Dr Ignominious Death

This morning saw two sets of yellow eyes about 40 yards away from my headlamp at 0400 walking to my stand. I've seen the same squirrel and chipmunk chase each other endlessly, saw a fox, an owl but no deer. That's 3 sits in this spot without seeing anything. Packing it in, heading home and going to try a friend's land tomorrow. Stay safe everyone.

Like anything in Science or medicine, you should just go to the source...i.e scientific journals. Some of the highest impact journals I can think of are Advances in Physics, American Journal of Physics, Annals of Physics etc. I have a degree in Microbiology and took several years of physics but still. most of these articles are way over my head, however every now and then the "letter to the editor" section has some "dumbed down" section that is easier to follow. If you are not proficient at at least a college level of chemistry and physics, good luck understanding anything about string theory......just try youtube.

I grew up playing video games and occasionally still find time to play a few video games with friends, albeit rarely. I've been toying with the idea of getting an XBOX 1 or PS4 a few years down the road so I can introduce my sons to another of my hobbies ( and I still love dealing out head-shots in HALO). Growing up I was an xbox fan and was leaning towards an XBOX 1. However, I read an article today that Bill Gates, native of my home state, donated 1 million dollars to the anti-gun community. Well, as much as I love xbox and was a loyal customer, I have to say that I no longer feel I can support Microsoft. I respect the Gates family and all the great things they do with their foundation, but I'm disappointed in his actions. I used to think people boycotting business for the actions of hands-off owners was a wasted-exercise, but now my attitude seems to be changing. Do you think boycotting a company because of personal, unrelated decisions of CEOs,presidents and/or owners is justified? For 400$, I'll probably end up using the money to purchase an AR, when I move back West. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/26/the-nra-pissed-off-the-wrong-nerd-genius.html

Thanks Bubba! I called the regional DEC office, they no longer accept bowhunter Ed course from the online source, however, the person I spoke to told me she would send me all the materials in the mail tomorrow. She said that the manual is not available online, fyi for anyone else in the same predicament. Again, thanks for the input.

Hey guys, Q: Does anyone have any recommendations for a shop that will help me get situated with my new compound bow (mechanics, measurements, arrows length, best grip and mechanics) near the Rochester area? I'm willing to drive for good quality help. I haven't used a bow since boy scouts and before I learn any bad habits, I would like to try and learn the "right" way to do things. I have searched places on the internet and they really don't have any helpful reviews. Some of the Pro shop threads have had some good info, ie which to avoid (E Henrietta), I just wanted to tap the brain trust first. Thanks for any recommendations. Derek

Hey all, Question: Does anyone know where I can access the "Today's Bowhunter" manual and test online? I signed up for the 2 part Bowhunter's Educations Class; home study and field day, unfortunatenly I had a family emergency that prevented me from attending the "class day" where we pick up the "Todays' Bowhunter" manual and I suppose question sheet that needs to be done prior to the field day. I spoke with a person representing the class day on the phone who said I could access the manual online from the DEC website and if I finished it and made it to the field day, I would still be able to get my certificate. Well I have searched throughout much of the internet and have not been able to find a copy of the manual for free, I found several for sale, which I would hate to pay and wait for delivery if there are free copies in cyberspace. Does anyone have any suggestions of where I may be able to pick up the necessary resources (online or in person) so I can get that done before the course? (Truth of it all is I just took my anesthesia boards and my wife is due with our second child in 4 days, and I'm currently working a week of nights...covering obstetrics, heaven forbid my wife comes in...so I have little time and energy to spend chasing this stuff down.) I appreciate all your help. Thanks. Derek

More like brother-cousins.

Okay, now military medicine is a different game altogether, especially if you plan to go career and stay in the military as a doctor. The overhead is way, way less, less hours, patients are usually low ranked so you get the "respect". I worked at Madigan Army base for about a year during medical school, all the physicians and residents seemed pretty happy, worked way few hours. They don't make nearly as much as private, but they have decent retirement and great benefits to make up for it. One of my co-residents is doing the Navy things and he is pretty happy about it. I have a wife and kid and it just didn't work with my plans to be in the military for medicine, but it could be a great way to secure a career in medicine and serve the greatest country on Earth.

