nyantler

I'd love to see the research where you pulled that info... I'll bet that almost every hunter is after bigger deer... but don't shoot just bigger deer...

At this point with NY hunters barely keeping up with population control of whitetails... any restrictions that could result in less participation or decreases in hunting interest... would be counter productive. Reducing the number of buck tags and /or the length of the season will light the fuse... add in AR's and the whole thing will blow up. Everyone just needs to shut up and hunt.

I do recommend a jacket that unzips in the front versus a pull over... that way you can unzip to let heat out... I like a lot of pockets so I don't have to carry a back pack... sometimes just a good fanny pack if I'm hunting back in a ways... I wear a fleece vest instead of a coat sometimes if its warmer out.

Hard to find something you won't sweat in Terry... I usually only wear poly long underwear light fleece coat and pants... boonie hat and no gloves... and I still get hot as hell.

We are making our own choices... not the choices for other animals... when we're hunting we are part of the ecosystem and not interrupting it with the intention of changing it's natural course... it is natural for a coyote to hunt and kill other animals to survive.. by actively seeking to stop that from happening is interference... for example, if a hunter were to come upon a deer being killed by coyotes and did not have a legal tag to take that animal for his own consumption, he has no right to deprive the coyotes of their natural means of getting food... nor do we have a right to kill all the coyotes for doing what mother nature intended them to do. I really do know why any of this needs explaining to any hunter that claims to care about wildlife.

Sorry.. I was just venting and used your post to get started... the subject of coyotes vs. deer is one of my biggest pet peeves... I will never understand any hunter thinking one animal is more important than the other... and that thought process runs rampant in the hunting world... all based mostly on myths and legends about how the coyote will soon eradicate the NY deer population and we need to kill them all.

What would have been so horrible about the coyotes getting a meal? Doing what mother nature has taught them to do... why is it nice work to interrupt a natural occurrence in the wild? Would it be nice work if we could completely stop predators from killing all together? Or do we just pick and choose the animals predators can consume? Or should we somehow try to train them to kill more humanly? My point is that there is no place for human emotion in nature... in fact, a sure way to screw up an ecosystem is for humans to get involved in trying to change the natural order of things... you may think you're helping.. but you're not.

I was thinking the same thing when I saw the wound on the deer's face rather than it's rear end... coyotes tend to attack from the rear in most cases... if there were a few coyotes and one got a hold of the deer's face... the others would have been all over that deer in an instant and wouldn't lose interest in a meal so quickly. One thing we know for sure... it wasn't any coyote or dog that killed the deer.

I think I would have just as much of a hard time watching coyotes starve to death because they have been interrupted in their attempt to feed themselves the way mother nature intended... I just don't get how hunters can't understand that in nature no animal's life is more important than another's... like Doc said, Mother Nature is brutal in her wildlife management... and all of it is important to the entire ecosystem... predators are part of that system for a good reason... including man, who is the deadliest of all predators.

I like the Timberland Hiker...

I wonder how many guys on the forum are actually predator hunting this time of year... I'll bet it's a lot less than the numbers of guys that complain about the coyote population... maybe not.. but I 'm betting most deer hunters don't hunt coyotes outside of deer season.

A rug would be my choice

This is probably the best part of tracking... once you have an idea of the kind of track you like to follow... (and those of us that have tracked many bucks know exactly the kind of track that produces a mature buck)... you usually know long before you see that buck whether or not you're going to shoot him. I have yet to be wrong about the size of the buck I've been tracking... we all know nothing is 100%, but there are general rules that nearly always hold true about big buck tracks... It's one of those things where if you have killed a lot of mature bucks by tracking.. you know exactly what I'm talking about.

At 100 yards I would hit a 16" round steel target dead center with a 180 gr... with the 240 gr, same sight picture and aim point... I would hit 2" from the bottom of the plate... so that would be a 6" difference in drop at 100 yards... but at 50 yards there was no difference... my rifle is a single shot H&R "Handy Rifle"...

The 240's I had were loaded by a friend... I'm not very much into the whole hand loading stuff... so not even sure what make of bullet they were... all I know is they pack a wallop!!!!

Snow camo is definitely an advantage... I've gotten so close to deer with it that both the deer and I were startled... if you're in a treestand it may not be worth the additional expense over any good camp.. but, on the ground in snow... I never wear anything else... I am sure it is the reason I've been able to get close enough to some of the deer I've taken while tracking.

