Doc

Like nyantler, I am always curious as to just where some people really want to draw the line when it comes to gun ownership. All I ever hear is that the NRA is evil and that wackos believe that the books and books of worthless redundant laws might actually stretch the meaning of common sense and many are really designed to harrass and frustrate legitimate private ownership of firearms in general. In fact some of these arguments make me wonder if these people really believe there is any legitimate reason for private ownership of firearms. I'm just saying that we have entirely too many people that are totally committed toward eliminating private ownership and use of firearms. We probably don't need gun control zealots speaking for them from supposedly within our ranks.

There are an awful lot of places that look real good from the highway as we vacation through them. You never really get to see the ugly aspects of various locations until you have spent some significant time in them living day-to-day life. You can read all kinds of statistics and opinions, but nobody can evaluate any of those places for you because we all have differences as to what specific features are important to us, and what ranking those features really have for each of us. I have vacationed in an awful lot of places that in the middle of bass season looked like paradise, but reality told me that I would never really like some of the other seasons. We all have lived a significant amount of time here in NYS. We all know every little negative aspect because these stick in our minds a lot more than the positive features. We know state politics here because we live with it. We don't know the state politics in other places as well as we are familiar with all the little negatives here. The one thing that stands out is that for all the negatives that we see here, we all still are here. How bad can they really be?

The effects and success of quitting smoking is different for each individual. I will honestly tell you that I have quit for 3-1/4 years and still have times when I have a quite powerful urge for a cigarette. The difference now is that the urge only comes occasionally and passes very quickly and is easily overcome. I used Chantix, but I'm not sure I could swear that that was what finally created success. My feeling, looking back at it is that for the first time in my life, I really wanted to quit and I credit that attitude change with the success more than the Chantix. I was developing a chronic cough. I was coughing up some nasty looking gray goop. I was told by my cardiologist that he was quite sure that he was hearing the beginnings of emphysema in my breathing. I had also had a stroke a few years earlier which I had been told could be aggravated by smoking. All those things taken together finally convinced me that I probably shouldn't be procrastinating any longer and that no matter how hard it might prove to be, I perhaps had one more good run at it left in me, and failure this time would most likely lead to all kinds of nasty consequences. 48 years of moderate to heavy smoking had taken its toll, and I truly convinced myself that I had just one chance left. I still don't know what kinds of permanent damage may have actually taken place, but I can say that the chronic cough stopped within a week. The nasty looking crap that I was coughing up stopped almost as quickly. There has been a marked improvement in my blood pressure, but medication is still required. So perhaps I dodged the bullet. My Dad had emphysema and died of all kinds of complications that were due to his condition and also due to the fact that he never could quit. One would have thought that that would have been sufficient motivation for me to quit right then and there, but like so many people I made excuses and continued smoking for another 8 years. Finally the symptoms got to be something that couldn't be ignored or explained away. I hope it doesn't take all these ugly symptoms and problems to properly motivate you. I waited way too long and still may pay the price for my procrastination and excuse-making ..... I don't know. I know it is an ugly tough addiction and for many is the toughest challenge we will ever face. But when you sit down and honestly look at the possible alternatives, the motivation will come and so will the success. Good luck to you.

This was the worst storm I have ever seen here in all my years here. My wife described it best when she said that the whole hill behind the house was a sheet of water flowing down and bringing all kinds of leaves, stones, logs, and mud with it. Somehow the bulk of it missed the house but my archery butt was right in the path of the water that jumped out of the banks of a ravine crick. You can imagine the force it took to push that thing that far. It's super heavy, but if that storm had kept up any longer, It would have pushed the butt right on down into my yard and it might have smashed into the cars.

I think I will enlist the services of one of my sons and my brother-in-law. They owe me a few favors ..... lol. Thanks for the offer though. I really appreciate it.

your choice of organizations shows quite a contradiction there ole Doctur? NYB which is anti crossbow to the bitter end and the NRA that supports crossbow hunting in NY State. seems you have a problem pickin sides there fella ;D , LOL, ROTFLMAO, so on and so forth. Absolutely correct..... they do disagree one that one sole minor issue. So what? Being a realist, I do not demand that my advocacy organizations agree with every little position that I hold. It would be stupid to expect that wouldn't it? I look at their philosophies and their achievements in an overall sense and then decide if I can live with those issues that we disagree on. Both of those organizations have successfully passed that evaluation as far as I am concerned. Do I agree with every stance each of these organizations have? ..... like probably 99% of the members the answer is no. Do I pack up my toys and go home because of it? ...... the answer is again ,no. Some people use these kinds of minor issues as excuses to belong to nothing. To me that is the bigger contradiction for those that claim to support organized advocacy for bow and gun hunting.

