Adkhunter1590

It's basically a get out of jail free card that big companies can play. They are closing 30 something stores across the country but that's about it. They are supposedly going to remain in business and not much will change or happen other than closing select under performing stores in different states. Their debt will be washed off the books so they can basically start fresh. Restructure some things and try again. I kinda doubt they will ever become as profitable as they hope, and should probably downsize much more than they plan on. Store fronts make for a lot of over head that they obviously can't handle. If they are hoping that by just closing some stores that all their problems will be answered, I think someone in that corporate board room is lying to themselves and selling a fairy tale to the rest.

I'm not really surprised by them going broke. They have a lot of store fronts that must make for a lot of overheard and no where near the amount of sales cabelas or bass pro can do. I shop there when I'm close by but I never make a special trip for gander. Their prices for their "guide gear" is on par with cabelas branded stuff but the quality isn't even close to as good as cabelas.

Depends on how well your house was built and designed. If your house was built to code standards you should be fine. I never think much of it until there's 3ft or more on the roof. That's a lot of weight. Ive never lived in a house that I truly needed to worry but it's a piece of mind thing for a lot of people. I did have to clean the roof off of my chicken coop run. The coop itself is fine but I built the run last summer with nothing more than scrap wood I had from old projects and I kinda tossed it together pretty quick. I'm gonna need to reenforce it a little this summer but it was holding 30 inches of snow with just a little sag in it. I am incredibly impressed by the pvc translucent roof panels I used for half the roof though. I was kneeling up on it to reach the snow and it bowed and crackled but never broke. I didn't expect that kinda strength.

Got an email from the power company about the upcoming storm. Says that we could experience some outages due to the severity of this storm. I've never gotten such an email from my power company before. Must be expecting this one to be a doozie...

Wunderground has me at 18inches for the house. Other reports are saying 10-16 inches. Don't want any of it. Hoping we don't get nearly the amount they are saying. Unfortunately, it stays kinda cold for another week or more so it's gonna stick around for awhile...

Was thinking the same thing! I got busy and didn't spread seed the other day but with this snow coming I'm gonna wait till it's gone. Should be good to go after that

The word "herd health" can be argued 100 different ways. Everyone's perspective of healthy is different. Older deer may have lived to those old ages because they didn't get sick with EHD or blue tongue. Two major diseases that have shown some deer with quality genetics are resistant. So yes antler size is a big point, but there's many other factors. They have CWD resistant genetic lines as well in deer farms. Letting more bucks walk and spread their genes around can be a good thing. If everyone stopped hunting (don't freak out, not saying I'd vote for that!) and we just sat back and watched for 10-15 years, there's no way you could tell me that Mother Nature wouldn't weed out the weak on its own.

Never claimed to be a herd manager or that I was looking for the best survival genes. My intentions are larger racked deer. Nothing wrong with it. I don't need to hunt for food to survive. I'm not an Inuit. Hunting is a sport to me and the Goal is large mature big racked bucks. I think you'll find any genetic talk about Whitetail's is usually all about rack size. Ever look into the huge amount of deer farmers out there? There's a entire forum for it. They are doing nothing but breeding big rack genetics. I've never heard of anyone breeding deer for anything else other than maybe certain diseases and coat colors. Mother Nature already provided what they need to survive their climates. How would anyone even try and push certain genetics such as better thicker coats and stuff? You wouldn't be able to tell such things on a live wild deer. But you can tell what kinda rack he's got from a half mile away.

Damn that first quote was crazy! Could almost build a whole new deck for that much! Lol. I agree with the no pressure washing if your doing a solid. Especially since your boards are a little jacked up to begin with. My deck is looking even worse than yours but just an example of the type of wood not to bother pressure washing. New deck boards is one of my summer projects. Have a builder coming over in a couple of hours to give me a quote on building a new garage. Once that's done with I'll move onto the decking.

