beachpeaz

I won't hunt because of that temptation. I'm going to shoot 1 buck and 1 buck only. I do every year. Why does the DEC care if it is on 10/9 or 11/15? Venting of course and not trying to turn this thread ugly. Enough of that going around. I will just watch from my window until 10/15 and then head out like a good boy.

I've never seen a rats patoot. Don't even know what that is. Good to know though.

Except that is not who is buying it. People with deer farms or livestock, don't go to Cabela's to buy a single bag at retail price! And they sure as heck don't buy the "commercial" brand that is advertised all over the TV with a picture of a giant buck on the bag. That's laughable if you think that is who they are selling it to.

Just curious. Why do you think our hunting stores (AKA: Cabela's, Gander Mountain, etc.) sell "bait" when it is illegal in NYS? I can stand in my local store and watch idiots walk out with bag after bag of deer food. Shouldn't our local stores be partly responsible?

It's rare in today's world to receive exceptional customer service, so when I do, I like to spread the word. A friend of mine recommened this product called Stealth Strips: http://www.stealthoutdoors.com/product-category/stealth-strips/ I ordered them and: 1) This is a fantastic prouduct that anyone with any kind of portable stand should be using (eliminates noise). Remarkably, it is relatively inexpensive as well! 2) The level of service I received from Louis was above and beyond my expectation. As a small business owner, I take personal pride in promoting someone elses small business when they do things the right way. Check it out! You won't be dissapointed.

I think you need to re-read what I actually wrote. I didn't say that nature makes population ideal for humans, I said it makes its own balance. And by balance, I am referring to what NATURE considers balanced. If food is scarce and predators are high, population will be low. That is natures balance. When food rebounds so would population. There is a very obvious correlation amongst these environmental factors. This may be a very tough concept for people to conceptualize, but I would argue as far to say that EVEN IF you eliminated hunting in NYS altogether, the deer population would remain the same. The DEC does NOT in any form have an impact on our deer heards. If hunters didn't kill the deer, the lack of food, predators, cars, etc would. Nature would balance them out. True statement. Darwinism at its finest.

Thats a very rational thought. With all the thinking I do regarding hunting pretty much year round, I never thought of the common sense approach that the DEC wants coyotes wiping out deer and turkey! it would make sense. I would love to be a fly on the wall during their conversations regarding yote hunting. They are getting out of control by me. On my most recent camera pull, I have more yote pictures than deer. Few people hunt them, and even if you do, they are like rabbits in that they have very high offspring rates and very high survival rates. Yotes will always outbreed a deer. It makes no sense (other than what you said) as to why there is any season or bag limits on those stupid things. I know in Utah where my Brother-in-law lives, for every Yote you shoot, you just clip their ear off and their DNR give you $50. They WANT you to kill them and keep them under control. Its only a matter of time here in NY that another failed intervention by our DEC will backfire!

Agreed, there are more deer in the suburban areas. Why? Because there is no nature! it is essentially a sanctuary for "cute, cuddly" creatures. I'm not saying that we need to release a pack of wolves in Buffalo, NY, lol. I'm simply saying that absent of humans, nature does in fact balance itself. Not just by predation, but by food as well. When food is abundant, populations rise. When food is absent, populations crash. Disease creates population changes. There are a lot of environmental factors that go into that. Remove humans and it is survival of the fitest as Darwin would say. Add humans, and everything gets fouled up. We try and do natures job for it. Where I live, part of the "doe only" reg, the balance is just fine. I am in a rural area. The coyotes are taking out more and more fawns every year. There are even a few bears moving into town. The DEC reactive medling in buck to doe ratios, a natural occuring cycle in nature, won't ever change anything. In 2 years, the DEC will have another reaction to lack of Doe's and make it buck only, watch and see. You must remember a short time ago when it was virtually impossible to get a Doe permit right? You had to be there the first 5 minutes they went on sale to get one?? Everything operates in cycles. Populations naturally rise and fall. Our DEC, has no impact on that. This puts me right back to my original statement (and, yes, i agree with you there as well that the gov't will always get its money somehow), that without hunters (and outdoor sports), the billons of dollars in funding would be irreplacable. The DEC's only job is to collect revenue and make it "appear" as if they are effecting nature, when in reality, they are not.

G-Man, let me ask a really obvious question. Not just to you, but to ALL the people talking about these changes.... They say that the changes were for population control, correct? They want to kill off a certain percentage of Does in some areas, correct? Why early bow season then?? They could make opening day of gun season Doe only and kill more Doe in 1 day then bow hunters could kill in an entire season. Bow hunters are such a tiny, tiny portion of deer kills, it makes no sense. I just won't hunt the first 2 weeks. The 15 or so people in my bow hunting circle said the same thing. This regulation will not change the amount of deer that are killed, it will just alter when they are killed. Next year the DEC will come up with another set of reactive hairbrain ideas that won't work. We are all just cogs in their revenue machine.

Thats not exactly a true statement. I agree that hunting is a form of population control, but that is secondary. Nature has its own population control. Without hunters (we have only been around for a couple hundred years), nature would balance its own populations as it did hundreds of years ago. What everyone is forgetting, and the MAIN reason for hunting / fishing season's and license sales is the revenue they receive off of it. This is #1. There is no close second. If it weren't for us outdoorsman, wildlife programs, including endagered species protection, parks, preserves, forestry, species studies, etc, etc,etc, etc, etc. would not exist. God knows that our bankrupt state can't fund the DEC. They can't even fund our welfare system for humans, let alone animals.

