Doc

Anybody hear anymore details about the Avon Region 8 National Hunting & Fishing Day. Is it off the calendar completely, re-located, or going on at the region 8 headquarters as usual?

Yup.....That was my guess. I was surprised because I have seen stray cats going in and out, but never saw a litter of young ones. I have seen a coyote heading in there a year or two ago. It might have been something that he dragged in there.

I would say that any DEC employee that is calling himself a game biologist and is drawing a paycheck for that position, who does not understand at least the fundamentals of deer aging reflects poorly on those above him that hired him and even worse on those that are handling their annual appraisals. But I suppose that in any field you will find people that don't know or do their job with bosses that can't seem to recognize deficiencies. Good management should weed those out over time.

Found in the back of my barn. I think I know what it is, but I'm not sure.

It is nice to believe that all these surveys are done to preserve hunter numbers, but I believe the reality of it is that DEC surveys are popular ways of conducting game management only as it allows them to disperse blame when things go bad. Yes, it is a lot easier to let the public make the hard decisions for you and then have a scapegoat when things go bad. It is getting to be the politic way of doing business these days. Even our legislators have caught on to this. But what is getting increasingly difficult is to get people to actually apply the expertise that they are being paid for, and take full responsibility for the results. Yes, I believe that wild game management by popular opinion is basically shirking responsibility and depriving us of getting the services we are paying for. But in the end, they can always say, "Well, we gave you what you asked for".

Be sure to use those two days of hunter safety education classes as a networking opportunity. There will be a lot of people there that already have hunting grounds, or ideas of where they will be going and they are all local. Make use of that fact. Also, "where to hunt" would make a good classroom question because I am sure you won't be the only one there that has the same question.

As I sat in the living room looking out at the wind-whipped, drifting snow and trying to figure out the best time to go out and plow, I vowed that when summer finally got here, I would get out and do more fishing, camping, hiking, picnicking, and just a whole lot of summery things. Well, I got tangled up in barn repairs that have monopolized the whole summer. Now, as Larry noted, July is whipping by, and I haven't really had a chance to do all those "summery" things that I promised to do. And of course the weather has not exactly helped things either. This summer just isn't going the way I planned it. We've tried to have some meals over in the picnic area, but the bugs have been so bad this year that I figured that an hour over there would require a transfusion. But, as they say as long as I wake up on the right side of the grass, I am having a great day.....lol. The barn is almost done, so I will be working at salvaging the rest of this summer soon.

Aw .... cute little poo-bear came up to say "Hi". So there you are virtually trapped on a little platform in a tree. What the heck are you supposed to do? What if he had started gnawing on the guy's foot? "Yeah, looks like a human foot ....... Hmmm smells like a human foot .... sure tastes like a human foot! .... Let's pull that sucker out of this tree." What on earth possessed that bear to pick that particular tree to climb?

Back in the days when there were neighborhood hay lots and cow pastures, we had a lot of good woodchuck hunting. But I haven't seen a woodchuck locally for quite a few years. We have brush-lots and woods in the places where I last shot one of those critters.

Are we a complacent society? Maybe. But the world has changed over the course of history and has become a very complex place with a bombardment of complicated problems that defy solution. Simply managing our own lives is a full-time job. The newspapers, radio, TV, and internet flood us with a deluge of horrible and mind-exploding evil and unhappiness, and if we were to react to every scrap of this, we would eventually become completely mad. And so we perform a kind of triage and process only those things that we can influence and still keep our own affairs under control at the same time. Do not expect the world to get simpler and more manageable or to become kinder and gentler. It is not going to happen. And don't assign complacency to our efforts to simply conduct and concern ourselves with our own personal lives. That task alone has become a full time effort and gets more complex with each generation.

Quote; "Deer flies have sharp mouthparts that easily cut into skin and can cause pain. The flies than suck up the blood that flows from the wound." I have some bad news for these poor deer flies. No blood to suck up for them. They may get to bite, but I get the last word. I am quite deadly at swatting the little stinkers. I don't miss very often. So all I can say to them is enjoy the bite because it is going to be your last and no blood sucking for you!

