Doc

Ha-ha-ha-ha.......we still have a functioning dial phone. It was a riot watching my nephew trying to figure out how to use it. It is kept mostly as novelty now, but it still works.

That is the excuse I hear all the time from those that are just plain too lazy to vote. They have conjured up this stupid self-fulfilling excuse simply to keep politics from interrupting their lives. And yes, they are the reason why NYS is in the mess that we are in. It never seems to keep them from whining about the state of the state though.

No, we are not "powerless", just apathetic. We cannot get our people to the polls. If we were ever able to unleash the majority that I am convinced that we have, this country would have a re-birth in a lot more areas than just gun issues.

But Micron does not make guns. That is what determines the effort put into attracting business. NYS has specific biases on what kinds of companies they want to attract and hold. Guns?.........Not a politically correct product and must be driven out.

The well-defined tracks at the left look very much like domestic cat. The tracks on the right look much older and of a different animal that the ones on the left. It is helpful when trying to identify animal tracks in the snow to take two pictures. One up close and then pan out a bit so that the pattern is shown. Also, if you can include something that everyone is familiar with in the photo to give a good idea of size. I don't see any indication of claws and the tracks have no oblong features to them like a fox would have (usually a bit longer that wide). So I am still going with domestic cat. The set of tracks at the lower right look a lot like squirrel and because of the small size I would guess a red squirrel. The upper right doesn't have enough definition to tell, for sure, but if I had to guess, I would say it is probably from that same cat, from an older time. I sure would have liked to have seen 8 or 10 of those track in a line to see what the pattern looked like.

Well yeah......we all learn what people we can talk politics to and which ones we can't......lol. It's just like here on the forum. Some people you can have calm political discussions with, and some go completely berserk during a political discussion. Use discretion depending on whether you value their friendship or not.

Okay, so now take the next step and put all that into an Excel spreadsheet. That is where all historical and scientific data belongs. Millions of ways to sort, find, and massage and analyze the data that you accumulate. That is the system that I use to record all the hunting data that I have accumulated over the past 40 years or so. It should work well with gun performance and reload-recipe data too. Just imagine: Bullet manufacturers, weights, styles Powder brands, weights, etc. Case manufacturers comments about case sizing and techniques Primer I.D. Any notes about pressure signs or potential malfunctions Overall bullet length Trajectory Chronograph notes Group size remarks You might even want to include cost data for bullets and components And of course that all important "Comments" column What have I forgotten? there must be something. Oh this might also be a good place to record your inventory of reloading equipment: Powder scales, tricklers, presses, etc., etc. Anytime that I have data to record, Excel is my tool for that. Keeping a good back-up procedure guarantees safe keeping of data. For best records safety, back-ups need to be stored someplace other than where the computer is located. What do you think? Good idea or pain in the neck?

I don't know how many will agree with me, but It seems to me that hunting was a lot more fun back then. Most of the strategies came from one's own reasoning instead as from a video or seminar from some supposed "expert". The hunt was all about me vs. the deer, without any concern for who I was going to beat out in some nonsensical scoring system. It used to be that the conversations at the Monday morning gatherings at work among all the hunters (and there were a bunch of us) centered on that 4-point buck that somebody flung an arrow at, or the huge tracks that someone found on the trail that they were watching. Getting a deer with the bow was a super accomplishment......Any deer, buck or doe. Now the workplace gatherings to discuss hunting activities don't even happen. Nobody wants to hear about any of it. And if you do talk about a deer that you get the first thing asked is, "What did it score?" If it happens to be a doe, everyone goes back to work without comment or the conversation switches immediately to the new tractor that somebody bought to work their food-plot, or the new lease that they managed to lock up for their own hunting. It's a whole different activity with hunters now being pressured to compete against each other. We even have rules and regulations for keeping score in our inter-hunter competitions. Altogether different attitudes now. I have to wonder how much effect these new attitudes of hunter to hunter competitions have on the declining hunter participation.

You have all winter to build a nice hickory long-bow, and then you'll have a 100% homemade traditional outfit to take a deer. What a thing that would be, to hand make your own traditional, historic hunting equipment from scratch and then take a deer with it all.

Yes, that is what kept the deer moving all day long. Unlike today where everybody just sits in a tree like an owl all day, people without the assistance of space age hunting clothing and fabrics had to start moving. And with hunters everywhere moving, the day became a constant massive deer drive that kept the deer on their feet. We may have had fewer deer back then, but they were on their feet and making themselves more available. It was exciting.

Careful..........I am looking for a list of accomplishments and activities and finding none.