I don't think anyone means the actually "health" of the deer in particular. But to have a healthy age structure is what we are after. Well balanced age classes is what makes for a healthy or good herd. I do try and take older does if I can. But sometimes it's better to take younger does because a lot of times the middle aged does are the most reproductive, and as seasoned mothers, they tend to be better at raising fawns. Now if a doe gets really up there in years, she may not reproduce as well anymore and should be shot. It's all a balancing act. And while one could argue that this doesn't work with small acreage, if everyone had the same mindset and goal it would be a lot easier to obtain our goals. It's gonna take a lot of education to bring people up to speed on a lot of this stuff that's for sure

Never said you'd ever get NY to become what Kansas or any place else is. But we have a lot of room for improvement. There's nothing negative about improving in my eyes. I can probably dig up pics of a couple 6 pointers we shot in Kansas that were 6+ years old. There are small racked deer everywhere. I seen the biggest 4 pointer of my life in Pike county Illinois. It happens. Hunter density in the areas where bucks had the potential to mature shouldn't matter if everyone of those hunters passed everything small. Yep your probably going to see a lot more smaller racked older deer, but I bet after awhile your gonna start seeing more bigger racked deer to go along with them. Let the better genetics spread. It's gonna take time no doubt about it. And it will never be as good as out west, but it can improve ALOT. I already know it works and I'm seeing it in my area already. I've talked to a decent amount of my neighbors and close by land owners who all seem to be looking for big racks and letting stuff walk. Before my father sold our camp in Otsego county, we noticed a big change in our deer the last 4 years we were there. Other than some additional logging on our property we changed nothing. The biggest difference between the last 6 or so years up there was that hunting pressure in the area had dropped off by a large amount. A few of our neighbors got old and stopped shooting 4-5 dinkers a year. We heard less shots every year. Then all of a sudden, my old man arrows a 140inch 10 point and my uncle drops a 12 pointer he said went just over 145. And to top it off my old man swears up and down he spotted a buck much bigger than his on 2 different occasions. He showed me the track and it was a massive print. My dad and uncle owned this property for 35 years and had never shot anything over 120 in that entire time. All the years I hunted there growing up I never once saw bucks chasing does or many bucks at all. The last few years we had it, I witnessed more buck activity in the day time than ever before. There's no doubt in my mind that all those bucks previously destined to die, had lived and grown up.

It's not hypocrisy to be on the other side of a debate. I just have a different outlook on this situation. Maybe living and guiding out west ruined me. I like seeing lots of big deer around. I'm a firm believer in that by letting little ones grow, the more big ones you'll eventually see. Everyone I ever met out west would never think of dropping a spike or a 3 pointer. And the point people make that they need the meat is bologna...there are broke people in every damn state, town and county and I never seen anyone out there need to drop dinks to survive. My old boss who's been a outfitter for 30 years told me a million times the foundation to a good herd of big bucks was to let em grow, simple as that. They obviously know what they are doing out there, maybe it's time NY listened.

They don't need ARs. Their residents already have the let em grow mind set. They've been doing it that way for so long now they wouldn't know any better. Well their mature bucks didn't just pop outta their mommas like that, so you tell me how do you think they have so many? They didn't just appear, and they don't have more of em than us. I'd be fine with state lands being restricted to ARs. We have a lot of state land and it could be an excellent testing ground.

If you had a much larger amount of mature bucks to choose from, it wouldn't matter if you shot a few. But the numbers need to reach that point before it could become a reality. If what your saying is true, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois etc would all be dead zones for mature deer. How could they possibly have a mature deer left in those states if that's all anyone shoots? Kansas bow season opens just as early as us, and they have a early youth/handicap and even a muzzy season to boot. Their deer population numbers are also much lower than ours. Point is, you let them grow and you'll keep seeing more and more big ones. It will take a few years, but it will happen

Yes I think better education and ability to easily access such education has absolutely made some impact. What I'm unsure of, is if it has made enough of an impact at this point in time. Here's how I kinda see it. It's like some Ny hunters are asleep at the wheel when it comes to educating themselves on how we could obtain healthier, more mature deer herds state wide. So I think maybe someone(state) needs to give them a little shake to wake up. ARs might be that shake. There's many states that have similar topography and weather that have higher quality deer herds. It CAN be done here. I'm also on the side of making ARs only last for 3-5 years to see what and if any impact it makes. I know some will say this is the state imposing on your right to choose blah blah. But come on now, we all know the state does that a million other ways in our lives. This would be at least one restriction I could understand and see a positive outcome from. Who knows...we could do ARs for 5 years and maybe after 5 years we will all be on here saying " hot damn I'm glad we sucked it up, huntin has been great this year". Just never know until we try.

