Doc

I guess I am fortunate enough to still afford some real beef and pork steaks and roasts when I want meat, and don't have to rely of wild game for survival. So the only motivation I have for hunting is to measure my abilities against a deer's abilities. Not some guy's manufactured product against the deer. That all is just another way of saying, "I need the challenge if I am going to hunt". That is what made me get into hunting in the first place. How far am I willing to retreat on that challenge....well that is where the question really lies. It is a tough balance. At 81, I'm not going to lay out on an overhanging limb with a knife clenched in my teeth waiting to drop down on the back of a deer. But I do draw some lines on what I will do to get the job done. I was just curious as to what kinds of limits people put on their hunting to satisfy their version of "fair chase". But I know we all hunt for different reasons, and that is why I posed this question. There really is no right or wrong answer. We all do what we want, the way we want to do it and that is the way it all should go.

Well I have a problem that I have never experienced before in the 49 years that I have lived here. The snow has come in such small but frequent amounts that I just kept driving over it. No need to plow out an inch or two. Well, what happens when you do that week after week, and the temperatures stay cold is that there gets to be a build-up of ice. I would say that there is about 4 or 5 inches of nice shiny ice. Unfortunately the driveway is about 1000' long so the amount of salt required to melt that much ice is way out of my budget. And you cant plow ice. I'm hoping for more snow on top of the ice so I can drive in and out. It's an interesting problem with no significant melting in sight.

In the original post, I emphasized the fact that the deer absolutely could not resist the product. Sure this is all theoretical. At least at the present time it is. But the question gets more at the importance of challenge in your deer hunting. More and more each year we scheme and plan different ways of erasing as much challenge as possible from our deer hunting. It almost seems like we would condition or train the deer to come to our shooting spot, we would do it. I am just curious as to whether you all have limits based on a code of fair chase that place self-limits as to how far you are willing to let science and technology do the hunting for you. How much of my hunting success am I willing to hand over to some nerd in a lab coat or sitting at a design computer? It's a question I that always seem to be wrestling with whether it is a choice of some new super-duper weapon or some new chemical attractant that someone has put on the market. I know that I have pushed that limit around a lot farther than I wish I had over the years. I often wonder where the line is for me.

Let's say some chemist in a lab somewhere came up with a product that deer absolutely could not resist, and it didn't violate any existing NYS baiting restrictions. Would you use it?

We are not helpless in this fight. Here is a headline from the Sienna poll people that shows some light at the end of the tunnel if we can just get out the upstate vote: Hochul Job Approval & Favorability Ratings Up a Little, Remain Negative; Only 33% of Voters Would Re-Elect Hochul, 57% Want ‘Someone Else’ We need a good candidate and a bit of activism regarding voter turn-out. We can reverse this nonsense, but it will take a little work on our part.

Does he skin them out and sell the hides? I know the prices are way down, but it might be a way to pay for the ammo....lol.

This kind of behavior from a forum owner is really quite bizarre. I am wondering if something happened to him. None of it seems logical.

My brother-in-law hunts his deer with a .243, and has never had a problem getting the deer down. Of course he is deep into competition rifle shooting and always hits the deer exactly where he wants to. I hunt with a .270 and cannot find any significant recoil. Does my .270 kill the deer any deader than my Brother-in-law's .243?.......Probably not.

So this forum is indeed doomed to a slow death. With no new members coming in to replace those who die or leave, the numbers will continue to dwindle, with the only new members being hackers. That would explain the lack of participation here. I remember all those newbies that used to post and respond to posts back in the days when this was a growing forum. Now it is just a handful of us old-timers that do any posting, and any responding to the few posts that we have. That is sad. I've been here 15 years, but I wonder how much longer my membership continues to make any sense. Without Owner participation, this forum is doomed. Why it hasn't been turned over to someone else, I can't imagine. For the Owner to just simply abandon the site and all the people in it, seems like a most irresponsible act that is a slap in the face to all the hunters that have counted on this form of communication between outdoorsmen and women.

Yes, who else is actively fighting for our 2nd amendment rights. I also belong to SCOPE for the same reasons. For me it is just putting my money where my mouth is. Yes, the libs have done a good job of painting the NRA as an evil enterprise, and that just gives me yet another reason to maintain my membership.

Really?

There is a common thread of challenge in all forms of shooting. But the mental and physical demands of archery seem so much more rigid. The unbending rules of form consistency, stance anchor position, release, follow-through and all the little rules of absolute consistency are all so critical in archery. A lot of the challenge came from my years of tournament shooting when I became enthused with the idea of putting arrows into the same hole. Never realized but that was the imagined goal. But I still remember that old hickory stave that I fashioned into a fairly decent long-bow, and the shooting challenges that started me off on a lifetime of archery fanaticism. I still idolize the more famous archers like Darrell Pace, Fred Bear, Howard Hill and Stacy Groscup and others that did amazing things with rather basic equipment. And up until I got involved in tournament shooting these were the people that I tried to emulate. Of course the tournament stuff is where I really got hung up on the thought of perfection. I never got there but the pursuit of perfection became fanatical. It's been a grand journey through all the phases of archery and I enjoyed every minute of it. I am not saying that all those other weapons of shooting can't be attacked with the same kind of fanaticism. I have brother-in-law who goes through a lot of the same kind obsession with his guns. But archery was the thing that I began obsessing about, and it has been a lifetime obsession from age 10 to today.

