Doc

Hey, maybe the tick invasion will slow down a bit ...... Maybe? Yeah, as I sit here shivering from the umpteenth consecutive day of frigid arctic temps, I will be concentrating on all the good it might be doing. behind every bit of misery, there does seem to be something positive that comes from it all. Are we setting any kinds of records with this cold crap?

So there is more than mere speculation. And by the way don't be conveniently forgetting the muzzleloaders, which are basically single shot rifles. And apparently your short memory has already forgotten the recent threat of the DEC to help a bunch of bowhunters in specific WMUs with muzzleloader inclusion to control doe populations. 150% pure speculation? ..... I think not.

You don't even realize that there are firearms in bow season already do you?

I will tell you right now that if the decisions were up to the DEC, we would be sharing the bow season with muzzleloaders. They were pushing an early muzzleloading season a decade ago until the bowhunters shouted them down. And even very recently they were threatening a few WMUs with an inclusion of muzzleloaders during bow season to meet their doe harvesting quotas. So their philosophies of weapons have already been made public. It has always been very clear that the DEC has had the mindset that they prefer as lethal a weapon as they can get away with dictating. Would they go beyond muzzleloader inclusion? ..... Very likely they would if the decision were 100% in their shop. I know that would be perfectly acceptable to a lot of people.....Ha-ha-ha. Oh did I mention that we already have in-lines co-existing with bow seasons already.....ha-ha

Oh here we go with the name calling already (actually again). You people sure have gotten a lot of mileage out of the "elitism" label. The fact is that you give the NYB a lot more credit than they deserve as far as their influence with legislators. They have been rendered all but dead and totally ineffective, which I guess was really the prime object of the crossbow lobby.....destroy the archery lobby and all they have done to establish the season, to make it easier to elbow your way in. And of course you are completely correct about change and evolution. That is a fact of life that I have been noting for several years now. The crossbow crowd only looks as far as the end of their noses and think that the invasion of bow season will stop with crossbows. That's pretty much what bowhunters thought when the compound entered the scene. How silly it was for bowhunters to believe that they could have a season devoted to the art of using the bow. And I can guarantee that the same mentality that brought crossbows into bow season will not stop there. And there will come a time when the NYS crossbow organization will be labeled just as unfairly as so-called elitists when the next wave of invaders decide that they want to hijack the early season. I think it will be funny to see the shoe on the other foot as you are forced to struggle to preserve the season that you all have shoehorned yourselves into. The same arguments and tactics will apply and work as the change and evolution that you value so much continues. Oh, you too will try to put your own road-blocks up. And it will be just ineffective as the NYB struggle was.

Well, thank you all for the happy birthday wishes. Nice rib-eye at Longhorn steak house, and two candy bars and a couple of big fat sloppy, gloppy, cream-filled chocolate frosted donuts at my new favorite hang-out......Dunkin Donuts. Life is good!

Yes, these are the kinds of mindless wrestling matches you get involved with when you try to cram something into a season that was never intended to be there. It is a bow season, and everybody is trying to turn themselves inside out trying to achieve operational parity between the two entirely different weapons. It will never make sense. You cannot regulate parity between two completely different weapons that don't even look or fire the same and that operate on two completely different theories of operation. It's a case where you need to simply accept the fact that they are not the same, will never be the same, and open the floodgates to simply allow technology to shoehorn in whatever the manufacturers want to market. That is the natural path that compounds forced on bow seasons, and the incorporation of the crossbow into bow season is an even greater stretch. I am not as surprised as most seem to be that there are goofy and arbitrary regulations as the regulators try to justify the inclusion. What did you all expect?

I have to agree that some of these restrictions seem a bit arbitrary. But then I am wondering if there aren't those that saw the massive surge in technology that vertical bows went through when compounds were introduced into bow seasons. Could it be that they are still trying to keep some control on what is called a crossbow by setting size and power limits?

