Doc

Unfortunately, it is a fact that the hey-day of great whitetail habitat left us as the small family farm unit began to disappear. We went through a marvelous habitat change which could be called transitional as farms went out of production and turned old cropland into specialized deer-productive browse-land. Fields morphed into sparse brush lands, and created tailor-made habitat for deer and populations boomed from the change. We will never see that transitional habitat again .... ever. A relative insignificant few will try to build individual parcels of improved habitat but almost all of the wild land will experience maturation with canopies elevating far beyond useable reach. It's happening already. The rest of the land will experience increasing development and non-deer-friendly land uses. So we all agree that prime specialized habitat is what is needed to maximize herd sizes. But we also have to recognize things that are beyond our control. Habitat quality on an over-all state level is one of those things. And so we have to get used to the idea that herd sizes must be held at increasingly shrinking levels because of this. It's unhappy, but our best whitetail years are behind us and really will never return.

I do not understand the expression of outrage over police brutality justifying the burning and looting of neighboring properties. Where's the logic in that? That kind of lends credence to the suspicion that none of this really has as much to do with police brutality as it does with a simple excuse to hold a party and burn and break things.

Footwear is one of those products that I never mail-order. I must try them on. Nothing is more worthless than ill-fitting boots or shoes.

I suspect there is a lot more to this story than a dog crapping in a yard. I don't know if this was the actual case or not, but I have had a rather large dog displaying aggressive behavior in my own yard, and I will say that had I been holding a gun at the time that dog would never have threatened anyone ever again. And that would be true whether he was still coming at me or had turned around to leave. I will not be threatened on my own property. Frankly, I am getting a bit peeved at the increasing attitudes that animals have more rights than people. I am seeing this all the time now as people get these pets only to turn them loose and let them have free reign over anyplace they feel like wandering. I would truly like to see a statewide leash law that had some real teeth in it.

Yes, habitat is the primary controlling factor of herd management. That really is the one factor that determines how big the herd can naturally grow and how big it should grow. However as a state, that is the one feature that we have the least control over and it is the one feature that is on a fast decline. The next important factor in herd management is hunting activity and how efficient hunters can be used to regulate herd size through antlerless permitting and harvesting. If done right, this factor can be used to maximize the use of the available habitat. Predators are a very distant third importance in herd control. You might see some effect from predators, but I suspect that it is one of the more over-estimated impacts. I will not comment on the turkeys because I am not a serious turkey hunter and have not ever taken that big of an interest in them.

My working life started around 8 years old when I carried water, and fed the sheep. Yeah, I had to work for my $1 per week allowance. I was also the kid up in the hay-mow tramping in the loose hay as it came off the big hay fork up on the tram (yeah, hay didn't always come in bales). But eventually we did get to real bales that had to be loaded on the wagon and stacked up in the mow. Funny thing was that even as I grew up and did more work, I don't remember that allowance getting any bigger. To all of that I eventually helped my grandfather run a pretty huge trapline, and took on odd jobs at the small farmers around the valley. That was back when we still had farmers in the valley. I may be one of the very few guys here that know about bagging wheat on a combine. Yeah, the kid with some pretty severe hay fever spent hours with his face over a wheat bag while it filled .... lol. What a mess I was at the end of the day. Through college summers, I worked at Olympic Park on Scottsville Road mostly at the golf driving range at night and doing all kinds of maintenance work during the day. After graduation fro RIT, I took on a toolmakers apprenticeship at Bausch and Lomb. Thought it would make a good background for my engineering degree. I was right. First real full-time job was designing optical instruments at B&L. Great beginning because it was pure engineering without all the systems and paperwork B.S. Spent some time just bopping all over the place trying to find the right company to hunker down in. I even spent some time in architectural design. You know those paper transport subsystems on the Xerox copying and printing machines that are all the time jamming? .... That's where I finally put most of my engineering time at. Yeah, I did get involved in all areas of copiers, but specialized in moving paper at ridiculous speeds and putting the 10 pounds of stuff in the 5 pound bag kind of work. It was fun! I began the best job of my life 11 years ago when I retired ...... love the benefits!

Look, there is no excusing what the shooter did. That was a ridiculous and inexcusable over-reaction to the situation. But let's not be so quick to let the dog-owner off the hook. In my mind, it is the pet owner's responsibility to be in complete control of their pets at all times. If you can do that then you shouldn't have pets/animals.

