Doc

My yard has been declared a "Deer Hostile Zone". I put up with a bit of shrub damage over the winter when food was scarce, but it appears that they have a taste for decorative plantings around the yard even when there is plentiful sources of food everywhere else. So now instead of simply enjoying seeing deer around the house, I am giving them the boot every time I see them......lol. Next deer season, areas in close to the house will no longer be a sanctuary for them. They have to go! ... fawns and all.

Interesting view of our president that probably is shared by many more people inside and outside the U.S. than we would like to imagine. I do appreciate the right of any of those people to view our leaders and our policies in any way that it all happens to strike them and to voice their opposition to the way they perceive that we may impact their national situations. I think this woman was doing exactly that. I may not agree with much of what she had to say, but there certainly was a ring of truth in her comments about the media fawning over every little thing that the Obamas do. That is something that you don't have to go to a foreign country to appreciate. When I see our own press coverage of the Obamas, I get exactly the same impressions ..... Especially after the years of venomous coverage of both of the Bush administrations. I do wish that the video had included the responses instead of just the presentation of one side of the discussion.

Probably the most optimum chance for injury is the presence of a greenhorn on a farm. It's bad enough for those that do that kind of work day in and day out. There is a lot of equipment there designed to cut things up and munch them into little pieces .... lol. Not only that, but we used to have a few critters that would really like to stomp some unsuspecting person into a tiny puddle. Sometimes there are places to work that really are better suited to those that live there

Perfect weather for epidemics of jungle rot. Anybody having any body parts falling off yet?

You know, I haven't even seen a Weaver scope in years. It certainly is an old established name in the world of scopes if that means anything.

The problem is that occasionally I get the urge to get a new car, but this thing just won't give me the justification to do it. Right now it has cost $7.26 per day to keep it around. That includes the original cost, every service and repair and the taxes on each item. Every cent that I have put into the thing except gas and insurance. That's damn cheap transportation. When you think about it, it costs about $20,000 to $30,000+ to buy a new car these days. You can put a heck of a lot of dollars worth of repairs into this car before the total comes anywhere near that. Plus, even though Hondas hold their value like crazy, there is not a whole lot that anyone would give me on an 11 year old car of any make. I have been thinking that my Grand-daughter who is in College (50 miles away) could sure use a replacement for that rickety old hunk of junk that she is driving. So I am seriously considering buying a new one and giving the old one to her. While it doesn't make sense in terms of dollars, there seems to be other good reasons to do it.

Every year I try to figure out what will screw up the garden. This year It probably will be "rot" with all this cold and wet weather. What a crappy summer. Every time I want to do something outside, they are threatening rain. I'm getting sick of it. Pretty soon it will be snowing and we will all wonder where the heck the summer went.

2002 Civic LX 135,000 miles and probably good for another 11 years .... lol. 2009 CRV LX (I got 29 miles per gallon on a recent trip to Troy)

Huh???? Politics? .... Term Limits? .... Gery-mandering? ..... Republican party? ..... Demographic studies? Holy crap!!! that sure did cover some ground. Couldn't we get a little abortion and evil Soviet empire stirred in too ..... lol.

Some guys really get off on that sort of thing since it is a novelty to them. But I had my fill of farm work as a kid and a young adult. It's a great life, but not for someone who is getting on in years. I wonder what the potential liabilities are for the farmer if some guy gets hurt doing the "work for hunt access" thing.

Not a lot here to disagree with. But I do think you are missing my point about revisions not ending with the crossbow. It is just another precedent setting addition that is sure to be followed by more in the future.

Well, I have to admit that bow hunting would be a very different activity if the bow hunter density ever became anything like current gun season hunter density. And for sure that situation would definitely turn the quality of the hunt into crap. But I don't really worry about it getting to that extreme (I could be wrong). But my biggest fear is that just as the compound served as a precedent for the crossbow, the crossbow will serve as the precedent for whatever contraption comes next on the parade. I also worry about people eventually questioning why we have the privilege of special seasons. I already see muzzle loaders eyeballing chunks of the early bow season. There are others that are also questioning why we are allowed to take the cream of the hunting season crop. As our success rates continue to climb, and technology continues to add fuel to the fire, we may be providing ammo to their arguments. We have arrogantly believed that we can add whatever we want to bow seasons and still maintain the advantages won over in years past. Well, it just might happen that we are in for a rude shock one of these days. We may learn in a very uncomfortable way that we are indeed in the minority in the hunting community.

