Doc

Aw geez ..... I got soaked this morning. It didn't come down real hard, or last very long, but just long and hard enough to soak me up pretty good. I found out that even rain gear has it's limits. I think I am feeling the onset of a sore throat too. I'm going to have to pick my hunting times a little more carefully. The last thing I need is a cold this time of year. I have done that in the past .... coughing every 5 minutes, sneezing and blowing my nose. When I am in that condition the best I can hope for is a visit from a deer, curious about all that strange noise ......lol. I really hate bowhunting in rainy conditions, but yesterday the forecast sounded bad, and it never actually rained all day. Well this morning the forecast sounded like another one of those kinds of bogus forecasts, so I thought I would take a chance ....... Bad idea!

We do spend a lot of time worrying about the legal harvests of others, don't we?

Yes, there are laws against that kind of behavior.

That was one of the first things that came to mind when I saw some of the pictures of devastation. I know that we have a lot of people on this forum that are from Long Island, and I feared the worst for them. I often whine about the one or two days per year when the water comes up and covers the front of our driveway so that I am locked in for a few hours (never any erosion or damage). But after seeing what occurred down there, I probably will appreciate just how mild that slight inconvenience really is. I cannot imagine going through flooding that involves ruining my house. That goes way beyond "inconvenience". I hope you all escaped serious damage and all came through this safely.

So what do you do with the root-ball. I would think that would require some expensive heavy equipment to get rid of it. Even more so if the RG&E boys didn't free it up from the ground. Also a load of top-soil.

Section 11-1203 1. No person shall engage in hunting while he is in an intoxicated condition. 2. No person shall engage in hunting while his ability to engage in such hunting without creating unreasonable risk of injury or death to himself or other human life is impaired by his consumption of alcohol or use of a drug. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No, they don't say anything about hangovers ..... lol.

Three arrows in the quiver .... all broadheads. If I can't get it done with three arrows, it's not likely that the deer would be waiting around for a fourth one. In fact if the first two don't do the job, it is likely that something is messed up on the bow, and it is time to head home to sort out the problem. A miss on the first arrow .... well, unfortunately that does happen occasionally .... lol. Two misses, something is really wrong. And if you are missing so badly that the deer doesn't even realize you are shooting at him and hangs around for a third arrow, you might as well save that arrow and put some time in on the practice range to fix whatever has gone wrong.

Ah yes .... the old eyeball shot. What was the guy hoping for? Head-shots are a super low percentage shot bordering on impossible. He knows better I'm sure but just succumbs to the old panicked spray and pray philosophy. It's too bad that some guys don't have a little more control over themselves. Of course if you want to struggle for a reasonable excuse for such a hit, you might try to imagine a deer jumping the string and getting his eye where the kill zone used to be .... lol. Probably not all that likely, but possible I suppose.

I don't really subscribe to the notion that you should take-off on a dead run trying to push the deer to it's death .... lol. I generally wait at least a half-hour before taking up the trail. And with gut shots, it usually means an over-night wait. That's what I was told and there is some good logic behind it. However, I will say that on deer that have survived that 1/2 hour wait and still had some life left in them, generally makes one heck of a project out of picking up the blood again after that first bed. My theory is that the bed provides an opportunity for the blood to clot, and the deer to lick the wound and stem the blood flow a bit, and it may be 100 yards or even much farther before it starts to flow again. Would chasing the deer right away have made the result come out any better? ..... Probably not. That deer that made it past that first half hour probably is not hit as bad as we might wish. Chasing after him will just push him farther than you can go .... lol.

Looking on the TV this morning, I couldn't believe the destruction. Fortunately for people in our corner of the world, not much actually came of it all. We got a total of 1.81" of rain according to my rain gage, which over that many hours (over a dozen hours or so) didn't really create flood conditions. Water did come up in the ditches along the driveway, but not really to any extent that was ever a threat. The swamp is up, and I really don't want to see too much more rain. But the ravines never got cranking, and it really didn't rank anywhere near the top of a list of storms that we normally go through in any year. The winds were kind of heavy but again, I have seen a lot worse. I think we dodged the bullet. On the other hand, they are showing the rest of the path of Sandy coming north out of PA and passing right over top of us. I understand it's supposed to be pretty wasted by the time it does that. I do hope that those along the coast manage to recover without too many personal and property effects. Some of what I am seeing on TV makes you wonder how some will ever recover.

It's kind of sad to see a button buck hanging from the met pole, but it doesn't do a lot of good worrying about something that likely will never change. As WNYBuckHunter said, we have a lot of casual hunters that will only develop a certain level of skills ..... ever. And I belive that may very well be the majority of hunters.

Geez Noodle, don't be saying things like that on here. It is possible that DEC people might stop in here every so often too see who is confessing to what.

Yeah, if you are using a sight, it is time to make an adjustment. Obviously you are shooting high and right. The whole buch of holes as well as the three arrows indicate that you need a sight pin change to center your point of impact. Another little tip: put four small bullseyes on an 8-1/2" x 11" piece of paper and shoot one arrow at each instead of going for groups at a single aiming point. You can eyeball on the separate bulls as to what kind of groups you would have, and you will save a lot of time and money on the tore up fletching and busted up shafts that you will eventually be getting if you continue to shoot all arrows into a single aiming spot.

