Doc

Alright, let's get this out there. WARNING!!! hunting season is soon upon us. Take special care to safeguard fingers, arms, shoulders, elbows, back muscles, legs, feet, eyes, etc. It you have to start wearing boxing gloves ........ do it!!! If you have to stay in an empty locked room ....... do it!!! Whatever it takes.

It may not be a real bad idea to come up with some list of general concerns regarding conduct of debate. As long as they are not so restrictive that they inhibit debate. It also might serve as a general assist to moderators as well as a guideline for determining when action is appropriate. The above list is not a bad start. The only problem that I can see is that an awful lot of it is terribly subjective. I'll bet we all have different and wide-ranging limits on all of those terms mentioned above ("appropriateness, aggressiveness, redundancy, etc?"). How do you get around that? Doc

I'm still a bit confused as to just how anyone would know exactly what topics are to go into this "special" forum. Obviously there would have to be some rules or criteria established. And then, what would the purpose be? Would that be to shield people's sensitivities from confrontational subject matter? I always figured that topic titles gave members an opportunity to not access certain topics that they had some kind of problem with. Isn't that true? I guess I still am not following what is being suggested here and why.

Actually, it's true. The herd does seem to be as healthy or healthier than ever, and I haven't heard of any real problems with reproductive rates or results. We still seem to encounter frequent years when the herd has to be thinned. All this without the benefit of AR. Maybe we just have a unique area here and the actual herd statewide really is in a condition of decline because of inappropriate age and gender structure, but I must say that I haven't really heard about that actually happening. Doc

That article should serve to erase any feelings of comfort that anyone might get just from the fact that we haven't heard of any new incidents of CWD in NY. Once it is here, I wonder if there ever is any situations where you can declare absolute success in erradicating it. So if someone (DEC) seems to think that feeding and baiting has the potential for the spread of CWD, I guess I'll accept that as a good reason for outlawing those practices. The fact that I still have adequate hunting skills and don't really have to do either of these things to be successful at hunting makes that a very easy and painless law to abide by. Doc

You must be hanging out with a better crowd than I am....That amount of disposable income is pretty hard to come by the last few years for most Yeah, for all the talk about the recession, and the hard times (which I'm not denying), there's still a whole bunch of money around. Anytime you want to check that out just take a stroll through any casino and watch the mobs of people filling those machines. Take special note of the guys that sit there all day cranking in $1 or even $5 or more per spin. That's just one example, but there sure is no shortage of disposable cash these days (emphasis on disposable ..... lol). Another thing that I have noted is the general quality of the cars (plural) that people drive today compared to the junkers that populated the road years ago. I still remember the days when a significant percentage of cars that you would see on the road had the flapping fenders and the duct tape holding a headlight in .... lol. Another eye-opener is the huge palatial estates that are owned by upper middle class people. They use to rent to 3 or four families any houses that size. Also head down to the Canandaigua pier (or any city pier) and note the fancy power boats that seem to just sit there all year more as a status symbol tha something that actually gets used. There's signs of significant wealth all around us, and a lot of those people who on a whim, feel like having the hunting experience, have no problem blowing the bucks to do it. It's true there are a lot of us who will never be able to afford it, but there is no shortage of those that can. Doc

I think that's true for just about anybody that gets involved in food plotting. Attract and hold is the name of the game. You never see non-hunters putting plots in. Doc

Did they get ya?? Don't you just love the way those thorns are shaped so that they just dig in deeper as you pull back? Just the perfect "man-trap". ;D Doc

One of the interesting things is that it appears that hunters may actually be getting more efficient at harvesting deer even as their numbers decrease. I think today's hunter is better informed and equipped to do the population control activity much better than in the past. And also, the DEC has the freedom to revise season lengths and equipment content to make a smaller force more effective. So there has been, and could be, a lot of things to make the decrease in hunters transparent to the harvest.......for a while. So it all depends on how far and how fast the decrease in hunters continues as to just when they might have to resort to increasing bag limits. My thought is that increased bag limits will only be marginally effective. Of course it needs to be proven, but I have the feeling that hunters already have limits on how many deer they can actually consume. Frankly, I am down to one deer per year and then I have to give away any additional animals. We just do not eat any more than that anymore. I'm sure others have some limit that they have set. So perhaps allowing each hunter to take a half dozen or so deer might not have the impact that one might think. Doc

There is one good thing about using the mail. When you receive permission, it is already in writing which helps in situations where other members of the family or friends might be questioning your presence there when you are there hunting. Doc

There's only one thing to do when that happens, buck-a-roo. You've just got to plug it back in and climb right back on or you'll be afraid to ride again for the rest of your life. Doc

I have re-read my reply to Bubba, and decided that I went over the line in responding to some of his remarks. Because of that I deleted that reply and wish to apologize for getting caught up in the escalating animosity. Things went a lot farther than they should have and I will try to use a bit more restraint in the future when dealing with certain types of personalities. Doc

What's the problem? Most of the subjects have some pretty definitive titles. If you don't like the subject, don't click on the topic. If you want sterile, non-confrontational topics, anyone that wants to can start one can. You want topics that have no opposing opinions, I doubt there is a forum around that can supply that (or wants to). Do you want censorship? Doc

Stinkin' goats!!!

