wooly

Happy B-day Lawdwaz! Too bad it didn't fall on a Friday! Maybe just hang out and buff the boat or something today!

Id rather kill a wacky racked 1.5 year old over a typical 2.5 year old 8 pt if that makes any sense.

That's WHY they're there! You have a good balance in habitat right now, that comes with a slight upswing of prey animals for them to eat. Enjoy the plentifull times and variety while it lasts. When your yotes disappear, so will the rest of your furry critters.... or vice versa.

They all look like different bucks to me. The first one could be a 1.5 all day long around here though.

Last year the pre-rut kicked off the earliest I've ever seen it in my area. Rubs and scrapes were popping up by the third week of August and steady through Oct. Bucks were harassing doe in the fields the entire time as well even in full velvet. I was expecting to see some serious chasing between Nov 6'th-9'th at the latest, but it never happened. I really thought I missed my favorite time to be on stand with the bow. Opening day of regular season (Nov. 15'th), the bucks were running doe like crazy, so I hadn't missed it after all and managed to connect then. Once the frantic chasing begins, there's only like a 3 day window before they lock down with their doe to breed. Although the rut is a long drawn out process that escalates over the course of weeks and months... there's only 3 days I get REALLY excited about and focus on nailing!

Cute pooch! Gonna be tough to keep up with those legs.

Oh damn....., I don't want any ones imagination to get carried away,lol! Thank you very much!

Thank you for the nice gift! I can't stop looking at it....... it's so wild, and amazingly beautiful, and exotic! It's everything I could ever dream of seeing,lol Your pal, wooly

I thought the branches looked like lightning bolts when I seen them,lol First time I ever looked at my stand from the 2'nd bottom wrung.

Our days are numbered..... AMEN!

Rahh.. Rahh.... .......GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Bills!!!

I'm not sure the last time this was updated by DEC, but under the heading "Management and Research Needs" I found interesting. Actually, It made me feel pretty fortunate to have this encounter here on private land in WNY given the number of transplants. http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/7088.html

You can buy salt at Wegmans. Same stuff.

Thanks all for the confirmation. I've seen some amazing shots of these birds fishing on some photog sites I visit that have always made me jealous I'd never even seen one before so I was pretty excited to notice what I thought it might be. My neighbor told me last year he was finding some fish heads laying around, but he thought it was a mink getting them. He has a lot of bluegill, perch, and some pretty good size catfish in there that he feeds floating fish pellets to, so they would be easy pickin' for this guy on the surface.

Never seen one of those before. I hear it's bad luck to see one of them on your property you have permission to hunt.

I'm gonna turn you into a birdwatcher yet,lol

Awesome! Thanks guys! I can check another off the life list of birds now.

If it is..., it's the first I've ever seen here, or at least noticed and gotten a pic of and I'm determined to get better shots. Coming back from the fields photographing deer tonight when I found this guy at the pond. Now I have a legitimate reason to hide in the bushes there! (inside joke a few here will get) It was pretty dark when I left the fields so I had all my settings cranked pretty high allowing me to pull these off but they are cropped tight and pretty grainy. By the time I spotted this guy all I could really see was a silhouette in the sky and did the best I could to lift some detail out of them in post. So..... is it an osprey or another raptor I'm unfamiliar with? I've said it before and I'll say it again.... I' not very good with bird ID's, but I think that's what it is.. but I could be wrong, that's why I ask.

Oh, I got plenty of those too,lol Most recently, turkey hunting with my sister this spring. We'd set up several times one morning and we weren't having much luck. We decided to call it quits early and started heading back home when I stopped dead in my tracks, looked at her and asked...."didn't I bring my gun along today..?" She said "You had it earlier this morning" Ahhhh crap, we made our way around to 5 or 6 of our last set ups where I finally found my shotgun laying in the leaves,lol I'm so used to paying such close attention to not leave my camera behind throughout the year, that Ii forget half of my other crap when I bring anything "extra".... like a gun for instance,lol

I was actually still implying doe only for early ML and I think would get a lot of participation. Many here (not in this thread) say we need shorter gun season to benefit the bucks. DEC would probably do that as well once they found a way to kill all their does sooner with an earlier start for gunners in archery season.

Sure, I'll play... it may help someone avoid an avoidable catastrophy. In my early high school days, me and a few buddies were hanging out at his house while his parents were out for the night. We found his old mans weed and beers in the garage before we headed up to our hangout in my buddies room to properly dispose of them the way young high school boys do. After all our buzzes kicked in, my buddy disappeared and came back with his old mans pistol he kept hidden in a shoebox under his bed. We all drunkenly and stoned handled and admired it for a bit before passing it on to our next friend in the circle. When the gun finally came around to me, I remember aiming it at my pal and trying to pull the trigger but it wouldn't "click" for some reason.... I don't know why or how we didn't try to figure it out at the time, but in the end we finally figured out the damn thing was LOADED with the safety on the whole time. I almost killed my best friend at the time because his dad was irresponsible in regard to safe storage of his weapons with kids in the house and our own stupidity. I think about that a lot now whenever I pick up any gun I'm unfamiliar with or see someone I know storing their firearms in a lazy manner. The consequences can be life altering for everyone, so I'm not afraid to share that story whenever I see a gun owner that has as much common sense as a inebriated high school youth. That experience has stuck with me for almost 30yrs now even though it could have ended much worse. I'm thankful it didn't, but I'm still not sure who I'm angrier at till this day...... myself for being young and dumb and intoxicated.... or his old man for being oblivious to what could have happened leaving a recipe for disaster so accessible to us all.

Vaping allowed Burt...????

Looks like the same one to me by that deep curl on his right antler noticeable in both the day and night shots.. I'd put him at 1.5 if I saw him here, but he may be different in your woods.

I think we've beat around the bush long enough with this one. The FACT of the matter is this.... "Gun hunters"..., (also read as bowhunters with a gun in their hands.., strictly gun hunters..., and gun hunters that may also be ML/x-bow hunters) are more excited to pull the trigger on a nice meaty doe than most "die-hard bow hunters" and there's no denying that. Bow hunting has been allowed in the regular firearms season as long as I can remember, but the opposite only came to be with the recent youth seasons allowing youth to hunt with guns during early archery. Gun hunters (and this is not a dig against any group looking at the numbers) are more likely to dump a doe and I'm sure many are chomping at the bit seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for a shot to hunt the early season they've been excluded from to this point. The more I think about this change in regulations, I don't believe it's such a bad idea. There have been many changes to the "special seasons" over the years and eventually we all learned to roll with them or drop out. They want a lot of dead deer and that's what they'll get by introducing the ML into archery. Last season my area got SHUT DOWN due to weather by the end of the first week of regular season. I'm sure many gun hunters ate their tags last fall and winter in this area because of it. ML's in archery would generate interest and sales in tags from the average "regular season hunter" and it would put the hurtin' the DEC is looking for on the herd no matter how the weather pans out as winter progresses and can put an end to "gun season" at any time for a lot of folks and regions. I'll admit, if 2 weeks of early season doe only ever comes around to my dmu, I'd enjoy the extended range the ML offers and obviously higher success rates from increased accuracy and overall effectiveness at the end of the day.

Pretty cool! I have a pair of wrens that has been coming back for three years now. I enjoy watching them "hunt" back and forth from the woods to their "house" in my electric riser on the shed. Who needs feeders!