Doc

You know, I can't even think of a place where I could see a deer at 700 yards. And then if I could, I would probably be breaking the law about shooting across a road.

I refuse to get sucked into the world of the paranoid by the Timothy McVeigh types and those that would associate themselves with the mindset of the Ruby Ridge crew. Democracy is what we've got and Democracy is what I intend to stick with, and I am not yet ready to replace it with armed anarchy. I have no need or desire to begin sounding like some whacked out militia recruit. If we can't figure out how to keep our Democracy intact, then we probably don't deserve it.

I guess I had the nature of this meeting confused. Wasn't this simply a meeting between the NRA and whitehouse representatives? I mean, once the two participants reached a defined impasse, what choice would you have but to leave?

There do you feel better now? ..... lol. At least you paused for a bit from your deluge of anti-gun links to actually express a real thought of your own. That alone is an improvement. Look, I have no problem with posting links (do it myself occasionally), but when you post 4 or 5 of them in a row without any personal comment of your own, I have to admit that I was beginning to wonder just how long this string was going to last. Give Google a rest for crying out loud ..... lol.

The bigger point is the demonstration that no matter what you make illegal, obviously it can still be obtained.

Look, there is just one way to fight this onslaught of gun laws. That is by joining and supporting the organizations that we have in place that have the infrastructure for taking on these wackos. This in conjunction with individual letter writing campaigns are the only realistic ways to avoid further 2nd amendment infringement. Let's keep our eyes on the target, and not be distracted by activities that go after the wrong targets and that will not work.

We were not in the room. We do not know the level of arrogance that might have been displayed by the administration. We do not know what kinds of hardline ground rules that were set down in concrete right from the get-go. I do know one thing .... It usually doesn't take a lot of time to discover when your opposition is totally intransigent. And when confronted with that situation, it is foolish to just sit there.

My guess is that there will be no gathering of firearms. It will be a proclamation that it is illegal to possess, and enforcement will come whenever anyone tries to bring one out and use it, or gets caught in possession during other incidental contact with authorities. It all comes back to a question I asked a while ago: what good is owning something that you have to keep buried in your yard or boarded up in the wall. If they make the penalty severe enough, I fully expect nearly 100% compliance. This stuff has to be fought in the legislature, courts, and any other legitimate venue that we can come up with. Depending on the difficulty in enforcement is a losing position. They will figure out a way to enforce the law or make violation of the law pointless. As far as creating new criminals I really don't think that they give a damn about that. They already have the engrained mindset that if you own a gun, you are probably a criminal. Let's keep our attention on fighting this gun-hysteria and not be lulled into complacency by hopes of enforcement problems. I hope it never gets that far and we had better be concentrating on seeing that it doesn't.

If that were true, they wouldn't have gone to the White House in the first place.

I hope he figured out a way of getting down without breaking all four legs. That's a long way down.

AR personally doesn't impact me at all. But I am sure that it is a very divisive issue with very little positive potential. Frankly I am all for those that chose to limit their harvests in that way, but I am not interested in forcing that choice on all hunters. I do like the way you ask who wants AR and then in the last sentence indicate you only want the answers to go one way ..... lol.

I would guess from their statement that they realized that the President and his merry band of gun-banners were only interested in "potential new gun laws" and not a serious discussion of the problem of societal violence. Yes, it is "good for them" to have quickly recognized the insincerity of this bunch and not waste any more time and effort with these people. I guess that's what you missed.

Sorry, I know this reply was not aimed at me, but I have to ask about a point of curiosity. When you choose a political party to belong to, doesn't a compatible general idealogy play some part in your choice? I suppose that very few people go in lock-step with every issue of their chosen party affiliation, but I also don't think it is particularly unfair to assign general concepts of idealogy to each party and its members in an over-all sense.

That is weird! I have never seen that kind of color phase or even anything close to it in real life or pictures.

Anything over 6" is more than I want to wallow through. One year, my wife decided that I should get out of the house and go out and play in the snow, so about 6 or 7 years ago, she bought me a pair of snow-shoes. I guess there must be some kind of trick to it all because I still sunk way too far down into the snow, plus I had these awkward things stuck to my feet. I'm glad I didn't wander any farther out than I could struggle back. I'm thinking cross-country skis might work better. By the way, I still get the snowshoes down off the wall every so often, where they are hanging ....... just to brush the dust off them and hang them back on the wall ....lol.

And there are people busily working right now to make sure that she and all others are similarly under-gunned in these kinds of situations. Apparently it doesn't bother our anti-gun friends one bit to help out those that would do violence to innocent homeowners.

And that was only a single intruder. How many rounds would she have wanted if two or three home invaders had entered the house? Why is it that these anti-gun freaks want to handicap legal gun owners in favor of the bad-guys when it comes to legitimate self defense? Probably has something to do with "criminal's rights" .

