Doc

Lol ... this is how this subject always winds up. I think that's why people start these topics. They know it will always degenerate into name calling and personal attacks. Seems to work every time.

Can you imagine the process of trying to vaccinate 120 deer. How much time and money will be wasted re-vaccinating the same deer by mistake. How many man-hours will be spent in this fiasco. 2 square miles doesn't sound like a big area until you try to perform some injection procedure on 120 animals romping around anywhere within that area. I hope they video this thing. I would like to see it.

My lifetime license came yesterday.

Running a full-time feeding program falls into the category of deer farming as far as I am concerned. That along with the super food plotting that they do and whatever other farm-style activities they do pretty much falls more in line with an agricultural venture than hunting (fence or no fence). I think you might be surprised what NYS could come up with using those same ag-type techniques.

Lots of peaches this year. I had to pull a bunch of these off the tree to keep it from breaking. That's the "good news" And now the bad news ..... this is as big as they are going to ever get and they are harder than a rock. And no, my feet are not that big.

Yes, you should all be planting fields of Rose-of-Sharon bushes. That's right, that mushroom shaped bush is a rose-of-Sharon with a welded wire fence around it. The skillful pruning comes courtesy of my local freakin' deer (soon to have antlerless permits hanging from their ear).

Thanks.

Lol ..... periodically, this subject comes up with different municipalities. They just have to go through the research and eventually blow off the idea as being totally impractical. Although I will say that with only "up to" 120 deer to deal with, it might work out for them. I will say in this age of unimagineable technology, there may come a day when they can get something like this to work. I never rule any of that stuff out anymore. To me, it seems like hunting is becoming a bit marginal as a population control in some parts. You may see the day when even the DEC starts looking into alternative population controls...... Never say "never".

Anybody know when Bow licenses and antlerless permits are available ..... or are they available now?

I'll bet there is a lot of "farmer-wannabe" attraction to food plotting. It is a very satisfying activity to spend some time on the tractor, creating something that wasn't there before. I have opened up quite a few acres over the years, particularly when I was a youngster working on the family farm. What a feeling of accomplishment. It was great to see a crop growing on land that was previously brush. I'll bet a lot of food-plotters get that same feeling of satisfaction at a job well done.

There is a cheap Styrofoam target at Walmart that broadheads and serves as a cheap disposable target that lasts a couple years. Form and consistency are worked out using regular field tips on my more expensive butt (the block). I generally have both set up and send a few broadheads down range with each practice session just to make sure everything is still ok with them.

Hunting the deer "as you find them" without modifying their behavior or patterns to suit hunting. I think that is part of what you are saying, and I completely agree. That all fits into the "challenge" of the activity.

It does seem to be a problem that gets worse every year, where people are struggling to find one of these courses that coincides with the busy schedules that everyone is under these days. But there still is a legal need for a "hands-on" portion of the certification. So, I guess I am a bit confused as to what is really accomplished by all this. Perhaps the idea is to shorten the time requirement of the "in-person" part of the course so that more courses will be available for easier scheduling. Is that it? Shorter courses = more volunteer instructors which then equals more courses available?

All I am saying is that if you want to be a deer farmer, you can do that successfully anywhere and it doesn't depend on any special soil. I would assume, since you are in the business, that you would agree with that.

That's a good choice of words .... "the kind of deer those guys make". There activities have more to do with animal husbandry than hunting. It has far less to do with what state it is, or what minerals are in the ground, than it does with what kinds of minerals they are fed and what kinds of food plots they are fed on. I will give them all kinds of credit for being great deer farmers, but great hunters?.....maybe not so much. Perhaps their time would be better spent raising their own Herefords or angus and then shooting them in the field. But then that wouldn't make for such a great TV show would it. Not to mention all the "hero" status they would lose.

It's nice to see how hunting looks in other countries. Thanks for the pictures and the descriptions. It all sure doesn't look like an activity for those that aren't in top condition, but the scenery is absolutely spectacular.

That's not really a good thing......lol. But all of this really does help understand the lack of credibility of their shows and others like them. If anyone ever had any doubts about how these people always seem to have successful hunts involving a constant parade of trophy animals, I guess this shows how all that really works, and it has absolutely nothing to do with hunting skills.

Maybe these guys are starting to get the message. I have heard a lot of complaints on the standard run of the mill fakery and boring lack of creativity. Who knows ..... maybe they are starting to react to the criticisms. I hope so.

Aw geeze ... I never thought of that. That could be baiting ... lol. Soak the hay covering in salt before you add it onto the blind and you could get a lot of face-shots.

I hate recoil! I wouldn't even want to be watching while that thing was being shot. I'm surprised they didn't have to cart someone off to the hospital. It actually got right away from that one guy. He could have been wearing that in the mouth. About the only thing that I could see using something like that on would be tanks or trucks or something of that nature.

Try this one: http://scopeny.org/index.html

I always figured that two or three of the actual big round bales would make a heck of a blind if they were located in the right place and arranged in the right configuration.

Lol ..... Damn, you guys come up with a picture for everything. That was really funny.

A crummy $20 ..... why not? It's a very powerful public statement that is hanging out there every day for people to see. Also, I am not sure what took me so long, but I have finally signed up as a member of SCOPE. Seems like the time is right. Our problems are of state origins, so it seems logical to support the state gun owner advocacy organization. Membership is cheap enough and they seem to be the ones doing the heavy lifting here in NY. I think they need my support. They probably need the support of any gun owner. Something to think about.

Way back in the dark ages, I put in a service pole to feed the barn. From that pole which is along our main overhead line, I decided to run the line underground to keep it out of the yard. I buried it 4' down and housed it in leach-field pipe. I think it would take a backhoe to disturb that line. You might want to consider doing that when you replace the line. I was going to go underground for the main line into the house site but we were talking 1000' and the estimates that I got at the time were out of sight. The thought I had in mind was that we also have trees everywhere along the length of the driveway and underground would protect from wind, ice storms, heavy snow loads etc., etc. As it turned out, we were quite happy that we didn't. With the advent of cable and such, we wound up needing the above-ground poles to string the cable on. There is always that question of access when new wire technologies come along. As it turns out, the electric company is responsible for maintenance of the access line anyway, so they actually keep the trees trimmed away from the lines. In 38 years we have not had a problem with that part of the line..... lol, now I've done it!