Doc

LOL.... If you'll recall, all my comments on treestand topics talks about my fear of heights. I can't even get anywhere near the edge. Actually there is also a 90' waterfall that has the banks going straight up for another 200'. I have a pretty good picture of that if I can find it. There was a time when hieghts were no problem at all for me and I did get some black and white pictures but most of those were back when I was a kid and they were taken with a Kodak Brownie camera. I'm not sure any of those pictures have survived the years but I'll check. Doc

I have to admit that the motivation is likely the same for both, isn't it? At least that's how it seems to me. The methods may differ, and the results may differ, but the motivation behind each activity probably is essentially the same. Yes I know the food plots carry the cover story that they are good for the benefit of all other kinds of wildlife, but I seriously question whether very many would put in the money and effort if the plots had no attraction to draw and hold deer for hunting purposes just like baiting. I know that thought probably is not going to be the most popular with those here that are involved in food plotting, but I wouldn't be very honest if I said it looked any other way to me. I definitely could be wrong, but I have never seen nor read anything yet that would make me think so. Doc

I'm a believer in the free enterprise system and realize that for every demand, there will be someone to fill it. The pay-to-hunt, high fence operations fulfill a demand, and obviously there are people who call themselves hunters who will pay to have those demands satisfied. I find the whole business (including those deer farmers who enable the stocking of these pay-to-hunt operations) to be repugnant and an activity that will in the end eventually cripple hunting as an viable honorable activity for the average Joe. I hate the idea that they exist. I hate the idea that anybody would patronize these places. I hate the modern-day hunter attitudes that provide support for this abortion of a sport that I have treasured most of my life. But most of all, I hate the glimpse into the future of hunting that these places give us. However, these operations are legal. Whatever they are doing to hunting is legal. Our entire history and economic system is based on this kind of free enterprise activity, and this guy and his customers are filling a need that we hunters are bringing on ourselves. Here is a case where those nasty little things called ethics (or lack thereof) that we were discussing in another thread are failing us. As the majority of us shun ethics or even the discussion of them, little bastardizations of what we call hunting are going to prosper and grow and take over the entire activity eventually. Here we have one little peek at it all. Every year that goes by will bring us a clearer look at it. Doc

The subject of baiting is a state regulated issue that has no requirement to be uniform across the nation. Each state has to decide for themselves what the appropriate hunting methods should be and each state has that right. needless to say they are not all going to agree, and as a matter of fact, they don't have to. Our game management people have decided that we have a potential CWD problem along with other potential transmissable diseases. They have decided that feeding and baiting have the potential for aggravating those disease potentials and have passed a law prohibiting those practices. That's good enough for me. Not only that, but personally those laws don't particularly bother me because I never felt that I really needed that kind of a crutch to be successful. Also, I'm not real big on conditioning the herd to make better targets of themselves. If there's some reason why I can't seem to hunt the deer as I find them, then I guess I have no real desire to try to train them to compensate for my shortcomings*. *Disclaimer: That last part is just my own little personal spin on hunting that I choose to live by. That's not necessarily a slam against those that have a hunting philosophy different from mine.....lol. Doc

Wait a minute ...... I have one of those. I call it my garden. ;D

The earn-a-buck (EAB) idea. Now there is another wonderful idea. That one is worse than AR.....lol. If I could guarantee that the buck of a lifetime would wait his turn and not show up until after I had fulfilled my EAB duties, that would be ok. But you just know that's not the way it would happen. EAB is a program designed to force hunters to harvest does. You can't take a buck until you have taken an antlerless deer first. But once that buck goes by, he's gone. And if you're stuck still waiting for a doe to shoot ........ too bad ..... that opportunity is gone and it may very well be the only one you will have. You want to see "brown & down" mentality, EAB is the way to have it. Doe, fawn, button buck, who cares just get that antlerless deer tagged quick so you can shoot a buck if one comes along. What is happening? We have more darn people sitting around with apparently nothing to do but conjure up ideas to frustrate hunters right out of the sport. Things are really going nuts these days. : Doc

Ok, I've got to say that I have seen deer walking in all kinds of directions regardless of which way the wind was blowing. I have tracked deer in snow that really have no set direction and wind direction had nothing to do with where they went. I believe deer move in a certain direction because their stomach or their sex-drive or their need for cover or water or whatever is on their mind at the time. If wind direction determined where they were going to go, during a week of constant wind direction, they would walk right clean out of their home range. The fact is that most of the deer I have tracked are big on huge circles, but mostly they really don't do anything all the time. Also, I have seen deer approach my stands from down-wind, up-wind, across wind and any other variation you can imagine. Also I have found that a spooked deer usually will initially run straight back from where it came. Not always (they don't do anything, always) but usually. doc

That is the one that really gave me a chuckle. The sound of crunching acorns is supposed to relax the deer. There has to be a way of getting on the receiving end of some of this stuff ..... lol. Doc