Ah yes and yet another post from the "Internet Link King" who apparently has never had an original thought of his own that didn't come from the fiction of others ...... lol. I stopped accessing these things after the 3rd one. Would have made more sense to have stopped just prior to the first ..... lol. Kind of looks like someone who has just discovered Google for the first time.

Gee there was no need for that nasty remark ...lol. Didn't I say that I was coming back to read your words of wisdom and learn from the master? Look, I spent a lot of time going through these six points and was prepared to go one by one through each and respond. But I found that with all those words, it all boiled down to a couple of facts that you refuse to listen to. First is the point that there is nothing that you can find in winter that you won't find easier in the early spring. Second, deer do not maintain the same bedding areas or maintain the same feeding patterns in the dead of winter that they do in the fall. Food and cover change dramatically and deer relocate accordingly. In some more severe winters, deer can relocate several miles. I realize that deer in different areas may have different traits and actions, but it is pretty obvious that there is very little that happens in winter that can be related back to fall hunting opportunities. It is equally obvious that there are very few observations that can be made in the dead of winter that are not there and easier to see in the early spring. I personally prefer to maximize the efficiency of my scouting by waiting til early spring and beyond for reasons stated before. It's really as simple as that. That's my choice. You don't like it? ..... I can't help that. I am not trying to talk anybody out of doing their winter scouting. I happen to believe that if nothing else, it certainly is great winter exercise. However I kind of sense that I am starting to step on your ego here and that is not my intention. So before all this escalates any further, perhaps we can simply agree that we don't see eye to eye on this and let it go at that.

Is that where all your profound words of wisdom can be found? Well look, can I get back to you on this? I have to eat supper. Maybe later I will come back and study and learn ..... lol. I always wanted to read the words of a leading deer hunting authority. I'm sorry I missed it.

No, I mean exactly what I said. I target what I percieve to be the best deer in the area. So "great mature buck hunter" .... lol. Tell me what marvelous things you learn with your deep snow scouting missions that accounts for your amazing expertise. Like you said "we can never stop learning".

I think I could make a pretty good guess how the deer would react " if someone had happened to spill a little feed out every other day or so". I have read stories about the little old lady in the Adirondacks that decided to feed the deer. Eventually, she had well over 100 deer coming daily to her feeder to the point where she could no longer feed them all. Plus they cleaned her entire yard of any living vegetation. I think that is what you might expect .... lol. Apparently there must be some kind of communication system that the deer have when a source of food shows up in the neighborhood. The crowd just keeps growing and growing until you just can't afford to keep up with them. And then the mob of additional deer wipe out your greenery and poop on your yard. Nope, you cannot bribe the deer to leave you alone ..... it just doesn't work ..... lol.

By golly, that takes the gun control debate off in a brand new direction. Very convincing stuff!

You know, that is where I give these guys a lot of credit that I'll never be able to give myself. For all their flaws, they are putting themselves out there debating something that they feel is important. And along with an occasional bump in the road, they are doing a fair job of keeping their arguments on a factual basis. Well Nugent anyway. This other guy (Jones?) is a new one for me and I know absolutely nothing about him other than that severely edited patch-job of a video interview. We on the other hand kind of keep our debate to a rather ineffective, very low-key version of simply typing. I'll say one thing .... I don't believe either of us would win a second of a debate with Nugent. The man will take anyone to school when it comes to instant command of the facts and figures regarding any gun or hunting debate. He did it flawlessly to Morgan, and I have seen his debates with others where he basically made fools of his opposition. Could he tone down some of the language and abrasiveness? .... sure, but then that wouldn't really be him would it. No one ever said he was perfect. But he is out there trying in a very public way and holding his own. Who here on this forum can say as much?

Actually, I target the best deer that I judge to be in the area and that also includes a doe here and there also. But what drives my scouting philosophy is the reality that I share my time with other activities and interests, and I have to maximize the efficiency of my time afield. I also find that I can cover a lot more ground in a lot less time when the ground is bare. So, that all means that when I go scouting, it is usually at a time that yields the most information per hour of scouting. Looking at non-hunting winter deer patterns and wandering around unable to see sign that I am looking for because it is buried under a foot or more of snow is not the best use of my time. So I look at and find signs of last years rut and patterns and trails more toward the spring when the snow is just coming off. It all stands out like the pages of a book at that time of year. And also the time just prior to hunting season begins to tell the patterns of the coming year, and also starts a picture of current food sources rather than survival foods of the previous winter. Also, whatever I learn at that time of year pertains to local deer that are true residents of my area and not winter yarding transplants that may be miles from their fall territories. Yes, there is a method to my madness. It involves efficiency in using my scouting time. Oh, let's throw in a nifty pun ...... "The biggest bang for the buck". I do believe that more intense scouting trips at a time of year where everything is open to inspection is the most efficient way to spend my scouting hours. But then ... that's just me.