Doc

I think you are missing what he said and to be honest I think you are blinded by you view that crossbows don't belong. Look at the quote. He was making a point it is not called bow season.....it is archery season and since a crossbow is archery epuipment is belongs on the archery season. Try reading the words instead of imagining up some story. He said his statement wasn't to add more weapons, it was to add crossbows. Crossbows are weapons. If you guys can read and write english, it's right there, two contradictory items right in the same sentence. I didn't make up the quote and I assumed he meant what he said. Sorry for making that leap.

The mark is from the pet-collar that they took off just before turning on the camera .....

I have finished off deer for other hunters when I can plainly see they are wounded. I wait a reasonable amount of time to see if anyone is following the deer. Usually some winded, sweaty old guy will come trudging along following a blood-trail. As far as I am concerned, the deer is theirs. I figure if they took the time to follow up, they should be rewarded with the deer. Yeah they should have made a better shot, but it doesn't always happen and I know that. My Brother-in-law had a situation last year where he gut shot a buck and the thing crossed a huge ravine (you should see this ravine ..... lol). Anyway, when he got to the top of the otherside, the trail ended with his deer piled up and a couple of guys standing next to it. They had finished the deer off. Not only did these guys give him a hand dragging the deer back up to their camp (It would have been impossible to drag it back across the ravine), but they loaded it in their truck and took him and his deer back down to my place. That's the way it should happen! Doc

I understand skepticism toward the motives and tactics of businesses here in the US and elsewhere. There's no doubt that often they have earned it through past dealings. On the other hand, to take a position of anti-business here in a capitalistic country to the point where you just feel like arbitrarily denying them any opportunity to operate and refusing to listen to anything they are saying doesn't seem to be too good an idea either. I'm trying to listen to and evaluate both sides before I form an opinion. I don't have any scientific backgound or any personal expertise in the energy business, so before handing the business of energy exploration over exclusively to foriegn and often unfriendly countries, I have to take the time to listen to both sides with as open a mind as possible. It is interesting to try to understand just what the hazardous situations (real and potential) are that are involved, and just what is being proposed to regulate and monitor the control of those situations. I don't think that we as an industrial society can afford to just arbitrarily discard anything that has to do with domestic energy creation without an honest and open minded investigation. I think through this thread, I am getting a better understanding of the pros and cons. It's a good discussion.

Now look .... if you can read this sentence: "My statement was never to "add more weapons to bow season" it was to add CROSSBOWS to archery season" and not see that as absolute double talk gibberish, then I guess we really don't have anything further to talk about. You can't even be straight on an obvious contradiction right within the same sentence when someone shows it to you. No wonder you never could understand the point I was making. You simply pretended not to. good move but totally transparent.

I have noticed that it is quite normal for deer to start bunching up at this time of the season, and even earlier. That is why you can have two people hunting in the same area and one thinks the woods are lousy with deer and the other will swear there's not a deer in the woods anywhere. Chances of bumping into one of those little mini-herds can be kind of diminished, giving you a bogus assessment of the population. I've had it happen where I was getting the impression that there wasn't a deer on the hill and then all of sudden I would run into one of these deer clusters and there would be deer bouncing all over the place.

Ha-ha ... at my age anytime I can walk out the other side of the season, it was a good season .... ;D . Being retired, I have the ability to hunt as much as I want to. The past bunch of years I have been able to log an unusually high number of hours hunting when compared to my working years and the hunting is a whole lot more relaxed and carefree. To me that makes them all great seasons.

If it ever got out into an open field, there is no question it wouldn't stop until it hit the other side. Those things are like a big "sail". I couldn't believe that mine made it as deep into these pines as it did. We're talking firs planted 6' apart that have branches almost to the ground (you can hardly walk through all those branches), and the darn thing made it 3 rows in. I would have thought that was impossible. The good news is that there were no rips in it. That in itself is amazing. Anyway, if there is any way that yours could have gotten into any open or "open-ish" fields, it might be worth a bit of a walk to check out the other side or the perimeter of the field.

Now there is some great double talk: "My statement was never to "add more weapons to bow season" it was to add CROSSBOWS to archery season. Amazing! Isn't a crossbow a weapon? But I understand that you say you want to add crossbows and nothing more even though your original post said nothing about that limitation. If you will recall, you were pushing crossbows to make up for the requirement of practice that come with vertical bows. In a perfect world where you could put those kinds of limitations that little qualifier might actually have some meaning. I'm sure that those who argued for compounds said the same thing but used the word "compound" instead of "crossbow". But as you can see here we are arguing the next level of bastardization of bowseasons. And every (and I do mean every) argument that is used for crossbow inclusion can be equally used to include anything and eventually will. That's why I will never let such all-encompassing statements as you posted stand without rebuttal. It's really quite simple. We don't like to be saddled with the disciplines that bows require, and are always looking for new weapons that get rid of those pesky limitations. And step by step, that's exactly what we are doing. Kind of getting difficult to tell just why we ever set aside a special season for bows in the first place, isn't it? Every move we make seems to erase those reasons a little more. I don't suppose that is escaping the notice of the black powder guys.....lol.

You still don't get it do you? Nobody is arguing that a crossbow wouldn't cut wounding losses. I never said it wouldn't anyway. Read the posts! My problem with his statement (if you take time to read it) is that it implies that just because there are some bowhunters that don't practice, we should start adding in more weapons to bow season to compensate. Well, why do you think that argument stops with crossbows? I'll repeat: If you or anybody really believes that more efficient weapons should be added into bow season to compensate for those that can not or will not practice why do you think the argument stops with crossbows? Now this probably makes about the 4th or 5th time I've repeated that same thought without anyone bothering to reply to it. But maybe the 4th time is the charm .....lol. As to your second point, no one has convinced me that crossbows in bow season will add even one more hunter. It may very well serve as a convenient weapon for a crossover of gun hunters into bow season. Is that a good thing? Well, I don't think so but others may. At any rate shifting hunters from one hunting season to another does not add numbers to the overall hunter population.

