Buckstopshere

I've always hated the First Quarter of the moon just before the rut (that's what phase we are in now.) But in a couple days the moon will be full, and as it wanes the rut will pop wide open and the big boys should finally be on their feet in the daytime! In 45 years of bow hunting I don't think I have ever killed a buck in the First Quarter before the rut.

It's tough, but I somehow have avoided stinking up a few stands on a few properties that I have got good trail cam evidence of good bucks there, but the rut is ready to pop and we know what happens when we overhunt our stands. However, it may seem counter-intuitive, but I think that there is some benefit to getting into the stands a bit to feel them out, make sure that the shooting lanes are open, and just a feel for them. And I wonder too that is it better to leave a bit of old, degraded scent (that we leave) to put the deer at ease if they get a little used to it. Rather than have spanking fresh scent hit them. Hunting bucks in deep woods is tough (Pa.,) but most of my hunting is near civilization and whitetails are used to ambient human scent. My best stand that I am holding off getting into is between two bedding areas...one an overgrown field...three years in the making, and the other a steep sidehill bedding area that is impossible to see through, let alone walk. The two interface in an area where I have my stand and a camera. It's textbook and the only way between the two. I am having a tough time staying out of it. I put a Mobile licking branch there and this is what I got last night...not the biggest buck, but one I would be proud to take.

Monday (10.19.15) , all my zip-tied overhanging branches blew up. Including this 8 pt.

This is my biggest weighed buck... still not 200 lb. It was 196 dressed on the scale. Should have left the heart in to make it to 200. Caught him in a snow squall. Cut his tracks and ran him down.

I'm old, but not quite Civil War old! Actually, that photo was taken by my mother.

But seriously, my heaviest long bow buck...176 dressed, won three small, local archery contests with this eight point. Not bad for my neck of the woods. (I had a lot more hair then!)

My biggest hog with a bow...ever. Oh, not a whitetail.

I beg to differ. I love hunting here. Just my two scents. New York deer is not the worst state for deer hunting A significant part of the state ranking's premise is based on New York's "miserable" weather. Granted, we had an epic winter last year, but deer season was great, actually a bit on the milder side. Perhaps it may be a bit counterintuitive for a Texas deer hunter, but many New York, Midwestern and Northeastern deer hunters actually look forward to a tracking snow. Though it may be inconceivable to a Southerner, a tracking snow is what many of us yearn for, dream about, and hope for on opening day...despite what the national weatherpersons say. Northern deer hunters know that when sitting on stand with snow on the ground, whitetails are easier to spot and easier to drag out. By using snow as a negative criterion, the ranking fails to factor in snow as part of our deer hunting strategy and tactical approach. The thrill of being on the track, running or trailing a big buck down and meeting him close up either before or after the shot and hefting the heavy rack in deep snow is built into a Northern deer hunter's DNA as is waiting on stand and seeing the deer, saying excitedly to ourselves, "It's a buck, there's his rack silhouetted against the snow!" The Benoit's and other famous Northern deer hunters evolved hunting styles impossible to imagine without snow. Snow is a blessing. Snow allows us to figure out, and pattern whitetails by reading their sign. A second benefit of our so-called "miserable" weather that the southerners whine about is that we can hang our deer and actually age them. Aging meat is an art and a science. Many of us prefer to hang our deer, believing that the meat is better quality than those carcasses (like in the South) that must be immediately processed green. The northern culinary tradition of aged meat transcends in one more way the simplistic category that cold makes deer hunting miserable. When we compare the north and the south, bow hunting in the southern states seems like a battle against biting insects and critters of all sorts. Here in NY, the biting bug quoificent is a non-issue. Once the frosts hit here during deer season, ticks, mosquitoes, and biting flies are toast. So, when an article whimpers about "miserable deer hunting weather," when it snows, many of us have reason to differ. But arguments about weather may be subjective. Some people's toes and fingers get cold. Lets look at some numbers: New York's overall deer harvest showed only a 2% drop from 2013, which was dead-on from 2012, showing New York state's deer managers are keeping a consistent handle on the statewide whitetail herd. New York's deer hunting lands are very diverse, from the Adirondacks with a low deer population due to the forest, to high deer numbers on the outskirts of the Empire State's many cities and towns. New York hunters harvested 238,672 deer at the end of the 2014 season, while in 2013, they killed 243,567 whitetails. For comparison, here is what deer hunters had to deal with in other nearby states in the Northeast and the Midwest: Pennsylvania, tallied another drastic drop after the numbers came in from the recent 2014 deer season; tumbling 14% from 352,920 deer harvested in 2013 spiraling down to 238,672 this past season as the Antler Restriction mantra continues to beat its loud, disastrous drum. Ohio is almost as bad as the Commonwealth and showed a 9% drop this past season to 175,745 from the previous year's 191,455. Worse, in the previous year Ohio deer hunters took 218,910 deer, showing a 20% drop in filled tags in just two years in the Buckeye State. Further afield in Minnesota, hunters harvested just 111,000 deer, down 22% from the previous year. Wisconsin tumbled 15% in 2013; down to the lowest deer take in 30 years in the Gopher State, down to 191,550 deer. Wisconsin deer hunters just eight years ago killed over 400,000 deer, showing a 48% free fall. Enough is enough there, as Governor Scott Walker took the responsibility for the deer population away from its game department, fired them and hired a private whitetail manager. From a glance at these current whitetail reports from other states, New York hunters are a bit more lucky indeed, with a state whitetail plan that is at the least stable. New York deer hunters today get a quality Northern deer hunting experience, and a reasonable chance to put venison in the freezer for the average New York hunter, when compared and contrasted to other nearby whitetail state's recent historical data, hardly deserving the appellation of worst state in the entire country.

