New York Hillbilly

I'm not sure what they added to it to be honest. I didn't get around to eating last night because everything going on around the house I forgot. I'll wait until tomorrow in case I fall over or something, so I don't mess up everyones Easter Sunday! : )

this was duplicate post......so I'll add a few last guesses for now. Back row from left, 7th person over (female) looks like Donna Douglas who plays "Ellie Mae Clampett". And, from the left, the second table seated at the far left of the table, it looks like Willie Nelson! Finally, Ernest Borgnine is the first person in the row of people above the room, nearest the top of the stairs.

And I think almost in the middle of the picture is Will Geer aka. "Bear Claw" from the movie Jeremiah Johnson.

Next to "Hoss" isn't that the hound from Dukes of Hazard? And, just above the hound sitting in a chair...Burt Reynolds?

Tonights snack then, with a little mustard if necessary. : )

Yup......Miller's. : )

OK you guys. While I was in Alaska I kept my venison from one season, Slim Jims, summer sausage, etc. in her freezer downstairs. These items were professionally made, vacuum packed and frozen by a processor in the Lowville, NY area, and have remained I the same freezer since put there 2 seasons ago. With the exception of a bunch of it we ate when I was back visiting, she never got around sending me the rest being so busy with her first child now 3. So, I ask you all, would you try eating the Slim Jims at this point or be too worried you might get sick? What's the oldest processed venison you have ever eaten? How old is too old?

"As expected, nurses in several nyc hospitals are now allowed to work despite being “positive”" Seriously, not to break your chops too bad there Biz, but again you are showing a lack of insight about this situation. "Allowed to work" sort of misses the point. What freaking choice is there? Medical professionals chose the field to try and help heal and save people. People they almost never know, but show the same level of caring and commitment to strangers they would if it were their own family. It is work we chose and were trained to do, each in own area of specialty and with varying degrees of risk given the type of battle and/or day of week. And, we do it despite the risk to our own safety, even if/when we are frightened, and without looking for fanfare or pats on the back. Medical/healthcare professionals (like your brother, me, my daughter ) do our job because someone has too. It would be like saying soldiers ordered to engage in battle are "allowed" to fight. Again, as if it is a matter of choice! Without proper protective equipment, medical professionals still try to take care of people, while politicians and administrators behind desks and/or from their kitchen tables at home (likely the same ones responsible for the shortages to save money to split up between them as bonuses) give their blessing to "allow" even those who test positive for the illness to continue the fight. How noble!

Except for those who have gotten sick and/or died from it, or have been on the front line taking care of patients since the start of this non blizzard. I am still seeing patients face to face in a mental health clinic not knowing if they are exposed, have it, or not, and have had no PPE since the onset. At 61 y/o and a lifetime asthmatic, told you are not allowed to switch to telemedicaine "yet", it's scary shit, but you go in everyday and do your best to help your patients while trying protect yourself and them. Maybe the blizzard isn't real for you, but for many others including me it is very real!

Here is a thought! If people are wiling to support forgivable loans to businesses, maybe they would support forgiving the student loans of the medical providers and health care workers, currently putting their lives on the line taking care of patients during this crisis without protective equipment and proper supplies. Thoughts?

This conference sounds like a guy saying his last words before he just tosses in the towel. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with bullshit! Take away is everyone down there is in panic, overwhelmed, run for the hills or other States, and I'm going home to my family to eat Sunday dinner.

His head is a rolling curve! And who goes a shit about his store bought meatballs for the love of Pete! Get freaking real!!!

Yes it does! We live(d) in Soldotna, on the Kenai Peninsula. Technically speaking we still do live there. I still have my house in Alaska. We decided to return for medical and family reasons as I said, but not sure we can cut it here again in New York. Old timers told me once you have lived in Alaska for 4 or 5 years it is almost impossible to readjust to life I the Lower 48. They are all betting I return!

Back in NY after living in Alaska for the past 5 years. If it was not for the screwed up eye surgery I had there that removed my lens when I never had a cataract in my life, and fear of not seeing my family (3 year old grandson) again if I totally lost my vision, I would still be there. I just couldn't risk it after the wrong surgery, the subsequent post surgical ruptured retina, and threat that my other eye could rupture too! I love Alaska and feel more Alaskan than I ever felt being a New Yorker. I pray in time I will go back home, to Alaska! I think everyone should get a chance to "see" it!

Nice pictures. Did you hire the surveyors to do your property or were they just passing through?

