phade

Agree on all fronts. The zip lock bag trick saves money pretty quick. I used to burn through two small hand warmers each hunt...so four a day. I can cut that down to two with a morning and afternoon hunt by placing them in the ziplock and sealing.

Shooting volumes of arrows to me is not great advice cart blanche. Shooting volume can introduce bad form issues (that stick) once the shooter has reached mental or physical fatigue. It also can reduce confidence when fatigue or form issues crop up resulting in less than stellar shot locations. Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Shooting groups is worthless once past tuning and to "double-check" any equipment or form issues (one group will suffice). You need to make that first arrow count. Instead of running three, four, or five arrows an end...use one arrow. Shoot arrow, retrieve, repeat. Incorporate a 3-d target rather than bag or block styles. Shoot from the treestand in your backyard. If your range of shooting at deer will be say, for example 40 yards max, practice all the way out to 60. It will take me a half hour to shoot 8-10 arrows sometimes, depending on whether I'm shooting from a stand, moving the target, etc. But, I find that the shots are much better than shooting 3 arrows an end. This all translates into the real-world application. The "system" or "process" will become second nature. I seem to go into auto-pilot now; I wish I could explain it more, but it's just that. I'm not sure why some people never get there - I don't know if it is innate, if it's shooting numbers of deer (does), if its practice regimen, or if it's just plain mental/physical fortitude. I can say I wasn't always this way, so that leads me to believe that there are things people can do to overcome any real-world shooting issues. Good luck!

Definitely not liking the opening weekend forecast.

that is a hoss. congrats to your brother.

ive never once been scentfree to a whitetails nose. I take precautions but im resigned to the fact I stink to a deer.

buddy shot his this a.m.

moog got his buck. mile plus covered and down for the count. what an adventure. pic posted in harvest thread for him. im sure he will tell his story..

moog got his buck.

moog has blood! gonna wait til 9 and track.

cause I seen the buck I thought I was shooting last week today at 20 yds. got 5 min of vid on my cell. and some pics of another shooter or two. 6 bucks 2 does and a button with habey chasing.

had not 1 2 or 3 shooters...but 4 shootable this a.m. I hate myself.got pics and vid. moog meanwhile dealt with chainsaw cutting lol.

test.

spike chased a doe by at ten yds doing mach 2.

theres a reason I have a pair of z28s...no need to change.

Try multiple loads/combos. Find one that works and run with it.

Deer activity increases in light rainy conditions imo. I'll sit out a soaker all day to have that 15-30 minutes when the rain subsides. Just like a day of high wind before sunset.

I get the sense that the writing was done separate from the survey. It's actually not solid writing.

I do agree with this...I'd like to know more about why it was written that way. The survey and questions are sound.

I'm not worried about the ethics police. Rain typically comes before the front passes. I said ride it out. Not slaughter bambi in Hurricane sandy downpour. Ha.

While Sunday seems to be a favorite here, and for good reason...Saturday looks equally impressive. Sat. a.m. will have good movement from deer as the winds subside. Better still, is the afternoon, as the cold front that everyone is hyped up about on Sunday, actually passes through wNY between 5-6 p.m. The incoming front, rain, and pressure drop will have deer on their feet tomorrow afternoon. It's not a day to be slow to getting to the afternoon stand...get there early, settle in, ride out the rain, and be ready.

Not to mention the whitetails are a different subspecies in most of the Midwest, with their profile having larger bodies/rack/etc.

Wow.

I'm not being condescending at all. I am explaining how complex the methodologies are and I merely have a background understanding into why they are that way. It's no different that some IT person explaining to me how servers work and communicate. I don't understand it, and I'm not offended when they explain it to me. So view me as worse, then, for all I care.

They ask the WMU you largely hunt. Questions 11-13 then address the sentiment. The WMUs are given a % rating of public to private holding and weighted accordingly. If, say for example, WMUs weighted heavily for public show high hunter sentiment against ARs, they'll be able to determine that. Likewise, if high private land WMUS show responses strongly supporting that AR, then they'll be able to relate AR to an access and resource distribution problem. So, it is in there pretty resoundingly.

It identified the trend from a measurable point of view that hunter sentiment may be shifting and that a management and consumers (hunters) mindset is misaligned. No need to get snarky Culver, that's pretty low. I'm not digging at you.