nyslowhand

Little $$ but this is what works for me on my new SUV! No lifting, other than onto the deer cart portion of the unit. Yeah, that knee-knocker 4" riser is painted orange as a reminder to myself. Okay, so I regret trading in my small p/u!! lol

... and every other house on the street had a deer hanging from a tree in the yard, either front or back yard! Not now-a-days!!! That was the social media of days gone by!

WAY back when it was Mondays & I was getting into deer hunting, my local HS was actually closed. Absenteeism was just too high to justify teaching 1/2 full classes.So, an official day off from school & hunting to boot!!!!!!!! Then you grow up & have work and family obligations, so the Saturday opener is IMHO a better option in today's world.

Amen, brother! To you young bucks that might not understand, it isn't about being lazy or looking for the easy way out! It's about using your brain in place of your old back in order to hunt further into your fading deer hunting seasons. Sad fact of life!

OMG! Dude, for real!!?!! Opening day is business as usual for the deer & their activity. After that it depends on a lot of things: local deer population, habitat where you hunt, how you hunt, pressure on surrounding properties, when you hunt (specific days), food sources, status of the rut, weather, alignment of the planets..... IMHO, ideal time to get er done is opening morning or following Tue or Wed. From what I've seen, where I've hunted, the deer get super spooky after about Thanksgiving Day morning and after. By then the Orange Army has made its' presence known!

Necessity is the mother of invention! Very neat! Us old duffers are always looking for ways around using the old "younger days" brute force scenario. LOL Anyone that has tried to load a deer up & onto the bed of a truck from the ground by themselves will appreciate this suggestion! Some other gizmos available you can purcha$e that fit into a 2" receiver if you're not into inventing, constructing or rigging.

Oh how well I know! From each of my disasters I could only hope to come out of it with a lesson learned! God knows I'm not criticizing anyone, been there & made all those mistakes myself!

^^^ fer sure, but just imagine driving down the dark road at 55+mph and there he is standing in the middle of the road!!!! Talk about deer in the headlights, we'd both have those eyes, the deer & me!

Hopefully the scope mounting issue is resolved, at least for this deer season. BUT... There is a lesson to be learned from this experience! Never, never, never put your trust in "... so i relied on dick's ..." or most other big-box sporting goods stores for any gunsmithing, archery advice, product suggestions, etc. Period!!!

LMAO, TOO funny!!!! Not as brave as you, I only upgraded to a Galaxy S5 recently. Mainly for the better camera. Can't justify a $4-600 phone & $$ monthly contract fee for what I use one for. Stick with my Tracfone (Verizon based) plan for $125/yr.

^^, me too. Actually that small discharge bag from Dick's was closer to $15, at least when I got one.

For what you want to use a blind for, they'd be perfect for an old duffer type of gun hunter. I'm a ladder stand guy, so when I bought a blind a few years ago I could never get used to not have an elevated, 360deg view of my surroundings and it definitely restricts your listening ability. At least for me as a bow hunter. That blind got left out during the SZ regular season & got crushed by a wet snow storm. Snap, crackle, pop, trashed!! I've since bought another one for foul weather sits. Does take a little natural camo or concealment and time for the deer to get acclimated to it. Do read instructions before putting it up! Those fiberglass frame rods are not indestructible. When/if they break you're sort of SOL.

I never adjust my Xbow scope using only one shot! With shooting 3 bolts you get a better idea if there might be a problem with bolts or vanes or scope or me. That's happened to me, funky vanes on used bolts! Which is kind of typical when using practice bolts. They can get buried up to the vanes and you have to remove them by grabbing the vane end of the bolt.

Been there, done that. Easy to get overly excited when you haven't been seeing much or none within shooting range AND then one pops up in front of you. What works for me is to take a deep breath, focus on the deer's body position, shooting lanes & yardage, never looking again at the body size (or rack) and only paying attention to where the shot is to be placed. If by now your shooting form isn't 2nd nature, need to think about that also.Hopefully a lesson learned, don't keep running the scenario over in your mind and kicking yourself for screwing up! If those misses haunt you and you start doubting your ability, time to stay home or take up golf. Good luck!!

