Doc

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.

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.