Southern tier tracking is done differently than ADK tracking... deer travel and act much differently... down south there isn't really such a thing as bumping a deer too often... usually the first bump is your last... unless it is on a good size piece of state land with lots of room to hunt. I have had a couple instances where I have made some hunters days by pushing a nice buck right to them. Even helped one of the hunters track his down that he gut shot... found the deer, helped him get it out of the woods... It kind of made me feel good really.. I don't think the guy had ever seen a buck that big and certainly never expected to kill one that big. It was only about a 110 class 8-point, but to him it might as well have been the next world record... the guy's ear to ear smile and excitement was infectious... like watching a kid kill his first deer. I never really think or even care much about pushing deer to other hunters... I think I always have the notion in my head that I'm going to kill it first..

The position of the urine stain in the tracks is what determines gender... both does and bucks can "dribble"... but, like human females, does are much more careful and deliberate while peeing... the bucks can have the "pee on the toilet seat" syndrome like us male humans. This time of year the color of the urine stains are much different too, buck urine tends to be darker almost amber in color.

Yeah it can happen.. but it's very rare... and as most big buck trackers know... the tracks are only the start to determining the gender of the deer you're tracking... it's a combo of things seen while tracking that definitively identifies what you're tracking... after 4 seasons of seeing that track and following it most good trackers would have already determine that it was a doe and not a buck... the average hunter probably not.

You're talking about stride Terry... which can be a good indicator of a big deer, but many does are long bodied... more important is the stagger which is the distance left to right of the tracks... a big buck will always be bigger in the chest than a big doe... wide staggers 10" or more will be a really big bodied buck... and will always be accompanied by a big print as well.. about the size of a 30-06 shell. Heavier deer leave deeper prints too.

A big buck track will be the easiest track to assess in the woods... it is always bigger than th other tracks... the stride and stagger are always greater as well... when following the track of a big antlered buck.. you can usually get a good idea of the width of the bucks rack by the width of the trees he will not walk through... if his spread is say 18" he will only pass between trees that are wider than his rack... this is very noticeable when tracking him... because a buck inherently stays in thicker cover when traveling through the woods during hunting season, you will notice him straying briefly from the cover just to find a place where his antlers will easily pass through.

LOL.. I kind of expected as much from the biologist... I have had many conversations with NYS biologists and attend deer forums with biologists present and I am usually surprised at how little they really know about whitetails... yeah they know all the scientific terms and stats... but I have found that they know little about whitetail traits and habits. Trust me.. it is a buck urine stain... I've seen more than my share of them. Think about it... if one deer is eating pokeweed berries in a group, so are the other deer... if it was from pokeweed berries there would be stains all over from all the deer peeing red... But I suppose if I was biologist that didn't know the answer... I would have used the pokeweed save as well...

Sorry but I'm not seeing the common sense part at all... and you lost me as soon as you said.. the government gives me my freedoms... tells me you are still too young and haven't matured enough to understand where are freedoms come from...That alone is scarier than anyone with an AR... again your "common sense" is really just "Belo sense"... but you're entitled to your opinion... no matter how twisted and confusing it is...

At your age I get it... I lived it... thought it all seemed important then too... then my son got leukemia at 14... we nearly lost him to a pneumonia caused by a MRSA infection during his treatment... other parents we got to know weren't so lucky with their children... believe me... there is nothing that has to do with your work that you can't handle during work hours... for all you young guys that are burning the candle at both ends... stop and take some time to think about what is really important in this life... it isn't money, It isn't that big promotion at work, it isn't the acceptance of other people, it isn't who has the biggest or most stuff... slow down and enjoy the things and people you love... you really don't have much time to enjoy those things... I was 30 yesterday, I blinked... and now I'm 55... and now I never go anywhere or do anything without stopping somewhere along the way to smell the roses. I've learned that I have never had a bad day in my life... some are just not as good as others... when I thought I was having a bad day... I would think about those parents that lost their young child and realized my day wasn't really that bad at all.

There are two types of antlered does. One is a female deer with velvet antlers, which usually have normal female reproductive tracts and are capable of bearing fawns. The second type is female deer with polished antlers that are actually male pseudo-hermaphrodites. They have the external genitalia of a female, but male sex organs internally. Possible this could be either.. or neither... it could be a buck. Hard tellin', not knowin'...