OMG, you just brought back nightmares of me doing the exact same thing several years ago. Only when my bow hit the ground it was on one of the cams on a rock, OUCH!!! Only positive things that came from that experience are I no longer used the haul ropes with those damned clips and my mishap was on the very last day of bow season. Time to blow the dust off the Xbow Wooly!

Do yourself and the deer you're hunting a favor and take Saturday morning off from hunting and sight-in the new, better scope. AND... ignoring the obvious "guy thing" of putting the instructions aside for future reference, actually carefully read the scope's instructions on how to sight-in and how the BDC works at different ranges. Looks like a great scope! As already mentioned, you'll probably have less than 2hrs invested before you're up & running! FYI - A little misleading info about it on Amazon's website listing it as a variable 3-32X scope, while it's actually a 3X fixed mag and 32mm lens. Correct??

If being in the right place, at the right time isn't enough luck, then I guess a lucky hat would work!

OMG, that's depressing when you look at it like that. Countless days of nothingness, near misses and it comes down to a 30sec adrenaline filled season. For that reason I keep going out every year for the past 50 or so. Hang in there & have hope! BTW - Never consulted a witch doctor, but did hang a buck skull on a tree that I'd found and it has given me good mojo since.

^^^..... and the mfger designed each Xbow's scope multi-range dots/X-hairs with a certain bolt/BH weight combo. Variations in shots at yardages from (closer-further) the zeroing yardage will be influenced by going heavier or lighter. There's also a bit of physics involved with all the inertia created when the trigger is pulled and the ~180# of stored energy is suddenly expelled. You want most of that energy dissipated into the bolt and not completely absorbed by the Xbow itself. Lighter bolts may not do this efficiently and create undue wear to the Xbow parts. They may shoot fine, but eventually something has to give!!! Too much science, go by what your Xbow mfger suggests, if they are a reputable mfger. I went with Aluminum bolts and a 100gr BH, although sacrificing ~25FPS of advertised performance. A compromise! Bulls-eyes at 20->50yrd shots. Not that I'd shot 50yrds, simply a confidence builder knowing the X-hairs/dots are where bolt will impact target or game at varying yardages.

Dude, the older you get, the less any blood-lust is involved in your hunting. Also, simply filling tags for the sake of filling them becomes less desirable! In my pre-historic days I was doing both, not anymore! Not sure if I'm any smarter, become more of a conservationist or even lazier... just doesn't appeal to me to KILL for the sake of it!

Most will break-up your silhouette and if washed in a non-UV brightener detergent, they'll work. Hunting supplies & gear is a mutli $B industry, so you should expect a lot of sales hype or worthless innovations involved! Easy to get caught-up in the latest & greatest craze. I'm holding out with any upgrades to my camo until they perfect the Invisible Man pattern.

Just so much I want to say, but will just sit on the sidelines and wait for the train wreck to happen. Very much like the other topic that disappeared! Tis the season, every year about this time hunter frustration gets high and the threads reflect this!

^^^... and back out of the woods to change my soiled shorts!

Great time to remind all you Xbowers that took your hunter safety course decades ago, fill in & carry that foolish cert! Available online or in the 2016-17 Regs book, pg9. FYI - Here's the new hunting regs book in pdf format, in case you're interested!

This is exactly why I splurged on a more expensive Xbow. Made in Ohio and it seemed like if I needed it serviced, shipping it from NY to OH would be relatively easy & painless. Also one of the benefits of buying things from Cabelas, a great return policy. Which BTW I used on the 1st Xbow I bought several years ago for an OH hunt, a Barnett Predator. String broke after only 8-10 shots, launching a bolt to who knows where. Not to sound like a broken record, but low end $$ Xbows inherently have crappy scopes to keep the MSRP cost down. Which IMHO, can make you an unhappy camper from the beginning. Like Buckmaster7600 eluded to, if a $300 & &1000 Xbow had the same scope on them, it'd be a no-brainer! One of my pet-peeves is the lack of service available after the sale of most Xbows in NYS since we're still in our Xbow infancy stage.