Curmudgeon

I know a duck hunter who shot his lab but not the other way around.

I am in R4. I usually manage with DMAPs but a few winters back got nuisance permits. The R4 staff detailed exactly what was to be done with the deer. I could use the first 3 for myself or friends. After that, all had to be donated. They gave me a list of butchers. This might vary between regions. Posting and how people control deer population problems seem disconnected to me. I post to protect Christmas tree customers. The business can make it hard to kill enough deer during the season. There is a bit of a problem when your customers don't feel safe.

Grow - I think being close the camera makes the face look long. As per this photo: Now that doesn't mean it isn't a doe. I will try to get a going away shot.

Good luck. I have fantasizes like that sometimes. I just don't have the guts to do it. I move trees into their paths.

I use the stuff you put on after everything is tight. The wicking loctite. I have never had a problem removing it. I can get the exact product number from the barn if you want it.

Assume there are no apple trees. I know you can legally cut down trees to feed them. You can plant a plot. You can plant apples all over the place. But, moving apples a quarter mile is a crime, even if no one is hunting there.

To take this in another direction - hypothetically - is putting apples in front of a camera where no one hunts baiting under the law?

I'm not sure of anything. A biologist friend told me that the tiny antlers on bucks result from one of two things: the mother was bred the year she was born, or, the buck was born very late in the year. The thinking is that these bucks go into their first winter very small. If they survive, they out all their energy into growing body mass. If anyone has better information, I would like to see it. This is one of two similar deer I have been photographing.

And you think your bucks are impressive...............

I know this is a bow hunting discussion but I can't resist. Dad shot this tree and killed the buck - It speaks well for 7mm-08. He broke its front leg which penetrated the body cavity and punctured an artery. I once shot a "doe" which turned out to be a legal spike buck. Good thing I still had my buck tag. My buddy Steve shot a buck and the slug passed through it and broke the back of a doe.

Crows like to bomb anything big. Ravens often ignore bald eagles because they don't consider them dangerous. They do not like golden eagles because golden eagles eat them. This is a raven pulling a bald's tail: This is what happens to a raven if it hangs around goldens:

It doesn't compare to this deer of mine.

But not "catch and release". Well done Wooly.

I get my Dolgos before the deer so I have no idea if they eat them. I have seen comments on this forum that deer will eat any apple. Maybe, however, deer like what is sweet. They pick and choose what is ripe, and prefer the sweeter fruit. While the crab apples that hold their small fruit might not provide food for deer, they are a necessary food source for other wildlife in the winter. You may not observe anything eating them now. Check to see how many are left late in winter. Thrushes like bluebirds and robins depend on such fruit. While I haven't observed it, I suspect game birds eat them too - since they are so similar to hawthorn. Most of the deer here are not eating very high quality apples that are on the ground. They are still eating the salad of high quality grass that was not cut for second or third cutting hay. The apples they are leaving are improved varieties I have grafted onto wild trees.

Grouse here are often in hawthorn and brambles- especially brambles in the understory. They also need some poplars. Read this - http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/48393.html Where we deer hunt in the central Dacks, we usually take a few hours to hunt grouse. We always find some.

I have no knowledge about gulls but I should look into it. Yes there are concerns about vultures and crows. A recent paper found 100% of vultures tested with chronic lead exposure. Corvids - crows and ravens - are also affected but they process lead differently. Eagles and ravens eating the same diet will have different blood lead levels. The eagles will have much higher levels.

Someone just sent me a paper on lead poisoning of eagles that addresses coyote carcasses out west. This is from the abstract: "Of the bald and golden eagles with toxic lead levels, 91% (20/22) and 58% (18/31) respectively, were admitted after the end of the general deer and elk hunting seasons in December. Coyote hunting intensifies with the end of the large game hunting seasons and coyote carcasses left in the field and contaminated with lead bullet fragments become readily available food sources, exposing scavenging bald and golden eagles to high risk of acute lead poisoning."

I just got home and had to wait for one to get out of the driveway.

Habitat, habitat, habitat.................

There was a bird drumming here yesterday. Grouse aren't migratory but they must move around. I have seen somewhat dramatic changes in numbers over a short period of time - both positive and negative. Back a couple of decades ago I was inundated with grouse all of a sudden. I flushed over 50 on one hunt. That was before I was using a dog. A couple of weeks later numbers were back to normal.

Does that include his aide that just died from a gun shot to the head? So, how do you keep guns out of the hands of the mentally unstable while protecting our rights? It's a quandary.

Can I get some help with this photo?

Wow and Wow! 4 pages about a poor photo of an Amish or Mennonite trespasser. I guess it is better than 4 pages of rants about other religions.

My wife dropped hers by taking a brisk walk every morning. They wanted to put her on meds but now it is normal. Well done growy.