My deer hunting started at age 16 in 1960, so I experienced the same things talked about above. Posted signs were something that the small family farms never wasted time putting up. The farmers back then were happy to see hunters thinning the crop-scavenging deer. Trespass was an unheard-of word. Begging for permission to hunt land was also unheard of. You could still hunt as far as your legs would carry you without ever seeing a sign. Opening day of deer season was a forgiven absence from school and pretty much expected. Hunter safety classes were held in the school bus garage on school property.....With actual guns .... Imagine that! There were no how-to-do-it videos, and only magazine articles if you happened to be a kid with enough cash to subscribe to them. How on earth did we ever get a deer? Tree-stands?.... Only 2 x 4's nailed into trees but more likely just some dead logs and brush dragged up into a ground blind. Fred Bear wrote about those in the archery magazines. Camouflage??? That was for use in wars, not deer hunting. Some old red and black checkered coat was what identified you as a hunter and not a deer. Bow hunting was done in blue jeans and whatever shirt or coat you had available. State parking lots were filled to overflowing. Cars and trucks lined the roads. Farmer's driveways were filled with cars. Antler scoring ..... I guess the systems might have been around back then, but I never heard of such nonsense until more recent years. Food plots to condition the deer to come to your gun or bow. Who the heck ever did that? Hunting was a whole lot different than today with all our new-fangled things that you HAVE to do and own to get a deer. And yet somehow we did actually get some deer. Yeah, there were a lot of times when we didn't. But hunting was more about the pursuing than the harvest. The kill was the bonus that came on top of the hunt. And you know what, with all these primitive deer-getting rules and gotta-haves, hunting was a lot more fun and there was no worrying about recruiting the next generation of hunters. That simply was the nature of humans back then, not something that you had to bribe kids with by creating special seasons. We all waited in anticipation for the proper age when we were allowed to hunt. Very different world back then. Oh, and by the way, something else we didn't have back then was locks on our doors.

Next election, do a little personal poll by asking acquaintances if they voted or not. Be prepared for some of the most creative excuses that you have ever heard. That will give you a little idea of why we are where we are.

This all validates my assertion that it is not the politicians NYS that are the problem. It is the voters who refuse to take the insignificant amount of time required to keep those gun-grabbing politicians from getting into office. We have the power in our own hands if only we take the time to use it. But it is so much easier to sit back and blame the NYS libs while we do nothing to offset their votes. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Do you have any water-trapping opportunities? Muskrats, mink, beaver, etc.

Yes you would think that that is the wrong way for them to use the thermals. But they like to bed up on the side hill towards the top so they can look down on upcoming danger and have the thermals delivering scent from danger below. I suppose they have patterned the "people movement" and have gotten used to hunters coming from the road below. In the morning. That's just a guess. But the pattern is consistent. At night they come down for the better browse in what used to be the small farm fields of decades ago.

No body has any good recipes for pickled deer tongue? Are there other ways to prepare deer tongue? It seems to me that when I had cow tongue, years and years ago, it was not pickled.

Is that even possible?

This stuff is getting completely out-of-control. Imagine what it will be like a decade from now.

The general deer activity does move from hill-top down the hill to the scrub-brush in the valley bottom in the evening and then back up the hill in the morning........generally. So I wind up hunting all of the areas. Then when rut comes on, all bets are off. Down in the valley bottom, the deer stay confined mostly to trails through the vines and multi-flora rose patches and tag alders. Many of those areas there is no chance of getting an arrow through without carefully cutting some shooting lanes. The hilltop is a whole different kind of a hunt. Trails are scarce and not always used. A lot of it is wide open and the deer tend to wander randomly through the areas feeding on acorns and such. That's ok when it is gun season because now with rifles, you can reach out and connect on the wanderers. But with a bow I have to look for pinch points around the big ravine and other features that steer the movements. I've been hunting camping and wandering around this whole area (uphill and down) since I was a kid, so I know it all like the back of my hand and know the deer pretty well.

I guess I was lucky. This was an add-block of about 1-1/2" all the way across the bottom of the screen that had a collapse arrow. But it would come back again every time I switched pages. However, that was the only true pop-up advertising that I had to contend with. Maybe different operating systems or internet interface programs react differently with certain advertisements. I don't know, but it is gone now, so I don't have any pop-up ads at all. Yeah, there are the usual ads along the right-hand side of the page, but they don't bother anything. I'm happy with everything now.

Good to hear from some of the early subscribers again. I'm looking forward to more conversations with you here in the future. We need the participation.

Was it only my computer where the pop-up ads used to slide up from the bottom all the time whenever I changed pages? Oh now that is spooky.

Ah.....Letchworth. Probably one of the most scenic places on earth. And we know they have some nice deer there......lol.

Hey where did that pain-in-the-butt pop-up ad thing at the bottom of the page go? Somebody took it out. Is somebody doing some basic maintenance here?