Doc

These things are not something that we really want to dwell on, but it is true that humans tend to procrastinate when it comes to living each day as our last. We are always thinking that there is always time to say this and do that when really none of us knows which day will be our last. Your message is an important one for all of us regardless of our ages.

OK...... I see he posted today, so things must be alright.....lol.

A well used trail is exactly 20 yards in front of this stand. this stand is over 15 years old and is simply a wall to stand behind. I come to full draw while hidden, and release as soon as the walking deer exposes the vitals. This one has taken the most deer and is very consistent. Another very consistent producer with the same "wall-style" cover. I just let the deer move into shooting position. Down in the valley bottom. Don't see the blind? That's good because the deer can't see it either. Another measured 20 yard shot to the trail. Just behind the camera is an old wild apple tree that always produces. The cover is very tight and thick in here and good bedding is not very far away. You have to be watching all the time here because you will look one time and there will be no deer, and the next time you look they will get right across the shooting lane before you realize what is going on .... lol. Old dead beech tree that overlooks a mineral-seep. It is almost like a treestand the way the land is shaped. No stand construction required. I just take advantage of the natural barrier and the attraction of the seep coming out of the ground right below the tree. Sometimes you just get lucky. Gun stand ..... All the comforts of home! And it is as close to a guaranteed stand as I have ever found. It is a plateau that crosses the hill and forms an escape route when the orange-coats enter the woods. I have spent dozens of opening days right here.

I guess I have to ask: when you harvest a deer and you happen to be using pee or scent, how do you know that the deer wasn't going to be walking by anyway even if you hadn't used the scent. There was only one time that I was pretty well convinced and that was when I used a drag-rag and had a buck walking right on my exact trail in with his nose glued to the trail. That looked pretty obvious. he was making all the same turns and twists that I did when I dragged the rag in. But that is the only time I could say for sure that it worked.

Whenever coyote discussions come up, I start thinking about how in NYS, the coyote is really at the top of the food chain if we do not intervene. So other than disease, and cars, there is nothing to keep their numbers in check. Am I wrong about that? So I guess I am not very surprised when I hear that they are putting a heavy dent in some deer populations around the state. I am sure the DEC is most likely very enthusiastic about that. So I don't expect to ever see any push to promote a year around season on them.

This is the condition of a deer that I shot that was too weak to get out of its bed. Kind of a mercy killing. No question it was a predator attack. The damage to the rear quarters of this deer were definitely the result of a running attack by something. Coyotes, bear, dogs??? No way that I can say with any certainty. I sometimes wonder how many of the carcasses that we find in the woods and assume are wounding losses from hunting season are actually the remnants of predator attacks. But this particular critter was still alive with the damage that showed it was not a hunting casualty.

Probably the first question you should ask is "what are all the uses that you will have for the machine and how are the priorities ranked". Bigger is not always better. My machine is primarily used for snow plowing a 1000' driveway. Maneuverability is a huge primary concern. I have never found a lack of HP to be a concern. On the other hand other people may be interested in a food-plotting machine, or something that pulls firewood out of the woods. There may be passenger concerns for trail riders that mean nothing to me. Customize your choices to your needs. So the first thing is to lay out as accurate a picture of your own personal needs for the machine and build your "want-list" from that.

I agree generally with the content of this except that it seems to make villains of those that set up their own personal sets of standards and challenges. I cannot call someone a problem that lays out their own minimums and sets their own version of ethical hunting. They are not the problem. The problem is a person who sets NO ethical standards and decides that the ends always justify the means. These are the ones who paint the picture of hunting to those who do not know better and set up negative representation of hunting to the world. Yes there are extremes in both directions that do damage to the art of hunting. perhaps there are problems with the ways in which we express ourselves. However, I will always more easily tolerate the hunter that adheres to a rigid set of standards and ethics a whole lot easier than those who can't be bothered at all about the ethics of the hunt and believe that there is no such thing as fair chase considerations or limits. I enjoy discussions of where people set their limits. It shows me that they are concerned about such things. We will never reach unilateral agreement about right or wrong, but just the fact that we at least talk about such things means that we cannot be too far out of whack in the world of hunting.

