wolc123

I regularly use one up in the northern zone and I like it a lot. Pros: easy to carry, very comfortable (can even fall asleep in it), can shoot 360 degrees around. Cons: a little noisy to set up and take down, no good in rain (fills with water that runs off the tree). I might be the only one who ever perfectly executed a Texas heart shot on a whitetail buck (that means the heart was hit, there was no entry bullet hole, the guts came out as clean as a whistle, and the meat damage was limited to a small neck roast). I did it from that chair. The 360 degree feature came in very handy because I had to turn 180 degrees with the seat to make the shot. At about this time of year, back in 2016, this little 6-point was 50 yards away and walking towards me from behind. He turned around 180 degrees at the same time that I did, presenting me with that "special" shot angle. The seat has held up very well, in fact I was in it up there for 3.5 hours in 9 degrees F temperature this morning, and was quite comfortable the whole time. The deer were not moving much this year however.

Not much deer action up there, but my mother in law really knocked it out of the park with her Thanksgiving dinner this year. She got a fresh turkey this year (usually she uses frozen ones). Her dressing, with all the cut up giblets, was the best that I have ever had. I made it up there for the last hour of daylight on Thursday and that was the only day that I saw any deer (3 or 4 unidentified ones in the heavy cover about 40 yards away). There was just a light dusting of snow (not enough for tracking). Walking around on the frozen leaves and pine needles, in calm conditions, was so noisy that I could hear a red squirrel scampering around from over a hundred yards away. That left me no chance of sneaking in close to a deer, and basically sent them all headed for the hills once they knew what was up with my hunting pressure. My father in law let me hunt with his scoped Remlin 336W 30/30 on Friday and Saturday. That thing was a pleasure to carry up there compared to my big heavy Ruger bolt-action 30/06. Too bad that I did not get to try it on a deer. I was surprised how good the fit and finish was on that gun. It must be an early one, when they still had real "Marlin" parts to assemble at the illion NY factory. I used my Ruger on Thursday (only day that I saw any deer), and again this morning after I cleaned and oiled his rifle for him on Saturday night (he would never let me use it again if I did not take "extra-good" care of it). We never got the rain, sleet, or snow I was waiting for, to try out my own Remlin 336BL 30/30, with it's new fiber optic sights. Oh, well, there is always next year. Once again, I got to see the lake freeze over. It happened this morning this year, while last year it was the Friday morning after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, that meant no more bass fishing for me up there this year again on Thanksgiving weekend. Al in all, not a bad weekend. The best part was to food. The worst part was the cold and the drive home. It was rough crossing Oneida lake at about noon today with zero visibility on Route 81. My cold-weather gear, consisting of: Mickey-mouse boots, Gander mountain guide-series bibs, Eddie Bauer goose-down vest, Walmart scent-factor jacket, Polaris face mask, woolrich hat, and Bass-Pro muff with two handwarmers, worked out ok. I was relatively comfortable for 3.5 hours at 9 degrees F this morning, seated in my tree-hammock chair. We probably will not get up there again until Ice-fishing time on President's day weekend in February. I will have to try and fill my gun buck tag at home, in the Southern zone, over the next two weekends this year.

The Woolrich pants worked out very well this morning, but the jacket did not cut it. That's what I ended up doing to it, as I sat in my blind to get out of the rain and 40 mph wind. The sleeves were way too tight on my upper arms. It felt like a nurse was checking my blood pressure on both sides at once, and had the little pump up rings filled up all the way with air. My hands kept loosing feeling, due to the lack of circulation. I had a muff with a handwarmer in it, but that did not even help much. I also had a very sharp pocket knife, so I removed the jacket and went to work on the sleeves. Now I have a very comfortable Woolrich vest, and a couple of nice buffalo-plaid wool muffs that the kids can use to keep their hands warm while we are ice-fishing. The sleeves may have been a little better, had I not had a thin base layer and a quilted flannel shirt below. The rain stopped about 8:00, and I went up in my woods stand, next to the ditch. The only critter that showed up before I left at 9:45 was a grey squirrel. It was comfortable up there, in the cold and wind, wearing my Woolrich pants and vest. I would still be there if I did not have to make the long drive up to the Adirondacks for the big meal tonight at the in-laws. I will try this outfit again next weekend at home for sure. The wool vest will be great under gor-tex raincoat.

