Doc

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.

Ah yes..... the old annual blaze orange controversy. It always amazes me how there could even be a controversy....lol. It's just damn foolishness to go afield in a gun season without wearing generous amounts of the stuff. And this idea of people becoming conditioned to stop following safety rules just because they don't see orange is also just plain nonsense. All I know is that when somebody in blaze orange gets anywhere near me, I know immediately, and begin watching them intently until they are out of sight. If they begin standing in an area that I think is too close, or is in an unsafe situation, I very quickly let them know or I move. I like knowing where other hunters are. I think that little piece of information is pretty important for their safety and mine.

Perhaps it depends on the quality of your local SCOPE representatives, but I will say that our guy was on the ball and sending out advisories and notifications and e-mail at every major part of the election process right from registrations to primaries and candidate selections on through the eventual election, and now the follow-up. In fact it was almost getting to be aggravating to be hand-held to that extent. The end result is that we ditched the incumbent state senator and maintained our pro-gun state assemblyman. And I'll bet if local gubernatorial results could be separated out, I would fully expect that our area was a landslide for Astorino. So from my perspective, I couldn't ask for better results, and our SCOPE reps were not sitting on their hands. Perhaps that wasn't the case everywhere.

I'm not sure what modern harvest number say now, but numbers that I used to hear was that something like 3/4 of the deer harvested were taken on opening day. Now that used to be an opener of a single day (Monday) and now we essentially have a 2 day opener. But in my experience, after the initial shock of the opener, the deer go into super-stealth mode and those that don't get wacked at the beginning get a whole lot tougher to find and take. They are on constant high alert, and mostly nocturnal. On the other hand, those who have had enough experience on the same chunks of land can over time figure out where those chosen hidey-holes are, and work out some clever tactics to handle the situation. But as has already been said, different places with different pressures may have deer that react differently. I am speaking of a relatively heavily hunted chunk of state land.

I know everybody was disappointed that we didn't knock off the main culprit, but NYC is a formidable political force when you are looking at a governorship or a federal campaign. However, the state senators and assemblymen are relatively local elections that NYC isn't involved with and that where the gun advocacy organizations had their impact ..... and it payed off. Forget NYC. When they have a say in any campaign, the pinkos win everytime. But regional elections have regional control.

Every year gets quieter than the one before. Of course I'm not sure how many guys got surprised by the colder opener. It's usually warmer.

I never could understand the camp argument of the Monday opener fans. If you are willing to burn a vacation day or just play hooky on the Monday, why not take that same vaco day on the Friday before and do your camp thing prior to the Saturday opener that we have now. Yes it does cut one of these non-hunting days out of the "camp experience" but really how many of those do you really need?

Message from S.C.O.P.E. Together we changed the balance of power in Albany with the results below: REPUBLICAN 32 DEMOCRAT 24 DEM CONF/W REP 1 IND DEMOCRAT 5 DEM. NOT IN CONF. 1 This was groundbreaking for our state and although the Republicans re-took the Senate we have a long hard fight ahead of us. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So my membership in S.C.O.P.E. was worth the few bucks. I got my money's worth. Of course SCOPE didn't do it all by themselves, but I do feel that all the rallies, mailings, voter awareness activities and other activities that they carried out definitely had an impact. Those that have doubts about gun advocacy groups might want to think about joining and adding their number to the gun advocates.

You got to be kidding me. 18 degrees and a mini-hurricane at work out there. You know, my lifestyle has evolved past the point where I have to have venison to subsist. For me hunting is recreation (refreshment of health or spirits by relaxation and enjoyment). Sometimes I have to remind my self of that .... lol. The critters get a pass from me today.

So, here we are, beating each other up over perceptions, opinions, undocumented claims, etc., etc. It sure sounds like the world of hunting is coming apart at the seams, doesn't it? And then from the background comes the whiney voice of that great American Rodney King (*sarcasm alert*), "Can't we all just get along"? The answer to that is "Absolutely not". As long as we each have a brain, and the intellect to form opinions, there will be disagreements and some of them may become quite loud and impassioned. That's just human nature. But don't make more of it than it really is. Frankly I am glad there are open discussions about these kinds of issues. It sure is a lot better than everyone just walking in lock-step never considering the rightness or wrongness of hunting issues. The whole concept of "fair chase" and hunting ethics did not come about because people were more interested in quietly getting along than in doing things right.

I understand it. I don't agree with it, but I think most of us at one time or another have let a little Bambiism creep into our thinking. We all like to talk about how we are doing the "conservationist thing" by controlling populations. But I have to confess that I have never loaded up the gun and headed out the door thinking that today I am going to control the deer population. There definitely is something other than our usual justifications at work that drives us to head out and try to kill something. It's something primal and genetic. So if there are others that don't have that need for the hunt, I definitely understand that hunting is not for everyone. The place where I have a problem with them is when they start trying to prevent me from doing my thing.

I'm retired so one opener is as good as any .... lol. Did the change increase participation? Logically, you would think that it would, but if I go by the level of shooting, it seems to be just the opposite. I have seen participation (as perceived from the number of shots, and the car-counts in state parking lots) going down hill dramatically. But then that seems to have been started before the "Saturday opener" changes. Look, nobody wants to burn vacation days when it is not necessary. The schools and colleges have not decided to make opening day an excused day of absence. Also, in these days of corporate downsizing, just taking a day off, including vaco, may not always be an option if you want to maintain your job. So since opening day really is such an important day for deer harvests, why not make it on a day when the majority of the people already have off. Makes a lot of sense to me. Those that need an extra day for preparations or travel ..... use your vacation days there instead of for accessing opening day.

Actually, this policy has been in place for quite a few months now. So I am patiently waiting for the reports of DEC success in trapping and eliminating all those piggies. I hate to say it, but I think I'll be waiting a long time for that report ..... ha-ha-ha. The good news is that the DEC must have had a sudden infusion of resources to be able to dedicate personnel to pig-eradication.