Have you noticed that your push for AR is all based on your own personal preferences and philosophies on hunting. And that is fine. You are free to set whatever personal goals you think you need. Fortunately, it appears that the majority of hunters seem to value having choices as to what they consider to be a satisfactory harvest. There are even some that think the hunting in NYS is already damn good and likely will stay that way if we can keep the armchair fad-managers from mucking things up with their latest brain-fart restrictions to heap on the backs of everyone else.

It sounds like another avenue to collect fines, or add to the complexity of the law to frustrate hunters (an anti-hunting reference there ....lol). I have had situations where the point count was not all that simple, and that had nothing to do with speed or brush. Here again is just another unnecessary complication of the law because some hunters are overly concerned about what other hunters are perfectly happy with.

She lasted a lot longer than I would have given the relentless personal attacks that she was getting.

Bill- Let you doctor answer that question for you. Good luck on the surgery.

So, is that the purpose of AR? ..... to let more legal bucks escape? I didn't realize that, but I'll bet it frequently does work out that way. So it is a law to confound hunters. I wonder if it is backed by PETA. It seems like they would love it.

There is one thing that can be said, for sure. That is that the more laws you have, the more likely that people with good intentions will innocently be sucked into some pretty ugly legal situations. When we try to set rules and regulations on every aspect of an activity there will be many who quite innocently, inadvertently, run afoul of those rules and suffer some bad consequences because of it. Environmental Conservation Law is one of the most complex and argued about and misunderstood collection of laws, and a tiny amount of time on this forum will show just how completely confused it already is by hunters and how complex others would like to make it. AR is one of the more difficult laws to abide by unless you do as Stubby has suggested and never shoot anything under a 12 point just to be sure. A side view can have a hunter confusing points on opposite antlers and quickly coming up with a mis-count. And there are those that want to make the AR laws even easier to run afoul of. How about those that want to make antler spread the way of accomplishing AR requirements. Imagine how difficult that could become. That would require that the buck be looking straight at you. If he isn't, it would be a requirement that the hunter do something to make him look straight at you. So you can attempt to judge the distance between antlers in inches. I long for the days when hunting was so much simpler, and abiding by the law was not such an easy trap for the innocent to run afoul of. And yet there are so many who engage in fad-management proposals that never seem to worry about or consider the growing volumes of complex restrictions and requirements.

I'm afraid I don't really understand the guy's confusion. He failed to determine that the buck was a legal deer to shoot, but he shot it anyway. What did he expect? I guess he is saying that he expected a pass because it was an honest mistake. but I have never heard of people getting a pass because it is claimed to be an honest mistake. I think there have been some speeding tickets that I should have been able to get excused simply because it was an "honest mistake". I'm no fan of AR, but as long as it is the law, I'm thinking that you had better be pretty darn sure of the point count before shooting.

I try to get in on all the discussions that go on here, but I don't have time to catch all of the conversations and do miss quite a few of them. Anything that happened here over the past hunting season probably didn't get read because I was pretty intensely involved in my hunting. So if I missed this subject on another thread, I apologize. But I have not come at this subject with a mission to cause battle. Every year as I compare current hunting seasons to past ones, it gets to be more and more obvious that either hunter numbers are diminishing, or hunter participation and enthusiasm is only good for a few days at the beginning. So whenever I hear arguments about hunting season lengths, I keep wondering how changing the lengths of seasons one way or the other is going to have any impacts at all if most hunters call an end to the season after a few days. So I decided to start topic that addressed all of this. I do this in the spirit of curiosity and not for any combative reasons. See, I am not even sure what people are trying to achieve with shorter seasons. There may be some legitimate reasons for shortening the gun season that I don't even understand yet.

No bucks, 3 does, for two hunters. Buck would have been nice, but it was a very successful season anyway.