You may have a very convincing argument. So when are you going to begin the campaign to get rid of compounds? .....lol. Can't be done can it? Once it's there, there is no turning it back is there? I think if you really have a problem with compound bows in bow season, you are probably just a little bit late, don't you think? But I will say that the compound is serving very well as a precedent for the crossbow. Even you are trying to use it that way aren't you? Makes one wonder just what the crossbow will be a precedent for in future bowseasons doesn't it.

Boy that had to be one awfully unlucky deer. I can picture some of the wounds as being antler punctures, but I don't know of any shotgun (other than one in one of those Rambo movies...lol) that would blow the whole area around the butt-hole off.Were talking a wound that is roughly 8 to 10 inches in diameter. Picture the hide and hair and some of the meat removed from most of the white part on the deer's rear. What kind of gun does that?

I know we have a lot of dirt roads that have no guard rails, mowing or fences so I guess you could be standing just off the gravel and legally shoot. That's surprising, but if that's what it says, then that's what it says.

Well, I guess we still don't really know if you could have been busted or not. Maybe yes .... Maybe no.

This is turning into a pretty interesting topic. It is probably one of the few topics that we have going that is actually trying to involve facts. That's pretty rare. I'm still a bit hung up on why we don't hear more from legislators trying to sort out the right and wrong of this mass of facts (pro and con). I mean this is the state that worries about such things as recycling, and septic systems, and lake watersheds and wants to regulate the hell out anything that impacts the green movement. We are also loaded up with all kinds of liberal, green politicians in this state that would dearly love to make their legacy out of an issue like this. And yet there are no legislative studies or cases which involve shutting down this idea of "fracking". It all is still relatively silent from a legislative standpoint. It appears that there is still a heavy shortfall of actual scientific data on the "con" side as well as a fairly large content of "what-ifs". What-ifs are ok, but at some point there has to be declaration of facts in order to make a credible case. I haven't read a lot of that yet. Maybe that is yet to come. Our man Armcomm has presented a pretty darn convincing argument with the kind of detail that is useful in forming an opinion. I would like to see that sort of thing from the opposition, or at least something besides a Hollywood version of the issue. However, the topic is off to a heck of a good start and hopefully we can hear some rebuttal that contains documented scientific hard info. I'm looking forward to it. Doc

Boy! you really put some thought into that list. You got all the "heavy-hitters". Good-going! Doc

Artificial is where it's at ..... lol. Most of decorations stay on the tree and for most of the year it lives under a huge plastic bag down in the basement. No muss ... No fuss ...... No potential fire hazard ..... Easy up .... Easy down. While the kids were around the house we did the "real" tree thing and had all the ceremony of cutting down our own tree and all that crap. However, with just the two of us in the house now, we have opted for the lower cost and lower maintenance version of Christmas. Works for us.

That's funny because that is exactly what happened to me the other day when I went down to put away my pop-up blind. As I walked up to the site, I was amazed to see it missing from the spot where it was supposed to be tucked into the pines. I couldn't believe it. But when I finally got to the spot and stood there looking around in disbelief, I spotted it deeper into the pines. What a relief! How the heck it ever was able to work its way through those pines is something I will never understand. Those pines are super-thick. Anyway, it all came out with a happy ending. Doc

And a trigger - for both. yup...kinda just like our trigger releases on our compounds...lol Well, I'm not going to get into a repetition of all thirty some pages of this thread where the differences between crossbows and compounds has been thoroughly and accurately pointed out. Also, none of that has anything to do with the narrow subject of the post that I have been taking WNYBowhunter to task on. Just to review for those that apparently haven't really been following, I am not in favor of an argument that says that because there are some archers who do not take time to practice with their bows we are justified in adding in more weapons in bowseason that are not as demanding. There is nothing in that argument that ends with just a crossbow. Doc

Well then I guess all that drivel about allowing the substitution a more efficient weapon for those that don't devote required time to their bows for practice was just meaningless garbage that you really don't believe in. Or maybe it is just a worthless argument that only goes as far as your fanatical promotion of crossbows in bow seasons. I suspect both are true and that was exactly the point that I was getting at.

I know you can't shoot across the road, but is there a legal limit as to how far off the road you have to be when you shoot? Do you have to be off the public highway right-of-way and onto private land? I never shot that close to a road to have to worry about it, but now that the discussion has come up, I'm curious. Doc

When you talk about massive permanent environmental damage, usually if there is solid documentation, you don't even have to worry about having an opinion. Such threats that are backed up by science are generally legally squashed right away these days by the government. Lets face it, when it comes to new introduced harmful environmental issues legislators do not usually sit along the sidelines on such things. So what is it that we are not hearing about this issue? Where is the other side of this issue?

Let's try this. Finding a dead deer in the woods is like finding roadkill on the side of the road. In order to possess it you must have a permit signed by some LEO. That's right isn't it? So why wouldn't the same thing apply if you are trying to remove some portion of a "found" deer from the woods? Seems reasonable. Sounds like we have another topic for legal advice. We need a member on this forum that's a conservation officer or a judge ..... lol. Doc

The only place I ever see any doves is out back at the bird feeder. Where would you go to hunt them? Doc

;D That's hard to argue with.