Yes and eventually in the name of progress, we will begin to accept weapons that don't even look like a bow. And people will continue to flood into the sport and we will continue to pat ourselves on the back because of it. The real funny thing is that while we think we are being so successful and counting all the numbers of people who are flooding into bow seasons, there has to be a growing suspicion that we are simply transferring people from gun seasons into bow seasons. Over-all hunter numbers continue to slide even as the bow hunting ranks grow. The success that we are bragging about is merely hunter re-distribution. The closer our equipment emulates guns, and the more we continue to squeeze the challenge and personal accomplishment out of the sport, the more redistribution that will take place. Is that making bow seasons better or more successful? Is that progress? Unfortunately, each one of these pieces of "progress" removes the very purpose of separating the bows out of the regular gun hunting seasons in the first place. We said that we needed special seasons and bag limits to compensate for the difficulty of our sport. But, we keep getting closer and closer to the quality, attitudes, and equipment of the gun seasons that we said we had to separate ourselves from. We call that progress and we call that success. Was bow hunting really meant to be ruled by technology? I suppose that comes with answers that vary by generation also. Sure we're all suckers for the gadgets and go-fasters, but I draw lines and set boundaries. It just seems logical when you are talking about an activity rooted in tradition and history. When have we gone too far? I know we all have our own idea of where those limits should be drawn, but the plain practical truth is that none of us has the ability to stop this technology craze once it has begun. Bow season was initially set up to provide a time for use of some pretty primitive equipment. That notion has been pretty much eliminated when the compound came along. We are doing our best to eliminate the reasons that we have a "special" season. The compound was a "baby step" and even with all the pulleys and cables, the actual procedure and disciplines and principles of use remained exactly the same. But what the compound did do was to set the precedents that served as enablers for the next generation of contraption. Each generation of bastardization of the bow becomes more extreme and sets the way for the next pollutant coming after it. So yes we are "progressing" toward combining bow hunting back in with gun hunting both in technology and attitudes. Is that really progress? Not in a good direction as far as I am concerned. We are getting to the point where the next generation of technological progress will simply be to go back and pick up a rifle....lol. That's kind of where the "end-game" of all this "progress" is heading anyway.

If you are leaning toward Toyota, take a look at the RAV4. It really was a toss-up between that and the CRV when I bought mine. They are almost identical. Either one is super reliable and very popular.

So, you are not going to have the thing looked at my a doctor?

That was pretty funny ....... until a few minutes later when you stop to think about it all.

I know you are not understanding a bit of what I am saying. I guess it is probably a generational thing left over from those of us who understood the basic philosophies behind the creation of our bow season. If the whole thing was about distance, a person could do the same thing with a rifle and just limit himself to a certain distance. There are some pistol set-ups that are only good for 30 yards too. Some flintlock weapons are barely better than a bow in terms of effective distance, especially given the skill levels of most participants .... lol. If bow hunting was defined by distance, we would have quite an array of weapons in the season most of which really would have nothing to do with a bow. Believe it or not, there was a time when we really understood what bow hunting is. The whole thing was, amazingly enough, about using a bow. Today it is mostly about various technological advantages and items that have more to do with what someone else has invented for us than our own strengths, disciplines, and desires to meet challenges. And on and on it marches through compounds and now crossbows and who can predict what all, off into the future as this technology continues to take over something that was once so basic and simple. Yes, the nature of bow hunting has morphed into something that doesn't even resemble what it was originally. The evolution has occurred not only in the equipment, but the very attitudes of the participants. It's not an activity of self reliance and individual achievements, but more a case of who can buy the most technically advanced contraption. And yes there are plenty of participants who will continue to say ..... "So what? And there are those of us who continue to unsuccessfully attempt to explain the differences. And it is all in vain because it is all based on dated attitudes toward the sport and the experiences along the way. We valued different things when modern bow hunting became a sport. However, we also have to admit that it was people of my generation that let the genie out of the bottle with the compound. And so it will be that this current generation will continue to re-make bow hunting in sweeping dramatic ways. And people like myself should really get updated and adopt that same attitude of "so what". It really isn't the end of the world by any means .... lol.

