Doc

The best meat that I have ever had was domestic rabbit. We raised a bunch of them, and they were delicious. I have had wild rabbit also, but there is no comparison. Wife breaded and deep fried the tame ones just like colonel Sanders would do it, And to this day I still remember that flavor.

Have you checked the ridge line along the ravine for trails and sign? It looks like a great route for deer to travel to get from one ag field to the other. That white spot (Fo) does look like a great place to get that whole field covered with rifle. For observation purposes if nothing else, to see just where the deer come out into the field. Is that whole field covered with goldenrod? There is some strange looking pattern in the field that looks like some of it has been mowed already.

By the way, is the new stand for this year or next? Also, what kind of sign (and where) have you seen throughout the area Trails, rubs, scrapes, and actual sighting (where and what time of day).

What kinds of crops are in the north and south fields? The trees to the west.....Are there acorn bearing oaks in there? Are any of those areas in or bordering thick dense brush? I am trying to get an idea of where the bedding areas might be and the feeding patterns. Also, are these stands for gun (rife or shotgun) or for bowhunting? That will determine how far from the deer the stand should be located. Is that creek-bed a deep ravine with steep sides? What is the normal prevailing wind directions? Is the area generally flat?

Understand that these idiots that are constantly passing bills such as this are not in their positions of power by accident. They are people that we elect either through ignorant direct voting or not bothering to vote at all. This state didn't get to be the National joke that it is without the willing help of the states voters.

Possible answers to the above question: Those in charge of such things are eager to find alternatives to hunting....Any alternatives. The inclusion and proliferation of coyotes, or any predator provides assistance in that goal of not relying on hunting so much for animal population control. It helps anti-hunter forces. You have to wonder if even the DEC isn't starting to be concerned over the inability of hunters to control deer populations as our numbers and our intensity fades year after year. So those things that would cut coyote numbers may be seen as counter-productive to future population control of the growing deer population problem. Just some random thoughts and possibilities regarding Grouse's question of why coyotes seem to enjoy a special protected status among all wildlife.

There is more than one reason to build your own ammo.

OK. Today I went to a gun shop and asked this question. He said that no permit is required as long as you don't have the components to make it go BANG! The black powder pistol is not considered to actually be a firearm until all the components are together to make it fire (as in hunting or target shooting). The guns that I am talking about are commemorative pistols that are in a locked in a fancy wood box with a glass window in the cover for viewing, and have never been fired, and likely will never be fired. So there should be no permitting requirements. While trying to find out about this, I went through a lot of NYS gun laws. I now understand what you pistol owners are complaining about. They have pistol ownership tied up in knots that make it likely that anyone who owns a pistol is likely breaking one law or another.

Is there any requirement for a pistol permit for black powder commemorative pistols?

We should be so lucky to get a Trump clone for governor. But, that will never happen here in NYS. No one who would upset the status quo apple-cart in this state will ever be elected. The pinko crowd is too eager to elect whoever promises them the most freebies. The whole culture of this state has been manipulated to favor the "give-away establishment". We all let it happen, and it will take a miracle to vote in someone who is not promising the freeloaders a continuation of the government handouts on backs of the employed. Yes, that is a defeatist attitude, but it is the reality of what is driving people and businesses out of the state. We need a Trump-style governor to straighten up the direction of this state.

Rough year this year. We logged the place in the spring, and they took every Oak that was harvest size, and unfortunately those were all the ones that were acorn bearing size. This year the deer didn't appreciate that change too much. I guess next year I will be hunting state land a bit more. I am hoping that the deer will start using my land a bit more as the browse starts to fill in to the open areas that the logging created. I think it will make some pretty good bedding areas around the tops too. We'll see. So, it wasn't a great year for me.