You sure you want to go to medical school? I'm an anesthesiology resident at U of R right now and I wish someone had almost forced me to reconsider my career choice. Honestly, if I could go back, I would go to dental school..way easier, done in 4 years and get to start paying off the student loans right away instead of deferring them through residency and work way less once in practice. I enjoy anesthesiology and will likely do additional training, but medicine isn't what it used to be...pay is going down, tons and tons of regulation (the worst part), lack of patient respect, work tons of hours, lots of call, malpractice is insanely expensive...all things I didn't consider entirely when applying for medical school. Cost me about 15,000 just to apply for medical school and residency and fly to the interviews. MCAT, STEP 1,2,3 and Board testing-another 5000$ Not to mention you don't get to start saving for retirement until you are in your late 30s. Make sure you know what you are getting into, and not just shadowing a doctor and seeing the "cool stuff", look at all the "bleeping" paperwork, dealing with difficult patients, licensing and regulations. I thought medicine was what I would "love to do", now, what's most important to me is the little free time I have. Seriously, 5 years undergraduate degree in a insanely difficult major, 4 years medical school and 5 years residency...that's a good chunk of your life where most of your life is work and studying....I do find time to go hunting though. Good luck with your decision, I'm sure you can find people who are less discouraging than me about the future of medicine.

Is anyone aware of the online course we need to take (I took the gun hunters ed prior to 2014) to be able to hunt with crossbows? I've looked on the DEC website and couldn't find anything. Thanks.

Thanks for the info everyone.

A well placed eye shot with a .22 lr is my recommendation. Cheap? Yes. Requires skill? yep Make hunting brown bears more exciting? Probably won't live to tell about it. Second to that, why not a 270 over a .06?

"Fishtailing"- I knew there was probably a technical term. Here are my specs: carbon Piledriver shaft 20", 100g field point tips. Target is a foam/styrofoam target. First shots were cheap stock arrows where the fishtailing was much more consistent and worrisome. The tail would be left of the of the point of impact. I switched to the pile driver arrows with field points and felt they would still fishtail left but not to the same degree. Below is a photo of the piledriver shots at 30 yards. Looking at the picture, the fishtailing doesn't seem as apparent so I may either be hallucinating the degree of fishtailing because I was initially concerned for a possible bow defect and there is no actual fishtailing with the higher quality arrows OR the picture angle is deceptive. Thanks.

I sighted in my new crossbow this past week at 20 and 30 yards. What I noticed is that my shot placement is pretty accurate and I'm satisfied with my scope settings but one thing I noticed is that my bolts seem to enter the target at a slight angle; the bolts are sticking into the target at about a 20 degree angle from my direct line of fire. What is the implication of this angle, if any? Does this slow the speed of the arrow or have any bearing on it's ability to take down a deer? If anyone has experience with this, is my bow limb off center? (I measured the limb and it was as close as possible to even). Am I using my cocking device inappropriately and pulling the two sides unevenly? Thanks for any input. This may be completely normal but my concern is I am loosing FPS and killing power. Thanks.

Spent 4 days in 9H. First day saw one buck (no shot) and a fawn. Tons of hunters and tons of shots. Next few days were wicked windy and nothing was moving. this morning I walked deep into the woods and spooked a deer 20 feet away at 530 AM. Sat still and saw nothing the rest of the morning. It was very cold, 21 degrees and I lost hope and left the area around 10AM.

First words of second sentence..."public land". I went back yesterday, extremely windy. Saw only a handful of hunters, met a couple of them who didn't see any movement, myself included. Again this morning some D-bag decided to cross the middle of the field where I was hunting. I suppose that's the bane of hunting public land.

Good thread here. A couple questions for a newbie hunter if you don't mind. 1) What does "bumper hard and soft mass" mean? 2) button buck? Does this mean the buck has just small knobs on it's head which are the beginning of antlers but is shot as it looks like a doe due to the lack of the antlers? 3) Don't want to hijack the thread but if someone wouldn't mind PMing me or a brief post if you have an annswer. Should I be hunting the fields or woods right now. I'm doing buck and doe bleets when I"m sitting, is it too early for this and am I just scaring the deer off? Thanks. I hunted public land in Wyoming county (first deer hunt ever) and saw a buck and doe (unsafe shot on buck and passed on doe) on opening day in the field and nothing since. It's been very windy up there and on opening day heard about 80 shots and saw tons of orange. Yesterday and today only 5-7 shots and a handful of hunters. I've seen deer in the fields driving in in the middle of the night, but nothing in on "huntable" land during legal hours. My one friend says it's the wind that is the cause for few deer sightings. I spoke with two other hunters yesterday who also stated they saw nothing move all day. I'm pissed up passed on the doe and didn't take the shot on the buck. Oh well.

