Doc

Yes, and I believe a good portion of that original post was about gun season as well as most of the follow up responses.

Have a good time and don't let those fish pull you in. I think we might be needing a couple of "hero" pictures of you getting a hernia from lifting some of those monster fish.

Maybe I'm not understanding the original post, but I don't see this as being anything peculiar for the seasons of the last bunch of years. haven't we all seen the season being primarily reduced to an opening day event (or maybe the opening two days)? I thought it was a pretty accepted expectation that every year hunters are becoming pretty much part-timers. Many show up for the first day, never to return again. Or perhaps in days after opening day, a few hunters show up for a few hours in the morning and then disappear at lunch time. Also, most of what few hunters that come out after opening day are strictly sitters with nobody moving deer. Meanwhile, once the trauma of opening day takes place, the deer remain in super survival mode as long as there is even one hunter in their area, and they remain sitting tight in their favorite sanctuaries. It has nothing to do with super heavy harvests, or coyotes, or diseases, or any kinds of deer deaths because when the following year rolls around, there are as many deer as ever (+/-). Let's face it, hunters are simply getting to be part-time participants with only a very tiny core of die-hard hunters (not enough to move deer). Not only are we losing numbers of hunters, but the dedication is waning as well. At least that is the way I have perceived recent hunter attitudes and participation in recent seasons.

It's kind of funny what some feel is an old age that requires mechanical assistance for a deer drag. I had a neighbor a few years back that dropped dead of a heart attack on his way up our hill (on foot) ...... and he was in his late 40s......and he wasn't even dragging a deer....... and supposedly he was in pretty good shape. It seems that there are a lot of reports of people dropping dead during hunting season every year. For some it isn't that big a surprise. For others it is. All I know is that for some people who are desk-bound for almost all of the year to all of a sudden begin dragging 150+ pounds or so of dead weight up hills and through the woods might cause them to think they are doing something healthy but that wonderful activity of "good exercise" might just be creating a potential health disaster. If there is an opportunity to use a mechanized method, or to team up with a fellow hunter or two for the drag, I say go for it. It just might provide a few more seasons for you to enjoy. There are times when I use the ATV to get me up the hill and then park it just under the ridge of the hill and start walking from there on semi-flat land. That may be a sign of deteriorating endurance, or it might just be a case of smart distribution of hunting effort and time. I suspect it is a combination of both. All I know is that it allows me to get deeper back in away from the crowds, and that ATV is always just a good "flat-land walk" away when I do get something. Unfortunately, since a lot of my hunting is done on state land, I still get involved in way more long drags than I probably should just getting the deer back to my land where I can use the ATV. Quite possibly my doctor would be the one having the heart attack if she ever saw some of the drags that I have undertaken in recent years..... lol.

67 years old and closing in on 68 (another month and a few days). Sure enough I have slowed down a bunch. But then I hunt in valley country and most of my hunting is done on top of a killer hill (actually it did kill my much younger neighbor a few years back). When I feel like it, I'm not afraid to take the ATV nearly all the way up to the top and begin hunting from there, but I have climbed that thing many times by foot as well and more trips are made on foot than by motor. What I have found is that I think a lot more about the practicalities of dragging a deer out from wherever I hunt these days when not too many years ago that thought never crossed my mind, and I always seemed to find myself hunting a ridiculous number of miles from home or transportation ..... lol. I tend to favor those areas where I can use my ATV for at least part of the drag. I've also turned into a bit of a fair-weather hunter. I try to keep in mind that hunting is a recreational activity and undue excessive hours of torture and discomfort are not really the goal of the activity. I've paid my dues and I now expect that shivering uncontrollably with wind-whipped rain soaking through my clothes probably is not the best way to spend my day.