I'm confused. I read on here somewhere that this site was no longer accepting new members now that Burmjohn has come up missing. And yet, down at the bottom of the main forum index page I find little circles with letters inside that indicate members that have been on the site in the last 24 hours. If you hold the mouse over those circles, you will get a drop down window that gives the name and date of joining. I did that with all of them, and found 17 members who have joined since January of this year. There were several who joined since today. So, according to that we have members still joining all the time. Does anyone know people who have joined recently?

Actually, I really like archery, just for archery's sake too. There is something about manually holding back all that force, and then letting go of the string and seeing the arrow go into the target (or not). At one time I was deep into tournament archery. I was never really super good at it, but it was just fun. Like any sport, it was the challenge of developing a skill that was difficult to master. I always enjoyed the 80 yard shot on the NFAA field archery course. When I shot it with a recurve, I had to have a prism sight pin just for that shot, so I could see the target around my fist.....lol. Hunting was really a natural offshoot of archery. I was bowhunting before I ever owned a gun......shooting pigeons in the barn at age 10.

So what was it that fascinated you about shooting a bow? I remember poking around up in the shop over our garage where I found an old draw knife way back when I was about 10 years old. I took my trusty hatchet and went up on the hill where I hacked down a hickory sapling, and used that draw-knife to fashion something that looked like a pretty good version of a longbow, and built some arrows out of willow branches. The bow worked fine, but the arrows didn't fly all that well. Of course the question comes up as to what the heck I did all that for. There was nobody in our family that was into archery or bowhunting. No magazines or books or TV programs for encouragement. But as soon as I saw that draw-knife, that was the first thing that came to mind was that I had to use it to make a bow ..... lol. There was just something about a simple bent stick being used to propel another stick at a target that was and still is fascinating. It had nothing to do with getting a deer or hunting anything at all at first. I suppose all of that is not all that strange because quite a few kids get involved with archery and never really do have any thoughts of hunting. It's just a challenging activity. So how about the rest of you? What was it that was the big fascination with shooting a bow?

No, that's alright. I just wanted to encourage you to keep on posting these. They are hilarious.

Robby- Where the heck are you getting all these. They are all great!

I came down out of the trees a quite a few years ago. Mainly due to a "heights-thing". But I also discovered the excitement of dealing with deer in an eyeball-to eyeball situation where things are put kind of in their favor. Yeah I'm sure it has impacted my success, but the added excitement has kind of increased the whole deer hunting experience. By the way check out the poll. That's a forum feature that we haven't used in quite a while.

This is a question I asked way back in 2010. Well, there were a lot of interesting responses, & we have a whole different bunch of people here now and 15 years have passed, so I was interested to see if anything has changed

How many of you have permanently hung up your vertical bows in favor of a crossbow?

The one piece of info that never seems to show up in any of these articles, is, "Does this now mean that the herd population will now dwindle down dramatically"? Can we now expect to be seeing a whole bunch of dead deer all throughout the PA woods? How serious is this news? Is this the death knell for the species? These scare-articles pop up occasionally, but no one ever researches if this disease is actually significant in any way to the actual health of the herd. Where are the articles about dead deer littering the woods? This disease has been reported for many years now, and there is no cure or effort to combat the disease and yet the impact seems to be minimal.

That definitely will do the job.

I'm not sure what the name of it is, and I'm not sure that there is a name indicated on it. But make sure that you look it over pretty good before buying it. I would go to a dealer that sells and services the brand of ATV that you own. The attachment features and clearances are located differently from one to another. The other thing that has become necessary for me is a winch system that lifts and lowers the blade. My earlier plows were lever-lifted, and that worked fine back then. But on a long driveway like mine, that sucker gets mighty heavy.

I just finished reading an old topic here on using an ATV for snow plowing, and there seemed to be a lot of concern about the ability of an ATV to move heavy snow. I have been using an ATV to plow my 1000' driveway for in excess of 30 years. The first one I used was a 2 wheel drive Yamaha in the 228 cc range, and it did all right, but there were definitely limitations. Then I moved up to a 400 cc Yamaha in 2004, and there was only one storm that made me not even take it out of the barn. Pick-up trucks couldn't even handle that one. Now after 20 years of handling all kinds of snow with a Yamaha 400, I finally bought a new one ( a Yamaha 450), and yesterday I did the driveway, and the snow was dripping wet and heavier than I have ever seen. No problem......Didn't even spin a wheel.

Just replaced my 21 year old Yamaha 400 with brand new Yamaha 450. Did my first plowing of the year with it yesterday. Yamaha has been doing some amazing engineering over those decades. The traction has improved (probably because the tires are brand new. That little bit of extra power makes a big difference. The snow was super heavy and the thing did not even grunt. The new plow is a lot easier to use and sheds snow like you wouldn't believe. Of course the surface is not all scratched up like the old one, but that gooey wet snow didn't even begin to clog up on the blade. I'm really happy with that monstrous snow-moving machine, and it does a great job on our 1000' driveway.