Everytime they step into the ring, there is a risk to their lives. I don't see any problem with them getting whatever obscene gobs of money they can get. It is a gladiator style activity and if they get rich from it, I simply say it is one damned hard earned wealth. I love boxing, warts and all. There is a kind of raw honesty to it where a fighter is forced to confront an awful lot of what he is made of. The emotions, courage, and dedication are undeniable, but I will admit that there is a level of barbarism to it all, kind of in the same vein of another sport that has guys chasing after another with a weird shaped ball with the intent of grinding him into the ground with as much force and damage as possible. But, I will not assign all the ills of the world to the fact that such a sport exists, nor will I whine about the amounts of money involved. I am not one who wails and moans about the amount of money anyone can make in the sports world (or anywhere else for that matter). They are worth whatever they can get people to pay for them just like any of us. I am not expecting that this fight will be any Hagler/Hearns kind of fight. I expect that Mayweather will display his defensive skills and avoid being knocked out and Pacquiao will be the one pressing the fight (but carefully). Fight will end by decision .... no knockouts.

Yeah, most of my trail cam usage has absolutely nothing to do with hunting. I just like to see critters being critters when they think no one is looking. It's interesting. Sure I get a lot of deer pictures, but I get a whole lot more excited seeing that fox carrying a rabbit, or that coon wading around in the creek, or that heron tat just landed. That's all fun stuff.

There are damned few people who begrudge a necessary helping hand up to those who through no fault of their own have found themselves in a financially strapped condition. And that includes the rich people that everyone is so fond of railing against in their practice of class envy. But the fact is that there are entire generations that have accepted the welfare road to living out their lives. And there are plenty of libs who are content to leave these people in that situation and even facilitate it. Those are the scumbags. There are people who have been conditioned to accept handouts without any regrets. Politicians and their pink supporters are very happy to keep these people there, not as a help up, but as chains to hold them down. You want to talk about scumbags? It isn't the recipients that fit that title as much as those who promote their way of life and encourage them to stay where they are by inventing new systems to take advantage of. Those are the real scumbags.

When is the last time a welfare recipient gave you a job? I will tell you that it is a whole bunch of rich guys that provided for and still are providing for everything I've got. So if tax cuts provide a more friendly business climate to encourage people to do business here, I guess I won't holler about that too much. It sure doesn't work out well waiting around for a pay check from some poor person. That could be a long wait, couldn't it. But I sure don't have to wait long for them to dip into my pocket helping themselves to a good portion of my hard earned gains.

I've heard it said that "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". Sometimes those old sayings have a lot of truth to them.

The same night that I had a raid on my feeders and the garbage can, the next-door neighbor a ways up the valley fond a big old muddy bear foot print on their house wall. They had their feeders wrecked too. But I'm not sure what he bear had in mind while he was checking out that house wall.....lol. I think that bear probably needed a little re-training in the natural fear of man.

You know there is so much of this discussion that waves some big red flags when it comes to semi-butchering an area to clear shooting lanes. It also makes me look long and hard at simply throwing up some pop-up ground blinds and expecting deer not to pay attention .... even if they are expertly brushed in. Think about a deer spotting a little square box mounted to a tree, and then think about some brand new monstrosity set up in their living room that we expect them to ignore. Imagine a treestand that sticks out from a bare tree with these climbing sticks buckled to the tree. And we are expecting them to simply ignore all our forest renovations? Yes it may work fine with younger deer, but those that have made it through a few years by simply being wimps, may just be a bit more twitchy when it comes to some of our constructions. These reactions to that simple little harmless box stuck on a tree should be telling us something. And by the way, many of those "bolting" bucks got the hell out of there before they even approached the box to smell it. It appeared to be just a response to a visual stimulus without the scent and sound senses. They simply saw it and scrammed. Yeah, a lot of these videos are telling us a lot more than simply the right and wrong ways to use a trail-cam. There's other lessons to be learned there too. Just something to think about.

Placing cameras well above the line of sight may also serve an additional benefit of making them less obvious to camera thieves.

If you think about it, any human attempts at forcing deer populations to be more dependent on the efforts of humans are likely to be creating excessive concentrations of deer populations and populations that exceed natures ability to provide sustenance when the human intervention ends or becomes inadequate for whatever reasons that nature might provide. Wild deer are not livestock or creatures that should be managed via agricultural means. We may modify populations through hunting, but trying to boost those populations beyond what nature automatically can accommodate is likely not something that will in the end benefit the herd.

