dbHunterNY

that'd mean the doe was bred second weekend in October. still possible but about 2% of doe are probably bred then. if it was overly drawn out it might have been a fox bawling from distress of some kind. they sound little similar but little longer and more drawn out. females will make that sound around now. they're trying to attract a mate so they'll stay in the same area for a period of time and then move on. it's breeding season for them unlike deer. sounds like a breathy hoarse scream.

i make it a point to not shoot button bucks as do others in the area. kind of frowned upon out this way for one reason or another. doesn't necessarily help your hunting as they relocate. it helps the future buck numbers for those around you though. besides I've processed them before. practically the same amount of work for a fraction of the meat. PITA if you ask me.

nice mount for the corner.

definitely accurate. deer prefer different weed/browse. it's not by itself sustaining so they seek out other concentrated food sources. I definitely have them divert travel patterns to hit spots where I've mowed once early in the year to allow the lower greener preferred weeds to take over versus faster, taller, growing weeds that would otherwise choke them out and not be preferred.

anyone link into watch the webinar last night? anyone go to an actual location? most likely Q&A content after with each DEC staff/biologist had more to discuss.

DEC to save face and function extrapolates data and does field data collection at places like deer processors. They've openly said it would be better if hunters reported their take, more so than they do now. 2% confidence factor is built into modeling sure. no model will ever be as good as more complete actual harvest records. DEC has said it would help and it's against the law not to report, so all hunters should be reporting their take. we all understand lax attitude is a precedent, but if we care anything about hunting we should be changing to report our harvest. luckily people who manage their land are most likely getting DMAPs and they're most likely the most accurately reported and recorded by DEC.

after last night I'm looking through some of this again. I agree with Doc about fines but I completely agree DEC's game department needs pull. i get things like discharge setbacks that are controlled by the legislative body. however, some things just have no place going through the legislative body every year.

not sure what arrows he was using but I noticed this too at times. Not as loud as maybe you described but enough for a deer to look back and/or up looking for the sound if they were under 20 yards. much more so with uncoated arrow shafts. also they can ice up a bit if it's really wet, cold, and sticky. there are sprays out their to treat the whiskers though that seemed to work. it was an aerosol can but I don't remember what. might have been No-Sno.

anything that would slip through the bristles with less effort would be best. blazers are thick material so their durable. lots of other good vanes out there too. if any get messed up but are still on there good, just use a hair dryer to relax and straighten them back out.

....bring sitting height shooting sticks, binos, and one of those cheap foam/therma-seat pads to sit on. otherwise there's usually nothing else to rest on or against. you'll get sick of raising your gun to check a little clump of brownish grass. the seat pad will keep you comfortable and dry. attach it right to your back belt loop.

I agree stick to high velocity 22LR rounds at least. Some rifles are finicky for accuracy with the hotter stuff like Velocitors. Anything over 1200 fps. Try for head shots. A lot of times you'll have them peaking out with only their head anyway. Like Airdale said they're tough. they can crawl back into the hole to die which isn't good for multiple reasons. mornings and evenings are best now but as the summer carries on they'll come out more often to gorge and put on the pounds before winter hibernation. you'll probably get busted and one will scurry back and dive into it's hole. just set up on the hole from a different angle and it'll probably be back out 20 or so minutes later if in the morning or evening. during the hot noon summer it might not. if it's hot and dry, after a rain shower passes through is a good time. Don't go alone. Take turns at shooting and spot for the other. great practice for fidgety youth hunters as they give you time. great trigger practice for any hunter before fall too.

I don't remember it being the "QDMA Statement Tee". my memory must be bad. I guess that's the one.

