Nomad

Ya baby can't wait for tomorrow AM ! took deer first time I went out in bow, opening day of gun (and the next) now its opening day of ML.... My spot has been left alone for the last 10 days or so too. But a 89y/o Dad in ICU will show you what really matters......

Well said doc. Those things were still the practice where i hunt up untill a few years ago really, then I was forced to post or be the place everyone who had no place hunted. As for unimproved ect. please define that for me. i have crop fields, laneways, stone parking areas,treestands,cut trails,mowed fields and the evil wood hut. I say any one of those is an improvment and i see little land that does not. I have also let a kid up the street from our land hang a stand on our unposted crop fields in an area i don't hunt much, he called me and asked how refreshing.

Mine is 4X8 tall enough to stand in, not much bigger the "blinds' they sell.... I camp out of it in the summer, no really I have a cot in it . In deer season its more of a storage, lunch eating place. We were going to put it up on phone poles but I like to be able to move it and have based upon deer sightings,sign and movements . Tell you what on a rainy windy day I can still "hunt" if I chose to, thats nice. My friend has a new hip but still can't walk that well, this works great for him, my daughter has sat with me also. I see more and more of these up in the air much bigger too. Many states thats how its done, well add a feeder too. One of the great things about hunting is you can make it as hard or easy as you want.Hey toss away your compound and buy a recurve is what my buddy tells me that and hunt from the ground... Myself I think the portable tree stand is the biggest single factor in making bow hunting as easy as it is today,guys sure seem to think their ok . A guy at work built a play house for his grand kids who he watches, in the rear of his long strip of land. He did this because he did not get along with his neighbor who's land was a big " L" that was on 2 sides of his land. The guy said "I can still hunt,thats not occupied much if ever ," The DEC anded up coming out, they said otherwise.

STAY OFF MY LAWN, as Clint said... and my land too. Hey is your yard posted ? No? fair game then, think i'll go for a swim in your pool and shoot some hoops in the driveway. I know farmers who don't post but watch out, one will walk the woods with a chain saw if you got a stand in his tree T-I-M-B-E-R..... The "I did not know it was your land " is met with the " But you knew it was'nt YOURS right?" Our's is posted with a name of our land management group and a po box. Non posted land is a good place to start knocking on doors,nothing else .I hunt a large farm we don't set foot on ground the farm does not own, posted or not .

I scoped my SG, years ago. For me it worked out good, a 1.75-3 I believe. Older eyes, and switched from shooting right handed to left, right eye just got weaker and left is my master eye as well. Neither switch was hard. Those sights on my BPS were nice, small and precise. Not so good for older/weaker eyes though. Today I have bi-focals, which really suck. Good luck .

Ok its the number of deer killed I'm talking about, not the population as a whole. As for dead deer they have biologists in the meat cutters and check stations recording numbers of deer killed and recording the tags used, they then see which of these known dead deer are reported. This tells them" X" % of deer are reported buy hunters as well as the totel number brought in, As for the deer population ? who knows. I see plenty all bow and most of gun, my town is over run with them, when in the '60's and '70's you hardly saw any . We got at least 100 guys on the job who hunt , it rare for anyone not to get something unless they are looking only for big racks. One firehouse I was in today had their count posted on a chaulk board. 1 guy had 1, the rest had between 2-4, I listed my 3, and after ML may add a few more.... If others want the meat . Patterns change over the years, hunting changes guys don't drive much so a gun hunter who still sits on escape routes won't see 'em like they used to unless they change. If you do what you always did and the deer are not doing what they always did well...... When I hunted by my house it was unreal, deer and BIG bucks all over. then they built a school,Lowes and shopping center in 3 woods around mine. If i go hunt the same woods today I'd say "there are no deer anymore" , BUT if i go a few miles I'll say "Holy crap" its loaded with deer, because the deer moved. QDM is big around me, we do it on the farm as well (2,000 plus acres) we kill some nice deer and see plenty, but if you sit waiting for them to run across the fields to your woods, like we did in years gone by, well you won't see much, because no one is pushing them .

