Daveboone

I wont bother posting this years deer, already done that...but we have quite a bit of Venison which I butchered, mostly into steaks and roasts. The scraps this year went to Costanzas for hot salami, hungarian smoked sausage, cajun style stuffed sausage and bratwurst. I am lucky enough to have about sixty pounds of moose left from my 2018 hunt...primarily roasts and steaks. We have several packages of perch fillets and northern pike from the fall....gotta eat them up. I look forward all winter to getting down to Cayuga Lake for spring perch.

I would just cook it like you prefer a burger, but make sure not past medium...I prefer more to the rare, like a steak. I enjoy both deer and moose just liberally peppered and a shake of salt, and served as a steak with breakfast. Ground, it will be difficult to tell from deer...but then again, different batches and cuts of ground beef taste differently. More as a roast or steak it is easier to tell apart, more because of the heavier grain and muscle groups. Cook it hot and simple and rare to keep as close to its own flavor as possible.

I have eaten road kill (local cop let us know ) that was clean killed....head hit, etc. year round, and I agree, spring and summer deer never tasted quite the same and they were much leaner. I would wonder if it was because the best browse/mast, crops weren't matured yet? Kind of like finishing beef cattle on grain.

My mothers family was very....well lets just admit my grandmother was the first adult to hold down a real job (and then for fifty years at the Cortland Corset Factory). Historically, they always lived very close to the land...they poached year round. Not uncommon, as nobody really had jobs, and they just usually did day work...which was very common. Back then (pre-nineteen 30s) there was no game. The land was pretty much cleaned out due to illegal hunting. Deer were seldom seen, and when they were they were shot on sight. All these families could be said to be needy. The end result took decades to recover from. We have more deer now in NY then ever before. If times got hard again (not "oh, we cant go to Disney this year hard...but cupboards are bare, 1930s depression hard ) our deer herds would probably get wiped out again in the first year.

Sometimes you just gotta put the shoe on. I tend to keep with the same brands all the time for that reason...the sizing usually stays very consistent.

Been there, done that....within reason. Circumstances vary too much to give blanket coverage, because I don't cater to the parties that spend all their money on booze and pot, but figure they cant afford milk and eggs and cereal...oh, but that's a nice 2020 Nissan in the driveway.. At the same time I have worked several jobs at the same time and grown gardens to put food on my table when in need. And didn't feel I needed to drop a doe on the back forty.

Probably more accurate is to look inside the shoes you already own for the size...look in several pairs.

The device is saying 9 1/2....next, what type of sock do you wear? What size shoe do you normally wear? Have you ever worn that brand before? I would go to an online source for the boot where you can read questions/ reviews of the boot. How the boots fit and how true to size they run usually show up quite a bit...and that goes out the window if you like your boots to fit different. I normally wear 10 1/2, and in the brands I like with my wool socks (medium weight which I wear year round) my boots usually are the same unless they are rubber packs, where I go to 11 for a wool innersole. I also usually try to find the style locally so I can try them on....then if I am saving a lot of money, buy online, and make sure you are buying them from an outfit that you can return for size.

There are lots of porkies around. Usually you find them in trees, but they don't move much and when they do it is slowly, so are easy to miss. They actually are pretty amiable if you aren't bothering them. For years we used to shoot them on sight, but I leave them alone now. they are usually quite layered in fat. If you trim the fat off and parboil them, they are quite tasty on the grill barbequed...a lot like woodchuck. Come now, you have eaten woodchuck haven't you?

When Dicks first opened in Cicero, it was a great store, with good deals on fishing and hunting stuff, and the staff actually was pretty knowledgeable, I bought a number of firearms from them. My wife and I walked through the Syracuse store a couple weeks ago, and they had very little. A lot of hunting clothing was at great sale prices...we bought some stuff for her and for myself at about 20% of original price. We were real happy with them, but otherwise the chains are dead for sporting goods. Gander Outdoors has no clue what they are doing with a constantly shrinking sporting department and staff that are all airheads. They may be able to answer a question about the gun flavor of the month, but otherwise are just counter clerks. I have sixty buck gift certificate for there and cant find anything I want...the ammo I want is constantly out of stock, no reloading, clothes are overpriced......