We do have a fairly large herd of white deer mixed in with a normal pigmented bunch of deer over at the old Seneca Army Depot. They are not albinos, but simply deer where the recessive white pigmentation genetics took over. I would guess that piebald deer are some other version of that. Interesting to look at. They look kind of like a domestic goat .... lol.

It sure does seem like there are more leaves than ever .... lol. But, there probably is not. More likely it is just the way they are coming off this year. Instead of coming down in a short period of time, they seem to be spread out to make the biggest mess for the longest period of time. I don't rake anymore leaves than I have to. I simply mow the lawn blowing the leaves out as I go around. When I get to the edge, there are thickets on three sides so the mulched up leaf bits get blown into the thicket. As far as the acorns, I can't answer that. Just like our apples, I haven't seen more than a half dozen acorns all year and those were shriveled up tiny things that dropped way early before they even started to fill out. So apparently what you are talking about depends on location. I know what happened to our apples. They got forced into early blossom in the spring and then got repeatedly hammered by hard frosts. The acorns? .... I've got no idea what happened to them unless maybe it's a product of the severe drought that we had for almost all of the summer this year. It's funny that we seem to have a bumper crop of hickory nuts and walnuts but no butternuts or acorns. Anybody figures all these contradictions out, please let me know. I'm pretty confused as to what effects these different mast sources.

Most of the time I can tell a button buck from a doe, given enough time to check it out. But I certainly would stop short of saying that those that can't aren't hunters. Just like I would stop short of taking irrelevant, off-the wall, random shots that have no relevance to the discussion, at a segment of bowhunters just to make that point.

Yeah, I realize that. It just would be nice if stores made a few decisions based on being good community citizens. I know when I see businesses ignoring negative local impacts I tend to shop elsewhere. Especially if it's a blatent disregard for conservation law (legal or not). I would like to be able to say that I no longer shop at Gander Mountain because of this policy, but basicly I stopped shopping there for a whole lot of other reasons a long time ago.....lol.

Are you certain that you are not mis-interpreting some rather innocent activity? If he's a non hunter, he may not even realize what a pain he is being. Have you had any conversations with him to ensure that his behavior is intended to be harrassment? I have a neighbor that seems to be busiest about 1 hour before sunset, and it seems that there is a whole lot of activity that kind of screws with one of my stands a bit. However, I know for a fact that he has no ill feelings toward hunters, and in fact he doesn't even know when or where I hunt. So, I'm just asking because it would be a shame to have hard feelings with a neighbor over something that is not being done to cause a problem.

The use of guns is not specifically contrary to NYS laws. The use of bait is. That's where I would draw the line. Note that the stores do not sell illegal guns. I just think that the stores that do business in this state should respect the intent as well as the letter of local laws.

I agree that they are covered ..... legally. However there is a bit of a moral question in my mind when you consider that they are somewhat complicit in terms of providing materials for illegal hunter activity and most likely fully understand their part in that. One might think that a store that is 100% involved in hunting might consider and be sensitive to local hunting laws and their potential part in those laws being broken. Yes it is a bit of a sticky subject and I can see both sides of the issue. But I will say that if selling those products that are illegal to use here gives them enough income to offset any controversy then most likely it can be assumed that that level of sales does involve significant numbers of local customers that are using the product in an illegal fashion. If that is the case, then they know that they are promoting illegal acts, and simply don't care.

Great question. It will be interesting to see what the answers turn out to be. I know that animals react to approaching lows, and seem to go on a feeding frenzy before storms. But also, since this one will be a bit of a prolonged event while it is here and will keep critters under cover for a while, there also may be a lot of feeding and other movement that will begin as the storm ends. So my answer is ..... your guess is as good or better than mine ... lol.

Yeah, I have been known to do the same. When I run across an old skull, rather than just leave it semi-concealed on the ground, I will stick it up where people can see it. It's just a way of sharing the find with any other people walking through the area. I never thought that anyone would be creeped-out by seeing where a deer had died. Is that really a concern to many of you? Does that upset you all? Maybe I shouldn't be doing that.

What you are describing here really does sound like a bear looking for insects. Was the log fairly well rotted?

It certainly is frustrating to have laws that are written in terms that can cause 10 pages of discussion as to how those laws are to be applied. The legal system is guaranteed to make a criminal out of you just about any time a LEO wants to make an arrest. Yes they say that ignorance of the law is no excuse. And then we have laws that are misinterpreted by even the people who enforce them, and cause ten forum pages of widely differing interpretations. Frankly, these clowns that write the laws don't seem to have even the basic understanding of communication skills. And these are supposed to be our trained, super-educated, legal minds that are conjuring up these fiascos. It wouldn't be so bad if it were just this one law, but a quick review of some of the topics that show up here, indicates that almost every law has many interpretations. Oh, and that's only conservation laws that we are talking about here. Imagine the laws you are inadvertantly breaking daily when we consider the rest of the legal system. We're all a bunch of crooks .... lol.

And hunting technology marches on ..... lol. I guess there really is no end to it, is there? What we really need is a satellite service that shows the location of all the deer on our hunting area. Hey, a little infra-red technology from up in space could make this hunting stuff a simple piece of cake .... right?