Doc

What is the max temperature that you can stand to have the rynoskin on before you start sweating? Is it true that it is mosquito-proof? Is the weave so tight the little suckers can't get that proboscis through? I think I just might get a set (top and bottom). I suspect that on a day like these past 90 degree days, that stuff is probably not practical. But during hunting season, it should be ok....right?

It will be happening to us all if we are lucky enough to live that long to experience it. There also comes a time when we can't see as well, or even hold a gun up and still enough to guarantee a shot. Eventually, the old knees and ankles will come up short and fail us from even reaching preferred hunting grounds. It's all just part of the cycle of life. At those points in time, we will sit back and enjoy the memories and accomplishments and be thankful for all the hours of hunting we were blessed with. There is nothing new about all that and if we live long enough, we will all experience it. But finally hanging up the bow simply means that we were lucky enough to have had the experience of a wonderful way to hunt. I haven't gotten there yet, but it is now in sight. By the way it was a pleasure to see that picture of the magnificent work of craftsmanship that the Bear Tamerlane was. I have mine hanging on the wall rack to remind me of my tournament activities. What a work of art!

Bedding areas generally have several entrance and exit trails, and hopefully there are not so many of them that screw up your odds too much. I would suggest that you stay in the observation area some distance from where you have traditionally seen them moving out of the bedding area and then if and when you believe that you have determined a pattern, move Slowly and carefully) into bow range on a day when the wind is right and conditions cover whatever noise you might inadvertently make. Likely you will only get one chance, so put all conditions as much in your favor as possible.

Actually this whole thread is not really about constitutionality. There are no constitutional guarantees regarding these internet entities that really are a whole new form of political manipulation that has not yet been regulated, and may not ever be regulated until Democracy has drawn its last breath and the heavy hand of socialism finally has it's death-grip around our necks. Credit the left for having dominated most forms of media that forms public opinion. Understand that it is the left that has been able to control the educational institutions and bend the young skulls full of mush of entire generations to tolerate and encourage the pushing of Marxism and other such anti USA agendas and ideals. The educational system has been in their control for many, many decades. Take note that the left has found ways to turn our own freedoms against us and done so in a way that there is no defense. Don't blame these e-businesses for making use of our own free-speech guarantees. They are just seizing the vulnerabilities of our own freedoms and applying what has been drummed into their heads by the Marxist professors in their education that we paid for. There definitely are enemies of Democracy at work here, but there is no Constitutional argument to be made against them. They will use the Constitution right up to the day they abolish it.

Basically, starting out with a 50# bow is likely to end with frustration and a bad feel for archery. I started with an old Ben Pearson fiberglass bow and would have given up if I had not saved my pennies and bought a 35# Wing Gull. Finally, I could allow my body to achieve decent form and actually come to fulldraw and finally hit what I was aiming at. So, as a recommendation, I would say take the bow, have it checked out and get a new string made for it, and buy a lighter draw weight recurve as a starter bow and work your way into Grandfather's bow. That is a much easier, practical, way that is more likely to end in success.

Shakespeare was always a well thought of recurve back in the day I had one myself. Pretty good quality workmanship. If it was not abused and stored with some care, it should still be serviceable and have a lot of life left in it. I have a few bows from back in the 60's that I still occasionally pull out and shoot. They all shoot well.

I am not a turkey hunter, so any deer would be easier for me.

Hunting buddies come and go. Yes it is a lot more fun to have people that you can hunt with and count on not to do some of the things you mentioned. But hunting partners have to be screened carefully and chosen with care. Case in point, I had a guy from work that hunted with me on my property. Next thing I knew his brother-in-law showed up and then friends of the brother-in-law. Before long my driveway looked like a parking lot. I had another situation where a guy that I hunted with decades earlier had a brother who suddenly showed up unannounced and was starting to set up a drive through the thicket in front of my house (without introduction or permission). He had about 8 guys ready to push through the area when I went down and put a rather unfriendly permanent end to that activity. There are other surprises you can encounter when you decide to hunt with somebody. My Brother-in-law from Canada invited a couple of people down for a few days of hunting. The day before the opener, we set up a target to check their guns out to ensure they survived the trip without any changes. The one guy proceeded to rip off 5 shots as fast as he could pull the trigger. I'm kind of a "one shot-one-deer guy", and I really don't like being around the lead sprayers. Its a safety thing. Apparently he was raised with using deer dogs and his past meant laying down a wall of lead at deer running flat out. The other guy was worse. While we were walking up to check out the targets, he was hanging back doing something with his shotgun when all of a sudden, we heard a shot right behind us. I have no idea what the hell he was doing, but his gun accidently discharged (fortunately into the ground). That is when I turned around pointing to the opposite hill across the valley and told those two that that is where they would be hunting. The point is that it is great to have someone to hunt with, but you have to know them a whole lot better than just being members of the same forum. Bad things can happen when you don't screen them VERY closely.

