Arrow Flinger

Outlaw Josey Wales The original Rambo First Blood movie The Green Mile Shawshank Redemption

Yep, and now he's legalizing pot so he can get all the stoners to vote for him!

Now you can put that dollar towards the extra its gonna cost you to buy ammo!

Time to get the rifle out!!

Its gonna be a real PITA to have to drive to PA and stockpile ammo!

I see the same thing with my son. He's 19, goes to college, and works part time. When he has free time he doesn't really want to go out in the woods with me. He took a week off in November to go bowhunting with me and that was all the deer hunting he did. He likes it but just not as much as me I guess. I hear from my wife all the time "he's not like you, he don't think about hunting 24/7". Unfortunately, I don't think there are many young hunters out there that do nowadays. I think to a lot of the younger hunters, hunting will be something they do when they have nothing else going on instead of something they live for doing.

I didn't have this problem this year and I wish I did. During gun season around me it seemed like guys didn't even try to sit. Opening day I actually had a guy slowly sneaking through the woods while talking on his cell phone! I heard him coming long before I saw him. After opening day it seemed everyone just slept in and put drives on the rest of the day. Of course, this was on public land so that's what you get. It seems as the years go on I see many more "bad" hunters with "bad" hunting technique on public land. These are probably the first guys that get booted from private property so they just gravitate to the public land.

I don't know if there will really be more hunters in the woods in the future so it might not be that big of a problem. I guess it all boils down to people can hunt the way they want, who am I to say otherwise. Just because many think the deer farming is ridiculous, don't mean you don't have the right to do it. Maybe I'm just entering that crotchety old man stage of life!

Do you really believe that? One square mile is 640 acres. You don't think in the future someone could lease a couple thousand acres up and control the deer herd? If they have a lot of does on that much property the bucks wont have to leave it during the rut. Sure, the occaisional buck might wander off and get shot but not many. Just do a little looking around the internet and see what its like in Illinois and Iowa for example. People have no problems leasing thousands of acres there. If you have enough $$$ you can do it here. And just say you kill deer, theres nothing to be ashamed of!

Exactly! If you need a new bow today, you're not gonna go out and get a 20 year old relic, you're gonna try to buy as new as you can afford which would then put you in the category of having the latest and greatest in some peoples eyes. I don't have as much of a problem with new equipment( although some of it is over the top) my main problem is with the way these guys raise and "harvest" deer like they are livestock and the land being all leased up in the future.

Theres a big difference between what you do and what is on TV. You don't control enough property to manipulate the deer herd as to what deer are shot and which ones are not. The deer you hunt are still "wild" because they get harassed by people/hunters when they leave your property. The ones on TV don't ever have a bad experience with people until they are fully mature which makes them almost tame. They are not afraid of people because they have no reason to be. I see nothing wrong with what you do. ....except harvest

I can see, in the future, land in the Finger Lakes Region and Western NY being all leased up by clubs and outfitters. Look at Illinois and Ohio for example. Its nearly impossible to get permission to hunt private land in those and many other "Big Buck" states because its all leased up by outfitters and hunting clubs. Where is the next outfitter surge gonna be? Wouldn't surprise me if its here in NY. Look at some of the whopper bucks taken in Regions 8 & 9 the past few years. You cant tell me that these guys cant come here and lease a ton of land to "grow" a herd of monster bucks.

I'm all for shooting big bucks, and passing small ones in order to do so, but what you see on TV touted as fair chase is hardly that in my book. These guys basically raise deer like cattle. They aren't afraid of people because they never experienced a negative intereaction with people until they are 5.5 years old and then shot. They are all given names like pets, fed the best deer feed available to fatten up and grow big racks and then shot.. Its just getting ridiculous! If someone wants to start hunting and watched the outdoor channel they would expect to see a big buck behind every tree. I agree about all the land getting leased up too. Where I live, a lot of it is being leased up. I drive hours to hunt public land when theres big bucks right behind my house! Unfortunately, I don't own the land and the neighbor that does is a bowhunter. Its next to impossible to get permission on private land around here. Its either leased, owned by anti hunters or owned by someone that hunts it already. In the future, if you don't own it, you'll have to lease it and that's unfortunate.

