Doc

Ok, then challenge is not one of the motivating feature of hunting for you. I was not stating whether it should be or shouldn't be, just stating that in some cases, we seem to be moving toward a hunting culture that wants to remove challenge a motive. To me, I see hunting as a contest between me and the prey, and I do enjoy a worthy contest. If I was only interested in food, I would have been a farmer. Also, my resources have not dwindled to the point where I must forage for my food........yet. We do quite well at the super market and actually find it cheaper when all things are considered...... lol. I think that if you value your time as being worth anything, and when you look at the cost of equipment and supplies and maintenance, and transportation and special clothing, venison is one very expensive kind of meat. Regarding the question of respect, I think I have as much respect for my prey as anyone, and when looked at as a worthy adversary, perhaps even more respect than many who have an attitude of "whatever it takes to get that walking chunk of venison is ok, fairness be damned". I still maintain the perspective that hunting/fishing is recreation, and whatever handicaps that I voluntarily place on myself only helps to further the principles of "fair chase".

I don't think that I ever said that. Almost all hunts have some element of challenge in them even if it only amounts to marksmanship or simple patience and persistence and willingness to suffer the cold. What I DID say was that those that talk about challenge as being their primary reason for hunting, "walk the walk". But the realities are that almost all participants in hunting today are doing their absolute best to eliminate as much challenge as possible. That is a statement that darn few people can argue these days. The examples are everywhere throughout hunting today. I point to the establishment of bow season way back in the early days of bowhunting. Everyone who participated did so to handicap themselves severely with a weapon that was a real problem to succeed with and the deer take numbers reflected that. That was the whole reason for the creation of that season. Those people were obsessed with challenge. That really was their primary reason for hunting. That attitude is really very different today. No, no one is saying that hunting does not have some challenge built into it, but nothing today makes that challenge look like a primary motive for hunting. Everything that I see today is an attempt at removing challenge. I'm not trying to say that that is good or bad. Just saying that motives for hunting seem to be something other than looking for ways to put the odds in the deer's favor.

This year, our garden will likely have value only as a source of exercise. Yes we will get some produce (I hope), but it is the sickest looking thing we have ever put in. The constant rain drowned nearly all the seed inputs, and the plants seem to be quite stunted by the constantly soaked ground no longer having any give left for root expansion. The surface is kind of a hard-cake crusted quality. We were very late getting anything in because I couldn't get the tiller out there until way late. But we were stubborn and still put stuff in when I could even though it was getting quite late. So, what the heck, we will get what we can off of it and enjoy the fact that I have been able to lose some weight because of the effort. The weight loss will likely be the bigger benefit.....lol.

For most of history, every farm had a dump on their property. Every outhouse had all kinds of things dumped in the pit and eventually buried after they dug a new pit and moved the outhouse a little ways. Some of the property dumps had centuries of house hold trash and were huge. We had one such dump on our old farm that had remnants of old ladies leather high button shoes, and old collectable bottles and insulators along with every kind of thrown away household and farm items that could ever be produced on a 13 room house and farmstead. There was no way that the contents of this huge dump could ever be policed up and transported to the county landfill. The cost would have been too high. And so the eyesore remained there for many more decades exposed to the air and view. Far better if we had called in a dozer or an excavator and buried the whole thing. But we didn't. It was contained in an old gravel pit out of sight and way away from the home-site and out-buildings and any yards. When the farm was sold, the new owner did bulldoze gravel over the mess, and no one worried much about it. It is still up there today covered and likely will not be disturbed ever. I think it is far better to be buried many feet underground than still laying there exposed to every living thing that passes by. My feeling is that Grow basically had two choices which boiled down to leave the pollution there exposed to the above ground environment, or bury it. I can't say that I would have made any different choice.

My comment about eminent domain was in response to the previous reply about the gas transport pipelines that cross both participating and non-participating properties.

The real choice depends on what your motives and goals are in hunting. It is an individual choice that involves a bit of an inward look to determine what you personally want to get out of your hunting. Do you need more or less challenge in your hunting? For you, is there some personal attraction to the experience of using one weapon over the other? What level of dedication do you have to become expert at your weapon of choice? Some people don't give a damn what weapon they use as long as they can harvest some meat. For others, it is all about the weapon. Your choice will have to be your choice and based on your own personal approach to hunting.