Ah .... Chicken salad. I have had sandwiches from some restaurants that chop up chunks of chicken (white meat) and add in mayonnaise, and then add pieces of grapes, chopped walnuts, a few small pieces of apple and the usual celery and onion. Plop a huge glob of that on a huge croissant. Add some lettuce, and really .... there is nothing better. I have passed up some good dinners just to get at one of those sandwiches.

It's the same thing. Even muzzleloading has lost it's identity. Technology has buried the very reason that they have a "special" season. I know there is a lot of discussion among those that only engage in the regular shotgun season about why muzzleloading is in fact a special season. In fact I have often wondered that myself. I really hope that we don't someday encounter those same thoughts with bow seasons. I have to admit that I have heard and read a lot of bitching and complaining about how bow season success rates are wacking a lot of great bucks before the shotgunners even get a crack at them. Whether that is really true or not doesn't change the fact that that is the growing perception. Lets hope that thought never gains traction and finds its way into legal season changes. Bowhunters are not in the majority, and if the anti-bowhunting attitudes among gunners continue to grow ...... who knows? Someday we may find our growing successes lead to our demise.

I've met people that thought NYS was paved over.

I believe you should consider some of the AWD "cross-over" vehicles. I have a Honda CRV that is not really terrible on gas, and also has the all wheel drive to accommodate snow and light off-road use (although that kind of abuse gives me the shivers .... lol). It's just another possibility that you might want to throw into the mix.

There is nothing that can be done about 40 year old law that has been hard-instituted as archery tradition now. You are not going to turn back the clock and that is the point of the finality of polluting bow seasons with more contraptions. But one would think that somewhere along the line people would learn to benefit from history instead of ignoring it. My theory is that people probably are not interested all that much in what archery becomes. In fact the more mechanized and automatic the better. That fits so much better into today's schedules and needs for instant gratification. Bowseason has become simply access to a more comfortable time of the year, and the mechanics and tradition of it all be damned. That's simply a sign of the times and there is no minority that is going to stand in the way of that kind of cultural evolution. Just as an aside, I often wonder just how much more rewarding and fulfilling bowhunting would have been if compounds had been denied. Perhaps the original intents of the framers of bowseasons would be still intact. Perhaps the object of bowhunting would still be focused on hunting rather than shooting, and challenge rather than expectations of trophies. It is an interesting thing to contemplate.

Ha-ha .... and as it turns out, those old-timers were exactly right weren't they? They claimed that the compound would be the precedent for further encroachments of other weapons on bow hunting. And by golly, isn't that exactly what is happening. Kind of makes you wonder just what will follow the crossbow. Hypocrite? Maybe just a good student of bowhunting history might be an appropriate description.

And the rifle does that so much better than a crossbow, wouldn't you agree? You wouldn't find quite so many of those nasty lazy archers out there wounding deer because their weaponry is something they are not willing to put time into. That would satisfy your itch about irresponsible bowhunters. Look, I'm pretty sure you are smart enough to know exactly what the point is that I am making. There is no need for me to waste time explaining it further. If you can't understand it, it probably is because you don't want to understand it.

I didn't see that qualifier in your statement. I'm just illustrating the fallacy of your statement. The point is that bow season was never intended as a hunting method without challenge and effort and some level of dedication. But trying to make up for those that refuse to bowhunt responsibly by merely adding in more efficient and easy-to-use weapons and removing the challenges of the sport is not a valid solution unless you are willing to take that line of reasoning to its logical conclusion. And I was just pointing out what that logical conclusion really is ..... the rifle.