Doc

No, they didn't mention anything about that. I'll bet it does chew up batteries.

Just saw a different kind of trail camera in the Bass-Pro catalog. It's called the "Primos Deer positioning System" (Page 134 of their archery catalog). You set it up watching your food plot or some other kind of field. When daylight comes it starts snapping pictures every 5 - 10 seconds throughout the day. Yeah, that's a lot of pictures, but they have software that allows you to review the whole day in 3 minutes. What good is it? ..... Well it tells you where the deer are coming out and when and how long they are staying there. Once you determine a pattern, you just slide a stand in there and wait for them to show up. Yeah I know, it seems a bit like cheating ;D . Anybody going to be trying one of these things out? It's only $119.99. Pretty cheap by trai-cam standards.

Well actually I haven't read all the articles, so I really don't know how many different places per mile actually had any sightings, or collected any evidence. So it's hard to know just how obvious a trail it left through those states. Maybe he just had an affinity for walking through mud, and had a scalp problem that was causing hair loss and had a constant state of the runs. Chances are pretty good that a lot of those cases weren't taken all that seriously or investigated all that thoroughly until this one got smacked in Conn. and they started back-tracking it to it's origin. However, whatever the tell-tale signs were, what it does clearly show is that apparently it really is possible for a mountain lion to cross NYS. I've got to say that it is kind of hard to believe that this was the only one ever to take the big hike. So I guess I won't be so quick to tell someone who claims to have seen one that they are nuts . Actually I have always felt that when someone claims to have seen a mountain lion, I can only say that I wasn't there, I didn't see what they saw, and I know of no reason why anyone would lie about it. So I have always concluded that at the very least, they truly believe they saw one and now I have to allow for the possibility that perhaps they did. Beyond that, I really don't have any particular interest unless somebody tells me they saw one behind my house. That might get my attention. I already played the role of the skeptic in the past. I remember when the first reports of local bear sightings occurred. Also there was the deal when people were claiming that coyotes were in WNY. I guess over time I have become a little more accepting to these possibilities.

I was up on the hill and didn't feel a thing. Neighbors did.

No, just explaining that sign that is not located in tilled soil might not be as easy to come by. My little excursion up the hill made that obvious. I went up to check one of my cameras, and seven pictures of deer were tripped off. The trail that the camera was watching had absolutely no tracks in it and that was a dirt surface with no leaves on it. And I did notice that the ground was harder than a bullet. If hoofed animals couldn't leave an imprint, then I don't see how other critters could. So the point still stands that just because there is no evidence of a sighting available, doesn't mean that it didn't happen.

Actually, considering that up until the 40's and 50's, agriculture represented virtually all of the rural land use, I would say that the percentage of land that has been effected by some form of development is likely a lot higher than 30%, even if that development amounts to no more than putting up posted signs. Almost all of the farms have undergone some form of sub-division, some areas worse than others.

Really! with this cat stomping in every piece of mud to leave tracks, and leaving a layer of hair all across the country, and crapping up a trail across America, how come he made it all the way across NYS and almost out the other side without someone in the state noticing all this sign that he was leaving everywhere?

What fields???? We have no fields. And don't tell me about the ground. I just came off the hill and the ground is like a brick. There are no tracks (as in zero tracks). Even the ATV made no tracks going up the hill. There is no mud and unbroken ground is as hard as pavement even now. And yes we have had a lot of rain and it has all pretty much just run off. In fact we had rain just last night and there's not a bit of moisture left this afternoon. Lol... you flatlanders check out your farm fields and think you have looked at the whole world ;D .

When I say development, I am not necessarily talking about rows and rows of tract housing. All it takes to eliminate a former hunting area is for someone to come in and buy up 30 or 40 acres and post it. I have lived within 8 miles of the same area for almost all my life. Over those 67 years, I have seen massive amounts of land taken out of hunting access just due to single residences popping up and being locked up with posted signs. I have seen huge functioning farms chopped up and sold off with the hunting access being chopped up along with it. That is development too, and probably is having far more impact than housing tracts. Take a drive and look at the number of houses that are 50 years old or less and then realize that where they are sitting used to be huge farms and all of them open to hunting. I remember back when I was much younger how I used to laugh whenever someone talked about "over-population". I'm not laughing anymore since I have gotten a bigger, long term picture of what that sort of thing really looks like. When I was a kid, I could walk all day long in any direction and never encounter a posted sign. Now other than state land, I can't walk anywhere and not find a line of signs. I'm not blaming anybody, but I only mention this to illustrate just how much land has been locked up from hunters. It's such a slow phenomenon that we never notice because we grow up with it happening. But stop once and take a close look around and all of a sudden it hits you. Development is a real factor in the loss of hunting access and a pretty darn big one.

That one that walked across the country..... I wonder how many states he went through where nobody even saw hide nor hair of him. How many back yards did he cross without leaving any sign that anybody found? And finally, do we really believe that this was the first mountain lion that ever took a hike across NYS? I don't.