Ha! Yeah, you are right. I started fussing around with licking branches back in 2008, but in 2009 when I got this guy mid-morning. I was hooked. And it has been the most effective tactic that I have found to date.

The zip-tied overhanging branch is bringing in does like crazy, and a few small bucks so far. The more it is hit by bucks and does, it seems the more the branch gets visited. Can't get much more natural than the real thing. Here are two does adding their scents to the mix the other day.

I use overhanging branches off from hot scrapes on other properties and move them around, mobile overhanging branches...that way they get freshened by bucks and does in different locations. I have had trail cameras on them for years and the mobile overhanging branch seems to be most effective scent I've found. I have experimented down through the years with lots of brands and setups...and probably still will. Part of the fun of bow hunting for me has been fooling around with different scent setups.

I can't wait for the season to start! The wait is driving us all a little crazy. We have a big campfire and it can handle a lot of differing views.

This subject is a bit painful to discuss, by nonetheless important because my family and I basically live on venison and have for decades. I shoot a lot of deer. The little ones, the grand-kids, run around with a stick of jerky as soon as they are old enough to walk. We rarely buy beef and pork and eat free range chickens and buy a free range lamb at the fair each year. We grill a lot of deer meat and I am just about out...as it should be just before the season starts.

Well, good questions...out of my area of expertise so I am just talking off the top of my head... But if I was running research, I would attempt to find a way to repeat the experiment. Then it seems logical that we could isolate the cause by focusing on the variables and eliminating them one by one. But if as reported "Wyoming did a 13-year study in which cows were put in deer pens heavily infected with CWD, and none of the cows became infected." It would be as you said, if people were put in an enclosure and had sex (or swapped bodily fluids) with those testing positive with HIV and none...zero came away with testing positive for AIDs, then we would have to go back to the drawing board. My point is there is too much emotion involved and not enough objective science.

I was intrigued by a study, and I would have to find the link, that tried to get captive deer to contract CWD for research purposes by keeping them in close proximity to elk or deer that had tested positive for CWD. Bottom line, those test animals did not contract the disease. From what I have read, there is a lot more to CWD than we know now. But jumping up and down, running around and screaming, making laws and all kinds of rules, coming off half-cocked is so typical of our society today. If you point fingers at the deer farm today as having "a vested interest" and therefore its info is incorrect, what about the contrary? What about the people who are hired by the state to monitor these things? They make money from it too...just on the other side, so to speak. Govt. regulators have to justify their jobs. And don't think they are saints. So if everybody has a vested interest, it is a wash. And instead of pointing fingers and saying this guy or that is a bad guy, wouldn't the logical path be one that talks about the science?

Upstate: Right, but you need a way to attract bucks. And I have found that the only way to do that with regularity is go off the property and find an active scrape, snip the overhanging branch and put it over the best scrape on your property. I assume you have a tree stand set up on the best funnel into this location. The sniped off overhanging branch will draw bucks, most at night and of course not shootable. But by establishing a pheromone center, bucks will come from far and wide as the rut progresses. The key is you have does and they will enhance the overhanging branch and bring the bucks in. You just need to be there between Halloween and Election Day.