I'm thinking that even the trees are suffering from excessive wet. Just like you can over-water plants, I'll bet trees can suffer from the same thing.

I only need two deer per year to fill our venison needs anymore, and I really don't care what gender they are. Most years, I get what I need and have a heck of a good time doing it. I'm not as picky anymore because I just don't have the endurance that I once had. Thank God for my ATV ..... lol.

I have to say that I am a bit disappointed when it begins to feel like the DEC can't head to the john without first taking a survey. It's nice that they ask on matters that are not biologically sensitive, but when they begin to appear that they use public opinion to establish major game management decisions that should be scientifically arrived at, then I think somebody is just trying to shirk responsibility and dodging blame for mistakes and wrong decisions. We hire these guys to do a job, not to conduct surveys to let majority opinion of the uneducated dictate management. Are we getting to the point where we might as well abolish the DEC and just hire Cornell to do surveys to handle the management decisions?

I have to believe that there is no difference between 1000 acres fenced and 1000 acres not fenced in terms of challenges and difficulties and an even playing field for the animals involved. In fact the same thing may be true of a 500 acre parcel. I suspect that what most people are having difficulty with is the fact that more and more land is being locked up in this way (the old access problem). Or perhaps it is the idea of the guide services that usually go along with fenced operations (I don't want people doing that part of the hunt for me either). Or maybe it is the food source manipulation, or the stocking aspects of some high fence operations. But on a large enough parcel, I think the fence itself vs. fair-chase is really an over-blown controversy.

I have absolutely no idea why I have never owned a semi-auto anything. It just never got put on my list of criteria for purchasing a new gun. Probably because it is not a feature that I ever thought was worth the extra dollars. I guess there might also be a thought in the back of my head that any additional complications of mechanisms usually eventually results in malfunctions. Those are not really very concrete reasons to exclude things from the selection process, but for some reason, I just never considered buying a semi-auto.

I do remember a bunch of years ago when it appeared that our youngsters in the US vs. foreign future foreign work forces might eventually suffer a disadvantage in matters of technological innovation and advancement, there was a conscious effort talked about and implemented to convert our role models and heroes to technological wizards. It was talked about that our children should be looking up to computer experts and those that are brilliant in the world of technology. There was even talk of establishing a technological Olympics of sorts. Much of that came about. Competitions were established, and TV programs were begun that glorified more mental heroes, and I think that we finally got what we talked about. Kids worshipping technology and those experts in those areas instead of the sports heroes and the Arnold Swartsinegar (spelling???) and such. It was a good direction to be steering the attention of our future grads and probably still is for the good of our financial leadership and national security. But there are some side effects that we are maybe not all that comfortable with. even though that is what we needed and still do, those nasty side effects still come with all of that. Unfortunately the original natural childhood pastimes have become incompatible with the new chosen emphasis. That is just the way life goes, and maybe we just cannot reverse it all. And I imagine that we really don't even want to reverse the new religion of technology if we as a country want to remain competitive with the rest of the world.

I have had a couple of black hunting buddies myself and knew quite a few others that were just as crazy about hunting as I am. I also have met a whole pile of white people who have no use for hunting and some who are openly hostile to the idea. So I'm not so sure that the base premise of this thread is valid. Is there really any purpose of targeting any specific race when it comes to promoting hunting? I don't think so. I don't think there is any natural or cultural bias against hunting centered in any particular race of people.

I am guessing that not all high-fence operations are created the same in terms of fair chase. It is not the height of the fence that makes for a canned hunt, or an unfair advantage, it is more the size of the area inside the fence and the human interfaces with the animals inside. If you're dealing with animals that have had too much contact with the owners and are stocked critters with names, you are probably dealing with a hunt that is not all that "fair chase" in nature. But, if you have a thousand or two acres of wild land and a truly wild population inside, you probably would be surprised how often you will return empty handed. Take away the fence and all is well?? Hardly. There are plenty of ways to condition the prey animals to cooperate for your hunting success without using a fence at all. Animals are a slave to their food sources, and many hunters have the ability to manipulate those food sources without ever using a single piece of fencing. I think the primary purpose of fencing often has as much to do with keeping trespassers out than keeping deer in.

