Doc

So sorry to hear about the fire. It is a scary thing. I know that I am of the age and retired, and don't think I would ever get back to normal if we had a fire. I always thought that it would be worth the time and effort to take a walk through the house and take a video of each room and the contents. That's the thought......Now all I have to do is to actually do it.

I believe you have me confused with someone else when you say that I was ever against any AR style gun. My biggest problem with them is I can't afford one. I never bought any semi auto gun for the same reason. And of course the only real difference between an AR style rifle and any semi auto rifle is that the AR's are black and nasty looking. Is that how you form your opinion about what guns should be available and what guns make you a killer? Does the color of the AR's frighten you? Do you label people as being "nut jobs" because of the way they enjoy using their gun. Are you really that judgmental? Do you hate all gun owners who are not hunters? Do you have something against them? I know people who belong to gun clubs and only shoot competition. Does that make them "nut jobs" too. I find it interesting how emotional some of you people get over the color and fashion of a gun and the people who own and enjoy them. Try using a little logic instead of trembling and cringing over the color and style of a firearm for a change and then your arguments may actually worth listening to. Oh and by the way, if the laws on gun and ammo sales bothers you so much, understand that those worthless and ineffective laws were passed by people with the same illogical, emotional, paranoia and arguments and biases that you have shown here.

Alright......This page explains the theory of the range-finding capabilities of this sight: https://ezvsight.com/about/stadiametric-distance-ranging-how-it-works/ They show a 13-1/2" area on a deer that supposedly represents the vital zone. This is what is supposed to be aligned with the stadia marks. My question is, what are the physical features on a real deer that define this exact kill zone? I'm sure I must be mis-reading something here, but honestly, I just don't understand it.

I guess I am a bit thick-headed, but I do not understand the system. I know they talked about the 13-1/2" vital zone that they use as the width that is to be aligned somehow on the deer that apparently is always standing at right angles to the hunter, but what features on the deer identify the 13-1/2 inches? I saw where the transparent deer had some lungs to align the tick marks on the "V" contour, but I have never seen on a real deer any features that are visible that are exactly 13-1/2 inches apart. Can somebody explain to me what it is that I am not catching on to here? What is it that's going completely over my head?

Was he excited or what.......lol Not that I blame him. What are the odds that he would get that exact timing. The one thing that I noticed was the was the moose shook his whole body to get them off. It was so fast and violent that it almost looked like he was having a fit or something. It made me wonder if deer shake their whole body like that to shed their antlers. Has anyone watched or seen a video of a whitetail shedding its antlers. I always assumed that they were rubbed off on trees or came off accidentally when the bond to the pedicles loosened adequately. I never considered that it was possible that they might go into a full-body shake like that moose did.

The dreaded AR style rifles are simply a black version of any other semi-auto rifle that thousands of sportsmen use throughout U.S. hunting seasons. Don't let the color and shape of a rifle encourage you to be an enemy of those who would stand up for any of the dwindling rights that we still have left. There is no need to cower or cringe whenever someone shows an interest in protecting our rights. Save your fears for those who would happily take them away.

Hunting must have been some pretty serious business back in the old days. Most of these guys never cracked a smile in these pictures.

What's the current price on gray foxes?

From what I have seen of this winter so far here in Western New York, there really is no need to feed the deer. They can still graze if the wish to. I wonder how much longer this mild winter is going to be around.

Back when I was a kid, (late 40's thru early 60's) there was no such thing as coyotes in the Finger Lakes Area of New York state. The fact is I never recall any serious discussion of coyotes anywhere in New York State. It just was not an issue or subject of discussion. Even in my trapping days there was never any discussion about trapping them or having them messing with any of our sets. Now today they are all over the place. How does something like that happen? Does anyone have an authoritative reason for this change?

Another major change that has taken place is the role of the animal rights wackos. Yeah, I know we all made fun of them and they often seemed to be shooting themselves in the foot, they constantly looked like ridiculous fools that nobody ever thought would gain a foothold. But now with a few decades of history behind us, we see anti-hunting and anti-trapping and even in some cases anti-fishing attitudes all around us. The Hollywood crowd with their bags of money have bank-rolled these weirdos to the point where the movement is very real. Listen to what the kids today are parroting back to us from their teachers. We never knew what kind of success they were having until we started hearing it from the kids that our public schools are cranking out.

