wolc123

I will dedicate mine to Donald Trump and Mike Pence. Hopefully, they will kick off 12 more years of superb national leadership during the upcoming deer season.

We viewed the cyclorama today which depicts that scene on a 380 ft long x 48 ft high oil painting 360 degrees around. It was pretty impressive and worth the 15 dollar admission cost. It was cool how they blended in the real artifacts in the foreground. The girls liked the introduction movie narrated by Morgan Freeman the best.

It has been more than 30 years since I was at a camp for the opener but i still remember my last time when I pissed some of the older guys off. That is part of the reason I have hunted from home on every gun opener since. A couple of my buddies and I walked back to our stands on Sunday afternoon to make sure they were ok. I took my dad's Browning sweet 16, loaded with 7.5s in case any grouse were 2 show up Two shots rang out over the hills. My buddies asked if that was me and I held up the two grouse that i had killed. That was my only hunt with that gun. I was not used to it and it took me a while to get on the birds. I got on both of them just before they dissapeared. We cooked them up back at camp and they were delicious. A couple of the old guys were too pissed off from the disturbance to try any. That happened In the southern tier town of Centrville in 1988. I don't remember what if any deer got killed at camp the next day. Maybe they were right to be pissed. I took what remains my largest antleted buck back at home that Thursday morning. The camp owner lives just down the road from our place. I stopped by with the big Buck in the back of my truck, just as they returned from camp on Thanksgiving afternoon, to use their scale. That 3.5 year old 9 pointer weighed 178 pounds.

I like the Saturday opener because it saves me a vacation day.

That is where the tide turned during the civil war on July 2 1863. Prior to that day at that place the rebs were winning and after they were losing.

The front corn was looking good last time I checked it out. Thigh high on the 3rd of July.

Pulled beef street tacos.

The Eisenhower farm is always my favorite part on our yearly trip here. It is still closed due to covid but we did a drive by today. The crowds are way down which is kind of nice but has to be hurting the businesses.

Have you visited Gettysburg ? Lots of it is closed now due to covid. We saw the monument to general Reynolds today. He was the corps commander for the 3 Cramer boys and was also killed on July 1 1863.

Has the op been banned ?

That sucks that they hung Newman out to dry like that. He always provided the best entertainment on the morning show.

Mostly to shoulder blades and string jump on deer that were put on high alert by catching a glimps of a draw. That ain't needed with a crossbow, hence my100 percent recovery rate with that.

We stopped by to put 3 shiney Lincolns on the stone for my friends great, great great grandfathers 3 brothers who got killed in the big battle.

Every year, I appreciate those two weeks of crossbow season in the southern zone a little more. Last year was the best yet, when I killed my best 8-point on opening day. I am so thankful that those two weeks include all of the rut, which has always been my favorite time to hunt. Over my first 32 years of archery hunting, I killed and recovered 6 deer with two different compounds (I never killed one that I recovered with my first compound, but one that I got a bad hit on with it likely perished). I also missed one clean and struck 4 in the shoulder blade, which likely recovered from their wounds. I know for certain that one of those did because a friend took it later with a gun and it was very well healed up. That 50/50 ish recovery percentage wasn't cutting it for me. I respect the deer that I hunt and they deserve better than that. The crossbow has been the answer for me. In just (6) years of hunting just the 2-week crossbow season, my take with that weapon is just one shy of my 32 year total with the compounds. More importantly, there has been no misses or unrecovered hits. Is the crossbow easier ? Prior to the crossbow's entry in 2014, archery season never had much impact on my families food supply. Since then, it has often given me more than gun season. All that extra time not hunting or practicing has also come in handy. Now if only NY state would do something for the folks in the northern zone to let them have a bit more than the paltry three days they got now before the guns (early ML season) opens, everything would be really great. To the three compound hunters on this thread who are still fighting the crossbow tooth and nail, I suggest moving to Oregon. They have the even tastier blacktail deer and may be the only state that still allows no crossbow hunting. I don't expect to see that though. I would be happy if they would understand why I am so thankful to be able to hunt the entire rut in the southern zone, with the weapon of my choice.

The time I got my largest I was actually trying for them. We had been hooking into at least one on every drift, breaking most off. I switched to the heaviest outfit on the boat, loaded with 14lb line, doubled up the last 15 in, and tied on my largest bass jig. I attached a huge rubber lizard to that and lowered it down. The big one picked up that bait almost immediately. After a 20 min battle, it looked ready for the net, but had saved enough strength for one more good run. It had spent everything it had left on that last run, so it was either lewiston or my wall. I chose the latter.

