Doc

Yes they have reasons. Not necessarily good ones, but there were reasons. And there are plenty of reasons not to have stuffed it into bow season which they chose to ignore. Second, no one cares what the situation was prior to this event. The fact is that the hunt is this year and the Oct 1 bow opener has been established long enough so that they obviously intended it to coincide with bow season.

I used to work with a guy that could hold "coffee cup" sized groups at 50 yards without a single flyer .... ever. I had seen him do it. When he came in to work with his 5th wounded, unrecovered deer story in one season, I finally had to stop talking deer hunting with him. I have no idea what his problem was, but when it came to deer, he was always just good enough to stick them somewhere but never in a kill area. I don't know whether it was the pressure of shooting at a deer or what, but the guy was just an absolute menace in the woods.

Ok, there is an image of two things that I can't picture going together .... live traps and skunks.

Well, fortunately they have something in place to counter the alcohol and gunpowder mix. I was thinking about this very same thing yesterday as I stumbled across a pile of empty beer cans (8 of them) piled next to a tree. Some of these guys apparently party while they hunt ...... yikes. Glad I wasn't hunting that section of the hill that day .... lol.

I have watched the event go down hill in the last couple of years as the number of exhibits and events have shrunk in number. I think I will pass on it this year and maybe something will change by the next time I get the urge to check it out again. It's a real shame because it used to be a real good sales opportunity for hunting, fishing, and trapping. Hopefully it will become that again.

It's too bad that we have to learn safety the hard way. I had a cousin who will never get the chance to learn the harness lesson ...... ever.

What the hell is the point of this hunt if the only kids you can get to hunt are the ones that will never use the actual season. I thought the intent of this youth season is to recruit permanent hunters, not just provide some event to amuse the kids for 3 days so they can go back to their video games when the weather gets cold.

Ok, That's one.....lol. The fact is that in their infinite wisdom, they have forced the bowhunter portion of the available mentors to choose. And you know that there has to be some portion (probably a large portion) of bowhunters who will opt to hunt instead of volunteering for mentor-duty. Brilliant move! With an event that depends on a large amount of mentors, they just intentionally hacked out a bunch of potential volunteers by sticking it in bow season. Must have slipped their minds .... eh?

I actually like the "within reach" idea. You never know when physical action might be required to stop an impending shot choice error. That wording is exactly what should have been used. That's better than a distance thing and a lot clearer than the way they left it. Anyway, it is what it is. I just hope that all the mentors figure out what it really all means.

If they intended them to be in arm's reach, why are they complicating the issue with the "within sight" addition and the within talking distance phrase, and the no radio jargon? All of those things indicate some separation is allowed and expected. What is wrong with just saying "within reach". They always seem to have to throw in some kind of confusing nonsense that always leaves questions.

Absolutely, I could tell at a single glance whether they were in compliance. 10 -15 feet, you pick it. And it would be as easy to enforce and with absolutely no question about the definition of the requirement.

Bubsquatch???

But why is it mandated in some cases and not in others? What is the logic behind the mandate and why aren't the bowhunters under a B/O mandate for those 3 days? Do you understand what I am getting at? It seems like mixed messages and conflicting regulations on exactly the same issue.

Well if they meant that the mentor has to be able to instantly grab and restrain the youth, why did they go through all the suplementary jargon. Obviously if the intent was to keep a situation where you can physically restrain someone, they pretty much have to be "in sight", and close enough to talk, and radio wouldn't even be a question. I interpret their idea of physical control is as they described it .... I can see them and I can talk to them. Wouldn't it have been a lot easier to specify a distance? I am positive that there will be many who read it the way I read it .... and why not? They have left the door open for that interpretation. Plus, I am still not sure that interpretation isn't exactly what they meant.

I have lost a deer to excessive heat. Not every deer is recovered within a few hours. Mine was a late afternoon hit and unfortunately it had to lay over night and had begun to bloat when I found it. The stink when I tried to gut it was overwhelming. The temperature had flashed up to 70 and thedeer laid in the middle of a foeld with the sun beating on it. That's a temp that happened even during the old season (Oct 15th -). On the other hand, we found a dead deer early during gun season that had already entered rigor mortis but was still edible. It's all a function of time and temperature. In general, earlier season ... more risk.

So it's a "within sight" requirement with the ability to talk to each other. Actually, I can satisfy the talking requirement from 50 yards away if I'm not concerned with doing that in a quiet fashion. Well, that really isn't exactly the picture of the two sitting in the same blind that I had, or that I was hoping for. I think I would have made it a 20' rule if I was serious about "physical control". Oh well, whatever.... Just as an aside, It seems funny that they have mandated blaze orange for this special season, but refuse to mandate it for the regular season. In fact one would think that whatever reasoning led them to require blaze orange for the youth and mentor would have made them at least consider requiring bow hunters to wear BO. which gets to the 2nd question that I had. As far as the 3rd question regarding the potentially diminished effectiveness of BO when the leaves are still on, I guess that's still a matter of conjecture. So it does appear that there might be a safety concern after all. But then there is the deal about it only being attended by an estimated 8000 across the state which kind of makes it basically a non-event..... unless you happen to be in the middle of a group of them ... lol. Then it could get a bit exciting. Anyway, thanks for the info.

