Doc

I always had a motto that I work to live, not live to work. My life does not belong to any corporation and I always made that perfectly clear to anyone that asked about it. Yes, I took pride in my work and found satisfaction from doing a good job. BUT anytime I began to feel that work was unfairly dominating and dictating my lifestyle I always made adjustments. I never regretted that.

Well, mother nature has figured out yet one more wonderful way to screw up my bow season. The other day, I was brushing in one of my pop-up ground blinds with pine boughs and golden rod. In the process of gathering armfuls of golden rod, I managed to get a bunch of seeds in my right eye. No big deal, just a minor irritation .... right? Of course not. I managed to get a hell of an eye infection from it that has me taking eyedrops every two hours, and I can't see out of my right eye. Can't see anything but blurry fuzz, and that doesn't work real well through a peep sight ..... lol. they have a funny name for it that I can pronounce but not spell. I've had this happen a few times before and it usually lasts at least a couple of weeks. The season hasn't exactly been real wonderful so far, and I sure didn't need this! Oh well, I guess I'll just have a bit shorter season than everyone else to get the job done. Not going to let this get me down. There still should be enough season left after this eventually goes away to get me one of those furry critters.

In a lot of respects that's true. If you look at the two heaviest times of the year for roadkills, you will find them at times when fawns and does are suddenly separated. One is when they are busted up by the chase phase of the rut and the other is in the fawning time when the does get off by themselves leaving last year's fawns on their own for perhaps the very first time. They really seem to get screwed up, and you'll find a lot of these youngsters hit along side the road. However, that is just another test of life for the whitetail. Simply another case of survival of the fittest.

This is the only one that I have seen in a couple of years. I know there's a few around, but things are thick around here, so they can walk very near to you without ever showing themselves.

Yesterday, I got the FIRST buck pictures of the year...... a 6 point and a spike. That's two pictures out of 210 pictures since August. I was beginning to think all the bucks had left the county. So far I have found 2 rubs and no scrapes. That's pretty strange for our area. I'm not real sure what is so different about this year. However, at least things are looking up a bit.

You know, some of these incidents of mis-identification of targets kind of point up the fact that these guys are not really picking out a lethal target spot on the deer. In other words, they are just trying to get a bullet somewhere in the deer. They obviously don't know or care what end of the deer they're shooting at. I generally over compensate by not shooting at any running deer. Yeah that may be a bit extreme, but that's just the way I handle shot selection. The guys firing off these 5-shot volleys that you hear where guys are just spraying the woods with lead, they really aren't all that concerned with where they hit the deer, but instead are relying just on blind luck. Well, sometimes luck turns out to be bad. If you can't tell the difference between a human and a deer, then you sure aren't trying to place the shot. I guess when people develop sloppy shooting habits, there often are some pretty ugly results that can occur.

Actually Franklin County Beat Lewis county although it was not a fatality. A guy shot his brother in the shoulder with a muzzleloader. No other details were given in the AP article in the paper. That's got to really make a mess of a shoulder ...... yick!

What a battle we all go through as we make our way through life and try to balance those things we need to do for our future and the futures of those in our family versus our other passions of life. That battle is behind me now, and am reaping the benefits of retirement. However in the years along the way, I did do that balancing routine, and in fact did pass by some opportunities in favor of enjoying those outdoor activities that my life has always revolved around. Sometimes I was able to turn down that overtime, or rearrange my work schedule a bit, or just plain refuse some assignments. My decisions were not always popular with the bosses, and maybe cost me some opportunities for advancement along the way. But the times were such that a guy could get away with that and still do pretty darn good anyway. I do believe that was a different sort of time when employees were actually valued and not merely treated as a disposable commodity. In all fairness, I do recognize that the bulk of my life was spent in an era when I did have those choices available. Those choices may not often be available today. Some guys are doing whatever is necessary just to stay employed. That does indeed trump hunting and fishing and so on.....lol. But if you feel decades getting by you with no real life experiences other than what happens at work it might be useful to check those priorities and see if some adjustments can and should be made. What puts all this into perspective is when you suddenly realize that your getting a bit old, and you get a chance to look back on it all. No one wants to say, I wish I had taken more time for this and that. The only time to avoid that fate is right now while you are living life. I think I did a pretty good job with that balancing routine. I hope others take the time to do the same.