Of course I have a bit of a different situation than a lot of people with my neighbors on one side being tenants of a 5 apartment old farmhouse. Most of these people don't last long enough to build any kind of agreements with. Since they don't own the land they live on, they don't worry a whole lot about property owner's rights. On the other side I have state land. What can I say about the variations of people you have to deal with there? My back boundary is a 200' vertical rock walled ravine, so we have no problems with trespassers from that end of the property. However, even if there were permanent neighbors along side of us, sure you want to maintain friendly relations with them, but somewhere along the line it has to be made clear that your friendliness is not to be interpreted as an invitation to them and all their friends and relatives to simply take over your property. Singing the Barney song is fine as long as you still maintain a firm neighborly understanding as to what the limitations are. I have had some pretty ugly experiences with friendliness being misunderstood for being someone to be walked over. It doesn't happen any more. Doc

I guess, if you are talking about one of these places that has the elk and deer and pigs, etc. milling around in a barnyard setting where all the animals have names and eat out of a feeding trough and doze in the shade of a tree next to the watering trough, I don't have a problem with people shooting animals there. That's simply a weird form of slaughter. Where I do have a problem is when they start calling that hunting. I hunt, and there is no way that I want to have that kind of thing labled as anything that I would ever consider doing. Guilt by association sort of feeling ..... eh? If somebody fences in a 10,000 acre parcel, that is something entirely different. Those animals inside there are still truly wild and have an area large enough to escape, hide and do all the things that animals anywhere have the ability to do to avoid danger. So for me it's not the fence, it's the conditions within the fence. How big an area is big enough? ...... I don't know. It is one of those things where I'll know it when I see it. Pay-to-hunt fenced operations - Not going to find me there ...... I'm too cheap ..... lol. Also, I have a thing about being as responsible as possible for my own success. It's just a little personal thing that I try to hold myself to. Also, I get this uneasy feeling that I am looking at the only kind of hunting that will be available at some point in the future. Long after I'm gone I'm sure, but still not a very happy prospect for the future of hunting. Raising deer to hunt - This is another thing that I don't look at very fondly. I see some of these freakish deer that are "created" and then stocked behind fences for hunters to feed their egos with. It's legal, and accepted by a lot of people. We now can grow the most massive trophy money can buy. What that has to do with hunting, I haven't a clue. But those with deep pockets will continue to pursue that kind of way of getting some faked-up trophy on their wall. It really cheapens the achievements of those who actually earn what they get. There is no turning back these kinds of things because fewer and fewer people get concerned about such things anymore. It all will always be legal, but it's just not for me. Doc

Yes I can completely understand the subject getting a bit "touchy". Until you have actually experienced the frustration of people disrespecting property ownership, it is a situation that those that don't own land cannot seem to understand. Trespassers can be the most arrogant, people capable of creating damage and inconvenience and unsafe situations like you really have to experience to appreciate. I have had all kinds of these experiences that I have described numerous times here and they have involved neighbors and strangers and even past aquaintances that somehow took old invites as permission to use the property any time and any way they please, bringing along as many people as they want without a word to me. I will say that just about every posted property has some story of past abuse behind it. Doc

Actually, the state land next to me is alive with gunfire throughout the summer months. I haven't a clue what they are shooting at ...... probably each other. But there really doesn't seem to be any actual "shooting free" times of the year on state land around here. It's amazing, some of those guys get on their semi-autos and it sounds like they simply have a mission to burn up ammo. Now, so far I have not seen any campers there or horseback riders. I'm not sure those activities are even allowed. But we do have a constant parade of hikers and mountain bikers crawling all over the hill That seem to accept co-existance with the summertime gunslingers. So anyway, long story short, non-hunters already put up with shooting on state land, so I doubt that the occasional and rare shot at a coyote would really bother anybody. Doc

It's interesting to note that just about all animals in nature have some form of predator that plays a role in population control except for the coyote here in the east. About the only thing that will keep any kind of control on them is disease or starvation, oh and perhaps the occasional car or two....lol. But in the big scheme of things, it appears that in order to keep their existance healthy through population thinning, it is kind of left up to humans to step in and perform that activity as the next higher life-form on the food chain. It really does not make a whole lot of sense to keep us from doing that job by closing the season for a good portion of the year. I don't know how effective a year around season would really wind up being in terms of population control, but I can't picture any particular harm that removing the protected status of coyotes would really do either and it just might help us perform the role of population control just a little bit better. Doc

No, I was just curious as to how one might actually build a knife from start to finish, And I started wondering about the actual finish that is applied to the blade. My guess is that you would have to take it to a commercial plater and hope you can find someone who will mess with a little job like that. I don't even know what the steel blades are actually plated with. I guess it's likely that going at it the way I was thinking simply is not practical. most likely your approach of modifying an existing stainless steel purchased knife might be more in line with something that a hobbyist can actually do.

Ok, I'm still trying to understand the exact question. Are you talking about the impacts of a fence on the elements of fair chase, or the fact that private individuals have locked up a public resource. Or are you talking pay-to-hunt operations? the above quote seems to cover all of these. I have different answers depending on what all you are talking about. Doc

Actually, I guess I will second that thought. I have followed these AR threads quite closely, and I really can't remember anyone being attacked for private QDM activities.