I am kind of a privacy nut, and having somebody posted 50 yards away from a persons house grinning back at them, is just a little on the intrusive side. Of course if you wanted to have a little neighborly conversation while your hunting, I guess you wouldn't have to raise your voice a whole lot .... lol. Giving the DEC a whole lot more credit than they probably deserve, one might think that they have surveyed the amount of suburban land that could be additionally hunted by lowering the distance to 50 yards instead of something like 100 yards. Perhaps the 50 yard thing met some arbitrary target area of additional hunting area that they figured that they have to have. However, going for the whole thing may be a mistake as Sportsman pointed out. I think the only way that they can pull this off is if they go into stealth-mode and keep the legislation as quiet as possible. If non-hunting people get wind of this, we'll be lucky if they don't wind up increasing the distance.

Yeah, it was pretty weird that right out of the blue NYON decided to run this article right on the front page like it had some timely value. And then at the very end, they finally tell you that it hasn't even moved to the legislature. They must be a bit tight for things to write about. I will say that I sense from the reaction on this thread that when it does come around, it may have a pretty difficult time. It doesn't sound terribly popular. And, I can imagine how the non-hunters will feel about it.

And the point that you are refusing to acknowlege is that the "mistake" part of all that is the deer that you are sure of that turns out to be something other than what you would have sworn it was. And I still maintain that there are circumstances where a tine or two from the far antler appear to be on the forward antler or vice versa. I have seen that happen, and was only shown the error of what I was "positive of" when the deer happened to turn it's head. And this kind of thing is so much easier to do on the smaller antlered deer, which coincidentally are the deer that the law is trying to distinguish between. Sure, I know the answer is simply don't shoot the smaller deer .... lol. Well then, be honest and write the law that way instead of monkeying around trying to make poachers out of people that normally wouldn't be.

You wouldn't want to see me working on anything mechanical. It's not a pretty sight. My attempts generally wind up costing me more than if I take the stuff to a shop full of factory trained people. I have absolutely no patience, and a whole lot of destruction can result. I do pretty good on bows, but that is about my limit.

How about the mentors that really could use a mentor themselves .... lol. Sorry ... just kidding.

Yeah, I had a few trailcam pictures of Betty the Yeti, but something happened to the files and I lost them all. You'll just have to take my word for it.

I'm not trying to demonize anybody .... seriously. It's just that there are some here (yourself included) that simply love to see citizens controlled. You cannot give up freedoms fast enough. And it is difficult not to compare today's champions of that kind of thinking with the mentality of some of the more noteworthy historical believers in government public behavior modification. I'm sorry if that hit a sensitive spot but I do believe that your kind of mentality definitely has been over-played in this country for way too many decades and probably should not go unchallenged.

I think the safety aspect probably is blown a bit out of proportion, but I do think there are some questions regarding that. First of all, is an honest question that I really don't know the answer to. Exactly how close are the mentor and youth hunter required by law to be? Within reach? Within sight? Within reach of their voice? Within so many yards? How exactly do they define "being with" when it comes to mentors and their hunter. That does relate to just how much control the mentor has over shot selection and safety issues involving that. I know that if I am out there on those days of the youth hunt, I will be very well covered in blaze orange. The question is, am I going to be the tiny minority of bowhunters who actually do this? That also relates to the safety issue. Another question that I really don't have any answer to is how effective is blaze orange when all the leaves are on the trees. I was walking around the hill the other day, and I have to admit that I couldn't really see any great distances through the woods. I have only seen the effectiveness of BO in the woods after all the trees and bushes have lost all their leaves. The damned stuff really works amazingly well. What I really don't know is how well it works when distant vision is blocked out with leaves. I've never had occasion to actually check that out. You guys up north maybe have some insight into that if you have actually seen a lot of guys wearing BO in the woods before leaf-fall. I can't say that I have any idea.

Not to turn this into a blaze orange thread (perhaps others already have), but in case there is any confusion, anytime there is anyone gun hunting for deer, I will be wearing a very significant amount of blaze orange regardless of what ever else I am doing. That would include bow hunting, or cutting firewood, or any other activity in areas where such gun deer hunting might be taking place. In my case that includes waking down my driveway to get the mail. It seems to be the intelligent thing to do, and I do value my hide a bit more than I worry about some kind of fashion statement. And I also will say that if I feel that I do not have the appropriate BO garment for the situation, I simply will stay home.