My sense of this year's hunting weather is that we have had all kinds of extremes. This hasn't been the worst year of hunting weather I have ever hunted in, or the best. Early bow season was wet and windy. Then it turned warmer and dry. Then back and forth some more. We've had some great mornings and ugly windy afternoons during both bow and gun season. My recollection of past hunting seasons is about the same kind of mixture of weather. Could have used some more snow cover, but I managed to get along without it. At this point, I could really care less what the weather does. I'm pretty much finished. The number of shots I have heard in the past week could be counted on one hand. And yet the deer are still spooked into nocturnal super-survival mode. I got my venison, and for me it's time to call it a season.

I absolutely hate the reckless viewscape pollution created by the proliferation of these multi story high whirly-gigs. But Of all the good arguments against these monstrosities, wildlife disruption is probably not one of the more legitimate ones. I would seriously doubt that all wildlife abandons property, food, shelter, etc. with the installation of these things.

We've all heard of "suicide by cop". That's where a guy wants to commit suicide and creates a situation where a cop shoots him. I think this is the same thing with just a slight twist and could be called "suicide by hunter".

It used to be that there were adequate hunter numbers on state land to keep the deer moving. It gave a patient sitting guy a pretty good chance to have some action. Guys would get cold or bored and start still hunting and bumping deer all over the place. Our little chunk of state land doesn't work that way anymore. It gets awful darn quiet even on opoening day.

If I can see another hunter, I'm moving. I don't care if I was there first or if I've got what I consider to be a great spot. I'm out of there! And that is regardless of whether I know them or not. If I can see him, his slug can make it to me. That's not an acceptable situation for me.

Shotgun slug in the head ....... yick! I don't even want to imagine that sort of thing. They were dragging a deer for crying out loud. I can't imagine why the gun was loaded or at least why the safety wasn't on.

I'm not sure that all the quietness is due to scarcity of deer or anything to do with their patterns and activity. At least that doesn't seem to be the case in our area. What I do see is very light south-bound traffic compared to years past, and not a whole lot of cars in the state parking lots, and darn few guys in the woods. Today was definitely better. Maybe today the hunters were getting a bit bored and finally decided to do a bit of walking and got the deer on their feet more than Saturday. I don't know..... I'm just guessing and theorizing .... lol.

Much different kind of action today from what I heard/saw on Saturday. A lot of shooting on both sides of the valley. Still wasn't anything spectacular, but at least it sounded like a gun season was in progress.

I have a ground blind that is well brushed in that I have walked right by when I was ready to use it ..... lol. I can't necessarily fault someone who accidentaly shoots into something that has been purposely and intentionally camoflaged to blend in with the background (if that's the way it was). I bought some blaze orange material specifically for the purpose of using one of my pop-up blinds during gun season. I haven't had occasion to use that kind of blind yet during gun, but without significant amounts of blaze orange, I would feel just as vulnerable sitting in one of those things as I would if I was foolish enough to go out in gun season dressed in camo (or anything other than blaze orange). I'm thinking the victim may have had more fault in this situation than the shooter. I know, we hear all the people parroting back the safety slogan we were all taught about being absolutely sure of the background before pulling the trigger. But unless you are an individual who only will shoot under target range safety conditions (fully cleared with an earthen backstop), you are never 100% sure that this sort of thing couldn't possibly happen.

I've been saying that right along for the last few years that every year is quieter than the last. Yesterday was ridiculous. Also, more and more guys are coming out for only a half day. But, they must be getting more efficient than ever before because when I took my deer over to the procesor around 11:00 am, he already had the conveyor full of skinned deer and bunches of deer waiting to be skinned laying all over the ground. I'm not sure how unusual that is because I have never took a deer over that early opening day, but there was a pile of them already. So what's going on? Whoever would have thought that opening day of gun season would be getting so deserted. I finally had to ask my Brother-in-law who's been hunting with me for decades if I was simply having one of those senior recall failures when I start getting the notion that hunter activity used to be so much greater 20 or 30 years ago. He assured me that it really is not just my imagination. The change is dramatic. By the way, surprising to me, the change to Saturday seems to have made it even worse. To me it seems like the change is way more than the annual couple of percentage points of decline that the DEC keeps talking about. I'm starting to wonder if there isn't a significant number of people who buy licenses and then don't go out hunting. Actually I do know a few like that.

