Doc

It would be interesting to get an ECO's take on this question. Would he write you up? They still have a lot of leeway on how they enforce the laws. But here is a thought.... You need to do a little after dark tracking, and so there you are on the side hill with a loaded gun, and a light trying to do "the right thing". You lost the blood trail so your attention is focused on the ground. You don't notice that truck pulling over to the side of the road way down in the valley. Next thing you know, you have an ECO standing by your side writing you up for attempted jack-lighting, and he is confiscating your expensive gun, and generally making your life miserable and talking about a super high-dollar fine and maybe loss of hunting privileges. Was it worth it? What would happen if you had called the DEC and explained the dilemma before you started off with the gun and light? Any chance that they might have some less harmful suggestions that wouldn't wind up with all these dire penalties and still allow you to try to recover your deer?

If you can find an e-mail address at the DEC, I would think this would be the best way to make legal inquiries rather than using the phone or personal visits. That way, you receive back a hard-copy answer that you can keep. What I keep hearing is that a lot of the questions that are asked, are relative to things that are not clearly written. And if the laws can confuse you, they can confuse those that are supposed to be in-the-know. You may get a wrong answer, or an answer that an arresting ECO might not fully understand. It's always good to have something in your pocket that shows what you were told.

Does it make any sense to pass a law that make it impossible to enforce a whole battery of other laws? I hate to be a party-pooper, and the bearer of bad news, but when you make laws that make law-breaking easy and unenforceable, you have just written up an open invitation to have at it. Human Behavior 101.

First of all, such a law suggests that the bow and arrow is inadequate as a deer hunting weapon and needs an accompanying firearm to finish the job properly and ethically. Forget the ridiculous impossible quandary that such a law would pose for law enforcement. What would such a law say about the legitimacy of the bow as an ethical and adequate deer hunting weapon? I think that coalition of animal rights groups that proclaimed bowhunting as their primary target for elimination a few years back would be heartened by what this suggestion is really all about and what it is trying to say about bowhunting.

In my case, I am not dismissing anything, but simply questioning those that swear by the stuff without a single shred of evidence other than the word of the manufacturers or those that count on sponsors for their existence. Generally speaking, if I cannot find independent evidence that a product works, I will not recommend it to others, and often will not use it myself. And yet I hear people raving about the effectiveness of these sprays but when someone asks them how they know it works, or how they know they are using the best maker of these products, and all you get is blank stares and a shrug of the shoulders, which is pretty much what I got here when I asked the question.

This has some truth to it. Lately I have spent some lonely days in total silence on the hillside of state land, listening to all the slam-banging ruckus on the private land across the valley. They have plenty of people to keep the deer on their feet, while I sit quietly on stand and the deer are all bedded down in their favorite places, enjoying the peace and quiet.

http://www.wunderground.com/ It has already been mentioned, but this is the most complete and detailed forecast site that will do some pretty good focusing on little towns that most other sites won't even mention. just type in the name of the town and it will take you to the closest town and give you hour by hour forecast, wind direction and speed, and temperatures and precip chances and cloud conditions, sunrise/sunset times, etc.

If that is your goal, wait until gun season and use a rifle. Why go half-way? No crossbow will ever "put the deer into the next world as quick as possible" as reliably as a gun.

No, not really. There is no need to create any questions about whether the arrow was stuck in the deer by hand after it was shot with the gun. Right now there is no legal way that a deer taken in bow season can have an accompanying bullet hole in it. Let's keep it that way.

Actually, compared to the "good ol' days", the chunk of state land that I have always hunted has really diminished significantly in hunter density. Plenty of action on surrounding private properties, but the state land has quieted right down. I think it has to do with all the proliferation and exaggeration of horror tales of the past. All the tall tales have been embellished to the point where people are afraid to hunt there. That's ok with me, I won't discourage it. If it keeps going, there will soon be fewer hunters here during gun season than there is during the bow season. In fact, when you get into the second week of gun season, it already is like that.

Back in the olden days before I came down out of the trees, I remember using one of my milkweed seeds to check wind direction out of my treestand, and watched it go out a few feet and then drop straight down to a few feet off the ground and then circle its way down wind. That phenomenon was helped out by a damp cold drizzle, but it did point up the fact that treestands are no guarantee against getting nailed by wind direction. It doesn't happen all the time, but it sure makes it worthwhile to check the wind no matter what your set-up is.

Yes, that is what keeps marketing people in a job and what made the sellers of pet rocks rich.

Every morning when my feet come out of the bed and touch the floor. I'm retired and live in the woods. So anytime I can avoid necessary appointments with doctors and other pain-in-the-butt people, my time is my own.

Regarding cameras, I will say that I have gotten very creative at camouflaging them. Most people just strap them to the side of a tree, and the damn things stick out like a sore thumb. I have set-ups that hide the cameras under stones and logs with it just looking up at the trails. I have heard of other guys who go in the other direction and put them way above eye level. I put one in a very thick apple tree that had a big rotted limb hanging down. By the time I got done, you really couldn't see the thing at all. That attachment strap is what really catches your eye. Anything you can do to hide that will help that camera blend into the background.

