Doc

Every year the Christmas season and the other great surrounding holidays seem to be getting more and more important to me. So thank you Growie for the thoughtful offering of seasons greetings, and I want to return the same thoughts to you and all the rest of the forum members.

So I guess your comment is supposed to imply that I am some kind of racist. I guess that has become a knee-jerk reaction these days. If you can't think of something nasty to reply, just pull out the race card. It doesn't matter if it has any merit does it? Frankly, I am not a fan of any evil-spirited posts, or bullying, or piling-on, or any of the kind of crap that is going on in this thread. I haven't really figured out the real motivation for this open warfare against one of our long-standing members, but it wouldn't be any kind of loss if it were simply to stop. If you guys have some personal problem with growalot, and can't help but convey hateful things, perhaps the forum would be better served if you kindly took it off-line and used the PM feature of this site. I don't think your personal abuse of her will really be missed here. Regarding my lack of participation here lately, I was trying (unsuccessfully) to fill my buck tag.

So, how many of you people are going to go out during the late bow season? I'm going to pass ..... as usual.

Sounds like a crusade that we really don't need here

Hillside veal....... Leave it in one piece and put it on a spit to cook it over an open fire. Seriously, That little critter will most likely wind up coyote food before the winter is over. The question is could you take the abuse from fellow hunters even though it really is logical to take it rather than letting it go through the long, slow agony of starvation.

I have to laugh when those arguments start about shortening the gun season (or not). Things have gone nearly completely quiet around here for the last couple of weeks. State parking lots are nearly deserted. Very few cars parked along side of the road. And almost no shooting at all going on. The whole argument is a joke from both sides. We are arguing over is a period deer hunting time that is virtually unused. The handful of deer that are taken in the later times of deer season, are not even significant. I wish that one year, the DEC would publish exact numbers per date. I think hunters on both sides of the issue of season length would see that the whole controversy means nothing at all.

I took the sheet off the tree and brought it up from the basement the day after Thanksgiving. The lights and garlands and such were still on it from last year. All we had to do was hang the ornaments and voila..... all done. Fa-la-la-la-la....etc., etc.

I believe I heard that it passed the house vote. However, it will not supercede any local state laws. It just means that states will be honoring permits of other states as if they were issued locally.

It will be interesting to hear the results of any investigations, I hope members who are from that area will keep us updated on any further info on this story. I suppose we could theorize forever, but hopefully some real information will be offered at some point in time. If there is a legitimate reason (such as a roadkill dump), I would think it would take only a matter of a day or so to find that out.

As I understand it, the primary objection to feeding involves the concentration of deer into areas that do not have the habitat capacity to sustain such concentration. Humans often start out with good intentions, but when success gets to be more than they can afford, they leave these artificially concentrated herds to fend for themselves in areas that are not suited to those numbers. So it turns out that people often kill the deer with kindness. I have read articles about suburbanites and urban dwellers starting to feed deer through the winter only to find themselves over-run with more deer than they can afford or want to feed. A simple, well-meaning act by one individual can turn into a menace for entire neighborhoods with disastrous results on landscape plantings and traffic accidents. Food plots, on the other hand, I would assume are longer term habitat improvements that do not start and stop as abruptly as feeding. The act of food-plotting just by its very nature is a more spread out activity that occurs in areas for longer periods of time and generally is not done over wider areas than those that use feeders or piles of food. A secondary objection to feeding/baiting involves the promotion of nose to nose feeding with the food being drooled on, and urinated on, etc. in a single specific spot and consequently making it easier to exchange communicable diseases and potentially advance epidemics. Most food plots are of such a size that they do not concentrate deer feeding on the same square foot of space. I am assuming these may be the main reasons for the different attitudes of the DEC relative to the two practices.

Not really. Your same assumption would make apple orchards and farmers hay or corn fields as being prohibited feeding of deer. And of course that is not the case. However if you really want to see real contradiction in Conservation law regarding feeding, consider that we have one county that has no "feeding" law. I'm not sure how or if that conflict ever got resolved.

Another thing that we often forget is that the reasons for laws can be arguable and don't necessarily have to be proved to be correct to still be valid and enforceable. We can argue all day about whether the law makes sense or does what the DEC thinks it does, but the side of the law always falls on the side that followed procedures and made it become law. Anyone who thinks a particular law stinks, is certainly free to begin a campaign to get it changed.

