Doc

Yeah, it looks like an antler wound from rut activity. But it could be some of the other explanations also.

What .... is that wind out there howling again? Sure enough, that's ridiculous! Actually a little wind is a good thing for what I have planned today. Good cover for my stumbling, foot-dragging attempts at still-hunting ...ha-ha. Not quite as balanced and light on my feet as I used to be. So a little natural ruckus out there can actually be a good thing.

Shot just behind the shoulder (according to the OP) with the bullet or slug traveling diagonally through the body (According to the picture)? .... I think it's a safe bet that it didn't exactly pose a real challenging tracking job.

Shot behind the left shoulder and diagonally through the body and out the guts? It couldn't have been that difficult of a tracking job. In fact is likely that that is right where he dropped. I think there's a pretty good chance that it was intentionally left.

You know, there is another aspect to this lighting situation. The closer to absolute dark that you do your shooting, the harder it gets to find "first blood" when that becomes necessary. Some hits, the deer goes right down.....Great ... no problem. Some hits the deer goes a ways (sometimes a long ways) before any blood is dropped. Sometimes you are looking for specks of blood or even some sign of a track. Yes, hopefully the tracking job can be done by flashlight. But on the more difficult blood-trailing activities, a little bit of daylight left at the end of the day can make the difference between getting off to a good start on the blood trail vs. another lost deer.

Ha-ha-ha ..... They got me. Even though I already knew what was going to happen, I jumped when that critter lunged up. It was a funny reaction. Yes, it was pretty stupid of them to be standing in front when they had already remarked that the thing was still breathing. That's a good way to wind up with hoof-prints on your face or worse.

Actually my comments are not about shots fired 5 minutes early. What I was hearing Saturday morning was 1/2 hour and more before legal shooting time. Some of those shots you would have to admit were in the dark. That goes beyond legality and crosses over into the area of safety. My thought is that some of these people who whine about hunting start and stop times would have no problem with shooting deer at night if the right snow and moonlight conditions were to occur. There comes a time when you have to call that mentality just a pure poaching mindset. And either you believe in poaching or you don't. I don't.

Yes, that was Pro-cut. Lol .... I thought people here would find those pictures kind of interesting. You don't often get to see that many harvested deer all in one spot. No way I could have known that a couple of guys would take the opportunity to make complete jerks out of themselves over it. Lately it's been kind of hard to hold any kind of a conversation here without drawing out those kinds of people.

I don't think anyone is saying that blaze orange protects you from a bullet. There are no "fool-proof" items that will keep you safe. And by the same token, there is no way that anyone will convince me that the use of blaze orange doesn't cut down hunting fatalities and maiming. I for one am not solely trusting my safety on the fact that everyone has been told to guarantee their target and to consider the safety of conditions in front of and behind that target. We all know that safety training doesn't always take on everybody. That flash of orange may be the only thing that stops the trigger from being squeezed some day when I am in the wrong place at the wrong time? How do I know that it hasn't already happened?

It would be interesting to see the percentages of these incidents that happen on public land vs. private land. We might be surprised that public land is not as unsafe as some of the private parcels.

You can say that all you want, but we all know that there are people out there that don't. So it won't do victims much good to know that the guy that blew off their face didn't make sure of his target will it? My wearing blaze orange is not for the benefit of those that follow the rules. It is an act of self-preservation from those that don't. I don't care who's right or who's wrong. I just want to try to come out of the woods with no extra holes.

well, thank you .... lol. Frankly, I don't really get all exercised and excited about where or how butchering gets done by anybody as long as it does get done. I definitely don't use such trivial things as an excuse to malign other hunters.

Laws aren't worth a whole lot if they are impossible to enforce. That is why there has to be defined hunting times. So the DEC set the hours as being sunrise to sunset. That's a pretty handy standard that everyone has access to, that also keeps up with the changes throughout the season as the daylight changes. I don't have any problem with it. Can I actually see good enough to shoot outside of those times? .... Sure, but so what? Do I need to shoot outside those times? .... Not really.

Yeah, I get the same thing periodically. It comes and goes.

Well, when you start into your 50th year of it, you may have lost a bit of enthusiasm for it........ or not.

Ha-ha ... There, do you feel better now. Maybe now that you have had your shot at hunters, you get through the rest of your day. Hey, whatever it takes.

Ha-ha .... so it's a "manhood" thing with you guys. If that's what feeds your macho self image, butcher away. far be it for me to criticize anyone's quest to verify their gender ..... lol. This simple post of pictures that I thought would be kind of interesting to most hunters seems to have degenerated into the usual flame fodder from the usual sources. But anyway, I hope the rest of you found the pictures of some interest.

I'm thinking that even the truly die-hard "trophy hunters" are concerned with the actual quality of the rack such that they too will find optics useful.

So, I guess we are saying that abiding by laws is conditional on the size of the buck ..... lol. Filling an antlerless permit is done according to law, but if it happens to be a trophy, legality can be ignored. Interesting mindset.

I have heard about these high velocity bullets disintegrating when hitting saplings. That is an argument used when justifying rifles in a lot of the southern zone counties. The claim has been made by a Minnesota study that rifles are actually safer than shotguns because the rifle bullets do not hold together upon ricochet like slugs do. So, how much of a concern is that when the bullet hits some minor obstruction along the way? Is the bullet likely to come apart on contact before it gets to the target animal? Well sure, it sounds like a dumb question, but when some of these statements are made by some people educated in such things, it does make you wonder to what extend those comments are true. My questions about these things come from the fact that I am completely new at the rifle deer hunting thing, and I am concerned with just how paranoid I have to be about picking out a perfectly clear shooting lane.

These deals are really weird. Hunting is all about getting a specific animal in a very specific way. How do you pick a lethal kill spot on a deer if you can't even see enough of it to define it as a deer. I mean even if you completely disregard the safety aspects of that kind of goofy shooting, what kind of mentality thinks that just flinging lead at some unidentified thing will result in a harvested deer? It seems to me that there are a whole lot of things that were taught in the hunter-safety programs are being completely tossed out of the guy's head.

I always look for the areas that all the other hunters skirt around. You know, those thickets with the multiflora rose infestations, and the grape vines and sloppy wet swampy crap. They're in there. It's up to you to figure out how to sneak up on them ..... lol.

I'm thinking binoculars are the answer. Get a good pair and then you can check them out up close and personal.

It's the law isn't it? .... that the tag has to stay with the meat? I mean these guys have a fortune at stake if they were ever caught separating the two. And they are prime destinations for game cops and biologists gathering harvest data so I'm certain they don't take any chances with monkeying around re-distributing meat. And anyways, what benefit would it be for them to mix things up?

We all know that after the opener, hunters disappear .... the deer disappear .... and the woods can become a very lonely place. Now is the time to find out how sneaky you are. Can you find them? Can you get close enough to a bedded deer to get the shot? It is a real challenge now. You have to go into places where other hunters won't. But don't be hating gun season. And by the way, there is no better time to be scouting for next year's bow season. It's amazing how nicely those scrapes and rubs that you were walking by before, now stand out. Now about the original question of when deer will return to normal.... I will guarantee that the very week that all deer seasons end, there will be deer in my front yard pawing through the snow and chonking down on the grass in broad daylight. It's practically guaranteed. I am convinced that somebody has leaked a copy of the game laws to them so the know exactly when we will not be able to shoot them. But as long as there is even one gun-toting deer hunter wandering around out there, they will stick to their survival mode tactics and everyone will be talking about how all the deer have been killed.