Doc

It came today.

Yup, I sure do call now. But lately, it's not even worth the cost of a phone call. They simply have been dropped from my list of suppliers. For years there was never even a question. You just would go up there and start loading up on whatever you needed. They always had even the most obscure items. But now it can just be assumed that they won't have what I need. Believe it or not I actually have better luck driving all the way to Auburn to the Bass-Pro shop.....lol. I'll say that I am starting to understand the hoarding mentality. You never know when the next load of components will be the last time you will ever be able to get some of the stuff. Your next purchase of those kinds of products may turn out to be your lifetime's supply. That is one thing about reloading. Once you have spent all the time experimenting and finally have found the best performing combination of components and powder, you pretty much want to be able to stick to it. It's not like if you can't get a particular manufacturer's product, you can simply change manufacturers on the spot. It can take hours of testing to get the best groups. So, it is no small thing when months go by without being able to get the products that I have settled in on. There is no clear-cut direction to place the blame. There's enough stories going around so that you can point at anybody and chances are pretty good they share in some of the responsibility.....lol.

Ok, Mine came today. However, since I don't have a lifetime bow license, I stopped down to the town hall to get my bow license and two antlerless permits. Things got a little weird then. First of all, my wife couldn't get her fishing license because the computer that hooks all of her info to the auto licensing system couldn't find her. All her info was put in about 4 or 5 times and it screwed up everytime. So she will have to go back and try later on another day. Everything went fine with my bow license and my two permits except that apparently there is some printing problem with Ontario County (and maybe more) that mis-registers the one side from the other so that if you flip the license over to cut out the notched month and day, you will find them part way across the next perforated tag. Archery only as near as I can see. It's going to make tagging a bit of a challenge if I get a deer with the bow. This is the first glitch that I have ever had, in all the years that the computer has been involved in licensing. I have always been a big fan of DECALS. So why on earth did they change the whole thing around once they got the bugs out of the old system? Anybody know?

I'm not griping, I am making an observation and expressing an opinion. That is kind of what we do on a forum. I have no intentions of donating $100 or making a career out of running the Republican Party. I'm looking at Cuomo's campaign and I'm looking at Astorino's stealth campaign and to me, there are some pretty wild glaring differences that indicate that one candidate and his party came in prepared to win, and the other came in simply to see his name on the ballot and obviously has no support from his party. That's not griping.... that's simple observation and comment. If you are happy with the way the campaign is being run ..... good for you.

I suppose an accident could have occurred that broke an antler off. But the guy is still in velvet. Are they really that brittle at that stage?

What the heck..... I'm out there looking for nice bucks and all we get are goofy things like this. And no, I do not live next to a nuclear power plant ..... lol. Oh, and then there are the aliens ... lol. The eye reflection burn-out of the foxes face is no big surprise, but the reflection of the 12' tall sasquatch eyes behind him was:

Well, as long as everyone is satisfied with the way this campaign is going, I guess that's the important thing ....eh? Rob who??? Oh yeah, he's the guy Cuomo is always talking about in his campaign ads.

Yes and while he and his missing Republican backers wait for the perfect timing, Andy is filling the airwaves with unanswered slander, building up the case that this guy is just short of being an Al Capone. Those kinds of charges if not answered right away, stick like glue and become the only "facts" that voters can remember when they go to the polls. There is no real excuse to be going into a campaign underfunded. All that shows is insincerity, and the lack of ability to plan. And by the way, if he came into this campaign counting on every gun owner to contribute $100, then we definitely are backing the wrong horse. That is about the silliest notion that I have ever heard. He and the Republican party know what it takes to run a campaign. It's not a big secret that somebody just sprung on them this year. If their campaign fundraisers don't know what the heck they are doing, they need to be replaced. We can't continue to be putting up these "lightweights" and expect to beat a real political animal like Cuomo. And I think that going easy on the Republican Party for this fiasco of a campaign is letting them off the hook way too easy. Somebody needs to answer for this non-campaign. The party is either totally incompetent, or they have some other unknown agenda that calls for hanging a paper candidate out to dry. We can talk about liberal this and liberal that, but maybe the problem in NYS is that we simply run a crap campaign with crap candidates and a know-nothing political party.

They used to be the "go to" local source for re-loading components. Not so much anymore for what I need. Last several trips up there (a 45 minute to 1 hour drive) I have returned home empty handed.

A simple question ..... a simple answer without any editorializing: A 12 gauge shotgun for small game and my .270 for deer.

So, what is the ammo situation in PA? Is it any better than here? In other words is it worth the trip to stock up on items that seem to be missing here?

Look, I understand all the popular excuses, but the fact is that Cuomo and the Democratic party seem to have no problem raising gobs of money. They have an organization that comes to the show equipped to perform. And I'll bet nearly none of that is from mom & pop individual contributors. The Republican Party has failed to catch on to something that seems to be second nature to the Democrats. It's time (past time) for them to smarten up and start preparing to actually run a campaign. This Astorino is not supposed to be standing by himself. He is supposed to have a political machine behind him that has already accumulated the cash to run an effective campaign. Why hasn't that happened? If a dingbat like Cuomo and his merry bunch of pinkos can do it, it can't be all that tough to figure out.

So where are the Astorino TV, radio and newspaper ads? It appears that the Republicans have a stealth candidate. One of the best kept secrets in the world of politics. Quite frankly it is getting a bit worrisome. This clown Cuomo seems to have the complete run of the media and for all appearances seems to be running unopposed. I'm hearing a lot of "Astorino who?" from people who see the sign out front of my place. The only name recognition he is receiving is coming from the slew of unanswered Cuomo attack ads. It is shaping up as a bloodbath this fall. And with this potential landslide goes our gun rights as the anti-gunners become emboldened by the "mandate". What seems to be the problem with the Republican party? They had a whole bag of real good issues this year, and they are all being squandered ...... again.

Actually it is a myth that overseas production and technology is inferior. We have spent decades actively shipping production lines along with technology and procedures, and have mastered the art of using the hunger for higher standards of living in other countries to our benefit. Until we get to the point where we are willing to work for a couple of fish heads and a cup of rice, the tech drain out of this country will not stop.

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?