Doc

I suffered with that old shoulder-mangling, 12 gauge Ithaca Deerslayer since 1969 when I bought it new. Never could practice with it. The best I could do was the annual 5 shots off the bench just to check out the scope. If I didn't get the pattern I wanted, that meant I was in for a very ugly day of shoulder abuse, because about that time I would be developing a pretty good flinch.....lol. Today, I can go up to my range up on the hill and shoot tiny little groups until I just get tired of it, and in the last couple of years I have already put way more rounds through that .270 that I ever did with that 12 gauge in 46 years that I owned it. Whatever you get, it should be fun to shoot.

Yup, and that's exactly the way it should be. One hunter - one vote. His vote is as valid and appropriate as mine.

I'm a do-it-yourselfer too. Even our moose trips were done mostly by studying topo maps and planning out our own meals and camping gear. Yes, at the time, Ontario Canada required by law, that you hire an outfitter. And actually that was handy for guaranteeing all the tags that we wanted. But after the first night of arrival at their camp, we headed off on our own with tents and canoes and never saw the outfitter again until we got back, lugging our moose quarters into his walk-in cooler.

I went through this wrestling match a couple of seasons ago when deer hunting with rifles became legal. I wanted a caliber that had sufficient range and energy, but yet could be very comfortable on a bench for an hour of steady shooting (As opposed to that stinking 12 gauge that has me flinching after 5 shots). I settled in on the .270 Darn comfortable round to be shooting and yet enough bite to put the deer down. I could have dropped down to a .243, but the recoil on the .270 was so light that I really didn't have to go any lighter.

Another massively satisfying hunt would be to build from scratch a long bow from some native tree (hickory?) and build some arrows with knapped stone broadheads and turkey feather fletching, and take a deer (any deer) with that rig. All equipment as carefully faithful to the details of historical Indian archery equipment as possible.

Oh, I thought you were going to say "pick up small children and pets" and throw them at the animal.

I don't know. I have never seen that written anywhere, but with the volumes of laws that are squirreled away, it wouldn't surprise me any. I do know that it was a regular practice back in my grandfather's day and so, I never gave it a second thought. Anyway, I think 60 years or so probably exceeds any statute of limitations ..... lol.

Shoot. There is nothing that exercises those exact muscles better than actually shooting. If you are worried about muscle injury and over-stress, crank the poundage down a bit and keep the first practice sessions short. But shooting the bow involves specific muscles and muscle groups. The best exercise machine for archery muscles is archery equipment.

I'm not sure just what I am waiting for. I have been threatening to get them out for a couple of months now, and just haven't done it. There is still so much going on, and the crap weather hasn't really motivated me to get out and put the cameras up.

Do gators, water moccasins and rattlesnakes trip the trail cams ... lol.

I thought the intent of that particular forum was to discuss pending hunting/fishing/trapping/ and other legislation surrounding those sorts of outdoor activities. I really believe that is an important function of this site, to keep people informed as to what the legislators are doing to for us. But then, looking at the forum description, "New York Gun and Hunting Laws and Legislation and Politics Discussions”, there is an addition that if it were gone might just clean up the whole mess. That inclusion “And Politics Discussions” is the part that is totally unrelated to the theme of the site, and while some of that stuff can be interesting, it does have a tendency to get a long way from what people come here to talk about. Most likely the perfect solution if we want to stay on theme would be to remove the “and Politics Discussions”, and after a short period of enforcement, things would immediately be re-focused back to the core themes of the site.

When I was a kid (10 or 11 years old?), I used to go into our swamp with a fish spear and look for areas of muddied up water. I would probe around in the mud with the spear until I felt the hardness of the shell and then jam in the spear down and bring up the turtle. Then I would carry it over to a dry area and whack the head off with my hatchet. Yeah, it really wasn't as easy a I just made that sound. Then I would work like hell to get that shell off and cut the meat off the bones (no easy job). I then rinsed the meat off, and tried to figure a good way to turn that into food. So, I decided that I would make turtle burgers. So using a hand grinder, I turned it into some decent looking burgers shaped like meatballs and fried them up. They would have made very good centers for golf balls. It was exactly like chewing on cut-up rubber bands. There simply was no eating them. Ok, so that didn't work. So it was back to the swamp to get another turtle. This time, I was going to go find a good recipe and make some turtle soup. Also, I had an uncle that was famous for his turtle soup so I would question him about how to do it. This time I got two turtles. I worked for hours getting the shells off and the meat de-boned. Definitely a p.i.t.a. Nothing is easy on snapping turtles. I again put the meat in a pail to rinse it off and then began my research. Meanwhile, my little sister was playing out on the porch where I had the pail of meat and decided that it all looked way too dirty. So she added a little detergent to see if she could help me out and clean up the meat for me. That was the last time I messed with turtles.

There is a difference between tolerance and promotion. Apparently the people who run our schools are having problems distinguishing between the two. Our school system should not be involved in promotion of any style of sexual activity, homosexual or hetero sexual or any other kind of sexual. My gosh when did our school system become some kind of sex forum for adolescents? This must be another one of those "progressive" changes that have occurred over the decades.

