ticks.

See, that's why I use fishing arrows to hunt deer. If they go into posted property, I can drag them back without ever setting foot on that property.

I am simply issuing a challenge to the anti-gun members of this forum (and we do have some).

One of the good things about Eastern Standard Time instead of Daylight Savings Time is that with the EST, I am home and hunkered down in time to catch the local news/weather so I can get wind directions and precipitation forecasts to plan my next day's hunt. With daylight savings time, I can still on stand or coming off the hill while the weather is on TV. Of course today with the internet full of far better weather pages than local TV will ever have, that feature is no longer relative.

If you have ever attended a DEC seminar or conversed with any of the DEC personnel, or read any of their publications, you will never hear them admit that anything is beyond their control. According to them and their apologists, the statistics that they use are as good as the word of God, and their abilities to react and respond to any natural forces within a year or two are legendary and flawless. And yes, wildlife population control is their responsibility. That is one of the major things that they are being paid for and the reason we pay truck-loads of tax money to that agency. There sure isn't anyone else that we pay to do the job. Now bear in mind that I don't buy into their claims, but if they are going to put all that crap out there for public consumption, then they have to live with the "put up or shut up" expectations from their employers .... us.

This where I always spend opening day of gun season. Gun rests all around! After that I always have my Primos bipod slung over my back. I certainly have lost all my steadiness with off-hand shooting. I could practice 24/7 and still never bring myself back to that rock steady ability of my youth. So, I have found work-a-rounds that make it possible to make some rather impressive shots with confidence. You do what you have to do.

Skipped the hunt today. First it was raining quite heavily and that changed to sunny and wild and crazy winds with the trees bending over. I have never had any luck seeing deer moving when the wind is like this.

Yeah, I believe it sat down on a park bench and began worrying about some possible internal injuries. Likely after pondering it's situation, it reasoned that it should immediately seek proper medical attention. And the hospital was right there ..... so, why not. What a surprise it must have had when instead of emergency hospital personnel rushing around and performing emergency medical measures, it found itself being pursued and forcibly ejected from the hospital. Sounds like a clear cut case of bias to me.

As an individual or unorganized group, I would be very surprised if you could get permission. But as a sizeable organization of mountain bikers, apparently the rules change. All I know is that somewhere I saw it written that such modifications on state land are illegal and leave you open for a nice fat ticket. And yet, here we have an obvious exception granted to an organization of mountain bikers. Draw your own conclusions. So now the "Joggers/hikers and spookers" occupy a special elite group that are able to have rules bent and broke for their benefit. I still get a kick out of that word, "spookers". It sounds like something that would occur as a Halloween activity .... lol.

I will say that when it comes to deer population management, the buck really does stop with the DEC. They are the ones with Cornell supposedly overlooking and helping with the marvelous statistical methods which they are constantly telling us are flawless and endorsed by great statistical institutions. They are the ones with their fingers on the antlerless permits allocations. They are the ones that have all this staff of highly trained biologists. They are the ones that in the end are charged with being sure that the proper outcomes are arrived at. The only thing that hunters are responsible for is the final pull of the trigger finger which is heavily controlled and regulated by the DEC. Unexpected natural causes such as weather can upset plans, but then it is up to the DEC to take remedial actions in the following year/s. If landowner access is a problem, then perhaps there is an area that they need to really work on. At any rate, that is not a problem that hunters can fix or it would have been by now. You have areas where deer are scarce, the DEC has the power to control that all the way to totally shutting down the season if need be. You have areas of too high a population, the DEC has the ability to control that all the way to totally opening up deer seasons to year around, or unlimited and unregulated and free of charge antlerless harvests. So unless we reach the point of not having any hunters at all, the DEC has total control of all the tools necessary to adjust deer numbers to whatever level their CTFs determine is to their liking (or financial benefit). If they can't meet their goals, that is an internal problem within their own walls that should get straightened up. So you all can beat on bowhunters and gun hunters all you want, but the final responsibility for wildlife management always comes back to those who are being paid for it.

It sounds like the anti-deer forces are thinking of going on the offensive. By the way, that group is the same selection of interests that they use for the CTFs that set the deer density targets for the DEC, except that this bunch don't seem interested in any hunters attending that I could see .... lol.

I have no idea what may have changed or not, but I can tell you that this is an 847 acre wildlife management area that has been turned into a maze of mountain bike trails. Much of it is on the face of a very steep hill where it was necessary to literally hack the trails into the dirt (pick & shovel work), and clear (with chainsaws) each trail up the hill. The chainsawed logs are still there along side the trail. trees are painted with various colors to denote the different trail systems. It is not some covert activity that some one snuck in there and did. On top, the same kind of painted up, muddy, cleared trails blanket the whole area in a maze of trails that are so dense that most of them pass within site of one another, and there is no place that is out of earshot of bikers and hikers going by. So you are definitely wrong. The rules/laws are not the same for everyone. As a hunter, do not get caught cutting even the scraggliest of saplings or branches. But apparently as long as you are not a hunter, you can get special dispensation from the state to mangle, dig, hack, paint, cut, and disrupt any state land that you want to use in the name of organized recreation. Does that represent a change? ..... I have no idea. This area has been screwed up this way for quite a few years now (6, 7, years or more), and I'll bet it's not the only one that is being butchered in this way. And anyone who thinks that this kind of circus atmosphere can be installed on formerly undisturbed forested land without changing the hunting there is also mistaken. I have seen the change.

I'm not really sure .... I haven't done an inventory count in a while. But I can say that I have 11 bows hanging on the wall and they mostly all had different spined arrows. So over the jillion years that I have been in the sport with the hunting and tournament activities, I have accumulated a few. I also have a bunch that have been robin hooded, and broken and bent and used on deer and destroyed in all kinds of ways.