This time of year, I am a "hiker". I wander all over my hunting area, checking out known past hotspots and occasionally going through some areas. What am I looking for? ...... primarily checking oak trees and the occasional wild apple trees and checking where the wild grape vines are. Tracks and scat are interesting from a deer inventory standpoint, but most of the time, deer are traveling differently than they will come October 1. Food sources are in a continual state of change. Bedding areas are interesting to locate, but they too change with the seasons. I do hunt some state land, so it is good to check non-hunting pressures (mountain bikers and hikers and bird watchers) on certain areas. Any activities that can impact patterns are good things to know about. I spend a lot of time re-building ground stands even if the locations do not yet look hot. Experience with many of them shows that even though the areas look dead right now, that can change with something as simple as acorn-drop or rut. So the answer to your initial question is that I have an infinite number of places to scout. It's not a case of finding a couple of spots, but more of keeping a running account of what is happening in the entire hunting area so that when the season comes, I will have a good idea where the deer should be as the season, food sources, and the rut progresses. I also place as much value on past hunting experiences as I do the current scouting (maybe even more so). Past hunts tell me a lot about how the wind behaves in an area and directions and times of deer travel and why the deer are where they are.

I reserve my favorite breakfasts for when I occasionally go to a restaurant. Then it is two eggs over medium, a double order of wheat toast and a whole pile of homefries. And if the wife has any egg or toast or potatoes left over, I glom them up too. At home it is 2-cups of low carb bran flakes or a couple of eggs and two slices of low carb toast. Carb count at all meals is 60 grams of carbs, max. (a diabetic's diet set up a bunch of years ago by a dietician). It works.

You didn't say what poundage your recurve is, but likely you are a bit over-bowed and your elbow is collapsing in trying to brace against the unusual forces throughout the draw cycle. Roll your elbow out and you will find extra clearance. The muscles used on a compound and the ones used on a recurve or longbow are not quite the same. Compounds start at zero pounds and go to maximum and then toward the end of the draw cycle, the let-off takes over. Your archery muscles have learned to accept that force-draw application. The recurve builds to a point where you reach max draw weight at full draw. The muscles feel a whole different pull throughout the draw cycle, and your muscles have to be re-conditioned to accept that. At first everything is trying to collapse. Until your muscles develop the new cycle of draw weight, there will be all kinds of form failures. Roll that elbow out, and you should get your string clearance back.

Probably won't live long enough to exhaust my own list of projects, but thanks for the offer ..... lol.

Deer prefer many different foods depending on the time of year and what is producing and what is not. There is nothing wrong with variety. Be careful about putting too much stock in observations in open croplands and plots. You may be seeing deer there simply because they are quite visible when standing out in the middle of a field. When deer back in the woods eating acorns are not necessarily "on display". And remember that not all oaks are created equal in terms of being deer attractants. White oak acorns are the preferred food.

Frankly, I prefer productive physical labor to keep in shape. I actually go out of my way to find physically demanding projects here at home that wind up producing something useful rather than going to the gym just to burn calories and exercise muscles. One of the reasons that I push myself into staying engaged in bowhunting and bow shooting, is to keep my arms from atrophying and I am heading for 75 now where I have to be concerned about such things. But I think I did do my physical longevity a favor when I dropped the 80 pounder and got a more reasonable draw weight....lol.

Frankly, I don't like to see political activism enter into commercial enterprises, no matter what the cause is. But for a store to take a political posture that is contrary to a certain percentage of their customers, seems like they are telling their customers that their patronage is worthless to them. Frankly I will do my business at places that don't have that sort of anti-customer attitudes and behaviors. We get enough harassment from the libs without handing them money to finance their harassment. However, to be fair, I have to admit that for me Dicks was a place to buy an occasional bowling glove or kid's sports equipment and clothing and footwear. I never saw them as a serious gun store. So I really am not involved in a true boycott. I just never liked the store in the first place. It has always had the "jack of all trades" syndrome, and it follows that they were "master of none". Well, they simply added yet another good reason not to waste my time there. If I miss out on an occasional sale or deal, it won't be the first time.

