dbHunterNY

Dick's carries a variety of ladder. I don't really use them much. the cheap ones are horrible with the small platform. like what was said you're spending like twice as much to get a more comfortable one.

the club isn't that far from here. I know some good people that are a part of that club. You don't get all the details but I suppose they dumped them were they shouldn't have. It's to the club is going to get a bad rep for it. Next time I'm at my club i'll have to see if anyone knows about it down there. I'm sure people are doing damage control.

Yup

yea I just wanted to post about the neighbors and I meeting with a QDMA biologist. lol the hunting here is uneventful / sucks, nobody wants to shoot a doe despite we've got a ton, crops and woods are getting stripped, and we've got fawns with spots in late August to September. I'm thinking and it was verified those guidelines will solve the problems we have. part of this is getting buck doe ratios as close to 1:1 as possible and having a good mix of bucks from different age classes. an approach to this is to protect younger bucks and shoot older ones. from there it pretty much spun of the axle and caused the thread to careened into a canyon. reason being the common misconception that the original intention is to produce mature, consequently big, bucks. as NYAntler put it, it's really only a by-product and not the original intention. adding to this misconception is the fact that Four Seasons Whitetails (Mike) has used some of these guidelines to produce (really keep healthy) big racked bucks. similarly others have used SOME of these guidelines to help allow the most free range trophy racks to grow with a TDM approach. now throw in the p*ssing match of what's better QDMA or deer farms. bottom line is means to the end goals can be the same but the end goals are different. now lock my darn thread or someone give Doc some dang popcorn. while we're at it WNYbuckhunter can hope FSW's bucks start dieing from antler infections and he starts loosing assets equivalent to Dodge pickups. Culvercreek can then tell him how he's blowing smoke up his own butt by thinking NYS will give him for a natural disaster affecting his business at whatever cost he thinks it did. HAHA

I'm sure you wouldn't hold a conversation with a brain dead person. lol so I'm sure he's not. to say you use all their thoughts and ways to grow 250" bucks is a lie or you're not a great deer farmer. with a deer farm you control the genetics, just like a cattle farm/breeder would. QDMA standards would tell you a 3.5 year old buck is completely fine regardless of antler size. if you have a buck that produces a dink set of antlers as a trophy hunter or deer farmer/breeder like yourself you don't want him around. you may use many of the standards QDMA rolls with to keep your herd healthy. without health you can't have big antlers. if you don't think so tell that to the owners of Sudden Impact. You don't use all of what QDMA practices, because growing trophy deer and practicing what QDMA preaches aren't completely the same. I hope you've got solid walls or a double fence around your property. if CWD gets so bad it wipes out that much deer there's a good enough chance an infected one could rub noses with your deer through the fence. not to mention mother nature messing with your fence. your deer wouldn't have anywhere to go being in the fence and you'd be screwed. you can't isolate infected deer because by the time you'd know they were it'd be too late. heck if I were you I'd lose sleep every night. CWD is like our cows with pink eye and us with no meds.

you know it's not fair comparing the two. most deer farmers own land and probably not most of the QDMA members own property, so by default they are allowed to do more. money talks.... it's much more likely for me to be a QDMA member than to be a high fence hunter just based on the difference in cost of a membership versus the thousands for a hunt each year. just saying the logic isn't all there.

you know you should've stopped this a long time ago and he's only saying things to get a rise out of you. second question is rhetorical. deer on a farm and deer in the wild are different. for the purpose of the farm you've got no reason to do anything for wild deer. if you're a hunter with deep pockets, that wants a guaranteed class buck on the ground and doesn't mind an experience different from that in the wild, he's got an opportunity for you. there are many out there but for most it isn't the choice they seek. we both no this.

I've got standard Leupold rings and weaver style base on my Prohunter. Not sure what height but the bell of my Nikon Omega scope just misses the rear iron sight. Yup I use blue loc-tite too.

that's the best archery related investment you've probably ever made. I've still got mine. It stops everything cold, whether it's the fastest compounds or crossbows. I've never had an arrow stick through the other side period. more you shoot it the easier the arrows are to pull out. It's really not a struggle either. I've shot layered foam, fused layered foam, solid foam, and pretty much any other target out there and it's by far the most durable. I've shot 450 vegas rounds over and over without moving anything and it still takes the abuse. that's fat arrows hitting the same three spots 15 times each round. I think you'll be happy and if not i'll take it off your hands!

well at least someone reading these forums will get about the first 4 pages worth of good discussion.