Heard the first shot at 6:30. Then it was quiet until about 6:55 and there were a couple of shots right around that time. They were a little better this year than usual.

What is it that makes us always want to get into somebody else's harvest choices? Kind of pointless isn't it?

Exactly what I was thinking. Everybody used to sacrifice a day off from work/school when they had the Monday opener. So what's the problem with changing that to having everyone at camp sacrifice the prior Friday instead and extend the camp-life activities in that way.

I have been shooting in my basement for decades and have gone through all kinds of different back-stop schemes. The absolute best was a 4' x 4' x 18" deep stack of corrugated cardboard held in a frame that was compressible using a couple 1/2-13 lengths of threaded rod. You shoot into the corrugations. When the center got shot out (after a couple years) I would simply pull it apart and rearrange the cardboard with the unshot ones going in the middle and the shot up ones going along the top and bottom extremes. I never had an arrow bleed through, and there was a cement block wall right behind the butt. Eventually my cardboard butt got donated to my outdoor target and has been out there in a little open sided shed for a couple decades now soaking up arrows just as reliably as it did in my basement. However, for the basement in recent years, I got even lazier and simply set a commercial foam "Block" target down at the other end of the basement. That cement block wall behind the target gives you a little more incentive not to miss.....lol. I don't miss! By the way, without knowing the layout of your basement, I have to mention the safety aspect relative to any staircases or doors. I have a dog-chain thing that I snap across the stairway at the bottom. That has several lengths of surveyors tape dangling from it just to catch anyones attention. When that is across the stairway, it is understood that we have a "HOT" situation and no one is to come down. The stairway is midway through the flight of the arrow.

Elmo- If you are trying to say that accurately shooting a bow requires more practice and mental and physical discipline than accurately shooting a gun (at least for hunting purposes) ..... I agree. There is something quite instinctive about shooting a gun well. Archery accuracy does require some fairly rigid form and execution characteristics and enough practice to turn them into engrained methods of shooting. However, to carry that thought out beyond that point and into such things as hunting dedication and hunting ability and responsibility and ethics really has nothing to do with the difficulty of using either weapon. If you or anyone else is trying to connect up ethics with any particular weapon, you should understand that there is no such connection. Responsible hunting is something that exists between the ears of the hunter and is not dependant on what weapon he/she is carrying.

So, just how do you prove one way or another that a product actually worked? How do you prove one is better than the other? Until somebody can figure out how to sit down and conduct an interview with a deer, I'm not sure how I would ever get any level of confidence in any of it. That includes those expensive scent-lock garments as well.....lol. Does any of it work? ...... Prove it!

I'm thinking that no one here can tell you what kind of deer will make you feel you've had a successful season. We all tend to get too involved in trying to tell people that all ready. I would suggest that you don't need anybody's permission or approval with a personal choice such as this. Just figure it all out for yourself and apologize to no one regardless of which way you choose to go.

I am not in love with the DMP system and I believe there are flaws in the establishment of quotas and all that. However, I am not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. As flawed as the system is, it still does a reasonable job of controlling populations. It certainly is better than anything else that I have ever heard suggested. And it is WAY better than just arbitrarily handing out either-sex tags to every gunner. That would be a complete surrender on any type of managed population control.

Last year's deer was a mess. I finally theorized that he got the crap kicked out of him and then had some kind of encounter with some toothy critter that took afew chunks of meat out of his rump area. The wounds look like a combination of things. LOL .... No that messed up rear is not the result of a sloppy gutting job. That's the way he was when I finally got up to him.

Well actually the effect of wind would be dependant on bow poundage and arrow weight. Also it would depend on what angle the wind is blowing to the path of the arrow. I think wind can effect the stability of how the arrow flies as well. That can't be good. But if I were a "tree-stander", I would be more concerned about being blown out of my stand. Another thought is that if your tree is waving around doesn't that make your shot similar to trying to shoot a moving target?? ..... lol.