Buckstopshere

Apples are not native to the USA. Apples originated in Kazakhstan which is a country in southern Russia, north of Afghanistan. There are no indigenous apples to the North American continent. Apples made their way across Eastern Europe and into Western Europe when they were brought to "the new country" here by the French and introduced to the native American and Canadians probably in the 1600's. Historical reports say that the river valleys, such as the Genesee valley, were full of apple, peach, plum and pear trees as the Iroquois were great farmers and had vast orchards.

I've had them drop quickly a couple times like that...usually when they are in full rut. Notice the way their tail wags like crazy, right at the end. When I see a deer do that after I shoot them, I know they are done and I can find them right there.

I stand in my stand most of the time too...mainly because most of those cloth seats are pretty weak or shredded. Also, I don't have a lot of time to hunt except on the weekends, maybe a couple hours before work in the morning and a couple hours at dusk at the most.

It is about the same throughout the season for me, down through the years. I have about the same number of opportunities in the early season when the deer are unaware and food sources are the key. As the rut begins and that changes things and food sources change and are not as important. Most of my deer are tagged in November, very few in October.

Nice photos!

I've used a decoy but have not had a lot of success with it. Like you say, the does wise up quickly and it is a pain hauling it around. I have had a couple small bucks come in and check it out. One was quite entertaining and made me laugh. He stared at the decoy ( a bedded doe) for a while and then came in and circled around from behind. He kept raising his head to look at what the decoy seemed to be looking at and got his head right down next to the decoys to see what was getting such a long stare. After a while he walked away. I wish I had my camcorder for that show! If I was you and you have a hot spot like that, when the early stages of the rut begin, find a couple hot scrapes and cut they overhanging branches off them. Transport them to your mock scrape, 20 yards from your stand. Zip-tie the cut overhanging branches over your mock scrape. If you do that a week or two before the real running and chasing starts (like in Mid October this year, it should bring a buck or two in to check out what's going on. Much easier and in my opinion, much more effective than a decoy. That should do the trick to bring them in and get them to stop...does too.

I don't have hardly any apples on my apple trees this year, even though I worked like a dog, trimming out all the buckthorn and other brush that was shading them. Had tons of blossoms, but a heavy freeze in early May toasted them. On my apple trees, some apple varieties fall early and some fall late. I also have a lot of crab apple trees...and they are loaded. They blossomed later than the regular apples and evidently missed the deep freeze that the earlier blooming apples trees didn't. Deer like crab apples too. My property is quite high, 2,000 foot elevation. And it faces south, so my apple trees were in full bloom in late April, which is very early, earliest I can remember. But apple trees over on the cold north slopes didn't bloom until later and they have apples!

Yes I do, sir, not often, but once in a while.

We used to say somebody was either right or they were wrong. But now, in this litigious society we live in, I guess there is this big gray area in between...is that what you are saying, full of loop holes and worm holes? The "nolo contendere" plea, how 'bout the "I plead the Fifth Amendment (on advice of counsel of course,) or just old fashioned, "to the best of my recollection, your honor, I can't remember." Now we have crimes of passion, and of course, the trusty old insanity defense. Come to think of it, the latter defense would certainly be no surprise in this particular case, and would be a piece-of-cake sell for the Nuge to make if all the other loop holes were too tight to worm his over inflated ego through.

"I'm actually surprised that it is legal to shoot animals inside a fence." Sorry Sam to tell you this, but a lot of the photos that you see,... those hunters took those deer inside fences. A lot of the hunting shows on TV are shot inside fences. A lot of the deer farms where they are now experimenting with genetically enhanced deer that grow large racks, sell those deer as "shooters" to high fence entrepreneurs. Money, not traditional hunting ethics and values powers this whole trend in the sport we both love; pursing big bucks in the wild, whether in the deep woods or just outside of town.

Great photo! It is cool watching big fawns nurse. Sometimes they hit ma so hard they lift her back legs off the ground!

