dbHunterNY

what's odd is it seems to be a dated sport. i'm usually the youngest in the room at 34 yrs old. seems the times are more into 3-gun stuff with ARs and tactical based competitions. too bad really. I'm learning a lot.

I share the same thoughts. I don't plan on upgrading pistols. currently shoot a Ruger Mark III hunter with a 6" barrel. benched the gun can keep them all in the slow fire 10 ring or X ring on time/rapid fire targets. I've put Herett National grips on it. I've picked up JB Weld Wood Putty form it to fit better. job for the off season though. trigger still stock. heavy but crisp enough. thinking about changing it out or having work done to it, just low on the list. many of the pistols I've seen used are now classified as an assault weapon by the SAFE Act with the placement of the magazine. I did add an UltraDot red dot on it too. I just really started shooting pistols 4 yrs ago and jumped right into it the first year. i'm sharpshooter now. I don't think i'd take it seriously enough to get past Expert. if I even make it to that average wise, not individual scores. don't know many Masters really at all, even shooting the Adirondack Foothills traveling league.

my thoughts, despite I have no idea if you're a better shot than me. I've learned a lot from shooting one-handed NRA bullseye pistol matches and shotguns at birds. always create a vertical pocket with your shoulder and put the butt stock locked in it. it's more apparent where that is if you keep that elbow up. elbow completely horizontal is too tense and uncomfortable. just a touch lower and there's a sweet spot. butt stock is pulled in snug but not so much your creating fatigue if you have to hold for more than several seconds. if the target is close enough and isn't too small you can use directional motion to steady the shot. like coming down or up the leg to your point of aim with a bow. using your muscles to move in a single direction minimizes movement in other perpendicular directions. controlled trigger squeeze and big enough (close enough) target is needed though. for further shots I like to have my forend grip a little closer to the receiver with elbow as directly below the stock as comfortable to be consistent. I've got a slogan outdoors sling that has a little stretch to it so I can get my arm in quick but still have something consistent holding the barrel down. slow or fast trigger pull isn't important. need controlled trigger squeeze. learned this with rapid course of fire during pistol matches. it should smoothly increase in pressure and straight back as possible until it breaks. bones on your finger joints are sensitive and more prone to abrupt or erratic trigger pulls. finger pad should contact it and be bottomed out in the deep spot on the curve of the trigger. match your grip to how you can best pull on the trigger, not the other way around. rifle grips are open enough to give you room to move around. don't choke the hell out of it. grip it as if your holding your wife to catch her from a fall. feet are huge too. even weight distribution on your balls and heals of your feet and split between the both of them. otherwise you unconsciously stay balanced by shifting weight to different parts of your foot. those shifts in weight translate to movement sent on up through to your gun. everything wants to be a balanced push or pull that you can repeat. that'll lead to better follow through. when the gun recoils the crosshairs will jump off target and consistently to the same spot, by no effort on your part to put them there. grip and everything should end up being all muscle memory, simply thinking about it won't be as consistent or accurately repeated. sorry for the long post. i'm an engineer and think about things way too much.

welcome! now is a great time to scout public land spots for next year. snow and sign will tell you were they hangout and when.

it's all relative I guess. here it was -8 with the sun shining at 7:30am when I was leaving for work. doesn't matter it's all cold. I'm sure there's some poor shmuck north of me anywhere around Saranac Lake or Lake Placid that's got it worse. Around here Grafton gets pretty cold though. now through weekend it's floating between -10 and -16 at night. feels like temperature is [burning money and it sucks]. lol

now many are 80+%

a guy I know that's an older gentleman has a Mathews compound of some kind. it appears old and insufficient at first glance. over time though he's upgraded things like strings obviously but the bow is still in use. he's surpassed the milestone of taking 50 deer with it. I thought that was kind of cool. my hunting bow is a '11 PSE Evo. draw isn't bad at all and it shoots nice. IBO speed is 345 fps so it's plenty fast. I wonder if it'll be my 50+ deer bow. I've always spread the deer take across multiple bows I've acquired since getting that one, just to mix things up a bit. I've slowed down with getting different bows and gotten rid of some in recent years though. I still have a few i actually hunt with. The PSE though to date that I've kept has 2 bucks and at least 1 doe I've taken with it. just a really cool idea developing history of 50+ deer with something that was once considered just another piece of equipment.

happy bday! He tried recruiting me from the Realtree forums a long time ago. Glad he did.

I nominate his son Andrew. He should do it to honor his old man.

I used to have a favorite shop(s) that were actually all owned by the same entity/guy. spent thousands at those shops. I was a recognized customer too that everyone knew. just this past fall though the owner trashed my whole family on social media just for local political gain. so now I don't step foot in any of his stores and won't. ever. there's some great smaller local mom and pop shops that I go to now that could use the business. they support local clubs, including the local QDMA branch i'm involved in. even for here near the NY capitol region it's crazy how many options I have. they're Kelly's Guns and Ammo (Granville), Whitney's Hunting Supply (Granville), Calamity Jane's (Hudson Falls), Beecroft's (Schaghticoke), Smitty's (Schaghticoke), Marty's Sporting Goods (Bennington, VT), Lost Target Shooting Supplies (Bennington, VT). probably other's in the area too.

slight dilemma with you being on the other side of the state. still i'll get extra beer and booze just in case. lol

pictures say it all. no disappointment there. atta boy TC.

