Doc

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.

Ok, so I guess I probably lost the context of the comments. I know that any gun season generally involves a whole lot more hunter density than bow seasons, and generally when gun hunting, we do not simply walk through the woods just carrying our gun but quite often actually shoot it. Judging from what I've seen during gun seasons, deer really do take a dim view of that bang and generally by late in the afternoon on opening day, a full-out defensive pattern develops. During my bowhunts on the other hand, I am still taking advantage of normal diurnal deer patterns even late in the bow season (unless I am being plagued by small game hunters ..... lol). Also, most of the bowhunters that I know (not all) simply go to their stand, sit there for a while and then go back home. However, gun season was kind of made for still-hunting so quite a few gun hunters spend their time covering ground (myself included). I'm sure it probably occasionally happens but I think that conducting drives with bowhunters is a pretty rare practice, but not so during gun season. So again, admittedly not really having looked up the context of the argument, I would say that in general, gun hunting probably does create more disturbance in the deer's world than bow hunting.

I'll be honest .... even if coyote season were open year around, I just can't picture myself out there in the summer months swatting mosquitos just to get a shot at a coyote. Not only that, but being raised as trapper all of my early years, there would be something almost sacreligious about throwing out a furbearer simply because it was shot at a time when the pelt is worthless because it isn't prime. I'm not sure I could really do that. I have a feeling that there is some of that sentiment behind the DEC's decision to put a season on them. On the other hand, I can relate to how other people feel toward coyotes. One thing to remember is that the coyote is at the top of his food chain with the possible exception of bears (where they exist). And most likely there probably has never been a bear that ever killed a healthy coyote. So there really are no natural controls on coyotes other than us and disease. Having everything kind of in the coyote's favor including only a small window of hunting time kind of negate's even us as a significant check to the population.

I have resorted to hunting state land, and have become quite adept at hunting in a crowd. It's not the best solution, but so far I am still able to make it occasionally work and still able to enjoy a reasonable hunt. Sure I do occasionally come off the hill spittin' mad because an entire evening's hunt was ruined by some poor small-game hunter that just happened to stumble across my stand at a very inopportune time. Or had some other bowhunter mogging across in front of my stand dripping sweat and thrashing every bit of brush and branches in the area. But I do get over it and hope the following day might go uninterrupted. Of course when gun season comes around, I use all these extra people to move deer for me and I have become quite good at patterning hunter movements for my advantage. It's nothing like the quality of hunt that I used to have years ago, but I have begrudgingly adapted, and it will keep me hunting for the few more years that I have left.

I saw a product for sale in either the Cabelas or the Bass-Pro shop catalog that looked like a large stone. And in fact that's exactly what it is .... a chunk of mineral rock from some place out west that has all the ingredients of a typical salt/mineral block that you might find in a farm supply store. I don't know if anyone is really fooled by this product, but it's obvious purpose is to sneak around the baiting prohibitions in those states where the practice is illegal. To the person walking by it, it would simply look like a stone. To the hunter that placed it there it would be warden-proof bait ..... lol. So, I wouldn't look for the stores to be responsible in what they sell or where they sell it. This product shows me that if a buck can be made on it, they'll sell it ..... even when the product will be likely used for illegal purposes.

To answer your initial question about where all the good hunting land has gone, I can only say that it is buried under the over-burdening population that has accumulated in the rural areas of the state. A little short observation that I have made over the years: I live in a rural area and have all of my life. Back in the 50's when I was just a sprout, I remember that on the rare event that I saw a car go down the road, I would kind of stare after it trying to recognize the driver because most likely it was somebody you knew. Today, you can stand there quite a while waiting for a break in the traffic before you can cross. Where are all these new people going? They're going home ..... away from the city and toward points south that used to all be large farms and acres of unbroken hunting land that most of the farmers left wide open for anyone who wanted to hunt there. Now all these big tracts of land are busted up into 5-20 acre parcels with a house plunked in the middle and the perimeter rimmed with posted signs.

But we do have laws against "feeding" deer and bear. Could some aggressive and picky (trying to use nice terms here) CO claim that your bait was intended as deer or bear feeding?

So is this thread really turning into a gun hunter vs. a bowhunter kind of thing? I was wondering when things would come to that. And looking back a page or so, was I understanding correctly that a lot of you consider bow season to be just as disturbing to deer patterns as gun season? That's what it sounded like. Things are really getting weird on this thread.

I think so. It may not be quite what it used to be, but for someone who has never attended this event, I know you will be totally impressed. For me it is getting a bit repetitive, and instead of growing it looks like it is stagnating a bit. But there are still plenty of things to see and experience for those who have never seen it.