Any updates?????

I remember when : posted signs were an oddity. new car prices were in the mid four figures. the Watkins home delivery truck used to come to our house. my parents 105 acre farm was bought for 8000 dollars (35 minute drive from Rochester). I first broke the $100 barrier for my paycheck (and was living pretty good). Sears and J.C. Penny and Montgomery Wards offered catalogs for their sales. the main public entertainment in town was the monthly square dances and dinners at the grange hall. theater tickets were $.25 Nobody bothered to lock their doors. The Grange League Federation (GLF) was the sales point for grain. I remember all of us sitting around the huge console radio listening to The Green Hornet. And on and on and on.......

Quote: "anyone add new ground this year?" No, but I have subtracted a bunch, understanding that every year I have to shrink my range because it is getting harder and harder to drag deer out from places that I use to routinely handle in the past.....lol.

I found that it is very difficult shooting a bow when you feel compelled to bear-hug the tree-trunk for dear life.....lol. My last treestand was made out of pressure treated 2x8's and was fastened to the tree with 5/8 diameter x 6" long lag bolts. It is a 5' x 5' platform with railings all around. The whole thing was just 9' off the ground. And I still had to hang on to the tree trunk to stay up in there. That is one very serious affliction. I have tried to get up in it several times over the recent years, but no luck. It's a phobia that simply is never going to go away.

Ha-ha-ha... It won't be very long before we are complaining about the bone-chilling cold and all the snow that we have to shovel, plow and slide off the road in. Our problem is that we are a state of extreme weather. But these days with air conditioning in our homes, cars, and businesses, the worst that can happen is that we have to walk a little bit from our air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned building. I can handle that a lot easier than watching the snow pile up and wondering if my ATV will be able to handle it. Or worse yet standing on the shoulder of the road looking down in a deep ditch at the roof of my car.

went down to the Town Clerk yesterday and I got my bow license and two permits and wife got her fishing license yesterday morning (9:00 am). The Clerk mentioned that the system had been down. Compared to how the process used to be, I have absolutely no complaints. No producing old licenses or any certificates. No long hand written forms to fill out. Now with my lifetime licenses, all I have to do is tell her what I want to get. No ID (we've been on a first name basis for decades), and now with the lifetime license, and being older than dirt, I don't even have to come up with any money......lol. Yeah, computers occasionally crash, but we should be getting used to that by now. That isn't a problem that's unique to the DEC.

Anything that has to do with archery has gone through the roof as far as prices. That is why I have turned into such a cheapskate. I have killed deer with some amazingly primitive equipment. It has been decades since I played the game of "keeping up with the Joneses" with my bowhunting purchases. I began to feel like a fool that all these manufactures took advantage of. I learned that my old aluminum arrows still kill deer. I also learned that these old broadheads that I purchased years ago still are amazingly lethal. I also found out that it is not necessary to spend $1000 on a bow or to chase the "speed-gods" with constant new bow purchases. The big thing is that I learned that trying to buy a successful hunt is a losing game. Others can do whatever makes them feel confident, but for me these characters have priced themselves right out of my market with their stinking greed. Now instead of gradually getting me to part with some of my money, their ridiculous prices have changed my whole outlook on what I really "need" to get a deer, and now they get nothing.

I was just trying to think how many decades that I evolved into a ground stand hunter. I wish I could say it was because of some fantastic piece of intelligence, but it really is merely a reaction to a developing phobia about heights....lol. Actually, I put a lot of man-hours into treestand hunting, and not really with all the current safety recommendations that we have today. I am pretty sure that even without the "heights thing", I probably would have eventually made the change anyway. I had a cousin that died from a fall out of his stand. He was taken from the family at way too young an age. I do realize the benefits of treestand hunting. But I have discovered the excitement of hunting eyeball to eyeball with the critters on their level, and while it has restricted my success somewhat, I do enjoy the additional challenge.