I went even further backwards and ended up getting a recurve. not sure if I know of anyone that has one. they're over a grand to get one brand new.

i think you all should start a hunting co-op together and then have someone film it for a reality TV show. lol

lol.... I'm new to QDMA not so much to QDM, TDM, and whatever concepts. I've surrounded myself with the stuff. it's something I like. all I know is what was presented by the QDMA biologist Matt Ross was very helpful and would solve many problems we have in this immediate area of NY. The Upper Hudson River Valley branch and Otter Creek Co-op members who were there seem to be following sound QDM practices with the best intentions of helping out the hunting, deer, and habitat in general around here. Seem like great people with intentions that match what I'm looking for. Hopefully the next meeting gets here quick so I can post the outcome.

never asked this but would you get the regular black MK25 for the Desert MK25?

generally speaking, in this area, land owners and hunters have no sense of ownership to responsibilities as a hunter, land steward, and conservationist. there's tunnel vision with no intention to help out everyone and everything as a whole. if someone shoots a deer it's "i don't know what you're doing, but I got my deer I'm good." the way things came across in the meeting was if i pull the trigger or release this arrow, how will this affect the deer herd, the habitat, or how the hunting is next year. there's also a sense of community. you're forced to get to know your neighbors and talk to them before, during, and after the season.

nice... yea I haven't hunted that far south of Albany. just really within 4J or east.

what town was that taken in? nice looking mount it seems.

FYI the shop was Oakwood Trading Post, 8 minutes down the road from my house. It all happened, despite reports the raffle was cancelled due to a "bad image". Media tried make it look like the church screwed up and was back pedaling, but it was nothing of the sort. Practically everyone around here commend them for doing it. Not to mention Cuomo probably choked on his cereal for a bit the morning he probably heard about it.

....yea and where are Senators Serrano and Adams from................. NYC. The fact that I understand where they're coming from in dealing with guns, but they don't understand where most of upstate NY are coming from makes them both ass-hats.

Thanks.

I agree that the by-product of getting bigger bucks is what gets many in the door for the meeting or to listen. There was a big racked buck, among other things, on most of the slides in the presentation we saw. However, none of the topics of discussion were about big racked bucks. All topics you mentioned of carrying capacity, population, and ratio where talked about in the probably standard QDMA slide show and/or definitely standard QDMA video we watched. For that reason I got to think any QDMA speaker would discuss that stuff, despite not every deer management speaker would.

yea they said they've got all kinds of charts and material to teach us, plus a guy there with one of the existing co-ops teaches can teach a class on aging too. I've studied up on aging deer. I've read a lot, looked at pictures, and took quizzes. I've practiced on harvested deer that were aged by teeth after by both cementum and jaw bone, both in the field and otherwise. Our time span of dropping fawns being so large around here makes things a little muddy with comparing earlier versus later born as they get to 2.5yrs old. I can agree with what you're saying though.

we were told in the meeting that it's not about shooting the heaviest doe or the oldest biggest buck. the biologist said that Trophy Deer Management is when you're only thinking about the bucks and that QDM isn't that. many go into QDM is a trophy deer management mindset and then things don't work when they look at the goals of QMD. by-product is just what it is and it's ok to want that. it's just not the focus of your goals. that's what we were told.

I my limited experience with QDMA I have to agree with Culvercreek, at this meeting deer density and effects on habitat were the primary focus. in this area there is a lot of deer due to a maintained mindset of don't kill a single doe. they discussed how important it was to take an approximate percentage of doe to maintain proper density or achieve it. also they showed pictures of habitat that has been effected so a landowner could compare finds to his/her woods so to speak. also I don't think it's easy to age a deer on the hoof, that was my point. it can't be expected of somebody to do it when they're just getting into this. I feel deer are just like people some doe or some bucks respectively the same age could have varying physical characteristics that would subjectively put them into different age classes. In general though certain characteristics used for aging hold true. So I don't think it's too hard to the point I'd rule out it's use in the future as a management tool for our group... if the group even gets started. it's just going to take time and practice for anyone involved.

I'm sure we would get that problem. you've got to start somewhere though and the learning curve is much quicker with ARs then aging deer. The biologist said he's had countless deer shown to him that were mature bucks when in fact they were 1.5 or 2.5 years old. I don't think it's too hard to judge age on the hoof, but it's asking a lot in the beginning I feel. with the overall goal in mind I see no reason a buck like that couldn't be discussed with other members of the co-op and determined to be an exception (before it's taken, as to not stir the pot of course).