Not for an old goat like me, but I have to say, it looks like a lot of fun.

Yes, it is very sad and perhaps just one of those unfortunate things in life that can happen when you have a critter in the wrong place at the wrong time. No it likely was not the bears fault, and likely will never happen again. But we are the dominant species, and if we feel that some action must take place, I absolutely understand the sentiment. I know what the response would have been if instead of a dog, the victim had been a child.

So far, I have successfully used the 150 grain, .270, Winchester Powerpoints on deer. They do the job and group well at 100 yards. However when they are finally shot up, I will not be buying any Winchester ammo again because of a problem that I had with 2 boxes of them. Given that it took them a long time to respond, and it cost me an exorbitant amount of postage to send them to the factory (which was not reimbursed), I won't be doing Winchester ammo again. I don't like surprises when I open the box, and I have absolutely no tolerance for the sloppy quality control that let these visibly messed-up cartridges through to the consumer. I now have a couple hundred bullets all built up that I believe will do the job, and probably better. I am having good results off the bench with these: Hornady 150 grain SST bullets 50.4 grains of Hodgdon H4350 powder Remington 9-1/2 primers I have no doubt that these will do in a deer just fine, and probably over-achieve in terms of destructive power. If I were to do anything different, I might back off a little on powder and bullet size (maybe to 130 gr). There was some loss of meat that probably wasn't necessary. I will say that the two deer that I got with my .270 were not exactly challenging shots. One was at just under 100 yards and the other was at about 15 yards. I honestly believe that in the kind of woods that I hunt, anything over 100 yards is an unlikely shot opportunity. We do not have ag fields or long open areas where you can shoot long distances.

I get these kinds of "visits all the time. We have a long driveway, with an offset down at the beginning so that the house cannot be seen from the highway out front. For some reason a lot of people just can't resist what looks like a single lane country road heading back into the base of the hill, and they just have to drive up to see what's there. I think it is all quite innocent curiosity, but who really knows? It absolutely could be people with some sort of malicious intent. It certainly is not unheard of out this way. I believe that rural crimes will eventually escalate in numbers when the creeps of the world realize just how isolated we rural people really are. I am a good 20 minutes from any law enforcement headquarters. Pretty much, I am my only protection or law enforcement that is available in any practical sense. In our case, we are well armed and quite capable of defending ourselves as long as we are aware of any sort of intrusion attempts, but there definitely is a vulnerability here if careful scouting and execution were to be used for an armed intrusion. I keep saying it over and over and yet keep procrastinating...... I do need a good alarm system.

Ha-ha ..... Kind of like a trip to the meat market. I can dig that.

I once shot a deer that I heard at about 50 to 75 yards. Yes I heard it, because of a very loud wheezing sound that it was making. She was coming through with her head down in very obvious distress. It turned out that the wind-pipe had been severed by a slug without a whole lot of other damage. Obviously a neck shot attempt. Another deer had the lower jaw blown apart and swinging from the deer's head like a dangling piece of hamburg. Another attempted favorite shot, the "head shot" gone astray. I don't understand why people purposely go for these low percentage, limited sized shooting areas. I'm not sure whether it is some belief in their shooting prowess, or some kind of macho thing. But I know people who will pass up broadside shots where that huge heart/lung area is completely exposed, for a risky head or neck shot. Yeah, I know about the "messes up less meat" argument, but when you mess up a deer with high risk shots, you likely will wind up with no meat and an animal condemned to a slow lingering death. Again sorry for taking the thread off topic, but there is a very obscure similarity in that risky shots can also include using calibers that may not be completely satisfactory with similar results to risky shot selection. Ok, rant complete.