Doc

Ha-ha .... look at that smile! Nothing like the first. Mine was a spike with 6" spikes a whole bunch of years ago. I actually made an antler mount of him and it hangs in the livingroom as one of my proudest accomplishments. Every time I look at that, I remember that day. Congratulations and lets hope this is the first of many deer in your archery future.

I've had those kinds of hunts. But usually they involve forgetting some vital piece of equipment, or a wind direction that decides to cover every direction after I have gotten all hunkered in (Like yesterday afternoon's hunt). And then speaking of dropping things, I remember dropping my bow out of my stand back in the days when I still hunted from the trees. I remember that bow hitting the bottom eccentric and bouncing almost half way back up. I couldn't believe that it wasn't broken. And of course there is the classic jumping of a huge buck just as you get to your stand, or worse yet a group of does who spend the next 15 minutes blowing and stomping and announcing your arrival to every deer within anywhere that a deer might come from. Sometimes things just fight you. And you're right. Those are days when you probably should have stayed in bed.

Oh my gosh ..... an honest hunter. I wonder what kinds of wrath and flame these words will bring .... lol.

I have not missed a deer season in over 50 years (with almost all of those years being both a gun and bow hunter), and still do not understand what it is that makes an otherwise normal person climb a nearly mile long hill, and stand in the cold for hours, waiting to kill a deer. Also, consider the thousands of dollars that I have spent over the years, and the hours of practice and reading and discussion. None of it really makes a whole lot of sense other than it is some instinctive predatory obsession that I have no real control over .... lol. And it's not just deer hunting that effects me that way. It extends to all kinds of hunting, fishing and for many years, trapping. I've tried explaning it all, and never have been able to do so to any kind of acceptable level.

Not to nit-pick, but the crossbow is absolutely a legal hunting implement during the regular gun season and therefore has a legitimate reason for being on the shelves of sporting goods departments and other stores. Which of course is the relative point in this discussion.

Somehow, baiting has taken on the meaning as only being products that can be ingested. At least that seems to be the general opinion. Aerosol products do not fit that meaning.

Lol .... come-on ..... a Murderer?? .... really? That sounds like it was lifted right off the placard of a PETA protester. Frankly, I see all this concern with button buck harvests as being not so much a concern about a "new hunter's" antlered buck as it is a concern about our own next antlered buck. I am not advocating that we should start a campaign of targeting button bucks, but that one or two that do get harvested from the local herd really doesn't ruin my season or the next. And I certainly do not feel it is my place to berate someone else's harvest because it doesn't measure up to my personal standard. Why would I want to try to destroy another hunter's feeling of success? I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what other people are satisfied with, and I haven't made it my life's mission to make everyone feel like crap who harvests a deer smaller than I would take. Not my job!

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.