Doc

Just an interesting little calculation: Ever wonder how far a deer can move with just a casual step or two (as they often do when grazing) while an arrow is covering a 50 yard distance? Well a walking deer moves at 3.5 - 4 mph (The Deer of North America" Leonard Lee Rue III… Page 40). If you have a fictional super-bow that averages 400fps over that 50 yds, during the time it takes for that arrow to reach the deer, he/she can move 23.1 inches. That's not a deer jumping the string, but simply deciding to take a few steps just as you release the arrow. That takes a perfect shot and turns it into a gut shot. In reality, the deer is not going to move that far unless it is already walking because of its own inertia. But what if it is only half that distance? that's still a gut-shot.

That's not really all that bad. So you use scented soil and not the drippers?

Has anyone ever tallied up the cost of a mock scrape? The ones that I have seen on TV usually feature some expensive drip dispenser that dumps that expensive liquid gold on the ground. And of course the final cost would depend on how long you have it out. My impression has been that it is not a real cheap process, but I don't know. Never tried it.

How about you hang on to your old bow long enough to make sure the new one is up and running with no problems. I think that is what I would do assuming the old one is shooting ok. Another thought is that there is nothing wrong with having a functioning back-up bow around. It just may save the season some day.

The deer I shot this year during gun season is in the attached pictures. It was a mercy killing. My final conclusion is that this poor guy was the victim of one of those "deadlier fights" that you mentioned. I don't believe this guy would have made it through the winter. I have always wondered about how healthy this sort of thing is for the herd when the buck density gets to the point where they are constantly beating the hell out of each other. yeah it is survival of the fittest, and that is supposed to improve species strength. But what about the ones that come in second on these fights. I once found a deer skull down in the bottom of a ravine that had a large chunk of antler inbedded in it's skull. So these fatalities are not completely isolated events. Further, the amount of energy expended in these fights can be lethal as well, if not immediately then sometime throughout the winter. So your question is a good one. Where is the healthy aspect of promoting this kind of enhanced aggression among the buck population?

Years ago I put in a permanent archery/gun range measured and staked every 5 yards out to 100 yards. It's handy enough, right behind the house in the woods. I also have lights at 20 yards and 30 yards and up until the big ice storm years ago, I had lights at 40 yards .... lol. I also have a moveable deer target that I can set up for when I have someone down to shoot and we want some kind of novelty shots. It just adds a bit of unique fun to a practice session. Also, if I want to shake things up a bit, I can shoot from angles throughout the woods with unknown yardages. It's a fun place to shoot and keeps the interest up. I had a little bit of an interruption this spring when the flood took out the archery butt, but after that was all set back up, I have been practicing pretty regularly all summer. So my practice is running right on schedule. It is my scouting and stand maintenance that has been running a bit late. Normally I have my stands all straightened up and ready for use by now. I've been a little slow on that sort of stuff because of all the extra repair work from the flood. Also, a lot of my stand areas have been under water for a good chunk of summer until the drought. But I'm starting to get back on track slowly but surely.

Yeah.....How exactly did Chuck Adams ever get anything with that checkered flannel shirt? That isn't even possible, is it? .....

Well, the tendency is to want to buy success. The theory being that if you throw enough money at a problem, it will solve itself. It does take a long time to get past that notion, but it can be done. As much as we never seem to think so, money is still in fairly easy supply compared to hard effort and long hours of learning and practice. There is always the thought that "if I just had the best of everything, I wouldn't have to work at this as hard". Of course it isn't true, but it takes some time to figure that all out. It took me decades and thousands of dollars to finally reach that conclusion.

I'm not sure what different products Loctite has on the market today, but I know that they used to (20 plus years ago) market some varieties of loctite that basically turned screw-together assemblies into permanently locked together inseparable assemblies. I know because I once specified the wrong loctite on an assembly drawing and did not make any friends with the field reps ..... lol. And yes that stuff was strong enough to shear #10-32 screws when trying to disassemble. So if that stuff is still on the market, it may be that if you use the wrong loctite, some ugly future problems for anyone trying to dis-assemble may lie in wait. The proper kind we nick-named "breakable loctite" which was designed to simply require extra torque to loosen the screws. the other stuff was a nightmare waiting to happen. So, be careful.