Sometimes we get involved in a condition where it gets to be too beautiful .... lol. The leaf-peepers are out right now. Tooling along at 35-40 MPH, gawking at the beautiful hills and valleys. Miles and miles of cars such that it is difficult to even get out of the driveway. They are heading to the jillions of fall festivals that are going on now, and grabbing up all those fresh veggies and fruits at the stands, and pigging down those grape pies. And always with their eyes glued to the colorful hillsides ..... lol. My problem is that I live right in the middle of it all and have all my life. I tend to take it all for granted. It's the city people who really appreciate it all to it's fullest. So I really can't whine too much about their getting on the roads and taking in the sights that I simply rush through to get from point "A" to point "B".

For years I have put up with frozen ears for this exact reason. It drives me nuts when I have anything over my ears. Hearing is so important to my hunting. That is one reason why I am getting panicky about my hearing deterioration in recent years. I can't see in all directions at once, but I rely on my hearing to cover the areas that I'm not looking at.

I made my first snowball of the year yesterday and powdered the old lady with it ..... gently. I had to scrape it off the hood of the car. The ground is too warm to support snow just yet.

Actually, I really do like a light covering of snow when hunting. It is good for tracking and for spotting deer. An inch or two is fine. More than that is overkill and absolutely unnecessary. Temperatures ..... well lets just say that I don't like being cold. But when temps do get too high, there is always the concern about meat spoilage if the tracking job gets tough. However as far as deer movement, deer have to do what deer have to do, and that applies whether the temps are warm or cold. On warm years, the rut goes on, animals still eat and drink. Of course this is all irrelevant I suppose. We don't have a bit of control over any of it.....lol.

Well, I learned the hard way that people are people whether that applies in the woods or on city streets. Just because they are hunters does not mean that there isn't a certain percent of them that are scum-bags. When you leave things that are worth a couple hundred dollars in the woods (particularly on un-posted property), you are doing the same thing as leaving money on the hood of your car in the city. It is like bait for the scum of society. I lost a $200+ camera because I had a bit too much faith in our fellow hunters. It was misplaced trust. No more. Now my cameras are relegated to deep inside my posted lines, and I wouldn't be surprised if some day that turns out to be a mistake. It is all too bad, but when you think about it, there is nothing about any of this that should really surprise anyone.

The standard of "properly" marking surveyed property these days is simply pounding in stakes in the corners. When you want line-of-sight flagged definition over hills and across ravines and through the swamps and such, it will be done but will cost you extra. At least that was the experience that I had about a decade or two ago when I purchased an additional strip of land next door.

Here is a trick that I use. Keep your eyes open for milkweed pods, and when you find one put it in a sandwich baggie and put that in your pack. While you are on stand, periodically turn one of those little seeds loose and get set to see exactly where your scent is going (not only where you are sitting, but yards and yards away from your stand). Kind of fun to watch those things start off where you think the wind is blowing and then watch them hook a hard left and spiral off into a direction that you never imagined the wind was heading. It is amazing where the wind goes beyond where the normal wind indicator powders show. One free milkweed pod will supply you for the entire year's hunting seasons. This is how you learn to beat a deer's nose by knowing where the scent is going after it leaves your immediate area.

Heavy winters are great until it comes time to plow that 1000' driveway and there is no more places to put the snow. It's great until you find yourself crosswise in the ditch in a blizzard and no one on the road to help. It's great until the town bashes your mailbox into splinters. It's great until you have to climb that "killer hill" to go hunting, and the snow is up to your waist. It's wonderful until you have to go somewhere, and you look out and the car is buried. It's great until power lines start coming down from snow load, or some car plows into an electric pole, and you are sitting there watching the freezer and refrigerator beginning to defrost. And you start losing heat and worrying about water pipes freezing. It's great until you have to climb up on the roofs of your house and out-buildings to shovel off the snow. And perhaps you will get the pleasure of watching water drip from your living room ceiling because of ice-damming. Oh yeah, and you get to have a substantial percentage of your deer herd croak. These are all wonderful things to celebrate ...... lol. I'll tell you what ...... you snow lovers can take all those feet of snow and shove them up ........ Well you get the idea. I'll take the 40 degrees and higher all winter long and be doing one of those Snoopy "happy dances"...... lol. TWO FEET OF SNOW

It all depends on whether I can get my butt going in the morning. Often the answer is no, so naturally I see more deer in the afternoon .... lol. Actually, I have been doing pretty good so far in my "delayed start" season, and have gotten pretty good use of the morning sit the past two days, and if I get going here pretty soon, I'll make the third morning. To date, the morning sit has come up with the most deer encounters.

By the time they get done massaging those numbers with special calculated factors, and constants, and other associated B.S. statistical magic, any correlation to real doe takes will be strictly coincidental. Don't forget we have to establish and apply a reporting rate too .... lol. About the only thing I am reasonably sure of is that in the end it will be declared that the bowhunters did not take the mysterious secret number of does, and an early muzzleloader season is imperative to have any chance of saving even a shred of the habitat in those WMUs. Oh wait a minute .... the plan is to do two years of this charade before declaring the urgent need for the early muzzleloader season.

When it comes to hunting, I really do understand and appreciate stepping back to add some challenge into an activity that is suppose to be all about challenge. Nothing "crazy" about that.