I used a WB rest and different types including the original from Carolina Archery. now I've got QAD drop aways of different models on all my bows. I've never had a problem with either or accuracy enough to affect hunting deer. I do think that the biscuit wears out and does so with any vanes. I shoot enough that it's cheaper and easier for me to replace the felt on a QAD then to replace the whisker portion of the biscuit rest and vanes on my arrows. it really comes down to whatever you can just setup and not worry about though. when game comes into range you've already got enough to think about.

hey don't listen to WNYBuckHunter, I can send you a QDMA t-shirt that had the words "measure", "success", and "antlers" right on it, if it helps ya. I won't send it if you don't wear it though. don't worry they come in grey or olive. I wouldn't send you a pink shirt or anything.

i truly agree with you, that especially here in NYS we don't need to complicate things. most of us know that no set of rules is perfect. today's society seems to be all about instant gratification. on the co-op for example we try to get maximum results as quickly as possible, but still need to have a working plan that's accepted by the community. our goal based on what hunters could accept for opportunity and improving deer herd was to let a certain percentage of 2.5 or less year old bucks live. conversations with whitetail biologists and other deer knowledgeable folks, who hunt, to keep the spread restriction if the community would allow. so we did despite being "complex". our goal though is to educate the community on basics and have them run with it themselves with less "forced" restrictions on harvest. I'd hope that we would just become a resource. that's a bit of pipe dream though. some don't care to invest time and just want to be told from a QDM perspective what is best to shoot. for youth or other first time hunters, it will simply new to them. for these folks it's just a way to keep up with any learning curve. your second paragraph was main reason for posting... I don't want anyone who reads this getting wrong impression of co-ops. as we've seen even on these forums, people can get passionate about deer hunting and won't agree on everything. some individuals just aren't as pleasant when around other people. there's several hundred directly involved with the co-op, whether it be hunters, landowners, property caretakers, all the way down to local businesses and local high school staff that allow us to use their facilities for education and public meetings. we're destined to hit some negativity speed bumps. at the end of the day that's the exception not the rule. neighbors are getting to know one another instead of the cordial wave, education is abundant, hunting is getting better, and people are thinking more about how harvest effects deer and the community. it's becoming less about what's going in MY freezer or on MY wall. that does have add "value to the perpetuation and health of hunting." these co-ops carry on, bound only by voluntary decision and a handshake, in today's world that seems harder and harder to come by.

even breast meat doesn't cook the same as a sodium stuffed butterball. smoked turkey legs or the casserole/pot pie are good. as long as you cook it with the mentality that it's a tough piece of meat it shouldn't come out too bad. you've got to slow cook them in liquid of some kind for smoked legs you're just exposing them to smoke for flavor and not crisping them at all. just straight up trying to roast a leg will leave it tough.

seeing a bunch with a few inches worth of nice bases now.

in all fairness they do indirectly produce bigger bucks by letting some survive a year or two, which is many cases more than enough to stoke hunter satisfaction. it still can lead to an antler size increase of 30+% of their potential. I think it should be clear that the context of the article is referring to a big buck as a Boone&Crockett or Pope&Young buck, which is the portion of the population that are the very biggest and probably more mature. most hunters have never even seen that caliber of buck in the wild in their lifetime. so to say it's those results or nothing is a bit unrealistic. I'm sure you also realize that subjective comroderie or economic boost aside. some are hard pressed to get the time off or justify it for a Monday opener. Especially if they're newer to hunting or not that serious. Saturday opener gets more people out in the woods the first days of the open season.

let the legs marinate in a good jerk recipe and then cook them lower and slow in a smoker with juices of your preference in the foil with it to draw up moisture. throw them in a pyrex dish with cream of chicken soup and some veggies. the put a layer of unrolled crescent rolls over the top and bake in the oven. pretty much same as a pot pie. ground before but it's not worth the work and cleaning for what you get. grandmothers seem to throw stock piled leftovers from the freezer in with them to make a soup. not exactly a soup chef though so I tend to gravitate to the other two.

man with many plans gets it done. weights only part of it. congrats on the nice bird.

