Doc

That's a problem, and always will be with conservation law enforcement. However, almost every hunter carries a phone these days that are capable of calling the TIPP line at the DEC. Providing real proof is the problem, but most of the guys who ignore hunting laws really don't want the attention of the DEC even if a bust isn't likely. I don't know, but the very fact that the DEC law enforcement is spread so thin makes it even more important that we become the eyes and ears for them in the woods. If a guy's name gets mentioned at region headquarters too many times, he may become someone who draws a lot of close scrutiny for all kinds of violations. But I will admit that enforcement is truly a problem in most game violations.

Some of these pages of replies may be serving the purpose of educating guys that there are a lot of people in the woods that have not decided to ignore game laws and perhaps the more obvious violations may not always get a free pass that everyone assumes.

One thing that should be remembered is that the coyote sits at the top of the local food chain in most parts of the state. Other than disease and the occasional vehicle, there is nothing to control these critters. It certainly doesn't hurt anything to have humans intervening and at least performing some level of control where otherwise there would be none.

There is also some sort of rebuilding of sanity when I am just sitting there quietly waiting for a deer to come along. The mind just wanders everywhere when you are in such a serene setting with only your thoughts to keep you occupied. For example at one of my ground stands, there is an old abandoned pole-line road from way back in the early days of rural electrification that runs from the main road down in the valet straight up the hill to an old dirt road behind about a mile and 1/2 long. It's hard to make out anymore, but the deer seem to know its there. I get a lot of mental images of like back then in the 30's or 40's. I can almost see the buggies rolling along with the spools of wire. And then there are the barely perceptible changes in tree sizes from some old pasture lot or ag field. And the huge rock piles in the middle of the woods where farmers have worked to pull rocks out a field that is all mature woods. So the attraction of hunting is not always about hunting. Sometimes its just sitting there think about the local history of long gone farming, and the hunters of days gone by, and sometimes even a few thoughts of what the place actually looked like back in the days before settlement. Old broken plow shares and horse shoes in the middle of the woods kind of tell you that these hills used to look a whole lot different than they do today. I have even found an old horse-drawn walk-behind potato hiller in what you can barely tell was the edge of an old re-grown field. These are some of the thoughts and observations that hunting gives me a reason and opportunity to experience.

This is the way new recruits are formed. My kids always got involved in tracking and hunting at very early ages. It works!

I'm not too sure whether their politics would be in any particular unified direction any more than our own. If I am understanding their general philosophy, they simply want to have more hands-on control as to the origin and preparation of what they eat. I'm not sure where any of that differs from my thinking. I have long been concerned about the chemistry of food that we are sold. And yes some of my hunting motives are about an attempt at getting some percentage of my food that is un-messed with. I hunt and eat what I get. I fish and eat what I get. I garden and eat what I get, and for quite a while I ran a limited livestock activity here to feed on the products of what I raised. None of that gave me any unique or related political views or biases nor did my food concerns change any views on gun control other than reinforcing my determination to safeguard gun and hunting rights. So I don't see any particular reason why we should be cowering in the corners of our own forum. Anyone who comes to forums does so to exchange ideas that likely are not identical to their own. I don't think they are any different. Frankly, I am not sure they are any different than any of us.

There is so much to it all that Its hard to figure it all out. But it all has to do with what makes a hunter vs. what makes a non-hunter. How much of it is the in-born predator lurking inside of us, put there my centuries of evolution where we are simply being what we really were meant to be ..... meat eating predators? How much of it is simply a test of our independence and self-reliance? How much of it is all tangled up with our history, culture and heritage? I think it all plays a part for me. I come from a rural upbringing at a time when hunting was simply an expected part of life. The appreciation of nature was simply built into every day, and hunting, trapping and fishing was all part of that. Those lifestyle impacts never really do leave you. As Wheelieman said, it becomes a part of you and has come to define what I really am.

Almost any state land parking lot gets the attention of game cops. Its easy pickins for them. It winds up to be the most efficient use of their time, guarantee to put them in contact with the most hunters per hour.

