Five Seasons

Hmmm hadn't thought about the shotgun. I was going to use the 30-06 as my only other rifle is a .22. What sort of distances am I looking at? You said stand? I was thinking ground like turkey no? Obviously just toying with this without expectations. What times are good? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

A little bored this week. Saw dicks has a foxpro wildfire on sale for $150 and thought it might be fun. There's a bunch of yotes on our property and just looking for low stress hunting. Any good videos, tips or articles anyone can share? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

stubby you appear to be in the minority here so I wont keep going on... but bow season being too easy is quite the claim. any pics of some 130+ class bucks you've taken during these easy and warm seasons of past?

oh I see. So it was the carcass from a processed deer? At least it's not as bad as the deer with just the head cut off of just the back straps removed.

what makes you think it was a hunter killed deer?

You not being a bowhunter and pushing for 1 long season of weapons has EVERYTHING to do with it. If you were a bowhunter in NY you would know why. I've never hunted Nebraska, but I imagine there are large stretches of flat land with a lot less pressure than NY. Besides parts of the north and southern tier, NY is hunter stacked on hunter. I hunt a small section of 8F where just about every track of woods has a hunter in it. The deer are plenty during bow and all but disappear during gun.

I didn't realize what it really took to hunt deer till I moved 16 hours south to a foreign woods with a different type of deer. I no longer had the stands that were hung by dad and uncles in the perfect spot on nice private land. I no longer understood the patterns and the food sources. I was able to take everything I had learned about hunting and started from scratch on highly pressured public land. The doe I took first that year is still probably my most prized take. I took a nice 9 later in the season that I turned into a euro, but that doe meant more. I meant I could do this whole "deer hunting" thing from scratch by myself using the knowledge I had gained over the years. We all know guys that consistently shoot nice deer and there is no knocking of their ability to close the loop when the opportunity arises, but if you really want to test yourself, go hunt some public land.

and as someone who hunted Mississippi for 2 years, the longer seasons down south are not just because they're "hunter friendly", the rut in northern MS hit at Christmas. Can you imagine that? Christmas was the best week to be in the woods, and the further south you went the later it got. The longer seasons are almost exclusively due to the breeding cycle and the fact that the winters are much shorter/harsher. It's almost impossible to kill a deer in October unless you're hunting food plots.

I don't remember saying "the" longest. I said one of. iirc you're not a bowhunter, but the last thing any bowhunter wants is the orange army during what is one of the most magical times of the year.

longer? are you kidding me? New York already has one of the longest gun seasons in the country. If anything it should be shorter. If you can't get it done from 10/1 to 12/20 you're doing it wrong. I for one am looking forward to some hiking, cross country skinning and I know a lot of snowmobilers have trails that just opened up. You CAN have too much of a good thing.

passing small bucks and possibly eating tag soup doesn't make you a bad hunter. In recent years I've started shooting more doe then ever before because of this. In my opinion I learn something from every deer and confidence builds. I had a rough patch with some silly mistakes and the best cure was a nice doe. If you go all year or several years without deciding to take a shot at a deer you might end up making that rookie mistake on a nice shooter buck, especially with archery.

I don't hunt anything until Turkey, but enjoy scouting/hiking when there's a thaw in January and February. For the foreseeable future I'm going to enjoy sleeping in again and getting a long list of things I've been putting off done lol.

our plumber charged $100. I felt like that was money well spent because when we noticed it clogging every fall it was typically after a heavy rain and no fun. I imagine replacing the pipe and some of the tile would have easily been a few grand. Like I said we moved, but I left the info with the buyer so they knew what to do... which is what the seller had done with us lol.

holy crap a 170lb doe? I shot a 124lb doe this year dressed that was one of the biggest in generations of hunters (albeit most of my family doesn't shoot doe). but that's an absolute donkey. My opinion is any doe over 120 is big. over 130 is very big. of course also dependent on the area and feed.

i had a house in Alden that was on a river. My drain and sump ran constantly. Once I had a float stick on the older pump and caught it quickly but it didn't take long for the water to start to seep through the cracks. Bought a new pump with a backup battery system. In addition we had root problems with our drain and outlet pipe. A plumber had to come in once a year and root it out, said really I needed to fix the issues with the tile around the house and install a new pvc pipe to keep the roots out or he would have to keep coming back. That basically my pump should hardly ever run if my tile wasn't infested with roots. That was 3 houses ago and somebody else problem now.

