Doc

The guy looked like a wounded deer ......... oh really?

Yes it's true that it is a lot easier to turn away and ignore game law violations. I guess for those that do not believe in laws and such, the decisions may very well be to simply ignore such things as a standard way of doing business. There are many poachers who count on this kind of behavior. Personally I have never been one of these "shut up and hunt" people.

Our processor is a huge outfit with a whole lot of employees. I always get my meat back within a day (or less) of when I drop it off. Actually that hide is off and the carcass is hanging on a conveyor inside of a couple hours or less. This year I dropped my deer off on opening day late in the morning. He already had a pile of deer there. I got my call to come and pick up my meat around 4:00 in the afternoon. That kind of service is not all that unusual and has become the norm for the past decade that I have been using these guys. We have a neighbor own the road that seems to be a believer in aging meat. He generally has some doe hanging in his front lawn for about 3 to 4 weeks before it finally disappears. Most like it is taken down and taken to the dump or someplace ..... ha-ha. I see he has another one dangling there this year....lol.

Are there any local farm organizations, or farm supply store with a bulletin board, that you might be able to post your offer? You might get more responses.

Frankly, I would try to get that in an e-mail reply so you have "written" interpretation of the law. At least you will have some kind of documentation that you meant well if some other ECO decides he doesn't agree. I think that the included terms of "unimproved, apparently unused" could become points of discussion in court. For one thing, one has to invade the boundaries of the property in order to determine that the property is indeed unimproved or unused. Perhaps another point of possible misinterpretation might be what constitutes an improvement. The simple inclusion of an access road is an improvement. A well drilled on the property might be an improvement. A foundation hidden from view might be considered an improvement. A pond might be an improvement. A food plot might be considered an improvement. For me, my time is way too important to be wasted in court even if I eventually win. I don't think I will ever be trying to take advantage of those kinds of loop-holes.

I do always get reminded of just how few hunters are intimately involved with the politics of hunting when I try to get them to contact legislators about pending hunting or gun legislation. That can get to be quite frustrating, but really points out just what a huge percent of guys are in hunting to any extent other than to simply "get their deer". Another telling stat is the tiny percent of hunters who even bother to belong to the NRA. Yes many of them have all kinds of wild excuses (made up strictly to avoid involvement). The same thing applies to the lack of interest and involvement in wild game management procedures. But it still ocurs to me that as disconnected as these people are, we need those people in our hunter ranks even if they are nothing other than a simple voter registration number. I don't think that a lot of people realize just how damaging these reports of shrinking hunter numbers really is to our credible influence with legislators and other officials involved in game management funding and procedures.

Actually I am not sure which post or who's post you are commenting on but I have never said "meat is meat and you can't eat horns".....lol. It is absolutely a true statement, but I never said it. But what I have said very often in the past is that I have never shot any deer that I wasn't proud of taking regardless of size. I have also in the past said that I have never belittled any deer that anyone else has taken nor have I passed judgement on their accomplishments based on some false sense of superiority of what I consider to be a worthy trophy. I also might add that I get no particular kick out of bragging about how many bucks I have let walk by. In fact it really is nobody's business. It serves no purpose for me to try to impress anyone by publishing a tally of deer that I passed because just like that sort of thing doesn't impress me, I'm sure that my doing that wouldn't impress anyone else either. So hopefully that should correct the record on where I stand regarding AR and my attitudes toward trying to dictate to others what deer they should be taking or attempting to coerce others to adopt my values regarding what deer are suitable for taking. My comment was relative to the reply that basically said that saving 1.5 year old deer with the current pop version of AR is only a temporary goal for most of the AR crowd. I definitely agree with that remark and have already seen where the next phase of the argument would be to try to shame hunters out of taking 2.5 year old bucks (Which was the point of the post that I was agreeing with). And further, there have been enough comments across this forum to indicate it wouldn't be stopping there either. So I'm not sure where the rest of your response is coming from but my comments in the last reply were limited towhat I just indicated in this paragraph.

My Grandfather eventually came to the point where he had to give up hunting because of failing health, strength and endurance. My father also found a time when hunting was no longer something that he had the stamina for. Both had hunted in an honorable and legal fashion all their lives, a fact of which they were both proud. Neither ever once entertained the thought of breaking the law to accomodate their infirmities. I am not all that far from that point in my life, and I also intend to finish out my years in a legal and honorable fashion. Hunting has always been a strong family tradition and a large part of our lives. Another strong family tradition has been a respect for game laws. For me it would kill me to have my name dragged through the newspapers because of finishing off my years of hunting with illegal acts. It certainly would taint all years of hunting that I have done and cast a shadow on any accomplishments that I have achieved over my lifetime. That's not a way that I want to go out. I am not really the kind that would blow-in my neighbor, but there is no way I would shake his hand and encourage him to continue hunting in an illegal fashion either. I can understand some people thinking they are doing this guy a favor by encouraging him, but I have to wonder if he would like to finish out his days with an arrest and public humiliation. How great a favor would that be to set him up for because sure as hell, the violations he was commiting are certainly not all that hard for a CO to detect, apprehend and prosecute. Given the opportunity of Monday morning quarter-backing, I would have encouraged him to think about what he is doing, and as others have suggested, I could do him a real favor by offering to assist him in pursuing legal hunting activities. Isn't that a much better solution?