Here is another deer season phenomenon that always causes some people to claim feast or famine with every season. Shortly after opening day, the deer seem to bunch up. All of a sudden, if you see any deer at all, they are glumped together in some pretty big herds. If one of these big herds happens to be somewhere that you happened to be, you will come out of the woods claiming that deer were popping up all around you. But if these bunches happened to be a few hundred yards away or over the rise where you didn't see them, you will come out of the woods swearing there isn't a deer anywhere in the woods. They're all dead.

Well, at this stage it is all guess-work, but I believe that it is going to be a mixed bunch of results probably depending on where you hunt. I think the crazy weather kind of messed up a lot of people.

Well, here is an old time-tested topic, but we have some new people here and also have had some more time for the rest of us to think about it. Why do you hunt? When you step out the door all excited about getting a deer, a turkey, or a bunch of rabbits, squirrels, etc., etc., what is going through your mind. I am not talking about the things that usually come up in discussion with non-hunters where we go through the list of wildlife benefits of hunting. But what personally are you getting out of hunting.

Some of that might depend on what stage of earning power you are at. I ran a trap-line when I was in school. It bought me clothes, equipment, and other goodies that I wanted. Basically, if I wanted to buy anything at all, the trap-line along with summer farm-work was the only way to do that. My grandfather started me off with the traps, and I took it from there. It is a different story today with the abundance of money, but back then an awful lot of school kids had trap-lines. Also, I know few people who are financially disadvantaged for any of a number of reasons that look at that relatively small amount of money earned by trapping as the opportunity for adding a little disposable income to their financial situation. But I would guess that today the fur prices are sufficient for funding and maintaining a trapping hobby for most of the trappers.

I honestly wonder why there is so much controversy over shooting hours. Have we gotten so darn desperate that we cannot abide by a very simple rule? It is amazing what peer pressure and a need for the acceptance of fellow hunters can force people to do. Most do a lot of self-control acts, like being super-selective in shot selection, looking for minimum personal standard in size/age of what they take, etc., etc. So what is the big deal about adding one other restriction ..... ensuring that we follow the law. Is that really a big hardship? Why is that one so hard to incorporate into our hunting ethics?

The more I read about these "Foodies", the more I think I have always been one. But what a silly sounding name ..... lol.

Sh-h-h-h....... Right now people are convinced that the state lands run red with hunter's blood. They all believe that proper attire on public lands is blaze orange body armor. And word has it that there is not a deer left in those areas. I think that mentality is why the pressure has diminished considerably. It's a notion that may be the only thing that is saving state land and keeping it a viable hunting alternative for those that know the secret of the myths of killer state lands. You are absolutely correct. Get those first two days of gun season behind you and it gets to the point where you are hearing almost no shooting. Yes there is significant trauma throughout the opening weekend, and after that it doesn't take a whole lot of hunters to keep the deer in their super-survival mode. But by that time, they are in super-survival mode on private land too. In terms of real hunter population, I think they pretty much call it quits. I like it!

Why we hunt may be old news, but I wonder how many of us really even know. I know what our public mantra for P.R. consumption is about population control and serving as selfless benefactors of all outdoors and God's creatures. But I'll be honest with you. When I am getting all amped up for my first crack at deer, and I head out that door, I can never recall a single time that I kept thinking to myself that today I'm going to get out there and save the deer and do my part for population control. I can't even say that getting some prime venison is on my mind when I hunt. It's hard to represent ourselves to the public when perhaps we have never put much honest and soul-searching thought into why we do it. We can certainly list off the benefits of hunting, but when it comes to internal motives, perhaps that isn't so easy. Maybe its time that I post my annual thread asking why we hunt ..... lol.

I wasn't going to comment on this thread since I have no practical experience with a crossbow. But I will just mention that the whole reason that I don't participate in the late bow season is that there is no way that I can get around all the bulk of the required clothing of super-cold weather. I get all kinds of clothing interferences and clothing bulk just destroys my form and consistency. I really can't imagine that being an issue with a crossbow. I am wondering if perhaps you are practicing in a nice heated indoor range and then piling on clothes for the hunt. For me it does make a significant difference.