In general, I would say that I agree about age vs. challenge. However, I am reminded of all those hunts where it was a little snot of a fawn that blew the whistle on me while the more adult deer simply concentrated on filling their face. And then there are the mature bucks that make absolute asses of themselves during that special time of the year when they are staggering through the woods in search of some "action". If you want to hunt the epitome of wariness and intelligence, go after that old seasoned doe who has spent her entire life not only looking out for herself, but also her annual offspring. And almost always, she doesn't have a single antler point on her head. Sometimes the challenge is simply the quantity of eyes and ears that you are facing rather than any particular gender or antler features. There is only one bona fide super challenge posed by that heavy-horned buck, and that is simply that they are more rare in numbers. That is what truly makes a older buck a trophy. There simply are not as many of them in the woods. and every body and their brother are trying to change that element of challenge. And so for many, "hunting prowess" is based not so much on the smartest, but more on the randomness of numbers. And, it has been shown time and again that such randomness is more a result of being in the right place at the right time, or another way of putting it ....... luck. But this whole idea of earning peer respect via increased challenge is brought into question by the constant movement of hunting away from challenge. Just looking at the most popular changes in hunting indicates that most people work very hard at eliminating challenge. We grow special plots to attract deer. With very, very few exceptions, we seek out weapons that give us special advantages. We would bait if it were legal. We have taken primitive rifles and re-designed them such that they are no more of a challenge than any modern day rifle. We hunt places that are known to have more deer. And on and on. There is no special quest for "challenge". Quite the opposite....we are constantly moving hunting toward removing challenge. So it all still leaves me wondering why antler size is our yardstick of success. To me the guys who bowhunt the deep woods of the Adirondacks with simple primitive equipment are the guys that really take on challenge in a very serious way, and there aren't really very many actually doing that.

Very likely that a lot of properties would fall victim to imminent domain. It's like those damned whirligigs that cover up some huge areas of the NYS landscape. The only ones that benefit are the one's who own the actual land that they are put on. Meanwhile the entire area lives with the desecration of the natural viewscape and whatever additional road damage and noise. Yes, these wonderful brain-farts do benefit a handful of landowners at the expense of everyone around them. I guess if you own the land that these schemes are implemented on, you always have the option of keeping the land to collect the royalties and live somewhere else. But your neighbors get screwed no matter what happens.

So, does fire kill it?

But the video was so great, it was almost worth a couple of batteries.

You read about so many of these TV hunter-heroes bending, breaking and smashing hunting laws in order to keep up demand for their shows every week. The pressure must be tremendous when you have to be successful every week and put on a show to make your living. I imagine that hunting takes on a whole different role. At one time or another we have all fantasized about turning our hunting activities into our source of income. But here is yet another story (of many) that shows the reality of such a career. The other shame of all of this is that it makes us wonder about others in that profession whether they deserve that kind of thought or not. I will say that it makes you wonder what kinds of rules they push around to create that weekly show. Its always a case of spectacular weekly success or you become yesterday's news.

Human behavior is a weird thing to contemplate. This thread has brought out a lot about hunter mentality, motives and expectations. It does seem like we are needing peer recognition, and that it is very important to us. We have even concocted a scoring system so that we know when we have won or when we can declare ourselves masters of the sport. hunting seems to have moved from a competition between the hunter and his prey to a contest between hunter and hunter. Maybe its always been that way. But why we have settled in on antlers as a way to measure hunter prowess, is still a mystery. Heaven forbid if you are a hunter that doesn't hunt deer. I guess those people have to invent their own little ways of measuring their worth ......lol.

One thing to remember when you are trying to build bow muscles. At some point through the draw you do have to pull the entire max draw weight. So exercising using only the let-off weight of you future bow will be short-changing the muscles for when you have a real bow in your hands. There is a repetition that your draw requires that makes the muscles require different force as you go through the force-draw curve. Muscle building requires certain loads at certain positions through the entire draw and that is what you are trying to train your muscles to accept. This "practice bow" would have been designed to be more useful if they had tried to replicate that let-off so that the drawing muscles would get used to that kind of change in force requirements throughout the draw cycle.