Me too! I kept looking around to make sure nobody saw me open it! hahaha

I would love a cap for my truck. Heck, it doesn't even have to be a new one. Then if I was really nice this year I would like to start to get back into rabbit hunting by buying some new wicks type briar bibs, jacket, and my first beagle in many years. I used to breed, raise, train, hunt, and even successfully trial beagles as far back as age 13 when I got my first one. It was lots of fun and great exercise.

Good luck to those still out there. Go get em!

At 60, I sure am with you on this one. After so many years and so many deers...lol..I just can't get them hung up, cut up, and wrapped alone like I used to. Plus, after being away for so long nothing is set up to properly tackle the deer processing part of the equation. Unfortunately, with the exception of one local fellow who cut a few of my deer, the several other times I payed to have it done I was terribly disappointed. When you cut as many deer as I have you know full well what you should be getting back, and when you did not. Getting one small box or a couple white plastic shopping bags filled with "your deer" just does not fly with me. Also, the idea that I might kill a deer with one shot and handle it properly then possibly if not likely gets tossed and mixed in with one shot to pieces and handled questionably burns me up. If I choose to have every part of the deer with the exception of tenderloins and backstraps turned into processed items that is my business, but it shouldn't get mixed in with some else's deer as part of the deal. If I could only find someone I trust to cut and wrap my deer it would be a blessing and they would have a long (hopefully) time customer. I would never grumble about the price I'm asked to pay because I know the work involved, but I would insist on knowing what I brought in was what I was bringing home. Nothing more and nothing less! Anyone have such a deer processor close to either Utica or near my family in Webster?

Still fighting a miserable cold that went into a lung infection, another night of coughing almost convinced me to throw in the towel for this gun season. With the sound of the wind outside, the warmth of my bed seemed much more appealing than waving about side to side tied to a tree. However, after a few moments I managed to muster enough resolve to get up, hack a few more times, hit the asthma puffer, get a drink of water, brush my teeth, and start slowly climbing into my hunting clothes that at this time of year more resemble a cocoon. The argument in my head about staying in bed or tackling another day in the cold, windy, snowy woods, was in the end won I think in large part by my refusal to accept the thought of getting too old and slowing down. Call it pride, ego, or stubbornness, I reminded myself I did not come all the way back to New York to live from Alaska to wimp out from doing something that has been such an important part of my life and something I desperately missed while I was away. Once my clothes were on, I quickly started to build a sweat as I wrangled with and swore at the cheap safety belt harness system I have been using because I couldn't find my much nicer (and safer) one buried for the past 5 years in my garage someplace. What a fiasco this pile of loose belts and buckles that seem to have no rhyme or reason and require the physical stamina and contortion skills of a Cirque du Soleil athlete/artist. Definitely not an easy task for a guy my size, age, movement restricted by a laundry basket worth of clothes, coughing and gasping for breath. God I hate this harness, but I don't dare climb up into ladder stands anymore, wind or not without one on. Did I mention 3 years ago, after some 40 years of climbing some pretty sketchy deer stands without incident, I fell off a brand new eight foot ladder while I was painting around a window frame? The end result was surgery on my arm to put in 13 screws and 2 or 3 (I can't remember) metal plates that hurts to this day. No more climbing anything without being secured. Once finally dressed and with the safety harness gripping and pinching me in all the worse possible places, I left the house without looking back. I climbed on my 4 wheeler and made my way up the hill through the snow covered fields. All of my fiddling around got me started rather late by most peoples standards here, but to be honest these days I actually prefer getting on stand just before shooting time. I hate sitting in the dark listening and hoping to hear nothing. When I entered the woods on my wheeler I had to stop and back up to grab my blaze orange hat that was ripped off my head by a rogue blackberry bush, and then onward up the hill to my stand. The snow was deep in the woods and being close to 7 am I could see the deer tracks seemed to be everywhere I looked. Many of them looked fresh, which worried me a bit that I bumped the deer out of the area on my way in to the stand. Regardless, I was now there so I parked my wheeler up a bit from my ladder stand, hidden as best as possible in some brush, and I walked the few yards through the knee deep snow to my stand. Grasping the rungs of the ladder, up I went, while trying to not to keep stepping on my insulated coverall bib pant legs that are too long for me. At the top of the ladder I reached for the tree to hug it to steady myself in the wind. When I pulled, then tossed the belt that goes around the tree to secure myself, the stupid thing pulled out of its loop in the back of me. Rather than risk falling out of the tree trying to get it back behind me I decided to improvise and tried to secure it to the tree but through a different part of the harness. As I monkeyed around with the belt trying to figure out a way to tie myself to the tree, I suddenly caught a glimpse of a coyote moving quickly through the dense saplings on the hillside above me. I'll admit that I have no love for coyotes after losing a beagle to one years ago and several other close calls with my beagles with them while rabbit hunting after that. So, I immediately stopped messing with the belt and sat down, pulled a bullet from my pocket, chambered the round and tried to put and end to this one. At the shot, he/she kicked it into high gear and was gone in a flash, clearly a miss. Gathering my thoughts for a moment, the wind gusting against my face reminded me I was still not secured to the tree, so I stood and turned around to resume once more figuring out this dilemma. It seemed like I was at it forever in the tree, and I was beginning to think I would just climb down and hunt from the ground rather than continue to huff, puff and swear under my breath. It had been about a half hour since the coyote deal and I still was not secured to the tree. Then again out of the corner of my eye I caught movement. This time coming up from the stand of hemlocks below me, just as I had hoped would happen, I see a big doe all by herself. She looked alert but not frightened and was clearly on her way up towards me. As with the coyote I was standing untied to the tree and with my rifle still unloaded. This time though, my back was to the deer and she was walking straight uphill towards me rather than off to the side like the coyote. I knew my movement had to be seamless and with some haste to pull this off successfully. With that, I turned, sat down, all the while watching her pick up some speed as she came up the hill in front of me and in a diagonal direction she would pass me at about 50 yards. I fumbled quickly in my coat pocket for a round and quickly got it chambered. The wind was in my favor but she clearly began to sense something was going on, perhaps hearing the rifle bolt close, and she picked up her speed to a trot. At her pace it was going to be iffy to keep the scope steady on her, so as she started across an open area above me I let out a loud squeak noise from my pursed lips. At the sound she stopped, I put the cross hairs where they needed to be and I fired. At the shot she whirled around and sped back down the hill towards the hemlocks she had come from. I couldn't see where she went but did see a giant cloud of snow following her movement down the hill. Rather than risk getting down and pushing her if still alive and then having to track further in the deep snow, I sat for another half hour. Interesting to note was, while I was waiting in the tree, a single crow flew over making a weird croaking sound, circling the entire time. By the time I got down, there had to be fifty of them circling above me and it was eerie, reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock movie "the birds"! It didn't seem possible the crows could have that quickly identified my dead deer if she was in fact dead. Once I got down I slogged through the knee deep snow in the direction of where she ran rather than walk up the hill to where she was standing. It was quickly obvious I hit her hard, as the blood spray on the snow looked like spray paint. When I turned my sight down the hill I could see her laying on her back, feet in the air and with her head buried in the snow. There was no tracking needed for this one because even without the blood it looked like a bobsled run where she slid and plowed all the way down the hill. When I got to her I was impressed with her size and knelt down to pull her head out of the snow, brushed her free of snow, and as I always do spend I few moments quietly reflecting and giving thanks for opportunity to take such an animal. While it was again this time a one shot one kill situation, and again thankfully she died within sight of my stand and four wheeler, the old saying about the work starting after the shot has never been more true. Pics include: my stand, my wheeler in plain view from my stand and only a few yards from where she was shot, single shot behind the elbow that passed through totally taking out the heart, and the bobsled run where I found her.

