Doc

A couple of years back I put down a buck that I believe may have had his difficulties begin with a severe goring from a fight. My theory is that he was badly injured by a fight and then had further severe injuries added by a predator of some sort that left him laid up. It is my opinion that he would not have made in very far into winter, injured the way he was. Here is the part where I think some predator took over: That area of torn up meat around the back end is not the result of a botched gutting job....lol. That is the way he was when I shot him. But there are other wounds along his body that were definite puncture wounds.

What an amazing video! What an amazing hunt! Unbelievable. I wonder just how many of these deer-on-deer homicides take place each year....lol. Around here just a prolonged fight like that would take an awful lot out of a deer even if they both wound up walking away. With an impending winter coming up, that would have to make the survival of both deer questionable. Anyway, it made for one exciting video. I do wish the guy could have held that camera a little more steady, but with the excitement level, a little loss of camera control is certainly understandable....lol.

So, what is with that layer of ice across the top of the ground. The darned stuff is about an inch thick and harder than a bullet. I've never seen that sort of thing before. It's not everywhere, but anyplace even on a slight grade you are going down if you step on it, And when you put it on a steep hillside, there's no getting past it unless you detour around it. Anybody else have that on the ground or it that just a local thing here? And that stupid crust on the snow up on the hill has effectively shut that whole area off to wildlife. In our area, little weird things like this stuff at this later part of winter is starting to concentrate deer and other things down in the valley bottoms, and may turn out to be very tough on the critters. That snow crust and those areas of hard ice do not seem to be going away.

Lol .... I could have done that down here in the valley where the snow is just about gone.

Yeah, people are always telling me to go take a hike, so today that's what I did. I haven't been up on the hill in long time so I figured I would climb ol' Cardiac Hill, and see what's happening up there. Big mistake! There's hardly any snow down here in the valley, but as I kept going higher and higher, the snow kept getting deeper and deeper. First about 1/4 of the way up, I ran into ice. Hard thick and very smooth ice that had me down about 1/2 dozen times. Then thankfully there was enough snow on top of the ice so that I could climb the hill without falling on my face. Then the snow kept getting deeper and deeper, plus it had a crust that would support me until my full weight got on it and then break down with a spine shattering crash. By the way the noise that all this crunching made never once threatened to allow me to ever catch sight of any critters. It didn't matter anyway because the only critter dumb enough to go up there was me. I should have guessed that it wasn't going to get any better because there wasn't a single deer track above the half way up point. Well, I made it up to the top, but I can't for the life of me figure out exactly what I accomplished.

Hell, I've got enough "ripping" to go around, and there is never a situation where I will not take the opportunity to "rip" at the NYS sportsman's number one enemy..... Cuomo. He never gets a free pass from me regardless of what other issues may be present about this article. Is it first class journalism? ..... probably not. But,I suppose it may be a lot more info than the Governor and his lackey intended for public consumption since the press was barred from the meeting. I would like to know the purpose of that decision by the way. My feeling is that the Governor is out fishing for allies that he considers to be the movers and shakers of hunting politics. And of course why have a bought-and-paid-for DEC Commissioner if you don't use him for your political activities. No matter what was going on, you can rest assured that the Governor was looking for some political leverage out of it. My comment was just to point out that Martens is merely a Cuomo mouthpiece and that in all likelihood there was political motivation behind this meeting that was orchestrated by Martens' boss ..... Andy. Don't be looking to make anything more of it than that. This is election year, and Cuomo is a master politician. His every waking move is based on re-election at any cost. Oh and by the way, those that may be getting tired of me ripping on that piece of filth, Cuomo, should probably get used to it. I will not be letting up until he is replaced. And actually, I do not understand any gun owner who wishes to or even suggests that we should tread lightly on Andy's contempt for the 2nd Amendment. In my mind, the campaign against Cuomo is in full swing ..... right now!

Take a walk on just about any parcel of state land. You will be amazed at the plastic water bottles, zip-lock sandwich bags, candy wrappers, cans, and other forms of junk that people just tossed on the ground. Another type of trash that I can almost guarantee that I will find are these damned party balloons that people turn loose by the jillions. Apparently people assume that because they eventually go out of sight that they disappear and never come down.

Ok, It's real nice that the DEC Commissioner wants to hear from sportsmen, but the fact is that the Commissioner is a tool of the Governor. He is an appointee that serves at the pleasure of Cuomo, so asking for sportsmen's input on dictates of the Governor seems kind of like window-dressing only for the benefit of P.R. What exactly does anyone think might come of this that would be beneficial to the outdoor men and women. It is show-time!

Damn! That brings back childhood memories of when we used to head out to the feeder creeks of Canandaigua Lake. My Dad, Uncle, Cousin and myself. We filled buckets with smelt. We had about 8 different places we would go where cottagers left the creeks open for smelters. You can't do that anymore. Those places have long since been posted up and shut off to access. Probably the fault of the fishermen themselves. People can be such pigs.

I just wrote that down so I don't forget to tell my wife that idea. It really sounds good!