I'm not sure what makes you say that, but the observations that I have had over the past dozen years or so have been that the activity during gun season traditionally drops off to near nothing after opening weekend, and my theory is that deer herds are not significantly altered by the length of gun season. And so the big controversy about shortening gun seasons seems to really be a moot point. And sure enough, a DEC graph was posted that seemed to back up my contention. So I think the thread was a legitimate discussion. Now I would like to see some conversation about what people think would be trying to accomplish with their calls for shorter gun seasons just to see if there is another aspect to topic. Again it seems like a legitimate related discussion. That is not stirring the pot, but simply conducting discussion. I believe discussion is why we have forums......right?

I have one camera out. I am wondering how this prolonged stretch of super cold weather will be wearing on the batteries. I should check soon and see how things are holding up. Anybody have any preferences in battery choices for maximum life in these stressed conditions?

When the animals start coming to the feeding trough when they hear the grain bucket, or they come when they are called by name, that probably should not be called "hunting" ..... lol .

I have a related question for those that want gun seasons shortened. how is that supposed to help the deer herd? What would be the expected benefit? I think there is more than one answer to those questions, and I am just curious about some of the theories behind this quite frequent demand that gun season be shortened. I started this thread with the theory that shortening or lengthening the season probably would not have any significant impact on the herd since so few people take advantage of almost all of the season after opening week. But now the thread has morphed a bit, and now I am wondering what those that want to shrink the gun season are hoping to accomplish. Whatever it is, I'll bet that season length doesn't really accomplish it.

Where are you getting your demographics from? I'm not saying whether you are right or wrong, it's just that when someone makes these kinds of statements and is passing them off as fact, I kind of like to see a few credible sources for the so-called "facts".

You might try reading that reply a bit slower so that you don't miss-quote me again. "I have nothing against using common sense and good judgment in further voluntarily restricting those hours, but I am not real happy with a bunch of yahoos out there making up their own rules when it comes to my safety." So now you have a problem with using "common sense" when conditions make you feel like you should be quitting? I know that I have quit early when combinations of fog and dim light and heavy over-story made conditions seem inadequate for safe shooting. But since safety is a joke to you, I suppose you likely have never seen a situation where you would refuse to shoot. And I guess now you are telling me that you are against the current law and apparently also using "common sense" as even a guideline for quitting. You don't want any limits regarding lighting at all, do you? The only fears I have of being shot is when I start hearing the opinions of those who consider safety a joke and those that have nothing but contempt for any safety laws.

No, the real point is that someone thought exactly like many on this forum do ..... That they are good judges of when they feel they should be able to shoot (law be damned). Those missing fingers are the result of somebody else that wanted hunting to become a free-for-all where everyone makes up their own minds about what laws to abide by and which ones to ignore. Look, when it comes to these things, it is my neck that I am looking out for, and with all the different hunters that are out there I don't like the idea of them arbitrarily deciding when to quit or start. I don't want to hear, "Gosh I thought it was light enough". I'm all for a defined start and stop time and I am happy that the NYS times agree with my notions of safe shooting hours. I have nothing against using common sense and good judgment in further voluntarily restricting those hours, but I am not real happy with a bunch of yahoos out there making up their own rules when it comes to my safety. As far as other states are concerned, I have noted that we have been posting some pretty impressive safety stats and I am not sure that all the other states with extended hours have done as well. For a state with our situation of extreme hunter density, I think erring on the side of safety probably is the right thing to do.

License sales numbers may still be up, but that doesn't say that they are being used at the same rate and the same enthusiasm as they used to be. Let's face it, in spite of how much we complain, the cost of a hunting license is still pretty darn cheap. I'm sure there are a lot of people who buy a license just in case they get the urge to go out. And then there are the people who want to go out just for opening day so they can say they still go deer hunting. And then there are those that go out on opening day but seem to never make it back after they head out for breakfast or lunch......for the remainder of the season. Then there are people who get counted for each different kind of hunting license that they buy. There's a whole lot more to judging hunting popularity, activity and enthusiasm than simply counting licenses.