How about the question when someone walks into your home and spots the deer mount hanging on the wall ....... "Did you shoot that one?" Nope, he come ripping down that hill back there and smacked into the wall and that's as far as he got ........ Here's your sign.

I think that's a good idea. I'll see if I can find a new entrance spot. Although I think they are not confined to one spot anymore from what I have seen. I kind of agree with the idea of moving cameras frequently. I think if someone were to come up with a list of suggestions for successful trail-camming, that would have to be one of them. That is something that I was hoping that this thread might lead to ..... a large list of dos and don'ts along with reasons. I have to believe that we all have developed a few rules that help eliminate deer pattern disruption. This idea of trail cam use is still pretty much in it's infancy, and there appears to be a lot of things to learn about it all, and darn few resources for tips & techniques.

See there's the problem with baiting laws. Legal for some species ..... illegal for other species, even though they all eat the same stuff. So now the CO has to judge intent. Yeah like he's a mind reader. It gets into some interesting disagreements. And then there is the laws against feeding (applies to bears and deer). More interesting interpretations. Anyway, that is a long way from the original topic. All I got to say is those are some darn nice pictures and a lot different and more interesting than the average deer picture. Thanks for posting them.

It's possible that it might depend on the gun range and how frequently it is used. With enough de-sensitization through frequent use, I can see where the deer have to learn to adapt or starve ..... lol. Not being familiar with the frequency of use for the range that J.R. was talking about it's hard to say whether that is a similar situation. My guess would be that since the club is willing to shut down the range for all of bow season, it probably is not a range that gets that much use. So perhaps the situation that you are describing and what was the case at this club are not really an apples to apples comparison. It's like my range out behind the house. I'll guarantee you that when I am out there occasionally shooting, the deer head for parts unknown. But then I am not out there in a relatively constant fashion. At any rate, I really doubt that gunfire does a whole lot for trying to hunt patterned deer. I think the regular firearms season gives a clue about that....lol. I think I would be a bit upset too if I was trying to bowhuntg and somebody started ripping up the place with gunfire. In fact I had that kind of happen last year. I was on stand and some squirrel hunter (quite innocently) parked himself a couple hundred yards away and about every 10 or 15 minutes fired off a round or two at squirrels. Not a happy situation, but when hunting state land it can be unavoidable. As you might expect, the buck that had been hanging around in that area didn't show up in daylight hours that day. Not much of a surprise....eh?

I'm not sure exactly what you are disagreeing with me over, or what it is you think you read in my reply that you thought indicates that I condone drinking while hunting.

Unfortunately, a lot of laws are written in quite vague terms so that you really need the interpretation of a judge to sort them out. A lot of law is defined by precedents of other cases where the legal wording was insufficient. What a lot of this stuff boils down to is the personality of an individual ECO on any particular day. Has it been a long time since he wrote up any violations? Has he been having a bad day? Is he really confused by the wording and details himself? That's why I always recommend that anyone soliciting answers from the DEC, do so via e-mail where at least you have some kind of document that shows that your actions were backed up by DEC opinion. It may not be a legal document, but at least it shows an intent on your part to abide by the law. That should carry some weight in a court case.

It sounds like you probably have it right. You can hunt other predators over any form of bait. You can even watch bears come in and eat from it as long as you don't pull the trigger. That would be my assumption (which by the way means absolutely nothing legally). On the other hand, if you were to maintain a gargage pile in the woods for baiting predators, I wonder where the shear volume begins to convert it from predator bait to feeding bears (which is also illegal). In the case of your example, a gut pile is almost kind of a naturally occurring situation. It's almost like hunting one of the few bearing oaks that is in a parcel of woods. So, your question is a good one and maybe you should address that with your regional DEC headquarters.