Every law is backed up with the promise of eventual force (violence) somewhere along the chain of reactions if not obeyed. Our entire society is built on that precept. If you act in a lawless fashion, somewhere along the legal reactions, someone will visit violence on you to force you to comply, or to take you out of society where you will be controlled. It's not a wonderful thought when you live in a society that celebrates independence and personal freedoms, but it is a fact of civilized living within the organization of a society. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see where life would be if there was no threat of violent reaction to law breaking. All it takes is a 5 minute glance at the local news to understand that there are people in our society that need control and that control often requires some level of violent response to have any effect at all.

Not only am I going to take more pictures, but I will be coming back to prune that little guy up a bit and pull those vines out of it. It looks very healthy, but it is being buried alive with vines. I think the deer will appreciate a little care for this food source.

And such a beautiful looking face on them too ..... lol. Actually, every body of water in the area that would typically hold bullheads are still frozen over tight. But I'm glad for this reminder thread. I have a way of always missing the best parts of the bullhead run. Not this year though .... I will be paying attention this time. Best bait? .... Pollywogs (no legs even started to satisfy the law) if you can find them. What bait do you guys use?

Lol .... Thank Heavens. I am quite addicted to the stuff, and am also mildly diabetic as well.

Well, I thought I was done with this thread, believing that the majority opinion was that your pictures were those of a persimmon tree. That was the case until I ran into a tree yesterday that was exactly the same as the one you have in your pictures. Check these pictures out: So, I got back to the house all excited that I had found a rare persimmon tree, and got on the net. Well actually I found that these are not persimmons at all. Not even close. The fruit is not close in size, shape, or stem configuration. In fact persimmons don't have a stem at all but rather a collar of leaf shaped features that attach directly to the tree. Check out the following picture: There all kinds of varieties of persimmons, but wild or domestic, they all have those same features. I also checked to see if these were left-over apples on a thornapple tree, but there were no thorns, and the bark, tree shape and size were not that of a thornapple. So after looking at a whole bunch of wild crabapple trees (there are over 700 varieties), I decided that it is indeed a wild crabapple. This year there has been a crazy phenomenon that I have never seen before, where some of the regular apple trees held onto the apples and refused to drop. They then froze on these trees, and even now are still hanging frozen and rotten on the trees. Apparently the same thing happened on some of these wild crabapple trees. Do not pay a lot of attention to the color, I looked at some domestic apples that are still hanging frozen on the trees and they are the same color, so apparently freezing and rotting cause them to take on that orange color. Anyway I thought it was strange that we just had a thread about these things, and I go out and run smack dab into the very same thing......lol.

Check out Stark Brothers at http://www.starkbros.com/ as a good source of mail order trees. As far as local retail outlets, that would depend on what part of southern New York you're talking about. Most of those probably will not be known to anyone other than those that live in your area. Be sure to check the growing zones recommended for your area. Some of the varieties sold are for more southern states.

Now come-on, there has to be something in that stuff that is terribly bad for you isn't there? Isn't it a scientific fact that everything that tastes good is bad for you? I once heard of a doctor saying that if it tastes good .... Spit it out!

Sure, I stuffed a ton of it in me ..... burp! By the way, the air quality in our house is a bit on the offensive side ever since. That cabbage can have real nasty effects.

There is no doubt in my mind that doctors play the game to dig as much money out of the system as possible. I know that excess appointments are made over every little malady that someone may have. Often I push back against this kind of excessive attention but I'm afraid that most people do not. But doctors have some other accomplices that may often force them to over-medicate and over-test and over-examine. There is the court system which has forced doctors to be able to show that they have gone overboard in patient care so that they escape legal actions when normal health problems go bad. I tell you, there is enough blame to go around when it comes to health care costs. You have the pharmaceutical corporations that want to recoup research investments in the first 6 months on the market. You have hypochondriac patients who have never heard of a disease or affliction that they don't claim to have. And everyone wants the most expensive medical procedures for everything from a hangnail to the sniffles. You have researchers who are constantly coming up with new inventions and procedures of heroic proportions that cost more money than anyone can afford. Of course everyone feels entitled to all of it. Replace this, replace that, it can be done and money be damned, I demand it! There is enough blame to go around including that guy in the mirror. Yes, medical science is a wonderful thing isn't it? We keep adding years onto life expectancies. Heck, they can now keep you alive a lot longer than you even want. The money flows freely in the business of medicine. Sure it cost money to perform miracles, but then maybe we should not be whining quite so much about it all if it is that important to us.

Here's a cartoonist who nailed it when it comes to healthcare costs .... lol.

I think you are right!

Brings back a lot of great memories ...... lol.

So, what are we saying .... that this news story about sending out warning letters to assault rifle owners is totally B.S.? I think so. How can they send letters out to people they can't identify? So perhaps we should regard this story as a fabrication, because I really can't see anyway that the CT state government could do what they are claiming.

Some of this stuff really comes off as comical. I look at my wall full of bows that I have accumulated over the decades, and am still reminded that more deer were taken with that old 196? Bear Whitetail than any of the other super-expensive bows hanging there. Of course I did keep that one in use longer than any of the others. Remember that old 6-wheeler that had the epoxy limbs that you could use as a crowbar if you had to. Amazing how even that old slow clunky bow would send an arrow through a deer just like my fancy expensive Mathews does today. I suppose that if I hadn't have gotten involved in tournament shooting I probably would still be killing deer with that old thing. But I eventually got caught up in that trap of trying to "buy" accuracy....lol. I certainly have slowed down on that attitude lately.