So far I haven't done anything other than look at it in disgust. All my time has been taken up moving mud-packed leaves and gravel off the lawn. The entire face of the hill was just a wall of water which dumped everything in my grass. Quite a mess to clean up but I finally have gotten the last of tons of mud, leaves, sticks, stones, logs, gravel removed. I also have a picnic area at the other side of the house that was in the same condition. This is where we are having a family reunion this July, so that had to have priority over the archery butt too. I'm getting close to tackling the archery project now. I'm not looking forward to it but I have to get at it pretty soon. I hope I can get some help moving it. If not, I will have to get creative with a come-along and some leverage. The first phase is to dig out a flatted pad for the thing to set on. The 2nd phase is to get it up on it. It hasn't been a great year ..... lol.

Well the answer to that question is a lot different today than it was back in my tournament days. The NFAA course has an 80 yard shot on it so that's how it was 20 some years ago. Today all my shooting is tailored to hunting, and I never considered anything over 30 yards to be appropriate for live critters and my shooting ability. So today I restrict my shooting to 25 yards max and practice at 30 yards. I also throw in a few 40 yard shots just for fun, but serious hunting practice takes place at 30 yds.

When finger shooting, I use the split finger style. No particular reason .... That's just the way I was taught and have never had a reason to change.

Yup! I still shoot aluminum arrows. I have a collection of them that takes both hands to get your fingers around. Sure, some of those are tournament sized arrows for competition. But the hunting arrows that I have are sized correctly for my bow, shoot perfectly out of most of my bows, kill deer, and hit the bullseye. I really don't know what more you can ask of an arrow. But anyway, I have more arrows than I will ever destroy for the rest of my life, so I seldom throw money around just to get rid of it. So until I can find any reason to change, Arrows will probably never be on my shopping list for the rest of my life.

NYB and NRA. NYB is the only organization that is an advocate for my bowhunting issues in NYS. The NRA is a time-proven effective advocate for gun ownership and 2nd Amendment concerns. I also consider them the only reason that the Kennedys, Schumers, Boxers, Fiensteins, Bradys and scores of other gun-hating nuts past and present, have not succeeded in eliminating or making impractical the private ownership of firearms.

First of all, I enjoy plopping my butt down at the base of a tree in the woods without worrying about some poisonous snake sinking hi sfangs into that butt. I also like to reach into a drawer that has not been opened in a while without worrying about some spider injecting some flesh-rotting venom into my hand. I also like a climate that does not reduce my home and all my belongings to a three foot high pile of kindling. I also like to live in an area that doesn't fill up with water up to the soffits for as far as the eye can see. I also am at an age where I don't like to have to use ropes to repel back down the hill to get home. I also like to have a climate that provides a growing season that is long enough to have a shot at a garden (this year is not a real good example of that in NY .... lol). For the most part, my little chunk of NYS satisfies all those wants and needs. Not too many other states satisfy all those requirements. But anyways, I had to face the same decision back when I retired. After weighing all those things that are important to me, I find myself today still sitting here in NY. Sure I still gripe about NY politics and taxes. But I'm sure I would find those same things and others to gripe about regardless of where I moved. There also is something to be said with "dealing with the devil you know". I'm too darned old to be out dredging up a whole new set of things to whine about. I might also mention that my family and friends and entire social network resides and exists here. That's always kind of handy and many times has to be a consideration. For the most part, I have learned to appreciate the truth in that saying that "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence". Maybe it actually is, but I will leave that for others to discover. I have spent a whole lifetime learning to cope with NYS and all it's problems. It's not really all that bad. Of course you didn't post your question to find who agreed with your decision to move, but I guess I'm simply not in a position to tell anyone what states are better to live in. I haven't really been able to find one.

Yeah, not all of our fawns come in a scrambled up condition either ..... lol. Here's one from a couple years ago that was still in one piece and breathing. Apparently enough of them make it through to maintain a good healthy population here. But I guess a certain percentage become critter food.

Here's a little perspective relative to school spending. Back in the 60's when I graduated high school, we had one school that had been there for decades. It contained BOTH elementary, junior high and high school. We had one principle and a vice principle and a secretary as the total administration. Our graduating class was 50 students. Oh, and by the way, we had exactly one bus run that handled all students from Kindergarten thru high school. Today the average graduating class is not that much bigger (about 60+). However, today there is another additional school (the elementary school), complete with a bloated administrative staff, and something they call a school district superviser. Far more than double the staff, school square footage, maintenance, heating resources spent, etc., etc. Today you can find school buses just about anywhere at any time of the day. They have the early bus, the late bus and all kinds of special transports for every excuse you can think of. School trips ...... anywhere, anytime, for any excuse. Strangely enough even with these massive increases in taxpayer expenditures, unlike us poor deprived students of the day, there seems to be a complete breakdown of basic learning. Reading, writing, comprehension, math skills and also by the way the graduation rate seem to not be responding in a positive way when we simply throw money at our education problems. The more we spend the worse the education. Why is that??? Nobody seems to catch on to the fact that quality of education is not really related to money spent. Teachers may shoulder some of the blame, but there seems to be a whole lot more wrong with our educational financing than just some teacher's salaries. Over-all cost per head for education has gone through the roof (even when adjusted for inflation) and nobody is even looking at that number. To me the blame lies in the taxpayers themselves. All you have to do is mention that "it is for the children" and taxpayers mindlessly fall all over themselves pulling the dollars out of their pockets. And all that without a single thought as to how the money is being spent or whether we are getting anything for our buck.