"Care too explain how they scientifically were able to calculate from all the deer they collected based of a deers gestation period and age of the fetus on the does they collected put the dates almost exactly the same over many years they did this study? Not picking or bashing honestly, nothing wrong with a good debate." In my opinion the fetal aging studies are flawed for a number of reasons, the most important being, not the sample size...but the control numbers seem to be suspect and too small for starters. Granted, it seems that thousands of dead does (mostly road kills) have been opened up, their fetuses extracted and then measured. And at first glance seems adequate. But when really looked at, questions arise such as, "what are these dead fetuses measured against?" You need a valid, statistically validated, sound control number. Think about it. If you were going to create a valid scale to measure fetuses against, how would you do it? Well, you would have to have a doe in a pen and know the exact time she was bred and her fawns were conceived. Then you would have to kill her, extract the fetuses and then put their measurement on a scale. This expensive and difficult process of holding a doe, breeding her, euthanizing her and extracting and measuring the fetuses along a 200 day gestation period would necessitate killing 200 does. That would give you a basic scale. But is this control a large enough sample to be statistically sound? There are about four or five fetus measurement scales. The first was in 1946 Cheatum and Morton in 1946, the second created by Armstrong in 1950. Both here in NY. Armstrong measured 76 fetuses while Cheatum and Morton measured 17. These statistical models were never tested to my knowledge. In 1985 Hamilton et al. measured 64 known fetuses in 1984, a southern study with a smaller race of deer than the northern whitetail of Armstrong, Cheatum and Morton. The fetuses are measured crown to rump. Now, with modern DNA research, we know that 26% of twin fawns have different fathers, many sired on a different day as the estrus cycle of the doe allows for here to be fertile for up to 48 hours before her progesterone kicks in, telling her reproductive system that it is done. A doe has a two-pronged uterus so when she is pregnant in one, the other can still accept fertilization. Of course when these studies were created the authors did not know the high incidence of promiscuity in whitetails through DNA or the multiple paternity in a quarter of the does carrying twins. Another problem is in the physical measuring of fetuses in dead does. Imagine the difficulty in holding a small fetus and putting a micrometer from its butt to its head and getting an accurate measurement from it. (Crown to rump.) (Having moonlighted...no pun intended, as a part-time contractor and measuring and watching others measure lumber with a tape...I know that we all make mistakes and judgements of an 1/8 to 1/4 on an inch are subject to personal interpretation. Trying to measure a stinky, slimy fetus presents questions that I would not want to hang my hat on. And I have dressed out hundreds of deer. The fetus scale is in millimeters...2.54 centimeters equals an inch or 25.4 mm in an inch. Now good luck reading that tape under those conditions of a gutted, road killed doe. So I have problems with the creation of the scale and the obtaining of data. But great question. Thanks! Incidentally, Joe Hamilton, founder of QDM did not invent the fetal scale, he just made his own. And I have a problem with the arithmetic too. Bad math. Fetal measurements are supposed to be a way to back-date the rut by using a measurement scale. And we know that the different races of deer are different sizes, that's why the ear-tip-to-ear-tip of southern deer is 15 inches while a northern deer is 17 inches when field judging on the hoof P&Y or B&C antler size. But the fetal scales make no mention of differing sizes of whitetails. Whitetail fetuses do not grow at the same time. Fetal growth varies between whitetail races, weather conditions (in a severe winter northern whitetail does can reabsorb their fetus) and overall herd health. So I have more than a passing issue with "the science" of fetal measuring to determine the prior rut. The whole concept has led deer hunters down a bad trail.

"Take these deer farms who have gotten deer from different climate areas in the US. Everything I have read in the past say that it takes them approximately 2 years for there breeding cycle to acclimate to the new area they are residing in. Why is this?" Whitetails, like sheep are short day breeders. There are two basic bio-chemical mechanisms hardwired into their DNA, one is their internal clock. It takes a while for deer to synchronize biochemically and through their pheromones so that they are on the same page with their new mates. I would surmise that some whitetails can find synchronicity quicker than others, depending on which geographical race they are from. I have read where whitetail breeders have had to deal with this phenomenon. The other timing mechanism is the pineal gland and the suprachiasmatic nucleus which processes light. The pineal gland produces melatonin. Melatonin suppresses breeding in sheep and deer. Sheep breeders use melatonin implants to time the lamb drop in the spring. They use melatonin implants in the ewes. When they pull them out at the same time, the ewes cycle and the lambs hit the ground at the same time. The moon acts like a melatonin implant if you will. There is a lag time between the pulling out of the melatoinin implant and the moon's effect. Takes a few days for the melatonin to dissipate. Then they breed. It isn't so much that the deer see the moon and figure on some metaphysical whitetail calendar. lol. Simply put, whitetails are ruled by their two bio-mechanical mechanisms, one being the internal clock (our deer are Oct. Nov. breeders, while Mexican deer breed in January.) And the other is the pineal gland and the suprachismatic nucleus that regulates melatonin and other pheromone flow. The question about fetal aging needs to be in another post and gets to the crux of the proof of the matter.

