Doc

Yeah I guess that's probably right. I guess the problem is that I just don't understand the system that they use. I do understand the importance of the DEC recognizing the seriousness of the hunter decline. The whole management system of wildlife depends on always having an adequate number of hunters. You have to wonder if that will always be the case, if the numbers keep going in the direction that they are going.

Do they count every license purchased as being a different hunter? I actually have a whole bunch of licenses all by myself. Am I being counted as a whole bunch of hunters. My personal observations over the years From the time I used to stand out by the road waiting for the school bus, to today, I think I have seen an absolutely huge drop in the hunter activity. Does anybody ever make an attempt at calculating how many hunters there really are left? Has anyone plotted the decline over the decades? Is anyone trying to predict how long it will be before hunting is not an effective wildlife population control? It seems there are places where that is already the case. Is anyone looking down the road to figure out what to do when hunting can no longer keep wildlife numbers under control? They'll always be able to manipulate season lengths and bag limits, but there may come a time when even those measures are not enough. So, how good of a handle does the DEC actually have on the dwindling number of hunters, and what are they trying to do about it? Anybody have any insight into this subject?

The Kansas Department of Parks and Wildlife consists of just 7 people and can pass such things all by themselves? ......Seven people???? And the reasons behind it were just about as stupid as anything I've ever heard. They are worried about privacy issues on public lands? What nonsense! Sounds like something that might come to NYS.....lol.

Yeah, this is what I was afraid of. It is something from a forum that has very small distribution, and we are expanding the ideas stated in that opinion piece for them. Certainly we have to keep an eye on such nonsense, but we really do not have to give it further credibility and coverage by repeating it. That is how a lot of these things gain momentum and become a real live issue. If these ideas are going to get picked up and begin to gather some kind of momentum among people of authority who can actually make such nonsense become law, let's not be the ones that help it all gain public conversation. At least that's the way I see it. Let it fade back into oblivion where it started.

Yeah but I would like to know where the article came from. Do we know anything about the credentials of the author? Is it a person of any authority or just a letter to the editor from some PETA person. Is it some article off somebody's website? Or is it something from a high ranking Dec official? It makes a big difference as to how seriously anyone should take the contents of the article. One thing you want to be very careful about is to not elevate some random comment from some "nobody" and creating an issue out of something that nobody else would ever otherwise read. I'm not saying that it is not interesting and useful to keep an eye on what the opposition is thinking. Just be careful about elevating a single isolated random set of thoughts into a forum for spreading the idea.

It all becomes crystal clear when you ask that simple question: "Are you better off today than you were during the Trump years?". The answer is a resounding "NO!" for anyone who wants to be honest about what's going on these days. It's not a trick-question.

I hope that forecast is a bogus one. 2 feet of snow would be hard to deal with given that it would likely be heavy and wet.

Actually, the drainage on the hill is pretty good with ravines that are not too far apart handling most of the run-off. We had an old horse trail that ran straight up the hill. I wouldn't even guess when that was actively used. but it was before tractors, I am sure. It has held pretty darn good over all the years it has been in existence. It's only the most recent couple of years that it has shown any erosion at all and that trail still was being used for ATV travel. It was a little washed out in spots, but with a little caution it could be used. Now I have some nice wide roads that wind their way up the hill instead of going straight up.......Much safer. I am not really familiar with "water bars", but I didn't see anything put into the roads for water diversion, but at every turn in the road, the water dumps off the road, so it never gets a chance to build up any volume. So erosion should be minimal.

This year I got all the way into March without having to plow my 1000' driveway once. That in itself is a 47 year record. But I wanted to get through a whole year without plowing. Of course March was the spoiler.......It always is. Some of the worst storms that I can remember have happened in March. In fact one March, I had to get a payloader in to clear a three foot dump of some very heavy wet snow. Let's hope that don't happen again. This year's March dump was only about a foot deep, but it was that ice cream consistency that does not plow very good.

Actually, I made more than just a "few bucks". The deal was 50:50. He gets half the income from the mill and I get half. With the price of lumber these days, that's a pretty good amount of money.

I have hunted a lot of logged land over the years, and erosion doesn't seem to be a problem as long as the roads tack their way back and forth and do not go straight up the hill. we had an ancient log road that went straight up the hill from decades ago and it held up pretty good. Of course there are existing ravines that formed over the centuries, and they do most of the drainage of the hill already. However most of the tops left behind wound up in those ravines, and likely will slow the natural erosion of them. So erosion concerns should be even less than before.

The next-door neighbor had his property logged, so I grabbed the guy and he was happy to do ours. Some of the roads turned out useable for both of us, and we used a common landing on the neighbors property (which saved some of the damage that usually happens around where logs are piled and loaded onto the trucks.