Ha-ha ..... Let them start tearing up golf courses and thousands of dollars worth of suburban landscape projects. We will instantly become the neighborhood. People will be falling all over themselves trying to attract hunters to their property. The bunny-huggers will be hard to find and awful darn quiet .... lol.

It's funny nobody has suggested getting rid of all gun seasons completely ..... lol. I suppose that reply coming.

Fawn pieces 2011. That's all that's left. Weird how the piece of hide seems to be twisted up.

Ontario County. There's no telling what exactly happened to this one. There's not enough of it to tell. It is possible that with all this crap weather it might have died of natural causes and simply is being finished off by other critters. A couple years back I found a dead fawn laying up against the barn ...... not a mark on it. Last year there was one up on top of the hill that had obviously been fed on (See attached picture). Even that one, you really can't tell whether something killed it or whether it was simply found dead and was being fed on.

Saw my first "torn apart" fawn of the season in the middle of my lower lawn while mowing. Somebody had a a nice meal. Couple of feet of skin and a front leg & hoof. It seems like every year now, I am finding chewed up dead fawns.

I have one place where I would have to use ropes to repel down to get to a deer that goes over the edge. It's a ravine that is approximately 200 feet deep with straight vertical shale walls. I had one close call there last year when I dropped a doe in her tracks but she was doing the death kick thing for a bit, all the while sliding closer and closer to the edge on the snow. Fortunately she stopped about 10' from the edge. They love hanging around the edge of that thing. Even quartering is not an option there. There are no options.

I mailed my letters out back when I first got the alert from New York Bowhunters to support the bill through the legisture and again when they sent out the alert about Cuomo.

Well, the flood last week kind of put my archery range out of business for a while. It's going to take a lot of digging, re-leveling and hernia building grunting to get that critter back in order. That thing is a whole lot heavier than it looks. The ravine creek jumped the bank and sent all thaty water down across the butt area and out into our driveway and lawn. I've been working everyday cleaning up the mess, and now we have another week of continuous rain coming. forget the garden this year too. There's no way I'm going to be able to get the tiller out there in time for planting. Also I still have big areas of the lawn that have standing water. Is this all part of "global warming" or "global cooling"? ...... lol.

So, has anyone seen any sign of the gas prices starting to drop toward a $.50 reduction like they said it would. I guess I wouldn't hold my breath since they alredy have concocted a new story about some refineries that are in the path of the Mississippi flood. They always seem to have some sort of a story for every occasion......lol.

Plain and simple ..... This is just another example of the government taxing a certain segment of the population and then misusing the funds. I think if any of us were to sit down and examine all the various ways that Pittman Robertson funds could be used, there are darned few hunters that would choose this way. The fact is that "forever wild" lands are the worst utilization of lands from a wildlife and habitat management standpoint. Allowing forests to mature and create a suffocating over-story benefits a very small percentage of wild-life and plantlife and eventually creates a fairly worthless and sterile eco-system that is of little use to anyone or anything. To take hunter donated funds to create this is ridiculous. Locking away vast tracts of land by removing practical travel is not only a misuse of hunter's contributions, but is also purposely moving to deprive citizens of existing access to publicly purchased assets. And by the way, I do believe that even among hikers, you would find that a huge majority still use some form of motorized access to begin and end their hikes in a timely fashion that suits the practicalities of life.

Get a used utility trailer. Put a ball hitch on your Quad and you're ready to go. I have an old 1/2 ton utility trailer that is used strictly for ATV use around the property. If I ever was forced to sell it, I'll guarantee that it would have to go for a lot less than $350. Brand new ones aren't a whole lot more. Mine is 8' long, but they make shorter ones (6', I believe). Now, the one thing that I cannot do with that trailer and the ATV is go up the man-killer hill behind my house. For that I have a tiny garden tractor trailer that I built. Depending on what I might put in there, even that can be a mighty scary ride. However, for most utility use around relatively flat-ish land, the ATV will pull that loaded up 8 foot utility trailer around all day long with no problem at all.