Doc

Oh ok, let's add on to that a bit. While walking into the stand in the dark let's concentrate on an image of some huge Russian boar with rabies running through the woods slobbering and squealing and looking for something to tear apart. Ha-ha .... if I keep this up, I'll be back to hunting out of treestands again ....lol.

I have a spreadsheet that locate all of my stand locations from 1982 to the present as well as hunting results, conditions, dates, times, sightings, etc., etc., it's pretty extensive. The number of stand locations is up to 114. Of course most of them are no longer used or maintained. At the present, I have about 10 groundstands built and maintained. In almost all places, two stands have been built to give options for wind directions.

I have never even been on a bearhunt, but through my ignorance, have pictured what perhaps is a major problem. I am picturing being way far from all means of transportation, and having just harvested a super-pig of a bear. Now I am faced with trying to get this thing home by myself. My vision of the task is something like trying to move a 300 pound bag of jello with no handles. Does this awkwardness of a bear carcass cause any of the problems that I am imagining?

It has nothing to do with logic, facts or anything like that. The mind has a way of magnifying the nearly impossible into reality all on its own. Before you know it, you are walking to your stand in the dark totally convinced that the next step will bring you face to face with a slobbering, growling, female preparing to defend her cubs. Heck, if you work on it hard enough, your imagination can conjure up a bear with rabies .... lol. I remember bowhunting for deer in PA and getting a slightly later start than I really wanted. That put me walking through the woods in that predawn time when there's just enough light to make every stump and downed log look like a bear .... ha-ha. I had my imagination really working at warp-speed by the time I finally got up in the tree-stand. It didn't help that I had to walk next to a corner of a cornfield that was flattened down by bears with scat everywhere.

Yes, I have found a few, and they are always under oak trees. https://www.google.com/search?q=oak+plum+gall&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=1Wr4U7PtK6fksATjvYKQDA&sqi=2&ved=0CC0QsAQ&biw=1280&bih=592

Yes, I always have a leafless surface to move around on at my ground blinds. There is nothing worse that having the noise of your feet on leaves just as you are getting ready to shoot. Or worse yet having some unseen twig snap just when the deer shows up. However, I have often wondered about the smell of the exposed earth. There have been a lot of times when I have returned to a ground stand for another day's hunt, and found a deer track in the freshly exposed soil. This at a place 20 yards or so from any trail, so what exactly caused him to come over and check it all out? That exposed dirt has a unique smell that actually is quite strong it means different things to different animals. For deer it means that somebody has been kicking around looking for acorns, or some randy buck may have been starting a scrape. Whatever it signifies to them, it can be a feature that will draw deer to your stand. Perhaps close enough to locate a scent of just who really was there for a few hours earlier in the evening .... lol. No, there's nothing you can do about it, and it doesn't happen every time. But it is just another thing to be aware of when cleaning those leaves away. It can give away the location of your stand.

No Lifetime license in today's mail for me.

Early snows .... great for spotting deer and following blood trails. But then there is the slipping and sliding and trying to stay out of the ditch, and then trying to shoot my bow with 45 pounds of clothing choking off my full draw. And the shivering and shaking and miserable stand conditions. I'll tell you what .... 1" of snow will be fine, but don't be wishing our fall away .... lol. Frankly, I have been a bit concerned about the consistency of this cold and wet summer and the fact that nothing seems to be changing as we head toward winter.

Weather forecasts have moved from information reporting to the entertainment end of TV. Don't be taking these guys too seriously. I sometimes follow the extended forecasts of 7 to 10 days out. As the week progresses, you can watch every day past the 2nd one change completely such that what they were predicting towards the end of their extended forecast almost always changes to completely opposite what they were saying. Just follow one of those extended versions on a daily basis and you will see that it means absolutely nothing. So when someone starts predicting any weather even in general trends that are a month or more out, I have learned that that is just some more of that entertainment and their desperate grab for TV ratings.

It's pretty much gone. But the freezer is filling up with vegies from the garden.

Actually, I have seen those quite often. We have some very well shaded stretches of dark woods around a deep ravine that never got logged very heavily and so we have what might be called "old-growth" hemlocks that keep the area in a dark, damp and cool condition that apparently these things like. I never knew the actual name of them, but I have seen them frequently for all of my life. However, there was a plant that I saw only once back when I was a kid camping with my brother. It was something that covered the ground where we had raked a bunch of leaves back, and after dark, these things glowed. They actually glowed in the dark. I never saw it since, but of course that particular set of circumstances never happened again. I have never heard of plant material like that that glowed in the dark. Anybody ever seen anything like that?

I am always curious about the supposed motivation that the DEC would have for suppressing evidence of mountain lions. What purpose would they have for denying the existence of any species in NY? I know how much fun conspiracy theories are, but really doesn't there have to be some good believable motivations behind a good conspiracy theory? Seriously.... can anyone explain what value it is to the DEC to deny the existence of mountain lions in NYS if they didn't sincerely believe that the sightings were complete hog-wash?