Everyone who buys a canned hunt thinks that they are a hunter. I would not even attempt to count all the big game preserves in this country, let alone the world, and let alone how many paying clients they have....what tens of thousands, annually? And if you walked into any of the thousands of lodges there and told those guys that they are not hunters, you would be in deep doo doo. They would think you were an anti hunter! ;D Just because you and I don't go for it, doesn't mean lots of other hunters are all for it. If that what floats your boat...and it is legal, fine. But what bugs me and my point, which was probably poorly made, is that the value of a six-point buck, taken under fair conditions, in the wild is a much greater challenge and hunting accomplishment than one that is bought and paid for, even though a Pope and Young and Boone and Crockett, and please don't lecture me on "their entry rules." I don't want to go there.

He was charged with 11 violations in the incident, but his lawyers pleaded guilty to two, which the court accepted. So it wasn't just that he shot a spike buck. There was 11 charges against him! I wonder if he is going to use that when he teaches youth? What? on how not to be?! It is interesting that he had so many violations in one episode. Was that typical? Was that the first time? Did he break the law on other hunts? He has left a pretty obvious blood trail of video shows for CO's from other states to examine.

You guys are right. New York state has big bucks in virtually every county. The point is some of our fellow hunters buy canned - that is guaranteed hunts. I'm not talking 120...130 class whitetails. There is a growing number of "guaranteed" whitetail hunts available. Do you know that every year, many hunters buy 200 class bucks? Do you know what the going rate is....? Between $6,500 and $12,000. And they show the mount, show the photo and never explain where the animal came from. I was talking to a guy who "guided" one of these hunts and he said he would put a client in a stand and then walk around the enclosure and push the deer past him until he shot one. Some guys might not know the difference between shooting a penned deer and a wild deer. And if you have enough money and time and want to, you can go buy hunts in the Midwest in Iowa and Illinois where 120-class bucks are common. They are like our four pointers. Nature of man to try and game the system. Make it easier. We haven't made the distinction great enough between hunting wild deer and pen raised or semi-pen raised deer. What about a buck that is passed on 100 times over a four-year period in an intensely managed property? He gets so used to smelling human scent, after a while his natural fear of human scent becomes less and less, and so does his wildness. Deer can become relatively tame after a while when around human activity. The more we manage something, the more of the wild we take out of it.

I've never presumed to reach his or for that matter, other famous hunters' levels of accompishment... of shooting so many deer and goats in pens and then thump my chest on video and say how great I am. Nope, never have and never will. Whack and stack hand fed animals. Some accomplishment. Spirit of the Wild, ha. Spirit of the pen. Spirit of the high fence. Spirit of the barn yard. Sit up in a hay mow and shoot the pig in the stall. Nothing wrong with that. He bought the pig. Heck, he owns the barn.

Ha! That's funny!

erussel: You are dead nuts right. Fewer hunters mean for those of us that are left in the woods...more deer walking in the daytime. More for ME! But who wants fewer hunters? For once I am trying not to be greedy, knowing I only have, Lord willing a few more years of deer hunting left. And if I was greedy, I would say...gung ho to AR's. Make fun of everyone who shoots a small buck, drive everyone out of the deer woods like what is happening in Pa. and that way there would be more for ME! AR's - Great philosophy. Elitism, plain and simple. And you know, the 500-lb. monkey in the room is that the more money one has, the bigger bucks they can shoot. That's a pretty straight correlation. Doesn't mean anybody is a better hunter, a better shot...just they can buy it. Elitism has no place in the deer woods.