I made a post on another thread which included a paragraph from the book Bowhunting Whitetails the Eberhart Way by John & Chris Eberhart. It summed up the way they feel about the direction Whitetail hunting is going and their concerns about it. Its something I agree 100% with and is one of the reasons I cant watch a hunting show for 5 minutes without wanting to chuck my remote at the TV. A couple of guys here requested that I start a thread on it so here it is. The Eberharts wrote: We are concerned with the trend toward growing and manipulating Whitetails. These magnificent animals are being degraded more and more by management practices that take much of the challenge, excitement, and mystery out of Bowhunting. Euphisms such as "extreme management" or even "harvest" are code for growing and continued privatization of animals that should never be tamed. We are hunters, which is why we kill our game, not harvest it. Grossly exaggerated hunting ease in the name of entertainment is misleading for young hunters and the non hunting public, and its dangerous for the future of Bowhunting. Don't be fooled by monster bucks crossing the screens. Mature bucks in pressured areas rarely reach those proportions, and a mature buck is a real trophy no matter the antler size. Bringing Whitetail hunting into the technological age and keeping hunting fair chase and real are big challenges facing the hunting community for decades to come. Hopefully our children and grand children will be able to experience hunting truly wild and wary Whitetails as we have. Discuss

I was reading a book the other day that I got for Christmas titled Bowhunting Whitetails the Eberhart Way by John & Chris Eberhart. On the last pages they summed up, spot on, the way I've been feeling about the ethical & moral direction our beloved sport is going. It was good to finally see someone come out and say it in print! They wrote: We are concerned with the trend toward growing and manipulating whitetails. These magnificent animals are being degraded more and more by management practices that take much of the challenge,excitement, and mystery out of bowhunting. Euphisms such as "extreme management" or even "harvest" are code for growing and continued privatization of animals that should never be tamed. We are hunters, which is why we kill our game, not harvest it. Grossly exaggerated hunting ease in the name of entertainment is misleading for young hunters and the non-hunting public, and it is dangerous for the future of bowhunting. Don't be fooled by monster bucks crossing the screens.Mature bucks in pressured areas rarely reach those proportions, and a mature buck is a real trophy no matter the antler size. Bringing whitetail hunting into the technological age and keeping hunting fair chase and real are big challenges facing the hunting community for decades to come. Hopefully our children and grand children will be able to experience hunting truly wild and wary whitetails as we have.

No, not my pic. Just my screen saver. If it were my pic, I wouldn't post it on the internet or I'd probably have breakfast guests in my treestand!

Just made this one my screen saver. I love this picture for some reason!

Awesome thread! Now I wish I had more field behind my house instead of solid woods. My woods starts about 50 yards from my house. Don't think they would come that close nor do I really want them to with my dog around.

I've fished that lake a few times. Great fishing in there! I'd really like to know how to get the Walleyes through the ice. I've got a lot of Perch through the ice there but not any Walleye

I was thinking the same thing. People voted him in because they wanted free universal healthcare and instead we got this crap which costs more than your old insurance!

OK... heres mine. Not exactly a writer but here goes I grew up in Central NY. As long as I can remember, I've been hooked on Archery and especially Bowhunting Whitetails.I started shooting Bow when I was about 8 years old. I ended up shooting in the Empire State Games and also the Jr. Olympics. I started tagging along with my father during bow season before I was old enough to hunt and was instantly hooked! I became a Whitetail hunting info sponge. I read and watched anything I could get my hands on about deer and hunting them. In high school, I was the only kid that brought hunting magazines to school to read during study hall and to this day I still read up on hunting( reading the book by Bill Vale as we speak). I would say my love for bowhunting Whitetails is an obsession, I think about it every day. The only time I stay out of the woods is during the summer but that's when I'm shooting my bow the most. I shot my first buck with a bow the 2nd day I ever went hunting when I was 14, a 6 point. I shot my first trophy buck in 1995 at age 22 and have since been lucky enough to shoot a few more. I've also messed up on my fair share! They have a way of doing that to you. I still live to bowhunt whitetails but I now get a lot of enjoyment out of helping others I know get a deer, especially my son who just started bowhunting a few years ago. I also get a lot of enjoyment getting it done on public land, even though some of the others you run into can be frustrating at times! I hope to have a lot more years of bowhunting left in me and will enjoy it till the day I die. I already cant wait till Oct 1

I just did some of my own research on this. Violent crimes have actually been on a downward trend every year since the 90's. The safe act did absolutely nothing to change that trend. Nothing!!!! There was not a dramatic decrease in violent crimes this year, if there was a decrease at all.

Exactly!!! Mums the word!

I'd like to see the stats on gun crimes committed this year compared to last year. After all, wasn't that the point...to reduce gun related crimes? None of these published reports include those stats for some reason. Could it be because it didn't reduce gun crimes like it was intended? I know that almost every day you hear about another thug in Syracuse getting shot!

Who's gonna find out?