nyslowhand

Sure, an early primitive only ML season using any issued ML tag. IRC, this was discussed decades ago, but never materialized. Wish I could bookmark this thread for future reference. If you read between the lines a lot of members are showing their true colors - my season, my deer.

I'm on my way Grampy, crack one open!

Renoir with a chainsaw for a brush. Yet, another very neat carving!

Aren't a majority of your calls really due to poor shot placement, rather than any specific broadhead or bullet wgt/style? Assuming you walk a grey line being called solely to retrieve a deer and trying not to give lectures about how or what to shoot them with!?! Be hard for me to bite my tongue!

Yeah, maybe... Depends on where the cam is located on typical travel routes or browse areas. Directly on a path, yeah they notice the cam, whether mounted hi or low. Off the path, pointed along the path & s/u 6-7' off the ground, not so noticeable. Okay, so initially a deer might get spooked by smells, lights or flash, JMO they'll get use to them. They might notice cam lights/sounds, but will eventually ignore them. Don't really believe it's the cam itself that's being seen. Just from my experience! Last 8-10 cams I've had have the field scan option, Not once have I used this, already get enough photos/vids of nothing-ness. Rather rely on something triggering the cam than it going off at timed intervals regardless of what's around!

The anti-Xbow crowd won't admit it, but this is what the whole heated debate is about! Sad! Also agree 200%, every Xbow license should require the bow hunter's safety course. Like NOMAD mentioned, it's a #s game for lobbying! The antis (NYBH) have 2X as many members as the pro-Xbow supporters (NYCC). BUT .. when polls are taken support for full Xbow inclusion is unanimous across the entire spectrum of NYS hunters! Making it appear as the squeaky wheel gets the most attention! Not to mention when this issue is put into the hands of the legislators, it gets little attention like all the proposed bills the past several years. Apologize, didn't really intend on adding fuel to the Xbow debate or revive another heated thread!!! Simply trying to add some facts and insight!

Wish this issue was up to the DEC's discretion!!! It's become an annual legislative "hot potato" item. Seems like the logical thing to do would be propose a bill allowing the DEC to decide if/when/how Xbows would be allowed. Be a great "pass the buck" opportunity for the legislators, which I'm convinced they'd jump at the chance to not do something!

People who road hunters are lazy, A-holes! DEC needs to change the set-back for firing a long gun from any public road, exc private. IRC, all they need to be is "off" the road & not shoot across one. Problem is they have absolutely no consideration for private property and will trespass at will! Nor do they take into consideration what's behind or around the deer they're shooting at.

After Googling this chef, well...

Don't take the bait...!

Every piece of paradise comes with some negative aspects. If you get to the ideal weather location, typically heat/humidity, hurricanes &/or tornadoes are common place. JMO, rather watch the pile of snow I've pushed off to the side of my driveway melt than view my home as a pile of ruble after a severe weather event. Lot of places that have lower tax rates and more lenient gun laws, may not have a lot of job opportunities. Lot of pieces of heaven have artificially inflated cost of living expenses. After thinking about the Pacific coast, this demon reared its' ugly face. Probably a lot lower on your negative side of the moving matrix, some places have creepy, crawly, slithering creature that want to inject venom into you. Or maybe moving to a place where you're not the top predator. If you're retired with a decent nest egg, it becomes a lot simpler decision. You're generally older and family are either gone or spread out across the country anyways. If you're still a working stiff, the decision of whether to more &/or to where become a lot more complicated. Of course, depending on your skill set or education. Believe other members that have posted have already brought up some of the trade-off scenarios. I've also gone thru these fits of frustration and threatened to move many times in the past ~50yrs. Yet, here I am. My Garden of Eden eludes me! What's the next PowerBall payout??

IRC, when reporting a harvest online the DEC already has your tag #s you purchased displayed. Maybe not..!?! All this reporting is for is so the DEC can compile data for the annual harvest report. With only ~45% of hunter actually reporting harvests, you're in the majority at least!! Meaning- you'd have a lot of common jailhouse conversations if every un-reported harvest were prosecuted. JMO, you'd have to have a very bad reputation or being snitched upon to have the DEC actually come knocking on your door. I've taken lots of deer to a local processor and the DEC does routinely visit & inspect the tags vs what's been dropped off. In my haste, guess 1-2X I never got around to officially report those deer. Not once has the DEC knocked at my door! Were talking about the NYS DEC, not the FBI, CIA, NSA...

WHO would do that head mount? If that were brought into my shop, probably tell the customer to take it back home, sawz-all the decomposing buck's rack off, let it dry out and then we'll see what I can do.... Would make a very unique mount fer sure!!

Lot of "what ifs" floating around trying to make a grey area issue more B&W... I don't care how big a buck is, if it appears to have been shot & looks like it's struggling to survive.. I'm shooting it and waiting for the other (1st shot) hunter to come along and claim it. JMO, I'd rather put a deer out of its misery and shorten any retrieval by the hunter who encountered it first. AND.. I'd expect the same in return. There's NO deer worth starting a fight over when both individuals have weapons! Not to mention initialing bad blood between any adjacent property hunters &/or neighbors! TOO ethical or logical an opinion?

... or hand-to-hand combat to the finish!

Your Dad of the Year coffee mug is in the mail!!!!!!!!!! Good for you and the little guy!