A few years back, I stepped into the back yard to find our bird feeders destroyed. One that was on a galvanized iron pole was bent down and the feeder was opened like a can of beans. Another plastic niger seed feeder was all chonked up with the seed removed, and I assume consumed. So, my house (a raised ranch) sits at the base of a wooded hill with only a short 30 foot wide back yard. I fastened a pulley and cable arrangement between the upstairs kitchen window and a tree up on hill so that everything winds up approx. 12 feet in the air, and put the feeder out on that rig. It is like the old clothes lines that they used to have in the cities back in the olden days....lol. So, I can pull the feeder to the house, fill it, and then wheel it back out. And so far the bears have not figured a way to get at it.

So, might it help a bit if you were to spray down the camera with some product like Scent-a-way or something? From the video, it looks like it is the scent that is the last straw for them, and what causes them to bolt. I like the idea of mounting the cameras up a little higher. Don't let them get their noses on it. It would also get the camera out of their direct line of sight.

Well, just to play devil's advocate for a minute, I have to wonder if feeding deer might possibly create an unnaturally higher deer density than the already inadequate habitat can support. As horrific as the video is, one has to wonder how getting more deer through a winter that is exposing a situation of excessive numbers of deer already is going to keep from making conditions far worse in subsequent years. What do you think? Would feeding deer every year have an effect of elevating deer density every year to a point where when you do get one of these ugly winters, the numbers collapse catastrophically when the supplemental feeding suddenly becomes insufficient. Here is a scenario that I remember reading about once. This kindly old lady began feeding a couple of deer that hung out in her yard. In almost no time at all, she had dozens of deer showing up. She tried valiantly to keep up with the growing numbers, but they were breaking the bank, and so she had to stop the feeding. So, what do you suppose happened to all those deer that she had saved, and that she had artificially enticed and concentrated in that one small area? Just a few questions to think and talk about.

This is a video that should be made mandatory viewing for all of the anti-hunting activists so they could see one of the alternatives to hunting. Damn, I am not much of a softy, but some of those scenes were very hard to look at. Thanks for the link.

I never was real big on still-hunting with a bow. I just can't do it. Can't get close enough because basically, I'm clumsy. And the older I get, the worse I have gotten. Whatever little amount of "sneak" that I might have ever had, it's gone now. Gun hunting is different, because I don't have to get up on them so close, but with a bow it is strictly stand hunting. And that is done with my Matthews MQ-32.

I don't lose sleep over it ..... I've got my 12 Ga. hanging over my headboard.....lol. I think it's a much better situation to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Oh now see .... there you go confusing the issue with facts. You are not supposed to notice those things. But I'll bet China still has a lower murder rate than those cities .... lol. Well, that's true if you don't pay attention to the murders committed by the Chinese government themselves.

You would assume that he would take your wallet and then wish you and your child a good day as he walked down the street whistling. I'm not sure you can make that assumption these days. I don't know that it is a simple no-brainer kind of choice. But when I think of self defense, I generally am considering home defense. When I am dealing with someone intent on home invasion or worse, I want the maximum force available. That sawed-off shotgun loaded with 00 buckshot kind of comes to mind. Right now I have a 12 gauge pump to handle that duty should the time ever arise. I would imagine that simply hearing that shotgun action racking in the total darkness would likely send any intruder (armed or not) diving through a window (open or not) to get the hell out of there without the need for a shot ever being fired .... lol. To me that is the issue with unimpeded legal choices of gun ownership. I do believe I have the right to save my life and the lives of those under my roof and I don't want that right impinged by someone's emotional idea of what I should own and what I should not. Yes there are already that kind of interference already on the books, but I don't want to see that encroachment added to. It's not necessary. It's not useful. And yes it is something that I feel is worth fighting for.

I am telling you that you haven't seen anything yet. The more horrific mass killings will be done without the use of any guns at all. It's just a matter of time. You get the right kid(s), with the right mentality, that comes across the right web-site, and you will see a new chapter written in terms of teenage mass murderers. While we are all sitting here anguishing over whether a certain rifle has enough of the nasty-looking appearance features, there will be a news headline that will have us wondering what the heck we were even talking about guns for. It's a gruesome prediction, but one that logic tells us has to come. It will carry extra hurt when we consider that we could have provided the security measure to prevent it, but decided that it just wasn't worth the cost.