Now there is a situation where the Tipp line should have been used. You just know that someone was planning on coming back after dark to pick it up. That also is an opportunity where the DEC guys could have made an easy bust.

I think you might be surprised at just what percent of all hunters fall into the category of "super-casual participants". Maybe we don't like to recognize these guys as "real" hunters, but like it or not, they have always been a large part of the entire hunting community. Even though forums such as these leave us with the impression that most hunters are very involved in learning about, practicing and attempting to force all kinds of deer management, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of hunters don't belong to these forums or hunting advocacy organizations or any kind of political entity that works for hunting, and they really approach their hunting with a very limited amount of interest. They are not into the politics of hunting and don't want to be turned into activists. Like it or not, it truly is up to a very small minority of hunters to actually shape deer management. But it is that much larger silent majority of hunters that we sometimes look down on that give us the numbers to be taken seriously as a significant segment of society. Without those numbers, we will never keep the ear of the movers and shakers (political entities) that regulate and even allow hunting. So while we may wish that all who hunt would be militant and active in the politics of hunting, that notion is really not all that realistic. It never has been and it never will be. But that doesn't mean that we needn't concern ourselves over the loss of those hunters. Just the periodic publication of articles that indicate that hunting is a faltering activity is a severly damaging piece of data for us. Politicians and bureaucrats look at those trends and see another segment of the population that they needn't waste their time and efforts working for.

Don't forget that when the temperatures drop to ridiculous levels a lot of hunter pressure also drops off. Guys either don't go out, or wimp-out early in the morning when they get froze out. That will also have an negative effect on deer movement.

Ha-ha ..... Ain't that the truth? That's already happening. There's really no end to it.

I hate to say it, but I do consider myself very lucky to have been alive at a time when there were no barriers and I could walk an explore as much as I wanted, limited only by the number of daylight hours and sometimes not even that. As a kid I used to take all day hikes along the ridge-tops of the valley, and never encounter a single posted sign. I got to see some interesting country, and the only time anyone would ever see me at home was when it was time to eat. The rest of the time I was up on the hill. When I got old enough to hunt, I used to just pick out a chunk of hill and still-hunt until I got tired of walking. That's not so easy to do these days without being turned back by posted signs. In fact it is impossible. Many of today's kids and hunters will never know that kind of freedom.

I've found dead deer and a couple of them were still edible. Quite a few years ago, I was hunting state land and heard one of those 5 shot volleys down in a nearby thicket. I jumped up on a high spot where I could see the small field above the thicket and saw 5 deer come out. Four of them crossed the field and went up the hill and one came out in the field and turned back into the thicket. Tracks had to be obvious because there was about 6" of snow on the ground. I watched for a minute and out came a hunter. He took a couple of steps out into the field. looked to the left then the right and before I could get his attention, he did an about face and headed back into the thicket. A couple minutes later, I heard a car start up and off he went. I never saw anyone put so little effort into recovering a deer or even checking whether or not he hit it. Naturally. I went down to check the situation out. I followed the four sets of tracks part way up the hill far enough to know that none of them were leaking. Then I remembered that one that didn't follow the rest and went back into the thicket. I went back down and located it's track. Yes, there was plenty of blood and yes I did find it almost within sight of where the hunter stepped out in the field. It was a monster doe ....... steaming fresh and eventually mighty fine eating. The point is that when a deer doesn't flop right down, some guys assume that they missed. The way this guy ripped off the 5 shots, probably 90% of the time he'd be right. Sending 5 slugs ripping through a thicket and then spending about 4 minutes checking to see if any of the deer were actually hit, is certainly the height of irresponsibility. Actually it probably wouldn't have ben a bad idea to see if there might have been some other hunter laying dead in the area, with that wild display of throwing lead through a thicket. But anyway, I'll bet that is how a lot of deer wind up rotting away in the woods. It's a shame, but this sort of thing does happen occasionally.

I have to wonder just what level of dedication and involvement a person needs in order to be called a proper hunter. Just what shortfall marks a hunter as being apathetic? Does a hunter need to obsess about all things related to hunting before he is considered to be doing his part? There are some people who look at hunting as recreation and are only looking to go out and "get a deer" ..... any deer. Some actually treat hunting as something that is a relaxing, enjoyable, activity rather than something that is a life-driving endeavor. Is that bad? Is that really any different than it has always been? In fact if we could actually track attitude trends, are people really getting less management minded about the deer herds? I don't think so. But anyway if a guy is only interested in grabbing his gun and have some fun getting a deer, I guess I am thankful for even that level of interest. The only way that hunting will ever encounter a "downfall" is when these people decide that they don't want to do that anymore.

You will need the cooperation from relatives, but you may not be able to get them to get into the heavy research part. All I asked was that they fill out some forms that I had prepared. That info was only pertanent to their immediate part of the family. I got 100% cooperation when I kept it down to that level of work. However, as I expanded my searches, I did run into a lot of people who got super-enthused and did go off and dig up more branches of the family tree. That's where I made some real advances. For example, I had help in the research of the midwest branches of the family, and other research over-seas. Those people got special mention in the book and free copies where I took care of the postage.