Get used to it. That is the way society is moving. And by the way it's not just kids. People value different things than they did years ago. Hunting, fishing, trapping, and camping aren't cool anymore. Tech is in.

Yes, I too have seen some freak reactions (or non-reactions) of deer to gunfire. That doesn't mean that someone blasting away is exactly putting the deer at ease. Whether the deer will ignore the gunshots or not most likely depends on the individual deer. I certainly wouldn't expect a seasoned old buck who has gone through a few gun seasons to ignore anything like that. My thought is that if a club has rules and makes them known to all members, then the thing to do is to abide by those rules or get out. That guy was definitely out of line.

As far as the effect of human activity, I have a camera that watches a trail that comes into our front yard. Yeah, being sealed off 1000' off the highway and surrounded by woods and thicket, our yard makes a preferred food plot .... lol. But anyway, there is the constant normal activity that you would find around any home-site. So the deer are very accustomed to human activity and human placed objects. It's funny that the deer still find their way out into the lawn, but have all but abandoned that traditional trail that is chopped down into the dirt from years of use. This was another one those camera set-ups that started out with several pictures each and every night and then slowly tapered off to a point where a picture per week is more the norm. And yet the deer activity in the yard is unchanged. To me, that is some pretty clear evidence that there is something about that camera that they don't like. I really believe that there is a lot to be learned about the art of using trail cams. We all run around placing these things around the woods without really knowing what the effects of doing that really are. I think there is a science to using trail cams and we haven't even scratched the surface in terms of learning all the little nuances and special details and considerations that we should be thinking about when placing these cameras.

Nope! I'm not falling for it this morning. Wind is already howling. It was raining when I poked my nose out early this morning. I've been suckered into it every drippy windy day since the season started. I've been soaked up a few times already, and I have only seen a couple deer and they had their hooves dug into the ground trying to keep the wind from blowing them away. I guess I am about ready for a break. Think I'll go bowling ...... lol.

Sometimes a good point, such as opposition to drinking while hunting, is better made by having the absurdity of the discussion continue.

Over the mere two years that I have been experimenting with trail cams, I have been wondering just what effects they may have on deer activity ....... if any. I have watched some locations start off with many pictures, every night for a period of time only to see the frequency of pictures seem to drop over time. I have also noted that the deer seem to be well aware of the cameras, to the point where most of the pictures have the deer looking straight at the camera. I have used only infra-red style cameras. I will admit that these observations could really be coincidence, or perhaps caused by other un-related happenings, and so I am not ready to say that placing a camera along a well used trail will eventually have deer moving around that spot. Also, I only have 3 cameras, so it's not like any of the evidence is over-whelming. However, I really would like to design an experiment that might give more concrete results one way or another. In other words, I would like to try to come up with a way to figure out primarily whether trail-cams disrupt deer patterns. If that can be proved, it would be interesting to learn a bit more about how to improve camera use to minimize disruptions. So here is the question for you all: If you had to figure out a practical way to absolutely prove that trail cams did or did not impact deer activity in the camera site, how would you all go about doing that? Maybe there is no practical way that a guy with limited time, money, and cameras can really do such an experiment, and I sure haven't had much luck thinking up a way by myself. So I thought I would just bounce it off our brain-trust here and see if anyone had any slick ideas. Just a thought.

So, has he set out a trapline yet? Any luck?

I did a little study on my trail-cam database (392 entries) and found an almost even split between daylight pictures and dark-time pictures. I haven't made a morning/afternoon check yet. Sounds like something that will be interesting to check out. That's what's nice about these cameras. You can do little studies such as this and answer questions that you could only guess at before.

Here's a thought. You said that initially the 4-point was with some does. Perhaps the blowing that you heard was one of the does and not the buck at all.

I know we are all assuming that everything in this 5-year management plan is now destined to become law, but there is some wording that I keep running across that makes me wonder if they have actually control all that they are proposing. I keep seeing phrases like "DEC recommends" and "DEC supports". I think some of this stuff may be controlled by the legislative bodies of state and local governments.