A Sportsman

Ill be the first to say it...2 big bucks. One with bow and one with gun. But yeah, safety, great time with friends and family, quality meat and all the things that go along with the sport, great memories.

I think by "lesser" she is talking about stands that she may be less likely to see as many deer from, yet also do not burn as much woods up in terms of access in and out and the resulting scent dispersal.

I wish I enjoyed shooting my bow more than I do. Sure I shoot pretty religiosly from aug 1st right on through december. But I don't get much enjoyment from it. I do it strictly out of the need to be a decent hunter. The whole reason I learned to shoot a bow was for hunting. Not vice versa.

When rifle hunting in the mountains my "worry" about wind nearly as much. It changes, plus I'm usually walking, and often my walking is being done in concert with 1 or more of the guys I'm hunting with.

Jafo, I would determine what "quick" is based upon the air temp. If its not getting over 40 degrees, ii don't think you have to skin it all that quick. Few days hanging won't hurt it. Don't hang it in sun tho. If its warm, you do it as soon as you can. Not 5 mins if you plan on dragging it out. Do it That night. In terms of cooking it, I found the meat most enjoyable slow cooked in a crock pot as a roast. The stew and chili was good too. Didn't care very much for the chops but that could have been from a lousy recipe or just me the way I cooked it.

The wind is always the first thing I consider for stand hunting. But selecting the exact tree to hunt is often a struggle for me. Its easy when I can dump my scent onto a road, or into a fenced sump or water body. But a lot of times the deer sign says to put stand deeper into the woods. You don't want scent going into thicket, you don't want scent going in the direction where deer are coming from. You don't want it running along a thicket. But the scent has to be deposited somewhere... In a sense, this scent game is what bow hunting boils down to. And it is not easy.

When I first started bowhunting, my bow was wildly out of tune. I just figured you buy a bow and and accessories, the guy at shop sets it up and you are done. Tuning? What was that? Well, the guy who set mine up may as well have been stevie wonder. I had no business being in the woods with that thing. Luckily I never wounded a deer with it. Never killed one either. The importance of Shooting an arrow straight with a tuned bow cannot be overstated. I can't help But think joes bow is way out of tune. 3 yards? 10 yards? Joe, save yourself the trouble, and get to a good shop and have them spend some time with you. To echo someones point above, you seem to have the drive to become a good hunter. That's important because that's something that you are born with and can not be manufactured. For now, Just get that bow and your shooting right. The hunting end of things will take care of itself.

Just because season opens in 19 days doesn't mean you need to be ready by then. Long iisland season is 3 Months long. You could always use all of october to practice a lot, then try to get in the woods in november. Heck for many yrs our opening day was nov 1. Good luck.

Geno, you are ABSOLUTELY right about that. I too have fallen victim a few times, both gun and bow. The moment you think you start thinking about the deer being dead, before even shooting, its the kiss of death. One of the things I started telling myself whenever I have an ecounter with a deer that I intend to shoot is "that deer isn;t even close to dead yet". I try to repeat the phrase to myself as everything is unfolding. Instead of my brain thinking about the mount, it helps me actively look for that "odd branch", or try to have an answer for the various ways the situation can play out, when to draw, etc. Buck fever is a funny thing with me. Sometimes it can really get me, with the shaking, other times I'm pretty collected. When it comes to the actual shot, I've don;t think I ever fouled it up directly due to buck fever. A myriad of other reasons, yes.

I'm just getting over a case of target panic. Spent a month just drawing the bow, but not releasing. Sorta reworrking my routine. I understand the need to keep that routine at the forfront of your brain as you shoot. Even now as I've started actually shooting I can feel my panic creep In when I am not focusing. The things I think about is drawing over target,anchoring, coming down onto bullseye, and pausing just a second or two on the bull before releasing. When the panic gets the better of me I tend to release as the pin is coming across bull instead of holding on it.

I've used cabelas dry plus rain gear foir about 10 years now. Eventually I find water gets in. But depending upon how hard its raining, I Can get about a half day out of it before I am soaked. After that I suck it up til I can't stand it any more. If we are talking about bow, I generally won't hunt if its raining torrentially.

At a minimum,I like to start the season with stand options for every wind. Usually at least 2 options for each wind as I often hunt with a buddy. For the upcoming season, we are at that point now, and Will not have to go back to these set ups. We will continue to scout in september (but light scouting, more or less walking trails) and possibly throw a stand or 3 up in real hot areas. As far as human stink, I tend to agree with lawdwaz, with the caveat that it sorta depends upon the location of the stand. Stands that are right in or immediately adjacewnt to bedding areas I try to be very careful with. For an early season afternoon stand a good distance away from bedding, not as important. We don't use trail cams, so that's out of the equation.