Or as we say, "Job security". I've seen motorcycles in houses, lawn mowers (tons of 'em) a guy burning wood in a 55 gallon drum in his kitchen and on and on.Brother Wease thinks all the red necks are in wayne county, he should come to the ghettos of rochester.

Hum my neighbor and fellow deer hunter was the head of the math and statisics dept. of a major college in Rochester, we talked about the Nys dec,method of tracking deer takes more then once. I'll can't speak in the same language of this math prof. but he seemed to feel it was an accurate method. Why do you feel its not ? They establish a base line of known deer killed in the tens of thousands,monitor the reporting rate of those known deer killed, and extrapolate for the number of tags sold. Heck a poll of 1,000 is proven to be accurite with in a plus or minus of 4 %

Good point 7j, another thing to add in 1,991 we killed 212,633 and in 2,010 we killed 230,100 deer but we had about 100,000 more hunters in 1,991. We're killing more deer today with far fewer hunters. Someones seeing deer. I'm no great hunter ,but the last year I made tag soup was in the '80's sometime.

Good post Doc. you nailed it,its not just deer hunters that are in poor shape its most Americans.However,I'd suggest instead of buying a machine,perhaps work out hard and become one ! Anyone who dies walking up a hill or dragging a deer would have dropped shoveling the walk or driveway or any other such activity,which still is sad but largely preventable,but that takes work and most don't like that . Hey if i lived in the sticks where i hunted and could use it for IDK whatever folks in the sticks use 'em for or hunted hill sides,or had a med. issue (my one buddy has a new hip) yet he still drags them....... or was at a age i felt needed to use one sign me up ! I get it. I'd just rather see guys try to make themselves stronger and healthy. But then I flip tractor tires and hit them with sledge hammers non stop for 1/2 hour for fun.

Hum at 52 I guess I got 3 years left till I hit "old guy" Me I work out hard to stay strong for life, deer hunting happends to be a small part of life.For ME buying,storing,maintaining, buying a trailer etc. is not worth an hour or so of work a year .Thats me hey some day I may need a wheelchair as well...... so who knows. erussell, I hear ya, my friend who lives by where I hunt drives his everywhere,I'll be on stand watch him come out drive towards say the thick brush,he stops short but the deer have already blew out the other side ! Saved him a 10 minute walk though......

Where I hunted in town was really good years ago,then they built Willink Middle school ,which was a nice bedding area, then Loews came in , a ton of deer lived in that woods, then Webster Center , which while Dick's is nice displaced even more. I would have thought this would make 'my" spot even better but it went down hill. Me thinks they headed north . I still get some on cam.in my yard, just not the numbers around me as before. Although growing up off Lake rd. in the '60's and '70's seeing a deer was rare, today they don't move as you park your car and walk to the house......

Good job by another Webster man ! See the town where "Life is worth living" is also worth hunting ! One less I'll have to dodge driving around town....

At this point I have one pic. from his cell and a one sentence "story". Last time I put a guys big buck on a hunting site, he was not pleased,so not having spoke with him yet no who,what,when or where other then NY ok Western ny. He works with my wife and many years ago i worked there as well,now I see him once year or so.

i hope its here....

Trying to post a buddy's buck..... Not good at this ! Its really really nice though.

So everyone is on the same page, nuisance tags are tags that can be filled by any means any time ( at night with rifles and lights etc) DMAPS are extra doe tags issued to a landowner, one hunter can use 2 of those. Both of those combined only add to less then 5% of the whole deer take.Stories of friends,brother -in-law's Mailman heard of a farmer..... aside. The farm I hunt gets both. Over 2,000 acres and they get a whopping TWO nuisance tags.the farmer who is to busy, well farming during the season gets his meat with them in the slower summer months. The guys who hunt the farm use the DMAPS( they get 15 or so) instead of our doe tags,we don't even buy them anymore. So for us these are not extra deer taken,just deer not taken with reg, doe tags. Either way its a small number of deer taken on both state wide. Back to the topic... This AM was the first day in gun I did not see a deer !

