BillJohnson

welcome Tom, I'm Bill and new here as well.

welcome Mr Wood, I too am a new arrival. I am in SW Vermont much of the year. where are you located? Bill

thank you for the welcome. First-Light, no advice specific to Vermont, hunting is hunting, belize or Barrow, texas or Quebec, the animals all are the same, same requirements, that's how we can trap and tag animals whether they be hare in alaska, jaguars in brazil , turkeys in maine or elk in colorado, they --like us-- all need the same things no matter location. the only thing i'd advise is sell those cameras and learn to read sign, use the camera money for good boots.

hmm, stretching my memory but I will try; rifles, muzzleloaders, shotguns and handguns as follows; 22 Long rifle, 22 Magnum, 218 bee, 22 hornet, .223 rem, .222 rem, 5mm rimfire, 25-20, 250 sav., 6mm, 243, 22-250, 30-06, 35 rem, 62 cal, 50 cal, 32 cal, 32 special, 44mag, .357 mag, 22 jet (insert), 308 win, 25-35, 38-55, 45-70, .444, .72 cal, 56 cal, 54 cal, .256 mag, 303, .410, 16 gauge, 28 gauge, 12 and 20 gauges (slugs), .380, 9mm, 41 mag, probably more if I had more time to think but it stopped pouring and I am making a break for my car from this coffee shop! thanks and glad to meet all of you Bill

thanks Elmo, one day we will be in the same place at the same time, the world is not that big

If you had ever watched the show "monk" you will understand what I am like when it comes to cooking, that and my wife is a professionally trained chef, the question of quality meat is primary in our house. I've always examined all game's livers for disease, granted you can't "see" some things like dangerous levels of cadmium in NY Deer liver ( dont eat anylivers from deer over yearling age ) and by the shape and color of the liver and other organs I can more or less tell if the animal is healthy or not. plus how was it behaving when we shot it? a bird walking around on the ground unable to fly is likely sick, birds are very susceptible to illness, they also get infections very fast, so any that are unwell wont be flying for long. Like rabid bats, the really sick ones are on the ground. young crows, (mass. has a season on now, nice newly fledged crow meat!) are excellent eating, and I am not a dark meat fan but I will eat crow...there I said it, someone was dying to. LOL. breasted and overnight in a marinade, they are excellent on the grill or oven. I have mixed pheasant breasts and crow together and only one at the dinner noticed the difference. like most things, what they are eating effects the flavor, but when you gut them you will immediately know what they are eating, ones stuffed with seeds, grains, etc keep and the ones with garbage and meat scraps in them leave for turtle bait. The greatest danger from animals is what parasites are on them, on rats and turkeys this is often ticks, rabbits and fisher, etc fleas can be a problem. The Black Plague was blamed on rats but it was the fleas that carried the plague, they simply rode the rats. On birds you can minimize risk by breasting the birds in the field and putting into a soft sided cooler with a freezer block or those fake ice cubes. Bag the rest of the carcass in a garbage bag treated with Flea Dust and dispose of when home. ALWAYS wear gloves when cleaning game and be aware of cross contamination in the kitchen.

...in NY

they eat very well if taken care of, like all other meat we shoot them in NY around barns, flush them first obviously, and we also decoy them in fields. best hunt was 486 in the bag and even breasting them it was a looooonnnngggg night cleaning birds. you can usually end up with crows( in season) and starlings for a nice mixed bag too. vermont protected pigeons by accident by revising the title to read " all other wild bird species are protected"....they had no idea until the pigeon shooters started calling and screaming...most wardens (wardens over in VT not Rangers) turn a blind eye to the pigeon shooting since its always been done in VT until this mix up. shooting fine shot, 8s and 9s works well in spots you expect starlings, in areas where I expect long shots ( high silos) and nothing but crows and pigeons we shoot 7.5s most places that did away with silos for bunkers or bags have low enough birds that I can use my 28 and get some good trigger time on my grouse gun. welcome to the pigeon ranks!! its a sickness

very nice hunting account and photos! always good ot get out. its hard to keep the meat on hot days like that, I never lived in an area with woodchucks but in the late70s started hunting for them in southern NY, Washington County, on my cousins farms. I grew very fond of them and the hunting, though I used many larger rifles early on the damage to the hide was too much so since 1992 I used 22 magnums, head shots only. the best year I had 400 hides to sell, and more than enough meat to fill many family members freezers. a trick we learned back then on the HOT days was to fill a half barrel with ice cubes and chunks, and 5 gallons of water. Then as you shoot them skin them and gut them, then wrap in cheesecloth soaked in vinegar and water 30-70, get a few bodies and then go back to the truck and sink the cleaned carcasses in the ice barrels, you can wring the cloths out and refresh with a soda bottle of vin-water mix, I used a canteen but one mix up was all it took to stop that. LOL. these days I am lucky if I shoot 50 chucks a season, and those mainly with my flintlocks so the hides are worth much less than they oughta be, and so few and far between are not worth the bother of keeping hides. Though the meat is still great, I have a BBQ pot of shredded marmot heating right now with local fresh bulky rolls for po'boys for supper if the rain keeps up.

apples here are tremendous, far ahead of normal production, early macs will be picked in a couple weeks, nothing like the size we had last year but we also had a 100 year high for rainfall too. the soybeans attract deer now and in the fall by you? some years ago they planted soybeans next to my cousin in lake clear and deer never touched them, not enough to notice anyway, those beans were not harvested and come Jan the road was a hazard with deer crossing to paw up the unharvested soybeans.

we have a herd of penned whitetails here and the small trees in their pen are fenced off, four T bar stakes and some page wire is all it takes, pretty cheap even at tractor supply.make a pen 6 or 8 feet square and they'll forget the trees. if you have trees in aline or near each other you could probably do one large pen around them like we do with our berry bushes, etc I can send you photos but its pretty easy to picture in your mind. I think?

I live part of the year in Bennington Vermont, moved here part time starting in 1971, I hunt and fish in NY, VT, MA, UT, WY, AZ, CO, ME, NH, I retired in 1999 and am always looking for a safe and fun hunting and fishing partner. I found this site through another WiFi user here at the coffee shop, he is a professional gudie and we hunted and fished a few times together but he is not my perfect kind of hunting partner. A normal hunting day for me is wake up feed my pets, have breakfast with my wife of 43 years, then head out hunting with a few friends or one good partner, I bag a lunch usually, Im on a fixed income, then after hunting stop and have a beer at a local tavern then return home, clean the game or fish and have supper with my wife, spend the rest of the evening looking through Cabelas catalogs and circling things. LOL. so far one partner I met here only wanted to drive around on the back roads and target shoot, which is ok but not something I enjoy doing every trip out. and the guide as a partner was difficult in that he can't turn off being "on", every trip has to begin in the dark, its marathon hunting from pitch dark all day until its pitch dark again, and then its work on gear or guns or bows or something all evening until you collapse. again something I do not mind doing now and then, but 16 to 20 hour days up and hunting or fishing wear this old man out! Anyone that has a calendar marked with the days he can get caught up on sleep is over doing it in my view. I'm not going to hunt Massachusetts this year as I do not have extra money for it, already have my elk tags paid for and am watchign gas prices for those trips, but I am hunting Vermont and New york washington county, Rennslear, Albany, and Saratoga counties and hope to meet some people that like to share a day hunting and fishing. Bill