erussell

Saw 15 doe behind my house tonight in the field, even though I never saw one during the gun season on the 60 acres I can hunt around my house. The deer really know where to run to when the shooting starts. Oh and they looked really fat and happy, one must have been the big 10 ( minus his antlers ) I was hunting this yr because it towered over the rest of the deer. They looked really good, compared to 10 yrs ago when they were starving to death left and right because they were overpopulated.

Obviously you have never seen the winters in the Adirondacks because what you have stated above could not be farther from the truth. The real capacity is what the habitat will support naturally in the worst season. If deer die without supplimental feeding, they are beyond the capacity. The only answer is to improve the habitat - not sustain the herd at an artifical level. +1

And yet there are still deer in the Adk. Its been this way for thousands of yrs. Deer do not need our interferance. The weak will die and become food for something else, its just the way it is in the ADK. If man had not logged off everything and made fields in the south it would be the same way here to. If you want to help the deer herd in the North stop the loonies from shutting off logging in the Park and I bet you would be suprised how many deer you will have. The worst thing they could do was make the Park forever wild. Mature forests look pretty but are not good for wildlife.

I wonder how much palm greasing goes on between the bow and crossbow lobbiests and the nyscc :-X Apperently the bow bunch should have given up a little more of thier lunch money. I wonder how much it would cost to get AR implemented :

Watched the reality show top shots last night. They had a crossbow challenge on there. There were two guys on there that had no prior experiance with a crossbow and within a matter of a few hours of practice were shooting or near missing apples at 45 yrds. With that said they were shooting at known ranges off of a rest which i imagine increased thier accuracy considerably. I wouldn't want to attempt a shot standing or sitting unsupported. The down side I could see to using a crossbow is they are very difficult to cock and would not want to try it out of my tree stand. Also they are very, very noisy. Up side is they are very fast and if you can keep them steady on the shot I don't see why a relative novice with minimal gun shooting skills couldn't shoot targets at 50 yrd in very short order.

I would have to respectfully disagree on the weed killer, I just started doing plots for a few yrs now so Im no expert but. 1st yr i only mowed my plots and scratched it up with a rake and then surface planted oats and winter rye in early sept. Needless to say the results were less than stellar and very little grew except weeds. The following yr I read up a little and mowed and sprayed the plot with weed killer. Then I took a reading on the PH and ended up putting down around 300lbs of lime( small plot 30yrds x 30yrds) and I only added about 100lbs of fertilizer. The results were like night and day I had a beautiful plot of rape and turnips. The only problem was that after the 1st or 2nd frost because of the small size of the plot they mowed it down in a matter of days and I never got to hunt it. This yr its going to be 3 times the size ( hopefully ) and I plan on adding 2 more plots of equal size in other locations, if my wife lets me spend that much

Deer seem fat and happy around Binghamton, had good food during summer and fall to fatten up on. Plus the last few yrs they have had a hurting put on them so the population is lower than its been in yrs. Buck I shot 1st day was still loaded with fat and Doe I shot during muzzleoader was nice and fat to. Deer will manely live off there fat stores in the winter for the most part from all my reading ive done on the subject. Its what they have done for thousands of yrs. A few scrawney fawns and rutted out bucks will probablly get nocked off but can't really tell till the spring thaw gets here.

Between the stateland, stateparks, and NYC resiviours you should have lots of deer hunting to do http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/48261.html

could you imagine the stink on that thing after 6 days and being gut shot. I have helped find gut shot deer before and after 12 hrs they smell bad enough. I think I would have just cut the head off. After six days the hide couldnt have been any good anyhow and after the blood settel's the meats no good so why bring the whole deer out of the woods.

I don't think its which species is more important than another. Its which species can F up my deer hunting worse than the other. If we get wolves, Bears, Mountain lions, and coyotes in NY you can count on thier being a shorter deer season or not one at all ( hope you like bear meat ). Which I think in the big picture is the plan and why all these crazy wildlife re-introducers are happy about the population explosions of wolves and cougars, but I won't get into that. And yes if I can prove that the Bears in my areas are having an impact on the venison in my freezer than I will make up for the loss of said venison with bear meat.

