Doc

There isn't too much that I don't read. Now how much I actually remember ...... well, that's something else ..... lol. ;D Doc

I haven't had a chance to read the scent article yet. Probably tomorrow. This is an unusally interesting issue and it's going to take a while to get the darned thing read. Doc

Convicts are easy. Their actions have deprived themselves of some civil liberties and rights. Gun ownership is one of those rights that they have lost. Convicted felons are barred from gun ownership. I don't think there are too many people that don't believe that those who have risky conditions or have in some way displayed that they are at risk of misusing a firearm should be denied the use of a firearm. That sort of thing actually involves point of sale background checking rather than registration and permitting systems. But my point is that we have to be careful about what doors we open up when it comes to gun control concessions. Some of those doors let in some real nasty little gremlins that have little to do with the reasons we opened the door in the first place. Doc

Blaze orange cloth would take care of any hazard. In my case with the decoy experiment, I really wasn't even leaving my yard. Doc

I haven't heard a thing. I suspect that all the grief with the budget has pretty much paralyzed Albany. Maybe now that the budget is passed, some of the more mundane business of running the state will start to happen. I have pretty much written off rifles in Ontario County for this year. I hope I am wrong. Doc

I love the enormous power of a moose and the size. I too have been on a successful bowhunt , and understand the perfect big game aspects of moose hunting. Yes, I realize that I will never see a NYS moose hunting season in my lifetime, but it is not completely out of the question for those that come after me, assuming that there are no diseases involved in holding the population back. Doc

I certainly hope their is a big enough difference because otherwise it wouldn't take an anti-gun group and their legislative partners very long to offer up a convincing argument for registering all guns (muzzleloaders included) using exactly the same mental deficiency arguments. I mean we can debate the effectiveness of a concealed pistol vs a long gun if it makes us feel better, but once you start accepting the premise of gun registration and government controlled permitting, then you had better be ready to start forking over the bucks for registering the rest of your firearms because the argument works very well for long-guns too and the puny arguments concerning concealability aren't going to be all that useful. The only thing that has held back registration of long-guns is the absolute stubborn refusal of the NRA to accept the premise of registration of any weapons. This is something that the NRA often gets criticized for and often gets the label of extremists hung on them, but the plain facts are that when you give an inch (or even concede the concept of registration) the gun control lobby and their merry band of sympathetic lawmakers happily will take the proverbial mile. The NRA learned that a long time ago, and some of the rest of us had better get on board with that same philosophy. Another thing to bear in mind is the fact that registration and confiscation go hand in hand. Those arguments that work for permitting systems are the same arguments that are so effective in outlawing or severely modifying the legality of those same guns. The anti-gun people will make themselves very happy by super-regulating your guns, or you, or both. Every concession that we make aids them in all of their goals. Doc

It looks like we lost one of our resident NYS moose. Cause: brain worm leading to heat stroke. The moose keeled over in a back yard of a Dannemora (Clinton County) home. I have heard that brain worm was one of the bad things about whitetails and moose cohabitating in the same area. I hope this isn't something that will be expanding through the moose population. I don't know whether that sort of thing can happen or not. Doc

WNYBuckhunter- I keep looking at that deer in your avitar. What in the heck is that sticking out of it's mouth? Is that a tongue, carrot, cigar or what? It's too small, I can't quite make it out. Doc

Another 30 or 40 years, you'll be ready for one of these signs:

Geez Oak. That picture does look like one of those old 1940s photos that you see in NY Outdoor News ....... lol.

Ah, a battle of attrition. Who will weaken first. My money is on Bubba. I've gone a few rounds with him and I know he is relentless .... lol. ;D

I agree. I understand that the DEC will be assigning ID's to trappers which will undoubtedly result in another list. Is that list going to be showing up on some of the more militant animal rights sites? Those wackos are definitely more psycho that the anti gun freaks, but the anti-gunners have a few derailed people of their own too. Is there nothing that the government accumulates that is safe from the Freedom of Information laws? How about individual census data. Is that up for public publishing too. I think not. So what makes pistol owners any less deserving of privacy? Certainly there must be some criteria that has to be met for this stuff to be part of public information. Doc

Lol ..... That's why I only carried it down to just below the garden. I wasn't going to lug that thing any farther than I had to. Besides, I had those deer coming through there like clockwork. It was perfect for an experiment just to see what they would do.

This thread is loaded with 20 pages of reasons. Bottom line, its a weapon more similar to a gun than anything else. i.e. scope, stock, trigger, locked and loaded, point and shoot......therefore it does not belong in the archery season. And so on and so forth. I agree. I would hate to have us all repeat those volumes of discussion again. I believe all those reasons were already on their 12th repeat the last time around. Nothing has changed in between.