Ha! ... our ground is so hard right now, it wouldn't hold the track of a water buffalo. And as far as hairs, I don't suppose that these critters leave gobs of hair laying all over the ground, and unless I could scare the crap out of it some way, scat may not be around the sighting area either. Heck, if I saw a mountain lion for a second while I was walking around, I probably wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to run right over there anyway ..... lol. So I still say that 99% of the time, there would never be any kind of evidence available or visible. Relative to the bears, yes in areas where they are plentiful, it's no real trick to find bear sign. But in areas where they are scarce, the odds of stumbling onto any sign is pretty darn remote. About the only sign they will leave is when you have a bird feeder or a garbage can outdoors. Of course the obvious point I was making was that if you have one individual or even a few that pass through the area, what are the odds that you would stumble onto that sign? And that applies whether you are talking bears or mountain lions or fishers or martens or otters or whatever. So this requirement that "if you can't produce some evidence, it never happened", is quite bogus. Evidence is nice, but I am not about to call someone a liar , or halucinating, or whatever because they don't whip out a picture or pull some scat out of their pocket. I always assume that they probably saw what they saw until proven otherwise.

Well, maybe the quicker the better. Perhaps with them gone somebody like Cabellas or Bass Pro might set up shop. It's a real shame ..... I was so darned excited when Gander first opened their doors in Henrietta. I was really impressed. It sure has turned out to be a real disappointment. What do you suppose goes wrong with a thriving company like that?

To me that is one of the few good arguments for AR.

Sounds like a scalp disease. I think I'll pass.

I don't know about any resident populations, but I would guess that if I was just walking through the woods without my camera and I saw one, I might have a bit of a problem documenting that. And since almost all of what I have heard or read along those lines, involves almost no people that are really claiming anything about a resident population, I guess failure to document single sightings probably is a bit excuseable when you actually think about it. My guess is that if somebody hadn't flattened this one, we would still all be laughing about those that actually saw it as it made it's way across the country. I remember a time when claims of bear sightings in our County were met with a bunch of skepticism. That was the case right up until recent years. Now you've got them wandering around up in the city and we have a hunting season for them.....lol. And you know even with bears now accepted here, you still can't find tracks or scat or any sign of their existance. So if there is an occasional mountain lion that passes through the area, I guess I wouldn't really be all that amazed. And if someone claimed to have seen one, I guess I would give them the benefit of a doubt.

Hey Squats in bushes- Where have you been? I've really missed those pointless, random, senseless, comments that you seem to feel a need for. Is that some form of turret's syndrome?

Yes, the leasing thing is continuing to have a rapidly growing impact on hunting access. I also believe that the QDM craze has caused much of the formerly accessible land to be cut off. I suppose there wouldn't be a whole lot of point to the QDM costs and efforts if the hunting pressure was not rigidly controlled. So, there are some relatively new and growing pressures being put on the continued availability of hunting land.

That is quite interesting because most of the controversy over mountain lions is not whether there is a self-sustaining population here. More discussions are generated over the fact that anyone stating that they have seen one here is almost instantly called a liar, or at least that is implied. Well, apparently it is possible for someone to actually see a mountain lion in NYS, in the wild. Is there a reproducing population of them in NY? ....... I don't know of anyone who is claiming there is. But I have heard claims of sightings. maybe some of those get a little higher credibility rating now. :-\

No its not, it was brought on by those who wanted AR's in their respective area. Can't speak for the Cortland deal. Yes, it's been quite a while, but I believe I recall that those people went through their local legislators because the DEC wasn't having any of it.

I'll have to try to check back a ways now, but I believe the deal was that the DEC was pressed into the original AR WMUs by legislative initiative. Yes, the DEC had to implement it, but I believe it was under political pressure to do so. Until just recently (this new 5-year plan), the DEC had absolutely no interest in AR even to the point where they were issuing statements that were outright hostile to the idea. Even in this 5 year plan, I believe that the DEC is again capitulating to political pressure.

There! Not my attitude these days, but by golly I can certainly understand those sentiments. "I buy it because I want it" ...... lol. That has a certain ring of honesty to it ;D . I've been there.

Otters have also been introduced into the Honeoye Lake inlet area, and apparently have taken hold pretty well.

Haven't all the special AR WMU's so far come as a result of legislative action rather than DEC initiative? That was my understanding. Is this another case of game management by politicians?

Funny you mention the field diary. At camp last year we were going over our notes on the rut and the conclusion we all came to was that we have noticed the rut getting later over the years. Diary is at camp or I would look at it right now and throw some dates down. Its wasnt really noticible until we wnet back quite a few years but it indeed is what we have seen. Use to get the rut during late bow but now its been falling during the first of the gun season on my hill. But then again you get like 20 different descriptions when you ask 40 guys to expalin what the rut is. Well, it's all that damn global warming that Al Gore is always talking about.

My Brother-in-law used to do the same thing back in the early 80's. He would shoot against a whole line of guys that had all their fancy polished up bows with 36" stabilizers sticking out all over the place so they looked like some kind of space satellite, and their fancy arrow rests and killian sights with chrome and flash everywhere. He was shooting an old Bear whitetail hunter with the epoxy limbs, and an arrow rest that was nothing but a solid plexiglass block glued onto the bow shelf. That and his nasty old gamegetter arrows would quite often walk away the winner for the evening. It was really quite funny.