Doc

No because you have not solved the problem at all by simply putting another inferior implement in the hands of someone who is unwilling to develop the skill to use it properly. Especially a weapon that is such a clunky, heavy, awkward, noisy, inaccurate p.o.s. that you guys have been trying to convince everyone that crossbows are. Don't be half-way in the convictions of your statements. Give the guy a gun and be done with it. That way he can just go out and point and shoot, and you have given the slacker the best opportunity for avoiding a wound.

Sounds a bit messy for just one apple to eat ...eh? It just that it is such a pain and it seems to take me forever. So I ask the wife to do it and sure enough she's faster than hell, but she winds up hacking half the apple away as throw-away. This thing looks super quick, but maybe if your only doing one apple, you pay for it in clean-up time.

I'm not sure about this way of doing things. My guess would be that it has to be firmed up into some kind of bill and be handled like any other law. But that would just be a guess. I doubt it could be handled like a King Andy decree, but then I've been fooled on that one before.

I'll be out looking this afternoon. I have to have one!

Where?

I want one! That is slick.

Blah, blah, blah you really don't have an answer when someone points out the fallacy of your reasoning. call it extremist if you want or whatever nonsensical irrelevant term but the fact is that if you want to follow that argument to its logical conclusion, I have just given you the perfect solution.

Then damn it, give that guy that wants instant gratification without the required effort a gun and be done with it.

I'll tell you what I always thought would be neat would be to hand build your own longbow and actually take a deer with it. That would be using hand knapped broadheads and homemade arrows. Now that would be going completely back to primitive weaponry. What a challenge, and what an accomplishment that would be. To me, that would be the absolute essence of hunting.

Pretty much, I am not all that happy about drone technology in civilian situations anyway ..... period. I really don't like this kind of 24/7 potential government surveillance of the population anyway. Call me paranoid, but it all smacks of Big-Brotherism (newly invented word .....lol). And now it is moving into the private commercial arena, and it really is only a matter of time before your neighbor can buzz one of these things up to your bedroom window. Using them for hunting never occurred to me until I read an article by an outdoor columnist in the local paper. It is a subject that probably needs some public awareness .... hence this thread.

I couldn't make out what was in the drill that would keep the apple from slipping. Anybody catch what was keeping the drill bit from just rotating without spinning the apple?

Interesting links ..... lol. It seems like we are almost back at the old Allen compound level of development when it comes to crossbows. The floodgates of technology are just now starting to open. It appears that we will be seeing just how many new inventions can be based off the basic crossbow platform. Perhaps we have just let the genie out of the bottle. You have to admire that good old Yankee ingenuity......lol

So now all they have to do is come up with drones that have their own on-board weapons systems. Ha-ha .... I'll tell you if you can imagine it, someone will build it. It reminds me of that internet hunting scheme. There is no limit as to how far people will push to get a technological edge when it comes to hunting.

http://www.stuyvesantoutdoor.com/ http://www.lsguideservice.com/ http://www.biggamehuntingny.com/ http://www.huntingtripsrus.com/whitetail-deer-hunting/new-york.html http://www.oakridgelodge.net/ http://www.abenakioutfitters.com/dcamp.html http://www.huntguide.com/grandisland.html http://www.endlesshills.com/ Ok, you get the idea. A simple Google search turned up pages and pages of them.

Well, perhaps a tin foil hat might help protect your head while it is stuck in the sand. While you are trying to play the role of the lone voice of sanity, the animal rights people have already shown that such activity is not only feasible, but is in use. http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/10/01/animal-activists-using-drones-for-aerial-surveillance/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2013/apr/16/animal-rights-activists-will-use-airborne-drones-s/ http://thetandd.com/animal-rights-group-says-drone-shot-down/article_017a720a-56ce-11e1-afc4-001871e3ce6c.html And also, there are some other states that are taking the threat quite seriously and acting preemptively: http://clevelandaerialmedia.com/blogs/news/13144969-eyes-in-the-air-states-move-to-ban-drone-assisted-hunting

Think about this..... A NYS guide service might find it very well worth his couple thousand bucks to be able to advertise guaranteed hunts, maybe even using public lands where he may be the only one there with his own personal "eye in the sky".

It may be a bit hard for you to understand, but when a person comes off like a raving fool, it becomes obvious that they are not interested in becoming either educated or informed. At that point it is obvious that such attempts are simply a waste of breath and time. You may not have noticed, but this thread has already moved around you. Discussions have moved to being between reasonable people. Sorry, but I just have to tell you like it is. You are already becoming irrelevant within your own thread.