Wolc, your response surprises me. It takes the humans actions and decision into account and includes nothing about praying and letting Jesus guide your shot.

I could be posting a totally different tune if I arrowed one of several close calls on bucks this year. But what surprised me was the lack of young bucks and doe on my property. I probably gun hunted more than usual not having anything in the freezer but even my father agreed that siting was down. Specifically on my place, they left a lot of standing corn. Planted more than usual and didn't cut till after gun opened. Coupled with some really tough weather weekends/holidays and some new additional pressure we've realized that just all the conditions were against us. My dad shot a beautiful 10 and I have a mature doe in the freezer but a lot of our pics are now almost exclusively at night. We have tons of doe, but they seem to know where no hunting is allowed. I'm not sure how the DEC can ever fix this issue and people will still bitch when they whack them with their cars... but when you have over hunting on the land that's accessible and no hunting on land that isn't... we end up exactly with the issues we have right now.

an old non-PC pep-talk my dad always gave me before parting ways for a hunt was "shoot em the guts so you know they're dead". It's a good joke if you have a sense of humor.

the weapon is important too. A broahead cuts, and there are arteries in the leg. But good luck getting an arrow at a running/wounded deer after you jump it. A slug doesn't cut, it rips. So there's a better chance it'll live, but your follow-up shot if jumped is much easier.

shot a mature buck 2 years ago that headed for a steep narrow creek (trickling water) about 20 yards from where I shot him. he went down the 6' steep embankment and back up the other side flopped over and died. All within about 20 seconds. What does that mean? lol

some of these myths sadden me that they're still in use. The agree with them all though and have experienced a lot of them, in particular the no blood. I arrowed a small 8 several years back that was cornering towards me. the exit was out the guts and he plugged up almost instantly. It was 3 hours of grid searching for me to find him a few hundred yards from the shot. If I had to nit-pick one it'd be the single lung hit. I know it's not an instant kill or one that drops a deer close to where it was shot, but I haven't heard of many surviving it. Maybe hard to track and not recovered but I would venture any that ever did recover from it were pretty minor. This guys seems to know what he's talking about so I wouldn't put up a big fight though. just my .02.

this discussion has shifted into the same argument hunters who take headshots use. "more meat". Neither shot is illegal and arguments can be made that both could be ethical. At the end of the day, most hunters will agree that a shot right behind the shoulder is the one to take. And for good reason. You will never win the a55hole shot or head shot argument with hunters.

when I bought my rifle I did a bunch of research on loads. Overall consensus seems to be that you should shoot what your gun likes and every gun, even the same make/model is different. I then found that most recommend a 165 or preferably 180 grain bullet for black bear, and as countless posters have mentioned, a 150 being just fine for white tails. I didn't want to deal with different loads and accuracy for the 2 types of animals I wanted to hunt and the 165 was my choice, and really not because 95% of my use will be deer, but because I will make a trip once a year for bear until I kill one haha. I bought a box of expensivish hornady superformance sst 165's. I sighted in my gun at 100 and was shooting 2 to 3" groups off a rest not a sled. I'm a perfectionist, but honestly for my guns intended use, I was happy with that. I didn't feel a need to try another round. If you want to see the result, you check out the carnage in the harvest thread.

I can't remember where I learned that. I think it has something to do with fowling of the primer or perhaps the powder? A small amount certainly wont hurt it and is fine for storage. I just know I've never read any manufacturer that recommends the traditional hoppes solvents and oils for muzzleloaders.

chef, I never said you specificially. there's a few posts like this in this thread