During a discussion a long time ago, the subject came up about how long these prions can survive and still remain viable in the soil. I wish I could remember how long it was said that these things can survive as infectable entities but I remember being a bit shocked at how long they can last. So, the point is that just because no cases have been discovered for a while does not mean that the disease is destroyed and no longer a threat. Doc

Yeah, I don't know what percentage of the users of high end pay-to-hunt businesses actually fit the true dictionary definition of being a yuppie .... lol. And it probably doesn't matter. The point is that their is a growing number of people with adequate resources for supporting more and more of these kinds of hunting businesses. And, the more land that these kinds of operations absorb, the less land that is available to the rest of us. If we continue on path with this kind of evolution of hunting, we need only look over in Europe to see where it will all lead eventually. No, not in my lifetime or even in the lifetime of most of our members here, but eventually. Doc

Oh boy.....I messed up on the poll. I said that I don't hunt a food plot, but actually I do have a second parcel of property that has a grasslot in the center that I keep mowed. The deer use it and I do occasionally hunt it. In fact I've gotten deer from it. Come to think of it, I have gotten a deer from my front lawn while I hid behind the barn with the shotgun before. That could be called a food plot too. So on the poll, scratch one "NO" vote. Doc

Parachute .......... think parachute. That should do it. Doc

I would take a hammer and keep hitting it until it is completely numb. No, seriously that is a very bad development. i can't imagine how you are going to be able to hunt without losing a bunch of days. How on earth did you do that kind of damage? Doc

I don't know about those guys, but I sure don't usually have time to rangefind on the fly. What I do is use my rangefinder to find the distances to various trees or other features around my stand. If I could get a deer to just stop and stand there while I checked the distance, then pulled up and tried to take the shot, I'd do that. But really, how often are the deer that cooperative? My guess would be that if you had a deer grazing in a food plot or hay field or something, you probably would have time to range the distance, realtime. But trail hunting, I don't think so. Doc

I don't know what the background of some of these guys is, but with the prices some of these places are asking, it definitely is people with deeper pockets than I've got.....lol. It's like some of these New Zealand hunts that you see on TV. Heck, I can't even afford the trip to New Zealand and back even without the hunt ..... lol. So, I'm thinking that maybe it's mostly young execs who all of a sudden get the thought that they should have some animals hanging on their wall for bragging purposes and simply decide to go out and purchase a hunt that guarantees success in a time frame that doesn't interfere too much with their tennis, skiing, kayaking, mountain climbing, etc.

Good. Now let's get back to discussing those property lines and those that like to play games with them ...... lol . Doc

I'm thinking that the problem that the state has with getting hunters to shoot does might be partially due to the fact that a good many hunters/families really don't care all that much for venison. I know there are other factors involved like the old holdover attitudes against shooting does from the old days when it was necessary to build herds. Also, like you say there are a lot of armchair managers who simply want to get those permits out of circulation because of what they perceive as DEC overkill on the herd (by the way, a lot of times they aren't all that wrong). Your version of EAB could be used to thwart some of those attitudes and get hunters shooting those does just on the outside chance that they might have an opportunity at a second buck.

I had two of the bigger ones and one of the smaller ones. Ranging used to be in East Rochester, and back in the 80's a few of us guys got an invite to tour their plant from the owner. We each got some free samples. I guess eventually they sold out (to who I don't know). I have a buddy whose picture showed up in their national advertising along with a nice buck he got over in Wyoming County. They were pretty well made units, but I did manage to screw one of the big ones up. I gave away the smaller rangefinder to my son, and keep the last one for emergencies in case something happens to my Nikon. Doc

I have encountered situations where the darn things bed down in the fields toward morning. You really can't approach any stands that use the field edges because they are there already no matter how early you get there. About the only thing you can do in the AM around such places is to try to guess an intercept spot that you think they will pass when they finally leave the field at day-break. Big gamble because there are so many places they could go. But when they are camped out in the field for hours just before daylight, there really aren't a whole lot of options. Doc