I recently got a best of CD of JD, and was pleasantly reminded of all the great tunes he put out. He was a very dominant voice on the radio back in the seventies.

Yep, the NEF was a great little gun, but for some reason I decided I needed something different...which definetly wasn't an improvement. Wish I still had it.

This is my muzzle loader buck from 2006, down Cazenovia way. He was as swollen up from the rut as you can imagine. 12 very irregular points, five years old. I have a number of probably bigger, certainly prettier, but for me he is "The One".

my stand by deer rifle is a 1933 vintage Oberndorf 98 Mauser. Although I have done a lot of upgrading on it, the bbl and action still has the original bluing . I love hunting the slop....the wetter / rainier/ snowier the better. That gun has never had a tinge of rust to it, and I have taken it for granted...at the end of a day a quick dry down with paper towels on the enclosed porch, where it will hang until I go out that evening or the next morning. She really needs a new finish to complete her, and after almost 90 years she really deserves it but I am reluctant to change what obviously still protects her just fine. I keep thinking a phosphate finish (dark gray parkerized type) but , well, I dunno.

Right eye and shoot right handed, I don't remember ever shooting with the left closed. I have been told you can retrain your eyes from L to r with an eye patch over the L. I don't see why one couldn't be "ambidextrous".

Looks great! My taxidermist told me wintertime is when he knocks off the small game/ a lot of fish, as the deer hides/capes take longer to get back. I had a fox rug done a few years back, same return time...which I was happy with! I always hope for a bobcat, but they aren't seen very often (and aren't legal) in my area.

I love bears...(but just like how much I love whitetails, I also love to hunt them). I would love to be in on a tagging/ den check someday, but obviously it isn't the easiest thing to get involved in without direct firsthand contacts. Cool for you guys though.

Doh! or rather, dough! Beautiful boats, but far beyond my considerations right now. What I would ideally love would be a lightweight Adk Guide boat. I have seen a few models that come in around 35 lbs, which would be great...at about a hundred bucks a pound!

I used to do quite a bit of canoe camping, many trips in the ADKS. I haven't had a chance to in years. Early may before the blackflies and late September are my favorite times. My wife even enjoyed it. We still have our old Grumman battleship, but it hasn't been moved in years. I really would like to get a solo canoe that I can easily handle myself for day tripping, light overnights.

This has been proposed a number of times in the past, locally and nationally.

At forty years old, yours is barely broken in! I always loved the 1100s, and they are a great used gun deal nowadays. Unfortunately I just don't do hardly any shotgun shooting anymore, and have a surplus as it is.

We used ours to shoot mosquitos off ourselves...at about 3" range. That was the accuracy we expected out of it.

The regulation book has a written plot of the line which is pretty easy to follow.

It is awful tough to tell after its been fed on. I have had a number of carcasses go days and over a week before coyote found them and started to work on em, so if it was an injured/ car injury etc. that the coyotes got, it doesn't necessarily mean they found it quickly. I would think if the coyotes killed it they would from the neck or disemboweling...the tender weak spots, not just by starting to feed on the back quarters. I have no answers, but it would have been interesting to take a closer look at the circumstances..the story in the snow, etc. n

Keep in mind that how urbanized the water is has a lot to do...I live right near Oneida Lake, which is heavily populated around, with quite a few industires in the watershed as well as agricultural run off....In my mind I don't want to eat a lot of fish from there.... Up in the ADKs, little population, little industry or agriculture. Also, predator fish accumulate a lot more...Salmon, pike, etc. The lower on the food chain, the better. Luckily perch are pretty low on the food chain!