Yesterday was my first deer hunt ever! I set up my blind at the edge of the field at 2AM and sat quietly thinking every sound was a deer and just waiting for the sun to come up. As I hunt public land, I put up some orange streamers at the obvious entrance to the field thinking that would alert other hunters that a hunter was already in this field..boy was I wrong. Just at sunrise, 3 guys start walking the field perimeter toward me, they get about 30 yrds away, see my blind and decide to walk to the other end of the field about 250 yrds away and sit right in my firing lane (rifles are permitted here). I had already started calling and about 25 minutes after sunrise a small doe came running into the field. I thought it was a little small so I passed, while admiring my first shootable deer through my scope, I catch movement at my periphery and a buck (which I would like to think somehow came due to my poor calling) was running right at me. I crapped my pants with excitement and put my scope on him. Unfortunately, all I could see was his head as he was at the top of a small incline and behind him would be the entrance to the field where other hunters were deciding to come. To my dismay I had to pass on the shot and the buck fled about 5 seconds later. I stayed in my blind the rest of the day and those 3 idiots stayed on the opposite side of the field coming and going to the field edge the entire day. I know they saw me cause I got out of my blind in all my glorious orange and they were pointing at me, but they decided to stay exactly where I thought most of the deer would have entered the field. Nearing sunset, another pair of hunters decide to enter the field and walk straight toward my blind. I sat quietly and watched until they were about 20 feet from my ground blind before they noticed (despite me wearing orange and having orange tags in the bushes on either side of my blind. After they saw me they walked 10 feet through some shrubs and just stayed there the rest of the evening. So my first day I had 15 minutes of excitement thinking I called in a "shootable" buck, but had 10 or so hours of misery secondary to inconsiderate and amateur (more than myself) hunters who ruined my hardwork and planning. Oh yeah, did I mention that they were UPWIND from me and they would have been shooting without a backstop where I was downwind and shooting with a backstop. I'm heading out Mon-Wednesday and hopefully I don't become disenchanted by all the idiots out there that made my experience rather frustrating. Good luck to everyone else.

What kind of law do you want to practice if any at all? My brother was a big time lawyer for a big Chicago firm (corporate law) making a lot of money, made partner, but hated his job, traveled all the time, never saw his family. He quit that job and moved back home to Washington state, joined a Seattle firm, but works from SW washington near his entire family. He practices a similar type of law, but now works a few blocks form home, usually goes to work in jeans and polo shirt and travels occasionally, adjusting for cost-of-living he may actually be doing better. Essentially, law is great because if you're lucky you can find a niche that fits your lifestyle and wants and still make a decent income. I am a healthcare professional myself. I'm 32 and am in my 2nd year of medical residency as an anesthesiologist. Just to recap...that's 4 years of high school, 5 years of undergraduate (microbiology major, chemistry minor, spanish minor), 4 years of medical school (50k per year in loans) and now 5 years of residency (100hrs/week + weekends, holidays for about 50k salary), I deal with tons of crap (I pronounced a 17yr old and 19yr old dead this week alone), healthcare reimbursement is going down, my loans are stacking up...not what I envisioned when I started down this path. However, there are many technical jobs in healthcare that require "little" schooling or training and if you want to work weekends/holidays/overtime, there are plenty of opportunities so you can make some pretty good money. Surgical scrub techs-about 1 year of training, radiation techs (not sure the training), cardiovascular perfusionists (not sure about the training). All these guys make pretty good money, for not terribly stressful jobs. I'm trying to guide my wayward younger brother to one of these paths since he made poor decisions and got crappy grades in undergrad. Like others before me, I don't love my job, but I like it enough that it WILL afford me to take care of my family and enjoy the time that I'm not at work. Good luck.

