Doc

I really don't know many people that actually save money with hunting. In fact, it can be a very expensive activity. I once bought a 4-wheel pick-up specifically for a moose hunt in Canada .... lol. Yeah, that was a bit on the extreme side. I am not one to ever say, "never". But when you do an actual tally of gas, ammo, gadgets and trinket additions to your hunting equipment, special warm clothing, weapons purchases, and even time has value, the costs of scouting trips, etc., the balance sheet seldom comes up with any money earned through hunting. That topic by itself could make for a very interesting thread....lol. I would guess that for most of us the lure lies in challenge and feelings of accomplishment. And also as you mentioned, there is an element of culture, heritage and tradition that get into it. Also, the self-reliance aspect is part of it for me, although sometimes that aspect creates more doubt than satisfaction. If I really had to hunt for subsistence, there is no doubt that I would be losing a lot of weight. Sport? .... yes I have referred to it as a sport in that there is a competition going on between me and the critter, but there is so much more involved, and it doesn't always wind up measured in pounds of meat.

Yeah, I don't have a clue where this "ranking" thing came from. That is not anything that I think about when it comes to hunting. My competition in hunting is not with other hunters, but rather with the animal I am hunting. But there are people who like to handicap themselves with equipment to "up" the challenge level for themselves. In fact that is what was behind the original establishment of bow season. And ever since the establishment of that season, people have been diligently trying to remove that element of challenge. I'm not sure why that would be that much of a controversial statement, but some will find controversy even where there is none. .....lol. But anyway, this idea of "ranking" has absolutely nothing to do with anything I was talking about. I leave that kind of thinking to other people to deal with.

Perhaps it was just a little too long ago for you to really remember very clearly just how difficult it was to shoot recurves and straight bows consistently compared to modern compounds, but it does sound a bit disingenuous to be trying to tell people that the compound was not a step toward removing some of the challenge from bowhunting. I'm not sure exactly who you think you are talking to here, but I'm sure that there are a whole lot of people here who have shot both that simply are not going swallow that. Don't you sometimes wonder exactly why just about everyone shoots a compound now? ...... lol. And if you weren't so busy trying to spin away from my original point, you would understand that the truth about the evolution of archery equipment does matter relative to the point I was making about the natural tendency for people to remove challenge from a modern-day hunting activity that was born out of the desire of a minority of hunters to add challenge into their hunting. Oh, and by the way just to get the story straight, my first hunting bow was a hand made longbow made from a hickory stave cut off our farm back when I was about 11 years old. And it did figure in to the demise of about a dozen pigeons up in the barn.....Ha-ha-ha.

Well, here's the good news. The melt has been so controlled and slow that most is gone or very thin without any flooding this year. Not even a threat of a flood. The swamp is still low, and the ditches down my driveway are handling any run-off including the occasional rain. If you had to plan and execute a controlled winter thaw, this would be it.

For me winter camping would be a short term diversion, not an endurance test. I don't doubt for a minute that spending a winter camping in that kind of extreme climate, would truly be properly labeled as "terrible" ..... lol. I would like winter camping to be something that helps to cure cabin fever, not create it.

Well, it truly is silly to deny the part that today's hi-tech bows, arrows, and other gadgets and trinkets have played in the escalating success rates of today compared to those of pre-compound days. I was there when the few bowhunters that were around used to brag about simply getting close enough for a shot rather than bragging what the antler score was. Getting even a small yearling doe was a rare and massive achievement. Those who use traditional equipment could explain to you about "challenge" in deer hunting. Likely they will not be telling you about their 40, 50, or 60 yard successful shots....lol.

Yeah April Fools day. Good day for a colonoscopy. Isn't that appropriate and just for some additional April fools torture, it took three "sticks" to get that stinking I.V. set up. Apparently the first two were just some more April Fools jokes before she decided to actually hit a vein. Haven't been amused with my April Fools day so far .... lol.

Don't be trying to drum up sympathy for these scum-bags. It is most likely that these crooks are simply thrill-killers who did it just for the hell of it. I doubt that there is anybody in this welfare state of NY that has to live off the land for any reason other than that they simply want to.

It's not only the anti-hunters that zero in on the minorities of hunting. The more-effective danger of that kind of bias comes from our own hunting population. Those that intentionally built extreme challenge into their hunting by using hunting equipment of yester-year are now targeted by our own general hunting community who jealously eyeball the special seasons that were necessarily carved out for this kind of "high-challenge" version of hunting. Today the emphasis now is to get rid of that silly notion of voluntarily increasing challenges, and start working in the other direction. The mindset and motives of those entering bowhunting are now something that was never intended. Now it is "challenge be damned .... full speed ahead with technology" to change the very nature of this unique opportunity that had been forged by bowhunting fanatics. With that "challenge mentality" removed from bow seasons, the gates long ago were thrown open with an anything-goes mindset. Yes a few decades ago it was the compound bow, and now the crossbow. And anyone who thinks that it will all end with just crossbows doesn't really understand human nature very well. It doesn't take anyone with a crystal ball to predict more and more incursions of weapons that have nothing to do with archery. We have seen firearms incursions happen already. Look for more successful challenges from the muzzleloader enthusiasts. You cannot have a special weapons season that continues to grow it's success rates without having others start to question why you have been granted a special season at all.