I don't expect you to understand the situation, but I assure you the risk on a co-op is very real. Sure DEC isn't dragging them away with a citation or cuffs, that's not what we want. Public ridicule is definitely there. I've even had to diffuse some heated conversations where people were giving it right to the hunter who made or in one thought he made a mistake, and I'm one of the few that are the reason the restrictions were implemented. Other situations were hunters getting told by the landowner to learn what happened and if it still continues to happen they'd have to find another place to hunt, even after hunting there for years. my point isn't so much as what the state should or shouldn't do if pursuing ARs, but that hunters can and do deal with more complicated ones just fine. I'm actually shocked with how little issues we actually do have or have heard of and how quickly the public finds out about deer that didn't make the cut. your second paragraph about the deer being broadsided we heard none stop back when the spread restriction first came into play. I type this in the sincerest way, you setting up a deer so it's broadsided as much as possible is the same as the rest of us. making noises to stop a deer in all honesty happens more on TV shows than in real life. I don't expect you to notice how often you can get a look at spread, because you don't have to. there are times where a buck might not look your way, but I assure you bucks don't live their lives eyes straight forward. finally, I'm not implying we should expect an ECO to look the other way or let you off when you're clearly at fault. what I mean is ECO's are more likely to rely on the same visual inspection that lasts fractions of a second and at their discretion choose to take a another look. they don't have the time and wouldn't be stopping every vehicle busting out a tape measure. even so, honest mistakes do at times get off with warnings. happened already this spring. youth hunter with his dad turned themselves in. one shot multiple jakes. ARs don't have to be all doom and gloom. I do think that NYS DEC should be open and realistic about what they're trying to achieve with them and not just say "hey people who are hunting in areas with ARs thinking it's the hunting is better", especially with any future push to expand them. They should especially be hammering home why they just took a stance on preferring hunters pass yearling bucks. "Because DEC said so." isn't a good enough answer and so far that's all so hunters know from what I'm hearing.

....definitely, and that most effective weapon isn't allowed during the most effective time to kill a buck.

they have loads of outfitters across the state with minimum antler size requirements allowing a hunter to take a buck, completely separate from state dnr regulations. going hand in hand with that your average joe hunter (even non-resident from NY) expects to have opportunity to shoot a bigger buck there versus here because they're around. there's more people in general passing up younger deer to shoot older deer because they usually have bigger antlers. you shoot what you see. if you see yearlings running all over the place and on occasion something bigger you'll probably hold out for and shoot something bigger. if you only see on occasion yearlings because nothing is in place to protect them, then you'll probably be tempted to shoot a yearling.

AR's don't make an animal that much older. if they are they're probably over reaching. protecting completely respectable more biologically mature bucks or say putting more hunter pressure on the best bucks of a younger age class that would have the most potential. state mandated AR's based on 3 or less points on at least one side though will never have anything to do with mature bucks and the bigger antlers they most likely will carry. most of the time they're limits are protecting a portion of yearlings. in some cases there's nice 2.5 yr old bucks that are respectable enough to mount on the wall, for your average hunter to be proud of, and still think it's possible to get bigger. i'd argue that it's nothing on a scale as to effect antler size surveyed across a state as showing a huge difference. as you said this article more or less proves it. so why have it at all? I don't care or need to be in a whitetail mecca state where I have to compete with outfitters and other lease seekers willing to empty a stuffed wallet for just a place to hunt. just a small improvement will go a long way. I think simply giving the average hunter in a lesser area a better opportunity at a 2.5+ year old that meets that threshold for justifying a taxidermist bill or a chance to experience more buck behavior in the woods is a reason why. I think knowing that there will be more yearling bucks to help with the deer population stability, productivity, and health is another great reason, despite not being a focus on bigger antlers. I acknowledge in some areas it'd have little effect where many are already taking 2.5+ yr olds or many yearlings would still be allowed to harvest, seemingly more common further into western ny. At that point it's effecting your opportunity to harvest whatever walks by much less, so AR's should be less of a concern and have less of any negative effect.

the tape measure joke I probably hear a good 2 dozen times per season from different people. at first I laughed from the joke and now I laugh because I almost know when it's coming. Even the more complex antler restrictions that are in place on many co-ops in the half dozen WMUs around here aren't bad. some are more strict. most are 15" outside and 3 points on each side. it's basically the width of relaxed ears. DEC ECO's can and do use discretion. also who's to say what a fine would or could be if it were implemented on a larger scale where it could be more of a concern. If a hunter leaves a deer to rot in the woods just to not get caught I think they're most likely doing a lot more questionable stuff to be concerned about. hunters deal with them every season of the year throughout the country. I truly don't like ARs in general because it's a when all else fails approach that can have very limited results. however, when dealing with the general hunting public, it's the easiest to implement and you still get results so i'm for them if done right. I'd much rather see hunters in general voluntarily pass yearling bucks, know why doing that is a good thing, realize if that buck gets shot it's not the end of the world, and be open to some reasons someone chose not to pass it (assuming it's not just a "screw everyone else. I got mine.")