I got hearing aid a couple of months ago......Big money for the two of them. Not the kind of thing that you would want to lose out in the woods. So My son and his wife were up visiting, and I was giving him a hand unloading his stuff. He walked up with his hand out and asked me, "Is this yours? it was one of the damned things that dropped out of my ear, and I hadn't even felt it go. That's how easy it is to lose them. I went back and the gal tweak the fit a bit and they seem to stay in alright now. But it sure did spook me from wearing them out in the woods. So I paid a lot of attention to Farflung's response about tethering them to my collar. Good idea! I think I will work on some nifty way to do that.

Hochul is a blithering idiot, but her stupidity is dwarfed by the majority of New Yorkers who voted for her. We had a chance to bring sanity back to this state, but apparently there just are not enough people who think we need it. It's not the idiot liberal politicians. It is the voters that can blame themselves.

This may serve as a warning to those using any kind of heater in elevated box blind or even the tent-style ground blinds. Make sure you are between the heater and the door so you have clear access to the escape in case something like this goes wrong. I suspect that the canvas ground blinds would go up in a flash.

When the media reports on a story like this, they just can't wait to bury it and move on to the next story without finishing the first. The same brief report is repeated over and over across the internet......Word for word. And they all end up with "an investigation is ongoing". I guess we will never know the actual details of exactly when and how the man came to be shot. Was it self-inflicted, is anyone being charged.....All kinds of unanswered questions that will never be made public.

That is absolutely true, and it doesn't take much pressure to put them deep into that "phantom" survival mode. And when that happens, you have to literally boot them in the butt to get them up and moving in daylight hours.....rut or no rut. They simply become nocturnal. Today with the pressure being so light and the hunters all staying stationery in their stands while they are hunting, it gets harder and harder to see deer that have been put in deep cover with nocturnal instincts. Where deer intelligence leaves off, natural inborn instinct takes over.

I have been around hunting for more years than I care to admit to. I have seen changes that most of today's hunters have never seen. Yes the deer do tend to run bigger and for those with the right kinds of hunting opportunities can have some pretty good consistent success. New high-tech clothing can allow hunters to flop down and basically camp out in stands all day with the deer bedded up a few hundred yards away. We even have little portable huts to keep the snow or rain and wind off of us so there is no reason to get up and walk like we used to do after the first couple of hours would drive us from our stands. That is what used to get the deer moving. It used to be that hunting land was just about everywhere. And the perceived deer numbers were high enough to keep everyone coming out year after year. Today there is hunting land shrinkage. Posted signs everywhere. Good hunting areas being shut off. It is not a situation that would fill new young hunters with a whole lot of confidence. Too many days sitting in frigid stands without seeing any deer all day long. It is not the kind of experience that makes a lot of new hunters eager to suffer through without even a flicker of a tail. And then we have the constant staged TV shows that have made all hunters feel entitled to a big buck. Yeah, bucks-by-the-numbers have set expectations a lot higher than reality. Hunters don't want to hear about doe harvests. They aren't even satisfied with a buck if the numbers don't match up with the TV programs. That is whacking hell out of our numbers also. Now the idea that you have to be perched up in a treestand has taken hold with everyone convinced that there is no other way. That has also encouraged the few people that are left to stay put. They are stationery, and the hunters are stationary. And that's the way the day goes. Not really all that exciting. The last thing that I have seen is what I call the "half-day" hunters. Opening day they come out and somewhere around noon they bail out of the woods never to return for the rest of the season. Yeah, they keep the license sales looking decent, but the actual participation ......not so much. Yeah, hunting is not what it used to be. I suspect it never will be and I guess there are some that are just as happy that it is not. It has become something that I can't even recognize anymore. But it is becoming a very silent woods and getting more and more boring every year. Maybe the woods will get quiet enough so that gun hunting will have all the benefits of bowhunting without the deer being sent into their nocturnal movements in a survival mode with that opening day burst of gunfire.....Ha-ha-ha-ha. Then we won't need any numbers of hunters to get the deer back up and diurnal again.