I don't know when our property was logged last....if ever, but the hill is opened up now. I think the deer and other critters will appreciate it. I got some good ATV roads up the hill now too so I don't have to haul my tired old butt up the hill by foot. That just added a few years to my hunting. Yeah, it looks a bit messy right now. Too bad I don't still burn firewood.....lol.

Yeah, it does seem a bit like eating a dog.........Lol.

Why do you suppose we have all this ammo hoarding? People know what's coming. The best answer to all of this nonsense that I can think of is to keep a lifetime supply of bullet components on hand. I reload all my own bullets and shot-shells. Even that is getting harder and harder to do, but I am pretty well set for a long time.

I watch a lot of these Alaska based programs on TV, and those people all seem to make bear meat a staple right along with their deer and moose, beaver and muskrat meat. That is what prompted the question. So I just had to ask.

Ha-ha-ha-ha......Here they come again. Every time a new "special season" is created, the hordes begin to apply there pry-bars to shoe-horn their way into it. It happened to bow season, and it will happen to muzzleloader season too. It's just a natural thing in the hunting community. Special seasons just highlight another set-aside time slot that every one eyeballs jealously and wants a piece of. Oh it may take a few decades, but it will eventually be stretched and pulled until you start to forget why the "special season was created. That is the fallacy of special seasons. This is only the opening salvo. Brace yourselves for more intrusions that you could never imagine right now.

I have never eaten bear meat. What is the general opinion of you people as to what it tastes like and is it something that you really enjoy?

Strings and threads will tell you what is happening exactly where the string is tied. But the milkweed seed tells the story for a far as you can see it floating through the air. If your eyes are good, sometimes you can see the exact wind trail all the way from your stand to where the deer will be when you shoot.

Here is how I would try to do it: Bear in mind that I have never done it. I would take a heavy duty plastic tarp. roll the bear onto it and grab the tarp and drag it. That should save the hide from dragging it on the ground. It also gives you something to grab onto. I doubt that I will ever have to worry about it, but I do know that trying to figure it out when you have couple hundred pounds of bear laying at your feet is a bit late.....lol.

Ok, so let's say you are lucky enough to get a bear.....If you hunt by yourself and the bear is a fair-sized one, How on earth would you get it back to your vehicle. It seems to me that it would be like trying to drag a big bag of jello with no handles. Is there trick to it? Is it legal to cut them up in pieces and drag out a piece at a time? If you had access to an ATV I could see that as a possibility but if you wanted to save the hide, dragging it out would ruin the fur. And trying to lift a bear up onto the ATV racks by yourself would have to be nearly impossible. Just curious.

My guess is that 90% or better of bears that are taken occur in places that allow bear baiting. But here in NYS baiting of bears is illegal. So, since the number one method for taking bears is illegal here, I have to wonder what methods you guys use to do your bear hunting. Are bears repetitive enough in their movements that you can hunt them like whitetails....That is watching a know common bear trail, or trying the old bedding to feed habits? Or is it more likely that bear harvests are simply capitalizing on accidental targets of opportunity while deer hunting. What's the scoop? anybody figure out how to apply a bit of science into bear hunting?

Guys that go out looking for antlers will be having a great year for that activity if the winter keeps up without snow as it has so far. Right now would be a great time for that.....right?

One thing we seldom discuss is a subject that is so critical to our hunting. That is, what is the real wind direction. It seems pretty obvious a few feet from our face, but there aren't really any deer right there. So we whip out our little squeeze bottle of powder and give it a squirt and we can see what the wind is doing maybe 10 feet out. But where is the wind going beyond that. The trail that we are expecting to see the deer coming in on is 20 or 30 yards away from the stand. I have played with milkweed seeds a lot over the years, and noticed that those little white parachutes seem to defy gravity and can be seen floating on the breeze for about 25 yards or so.....More if your eyes are better than mine. And boy are there some eye-opening things that I have seen. I remember a lot of times back in the days when I used to get up in the treestands, and on damp days I would watch those seeds go out a few yards and then start heading for the ground. Well so much for any theories that just because we are elevated, our scent goes over the heads of the deer. The air gets heavy on damp days. But another nifty phenomenon was to watch the seed float out a handful of yards and then take a hard left or right. That's funny, at my stand it was a pretty steady "in my face" direction. Sometimes it is the work of some subtle thermals. Sometimes it is just some ground feature that funnels unseen air currents that have found a shallow ravine to follow or a thick stand of trees or bushes that can turn the wind around in a devastating direction that can ruin your hunt. Oh, and by the way I find it interesting that in this hill country the wind will reverse itself half-way through the afternoon hunt as the thermals reverse. Just when the deer begin to move.....isn't that nice. I live in hill country, and I have seen stands that were completely ruined by circling winds. And I have noticed that those trouble spots where the wind is always circling and changing are the favorite spots that the bigger deer like to travel through and hang out. I would really like to see more discussions here on things that you all have learned about wind direction behavior. I think it is a subject that seriously gets overlooked but is so critical to our hunting success.