I like to hunt several state lands in the southern tier. I have combined about 500 acreas of private land to hunt but I usually go to the state land because I see less people and more deer and I get bored with seeing the same trees all the time. Im alot more picky on stateland though and let alot of bucks walk including a nice 4 point who decided to walk to within 15 yrds of me and bed down. I was like are you serious, after about an hour of sitting completely still I couldn't take it anymore and moved my head and that buck turned himself inside out getting out of there. I try to stick to the larger tracks of land in the 2000 to 6000 acres plots or where several statelands are in close proximity to eachother. I find the bigger land intimidates the heck out of most hunters.

I have heard of people buying maniquines and dressing them in orange and giving them a toy rifle and setting them in a stand on the edge of the propertys to keep people out. Might be something to look into. Find someone who has some old camo to dress them up in and get some orange material from Wally world to make vests with. Make wooden permanent stands and tie the dummies to the trees. use screw in steps to get to them and take them out when you leave so the dummies don't steal your dummies Sounds like a lot of extra work but from what Ive read it seems to work really well. Especially along field edges where people like to drive by. The more orange on the dummie the better.

I dont see it, I have poked through my fare share of bear scat with a stick just to see what they are eating and I have never seen deer hair or any type of hair in it. Now up north in the Adirondacks where food is scarce I dont know, but in the southern zone I have yet to see it. Now the coyote scat I see is usually full of deer hair ( and the occasional cat claws ) Anyone ever see bear scat with deer hair in it?

I don't care if its someones lost pet, an escapee, or a native of NY. If I see one it's getting shot at. According to the article they take down a deer every 6 to 12 days. Thats like 30 deer or more a yr if you include coyote kills of young deer into that equation also. I don't know of anywhere in NY the deer population can take a beating like that and have hunting stay open if the population of big cats were to take hold in NY. Just look at the mess of the Elk and Deer populations the re-introduction of the Wolf has caused out west. As far as black bears go, I have yet to see anything that they do to effect the deer population in my area. And I see bear everytime I go out, saw 6 in one day this yr. I think they are just as happy to lay around and eat grubs, acorns, and mushrooms. Though I find it a little freaky when thay follow me around or hang around my treestands when im hunting. But for the most part they keep thier distance or move away quickly to another area. Im sure they would down a deer fawn if given the opportunity, but i have serious doubt that they actually hunt deer, so I have no problem with them other than they ruin about half of my hunting excursions to certain areas.

here's another one

nice

How bout this one. Looks like a nice 10 point http://www.american-hunter.com/chads-new-york-muzzleloader-buck

The last 2 yrs I have stayed out of the center 40 acreas of a 200 acre pc of land I can hunt. Last day of muzzleloader this yr I slowly made my way into it to see what was there and came up on 13 doe and 4 bear ( mama and 3 cubs) sharing it. Not sure why but bucks really do not like the property. There are lots of rubs, but they seem to walk right off the property and not stay. I planted food plots last yr and dug a few knee deep watering holes that they use the heck out of but its very rare to see a buck up there before or after the rut. Im thinking there are to many does and might try to shoot atleast half of them this coming yr( not by myself of course). This yr I shut down all 4 wheeler and snowmobile traffic and blocked all the trails so Ill see if that helps to.

Would really be interesting with a few dillon mini guns. Then you could really light some shizer up

My wish list would be Crossbows and AR . How would everyone feel about 2 bucks a yr, 1st buck can have any size antlers you want, but 2nd buck must be an 8 point or bigger.

Good setup for peppering tresspassers with rock salt. But you would have to have several setups over watching one another or they would just walk up behind the setup and take the guns and computers. A 1000 dollar bennelli is an expensive gun to be leaving in the woods unattended. I would have used mossbergs atleast.

I borrowed a 300wm from a friend while I was in the Army to hunt deer. After I took out a loan to buy 20 bullets, I shot it 5 times to sight it in and I was like that is good enough. I was hurting for a week after that, but that was when I weighed around 150. Ive put another 60 lbs on top of that so maybe it wouldn't hurt so bad now.

http://www.petersenshunting.com/content/missouri-man-shootskills-cougar-35-miles-northwest-kansas-city

http://chronicle.augusta.com/content/blog-post/rob-pavey/2011-01-14/only-georgia-internet-controlled-shotguns-linked-web-cams