Yeah I guess that's right. But I will guarantee that those guys likely stressed their archery joints and muscles a whole lot more than we ever will in our lifetime even with our extended lives. No compounds for them, and they didn't just use their bows during, or in preparation for, a deer season. It was the daily tool of their trade. Native Americans wanted to eat, they began shooting at a very early age and shot a hell of a lot of arrows in their limited lifetime, until they decided it was "good day to die". Did they stop hunting when they had a bit of bursitis set in? I have a feeling they were a whole lot tougher individuals than we can even imagine. The Turks, Romans and Huns and all of those critters back in their day had to have been a pretty rough bunch of guys too. I have seen pictures and specs on some of the bows they shot, and damned few of us would even be able to pull them back.

Ok, let's forget about the modern day archery superstars, and just think about a time when archery wasn't just for exhibition, or for fun and recreation. There were whole civilizations built on regularly shooting a bow and where accuracy boiled down to whether you ate or not. They seemed to pull their bows back assumedly without too much groaning and wincing. And depending on which civilization we are talking about (native American or Roman archers, etc.) some of those guys were pulling a whole lot more weight than we ever thought about using. So there definitely is something involved in our modern lifestyle that seems to be making humans devolve into much less than humans used to be capable of when it comes to muscle usefulness. Yes, technology has figured out how to keep us alive way past what we even want, but it appears that something is being traded off for our modern lifestyle. It makes you wonder what our species will eventually look like and what other functions humans may lose over the coming centuries. One thing seems likely. The species will have well developed thumb and index finger muscles.....lol.

What is happening these days that is making people not age well? On one of the other threads we were talking about summer practice with bows, and it is amazing how many people talked of being effected by failing muscles and joints. Many of them are not really all that old. I think back to old guys like Fred Bear and Howard Hill and Stacey Groscup and others who were famous for using things like 110 pound long bows on elephants and shooting well into their old age. I can't even imagine pulling a longbow (or even a compound) with 100# pull, but these guys were doing it. Hey, and look at how Fred Bear was built ......not exactly what you would call the Charles Atlas of his time. Howard Hill was even deformed a bit from so much shooting that his right shoulder was visibly bigger than his left. It seems like these guys abused their archery muscles far worse than any of us do today and yet were able to shoot way into old age. So, I have to wonder what we are doing to ourselves that is breaking us down before our time. Even I have been forced to move from an 80# compound in preparation for a moose hunt, in my 40's, to one now set at 60# because of joints and muscles becoming a bit tweaky at times. How did some of those old-timers get away without body break-downs? Or are we doing things to ourselves today that is hastening a breakdown in body structure? I know that hunter ages are increasingly getting older, but it seems that a lot of these breakdowns are happening at younger and younger ages.

I will say that every trip into the woods provides an ongoing training session that can't be beat. The old school of hard knocks is a very effective teacher....lol. It's a tough way to get started, but the lessons learned are there forever.

The thought comes to mind that if the state screws this one up, they are directly impacting the future of hunting.....Big-time. These are some real horror stories I am hearing. We have enough of a problem with shrinking new hunter recruitment without trying to frustrate new hunters out even trying hunting out due to scarce mandatory training. Do other states handle the problem differently? Does anyone know? I will say that I believe the courses could be streamlined by paring them down to strictly Hunter Safety Training. The courses that I have been to were very heavy on hunting training and a fair amount of random B.S. about hunting stories and experiences. That is all nice, and I enjoyed it, but never considered bull sessions as something that the state should be mandating. My feeling is that the state should not be involved in mandating anything other than hunters being exposed to "Hunting Safety", and that should not take any longer than a couple of hours. I see it all as a massive inconvenience that you might get instructors to accept for a season or two, but I also see it as something that people would quickly be bailing out of when burn-out sets in. There has to be a better system. There should be compensation of some sort, and the courses should be stripped down to just safety training which should turn them into two hour courses.

There is nothing much that will stop that thing!

Ok......Are you all ready for a dumb question?? What do you do with dried turkey feet?

One way to rip the fun right out of the hunt is to have some kind of battle with other hunters going on. I'm not saying that you should always wuss out, but sometimes going out of your way to force other hunters out can have unintended consequences. Just something else to factor into your decision.

Perhaps what he really needs is someone to explain the error of his ways and work with him to help him become a responsible hunter. I have encountered people while hunting that didn't seem to realize that they are doing something wrong, and I frequently take the time to explain it to them. Sometimes that is all that is needed to change attitudes.

This sounds like a real problem. We have locked ourselves into a system that can't seem to support itself. And the future of hunting is tied directly to the system being successful. If we keep discouraging and frustrating future hunting recruits, how long can hunting continue off into the future with that additional millstone around our necks? Maybe it's time to begin some pre-emptive thinking to fix the system. Is it time for "paid" instructors? Are there other ideas that will help boost instructor participation?