Doc

Well, as they say, if I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself. I know I don't hold any records here, but damn ...... 70 years old? That's disgusting, but I guess it beats the alternatives ..... lol. I'm still upright and able to climb that killer hill out back and draw that old Matthews and drag out two more deer. Who can ask for more. Anyway .... Thanks all for the good thoughts.

Yup. I don't recall them being quite that aggressive un the face, and I thought they were more flat-faced but that was a lot of years ago that I last saw any of them. Anyway, they were the same theory of operation. That price looks kind of reasonable by today's standards.

Damn, You're right! those are John Deere arrows. Purdee!

Absotively dericulous!

Yes that is why I added the disclaimer that my observations are very local and that others may not have the same observations. But what I described was not just this year alone. It has been a trend that I have been noting for several years, and have heard other people from other areas commenting on as well.

The DEC is emphatically and publicly behind the use of the crossbow in all seasons. They also were championing the early muzzleloader season, and I am convinced that if they thought for a minute that they could get away with it, they would come out in favor of extending other guns into bow season as well. In fact, aside from the extra revenue that they get for the special licensing, they probably regret that any part of the hunting season has to be given up to the bowhunters. Apparently this is not one of the areas that they have the ability to arbitrarily change the law since it is obviously a political action that is determined by legislature.

You couldn't pay me enough to open up my land to the general public. I'm not sure how great financial incentives are anyway. Anyone who could be influenced that way is probably already collecting a hole lot more cash from leases. Paying all of the taxes and still having beer money left over. Unless it was guaranteed to work, I probably wouldn't really like my tax money used that way anyway.

Hey, speaking of "wack 'em and stack 'em" philosophy, I see old Teddy Nugent is getting ready to start a new season. No that has nothing to do with the topic, but I thought it might be a nice change of pace. After 23 pages, this thread is getting a bit redundant and stale.

20 years?? I'm thinking that probably isn't all that bad. Snow blowers may not see a lot of hours of use, but they do see some very abusive conditions sometimes depending on the consistency of the snow.

The statement has been made over and over that here are no known cases of CWD tainted venison effecting humans. However that is a long way from any statement that claims that it has been proven to be harmless to humans. Yeah, I would be a little nervous about consuming venison from a know CWD zone until these safety proclamations become just a little more positive.

So, now that the DEC has decided that they are the only ones qualified to effectively take out the feral hogs, has anybody heard how many of them they have eliminated yet? Just curious as to how the "experts" are doing ..... or IF they are doing ..... lol.

No matter what gun I buy these days, I always make sure that it is not a pain to shoot. All my guns see a lot of practice hours an I don't just go out to shot a 3-shot group like I used to do with that old 12 gauge shoulder mangler. I think that is kind of important to be able to enjoy putting some shots through any rifle that I own. Feeling comfortable with it and enjoying shooting it will bring home more game than going for a caliber that will kill the game many times over.

I haven't peeked outside yet, but I don't believe we were supposed to get all that much accumulation here in Ontario County. I might be surprised though. How do things look over by you Bill?

I thought they would be. They were real popular and did a heck of a job on rabbits and squirrels.

They're almost too pretty to use .... lol. Nice job.

There used to be a small-game head that was a big hard rubber blunt. Do they still sell those?

You cannot force people to buy licenses to hunt. You cannot force them to go out. You cannot force landowners to open their land to other hunters. And, the way that gun rights have come under attack, it may also wind up that you can't force people to buy illegal guns and ammunition to hunt with .... lol. That thought may be what is looming large in the minds of the DEC who seems almost panicky in coming up with new ways to increase deer takes. Perhaps they see what is happening and are trying to make a smaller force take more deer. Back to the original topic, one other direction that I have noticed hunting going is in terms of participation. By that I mean people buying licenses but not putting in the hours that they used to. And this may be strictly a local observation, but I have noticed a little flurry of shooting on opening morning (mostly before legal shooting hours) and then very sporadic activity after that. The same thing on the first Sunday and then we slide into a condition that makes you wonder if there really is a season going on. That's not the way I remember it sounding a bunch of decades ago. My theory (and I always have a theory .... lol), is that advances in clothing warmth have allowed the bulk of hunters to simply sit all day. The deer are driven into hiding by that initial push as hunters enter the woods (bang-bang-bang-bang), and then both the hunters and the deer spend the rest of the day sitting. We used to have a whole woods full of hunters who had frozen fingers and feet by 9:00 am and had to begin walking, keeping deer on their feet too. The days after opening day were used by the big drivers which also got deer up and moving.