My one and only attempt at decoying resulted in one very aggravated doe and her young-uns. I set up my 3-d target down below the garden while I hid in the hedgerow. Momma and her two offspring came along, got one look at the decoy and there we went with the foot stomping, head-bobbing dance routine. That lasted for about 5 minutes. I had my bow with me, but I was more interested in watching the show than trying a shot. It was pretty amusing, but I didn't get the feeling that I was fooling her for one minute.....lol. Finally, she blew me the raspberry and took off with her crew. By the way, I was completely hidden away from the line of sight, and the wind was blowing exactly away from the deer, so they had no idea I was anywhere around. Also, I didn't have the antlers on the target so it wasn't a case of her getting bothered by another pesky buck. I never tried the experiment again, but someday I will just to see what kind of reaction I get with a different bunch of deer. If nothing else it sure was entertaining. Doc

Per an article in the latest issue of New York Outdoor News, DMP tags will be lowered by 5% this year, statewide. However, just like the statewide deer harvest, that number means nothing to individual hunters. What you need to do is to look at the WMUs that you will be hunting. For example, in our WMU, 8N, the permits are less than 50% of what they were last year (from 23,600 last year to 11,300 this year) That's a long way from a 5% reduction. Also, there were 13 WMUs that didn't change at all. They had 0 permits last year and will issue 0 permits this year. Some WMUs even went up in permit numbers for this year. So the 5% number doesn't mean anything. Here is their explanation that gives a little insight into the trial and error "statistical" methods that are used to set permit numbers: "In many portions of the southern tier, after the population declines of 2003-2004, we reduced antlerless harvests (through a reduction inDMPs) for a couple of years and saw incremental deer population growth through 2006-07, Hurst said. We then began modestly ramping up antlerless harvests to keep deer populations from growing too fast and to avoid overshooting objective levels. Based on the 2008 and 2009 harvests, it appears that deer populations in many southern zone units began to level off prematurely, and easing up on antlerless harvest in these units is again necessary for 2010." Did you follow all that? First we had blasted the herd down too far so then we tried this and then we tried that, now we will try this again because the other is overshooting the mark. How are those statistics working these days? ...... lol . That's what I like .... good old statistical forcasting. Actually, if you have been keeping your ear to the ground, these results follow the exact trends that the hunters have been describing each year. Well, anyway take a look at those [last year/this year] comparisons and you will see how the DEC is reading the population changes in your particular WMU. It's kind of interesting. Maybe you'll agree, or maybe you won't :-\ Doc

The arguments back then were not so much about what the compound was as it was about the precedent being set that would eventually be used to eventually allow inappropriate weapons into bow seasons. I thought those guys were making far too much out of it. Who would have guessed how right they were and how wrong I was. Today the compound is being used as the precedent for jamming crossbows into bow seasons. It kind of makes you wonder just what the crossbow will be used as a precedent for in the near future doesn't it?

In the southern zone, if you had an opportunity to shove the whole season forward to begin at the 1st day of October, but had to relinquish the last week of the current bowseason, would you accept that kind of change. You would actually wind up with more bowhunting days, but you would give up a week of rut...... Acceptable?

Doewhacker- You are absolutely right. It's a hobby, recreation, pastime. It's not our living. It's very possible that the bulk of hunters that we lose every year are those frustrated individuals who take it all so seriously that they can't tolerate failure, or living up to the standards seen on TV. You never know. I know I hunt hard, but I also try to keep it all in perspective. How much of this super-seriousness comes from videos and TV. There's an awful lot of unrealistic expectations that can develop when we start setting our goals according to what we see on the TV screen. Doc

So they're telling you that you've got two chances to get a permit ...... slim and none.

For nearly all of my working life, I have commuted almost 80 miles, round trip per working day & a lot of Saturdays and was on the road between 3:00 and 5:00 am (in the dark), traveling through a lot of farm and forest country, and have never hit a deer (now I've done it!). On two occasions, I was hit by deer. I actually got thumped while the car was absolutely stopped, but never actually hit a deer. I did hit a pig once, but that's another story. One time I saw an oncoming car knock down a deer. I knew what happened because I saw the headlights wink and then I saw him pull over. So as I approached, I could see the deer flopping in front of the car so I pulled over to see if I could help. Before I got out of my car, the deer got up and ran over to my side of the road, circled way out in a field and came back and slammed broadside into my car. He fell down again and then got back up and ran off. Not much damage on that one plus my car was an old rusty Datsun so who cared anyway. Another time, I just got started toward work, and I spotted some deer in a neighbor's yard. I saw one was a pretty good sized buck so I pulled over and turned the car slightly to the side so they were in the edge of where the headlights were shining. I was pretty close. They all took off in different directions and the buck came right straight at me. Yup, BANG! right into my front fender. He went right down but only for a second and then he got up and smacked me again and then ran off. That time I had a little Honda CRX, and that fender took a beating. Almost had the fender rubbing on the tire. Doc

Most of the time these calls don't do a thing for me. However, there has been a couple of times years ago where I did get a look at a buck after using the grunt call along with rattling antlers. neither time did the buck ever come in within bow range. Blind calling has never worked at all for me. Of course I don't try that very often. I prefer to just try not to be noticed at all rather than run the risk of pin-pointing my location for the buck. If I see a buck that has no intention of coming within bow range then I might try some desparation measure to try to turn him in my direction. But I have yet to have that work either. Doc

That sounds like a good solution. Doc

I can't. My impression of a deer's size is unique to my own mindset. As is everyone else's idea of deer size. I don't belive there is any such thing as a universally agreed upon big deer or small deer unless it is an extreme of one or the other. Doc