I remember those "compound wars" when people were fighting to get the inclusion of compounds into the bow seasons. The anti-compound side was using the argument that the precedents set would eventually break down all limits in the future and would be used to justify the inclusion of all kinds of non-bow implements. I said that was nonsense. As it turns out, they were right. Bow season was a chance to take on equipment challenges that no one else was willing to take on, and so success with a bow was a noteworthy achievement. Human nature being what it is, drove participants to continually seek to remove that challenge that used to be the reason for the special season. I don't expect that part of human nature to stop, and I don't expect that the crossbow will be the last attempt to discard elements of challenge from bow season either. Bow season is becoming just a warmer time to hunt, and really little else. That's just the natural evolution of things, I guess.

Does he sound like a raving lunatic or what?

I believe that it was more of a crazy high population than anything too weird about the weather. However, I do remember that the first day that I went over to see the mess, the wind was howling, and the snow was coming down pretty good. I don't recall any huge snow depths (perhaps a foot to a foot and a half of snow on the ground at the time. But judging from the fact that it was April '89 marked on the slides tells me that the winter was reaching into that month without any breaks. I have always heard that more than the actual severity of the winter, starvation rates are influenced more by the length of duration. Between that and the fact that there were so many deer everywhere in that valley (the entire length of the lake and beyond), it was kind of a perfect storm sort of event where several things were going bad at once.

I like the way a lot of that ground is cleared straight to the dirt. That way those stinking snakes down there cannot get to you without you seeing them coming .....

Ha-ha-ha .... I stepped away from this thread with the thought that someone asked a question, and there were already several valid answers given. I thought it was done. Then today I happened to notice that this one is on page 12. I hadn't realized that it had moved from a semi-simple question and answer to an "I hate guns that don't look friendly" topic. Or is that a "Nobody needs to use any guns that I don't use" topic? Whatever .... it certainly took a strange turn ....lol. You really have to pay attention around here. These threads morph in a heartbeat ..... lol. By the way, for anyone who cares, I couldn't care less if you hunted deer with a zip-gun. I am getting real tired of laws being passed based on how evil a gun looks. makes no sense to me, and gun rights are not really something to be messing with so arbitrarily.

Interesting problem. So what does the color red appear to you ..... gray or something? That could be something that may mess with you a bit. And yes, possessing gray squirrels out of season would get you a ticket. However, there are other visible differences between red squirrels and gray squirrels. Size is one thing. The reds are significantly smaller. Their head shape has some subtle differences. The reds are very vocal and have a completely different sound. Even their running patterns are different. However, to learn all these differences will require some research and observations. So it may be a good thing that you have this time to simply wander around and observe nature a bit and learn these different things about wildlife. The suggestion that you take up nature photography is a good one. It will keep you out in the woods for long periods of time so that you can pick up some of the woods lore that is needed for some of the subtleties of hunting. These learning opportunities can be more enjoyable than the actual hunting.

Lawdwaz- *UPDATE* Ok ...... I didn't forget about getting this answer for you on the date of the Honeoye deer yard. I found some of the slides, and they had a development date stamped on them of April 1989.

Hey......Maybe next year I'll break out the winter camping gear and try to break out of the cabin-fever mode. I'm not exactly a green-horn at winter camping, but haven't done it in a few decades. As long as I don't find myself in some of that minus zero crap.

Yup, and unfortunately that is precisely the area that we have to deal with.

Yeah, you have to do things according to the normal schedules. You never know when or if this "global cooling" will continue .... lol. Who knows? .... It may turn around and get super hot and dry. Weather can be an absolute mystery.

Most of my shots over the years have been within 50 or 60 yards, but then, we have only had the use of the rifle for 2 of all those years. One of last year's deer was about 130 yards ...... rifle, bench rested, standing deer, perfect shot. Average shot for me? ...... not hardly.

Lingering winter is a critter-killer, and this appears to be a "lingering winter". It is shaping up to be a crappy nesting and fawning season. We're in a stuck pattern that may not back-off this year.

Lol ...... I was just picturing how I would establish the average shot distances on the area that I hunt. We have mixed habitat that runs from long mowed fields to tight swamps and everything in between. How far you can see depends on every different location on every different kind of terrain and vegetation density. All this for over 600 acres. I think I'll pass on this one. I don't have time enough to take on that project ....lol.

Wow! Reading through this thread, I have to say that maybe NYS, and our DEC, and our hunting opportunities may be pretty darn good. At least compared to Arizona. I suspect that is likely the way it is in some of the other states. That old saying about the grass being greener on the other side of the fence kind of comes to mind.

One of my early successes in hunter recruitment was getting my Dad into archery/bowhunting/bow-making. When I was about 10 or so, for a Christmas present, I bought him a book on building bows (seemed better than a tie or pair of socks ....lol). I don't know why, but it just seemed like something that he might be interested in doing. Well next thing we knew, he was constructing a small cement-block building, building gluing forms, and ovens, buying, designing and building specialized woodworking machines, and just simply went berserk on building bows and using them for hunting. His intent was to get into commercial recurve sales, but Fred Bear was just too big a competition at the time. But, from that little book, the result was that the whole family became bowhunters and most of his grandchildren eventually became heavily involved as dedicated bowhunters.

There is a long dry spell in all of NYS where seasons are closed. This is where it is handy to have alternative activities. Fishing comes to mind.