People who have that kind of money...$1,750 is nothing to them. They (or I should say their CPA's,) write it off as a business expense. Ted Nugent is an artist. We all make mistakes, but to screw up that badly shows me that he has little regard for hunting laws or how important it is for him to represent hunters the right way and do the right thing, especially when hunting. What do impressionable youngsters think about when they see Ted do something like that, pay the fine...not even show up at the hearing (he had two lawyers there to do it.) He's a big shot and full of himself. Don't we have enough of that already in professional sports? He hurt hunting...badly with his stupidity. The anti-hunters are grinning from ear to ear over this...he is the gift that keeps on giving to them. Paying a fine and fessing up to it is nothing to him. I want to see how he deals with it down the road. I want to see if he can stand up and be a man.

Here's all the AP has on it so far: http://www.wellsvilledaily.com/outdoors/x882506399/Ted-Nugent-busted-for-shooting-illegal-deer

I agree with your observations, Bushnell, having hunted Pa. for the last 38 years. Hopefully, NY will not put in any more ARs so we won't have to witness the scenario of the waste of a buck you as you correctly mentioned happens in Pa. as collateral damage not only to the deer herd, but to hunter's ethics.

You guys have a point, because no matter how crazy he is, he still is a man, but since he is...according to a recent poll in a New England Sporting magazine, the most popular of the celebrity hunters in the entire USA...and the self-proclaimed "whacker and stacker and cosmic guru of all the killers and grillers..." he is held to a higher standard, like sports stars, and politicians. Maybe he should have not bailed so quickly. Maybe he for once should have stood up for principle, no matter the cost. All the chest beating and holier than thou attitude really doesn't hold much water when the bullet hits the bone after all, huh? But then, doesn't that tell us all we need to know about him? But he was a heck of guitar player.

Exactly what we should have expected. He is like a cartoon character and now, it gives the anti's and all those in the middle who don't really care one way or another a way to laugh and ridicule hunters... and not take us seriously. Puts us on the defense to try to explain his actions...

Ted Nugent was a great guitar player. I remember back in the 1960s when I first heard him with the Amboy Dukes in Detroit. And here seems to be another example of the hypocrisy of baiting. It is fine in one state and and a violation in another. Some states with CWD allow bating, some don't. Other states with no CWD (like NY) don't allow baiting, and other states do. So is this a violation of ethics? No, it appears to be just dumbness and not reading the rules of the state where you are hunting. He hunts so much on game farms, it probably never occurred to him that it was illegal. I personally don't like the rock and roll style, gonzo...screaming in your face, spirit of the wild, kill and grill...machine gun mentality when it comes to hunting. The best thing about a TV is we can turn it off. Doc: I don't think it is fair to lump Roger Rothhaar and Noel Feather in the same pot. True, both were busted, but Rothhaar was set up. A hunter who he marginally knew came to his house and asked for his help to drag a big buck out of the woods at night. Well, the guy did not have a license. CO's showed up. Rothhaar was ticketed. I mean if somebody came up to me during the season and asked for a hand getting a deer, (I've done it a lot of times) I wouldn't ask to see their license. I spoke to Rothhaar and his wife for hours on the phone after the incident happened. Noel Feather is another story. This guy bought big bucks at a deer farm, shot them and took them across a state border. He made and sold videos of the kills, pretending they were wild deer taken in a different state. So I think we need to be careful about painting everyone with a game law violation with such a broad brush as all equally bad.

Steve863: Exactly right. The DEC is so hypocritical it is ridiculous. A 100 pound bag of corn spilled on the ground under your treestand is illegal but a 1/2 acre food plot of corn under the same stand is perfectly legal. Go figure. But to the point. I do not put any food out for deer in front of my trail cams and follow the letter of the law no matter how stupid I believe it is. I would rather see deer in their natural behavior at scrapes.

I use a rangefinder when I am rifle hunting and bow hunting. I wouldn't be without one. When I was in Africa, I had to make some long range shots...with the rifle (200 to 387 yards.) And it taught me how valuable it can be. That was in 1999. When rifles were legalized here, it has come in handy a number of times on long range shots. And when I am on stand during archery season, I use it to mark trees so I know distance without walking around and stinking up the scene.