I appreciate all the input. I prefer to shoot legally as opposed to "unenforced" regulation as it only takes one warden having a bad day to turn my day bad as well. Someone mentioned the Alabama swamps, is it legal to shoot there? I'm okay with driving an hour or so to shoot. I'll look into some of these clubs as well but if anyone knows the true law behind "promiscuous shooting" that would be golden. FYI, every time I go camping or hiking, I take a garbage bag with me and pick up trash on thew way out, something my dad taught his sons on all our camping/fishing trips growing up.

Please forgive the ignorance if this has been posted before. I'm looking to sight-in for the season and perhaps take my better half plinking occasionally. A week ago I took a few of my guns, targets, rest, etc out to a WMA and saw a sign that read "No promiscuous shooting". I was really confused that a place that would allow hunting, does not allowing target shooting. Coming from out west, we could drive out to most any rural place and shoot as much as we wanted. So I packed my crap back into my car and drove home without firing a single shot. So now my dilemma is finding a place where I can legally target shoot. I've looked online for public shooting ranges and most seem to be private, requiring attending as a guest of a member, etc. I'm looking for a public range somewhere around Rochester, where I can buy time to shoot (50 to 300 yards or anything in between). I would appreciate any input or suggestions anyone has. I moved here a year ago and have asked a lot of my colleagues if they own any land large enough to allow me to shoot and unfortunately, most are yuppy liberals who believe guns are "satan's tools" or are "city" dwellers like myself (not by choice). Unfortunately, I work 70-80 hrs a week and most weekends and really have not had the motivation to go door to door asking for shooting rights in the little time I have free, let alone hunting rights on private land. I'm not requesting permission from anyone on the site, just stating I have considered that option. However, if someone WAS willing to allow me to shoot (target, not hunt) on their land, I would be just as happy to pay you or most any other form of compensation. Thanks for the help. Have a good season. Derek

Hey, I'm a resident anesthesiologist and I have seen many knee scopes done. Several things: laparoscopy is scoping through the abdomen, arthroscopy is scoping a joint (clarification for above). Now, having a knee scope can entail many things, from just debridement of some joint tissue or bone spurs, etc all the way to tendon repair, therefore post-operative pain and rehabilitation varies. In terms of pain management, there are several options: some surgeons request a peripheral nerve block which is done by an anesthesiologist (usually) and is for post-operative pain and sometimes a means of providing anesthesia. I have done many blocks and have never had a patient tell me they regret getting a nerve block. However, some surgeons do not want nerve blocks (for whatever reason) and sometimes it depends on the extent of the surgery which dictates the efficacy of the block. Most surgeons will send you home with a prescription for an opioid aka narcotic (however narcotic is a legal term for an opioid an is misused in medicine but is more recognizable to the lay person), usually vicodin, lortab, percocet, etc. One thing I tell people is to take them as soon as you start to feel pain, as if you wait until your pain is 6+/10, then you are playing catch-up and will likely be uncomfortable for a while. If you don't need an opioid, tylenol works better than most people give it credit. Some surgeons are okay with patients taking NSAIDs afterwards, some not...so check. In terms of recovery/rehab, from what I have seen, most patients will start physical therapy a week or so after the surgery. Some people recover quickly and some not so, as you can imagine. This is by no means a comprehensive attempt to address your questions, but hopefully a good place to start. Luck in surgery!

The other day I was driving home from church and noticed a dead 180ish lbs deer just off the road. I performed a very brief drive-by assessment and felt the deer had probably been killed sometime the night prior. I started hunting about a year ago, prior to that roadkill was just roadkill; filthy, diseased, worm-ridden carcasses. I do admit once to stopping on a remote highway and plucking some feathers from a dead pheasant to tie some flies, but I would never have consider taking a roadkill animal home for food. However, now if I can claim to be a novice hunter, when I saw this deer I thought; "What a waste of perfectly good meat; it would be good practice for learning how to clean a deer and crap, church was way too long and I'm starving." So my questions are thus: 1) anyone willing to confess and share details about utilization of road kill? 2) Is it legal to take roadkill and process it? 3) Is it totally white trash for me to have those thoughts? (This is almost like a confessional for me). I never did go back to get the deer, I'm kind of wishing I had, not because we are desperate for food, but rather for the reasons stated above. Thanks all.

Why are physicists never constipated? They can work anything out with a pencil.

selfishness