Doc

I have been quite impressed with Runnings. Not necessarily with their pricing, but as far as product selections, they always seem to be reading my mind ..... lol. Their hunting, trapping and fishing selections are not in the same league as Bass Pro and Field and Stream and such, but they do have enough so that anyone who is looking for a certain outdoor item should not fail to at least stop in and check them out. And I should not fail to mention the stuff that I am addicted to ...... their licorice......lol. That's one thing that keeps me walking through their doors a lot!

There sure are a bunch of us in that area. But I have a feeling that Gander Mountain may be in trouble. They are the worst in the area in terms of what they stock or more importantly, what they don't stock. I don't even go there anymore, especially with the Field & Stream store a stones throw away.

We have a very extensive thread on deer anatomy: http://huntingny.com/forums/topic/6770-deer-anatomy/page-1 It's always good to browse through this thread some time prior to the season just to refresh your memory on where everything is and where you should be aiming.

I kind of wonder if you might see some of these stores dropping out eventually. It sure seems like they have the market saturated here locally. Can Gander Mountain really survive?

That one's okay. I don't eat the face anyway.

They do have the reflexes of a fly .... lol. When they decide to go, the first movement is down-ish. They may also be turning at the same time but the escape motion is first down to load up their legs for that first bound. So it is possible that the deer "jumped-the-string". So many ways for the bowhunter to get screwed .... ha-ha. That's all part of the bowhunting challenge and what can make it so exciting, but occasionally frustrating too. That's one of the reasons why the old pieplate-sized target accuracy may not be good enough. A lot of guys are now trying to aim at the lower third of the deer's body (heart area) to kind of hedge their bets a little against the old string-jump trick. That does require some additional precision shooting.

News Article in Canandaigua Daily Messenger says that the Victor Bass pro shop and plaza is still on track now that archeological studies has been concluded and submitted. Still on schedule for 2016. The competition for the outdoorsmen's buck is about to get even more fierce. http://www.mpnnow.com/article/20151003/NEWS/151009897/-1/json Gander Mountain, Dicks Sporting Goods and Field and Stream store and now Bass pro, all in a fairly small radius. All we need now is a Cabelas (sp?).

I don't believe that is a nut at all. I think it is one of a jillion different kinds of galls mostly coming from oak trees. This particular style of gall comes from the sting of a certain variety of wasp. Inside that thing is a larvae. Cut it open and you should see a chamber with a small grub inside. I have found these on the ground after they have detached from the tree. The one I found was a pale pinkish-orange color with dark red spots. It probably was a more mature stage of the same thing you found. It was about the size of a grape. That is my best guess.

I suspect we all have a goal of getting a deer when we walk out the door to go deer hunting. I'm not sure how far most of us carry that, but yeah, I have a goal of collecting some venison. Others may have a goal of getting a buck. Still others may have a minimum size criteria in mind and set that as a "goal". I guess I do believe that everyone has something in mind as to what constitutes a measure of success for them. Enjoying the hunt is a given, but everything we do has a purpose(s) and some way to know if we met that purpose. I don't know anyone who sits down and writes out the goals or makes a huge official deal out of their goal-setting, but I'm pretty sure that we all do it in one form or another.

Ok, that kind of makes sense. I would have thought they would have ended the regular process based on a number rather than a date so people could still stop down to the town clerk or whatever throughout the season and get one over the counter until the WMU allotment was depleted (which I understand never happens). But I guess they decided to go a different route with additional lotteries and such. There may be some logic in that that I am not seeing.

These discussions always remind me of a co-worker from back in my "working days". The guy was absolutely the most deadly shot I have ever witnessed. He simply never missed a coffee-cup sized group at 60 yards ...... ever. He had all the latest equipment and all the gizmos and go-fasters and his shooting was phenomenal, to say the least. And yet in one season, he came into work with tales of woe about 5 different animals that he shot at, wounded and failed to recover. We never did figure out what the problem was other than his shots were consistently way longer than what others would ever think of taking. Now, I have no idea what was really going on, but his archery range scores and results were definitely not lacking, and yet his hunting results were horrible to the point of being disgusting. This kind of thing went on for the few years that I knew him, and he did eventually manage to get a couple of deer. But every year there were also these wounding losses that were very hard to explain. Was there something about the shots he was taking? Poor blood-trailing skills? Was it a case of buck fever when he got live deer in front of him? I have no idea, but I just know that his archery range results were not translating to hunting results. I don't know, make of it what you will. My take on it was that he was trying to use a short range weapon for long range hunting. I'll never know for sure what the problem was, but this one guy accounted for a whole lot of wounding losses all by himself. As far as I know he is probably still wounding deer, perhaps he has even surpassed his record of 5 lost deer in one season ..... lol. I do know that he didn't want to hear anything about limiting his shot distances because he was absolutely convinced that what he could do on the archery range on targets, he could do in the woods on deer. So anyway, this guy instilled a definite bias in me that is hard to shake whenever this discussion comes up.

Anybody have any idea why there is a cut-off point on DMP sales? It doesn't make any sense to me. I would think that DMPs should be available at any time of any applicable season until the quota is depleted.

Eventually there should be nighttime tracks, and nocturnal use of the area may stay that way for a while, maybe even the entire apple drop season. Apparently they didn't like that level of disturbance too much.