Keep us posted as to how things are going. We miss you here already so get things fixed up.

We have a lot of logging that goes on here, and I have heard from loggers that a chain saw can act as a "deer call". They often associate chain saws with food because it means that tops are now on the ground for eating. So motorized items do not necessarily mean spooked deer. I have seen the same thing with ATVs. They often will lay right in place and never even move.

And a word of caution: If you cannot use power equipment because you are cutting on state land be advised that the state does not allow any cutting at all on state owned lands (hand tools or power equipment).

And if those "thorn bushes" happen to be multi-flora rose, the "pain" comment above can be taken literally. Those things are man-traps.....lol.

I have not done a count lately, but I would say that I have close to a dozen bows currently hanging on the wall right now as well a several that I have sold over the years. Most of them were high end bows when I bought them. I am counting recurve and compounds. There was one recurve that had to be thrown away because of heavy checking. A SIDE-NOTE: That reminds me, if you have bows that are showing structural flaws, don't just set them out with the junk at the side of the road. Either make them completely unusual of attach a note explaining that they are in dangerous condition. There are an awful lot of trash pickers that will use these things or place them in a yard sale or flea market for some unsuspecting newbie to try to shoot.

Anybody remember the old Bear Whitetail hunter. Six wheels, steel cables and solid epoxy limbs that could double as pry bars if need be. The price was under $100.....lol. Probably one of the slowest bows ever made other than perhaps the old Allen originals. I killed more deer with that bow than any of the super-duper bows that I have hanging on the walls. And none of those top of the line bows hanging on the walls killed any of the deer any more dead than that old clunky Bear. I am not saying that bow design should have ceased after that old Bear hit the market, but I have watched prices climb through the roof over the past years and most of those increases were based on things that you need exotic instrumentation to measure. The speed freaks accounted for a lot of the price inflation, and new terminology was invented to justify features that in reality meant nothing without a shooting machine and a chronograph to measure. Yeah I was chasing all that technology too. That's how I wound up with a wall full of very expensive (for the time) bows. Finally, I gave my head a shake and stopped trying to keep up with all the Madison avenue hype and recognized the real value, or lack thereof of all these mysterious features. The day I bought my $600 Mathews about 19 years ago, I took the first step toward shifting my disposable income to other toys that offered more perceptible true value for the additional bucks. And I still get as many deer as we can eat, and they are still just as dead as anybody else's deer take. Oh and by the way, I am still shooting aluminum arrows too. No I am not shooting these deer at 50+ yards, but then that wasn't why I picked up the bow in the first place. But the bottom line is you buy what you need to feel good about your bowhunting. I did for years and I really don't regret it. I just found out that I really didn't have to.

I have got to believe that there is something completely innerving for a would be intruder (even an armed intruder)when out of the darkness they hear the unmistakable sound of a 12 gauge pump Ithaca Deerslayer rattling a round into the chamber. I believe that within 1.5 seconds there would be nothing left of the intruder in the house other than the vile smell of his feces polluting the air as he turned and ran for his life. I suspect there would not even be a need to pull the trigger. In fact a mere tape recording of that sound would probably do the trick......lol.

Yup, August is well under way, so it's likely that a lot of you are starting to snoop around and, scouting, and beginning to check on deer locations, and patterns and food sources, and starting to learn of any deer pattern changes, or verification of old patterns and any changes to habitat. So is your scouting time yielding any useful info? What are you seeing? What are you learning?

So does it seem to you all that every decade, the drivers seem to get significantly more reckless? It almost seems like people are getting less concerned with their lives and the lives of others on the road. I realize that roads keep getting more and more crowded as time goes on, and therefore the odds of encountering idiots are increased. But these days it is getting downright scary. It feels like Russian roulette.