I was introduced to archery with a very well made carved hickory longbow that I made with my own hands at the age of 11. It downed it's first game up in the loft of our barn with the harvest of 4 pigeons (which I cleaned and ate).....lol. Then came the 50# fiberglass Ben Pearson recurve that shot the arrow off my knuckle (Fred Bear style). Spent a lot of time picking pieces of feather out of my knuckle .... ha-ha. From there it was a parade of bows from Ben Pearson, Bear, Wing, and Hoyt. I actually got quite good and took several deer when that was really still a fairly rare event. But then I started to get into competition, and tight consistent accuracy became the goal. Unlike hunting where good shooting was being able to hit the "heart lung area", the only acceptable results became target spots. Of course I quickly got sucked into compounds. The cedar arrows were sent to the corner and were replaced by some of the best aluminum arrows that Easton produced. The shop drawers stared filling up with gadget after gizmo that would each improve accuracy. Money flowed like water when it came to archery equipment and accessories. Today I have a wall full of compounds to go with all those recurves (looks like an archery pro-shop), All wrapped up in plastic except for the Mathews that I use currently. Gun-wise, my first deer hunting gun was an old bent-barreled 20 gauge bolt action. I even took a deer with that thing after I learned where I had to aim in order to get a slug where I wanted it to go. Then came the brand new Ithaca Deer-slayer. Just the name alone told me this was the deer getting gun that I needed. And that old 12 gauge certainly lived up to it's name. Yes there were other guns bought for small game but that old Ithaca has been the go-to deer gun for many decades. Last season, when Ontario County opened up for rifles I finally got a rifle to do the job. By the way, I never did get into muzzleloaders.

I was at one of the "state of the herd" DEC meetings a couple years back and overheard a couple of DEC employees having a conversation about bow hunters. I'm not sure how wide spread the attitude is in the DEC, but these guys were basically saying that bowhunters are a bunch of buck-shooters. They were saying that we are basically ineffective at population control and that we occupy a large part of the best time for deer hunting in what they considered a "waste" of valuable deer harvest time. That may explain their desire to see more effective weapons used during that time. Perhaps that is why it is bow season that is continually chosen for the inclusions of these "more effective" weapons. I don't know, but I just offer this as a possible explanation as to why the DEC always seems to be the willing accomplice when it comes to these kinds of matters.

Yes, as an official DEC tool for management probably not a problem. But as I have been led to believe, these things are not regulated from a private or hunting use. As a matter of fact, an early version of this technology was used by an anti-hunting organization taking pictures of participants in a private dove shooting activity as a means of harassment. So, it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to see how this could be successfully used in a hunting scenario. Yes, technology advances do seem to pose all kinds of new challenges. I suspect that this issue will eventually have to be addressed.

So, with the advent of the acceptance of drones into civilian air space, and the down-sizing of cost that will surely happen as they begin to find their way into more and more civilian uses, what do you guys think of their potential uses for hunting? Would you find it acceptable for hunting parties to have a "live eye in the sky" for scouting and hunting deer? Does this thought pose any ethical concerns as regards the principles of "fair chase"?

I hope you other bowhunters are paying as much attention to this guy as I am. Understand that he is really putting to words what a whole lot of gun hunters actually think. He is not alone in all this kind of crazy talk. The hatred of bowhunters is not isolated to this one guy. I hear more and more of it from more and more gun hunters. Also, understand that we bowhunters are in the tiny minority, and really don't have the luxury of simply casting off this kind of aggressive attitude as simply the ravings of the ignorant and uninformed. This guy and the venom he is spewing is shared by more people than we want to think. So while the initial inclination is to simply write him off as a jerk, take a minute or two to listen to the fact that there is a growing rift between bow hunters and gun hunters. Never mind that it sounds like the ravings of ignorance, and pay attention to the fact that bowhunting is under attack like we have never experienced before. It's not just the animal rights crowd anymore. It is the jealous feelings that many gun hunters are starting to feel over the season lengths, and timing. It is the growing success rates that we are enjoying. You are seeing words like "elite", and complaints about what is perceived as preferential treatments. Yes, this guy sounds like a wacko, but don't let his senseless ravings hide the fact that there really is an aggressive divide developing between gun hunters and bow hunters. Don't ask me what we should be doing about it, but the first thing that needs to happen is to understand that it is happening.

You know if crossbows were such a clumsy, noisy, awkward, heavy, inaccurate p.o.s. that you guys keep trying to convince us of, one has to wonder why you would even want to use one ..... lol.

That pretty much says it all. Those that were interested in preserving bow season for bows, did our thing and put up a hell of a fight. But as one might expect, bowhunters being in the very small minority in the hunting community, we eventually lost out. Just as our predecessors who worried about the precedents being set by the compound lost out to those who wanted to erase challenge from the bow season, history repeated itself. It's a story that will continue to be played out over and over. So now is the time to back off and accept the fact that things pretty much went as we should have expected them to. There really is nothing to be gained by carrying on the fighting and arguing because that will not change a thing. Now we just make the best of a bad situation and brace against the next onslaught when someone gets another brain-fart and wants to jam something else new into bow season (look for muzzle-loaders next). Our season has been jealously eyeballed by many ever since it was first implemented. And sure as hell there will be another time when people will be using the insertion of crossbows as leverage and precedent for adding whatever comes next. It is really "too little, too late" for the crossbow takeover debate. It really is a done-deal. Now it is time to start worrying about the next incursion that the crossbows have enabled.

I guess that's what they make bipods, and rangefinders for.