No, they have only one answer. You pile deer food, you are guilty of baiting and feeding. You plant an apple tree or put in an ag crop or a smaller version of a crop (food plot) and it's legal. There is no "different answers. There definitions are clear and precise.

That is true. Deer reactions and just plain screw-ups do happen. However, it wouldn't surprise me whole lot if many of these poor results are the result of simple panic and poor choices, or even some of the screw-ups are a result of pressured panic and other forms of basic buck fever style breakdown. Yes there are many different reasons for face-shot, leg hits, or gut shot deer running around with arrows or slugs or bullets in bad places, and there are some things that simply fall under the category of bad luck. But I suspect that many of the cases of bad luck are self inflicted by bad decisions and excessive pressure to just get something.

Many hunters put so much pressure on themselves to get a deer. If the deer happens to have a decent rack, some of these people go absolutely berserk. Shot selection be damned.....Just get an shot somewhere in him.....anywhere! All the good words and training and lecturing go out the window when that level of excitement takes control of their mind. You can preach until you are blue in the face, but these people are just go nuts when a deer finally gets anywhere near them and they lose all control of themselves. And it happens regardless of what weapon is being used.

Many laws have caveats that are necessary for practicality. Let's face it, the DEC is not going to make planting fruit trees illegal simply because they happen to also attract deer. Farmers are not going to be arrested for planting crops that deer feed on. And food plots cannot be made illegal either because there essentially is no physical difference from Farmer Brown's ag crops and Joe Hunter's food plots. However, a wagon full of corn or apples, or a special contraption for dispensing bait grains is an easily identifiable set up that doesn't look like any other legal activity. If it has been established that such practices are to be deemed illegal, bait piles and feeders can be easily identified and made enforcement can be accomplished without a whole lot of hassle involving proving motives and intent. Defining "baiting" in the way that they do makes a clear distinction without trying to get into the mind and motives of those attempting to do it (which is a hard thing to prove). Actually, baiting creates two DEC violations....Baiting, and feeding. Both are illegal.

Free-roaming dogs are not at all unusual. I have heard people say that one of the benefits to moving out into the country is that it gives their dogs freedom to run. If you shoot them and the wrong people find out, you are in trouble, and likely your name will be published in the local paper as a filthy low-down dog-killer. Unless the town has a leash-law on the books and a dog warden who is willing to enforce the law, the people and domestic and wild stock in the county are at risk. To many counties have an unstated policy of being a "sanctuary county" when it comes to dogs. Aw the cute little puppy-dogs can do no wrong. The only comment I have is that if you ever think that you might have to take matters into your own hands, do not publish pictures or comments about specific dogs. It makes you a potential prime suspect when those dogs do not return home.

Actually, I didn't have a thing to say on this topic until it began to morph into that same old crap that we have been fighting and arguing about for several years. What is the fascination with recreating these same divisive topics, unless it is just some thrill of trolling for reaction and trying to keep the discord alive. And I don't care whether this kind of thing happens in the bowhunting forum or the crossbow hunting forum. This kind of baiting of the opposite side is divisive, and I don't care which side is promoting this kind of contention. A post like this one is simply intended to extend the fight and it should be noted that it was not posted by an anti-crossbow individual.

I do "get it", but I refuse to simplify the physics of wind direction to just one isolated effect. I have already said that I am a student of thermals as the country that I have hunted all of my 57 years of deer hunting is impacted at one time or another by the fact of thermals. But thermals do not act alone to determine wind direction. There are many other forces in the same environment that are working with or against these forces of cooling and warming atmospheric conditions. Part of the significance of thermals depends on the amount of area that these thermal forces are working on and the magnitude is affected by the size of the slope and height variation. The flow and the force of thermals builds as the distance and elevation change increase. This is what determines the magnitude of temperature driven wind forces and how their effect interacts and tries to overcome all of the other wind direction determinants. The lesser the change in elevation the more likely that thermals become insignificant and are diffused by other factors. So if you are going to give advice, it is important that you cover the subject adequately so as to not mislead. There is a whole lot more science involved in the study of wind direction than simply saying daytime cooling always causes wind to flow downhill and daytime heating always causes wind to flow uphill. I have been burned by that kind of over-simplification and partial analysis, and so I am very careful about giving out inadequate and possibly misleading information.