Had a very similar experience yesterday, but by only 4 minutes after sunset. I don't set my alarm (great idea by the way) but I watch my phone like a hawk towards the end of the afternoon making sure I don't goof up with the time, especially on overcast days and/or snowy days when it is hard for me to be certain the sun is dropping below the horizon. Then today I think I was rewarded by taking a nice big doe. Judging from her size and that she was all alone, I almost wonder if she's the same one I watched last night. I think you too will be rewarded for making the right decision. Good luck!

A short sit on stand this morning. Filled my 7M doe tag. Deer tracks were everyplace I looked on my way to my stand, and all around my stand as well. Something has them on their feet. My sits have been few in number and pretty short in length with a severe respiratory infection kicking my rear almost all gun season. I'll put story on harvest thread tomorrow. I'm calling it a day, a good but tiring one at that.

Finally stopped coughing long enough to sit on stand again this afternoon. It was beautiful outside. Saw one doe and fawn up hill from in thick stuff, no shot. Nothing else until I came down the hill and spotted a big doe standing perfectly broadside about 100 yards away. She stood long enough to tempt me into thinking about chambering a round and taking the relatively easy shot but I passed. There were tracks all over the place today in the fields and woods. They must have been moving like crazy.

Check out Sangerfield (7M) on the map. Surrounded by, farm land, Nine Mile swamp, and thousands of acres of State land including Tassel Hill and Brookfield. Thruway to Utica then 15 miles south.

I agree with 110 to 115.