I would suspect that a larger impact on the fox population from coyotes would come more in the form of additional canine diseases because of the extra canine population. Also, the additional pressure put on food sources may impact fox populations. I'll say one thing, I have seen how fast and agile a fox is, and I think a coyote has it's work cut out for it when it comes to them trying to make a meal out of a fox. I won't say it can't be done, but I think a coyote has a whole lot of other easier meals to catch. I had a little episode with a fox "jumping the string" at about 7 yards. I've seen flies with slower reflexes. He jumped straight up and the arrow went under him, and he hit the ground running like a streak. I don't think there is anything that could have caught him (not even a coyote), certainly not my arrow....lol. Doc

If Oregon handles such laws the way NY does, the good news is that such laws never get voted on by the general population. Most likely the only ones that will be heard on the subject are the hunters, or even more likely hunting organizations. I wouldn't worry too much about the general voting population. These kinds of things are seldom elevated to general referendums. If there is enough opposition, and the hunters feel strongly enough about the issue, they will flood the legislators with e-mails and phone calls and should have their way with the legislators that would propose, and vote on a B/O law and the Governor who may have to sign it. If the opposition is weak in actual committment or forms only a weak minority of hunters, the law will be passed. I doubt that the gentlemen hikers of Portland will have any say or impact at all. Of course that's assuming that Oregon lawmaking is similar to ours. Doc

Really? ...... I know that all knife blades are not stainless, and I just assumed that the nice shiny surface was from some sort of plating. But then, I really don't know anything about it, so maybe not. The guys that are making knife blades out of old files must have some way of protecting the blade from corrosion when they are finished. It sure would be a nasty event to put all that work into them and then watch them start rusting. Doc

My entire property has a fence around it, and I hunt deer there. Of course a lot of the fence, you need a metal detector to find it. Doc

Well, that's a question that's been rolling around in my head regarding that end of the spectrum as far as issuing gobs of DMPs, and I really don't know the answer. Is there some upper limit where the DEC can offer all the DMPs that they want and at some point have difficulty getting rid of them all or getting hunters to fill them if they have been issued. Somewhere, I saw the percent success ratio on DMPs and it struck me as being ridiculously low. So it makes me wonder if there isn't a point where bulk numbers of permits simply top out and either are not taken or not filled. For that matter, does anyone know if all the permits are issued even at the existing rate allowed now. On that question, I would avoid factoring in the $10. I think if they were up against the wall trying to control a runaway population, that fee would quickly go by the wayside. But just how many deer does the average hunter kill and consume, and how many would they if there was no limit? I think we might be surprised at how low that number may be. Doc

Yup! That's why we don't get a vote about things that go on in Oregon. That is something they have to work out for themselves. Doc

How do you handle the re-plating?

I'm thinking the state will regret the day that they pumped up those license fees. First of all, it caused a huge spike in lifetime licenses. I still am not clear on just exactly how that glut of money is being managed, but I certainly hope they have it in the market somewhere and it is appreciating enough to make up for all the license money that will no longer be coming in ...... ever. My biggest fear is that they may have blown a good bunch of it just trying to keep up with current expenses and making up for current budget shortfalls. I hope not. Secondly, while it remains to be seen yet, I believe that the fee increases will result in an even steeper decline in sportsmen. I know that taxation is a great way to cut participation and it doesn't take that much of an increase to push some people over the edge and out of the activity. It's kind of a proven principle that has been used by the government for years as a form of behavior modification. There's nothing unique about hunting, fishing, and trapping that makes these activities exempt from that principle. It may all wind up to be a downward spiral. As sportsmen numbers decline, the fees have to go up. As the fees go up, the sportsmen numbers decline more. And another lurking force is the stagnant economy that seems to be lasting a whole lot longer than anyone anticipated. The longer that takes to turn around, the less income the state experiences from whatever fund they put the Lifetime license money in, which will eventually force future increases. Also due to the crap economy, the impact of these increases on those sportsmen that are on the edge will force more people to reconsider outdoor activities as their choice of recreation. I can't say that the state had any choice with their increases, but I don't think it did the system any long-term good. Doc

I don't think it is too much of a stretch to imagine hunter numbers declining to the point where the DEC is forced to cut bowhunting seasons and extend gun seasons, or modify bow seasons to include some more effective weapons such as crossbows and muzzleloaders. I don't see any of that happening in my lifetime, but somewhere off in the future I believe things will be moving in that direction. I think the DEC is somewhat less than impressed by the effectiveness of the bow as a herd management implement, and that seems to be their primary concern these days. Perhaps they are extending a view out in the future and are looking for alternatives to better thin herds when the time comes that hunters are not able to keep up. At any rate, I think that proposals that tend to hamper their ability to quickly shrink herds are probably not looked on favorably. Maybe that is one reason that they are not interested in any management changes that tend to set aside the harvests of any deer, even bucks. Doc