Doc

Alright.....You ice fishing guys are finally getting the kind of winter you all deserve. I remember hard water fishing back when I was a kid, and I have to say that I had a ball on Honeoye lake with pickerel. Damn, tip-ups were going off all over the lake. I wonder if these old bones can still take the cold.....lol.

I was checking one of the doves that was sitting on the wire that hold the bird feeder. Then I tried to imagine the thing without any feathers. Then I tried to imagine how hungry I would be if I had to dine on a couple of them. I have no problem with anyone hunting them, but I can't see wasting any of my time campaigning for a season. Good luck to all of you that want to put in the time to fight for a hunt for a couple of bites of dove meat, but I would sooner go to the store and pick up one of those Cornish game hens. I just think I am simply one who has too big an appetite.....lol.

Last I knew, crossbow inclusion into bow season was a NYS law ...... All of the state. What is your problem that you can't admit you screwed up? It seems to me that it is you who is twisting and squirming here and trying desperately to escape your own screw-up. You made an incorrect statement and I corrected you. Don't make more of it than it is.

It looks like a fun-gun no matter whether you use it on tin cans or squirrels. Just out of curiosity, what does a thing like that go for. Wish I had something like that to shoot in my basement right now. This frigid weather is getting me a severe case of cabin fever.

I do find it interesting as to how much money for hunting & fishing stuff there must be floating around if they are lured into taking another shot at it. Look at all the big-box stores there are now that deal in hunting and outdoor products. And most of them spare no expense when it comes to the facilities. Apparently hunters and fishermen have a lot of cash that these people are looking to glom onto.

I can't get too excited about a return of Gander Mountain. They had their chance to profit from this consumer, and they blew it. Since that time a few quality outdoor stores have come on the scene. I don't need Gander Mountain anymore.

Look, you made the erroneous statement. Be man enough to own up to it instead of just blathering on and trying to squirm out from under your mistake. We were, and have been, talking about NYS. The Northern Zone is a part of NYS. And my statements were not limited to only the early season either. My point was that muzzleloaders and rifles are already accepted in NYS as being a weapon that can and is already thrown in with bows. I know it and now you know it.

I just watched a program "Life Below Zero" that was showing dog-sledders up in Alaska where during a race, the dogs spent the night outside laying on straw. And that was with some real cold temperatures. Most likely it depends on the breed as to how well they fare in this kind of weather. I would imagine that the short-hair breeds don't make out so good. But I would bring the dog inside during this weather. It can't be real pleasant out there even for long-haired dogs.

Isn't it the bowseason where they specifically refer to it as a "privilege", or have they finally dropped that language.

No, that wasn't a pleasant thing to watch.

Speaking of not knowing what you are talking about, refer to http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/28605.html#deer and learn the facts. In the Northern Zone, there has always been a cohabitation of bow and muzzleloader during the last week of bow season. In the southern zone muzzleloaders and bows share a common season from December 11 to December 19. That is not speculation if you take the time to look before you speak. So as it turns out, the DEC has no problem running the two seasons together, and we do have firearms and bows sharing the same seasons.

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.