Yeah, another year and another round of griping from me on the fact that there is no one out there moving any deer. Yeah we had some shooting for the first couple hours opening day and then everything went silent. Just enough shooting in the morning to put the deer in survival mode, and then a few scattered shots through the early part of the day, and then silence. I checked the state parking lot just a ways down the road on the second day of the season, and it was empty. Thanksgiving Day....... Absolutely silent. This is getting depressing. Every year it gets worse and worse. Anybody else noticing this?

Well, I have no idea the actual time of events, or even what really happened, but I would imagine that there was some amount of time between when the shooter pulled the trigger and the time when any phone calls were placed. And then there is some time delay from when the call was placed to the sheriff's office and when the fire whistles went off. How much time that was is still not reported in the news and probably never will be. The old hunting hours on the 18th was at 7:03, so I suspect that if fire whistle went off at 7:00, the shot was likely taken during that 1/2 hour before sunrise. Like I say, it is all a lot of guesswork on my part, but everyone is talking about when emergency activities took place, not when the trigger was pulled which is what I am curious about. Of course that may never become public knowledge, but I'm just saying that it would be interesting to know.

Still no new details on the shooting. I am curious about the actual time that the shooting occurred to see how it may have related to the new hunting hours. One account said, "The Wayne County Sheriff's Office said it responded at about 7 a.m. to a report that a hunter had been shot in Savannah, just west of Cayuga County." So, depending on how many minutes it took to get to the body, and then report the incident to the police, and then the time it took the police to respond, the actual time of the shooting could have been earlier that the old legal hunting time. It will be interesting to see if that was a contributing factor. But I'm not sure that there will ever be more details reported in the news.

We went out to dinner last night and I was coming home about five o'clock. There was a drizzle all the way home and I can say for certain that the only deer I could see were in my headlights. With that drizzle, the daylight was completely gone and even the blaze orange would not have shown up. There are lot of things that can affect visibility, so there is no one situation that fits all when it comes to adequate identification. Yes, people have been cheating on the old legal hours. And some times that cheating ends tragically. Like I commented above, the dark conditions of a heavy overstory like hemlocks can make a difference and now I have seen what a drippy, drizzly day can do to available light. Throw some fog into the situation and it just makes everything even worse. A wide open hay lot is a very forgiving situation. Snow is great for shooting outside of sunrise and sunset. But of course the law cannot take all of these variations of situations into account. So it all becomes kind of an interesting condition and makes for an interesting discussion.

I still heard some shots before the legal start. I have no idea what the heck they were shooting at because it was barely light. But that is nothing new, I remember that there were always shots in the dark before too. I have to say that where I was, it was pretty darn dark. I was hunting in a very dense hemlock woods. I might have been able to see a deer in there if it was close enough. But it would have been a bit difficult to see the crosshairs through the scope. I know that if I had been on the edge of a hay lot or something there probably wouldn't have been any problem. But where I was, it was quite questionable. And that was with only a partly cloudy sky. If it had been a drizzly situation, I would not have really been able to shoot. I don't think I would have had much of a problem seeing blaze orange though.

So what do you all think about the new hunting hours (1/2 hr before sunrise to 1/2 hour after sun set)?

We are getting into the kind of weather where most of the bulk in my backpack is clothing. My hunts always start with a long climb up a "killer hill" behind the house. The hill is a guaranteed sweat-maker. The best way to beat that problem is to dress very light, and put the heavy coats and sweaters and such on when I get to the stand. I don't last on stand very long if I am all sweated up when I get there.

We always have a choice when it comes to subjects that pertain to our gun rights and the legal and political challenges to our second amendment rights. We can discuss and educate each other on the causes of and solutions to those challenges, or we can bury our heads in the sand and remain ignorant, silent and inactive. That section, if used correctly could be a major organizational challenge to the anti-gun and anti-hunting movement. Yes there have been abuses of that section of this site, but we have the choice as to whether to engage in those abusive discussions or not. But in my mind that section is one of the most potentially important parts of this whole site. It is a shame that we are scared or reluctant to use it the way I'm sure it was intended.