Nice job !! I missed hunting this years Thanksgiving morning, first time I can ever remember not hunting it.

I'm liking the sled idea, carts don't work well in my farm spots, to much wet plowed ground , drainage ditches and the hard woods has been logged with lots of tops and blow downs. Bucks I grab a horn and pull, does a rope around neck and over my shoulder. I have a couple friends/farmers who offer me there atv's but I hunt more week days when they'er at work and the trip to go get them and bring them back would be just as long if not longer then dragging. Yes a large deer takes a long time to drag over muddy fields .I got the time and squats and deadlifts make up a big part of my work outs so i got the horse power too . Hey a sled thats big and no holes ,might be able to float it down some of the ditches when we got good rain the days before...... Or maybe walk 'em at gun point to the parking spot and shoot 'em there !

oh its hard to get the whole picture on way or another by a few dozen guys who may post,but my butcher is ahead of last year numbers wise. Someone's seeing them !

Fellow Webster guy here. I hunt 8H north of 5/20 not far from Toomeys Corners. For me bow and gun has been great ! 3 weeks off in bow hunted 25 times or so,killed a doe saw 5 shooters never close though... Gun for US has been better then most years. Took a buck first light opening day, a fat doe next morning, one of the guys I take with me nailed a nice 8pt. I hunt A LOT every day of gun I've seen deer. Sat. morning i took a neighbor he saw 7 deer ( 2 bucks) by 9:00. But we have AR'S in place on the land and while the 8 he saw was wide as ears he held off due to short tines. While I still hunt right now its mostly to keep an eye on the land ,take a guy here and there and see whats walking around. I can't hardly wait for ML !!! I like the warm weather, can sit for ever in jeans and a sweatshirt !! Good Luck !

When they used sharp shooters in Durand Eastman Park years ago it was not very effective, cost wise or numbers wise. They had to hire off duty cops to both shoot and close down all roads to make sure no people were there even though the park was "closed". Then they used bait piles and after a little shooting the deer stayed away from them, the deer caught on fast. I can see keeping it on the down low, as Durand had its share of protesters, but then I 'm not sure it could be done without hearings, permits and other public record type things. Can't wait to hear for sure.

Took a neighbor with me this AM. Had to place him which left me with a nearby spot thats so so. He saw 7 deer by 9:00, 2 bucks following does. All i saw was 3 doe. Last night I had a doe run in hard, soon to have a buck come down same path. 8H btw. seen a few bucks opening day( shot one). the next day a 6 running 3 doe, shot one of them as well. Had deer moving every day .

Ok reread your post if this is opptional for a reduced lic. fee ok then.But no way on Gods green earth would i spend 4 hours a night for 3 nights sitting there for less then $100 a night. So looks like I'd be getting a check to hunt ! The whole course needs to get with the times anyway and go online for most of it.Come in one night for hands on. My kid is in college in a medical program and half of that is online , a simple hunter ed should be a snap to set up online..... Now if they made a hour or so online refresher with online test for a savings of $25 bucks or so off super sportsman I might do it . But the state is looking for more money not less.

My friends out west call me a flatlander, because i tell them about my hard drags 1/2 mile or so sometimes ,mostly flat ground.Then they laugh. Rodger who lives in Montana this year shot a whitetail buck,antalope and a large bull elk. He was alone each time and the elk was 1 1/2 miles from histruck. He cut it up and packed it out.Thats how they do it. We buy atv's todrag ny whitetails 1/2 mile. Buy a pack frame and some game bags. I have a cart . Often a pain to use,blow downs, mud, plowed fields,wet ground, drainage ditches. We used them in Letchworth on steep ground, took 3 guys and we bring in a rope system. I also train hard in the gym year round 5-6 days a week . You can't make the ground flatter but you can make yourself stronger. Well Happy Thanksgiving. If you can get a atv to the deer,don't buy one find a couple local kids,get their cell numbers and pay them $25 or $50 bucks .