This has been one of the best threads that we have had here in a long time. The huge variety of viewpoints in our assessments of the future of hunting seems to cover a whole lot of ground. What is important to one doesn't mean a thing to others. But the thing is that there is a certain line of truth in each of the opinions. At least we don't have a lot of people here that are simply slapping on the blinders and saying all is well in the world of hunting.

I don't think that private high fences are illegal. At least not that I have ever heard or seen that written anywhere. I also don't think that these TV shows are effecting only young new-comers to hunting. I think that a lot of the AR demands are being fueled by the assumption that AR will create hunting conditions similar to what is shown on TV. Of course that is all B.S., but that does not stop a lot of people from fantasizing....lol. Yes, I believe that expectations are unreasonably elevated by these phony-baloney hunting programs and may be influential in driving management policy some day.

One problem is that as the hunting world shrinks (hunting access), individual choices are altered. The other thing is that as the hunter densities concentrate on less and less land, the quality of the hunt begins to deteriorate. We may be able to duck and dodge some of that right now, but there is no doubt that there will come a day when we can no longer escape the inevitable.

And one of the problems with that is that a lot of hunters are adapting by finding other pastimes. And that is an accelerating trend that is not likely to reverse.

It's funny, in my lifetime, I have seen hunting access go from "no problem" to a fierce struggle to get even marginal hunting land. When I was a kid, I would take off in the morning on a hike, and walk miles down the valley and never encounter a single posted sign. Nobody really bothered to get permission because none of the landowners wanted to be bothered with such trivialities. The land parcels were huge, and non agricultural lands were considered excess land open to anyone who could find a use for it. And then the family farms started to disappear with farmers breaking up the land as their version of a retirement fund. That has continued with each parcel being divided and subdivided over and over again. Little vacation homes began to fill the valley. Vacation homes turned to permanent residences as automobiles and road and road maintenance improved and made commuting to the cities more practical. Along with these new landowners came the posted signs. Favored hunting lands disappeared behind the signs. Formerly vacant state lands began to get packed with hunters that formerly were dispersed over the open private lands. Non hunting uses on those state lands have increased to a ridiculous condition. Is this a trend that will ever be reversed? ..... Absolutely not! Even some of the larger hunting parcels will eventually yield to the high demand and will be sub-divided. Even some of the huge leases will eventually be subdivided and sold leaving state land as the only real viable place to hunt for the average guy. And there will become a time when that won't even be adequate to hold the additional new hunters forced off the private lands. Yeah, it's not fun to be Mister doom and gloom, but how the heck can anyone really see it any different. from a strictly selfish standpoint, I can probably say that my days left probably will never see the complete demise of hunting for average people of average income. But the eventual situation is really quite clear and no real trick to predict.

Hunting is moving toward the science of animal husbandry. It is becoming an agricultural enterprise where we do our best to convert a basically wild animal into some kind of hand-raised foolish species that is fed, genetically managed, and trained to make itself more accessible to what we now call hunting. We are constantly striving to eliminate as much challenge as possible from our hunting. Everything now stresses the ability to create, modify, and manipulate the animal to make them easier prey. We are moving "hunting" towards game preserve conditions whether those preserves are someone else's commercial enterprise or something that we individually create for our own use. Motives, goals, methods and mentality involved in hunting has changed dramatically as we continue to evolve the activity into something that has lost the best parts of tradition and personal challenge. It is a shame because the activity that has dominated so much of my life is morphing into something that doesn't even resemble anything that I would have been remotely interested in years ago when I first got involved with hunting. I have always hunted the deer as I found them without any attempts at changing them for the convenience of my success. Personal challenge and self reliance and individual accomplishment used to be the goals. I'm not real sure just what it is all about today. It seems to be a hunter-versus-hunter competition to grow the most and best deer to shoot. I have to wonder what it will all look like 25 or 50 years from now. That's a scary thought.

Aliens. Never leave those kinds of things in high places that are exposed to the sky. And the worst part is that you broke the jar and set them free.

Arrow Flinger- This is a topic that deserves its own thread, if you feel like constructing one. I happen to completely agree with almost all of this.