We get a few musky by accident on the upper Niagara. My biggest was a 48 in back when they had to be 44 in to keep. Today it hangs above the bar in our billiard room. These days they got to be over 54 in to keep. I am not sure how many of the shorties survive after the trip to the boat on 8 pound test bass tackle. We always do our best to be gentle on them but I suppose a few have probably gone over the falls belly up. During that bass tournament a few years ago a 40 incher ripped a 16 in smallmouth off my line.

That is basically my home water (I can be at the launch in 1/2 hour). I am usually able to get smallies there any time of bass season and this usually is the easiest time to get lots of them (late post spawn). I stayed away from there for a few years, after they dredged up the Buffalo river for fear of what chemicals they may have dredged up, but they should be good eating again by now. As mentioned many times, I am not big into "catch and release". We started keeeping a few again last season and they were pretty good and I felt safe enough to feed them to my wife and girls. I will be in other places for the rest of this month (PA, VA, St Lawrence), but will probably start in again on the upper Niagara in mid-August or so. By that time the smallies where be deeper there, but I know a lot of their hiding spots. I am trying to locate largemouth in the Upper river. A couple years ago, we fished a bass tournament there and probably had the three largest bass overall of the tournament. We got the prize for the biggest bass (recouping our entry fee) but half the 6 allowed bass had to be Largemouth and we got skunked on them. We finished third place overall, loosing out to two boats who found some Largemouth. I was not real happy with the tournament thing because they made us release the fish, but the nieghbor kid talked me into it. I probably would not have agreed if I had known about the (3) largemouth / (3) smallmouth technicality.

I use plain old round-head bucktail jigs most of the time for the extra satisfaction of getting them on lures that I made myself but mainly because I am so cheap. I pour my own heads, shoot my own deer, pick up road kill tails, etc, so all I need to buy are the hooks and they litterally cost pennies. I always use as light of one as I can (1/8 oz works perfect for bass suspended down 5 feet). The lighter jigs are also easier to get a good hookset with and tougher for the bass to throw after they are hooked. They tend to be spooky in the clear calm water though so any lighter than that is tough to reach out far enough on the casts to fool them.

This is a fun time of year to chase smallies, as they leave the shoreline structure and head out over deep water. It can make things tough on big waters like Erie, but not too much trouble on a deep little Adirondack lake. The best time was the first and last hours of daylight when the wind was nill and the surface as smooth as glass. Then it is just a matter of watching for boils as they break the surface chasing up baitfish. Cast a jig to those spots, count to 5 or so, give it a twitch or two, and more often than not, you soon have one on. My favorite part, being cheap and lazy, is that there are no snags out there and the same jig lasted me all weekend. I imagine I will get most of the summer out of the same one. I ended up with 9 nice 13 to 16 inch "keepers" last weekend and a few shorts. It was not real fast action with lots of rowing between rises, but man do they pull.

No such thing. You mean "lawnmowers".

Great idea. Similar to what I suggested, but you are giving the compound/crossbow guys a few more weeks. It makes a lot of sense to group the compound with the crossbow. Oddly enough, all of the anti-crossbow bowhunters that I know of, only hunt with compounds. I wonder if the OP realizes that the members of this site have consistently supported full-inclusion of the crossbow in archery season by a 3:1 margin ? Maybe it's time for another poll. As I stated above, I have grown quite content with the two weeks that we have now, down in the sz. If the poll had "leave it 2 weeks" as an option, I might even go for that over full-inclusion. It is nice to have the extra time early for squirrel, turkey, & rabbit hunting along with some more fall smallmouth bass fishing. The real problem, is up in the northern zone, where the crossbow only gets 3 days before the early ML season. Whats up with that ? Must be that NYB has more influence up there.

Other than having just 3 days before the guns come in in the nz, I am quite content with the ny crossbow season. Having the best 2 weeks of the archery season in th sz has worked out well very well for me. A couple tweaks that would make things better would be, add 11 days to the nz, and also limit the vertical compound guys to the last 14 days. Traditional archery guys like the OP deserve some early time to themselves.

You have witnessed the power of fresh sprouting soybeans to draw in deer from miles around. I am not aware of any plot that draws them in better than young soybeans (pods are overrated). Since climate change and late frosts, you can have usually get that "early" draw thru most of bow season. To do that, you got to hold off until about September to plant. I have been doing that the last few years and it works pretty good. I mix the soybeans with wheat and white clover. Just get the plot worked up and broadcast the soybeans and wheat, then cultipack. Next, broadcast the white clover and cultipack again (those tiny seeds dont like to be pushed in that deep). The soybeans provide the early drawing power, and then the wheat holds the deer on the plots for late-season action. The wheat is mowed off the following spring, and then the white clover takes over and provides a few more years of attraction. Your brassica/turnip idea in a few weeks ain't bad, but I would also get some more soybeans, along with some wheat and white clover and get some of that in from late August to early September.