Doc

Yeah, there is no shortage of cash in that family since the daughter hit it big in the country music business. But I assume the show is portraying some time in their lives when she wasn't bringing in the family income.

Never mind the size of the trap...... I am more concerned with the size of the bear that it would be used on.

Ha-ha-ha..... there sure is a lot of that going on in this thread, but that is about as blatant an example as I have ever read. I have never heard it expressed so directly and clearly. But it does kind of fit into the theme of this thread. At least it clears up what at least one member needs antlers for, and his needed connection between antlers and trophies and self-aggrandizement ......lol.

I think recycling originated with the Kilchers. They look out across their trash and see possible raw materials for their next project. Pretty resourceful people. It looks like they don't throw anything away ....... ever!

Perhaps a glimmer of hope that this thread will get back on track. Although I will say that it has had some pretty interesting side-trips.

I seldom use trophy and deer in the same sentence. To me a deer is big or little, or I might refer to them by the number of points, but trophy? To me a trophy is that wood and silver or gold-plated thing that sits up on a shelf after winning some tournament or other noteworthy competitive event. Yeah, I understand that the term has been co-opted by hunters, but I just don't really refer to prey in that way. To me that term just doesn't make any sense when used to describe deer harvests.

Oh come-on. I have never heard such drivel since the introduction of Disney's Bambi. I never can remember that term that somebody invented that describes when someone is assigning human qualities and emotions to animals, but here is a good example of it. Ok, I looked it up ...... "anthropomorphize" is what I was trying to think of. Look, take one small twitch to the left, and those words will be spoken by a full-fledged animal-rights advocate. If you want to let living things actually live, don't stop at two years, or 3, or 5, or 10. Just throw down your gun and let them live until some car or coyote or disease rubs them out ..... lol.

I grew up a farm kid in hill and valley country at a time when everyone I knew hunted (Adults or kids), and I mean literally everyone. It was a whole different era. I built a fairly impressive trap-line with my grandfather and the outdoor life became what my life was all about. Hunting was just another phase of my life. A home-made hickory long-bow and some willow arrows began my first hunting ventures up in the hayloft of our barn as I started taking some pigeons with pretty regular success, for an occasional meal.....lol. Hunting was locked in then. That first hunting season when a high school buddy and I spent several days up on top of the hill in a homemade lean-to sealed the deal and even though my old bent-barreled 20 gauge missed a nice buck, that whole camping/hunting experience started something that would last a whole lifetime and take many different directions.

I missed the part about this all being a condition of purchase. So if that was the case, then that was another choice. Basically I thought her solution was for the betterment of the environment. She had a mess and decided to clean it up by burying it. It all sounds reasonable to me. Was it barrels of toxic waste?.....Probably not. I haven't the slightest idea whether the solution was according to the letter of the law, and as a matter of fact given the same circumstances, I probably would have used the same solution and never questioned it any further.

Yeah I have had some pretty ugly venison. I was not around when the buck was butchered so I have no idea just what the cause of the rank taste was. This was one very old 10 point buck. It was back when I was a kid and the handling of venison was a bit different than what we typically do today. I know there was the traditional "aging" of the venison as the deer hung from a tree in the yard, with the hide on, through many cycles of freezing and thawing in the sun. It seems that was what everyone did back then. I politely did my best but couldn't get beyond the first bite. So sometimes nasty tasting venison may have little to do with the age of the deer.

One can also ask, "Where's the motivation to continue hunting if little to nothing of someone's arbitrary legal standards are there?" How long can most hunters watch bucks that he can't shoot walk by before he begins to start thinking of all the other things he could be doing where success appears a whole lot more likely. There is always at least two different ways to look at these things.

No, your absolutely right. The thread has evolved into something other than the original post, but that's no reason to say there is "No value in threads like this". There may be individual replies that can be citicized, but the thread was written and posted without judgment as a simple set of questions involving why people use antlers to establish trophy status. It is not the fault of the original thread if it morphs into something else. And by the way, thread evolution is not rare on forums, and even the way things have gone on this one does not mean the thread was bad. Perhaps people have need of refining their ways of expressing themselves, but I always value opinions from hunters whether I agree with them or not.

That is a good distinction to make. There is a difference between criticizing a practice, vs. criticizing participants. One gets into the realm of "personal attack". But we should never get into the mindset that because something is merely related to hunting we must bite our tongue and not express an opinion. That is not an act of supporting hunting or hunters. When we get to the point where we cannot speak our mind about various hunting practices, the benefits of discussion and improvements will be lost to us. That's something that I hope will never happen to hunters.

What a mess! I imagine there are scratches and digs in the paint on the truck.....right?

