Curmudgeon

Read up on how to field dress a deer before you have to do it alone for the first time.

This is a problem of perception more than reality. See https://urbancoyoteresearch.com/ The big amygdala crowd always brings up these scary predator scenarios.

You never know what people might keep as pets. How are you going to kill it in Nyack anyway? You can't shoot a firearm in a village. Poison? Traps? If left be it might help with the rat problem. I haven't been to Nyack in a long time but every urban area has lots of rats. Keep your pets safe inside where they belong and they will be fine. If any area of the state needs a medium sized wild predator, it's the most urban areas. Coyotes in the metropolitan area should improve it. Overpopulated species like grey squirrel will be reduced. Song birds that can make a living there will benefit from the reduction in free-ranging cats. While the raptors that can thrive in a place like Nyack (Red-tailed Hawk, Screech Owl, Cooper's Hawk) might seem to compete directly with coyotes for small birds and rodents, the outdoor house cats probably kill much more raptor food than a coyote. Coyotes eating cats will likely provide a net increase in food for other wild predators.

Why do you loathe them? They are intelligent, beautiful and fascinating. I raise sheep and hunt deer and I like them a lot.

Belo, You forgot - sight, site, cite.

Why? It looks healthy. Nyack could use a few less cats.

I'm still getting lots of fisher photos on the carcasses. I think there are two. One is much more robust than the other. Red squirrels are really working the gut piles. These raccoons showed this week.

You couldn't find a more challenging rodent?

Irony is only dead in the politics section, not everywhere.

While selling Christmas trees yesterday, customers who were cutting their own trees kept telling me about a porcupine that was in my trees, and girdling them. When things wound down late in the day, we found it, put it in a box and moved it over the hill. I figure as slow as a porkie moves, my trees should be safe for a while. Technically, it would be legal for me to kill it but not move it 2 miles. Please don't tell DEC.

Very cool bear. It amazes me how long the gut piles are lasting now that rifle season has started. Because of the ravens, my first lasted 4 1/2 hours. The second almost a day. When I checked about a week ago, they were still mostly there. Too much food all at once. Here are some shots I got from a card swap last week. I'm hoping to get up there again today for another check.

Without any evidence, I've thought this might be the result of high levels of testosterone but fewer available does.

They do like to rub cedar trees, white and red.

A porkie would leave teeth marks. Are there moose around?

Here too. Not unusual. If there was snow, you would see detritus on it.

As Chris said, if you just want to kill them, why move them? Unless they are on your property? Vermin but no DMAP tags?

Is that a mouse directly under its feet?

Thanks for the update. I figured this was coming.

You are arrogant. I've killed 2 of the 4 does we killed so far. We have a bunch of tags remaining. I doubt we will fill them. There were 9 deer in broad daylight across the road laughing at me yesterday. There are 1400 acres surrounding me that are either off limits to hunting, or the owners do not kill does. DEC gives out plenty of extra permits to those of us with ag damage but it does little good. The does here are more wary than the bucks. I had 4 year and a half bucks in sight at one time while Xbow hunting just before rifle season, but no does. I will try to move some deer for the family next week in a slow hunt coming in and around from upwind of the bedding areas. I don't consider it a drive, just moving deer.

Things have been slow at the bone yard. I think there is so much food on the landscape that the scavengers are spread out. There have been 2 flying squirrels there. The gut piles are almost gone but it has been the usual cast of characters. Anyone who has been paying attention knows I've been pushing lead free ammo for hunting as a conservation measure to protect birds of prey. I came across a sick red-tailed hawk a few days ago. I suspect it is lead-poisoned. It stayed on the ground until I was about 30 yards away. Then it flew towards me and landed about 15 feet high. It is too mobile to catch. It may be one of the redtails I've been photographing. There are gut piles all around, and most them contain lead.

Back in the late 80s, I was hunting the edge of a swamp when I came upon a most odd creature. It was uniformly brown, had 4 legs, a horizontal back and it's head down where I couldn't see it. I was within shooting range, and had a doe and a buck tag. Given the strange way the creature was moving, I put my binoculars on it. Then it raised its head. It was one of my neighbors in carhart coveralls bending over checking muskrat traps during deer season. He's lucky it was me and not a truck-shooting idiot out there that day.

I'm as disturbed as anyone about this. One thing I had not realized is the time difference of sunset. It is 18 minutes later there than here. This is not an excuse, just an observation: the time of sunset, which spans a half hour range across the state.

As more information comes out, I find myself wondering if this idiot was challenging himself. "Could I hit at deer at 200 yards with this?". Maybe he never looks in that field except during deer season. Maybe the woman walks her dogs there daily, but during deer season waits until after dark - like my wife. Having had some neighbours lobbing bullets into my property last week, I am repeatedly amazed at how many people lose all sense when they "need" to kill a deer.

http://www.dec.ny.gov/press/111976.html

I went out this morning to check cameras, having finished filling the DMAP tags yesterday. I've got cameras on the two new gut piles on my property, and the bone yard. The bone yard was somewhat boring - repetitive raven and redtail photos - except for this cougar. It's really a bobcat but with all those NY cougar sightings, this one could be convincing. One gut pile has not been touched. I didn't even change cards. It's funny since my first crossbow gut pile lasted only 4 1/2 hours. There is a huge amount of food out there right now. The other has been very active with blue jays, a very hungry red squirrel and a few nocturnal mammals. Happy Thanksgiving to all the hunters and scavengers out there.