Yeah, there are a lot of different rules and thoughts when it comes to hunting methods of two different species. I'm not sure I would call it differences in ethics, just different methods. For example we do employ the use of traps for coyotes, but not deer, turkeys and some other animals. Does that make trappers unethical? No, different species have different rules and they're not all based on ethical decisions. Another circumstance that one would think represents a conflict of ethics is the fact that there are those that would hunt coyotes, but would be horrified at the thought of shooting a dog under any circumstances. One canine vs. another. but one looks like our pet and the other doesn't. Is there really any true logic to that? Conflicting ethical decisions? ...... You might say that. I don't happen to think so but it does make you wonder. I know some dyed-in-the-wool fly fishermen who would never dream of using live bait on trout, but they have no problem using it on carp. I think it's the same idea. One species gets one set of rules, the other gets another set of rules....lol. Doesn't always make sense, but it also doesn't always boil down to opposing sets of ethics either. How about the fact that you can shoot crows, but not song-birds. That's another one of those deals where one species gets one set of rules and another gets different treatment. Somebody decided that you can use a gun on one but not the other. So is it really surprising that we have settled on a standard that it is alright to use bait on a predator but not on a deer? That seems to fit right into a whole bunch of these same kinds of strange ethical choices. Interesting discussion.

Just trying to get this thread back on topic..... Yeah, bucks leave their birth location, but they don't go to another state ..... lol. Plus for those who believe in "culling", the buck you cull has already taken up residence in your hunting area and is breeding does on your hunting turf. So if I get the gist of your question, the fact that bucks may set up shop in a different location is irrelevant to the breeding age bucks you are culling in the area where you are hunting. Also, keep in mind that half the genetic structure comes from does. However the bigger question here is, "does culling even work in the first place?" I guess there are quite a few pretty good studies that show in a truly wild herd, there is no such thing as human influence on genetics of the deer. Which makes me wonder about those hunting shows you are talking about. Are those really wild free-range deer that they are talking about when they mention such things as "management bucks"....lol. Maybe just outside of the view of the camera lens there is a huge fence where all this talk about culling and such actually makes some sense : .

Sorry to hear about your wrecked plans. I have been in that situation myself. However, you never know how it will all work out. Maybe it will all work out better. That monster buck may be working your stand area a bit early this year

I've been on both sides of that issue, so I understand how that mania to buy and try everything can work. But I eventually got just as aggravated as anyone here at the constantly escalating prices and the feeling that I was being made a fool of by the archery industry. One thing that got me into the buying syndrome was early on when I got into tournament shooting. If we hunters think that we are suckers for everything that comes along, it ain't nothing compared to the tourney guys who are looking to squeeze out every last point..... lol. In fact that is what got me into a compound. I was a happy recurve shooter until I got the tournament bug. Well, things are different now and I have a shop full of equipment that should last me a lifetime. Even if my bow blows up, I have a wall full of replacements ;D . So if those archery manufacturer's are looking to get rich off my back, they have a real disappointment in store for them. They had their time.

Lol ...... This thing is like an ink-blot test. Everyone is seeing something different ;D

I have this possibly irrational distrust of the mail, and our Town Clerk is just three miles down the road. So I like to handle those kind of transactions in person. Besides, it gives me a chance to get caught up on all the local town gossip ;D

It sounds like you are saying that a compound is required to make up for lack of hunting skill and the art of getting close, which by the way was the original intent of bow seasons. We are constantly trying our darndest to stretch out that shooting distance through technology. I try to keep sight of what the original challenge was supposed to be. It was using short-range equipment to challenge our hunting abilities through the need to get within that 20 or 25 yard distance. Certainly there are some very good advantages to using compounds, but my main reason for using one is not to see how far away I can shoot my deer. In fact, I still limit my shots to 25 yards even though the target range says I could shoot farther. But frankly I am the most satisfied when I can get within a handful of feet (almost in touching distance .... lol). That's a bit of a test, and that's when I really get over-the-top excited. To me that's the challenge and excitement of bowhunting.

