Doc

It's hard to believe that when I was a kid, we never had locks on our house doors. There was no need. Things sure have changed.

It's a freakin' mistake of nature that can't make up its mind whether it is a deer or a goat. Shoot the damn thing and eat it just like you would any other deer and take satisfaction in the fact that you have removed a deer full of recessive genes from the pool, and never mind all the romantic emotional crap. Yes it is rare, and that's a good thing.

I have to laugh at all this concern about confined animals laying in their own crap. Do you suppose any of them sit around having a nervous breakdown about the fact that they are not allowed to bathe regularly.....lol. And does anyone think they really care that they aren't out there "where the deer and the antelope roam" .... lol. For crying out loud these are animals that will lay in their own crap even if they are out in the pasture, and the most activity that the "free" animals get is sauntering along on their way back to the barn to getting milked, and begrudging that expenditure of effort at that. Ever see a pig that laid around all day pondering his great escape to freedom and cleanliness? Come on......a life of misery??? This is the language of PETA casting human intellect, reasoning and emotions on animals.

It sounds like you may have interrupted some illegal activity.

The Owner does is not released from liability for any damages caused by their animals just because they found a way outside of the fence. My thought is that any of today's light-weight vehicles going highway speeds that hits a buffalo is likely to fare well with such an encounter and a fatality is perhaps likely. The same results would apply to a confused and ornery buffalo that might take into his mind to squash a person regardless of the circumstances. I am not sure what the penal law says about all of that, but you would certainly think that the plaintiffs in a civil suit would have a pretty strong case for a substantial award. I would think that alone would make the owner of the animal very happy to have someone put it down for them.

So far, bow hunting is a lot less of a carnival atmosphere. It allows one to actually pattern deer rather than patterning hunters. I say "so far" because every year brings the two styles of hunting closer and closer together. Those of us that hunt state land are generally finding things more and more crowded every year. Some of that is due to the non-hunting uses of state land, and some is due to the increasing success rates due to equipment changes.

Can't wait for the next round to hit???? Aren't you just a prince. Damn.....You run into all kinds on these forums.

So, any sign of those floods that they are expecting?

Don't ignore those packages of dried food that you can buy at Ganders, Bass-pro, Field and stream stores. Yeah it's pricey, but damn good. I know you have ATVs, and you aren't all that far back in, so cargo space and weight is not a concern. But that stuff is pretty darn tasty and convenient and offers a heck of a variety. Even if you carry in some fresh and canned stuff, the addition of some of that dried food can add some great change-ups in diet.

It's a wound for sure, but let's not assume that every malady that wildlife suffers is manmade.....lol. There are so many ways that deer get injured that are simply a part of their normal life. It is impossible to tell from these two pictures exactly what he cause of that mark was.

I repeat.....Blaze orange does not make you bullet-proof.

You are hunting exclusively for mature bucks, then you have to hunt where they are. Don't be looking at stuff you are already doing right. For one thing, perhaps the state land you are hunting is over-pressured either by hunters or non-hunter use. Mature pressured bucks are really damn hard to hunt (during legal shooting hours).

New York has not had an excellent safety record because blaze orange is not mandatory. From what I have seen, NYS hunters treat blaze orange as though it is mandatory. Over all the years that I have been hunting, thankfully, I have seen only two idiots out there in camo. Ha-ha, maybe I haven't seen them because they were in camo. But the fact is that we do not refer to them as the "orange army" because they are decked out in camo. I am not a big proponent of mandatory orange, but I wouldn't exactly get real mad if it did become mandatory. I really hate the idea that there are people posted out there in full camo.

54 consecutive gun deer seasons for me, and 53 bow deer seasons without missing any.

I really am enjoying the thread and thanks for posting it, but regarding the size, age or whatever that you feel you should be taking, you should never feel that you need anyone's approval but your own. Do not let others influence how you feel about hunting and whatever kill that satisfies you. We have too much of that going on these days where we spend way too much time worrying about what someone else thinks we should be hunting. If you can break that mindset, I think your enjoyment of hunting will jump a few hundred percent.

That is the thing to watch. I am already sensing that now that elections are over, the anger and outrage over the Safe Act is gone.

With today's camo, I would say that there probably was never a time in the woods when you really knew that there was nobody beyond the deer hunkered down in full camo. Unless you are hunting a brushed out, clearcut area with an earthen backstop, you never know that there is no one out there dressed in camo. Yes, Be as sure as possible of your target and beyond. But recognize that there is always a possibility that there is some guy in camo out there trying to hide from you. Saturday, I had a guy come in on me and set up within 70 yards of me. If he had been in camo, I would likely never have known he was there. As it turned out, that blaze orange stuck out like a sore thumb, and I shouted over and convinced him that he was really too close and that the situation was not really safe. He moved on. Had he not, I would have moved. Had he been in camo, that unsafe situation would have remained.