We are in danger of contracting jungle rot. Seriously, these gray, wet, days are beginning to resemble winter an awful lot. Trapped inside the house, looking outside for a little glimpse of some lighter skies. Yeah, I know what you are saying. It may be that this year the gym is the only place you can actually get some exercise and stay dry doing it.

Does anybody make a pair of snake-bite boots that zip up over your head?

Some version of #1 is probably the most realistic and practical answer. No, not stop entirely, but cut back on the season length and bag limit when turkey populations show stress. That is the normal and traditional way to manage any wild population. There may be places where temporarily closing the season entirely is the most effective way to go. Thinning predators is not a bad idea, but likely there are no real ways to increase that activity. Predator hunting is primarily a function of fur prices, and that rightfully is a function of the free market. Their is no way to influence people to hunt predators when they don't want to. You can expand seasons, but if no one has any interest in summer hunting of predators, it likely ain't going to happen. We have to accept that there are practical limits as to what we can or should do to help out one species vs. another.

It would be nice to repeat the Canadian canoe & pack-in moose hunt that I took back in the late 80's. Miles of dirt road to a remote lake. The length of that lake, 150 yard portage and then off to the end of another long lake. Small tent camp on the shore. The only sounds were beavers splashing, moose wallowing around in the swamp across the lake and an occasional branch snapping back in the darkness....lol. There was no one around and no sign of people anywhere. Lot's of walleye and pike to eat from the mid-day fishing. And a bull moose to take home as icing on the cake. Of course that will never happen again .... lol. Getting a bit old to be pulling off anything that strenuous again. But that was my ideal hunt.

Quite possible, but the historical track record says no. The thing about the market is that if distributed properly and planned right, it keeps pace with inflation. Those pensions that do not have inflation adjustment clauses can wind up to be a starvation income in 20 years if you should be so unfortunate as to live that long.....lol. I know of several households that had a very impressive pension at their time of retirement, who are now finding social security is their larger source of income.....lol. Inflation has taken that impressive pension and turned it into chicken feed. I'll stay with the markets. Of course, anything can happen with the stock market (that is why we diversify), but inflation is a sure thing and can erode improperly protected pension funds.

I was advised to wait to maximize the benefits, and it paid off. That is a decision that each generation has to make for themselves with a realistic assessment of the system when the decision has to be made. The sky may be badly cracked, but it isn't falling ...... yet. My advice: use it like "found money" and make sure that your retirement is well funded outside of the S.S. system. And don't wait until your 50's before you start saving and investing. Earlier is better. Every year delayed is thousands of good compounding dollars lost.

Well, it has turned out to be a bit of a Ponzi scheme, but so far it is barely holding together. Most of the problems and uncertainty are coming more from the design and management of the system rather than the basic concept. I guess it beats the alternative of maintaining a publicly run "poor house" for the elderly or perhaps debtor's prison. Had it been designed and maintained to be a market driven enforced retirement investment plan, recipients would be floating in money right now. But it has been given the "welfare touch" and used for every purpose under the sun, and has become a basic slush fund for trying to balance budgets and fund cradle-to-grave welfare schemes. So with so many things being drained from it, and no real ties to inflation, it is stumbling and has a bleak future. One of the things that makes it all look like a loser is the election system that has ever-expanding elderly voters with a self-serving, vested interest, that forms a political block that resists any credible efforts to modify and save it. The geezer vote makes any attempt at reform become the kiss-of-death for any politician dumb enough to enter those waters.

Yup! I guess the bugs got to get some benefit out of it all too.....lol. You can't hide from them forever. How will you get all that work done?

Seriously, this weather has raised hell with the farmer. I have seen fields that will not support combines right now. And some corn fields that are only going to add to the expense part of the ledger, with no income. Cute little corn plants and some large areas of drowned plants that will never come back this year. It's a shame.

One more thing that needs to be stirred into the pot. There has been a huge run on Lifetime Licenses with some great deals for some of us who met certain age requirements a few years ago. I got mine for $50. What that means is that I am now taken out of the annual license sales pool forever. Statistically, it makes me and all other hunters holding lifetime licenses look like we simply exited the sport. They'll be getting no more annual license sales from us. They have messed around so much with licenses, and prices that it is darned near impossible to compare apples to apples anymore. So you can look at the revenue loss and still never know exactly what all the factors are that influenced the loss.

Organized bowhunters have only the power ceded to them by the apathetic.

It doesn't take a crystal ball to figure out that it is just a matter of a year or two before crossbows have inclusion in all of bow season. And so the crossbow people have a vested interest in this issue. But apparently they do not possess enough insight or actual interest to martial their members to fight something that is sure to affect them within the next few years. If you want to talk about petty, just examine the attitudes that amount to cutting off your nose to spite your face. These are the brilliant people that bow season has inherited. The ones who have no interest in anything that does not involve a crowbar.