A product is worth whatever someone will pay for it ...... Sure there are other items of equal cost that have real useful value that is greater than a bow, but people want the bow more and will pay more for it. Manufacturers and retailers are no dummies. When you have something that people will pay a lot of cash for, you don't try to talk them into a lower price. Frankly, I don't really have a lot of sympathy for someone who feels they need a new bow every other year. I've been there and I have since found out that a lot of the bows that I shot 20 or 30 years ago killed deer just as dead. So when someone waves a $1000 bow under my nose, I have actually learned how to not buy it. Those guys had their crack at me for way too many years. There's none of them getting rich on me anymore. I suspect that if more people adopted even a small percentage of that attitude, archery product prices would slide more toward a reasonable level.

But...... Just like any other industry, the asking price is as much as the market will bear. Who is really at fault ...... the guy selling the equipment or the group of people who are willing to pay that much and more for their stuff? Who really establishes the prices .... the retailers or the customers? Unless you are talking about something where the manufacturers have a monopoly (like gas companies), or a product that is an absolute necessity (like food), it is the consumer that sets the price. If archery prices appear to be ridiculous, archers have only themselves to blame.

Sounds reasonable to me.

That's probably an unlikely scenario, but I'm sure that you have the DEC's reaction figured out correctly if that ever did happen. I suspect that they see them as a beneficial additional tool of deer population control. They always seem to be super-interested in anything that will hack on the deer numbers. I think the fact that baiting for coyotes is still legal is most likely just an over-sight on the part of the DEC......lol. But really, I'm not sure that there is much about baiting that will have any real impact on coyote numbers. From what I have read, they have a real population resilience that can handle just about anything that we humans can throw at them.

In my younger years, I went through the phase where I had to own every new gadget that came out on the market. I amassed huge quantities of "stuff". I currently have a wall full of old bows. Eventually, it dawned on me that you can't buy accuracy and I simply stopped buying equipment unless something just plain broke. The last bow that I bought was a Mathews MQ-32 that fully equipped (including release) cost me $600. That was quite a while ago. At the time that was quite a bit of money and seemed to be the purchase that highlighted just how silly all my spending had become. Now, the pile of aluminum arrows that I have in a corner are kept alive with arrow-building equipment that I bought years ago. I buy a few vanes and nocks every now and then and a tube of fletch-tite and replace strings on the old bow occasionally when needed and that is the extent of my spending. Since I stopped trying to be the test lab for every new archery gimmick, I have saved thousands of dollars. Nobody is getting rich off my attempts to keep up with the Joneses. Instead of trying to buy success, I simply put my emphasis on improving shooting and hunting skills. So as far as I am concerned, let the prices do whatever they want.

The story I have heard is that those products are on sale in NY stores for those hunters who are going to use them on an out-of-state hunting trip where they are legal. ..............right!

I seldom go to Gander Mountain anymore. It's about a 45 minute drive for me, and I have made way too many trips up ther to pick up something only to find an empty spot where the item once hung. I'm talking about an estimated 75% of the times I went up there. So now I take the 1 hour+ drive to Auburn and go to a real store (Bass-Pro shop) that is actually well stocked and so far have found what I wanted 100% of the time.

I think that small game management is all about habitat. Unfortunately given the resources available in this state, and the fact that almost all land is under private ownership and control, habitat is the one thing that the DEC can't touch.

Yeah, that's kind of like the deer I saw that had his lower jaw blown off by a shotgun. I think people do some rather stupid things when hunting regardless of what weapon they are using.