Curmudgeon

I've got kids and grandkids and I agree with him.

No, its dangerous out there. Oh, that reminds of a Bill Morrissey song of the same name. He has some troubling things to say about hunters from New Jersey.

Wow! I hope all the young, new hunters are reading every word. This is educational.

Some of us have actual experience dealing with wild animals. They would have left with a minor amount of harassment. You sir are a reactionary coward.

Yeah, it's happened but this guy wouldn't let his 1 year old kid wander his suburban yard without supervision. There was no threat.

The one time I had a similar situation, some human scent caused the coyote to move her pups within a day. What you did was unethical, illegal and most likely unnecessary. You are the one who should leave the forum, not Rob. Fear rules!

I hope you don't leave. The ethical people here need your support.

Hey Virgil, Good news. There are woodies. They've been on the pond, and Mrs. C found some checking out cavities in the old sugarbush up the hill. You'll have ducks in the fall. In the 3rd shot with the hoodies, note the kingfisher on the branch. Then there is a shot where it hit the water in front of the camera.

Atlatls are really hard. Your arm and whole upper body are in motion. And, no one, I mean NO ONE, should be hunting when "wined up". Where's Belo When a grammarian is needed.

That stuff sure repels me, and I'm not nearly as sensitive as a deer.

I pulled the camera on the bone yard today. It had been a while since I checked it. Not much was happening. I did find a couple of interesting shots. A fox is looking longingly at the skeleton of one of last fall's does. Also, what is almost certainly a barred owl.

In my youth, I would eat 6 trout a day while in the back country - little brookies.

Certainly, that would depend on the size of the trout.

These are from the pond in the yard, less than 100 feet from the house. No wood ducks yet. The pond freezes many nights. The woodies might be a bit late. Hooded mergansers have been around for a while. I always like the territorial conflict. The hoodies in conflict in the one shot had a heron in the background.

My Dad has hunts the same stand he has used for 30 years. He is 400 feet from my south property line. We used to hunt that property too. However, a few years back, the owner gave a family from Cobleskill permission to hunt it. We used to put 1 or 2 guys in there. Now, there are 7 people hunting 50 acres of forest and cover on opening weekend of the regular season. Deer traffic patterns have dramatically changed. A great stand that resulted in many deer killed is now dead on opening day. The deer are around but all traffic from the south is cut off by a high density of hunters, and lots shooting, often multiple shots. We don't go in there until after they clear out after the opener.

Took a walk 2 days ago and saw over 30 without leaving the property.

Did you notice that the decline is almost entirely anterless deer?

While I have trouble respecting someone who calls shooting livestock in a paddock "hunting", and who considers eagles and hawks "vermin", I'll indulge the deer farmer for a few minutes. You are terribly concerned with 4 people in NYS who have licenses to possess road-killed deer for scavenger research. Those deer used by those 4 licensees can not compare to the number of deer that are put on the landscape by coyote hunters. Every road-kill picked up by my town, and by county crews in the western half of this county, goes to coyote hunters employed by those governments. State DOT does cooperate with us. Otherwise, we would get none. The local state crew stage deer nearby for me. If I was not using these carcasses, they would be hauled 2 or 3 times as far for disposal, in a place where they would not be buried until spring. So, our use of these deer limits the movement of carcasses, as opposed to worsening it. They have been hauling deer there for over a month, since my season ended. Extrapolate the number of deer used as bait by coyote hunters in this part of Otsego County to the whole state and you have a situation that is a couple of orders of magnitude larger that what I do. Then consider that ECOs - if my local guy is at all representative - don't give a hoot about the coyote hunters using the deer as bait. Have you ever heard of a coyote hunter ticketed for possession of a road-kill? There is no enforcement. If you are really concerned, and not just reacting to me and my values, you should start a campaign to change coyote hunter practices. The lead-sickened bald eagle that died 2 years ago after being GPS tracked to where it was stuck blinded by PB, fed along with another dead eagle on a huge quantity of butchering remains spread on land behind a deer processor in Delaware County. These deer came from where? Some were certainly local but who knows? Now, re the PA and WV CWD situation. You claim CWD is spread by birds in their feces after they consume soft tissue. Maybe its true. Generally your "proof" is self serving but I am indulging you. So, go back to page one where I posted a photos of the gut pile from the first of my deer last year, it disappeared in just over 4 hours on November 8. These were not ravens attracted to a bait pile. They were just the normal background number of ravens. Deer season in the fall coincides with the southwesterly migration of large numbers of raptors and scavengers. Eagles number in the tens of thousands. Count Buteo hawks, vultures and ravens into the mix and you have hundreds of thousands of scavenging birds moving SW at the same time the landscape is covered with gut piles and unrecovered carcasses. If CWD is being spread by bird feces, the situation is hopeless. The disease will move SW steadily with the migration, worsening year after year. We know the eagles are feeding on them from having tested their blood lead levels. How do you propose to keep the hundreds of thousands of food sources away from the hundreds of thousands of birds? Birds that have been cleaning the landscape of such matter since before humans inhabited the continent. Winter resident birds on the other hand, have found a steady food source and hardly move at all. Basically from feeding site to roost, or in the case of ravens, to caching sites and back. GPS data backs this up. So, if you are right about birds and feces, the CWD situation is hopeless. And, it is a hopeless situation that your industry is responsible for creating. Who knows, with the excessive populations of deer in the east, and a lack of large, effective predators, it may be Mother Nature figured out a way to solve to the deer problem.

Red-herring, again! Everyone knows the responsibility for CWD rests squarely on the shoulders of you deer farmers.

Oh, there are road-killed deer too. The state doesn't "give" them to us. They issue a license to possess them.

Loved the Heinrich books.

Look at the size of the pelvis next to that eagle. Have you ever grown a deer that big on your deer farm?

It's been quite a while since I posted any photos. I was traveling and then got involved in surveys for wind project. Here are just a few photos I consider special from the late season. There are regular questions about what it a juvenile bald eagle, and what is a golden. I encounter that question all the time. This first shot shows both in their most similar plumages. Ignore the size difference. Size differences between these species are more a matter of what sex they are than the species. Notice the heads especially. Bald eagles have big heads and big beaks. Golden eagle head are sized proportionally similar to red-tailed hawks. Golden eagles have iridescent gold on their heads and napes. Also notice the bleached upper wings on the golden eagle. This is noticeable on all goldens after they are a year old. Before that, their backs are chocolate brown. Bald on left, golden on right. Raven with white primaries. It is a young bird. Since it is unique, we may be able to identify it if it returns. Putty Red-tailed hawk Coyotes dreaming

Eddie - If you are 77, who's the young guy in your photo? My father is 84 and he still shoots a deer every year, at least one. His hands don't work well so someone is always around to dress it and help him get it out. The UTV is also his during deer season. My 62 year old legs still work. It the 62 year old brain that's the problem.

You gotta love this. Vegans protesting outside a restaurant get their sensibilities damaged when the owner cuts up and eats meat in the window. https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/food-and-drink/toronto-chef-butchers-deer-vegan-protest/