I like a good debate and appreciate serious discussion with no impugning motivations, or picking and bashing as you say. Thanks! There is a lot to your questions and my answers would at the least put most to sleep and I do not want to set the record for the longest post! lol. So, one at a time. About the definition of the rut...that's why I call it "the apparent rut" and contrast that with the rut, or the actual breeding time. As hunters, I like to focus on the apparent rut because that's when I have killed my best bucks during archery season because their guard is down. And that's why I try to maximize my time in the field to key in on that time when the majority of the bucks have one thing on their minds and the good ones come out of their holes and they are on their feet in the daytime. I don't see the rut as pre-, actual- and post-rut. I see the rut as three bell curves each season. An early rut, the main rut, and then a final December rut. These three high points happen a moon apart each year and vary up to almost a three-week swing. The cycle is a 19 year pattern. So talking about pre-rut runs into the first estrous cycle that always occurs. And leads to more confusion than even the word...rut. lol. We will see this first rut spike at the start of our NY and Pa. bow season this year...scrapes opened, does being run, etc. And then it will die out towards the middle of October, and then build back up for the main rut spike between Halloween and Election Day, then ebb again in mid-Nov. with a late rut when the 20% of the doe fawns cycle in early December.

No, I didn't see the article in "Deer and Deer Hunting." Charlie and I do not agree 100% on our rut predictions. (Surprise, surprise, I do not agree with anyone on everything. lol.)This year my historical patterns show that the apparent rut will be in a low ebb on 11/11/15 on Veteran's Day, just the opposite of last year when it was really taking off regardless of temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, or hunting pressure. There will be some nice bucks taken then, but they will be in lockdown. I have tagged some of my best bucks, and had some of my best chances then because the breeding buck won't leave the hot doe. If she draws him out, because she wants to feed a bit, he is very vulnerable.

You are just calling him names. That will not sway opinion. Come up with some ideas better than "A$$."

Then why is the fawn drop different each year? Surely, as a gobbler hunter, you noticed that there were virtually no fawns in May. Even the DEC announced it, presupposing that the severe winter impacted the fawn population. But...we had a bit of a premature...estimation. It was simply because the rut was so late last year. One thing is always constant. The gestation period of a doe is always 200 days, give or take. When we have an early rut, like will happen this year, then we can expect fawns to hit the ground in mid-May. I think NYS jumped the gun this year by cutting back the DMU permits... we have a bumper load of fawns. Never seen so many. They were just born late due to the later...mid-November rut last season. Thanks for the links...I have already read them.

That is a very good, basic question. And it has been answered many times by some of the top deer hunters and biologists, in charge of managing state and private deer hunting populations, such as Dr. James Kroll and Wayne Laroche (formerly head of Vermont's Fish and Game Dept. and now recently head of Pa.'s...thank god!) The timing of the rut varies across the country. Generally, it is later as we move further south, but not completely. Why? For instance, deer here in the Midwest and Northeast are Oct.-Nov. breeders, Deer in Mississippi and Alabama breed from January into March, Mexican whitetails rut in January. Here we are facing the Harvest Moon as the "set trigger" if you will. Our deer have to breed in a three week or so window so that the fawns will hit the ground in late May or early June (like this year.) NYS jumped the gun thinking that we had a poor fawn crop because there were no fawns evident in May...but we had a late rut ...so we had a late fawn drop. It happened in June. Never seen so many fawns. But that's another story...for another post. Back to our fawns...if they were born earlier, they freeze will little food. Later, (like July) and they can not be mature enough to handle a rough winter. Mississippi has a different paradigm. There, if fawns hit the ground it May, they would not survive due to the severe flooding. So their biological clocks favored a later rut. And so on. But they are all set by the previous full moon. It does not matter where...the full moon still has a significant effect on the timing of the breeding because all whitetails are called short day breeders...totally dependent upon light (daylight and moonlight) to set their internal biological clocks. Deer, elk, sheep, turkeys...I have been studying the southern ruts for years...and it is interesting to see how perfectly the southern deer hunting websites blow up with "the rut is on!!" Only a month or two later than ours, almost to the day.

It seems that everyone is not on board with the QDM mantra. Free thinkers still have their place around this campfire. Please do not call him names. If you disagree with his points, address them in the best way you can. We are better than making these "ad hominem" attacks which is becoming too frequent here.

One eight point in and one eight point out of velvet on 9/4/15.