Doc

There is almost universal agreement that if anything, WMU size is too big to handle the diversity of deer numbers, and all the different habitat conditions, for proper management. So what does the DEC do? .... They establish a mere 7 management areas when it comes to buck management. Somebody want to explain to me the logic behind that? I don't get it.

Easton XX-75 aluminum.

So is there any game warden who will ever be able to tell the difference between a wound from one of these slugs and an arrow? heck even your average deer processor probably couldn't tell the difference. So for those interested in getting an early start on their gun season during bow season, these things will have some obvious benefits.....lol.

We all know that more gun laws will not impact the rate of gun violence. It hasn't happened yet and there is no reason to believe that it ever will. BUT Every one of these mass killings produces more and more people hardening their philosophy against gun owner freedoms. You are all aware that polls show the repeal efforts for the Safe Act do not really fare well with the general NYS population. I think there is becoming a panicky mentality that is struggling for a solution. I don't believe there is necessarily any logic involved in that frustration and panic but I do believe that we are going to see changes that we will be very uncomfortable with. I also believe it is only a matter of time before average hunting weapons and ammo are impacted, and I don't think there will be anything we can do about it as long as these senseless killings continue. It doesn't really matter what logic and numbers tells us. get enough regularly occurring mass murders, and public opinion will turn on us and run us over.

Oh damn ... there has to be a pill for that. Isn't there a pill for everything that ails us?

Truly a great thread! My thoughts? .... I doubt a deer would even know what that stink really is. It might move them along just because of the overwhelming nausea that they feel coming over them. But as far as identifying the source ...... I doubt it. Now the sound may be something different. Especially one of those long drawn out flutter-style farts that seem to go on forever. They get a bit of extra time to focus those ears to determine direction.

What a great Alfred Hitchcock style movie that would make. Instead of "The Birds", you could call it "the Beetles". Flesh eating beetles ..... it kind of gives me the creeps just thinking about it.

Damn! What a bad guy I am .... lol. I don't count deer. I don't consider myself any sort of game biologist. I don't make up any rules for how many deer I will shoot or what I believe others should or should not shoot. I couldn't score a deer rack if next years tags depended on it. I don't believe that I have the knowledge or ability to attempt to balance the gender ratio. I don't do any culling or any of those grand and wonderful deer management things that it sounds like most do. I just take whatever tags are handed to me by the DEC, and go deer hunting. No fences, no plots, no secret scents and manufactured scrapes. No special scent-lok suits. I guess some of us are just bad hunters .... ha-ha. But I always have good legal venison in the freezer and a whole pile of hunting stories to tell anyone that wants to listen at family gatherings and visits with hunting buddies.... ha-ha. I'll probably finish out my years exactly the same way, hunting the deer as I find them and not trying to manipulate the herd in any way. I just want to enjoy my hunting, not make a life career out of it. I guess we are all different in what we want to get out of our hunting. I'm pretty easy to please .... lol.

Oh, I must have missed it.

A word about getting legal info: Do not use the telephone. You have no legal record of what was told to you. Inquire using e-mail or written letters so that the replies form a written document that you can keep.

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.