So what is the purpose of your trail cam pictures? Are they animal inventory studies, scouting activities for upcoming hunting seasons, Patterning specific deer? Or do you use them for wildlife photography in general? I have known people who used them to identify trespassers. I used one to find out what was digging up my tulip bulbs (turned out to be squirrels by the way). I also used one camera to see what was tunneling under the back wall of the barn. Part #2- Do you have any accompanying programs that analyzes the sightings on the game cameras. Things like spreadsheets and such that use data and patterns from the pictures taken.

Actually, had you read the OP, you would have noticed that the question was really quite non-judgmental and simply aimed at why antlers are the standard of establishing trophy status. Being a part of the hunting community, I find it interesting to solicit opinions on things of this sort. Just kind of casual conversation. I'm not worrying about others. I am just curious as to what other hunters think on different subjects. But we do have those who like to stifle curiosity and conversation and can't help but find fault with anything posted on a forum. Well, that's their personality, not mine. I will continue to post questions on things that I find curious and the hell with the flamers.

I understand that the big cats are extremely secretive and certainly would not be around in big numbers, but you would think that with all the interest that people and the DEC has in mountain lions here that somebody would have come up with some kind of absolute proof over the years. I am no way ready to say that all these reports are lies and imaginations or cases of mistaken identity, but I will have to see better proof than just eye witness accounts. In this day of everyone carrying cameras and cameras strapped to trees all over the place, perhaps it is just a matter of time before real proof comes to light. We'll just have to wait and see and be skeptical. One thing I really don't want is for the attitude of ridicule becoming so commonplace that people will stop reporting what they see or think they have seen.

What I am saying is that the year that a big buck starts repeating itself into any sort of defined pattern that humans can detect, is likely the same year that he gets harvested. I do wish that our deer ran on a rail, following the same trails and feeding habits over and over, but they don't.

I will be satisfied as long as I can still get up our killer-hill. Each year the pace is slower and slower, and the ATV gets to be more and more an item of necessity.......lol. So this year my goal is to get A deer. No need for ego-building and being concerned about with point counts and measurements. I am after a bit of venison to add to my diet, and the strength to bring it home. A modest set of goals indeed, but as each year passes, it takes less and less to satisfy me. I just want to participate one more year and enjoy the excitement of the chase and continue to add to a long list of great hunting memories and experiences.

In this case I use the term "big woods" to indicate that there is no agriculture in the area or anywhere near the area. In other words, the deer pattern and move in mature forest without the aid or motives of crops or pastures or fields.

2" difference in arrow lengths? Is that for two different anchors? Or is one length for field tips and the other for broadheads?

Sometimes ...... lol.

To a large extent, I agree with this, but I do recognize that any thinking person does have preferences and biases as to what feels right to them. I think it is not unusual for people to express those opinions, and on forums those expressions are kind of the point of the existence of forums. For example, I have no love for extreme canned hunts and I really don't like the fact that they are referred to as hunting. I don't even want to have that image pop into anyone's head when I say that I am a hunter. That is a most extreme example but to lesser extents there are many other opinions on various methods and techniques that I have some level of judgments on. Many of those things are legal, but I still have opinions on them. Speaking those opinions are how we conduct discussion. And that is the purpose of forums. Does all that involve "judgment"? Yes it does, and I think the activity of hunting will stay healthy as long as we all continue to apply some level of judgment to all things that are considered to be apart of hunting. Legality is one level of judgment, but does not cover the entirety of our thinking. At one point or another everything was legal. The laws were formed only after expressions of opinions and judgments.

Yes, they have purpose to their movement, but have many of those purposes and choices which can occur to them in different ways at any time and in no particular order. In big woods, those choices become even more numerous by necessity. Actually game cameras can illustrate this nicely as a rather nice buck usually only shows up once at any particular location showing how seldom they repeat activity. Farm country may promote more consistent patterns because of crops and reduced areas of concealment, but a lot of deer activity that I have seen appears to be casual feeding as opportunities avail themselves (a leaf here, a few acorns there). In our area of more expansive unbroken forested area, there is very little that will constrict deer movement down especially if you are talking about bow-range distances.

So where are you people finding all these deer who are slaves to a daily habit. Our deer are extremely random in their movements. They do not always bed in the same areas, and their feeding habits are dependent on what favored foods are in season, and during rut the guys go wherever the does lead them and they don't own calendars or watches. There are also interruptions due to land use changes and non-hunting human invasions that can turn a deer from following a trail that they would have otherwise taken. Perhaps farm deer in heavy agricultural areas develop a more repetitive and predictable pattern of movements depending on what crops are planted where. Maybe because of the patterns of scattered woodlots, they must move in certain ways. But in our area of big woods and constantly changing food sources, the deer are pretty much marching to their own drummer every different day (big, small, young, old). If you can determine even a wide general area where they may be filtering through, you are doing pretty darn good. But where I hunt, luck does play a much bigger role than people want to admit. The only patterns that are somewhat reliable are the escape routes on the day that the orange invasion begins. As long as the hunter entry patterns stay the same, the deer reactions will stay mostly the same.