Everyone gets a "blind squirrel" buck, occasionally! A lot of those monster bucks profiled on BP's Big Buck TV shows and their traveling tractor trailer display are literally walked upon and killed. Little skill, simply a good shot and it's entered into the record books. There is NO "one way fits all" hunting style. Lots of hunters stalk deer with long bows, others change locations frequently using a climber, some sit in a sole tree stand, some go out their backdoor and hunt while others venture miles into the woods, sitting up in a tree or a ground blind - all are successful to some degree!!! Never too late to learn, grasshopper! Lots of hunting advice on the internet, TV shows, books, Whitetail Biologist and of course the free stuff offered here. The key is to sift thru all of it and figure out what can or will apply to your style of hunting, hunting area and habits of deer there! Hard part is to determine what's useful or some you just have to call BS on.... Best advice I can offer is to paid attention to what's going on in the area you hunt in all seasons and use that info for the following deer season(s). Keep a detailed journal if it'll help. Always good thought provoking reading for the winter months. Oh yeah, the biggest detail about being successful I almost forgot - perseverance! Being in the right place at the right time!

From what I understand.. rubs are territorial "posted" signs warning other bucks to stay out. I've seem clusters of rubs which I'm assuming are out of frustration and mainly near the doe's seasonal travel routes to/from food sources. Sort of done while waiting to ambush a doe!?! You might even see early Sept/Oct rubs on small-ish saplings, which again I'm assuming is to remove the itchy velvet. I also have seen rubs in same general area from year to year, on different trees/saplings. Don't think there is much science basis or predictability behind where & why rubs occur where they do. All I know is when I see rubs, there's been a buck there! There are some "rule of thumb" things you can get from a rub to determine guess the bucks size.. tree diameter, height of rub, aggressiveness & possibly even direction of travel. BTW - The 5 mile journey of a rutting buck is distance away from his core are & NOT distance traveled. I get a lot of May to Sept photos/vids of bucks. Cams are great entertainment and inventory tools. Nice to sit in the stand in Oct/Nov with the hope one of these local BBs will show up. Big BUT here... after velvet comes off my photos of bucks also becomes... sparse and if at all during the night time. At this time BBs disperse and s/u home-bases away from the typical summertime sighting spots. Some may stay close-by, but still separated by some distance from their brothers. This is when the BB hunting becomes unpredictable with the who/what/when/where/why.

OMFG, you folks still remember the exact date, location and situation...? Mine had to have been in the early 1960s while hunting after school. Shot it with a single shot 20ga my dad insisted I only use and the buck (??) might have barely qualified to fill a buck tag. Fast forward a decade or so, I bought several 12ga auto & pump shotguns, mainly out of spite for my dad's insistence of using a single shot gun. Okay, so I eventually figured out why my dad did what he'd done, after a few years of sling lead, carrying pockets full of slugs and emptying shotguns on a deer made me realize the obvious. Didn't we all think we were smarter than our dads??

Almost all of what GRAMPY mentioned is great advice. With deer being driven by only three instincts, survival, food and breeding, you'd think it'd be easy to pattern their movements. Right...!?! You can evaluate topo or aerial maps, do your due diligence with scouting, have numerous trail cams operating .. and.. it'll still take you a few years to figure out what's going on around the area you hunt. I could offer advice per the terrain, food sources & seasonal deer travel around where I hunt, but it may not be pertinent to your area!! Then there's the big wild card, trying to figure out mature bucks so you can catch them in daylight when their main instinct during Nov is breeding. They will do dumb-a$$ things at some point during the rut and hopefully it'll be in front of the stand/blind that you're sitting in! And it may not even be one you've seen on your cams previously. Whitetail biological fact - mature bucks can travel as much as 5 miles seeking does during the rut! What you're seeing with nocturnal movement of BBs starts about late Sept when the velvet comes off, every year! Bachelor groups break-up, they get elusive, don't move around much outside their small core area mainly in the darkness and they are no longer buddies with other BBs. This doesn't apply to younger bucks since they are fairly new to the breeding game! When a majority of the does go into estrous, these studs move around more freely, going from one doe to the next. They do attempt to maintain their secure nocturnal pattern, but they are thinking with their small (breeding) head at that time and may show-up at any time. LOL. This is when, eventually all your hard work pays off for this <1 minute/1 time encounter.

Really unique rack and a memorable harvest! If you're happy, we're happy for you & "F" the score! He's your biggest buck to date, so isn't that the score that counts! Great, unique buck!

click, click = dead battery, alternator not recharging it, bad wire or connection draining battery, starter solenoid engaging whir, whir = starter thump, thump = pounding your head for a solution ka ching, ka ching = replacing parts that might not need to be Take vehicle to a shop specializing in auto electronics. I did a few years ago, guy found problem in 3-4min with a voltmeter, no diag charge, gave him $20, about a $15 part, installed it myself and problem solved. No more musical car problems!

Maybe a few years ago a manual rope cocker could give uneven string tension. The gripper gizmos that attach to the string have been improved so that isn't an issue. The mechanical, ratcheting cockers do apply a more evenly distributed force on each side of the string. JMO, either method with today's tech improvements are pretty negligible with newer Xbows. This could be/have been an issue using a manual rope cocker for Bionic...? Just semantics - When you refer to a rope cocker, it's the manual type you carry in your pocket. Never heard anyone refer to a ratcheting or mechanical cocker using the word rope. Still understand what you're saying anyways!!!

My "pair" will be under at least 4X layers of clothing, so a selfie would do them justice. Oh, you mean my weapon!?! Savage 111 in 270 and still a virgin.

Agree with most everyone, except Biz. He mentioned two separate scenarios, longer bow distances and steep inclines. A RF with angle compensation would mainly be helpful in the later situation. Any doubts, find a website that will solve (trig) right angle problems. Only tricky part is to figure out just how high you are off the ground within a couple of feet when you're ready to release an arrow to plug that into the trig solver.