I am always amazed at the things that we think we "must have" or "must do" these days in order to hunt. And there are not a one of these "must have" gadgets, techniques, and processes that people are not capitalizing on and raking in some cash. Is all that stuff nonsense or money grubbing fabrications? Oh probably not. Each little "must have" probably adds something to your chances, but some of the more over-the-top concepts probably have more impacts in the mind than in reality. I remember back in the days when I used to smoke. I can't count the number of deer that I had to lay down my cigarette so I could draw my bow.......ha-ha. A little bacon smell has got nothing on the stink of a cigarette and the distance that that stink can travel on the wind. Here's the secret ...... you either got the wind direction or you don't.

The smiles tell it all. What a great hunt! Sure would like to read an "essay" version. There has to be a million details.

There was a brief sentence in that article that talked about "snap shooting" that reminded me of an incident that happened a whole bunch of years ago. My brother-in-law came down from Canada and brought a couple of his work mates along.......Something I later told him never to do again. The first thing we did on their arrival was to have them drag our guns out to my range behind the house, so I could see just what kind of shots these guys were. Well, the younger of the two took a pretty careful 4 shot group that actually didn't come out all that bad. Then the older gent took his turn and proceeded to rip off all 5 of his shots just about as fast as he could pull the trigger and work the pump. The rest of us looked at each other and made a few comments suggesting that he might try aiming. His explanation was that he was raised hunting with dogs, and running shots were the norm. So I patiently explained that there are no dogs here and that that kind of instinctive snap shooting was kind of frowned on here. Maybe he got the message I don't know. So we were headed up to see if he had actually hit anything, and there was a loud bang! behind us. The younger guy was doing something with his gun and it accidentally went off. That did it. Target practice was over, and I turned these two around and pointed at the far hill across the valley and told them That's where you guys will be hunting. I had no intention of being on the same hill as they were. There are some strange people out there with strange back-grounds, and no concept of safety. Nobody will ever hunt my land again unless I have years of hunting experience with them.

Just finished a 7 hour still hunt around the hill, and as far as I could tell, I was the only one out there. No boot tracks, no deer tracks to speak of. No shots in the whole valley. The wind and cold will cut you down in nothing flat. It is desperation activity at it's finest. Yeah, if you happen to step on a deer you might get a look at them. Otherwise, its a mighty lonely, boring and absolutely torturesome activity. This stretch of weather will be coming to an end pretty soon, and maybe there will be some people out to move deer. But right now it looks like everybody is a whole lot smarter than me and are staying home.

The state land that I hunt can get heavily hunted to the point where every deer fully understands the human stink and those loud bangs mean there is a deer season on. It doesn't really take all that much to put them on full alert. After the trauma of opening day(s), it only takes the scent or sight of one lone hunter walking through the area to remind them that the season is still on. However, I will say that hunter pressure has dropped significantly in recent years. In the later stages of the season, things do get quieter than it was before deer season opens. The deer do begin to relax to the point where the day after the season closes they are grazing in my front yard ... lol. My guess is that the larger the area of public land, the more quiet it is going to seem. You can scatter a lot of people around 2500 acres and never have them cross paths. That kind of diluted hunter presence can also effect deer movement and make things seem positively deserted.

Look, it is a fact that unless you are hunting on a rifle range with an earthen backstop and the foreground all cleared, you do not know for a fact that there is no idiot concealed in camo behind or in the direction of the deer that you are pulling the trigger on. I know that "Be sure of the background behind the target" makes a wonderful hunter safety course slogan, but along with that, it really needs to be emphasized that safe hunting involves doing your best to be seen and identified by other hunters. Somehow that fact has been lost on a few hunters along the way. Oh, and by the way, no one is saying that blaze orange makes you bullet-proof. It is just one more very important and pretty darned effective tool of hunting safety.

Back in the early 60's, when everything we knew about hunting came from some raggedy old dog-eared magazine article, we broke just about every rule to successful deer hunting that we have today. Whether the scents of pumping gas, or cigarette smoke (nearly everyone smoked back then), or fried bacon and eggs, interfered with our success was really not even an issue. The one thing I do recall was that we were one powerfully dedicated bunch of hunters who knew how to have fun while hunting. And by the way, we got a lot of deer back then too. The one thing that was a standard tradition was dragging those shotguns out to see what you could do with them before the season started. So you won't find me criticizing anyone for eating breakfast in their hunting clothes or pumping gas or considering any of those minor infractions, as indicating any kind of lack of dedication. As long as they take care of the gun familiarity part of hunt preparation, I could care less about how they are dressed when they eat breakfast or pump gas.

I do not hunt with any kind of malice in my heart for my prey. The kind of radio transmission that began this thread is something you would never hear from me. Some hunt with a "Whatever it takes" attitude. They argue that ethics and even fair chase has no place cluttering up their hunting. I have seen this in both bowhunting and gun hunting. It seems to be a growing human trait that doesn't really relate to the weapon in hand, but more on attitudes between the ears. It all boils down to what hunting really means to each individual. That radio transmission that this thread opened up with showed me an individual who is totally immersed in the "Whatever it takes" mentality, and the more people who are repulsed by that, the better for hunting. That mentality of kill at any cost does come through to those outside of hunting, and it does impact how they feel about hunters and the whole activity of hunting.