I think we should try the ARs for a few years and see what happens. We can all talk until we are blue in the face but that won't prove which side of the argument is right. Won't know until we try it. Personally I think it will work. I also think because of the rise in bow hunters, social media and expectations, we will see better bucks in NY as the next few years go on. I know I've been seeing better bucks in my area and I think it has a lot to do with more guys holding off on the little ones and waiting. No one really wants to post a 3 pointer on FB. Yes yes I know we all don't care about FB or any of that crap but your only fooling yourself if you think it doesn't impact people in a big way. Regardless of what the state does or doesn't decide, I'll still be letting immature bucks walk and waiting patiently for a mature specimen. My kids will do the same when they come of age as well. All of my buddies are now holding back these days and I think the trend is really catching on. NY has the land and the ability to produce some monster deer, we just need to give our bucks a chance to get a little age on them

Damn! I'm no electrician by any means. But even I know stuff like that is a no no. Some one won the stupid award for today lol.

Thought the same on that old gun. I always offer up my trusty benelli anytime some one needs it. Of the 30 turkeys hunts I guided I've let someone use my gun prolly close to 10 times. Sometimes stuff breaks or sometimes somebody just wants to try my awesome benelli [emoji12]

Damn! That sucks! Wind is blowing pretty hard here now. My wind gauge says 42 mph gust was the fastest in the last 12 hours. Holding pretty steady in the high 20s-low 30s though

I can 2nd that. Composite is where it's at these days. In your case Biz, you'd save money since your hiring out for staining to be done. Idk about you but my decks always need a fresh coat every 3-5 years depending on which brand stain I used the first time and how much sun it gets. Just don't use anything Thompson's watersealer. Good god that stuff is junk. If you have a dog(s) you'll find out really quick what a cheap stain will do! Lol

O and if you thought about doing it yourself. The easiest way I've always found was doing it with a sprayer and someone following behind you to brush it in and catch any runs. Spraying spreads the stain a lot easier and the brushing pushes it in and gives you the better look. It's a much faster process than just trying to brush it all on. With untreated pine or similar wood, it soaks most stains up faster than you can apply it with a brush.

Damn if I lived a little closer I'd pop over on a weekend and do it. The amount of board ft I've stained over the years has gotta be incredibly high. Did 2 complete houses for my parents, 6000sqft and a 4800sq ft house. Plus my old house 2300sq ft and every gigantic deck my mother always built on their houses. My old man always used to joke I should be a painter since I somehow always ended up being the one doing the staining. With a decent pressure washer I could have your deck cleaned and stained pretty dang quick.

Backup generators are awesome. Well worth the expense. I have a 10kw generac that's runs on propane. Since we moved to this house I think it's been used 4 or 5 times. Pretty cool when the lights go out, about a second or two after the generator kicks on and everything comes back to life. It will run almost my entire house, but I don't have 2 of the 3 bedrooms hooked up to it or the 2nd bathroom. This left a couple empty breakers in the generac breaker box that I plan to use for the new garage once that's built. We haven't filled the 420LB tank in 2 years either. Still has 70% left in it. Generator fires up automatically every Thursday at 9am and runs for 10 mins then shuts down. If it fails to start a alarm goes off. Hasn't failed yet though. I'm really impressed with how little propane it uses. Granted, all the power outages were short lived and the one we had back in summer that lasted 8 hours I manually shut the generator off because we were going to bed and had no reason to run it as we needed no lights and the fridge can keep itself cold for a few hours. By the time I woke up power was back on. My next house we are going to build and it will for sure include a generac. My 3 immediate neighbors also have generacs and claim they are the best things ever

Gonna spread my seed this week after it gets cold again. Waited for the rain we got yesterday and today to pass. Didn't want the seed to get washed away on the semi frozen ground. Looks like it's gonna get cold again for a couple days then go into a thaw freeze cycle. Should be perfect timing I'm hoping!

I PM'ed you. Would love to help a youngster get his first bird!