I got a new smoker for Christmas. probably staying home and cooking up ribs, pork loin, venison, and/or something else good. we'll invite some family and friends with other kids so we all don't have to figure out the babysitter situation. it's in the works right now but nothing set in stone.

haha... my life would end. that stuff happens in the garage and not in the house. done and mounted is the only time they come in the house. even then one has to have double drop tines to make it to the living room, per my wife.

I don't necessarily have a problem with season length. I do think that it does help the deer that during a time when deer need to do what deer do, we have the most efficient weapon in our hands to make them hit the dirt and quick order. that's also probably the time when they're the most pressured and stressed. I also understand there'd be some push back changing it though. most hunters are using guns hunting the regular season, and you'd effectively be taking away from them the "prime time" to hunt.

I don't think he hunts within the blue line, no.

looks great. i'm going to do a euro with the buck from this year. my heads still frozen. I really need to get on that.

Now I really feel left out and should buy a crossbow. lol

I've thought about getting one as a backup. forever I've used my dad's he kept from back when he had a general store. it's a smaller commercial Hobart. Thing's probably 40 years old and still runs great. I feel like a grinder is one of those things you save to send more and buy once.

I'm one of a few that manage/coordinate efforts for a QDM Co-op in eastern NY that's made up of over 90 landowners. We've dropped a couple landowners and added more. right now we're probably just over 11,600 contiguous acres. Every deer shot on the co-op has to be checked in at a self check station. one of few things that's done there is the lower jawbone is removed, a numbered stainless steel tag is zip tied to it, and it's placed in a wire cage to dry. all the jawbones are later aged by me and some others who have a good handle on it. one being a whitetail biologist for the QDMA, who happens to live out this way. We also have a DEC wildlife tech or at times the head big game biologist look at them when doing their rounds to collect data. of those, ones of interest we usually send out the teeth to Matson's lab. I'm the Vice President of the local QDMA branch too, so I've had access to other jawbones from other QDM co-ops or groups in our four county area. they provide us with doe age structure and other info that help us with the herd management portion of our QDM goals as a group.

I have the luxury of sending in sending in teeth for confirmation and seeing at least 125 jawbones every year. Still i admit it can be subjective. That said you can get damn close. When someone is off it's usually because they aren't taking things step by step and then looking at more than just one characteristic and not the overall picture to see if all the characteristics you're seeing agree with one another. Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

I think I'll resurrect the jawbone aging thread. I've got a few years (few hundred+) worth of jawbones to post up.

@NYBowhunter I missed this on here through the computer but it showed up thru my tapatalk app on my phone. Lawd and others have the idea that said I don't have confidence in every DEC biologist to age jawbones. some are very good. you won't find any whitetail with upper incisors. canines like what Wooly posted aren't common but present in enough deer they're out there. nothing to do with aging though, as well as the upper jaw. aging is based on tooth replacement and wear is done solely with the bottom jawbone. with the useful pictures posted, angles, and fact there's fluid and dark stuff built up on the last molar it's hard to really get the best view of it. Here's what I get from it: - First it has all six teeth in the back on a side. Meaning it's an adult doe at least 1.5 years old. (Each tooth has multiple sections or cusps making it look like there's more than six.) - 3rd premolar (3rd tooth back) has 2 cusps not 3. also the stained look of the 1st and 2nd seem to be it's replaced adult teeth and they haven't been just replaced. Meaning, it's at least 2.5 yrs old. - First and second molars (4th and 5th tooth back) all have dentine width wider than the enamel. Meaning it's at least 4.5 yrs old. - I notice an amount of bluntness of these teeth. also lack of wear on the first tooth. Also the last cusp on the last molar is worn a certain amount and sloping toward the cheek. Meaning it's still at least 4.5 years old. - I can't get the best look at the last tooth back to say if it's 5.5 yrs old or not. from what I can see i'm leaning hard toward no but not 100% - The 4th tooth back (1st molar and oldest tooth in any deer) isn't worn flat so much that the infundibulum (interstitial space between the cusps of the tooth) is gone. so I can't put it at older than 5.5 yrs old. ....so my thoughts are this deer is likely to be 4.5 yrs old and a slight possibility it's 5.5 yrs old. Sorry to hear your dad tossed them.

if my deer is hanging it's with the hide on. I doubt much water weight is lost. even so based on how much drains and drips from the hanging deer over the course of a week or more isn't much for weight. everyone who's going to weigh their deer does so promptly so it's a moot point. otherwise, i'd think you'd get more loss from trimming if the hide was off.

It's going to take a lot for me to ditch my '11 PSE Evo