Actually that answer from the DEC is very misleading. While a lot of the more ridiculous lawsuits would lose their validity, there is still the legal expectation that there are not dangerous situations allowed to exist on your land. As an example, we lived for quite a few years on the old farmstead before we found an old abandoned open well part way up the hill. Don't ask me why anyone would dig a well up there, but many many years ago someone did and we could have been made to prove that we were unaware that we were allowing an unsafe situation to exist on our property (impossible to prove) if some hunter had fallen in and drowned. I also know of another open well that is quite nicely camoflaged by bushes on another property. There are other things such as old fences that can damage snowmobilers that could form a very nice little lawsuit if people were not warned not to trespass. So I wouldn't feel too secure about a freedom from lawsuits just because the DEC says that such things have been tightened up a bit. I don't.

Back in 1951, a posted sign in our area was a novelty. Hunting lands were huge and primarily owned by farmers who were way to busy to worry about chasing trespassers, and really had no interest in doing so. Also, a great many of them couldn't afford posted signs or the time that it took to put them up. All land that was away from houses and barns was considered a place to hunt and it was fine with landowner (no permission needed or expected). Fast forward a decade or so, and you find improved roads and improved vehicles and improved wages that lured commuters out into the rural areas with the promise of cheap land, and lots of it, as the farmers rapidly deserted their farms and turned to the more lucrative jobs in the cities. Large tracts of land were broken into small parcels and filled with city transplants. With this new breed of landowner, fresh from the city, came new attitudes of possessiveness. Up went the posted signs and up went the denials of access. Every year since then it became more engrained in the rural societies. This idea of locking up land has become the established norms. Much of it has been driven by hunters themselves with careless hunting practices and a lack of respect for the property of others. Heavily publicized hunting deaths and near misses added fuel to the fire. Other abuses such as litter, fence damage, mechanized trespass with offensive sounding off-road vehicles and other abuses has solidified the attitudes of posting such that it is something that will never go away. A new force has also been gaining acceptance recently. That is the new hunter/managers who have been impressed with the idea of growing their own trophies so they too can join the big-boys that they see on the TV that harvest these "manufactured trophies". I have seen the high fences, and the leases, and the large chunks of acreage that have been withdrawn from the hunting public with only a few "members" allowed to hunt there. This idea was unheard of back in 1951. I'm sure that the future will hold even more stringent access as land continues to be gobbled up by development. Yes, a lot has changed over the past 60 years and the trends are obvious. Those posted signs aren't going anywhere.

My deer never hang anymore. As soon as I get it home, it's on to the processor ........ same day. Back when I used to do my own processing, I would hang it up overnight just so I didn't have to get into the stinking mess right away at the end of a hard day of hunting. No other reason. I know that professional slaughterhouses hang their beef and pork and such for a specified time at a specified temperature. Unfortunately, I don't have a climate controlled walk-in cooler like they do. So I forgo all of that process. I've never had a complaint or noticed any difference in meat quality. However, I have had some moose and deer meat that was "aged" in the sun and at all kinds of excessive changing temperatures. The taste of some of that was not really all that pleasant.

I have been into the family genealogy for quite a few years, Taking our family history back to the late 1500's. I was contacting family members all over the world and sharing and compiling family research. It's a great hobby and a great way to establish contact with a lot of family. Eventually I created a family book of over 90 pages and distributed hundreds of copies. The book had the complete lineage as well as old pictures of early family members and their farms and other interesting items and a bunch of articles and anything else that I thought family members might be interested in. Costs were simply postage which was very cheap at "book rates" so nobody had to spend a fortune to get a copy. Materials and copying facilities were donated by my employers with their knowledge and permission so there was no production costs. The software that I used was "Family Treemaker", a super user friendly piece of software. It's a great way to keep things organized. I have slowed the activity in recent years and gotten into a bunch of other hobbies so I am getting to the point where I am looking for some other younger family member to take it over. I would encourage anyone who has any interest in family history to start some research. With the internet, there is no limit as to how far you can go, and perhaps leave your family members with a present that they all will appreciate.

Mine stay up through the entire bow season and so far, after two years of use, there is no sign of deterioration. I generally take them in shortly after gun season starts. They do get to see all kind of weather and hold up pretty nice.

That's it !!!! I don't know why I thought it was a North American critter. Anyway ............. that looks like where some of these breeders are heading with their genetic experimentation. Pretty soon the Dr. Frankenstien deer farmers will develop a deer with a tiny body that just lays in a pen in a pile and grows antlers ...... lol. Hey, anything for a buck ..... eh?

Isn't that the way Christmas lights are supposed to be strung????

Aw, kwitcherbitchin!

Look, you ain't a real hunter unless you sit there so long that other hunters walk up to you and poke you with a stick just to see if you're still alive. I don't know, but it sounds like a lot of you guys actually leave the stand before you get your deer, some even leave the stand daily. What's up with that? You guys just don't seem to take this stuff seriously at all.