I have no problems with people asking questions about the law. I don't care how many places on the net the answer may appear. It sure is better than having them running around breaking laws that they were unaware of. Also, for every one of those kinds of threads, there are usually a whole bunch of people who chime in apparently with the same misunderstandings and questions. So, if you don't know ..... ask. That being said, I would recommend that any legal questions be sent off as an e-mail to the DEC so that you will get a written reply that can be stashed away in case there is a controversy with the reply later on. Sometimes even the officials get confused or disagree with each other on some of the more tricky and obscure laws.

I wouldn't mind having people asking for help when they are confused, or had some form of black-out in the Bowhunting safety Course when that subject was covered. I would rather see an inquiry here than to just have the shooter throw up their hands in frustration. There are times when some helping hand might be in order. Of course a good part of that helping hand would be more useful and successful if we were standing right there and witnessed the action. So much of successful retrieval depends on what is done and observed right at the scene of the impact and the initial run. Perhaps it would be useful to create a thread that is a list of observations that would be useful for the shooter to have taken note of before asking for assistance here, and turn that into a "sticky". For example, many newbies seem to have a nervous black-out at release and cannot explain the location of the hit, hair color, blood color, the reactions of the deer, blood evidence at the scene and on the arrow, etc., etc., just a basic primer of what they should have been taught in the bow course. If they can supply some of that detail it would help to give advice as to what their next-steps should be. I have seen a few of these threads in the past that resulted in a recovery and one of those that I recall was from a hunter who had given up.

I call it a special deer that has more meaning to me than others. I am all for getting rid of that term, "trophy" when it comes to deer. They are not some wood and brass award. And, if I were king, I would dump the stupid scoring systems too. Whoa! .... Don't get me started .... lol.

Thank God for the NYS Bowhunters. They are all that bowhunters have to save and maintain bowseasons. There sure are a lot of people out there that are jealously trying to shoehorn their way in.

I'm a scope guy. Sure I have killed a lot of deer with the bead or "V" sights, but eventually there came a time when the old eyes simply would not handle open sights anymore. But even if I had the eyes of a 20 year old, I would still opt for a scope. They help me pick out the individual hair on the deer that I want to hit. Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.....lol.

Another statement spoken as if it were proven fact, but is most likely a steaming pile of B.S. You have absolutely no credible idea about the attitudes or hunting goals of those of us who have a problem with these bullying tactics by the DEC against bowhunters.

Oh, and by the way, for all those that may be laughing at the misfortune of those bowhunters in the chosen few WMUs, I would like to bring to your attention a little quote that I found in the latest issue of NYON: "DECs deer managers at this point have not ruled out expanding the antlerless-only regulation to other units if needed." So while many have contented themselves thinking, "too bad for them, but not my problem", think again. The DEC is taking on the NYS bowhunters and it all maybe coming soon to a neighborhood near you. first the special antlerless only bow season and then followed y the threat of a early muzzleloader season crammed in. I'm thinking that the few WMUs are simply a test case to see what kind of resistance they get. The end-game is that early muzzleloader season that the DEC has been pushing for since 2004. This is all just their devious path to shoving that into bow season.

Beware of critters. Mice, chipmunks, and squirrels love that kind of equipment and can munch up seats, store hickory nuts around moving parts, build nests in places where combustible material shouldn't be, chew through hoses and wire insulation, and even chew holes in that nice new tarp you put over it....lol. I would suggest that wherever you put it, generous amounts of mouse and rat poison should be put around too.

I love a couple of inches of snow when hunting. It's great for muffling still-hunting sounds. It makes deer visible from a long distance away. It tells all kinds of stories about deer patterns and activities and even identifies where the deer are hanging out. And then too as already mentioned, it makes blood-trailing pretty darn easy. Now all we have to do is to figure out how to get it in the woods without it landing on the roads (and my driveway).

Well, I'm not afraid to say it ...... Blood and guts are disgusting , and since they came out with dirt-cheap latex gloves of insignificant size and weight, and I found out about them, my pack is never without them.

The link is still good. I just access it a minute ago. But let me respond to your assertion that because the non-hunters are not openly hostile towards us that the animal rights people are not having an effect in that segment of the public. I know it is hard to assess in any sort of quantitative way, but I do believe that these people are having a cultural impact that is challenging recruitment efforts of new hunters and the maintenance of existing hunters. Even among hunters, you frequently catch a hint of how their zeal for the hunt is softening because of the perceptions of killing the harmless innocent little animals. These animal rights wackos don't have to be marching around you with signs and chants to be having an impact on hunting. If hunters are tired of being regarded as low-brow red-necks that evolution left behind and drop out because of negative perceptions, or kids have decided that hunting is not really the coolest thing to engage in and opt out of the hunting scene, we are losing the PR battle. And the antis are winning and hunting is losing. The antis are well financed and are taking a direct and well funded public campaign to society with a very consistent message. We on the other hand can't seem to even organize ourselves let alone sell any message at all to John Q. Public. It basically has become a one sided discussion with no one publicly speaking for us. Not even the DEC. I know there are all kinds of reasons for the diminishing hunter numbers and the failure of recruitment efforts, but do not ignore the fact that the antis are succeeding in re-molding societal attitudes and how hunting is publicly regarded.

Unfortunately, these animal rights wackos are having a long-term effect. We make light of their antics, but as this article points outs out they seem to be winning the hearts and minds of society. Their well-financed campaigns are perhaps having their intended effects, even on hunters.