One other observation that I have made is that going to areas that are distant or hard to get to do not guarantee isolation from gobs of hunters. There seems to be a health and fitness craze going on now that makes a lot of guys relish long and strenuous hunts. We have a hill that is ugly-steep and yet, unbelievably it is laced with mountain-bike trails everywhere .... on the side of the hill .... on the top and on the bottom. I have seen joggers during the bow season prancing by in the middle of the top of the hill. The bikers pretty much can cover everything up there as they travel in packs, hollering back and forth. What used to be semi-wilderness, now has a bit of a Coney Island atmosphere to it .... lol. Yes, things in the state land are changing rapidly as hunters lose ground to the lands they used to hunt in pretty much ideal isolated conditions. So, there are cases where no matter how far in you want to go, you may still encounter interruptions in your hunt, and a herd that is predominantly nocturnal because of all the crazy raucous commotion during daylight hours.

It's not always about just distance. I get about a mile off the road, but that mile is a pretty ugly climb. I won't say that it's hands-and-knees kind of steep, but it sure makes that mile seem a whole lot longer to those that are tempted to get up there. Also, there are areas down in the valley that are right next to the road that have some pretty good deer that hang out there. A lot of that does not get hunted because of the thick multi-flora rose that has taken over. The whole area is basically a "man-trap". Guys walk right on past that stuff and won't even attempt to hunt in that crap. Some of these areas are great deer sanctuaries when the orange army invades the woods. For those that want to take the time to find or cut trails through that stuff to get to some of the more open areas on the insides, some pretty productive areas can be hunted. So it is more than just distance that gets you away from other hunters and into the deer.

Yup, just about anywhere is a better business environment that NY. Of course those that are looking for the absolute best business environment are not stopping at the country's borders. That probably is all the more reason that we should not be intimidating our last remaining businesses into picking up and bailing out. I don't suppose that Remington really had any burning need to vacate NY, but when you create a hostile environment to their products, they likely figured the time was right to just go for it.

http://www.ultimatecampresource.com/site/camp-activities/scary-campfire-stories.page-1.html

I always have a super tough time making recommendations to beginners. So much changes in those initial weeks of shooting. First of all your strength takes a rapid increase in just a few weeks of concentrated shooting, so you really don't know what poundage you want to start with. Your personal draw length will change as you begin to develop a more relaxed shooting form. Anchors will evolve as you find what feels most comfortable and repeatable. With so much that is likely to change, I would hesitate to invest a big pile of money until you have been shooting for a while. If you go with the big bucks, you may find yourself compromising on shooting form, trying to make your form fit some expensive bow that you have bought. Honestly, if you have an opportunity, I would borrow a bow from somebody for the first couple of weeks of shooting, before dropping a ton of cash. Get used to the drawing and aiming process. Get some development of the archery muscles, and I think you will have a better shot at buying a quality bow that fits you.

Here are some pictures that kind of set the mood for hunting for me: And here is one place you hope you will never see the blood trail go beyond. Past there is about 200' straight down: But first comes the archery practice: And of course practice for gun season: And then a look back at hunting in my younger years when deer camp was a bit more rustic: Yeah, these pictures generally get me in a hunting mood. Too bad I never seem to take any pictures of small game hunting. That is really my next hunting venture for this year.

I have a very lightweight aluminum folding stool that can be put in my backpack. I had to laugh at that title, "Getting comfortable in the ground". I may be getting on in age, but I hope I am not ready to be getting comfortable in the ground. When that day comes, I would guess that my folding aluminum stool won't really do it ..... lol.

Yes, perhaps they were and perhaps they weren't. Possibly, maybe, could be, perhaps, might have. Well, we don't have to use those guess words with Cuomo's actions do we?

Just another screw-job of hunters by the DEC. All they did was to transfer the printing costs to the hunters. Those guys that don't have computers will just have to guess at what they think the regs say. Granted there may not be many, or maybe there are.

I was looking at the piebald hide that somebody posted a picture of. And then a thread came out about a bear hide. And there have been other posts about taxidermy and mounted foxes and such. It all made me think that perhaps some here might have some neat looking dens or man-caves or trophy rooms. I have a lot of free space downstairs that maybe could be converted to such a room. I even have an unused fireplace down there. I also have some mounts and other items of taxidermy laying all over the house in places that simply were not furnished or designed for that décor. So I was hoping that some guys might have some pictures that I might use as examples as I continue to think about how I would design such a space.

So how many of you have a dedicated trophy room, or a den that features mounts, hunting and fishing stuff? Just a nice room of your own to retreat into that is decorated to put you in a nice, relaxed, outdoorsy atmosphere and frame of mind. Any pictures?

A lot of my still-hunting is hard to tell from "sitting". I walk a very short distance and then sit and scan everything (and I do mean everything!) with my binoculars. It can take me between 15 minutes to 1/2 hour just to check out every log and stump and dip and bush. And then its an ultra-slow forward motion for about 50 yards or whatever I judge gives me a new look at a new area. The difficulty that a lot of novice still-hunters have is that they are looking for a deer silhouette or large parts of a deer outline instead of an ear or an antler tine or the smallest part of a deer. You are indeed hunting a deer that has nothing to do all day but watch for the danger that they are already aware of. One quick pass of the eye over the landscape in front of you usually isn't going to hack it unless you are counting on luck. It is not an easy style of hunting, but is very effective when deer have survived opening day and refuse to move.

That was a pretty amazing seat these people had to watch the show. A live performance right in front of their window.