So, is that it??? Is Crossbow full inclusion in archery season officially dead for another year?

I am curious as to what you all think is the motive behind "trophy-ism" in deer hunting. Does it have to do with the notion that the deer with the biggest racks represent the hardest challenge in deer hunting? Is there an assumption that large racks equate to increased deer intelligence? Is there some relationship between rack size and the craftiness of the deer? Perhaps it is just the notion that you have heard that better hunters get bigger racks and that rack size is a way of measuring success or hunting prowess. Maybe that relates to needed peer approval. Why do you want to get a big-racked deer? There is no right or wrong answer, I am just curious.

Yup, you are misreading the replies. I have yet to see anyone reply that he deserved to die. I am seeing a consensus that perhaps even traveling to such a country probably is not the smartest thing in the world to do, but that has nothing to do with anyone deserving to die.

How many of those things does it take to make a meal for a family of 4? I look at those things perched on the feeder and then try to visualize them reduced to just breast meat with no feathers, and to me it looks like perhaps a couple of bites per breast. As a survival meal, it may be worth doing, but as normal table fare, I can't picture where they would be worth the price of a shotgun shell.

Well, they may not be pretty, but they do handle a line of work that needs to be done. And by the way, those wretched looking critters are really super strong. I had a deer vertebrae and rib-cage laying in my driveway, And I saw one of those buzzards actually lift the thing off the ground about 4 feet into the air before he had to drop it. Now here is the big question: If they were to be proven to be a delicacy to eat, would you cook one up and eat it, given their smelly dining habits?

My attitude is that in cases of contradictory battling of scientific studies and research it is far better to err on the side of caution when it comes to matters of permanent and irreversible environmental changes.

Thank Heavens they don't rely on my commercial contributions for any of their resources. Since I primarily hunt from home, nobody really gets any of my restaurant or hotel money as part of my hunting. And while equipment purchases may seem expensive, most of us likely get a lot of years out of these purchases. I doubt that any of that really gets a lot of attention from our legislators. In fact what really pushes their buttons is whether anything about us or from us helps them get re-elected. Sadly, I think our influence in that area is not really all that impressive.

You know, I really don't remember seeing these birds when I was a kid. I'm not sure whether I just wasn't paying attention of whether there has been a real shift in their territory.

Old barns are a visual glimpse into local history. They depict a lifestyle that is slowly disappearing. I love it when people take the time and money and effort to preserve these structures. I get the same kick out of watching old farmhouses being resurrected. It is all versions of rescued history.

The whole issue still sounds like a battle of scientist and researchers with each side having their own staff of scientific supporters. I will tell you that I don't believe there is anyone on this forum that has any credibility on the issue and all we can do is parrot back the hand-selected studies that support our own personal emotional opinions. One side champions a new study, and then the other side has to go out and find a refuting study, and we are left with no real knowledge to decide which one is right. My feeling is that the onus of proof is on the side that wants to inject poisonous chemicals into the environment. So far, none of them have convincingly proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, that such activities can in no way be a very serious and deadly problem. And to me that is the standard of proof that I would need to support yet another activity that plays irrevocable games with the future environment. Show me definitively that this is not just another scheme for environmental exploitation with no concern with potential environmental permanent damage, and perhaps I would be supportive. But I will tell you that the proof would have to be something that is nearly universally accepted, not just one think-tank's version versus another.

I know we all think that we pour so many dollars into the government for our hunting, fishing and other outdoor fees, but we also cost a lot of money as well. And when you look at the New York State budget, we really are quite insignificant and getting more insignificant every year.

There are more and more legislators considering taking advantage of their 2nd amendment rights as a measure of self-protection. That amendment is finally making some sense to these people. It is amazing what ugly things have to happen for these people to become concerned about what so many of their constituents have been concerned about for so long. All of a sudden it comes clear to them what it feels like to be completely helpless and unprotected.