Doc

My season starts on the 16th. I have had a ball hunting squirrels. and probably actually got more meat doing it than if I had been deer hunting.....lol. Yes, it may very well be cutting off my nose to spite my face, but I will not go along with this DEC attack on bow hunting. And yes it may very well lead to an early muzzleloader season, but I suspect that is really what is at the root of all this nonsense anyway, and regardless of what the doe take winds up being, since it is not their real motive, I'm sure the doe take by bowhunters would never have been enough anyway. Anyway, I have re-discovered the fun of squirrel hunting, and have had a chance to take care of fall winterizing of lawns, grounds and some household maintenance. I must say that I have not seen (or heard) any sign of the youth gun season so far, and I have not seen a large crowd of bowhunters. That of course does not mean a thing, and is simply one person's observations in one tiny part of the state.

Don't you just love it when the wind is finally just right for that afternoon stand for almost all of the day and then right at the end of the day when the deer really get moving, the afternoon thermals kick in and start blowing your scent right to the trail you're watching. That's where it is nice to have a lot of experience with some of these stands so that you don't get blind-sided by the thermals. Another thing is that I have certain stands around a huge ravine on the hill where the wind always channels up and out of the ravine, and while it may be a steady predicted westerly wind everywhere else in the world, along that ravine there will be a consistent easterly wind right out to the trail. Eventually I learned about that and rebuilt my stands to compensate. There sure was a lot of frustration before I figured that little peculiarity out. Sometimes forecasted wind direction at certain spots will never agree with wind directions at your stand. And yes there are some spots where the terrain shunts the wind all over the place in ever-changing directions. Again, a bit of experience on the same parcel of hunting land tips you off to these areas and you finally figure it out that there is no way of hunting those areas. It's all the beauty of hunting hill country ..... lol.

I have seen a lot of guys that spend their hard earned cash on anything and everything that has a good marketing ploy. And if they haven't done the wind direction thing, they still get busted. I have an old pair of camo cover-alls that hang year around down in the basement for the past 25 years (never seen a washing machine), and I have been within touching distance of several deer simply because I paid attention to the basics of wind direction. What I have found is that you can't buy success, and that hunting is more about what you do in the field rather than what some chemist sitting in a lab will do for you. I have no idea what works for other people, but for me there are no purchased shortcuts that I am willing to invest in. One thing is probably true, if buying all the scent-free paraphernalia and scent eradication sprays and mystical processes and rituals and whatever, gives you extra confidence without making you careless about the fundamentals, then maybe it has served some kind of purpose for you. But like ApexerER, I tend to try not getting too crazy about buying every product that people are hawking and just enjoy the hunt. Maybe I am too casual, or maybe I simply am not treating my hunting like my life depends on getting a deer. Also, I enjoy my hunting however it turns out, and try not to be too upset if I don't happen to have the absolute latest in what everyone is trying to sell me. Of course, the fact that I am just plain cheap does form a lot of my attitude .... lol. But I generally enjoy an adequate amount of success.

We're probably over-thinking this way too much ... lol. My take on it is always, if I have an antlerless permit in my pocket, and a mature doe walks by, I'm likely going to shoot it. My shooting that one doe is not really going to mean that all bucks will be vacating the area. It also will not cause any significant amount of increase in buck completion unless I just shot the last doe in the woods. Seriously, those one or two does that I might actually be able to shoot early in the season are not really going to have all that much impact on buck behavior, and that is probably the least thing that I really have to worry about.

Look, you wimps can keep your shots within 30 or 40 or even 100 yards, but I am thinking that I may just get lucky with my new shooting style.

Of course old age is not the only factor in antler development, but so much is made of deer management and yet there are pockets of huge deer in places where the only management tool is the motor vehicle. It appears that the biggest factor is simply to allow deer to reach old age. And urban and suburban environments seem to be the most effective way of seeing bucks reach their full potential. I suspect that that is the most effective factor in "managing" for big racks.

Be careful with .270 Winchester. Here are some out of two boxes that I bought the day I bought my rifle. This is some of the absolute worst quality bullets I have ever purchased from any manufacturer. After several weeks of negotiating and waiting, I finally got credit exactly for the cost of the bullets with no reimbursement for shipping, or grief and aggravation. This wasn't a problem with misfires ..... some of these wouldn't even chamber. So, none of these manufacturers are immune from quality problems. Hand loading is the only way to guarantee quality.

It is interesting how many huge bucks are found around major cities and suburbs where hunting is either nonexistent or severely curtailed. And yet, there is nothing about ground minerals or food plots or habitat that is particularly ideal. They all have just one thing in common, and that is long life. These are probably some of the worse managed deer herds anywhere and yet they thrive on not being managed.

You know, I really love that rule that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" and I love the condescending tone that usually goes along with. One of these days I would like to meet that mythical person who knows everything that's in those volumes and volumes of Environmental Conservation Laws. And that would include judges, J.P.s, and even the DEC law enforcement people (and at least those people all have the law books to refer to when they are looking for a "pinch" or conviction). Yes it is true that ignorance of the law is not a legal defense, but please do not try to come across with this holier-than-thou attitude pretending that you know all the conservation laws. Nobody really is buying it. Yes, you are likely breaking laws every season that you are unaware of, so don't be so damned ready to demand the violator's first born, as though it could never happen to you.

46 years for us in 4 days, but I had to do it twice before I got it right. Congratulations Growie. You're off to a great start .... lol.

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.