I was trying to think of when it was that hunting became an agricultural activity. At some point hunters decided that it wasn't enough to hunt deer that are kind of reacting in ways that nature intended them to. We learned that we could change their habits and patterns with food. It was kind of like baiting only legal......lol. In our search for ways to condition the deer to be easier to harvest, we stumbled on to "food plots". I figure that when we decided to change deer behavior to more predictable patterns, we probably began to think of hunting as deer manipulation. The only problem is that as hard as the concept was being sold TV, magazines, and actual seminars, it was only available to landowners who had a significant amount of land, and the finances to afford tractors and implements and such. This meant that hunters started to think that the only way to success (defined now by "scores") was to get into this idea and practice of deer feed agriculture. When I first got into hunting, the way to success (as we defined it) was to have a gun that could be counted on, and two good feet and patience, and an expectation that was not all that high to call success. After that, the school of hard knocks was the way you advanced your skills. Not so much what you could afford in tractors and land and seed. Somewhere along the line, hunting goals became redirected toward how much money can we throw at it to buy our success. Could it be that this too has discouraged a lot of potential hunters? Perhaps this is just one more change that has entered into our hunting that has taken a bit of the luster off the activity?

Sometimes I have to wonder if some of these changes in hunting goals and styles aren't "part of" the reason that hunter populations are waning. It seems to me that hunting used to be a whole lot more fun before we started hunting for scores and judging our success by the numbers. It also seems that today hunting is becoming more of an agricultural endeavor. I see guys buying tractors and implements in the thousands of dollar all to get a deer that satisfies the numbers and measurements that they now setting as a deal-breaker in their hunting enjoyment. I don't know...... the numbers that seem to be creeping into hunting now seem to be the declining hunter population. It makes you wonder.

Anybody here remember back when posted signs were relatively rare? I recall that back in the early 60's you could walk miles before running into any posted signs. Much of the land was still farmed, and the farmers didn't have a lot of time or resources to be walking their perimeter nailing up posted signs.....So they didn't.

Yesterday, I saw 3 degrees as the lowest. The wind was absolutely absurd. I expected to see trees going down. Just had the hill logged so I don't expect any problems up there. Snow looks to be something less than 1", but most of that blew away into the woods somewhere. Next spring there will be massive twig and branch pick-up in the yard. Location: northern 8N

It would probably be amusing to ask that question of the DEC and then call the local state police barracks, and see how the answers vary. Most likely if you called two different DEC offices you would probably get two different answers. NYS has scrambled up gun laws so bad I doubt if there is a single point source that understands them.

If I am trying to check out the gun or the scope, I use a bench, sand bags and take as much of my personal inaccuracies out of things as I can. If I want to see how shaky and wobbly I can be, I shoot off-hand.

I hunt from the ground 100% now (fear of heights). But one thing I do remember is how slick tree steps and stand platforms can get with just a little snow. Be sure to harness up snow or no-snow.

Interesting that there was no response to this reply. Musk is the messenger that all the libs want to shoot.

Or it might be that you are trying to draw a connection where none exists.

Check with your local County Extension Office, and they should have a lot of info on these kinds of infestation and the expected results that they may have on your forests. There may be some temporary bad news, but the long-term results may not be as scary as what you might imagine.

This has been a very depressing topic. So many of you putting into words the thoughts that have been running through my mind for quite a while. I'll be 79 in less than a month. Just about 63 years of hunting. Damn, I have seen all kinds of changes in hunting. I have also seen hunting partners leaving the ranks with the few that back-fill lasting only a few years. I have watched a time when opening day of deer season was an excused absence from high school to today where we rely on special youth seasons to try to pry their fingers of the electronic gadgets, and even that has limited or very temporary success. It is a losing battle. The sport is constantly under attack and our adversaries are winning. I am still hanging on to an activity and attitudes that have had top priority almost all my life, but I too have seen so many of my friends and acquaintances drop out without replacements. This core activity that so much of my life has been defined by is losing all significance in what this world is becoming. That is a sad thing, and this topic merely adds credence to the thoughts that have run through my mind in recent years. But as has already been mentioned, change happens. That is just a fact of life.

I believe that there are areas where hunters can no longer control deer populations. And if hunting continues to decline, that situation may eventually spread across the state.

Maybe it has more to do with people taking a more in-depth look at the shortcomings of electric vehicles than anything happening over at Twitter.

I had stick-built treestands even back in the 60's, eventually "graduating" to the old Baker climbing treestands. But somewhere along the line (about the mid 80's), I started getting a fear of heights, and have been a ground hunter ever since. Yeah, when I started (early 60's) there were no videos or TV programs telling you how you HAD to hunt. We all learned from our elders or one of the hunting magazines. A lot of the methods were by trial and error. And of course there were the B.S. sessions around the coffee pot at work. It all seemed so much more exciting before we all became educated and scientific about it all. Heck, it was years before I even knew what "scoring a buck" was all about. Didn't know.....didn't care. Counted points and that was good enough.