There is something that is happening across the state that I think not everyone stops to think about. Since the 40s and 50s, agriculture has contracted onto the more productive and larger and flatter properties. A lot of the more marginal land has not been farmed for decades. The small family farms are nearly gone, and a ton of land has been abandoned as farm land returns to mature woods and an out-of-reach over-story develops. At first these abandoned farm lands were great for the deer population explosion, as the transitional lands provided some of the hottest browse and cover that you could ever want. I began hunting right at the perfect point of that evolution of the lands into ideal deer hunting lands. Nice open fields with brush-lots scattered around offered perfect food and cover. Well it's been a bunch of years since all of that great hunting and the perfect habitat, and fields are disappearing and turning to mature woods. For me the number is about 55 years of actual deer hunting, so I have seen lots of changes. So when I look back decades and recall the deer activity, I have to note that things have definitely tightened up considerably. Sometimes it kind of freaks me out a bit when I stop in the middle of a group of young trees on top of my hill and recall how that used to be a large wide open field where you could look from one end to the other .... lol. Another important change is that I have found that I have had to revise tactics completely from those that I used back in the glory days to a style of hunting suitable for the spread-out, more random patterns of mature woods. So there is an evolution of habitat that changes what we should be expecting to see and our hunting techniques have to reflect that. There's still a pile of deer around but throughout my hunting life, there has been a gradual unstable downward trend, and had I not been flexible in my tactics, things would appear to be pretty bleak out there. So the perception of good and bad seasons have to be set in the right perspective along with the background of those making those assessments.

I was simply describing the way that I handle abiding by legal quitting time when all of a sudden I am confronted with a, "seems a little fishy there boss" comment, and apparently I am lying because for some reason I must be talking about getting out of a tree stand which I have said I never use anymore .... lol. And by the way it was not anecdotal evidence of anything, just a simple statement of fact that I start packing up before quitting time and leave my stand at sunset done with the hunt. I thought the whole reaction to what I said was a bit strange, uncalled for and contrived and still do. As far as appreciation of insight and differing points of view, don't mistake my defense of my honesty and integrity as belittling anyone's points of view on legitimate topics.

You know, this is a valuable time of the year. The deer are still in their super survival mode, and we have a written record of deer escape tactics documented in the snow. It's a great time to be out there learning and taking notes for the next gun season. Ha-ha .... This comment is completely off topic, and has nothing to do with "reasons for a bad gun season", but maybe if more people used this time of year for some intensive scouting, there wouldn't be quite so many bad seasons to find reasons for.

Don't bury your head in the sand. Anti-hunters organizations are making headway. It took a bear mauling to get New Jersey to undo the bear season ban that antis pushed for and eventually passed. And it looks like California will never undo their Mountain lion hunting ban. And each one of the "at risk" headlines represents a long and costly fight that hunting advocacy groups have to spend their money on in a fight to maintain the hunting rights that we do have, and not always a successful fight. I also believe that a lot of the reason for hunter numbers being in decline is the cultural challenges that these groups have successfully mounted. So the most dangerous thing that we can do is to belittle the gains that these people have made and continue to make. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. But for gosh sake don't turn your back on them with false confidence.

Ha-ha..... $400 - $600 is chicken feed compared to what guys are willing to spend to get a deer these days. Heck that's the price of a cheap bow these days. There really is no limit as to what hunters will spend to get the best buck money can buy.

I have to say that the pressure during gun season is nothing compared to years ago.......especially after opening weekend. Things get real quiet. And yet the damage is done. The deer are totally spooked and into super survival mode, And there are just enough guys around to keep reminding them of those two ugly opening days ..... lol. One change that I have noticed since we went to Saturday openers is that now we do have two big opening days (Saturday & Sunday) compared to only one biggie when we had only the Monday opener. The time when I have seen the greatest increase in pressure in recent years is the one time when you want it the least .... Bow season.

Ha-ha.... There is no fight here, I'm just not going to sit here and let someone call me a liar without pushing back a little.

And I would like to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter bunny but it probably will never happen. This past election showed me a lot about hunters and gun owners in terms of their political dedication and resolve. Nobody is advocating placating anyone, but it is useful to recognize that hunters don't exist in a vacuum and before we go charging across the landscape acting like we are some kind of majority force here, a little consideration of how the public perceives us and our activities might be a prudent way to conduct ourselves.