I have a longer view of hunting than most, with 57 years of unbroken deer seasons to look at, and I have seen a lot of significant changes that impact our hunting. 1.... Many of the prime deer-movers have been discontinued. The big drives, and the ever-wandering still hunters have turned into sitters that keep the deer anchored in their sanctuary cover areas. Without deer being moved, the impression is that there are none. 2.... People have become much more selective in what deer they will shoot at, and so the shooting seems to be a lot more quiet. 3.... Hunters are way less enthusiastic and energetic than they used to be. State parking lots that used to be over-flowing into the shoulders along the highway now seem to have only a half dozen cars in them. 4.... Hunters vacate the woods at lunchtime or before. 5.... After opening day, most hunters now find something else to do. if they come out at all, they seen to be 1/2 day hunters 6.... Open hunting land is at a premium now. Where years ago posted signs were an oddity that were seldom seen, now it is the odd parcel that is not lined with signs. Much of the private land is un hunted or under-hunted, and the deer simply stay where it is quiet and safe. Again, giving the impression that there are no deer. 7.... Yes, as has been mentioned, the food plot frenzy is in full swing which tends to keep deer anchored to a particular parcel of land. The list of changes goes on and on and most of the changes give the impression that the deer herd is diminishing, when what is really diminishing is the pressure that hunters are applying to keep deer moving. there appears to be as many or more deer out there if you place any credibility in the DEC numbers, but when you are sitting out there listening to the long periods of dead silence, you begin to get a much different opinion. Before the flood of replies start that claim that there area sounds like the Battle of the bulge throughout the season, I must add the disclaimer that my comments regard my area of hunting and what can easily be observed from where ever I happen to be hunting on any given day of the season. But I have to also say that I have heard and read similar comments from a whole lot of other people with similar observations.

Find an old deer skull and look at how small the brain cavity really is.

The problem is that I have seen deer in several of those choices, and the poll does not allow for multiple selections. And I hunt both private and public land and have seen deer on both.

These are the situations that turn a bad personal trait of stubbornness into a good quality that will result in a successful retrieval. Many years ago, I had a situation where I had made a terrible shot on a deer and had wounded it in the leg. I tracked that deer up over the hill, and began jumping him out of various beds but no shots. He went in a huge arc and eventually came back down the mountain and into a thicket back down in the valley where I lost the trail. That was a 2 or 2.5 mile tracking job that took all day. Even then, I didn't give up. The next morning I was down in that thicket trying to find the trail again. I did come across him and he was unwilling or unable to get up, and I shot him right in his bed. Yes stubbornness can pay off. It would have been much better if I hadn't have blown the shot, but once that decision is made to pull the trigger, a new responsibility takes over.

Actually, the advice I have in that circumstance is not to bank on thermals in that kind of super-subtle circumstance. So many people try to over-simplify thermals and fail to understand that just like any other force in physics, wind direction is the resultant of many deflections and other forces that work on the thermals. Prevailing winds can often negate thermals. Yes the thermals are still trying to do their thing but often get reversed by stronger opposing winds. Having paid close attention to thermals and other physical land shapes that direct wind around, I have learned that those who count on thermals alone without considering topography and prevailing winds will often find themselves trying to hunt in a bad wind direction. In order for thermals to have an effect, they have to result in a force that is greater than any other opposing influences. And the subtlety of the diagram provided will make that very difficult in anything other than a dead calm wind. Where I hunt, hills are in the 1000' elevation, and when thermals start working on that kind of slope and surface, the influence on wind direction becomes significant. And even in those cases, I have seen prevailing wind direction opposing the principles of thermals and shunting the wind direction in a way that could never be predicted. So to ask anybody to predict what the wind directions will be in the case of that diagram, the only advice that can be given is, "it depends!" No, I will not give Bionic half an answer, because there is no single canned answer. That all is why at nearly every stand set, I have trails covered with two stands on opposite sides of the trail, and make my choices on the spot when I actually see what is really going on in that particular location.

Yes but unlike you, I eventually caught on to the fact that this animosity between vertical bowhunters and crossbow hunters has gotten old and serves no purpose other than to cause friction. Now if that is your purpose, then I can see the reason for this post. Some of you have decided that this forum is not to discuss hunting and shooting of crossbows, or tech talk regarding crossbows, or techniques, but instead use it as a place to extend the politics of your choice of hunting equipment. That has been done already to death and now only serves the purpose of maintaining the contention and discord. I know I was smart enough to figure it out and am not afraid to pass on that discovery as per this reply. But apparently there are others who haven't quite figured it out yet or choose not to.