It's crappy that he lost his character though with those kickers off his brows missing.

You're going to get a bunch of different answers here I think, but the truth is that some deer are grow'rs and some are show'rs. Some deer pack on a lot of inches right up front and do very little growing the second half of summer. Some deer grow consistently all summer. I am not sure if that is more to do with genetics or food source or both. So, the non-answer to your question is, unless you have history with that buck to see what he did last year, there is no way to tell if he will grow any more than what he has.

Right, that is why I said the screw in tree mount version. Exactly so I can hang my cameras a good 6-8' up and tilt them down! Don't care about the tri-pod. I would just hammer a branch into the ground and strap it on if I was going to do that.

Interesting

Run and hide.

Plus those gaurdrails are typically no more than 3' tall. He appears smaller than that. I would agree with the consensus view here of 200-250 ish.

Watching a hunting video yesterday and saw this product. Looks so much easier for hanging trail cameras then traditionally strapping them on. I like how they rotate and tilt as well (and have brackets for multiple cameras). Specifically looking at the tree mount version verse the tripod. Anyone here use this product and have any feedback? www.sticnpic.com

Definitely not a genetic thing. I doesn't neccesarily have to be an injury (although a likely candidate). It could just be he has a jacked up pedicle (from birth, from injury, from a bug, from a disease, from an infection, etc.).

I would still respectfully disagree. You learn to be affraid of heights. Put a baby on a roof and does it cry? it doesn't know the difference. At some point as you age, you are introduced to the "fear" of things and they stick with you. Maybe it is your parents yelling at you climbing the playground slide to be careful and not fall or you will die, maybe you did fall and got hurt, there are a lot of environmental factors that could go into a fear (even subconsciencly). Again, not arguing, just my opinion.

I think there is a common misconception about the difference between poachers, and those who poach. What I refernce is that an actual poacher, someone who is a criminal and sets out to commit a predetermined criminal activity, doesn't give a #$% about a hunting license. He / She probably doesn't have one to begin with due to being arrested in the past. They are poachers. The law should come down hard on them. As I mentioned in my original post, Utah it is a felony and the penelties get even stiffer as the size of the animal increases. You shoot a trophy and you are talking years in jail and tens of thousands of dollars. Its no joke. On the contrary (not justifying this, simply comparing), the DEC will consider it an act of poaching if you are an honest citizen, with a valid hunting license, hunting the correct species in season, and pull the trigger 10 minutes before "legal shooting light." Is that person a felon? A criminal? Lose his guns, hunting license, etc? There are honest mistakes that should get a slap on the wrist / warnings and there are POACHERS who should go to jail!

I have! Yes sir! My refernce was to the 5 bills that the public wasn't even aware of that didn't get passed! Hard to voice any concern when you don't know until it is too late. I see NO reason why someone could vote against a bill to increase penelties for illegal activities, can you? I mean, what would the rationale be behind that? Illegal is illegal, but just like my original comment, when we don't even care about PEOPLE being here illegally, its hard to imagine they will care too much about wildlife.

So, you wouldn't think that since you were a little kid, that if someone in your family introduced you to a snake for example (slowly), and let you see it, possibly touch it or hold it, that over time, your fear would be unfounded and diminish? I'm not a Dr. (although, i did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once) so I am not willing to stand firm on my assumption and argue either. it just seems logical to me that fear is a learned reaction. It is the same for all instances of fear. Those afrraid of guns are probably affraid because they were never educated about them and a parent told them to be affraid (or reacted affraid). Those affraid of snakes, probably saw their parents scream, jump, run, etc. Kids learn a lot from body language of parents, more than you realize (my wife is actually a published author and part of her subject matter address parental body language). I don't know...again, seems more likely to me than a magic gene you are born with that predetermines you have a fear of snakes without even knowing what one is.

Back to my original rant though, and not to get into a moral conversation about consuming alcohol, I was just frustrated at that situation: The littering and the APPARENT possibility of drinking WHILE hunting. I have ZERO tolerance for those 2 things. The rest you could ask 50 people and get 50 different opinions. Thats not my place to judge.

I like to have cocktails, but refrain all together while at hunting camp. I am in bed by 8:30 or 9 and up at the crack of dawn, I don't need to consume alchol in that environment. There are guys at camp who (like mentioned) will have a drink or 2 after the day is complete, which I'm fine with. In general, I don't like hanging around people who drink too much. I'm not 18...er....21 any more....

If I found them on my property, from an illegal hunter / stand, there would be fury on that person. Not just from the drinking, but I would never allow someone to illegally put it up on my property to begin with. My shed hunting is mostly on either public land (not neccessarily state land, which is irrelevant because littering is littering) or on private property not owned by me (to which I have shed hunting access to). For all I know, the owner of the property is the slob who made the mess, but that is not my business since I don't hunt that property, just look for sheds with their permission. If I hunted the property and was out with the owner, and he was drinking and hunting, I would find somewhere else to go. I dont' need to be around people like that. I would not EVER be out in a hunting environment around people who consume alcohol durng the act of, or before the act of hunting. At the end of the day, with moderation (a beer with dinner) ok, but that wasn't what my rant was about. It was about finding them in the woods and most commonly by tree stands, which would infer (and yes, I am making an educated guess), that they were consumed during the act of hunting. I don't see someone being done hunting and deciding to shimmy up a tree after dark just to drink beer and chuck cans.