For me, I tend to think its typically peak rut when gun opens. As in, the breeding is actually occurring. Some years, especially those first few days of the season can be nice with some chasing going on. Other years, the deer can be sort of locked up with their does. Last year was like that, by me anyway. Deer just werent moving. The bucks were hanging out with the does in very small areas, more or less all day long. The weather also ties into this. Not only in terms of their movement, but your ability to hunt them. If they are locked up with a doe all day long, your only hope is to go after them. Can't sit. Problem is, if the weather is such that still hunting is out of the question (no wind, crunchy leaves, etc.), you are in a tough spot. In these cases, we find its best to try to hunt as a team and push deer out of these areas. What can be a frustrating is that it may take a few days of hunting to sorta get a bead on what the deer are doing. My hunting group does not hunt bow where we rifle hunt, and really do all our scouting, on the fly, as we start the first few days of rifle.

I agree Shawnhu. You hear about some guys shooting 5 or 6 bucks with the bonus tag program, but I wonder how many guys actually do this. When u account for the does too, that is a lot of processing work. For me personally, I liked taking 1 doe so I could get 1 bonus buck tag. And that was it. Most yrs, my bonus buck tag never even gets used. I know we have a lot of big bucks on the island, but for me anyway shooting a big one is still real challenging.

ERussel, I;ve experienced the same thing a few times. In fact, once early in the bow season I had a group of 4 bucks walk under my stand while I was up there trimming branches. Even still, I always worry about making noise climbing the tree...I like your idea about grunting. Though with my luck, I'll have a monster charge in only to find me half way up the tree with my bow on the ground. A few times I put out some doe estrus in the morning in the dark, just before climbing my tree. Only to have a buck come running in as i was climbing up.

Hear ya pygmy. Crazy how "stuff" happens in the wooods.

Nice shot sam. Over the yrs I'm pretty sure I wrote off some shots at deer in that same type of scenario. Maybe there is some Sense in opening my mind just a little bit.

If the window is in fact 2" wide, that means if you hit 1" on either side of where you are aiming, your starting to Get into trouble. At close yardage and from the ground, I can understand someone rationalizing the shot. But I would hate to have to explain myself if the deer gets away.

That's exactly it Danny. I always like to save my reg tag for rifle upstate. Getting that bonus buck tag was a way to justify shooting a buck with bow that was decent but not "what I'm after". Just have to be more selective now. Again, not a huge deal.

For me, Not the end of the world if i can't earn a bonus buck. but it changes my decision process in terms of what I decide to Shoot. Have to be more selective. Also, I'm not sure ill bother with getting doe tags. Between bow, muzzle and rifle plenty of meat, and 2 bucks.

The states priorities that is. Not our personal ptiorities.

Thank you Doc for phrasing what I was about to say. I couldn't have said it better. At least not without misccharaterizing in the process. Just to add, from what I saww, the state budget is around 133 billion. So yeah in a way 10s of millions is somewhat trivial. Its really about priorities, not simply giving goverenment more money to mismanage.

I had no idea that money generated from lifetime licenses somehow went into a separate pot than the money from regular licenses. And I'm willing to bet that many others didn't either. So thank you for enlightening us, honestly. That said, the way you went about saying it came off condesending, not educational. I don't even have a lifetime license and I read it that way. As far as people getting sick of me "mischaracterizing" things, this is the first I'm hearing of it. My skin is pretty thick. if anyone has an issue with something I say, feel free to tell me.

Am I reading you right mike? Are you knocking guys who bought the lifetime license? Because they wind up not giving as much money to the state as those who do not buy it? There are a lot of things to be grumpy about these days (Gun control, poor hunter recruitment, taxes, stupid govt spending, etc.), but lifetime license buyers? Really?

Hey folks, I finally had a chance to test out the modifications I made to my viper elite climber. To refresh your memory, I placed pipe iinsulating foam inside the platform tubes and zip tied more of the foam to sections of the outside of the stand. I only did this on the bottom portion of climber because that is where noise was coming from. It seems to have worked quite well. I couldn't duplicate the noise. Before I claim victory I still want to put in an honest hunt with it, in quiet woods and see how it goes. Nesting the two pieces together now takes a little coaxing, but its no big deal. Well worth the fix. I think as season goes on, I will need to keep an eye on the foam for wear and tear and to make sure it stays in position.