I spend a couple minutes looking for mine today also, but no luck. I marked the first blood with a surveyor's ribbon. That is still there, but no sign of the bolt. It looks like I will have to offer the kids a reward if they can find it for me in the spring. I would like to re-sharpen the mechanical broadhead, replace the o-ring, and go for a third buck with it.

I will be up near the Lewis/St Lawrence county line. How is the snow ? I heard they were supposed to get a little tonight. Happy Thanksgiving and good hunting to you. No more "roughing it" for me up there, since the in-laws finished their retirement home. I sort of miss the days when they stayed in a little "off-the-grid" cabin with just a big fireplace for wood heat, and I was in a truck camper with a propane heater. The indoor plumbing and all the other comforts of home that they have now is pretty nice though. They even added a new bathroom in the basement for me this year. Their place is built on a hill, so I can walk right out of that basement, through a sliding glass door, and hunt in the woods or fish in the lake. My mother in law always feeds us very well, even when it is not Thanksgiving. I will have to do a lot of hunting on this long-weekend to burn off all them calories. Nothing burns them better than dragging a big buck out of the valley.

No that ain't me. I assume that it's a younger airedale. Somewhere, I have a picture from me in 83 with my first antlered buck while wearing it. I will try and find it, scan it, and post it some time after tomorrow's "reenactment", if I can pull it off.

My wife found an old red-checked Woolrich pants and coat set like that, in my size, at an antique sale last summer. I have not shot a deer in an outfit like that since I outgrew my grandad's back in 83. I will try again in the morning, wearing the "new" stuff. I might as well take along his old gun also, since it worked ok for me on a doe on opening day this year. We don't really need any more venison, but it would be cool to be blessed with a bit more while suited up and armed like that. Buckmaster talked me out of taking it to the Adirondacks this weekend, because he said that water would run off the "tucked-in" pants, into my boots during a creek-crossing. No creeks to deal with here, and I left an old barn plank to use as a bridge if necessary, next to the ditch that I got a good soaker in a few year ago. I had to ford that ditch multiple times after shooting a doe on the other side. Walking the plank with the tucked in Woolrich pants should work out fine if need be. At the very least, I will try to report back here how warm they are.

I always hunt the morning at home in the flat-lands of northern WNY, then drive up to the in-laws in the Adirondacks, for the rest of the long weekend. Last year kind of sucked up there, because I punched my buck tag on opening day of southern zone gun season. No such luck this year. As long as a big one doesn't show up on Thursday morning, I should still have mine. My mother in law is the best cook I ever met, so the meal is always quite good. I am not a big turkey fan, but her sides are amazing. I especially like her dressing with all the chopped up giblets (heart, liver, gizzard, etc). The food up there is always great, but the best part is the hunting and the scenery. Oh how I miss the snow and the mountains and the pines. At least we had good snow at home for opening day. I hope there will be good snow up there this weekend. Thanksgiving is my third favorite holiday (Christmas is first, Easter second). It has been a long time since I killed a deer on it (too much driving and eating), but I did kill my largest antlered buck at home on that day, back in 1988. The Saturday after has been pretty good for me lately though. That is the day that I killed both of my Adirondack bucks (8 point and 6-point). I would rate a spike, or even a muzzleloader doe (I have taken a couple of those up there also) significantly higher than a 10-pointer at home. the scenery makes that much difference. Until you have done it, you will not understand. Even a western elk/mule deer hunt pales by comparison (the high desert ain't all its cracked up to be).

You are not alone. I have not seen any antlers since gun season began, and I have not seen a single deer since about 8:30 on opening day morning. I think I blew any chance I may have had at a buck over at my folks place, by killing what might have been the only mature doe left in the area, by mistake. I was after the button buck she was trailing. She threw me a curve ball that morning, when she traded position in line with him, after my first sighting of the three-deer antlerless group. Prior to that, throughout crossbow season, I had seen antlered deer on every sit over there, including one big one that was certainly "a shooter".

Sounds like the Woolrich pants are out for Adirondack tracking (I don't think they will stretch around outside of the Mickeys, ). I guess I will stick with the Cabelas bibs and just tighten the boot laces prior to the creek crossing. It is almost a certainty that I will need to cross a deep creek if I do any serious tracking in my spot up there. Thanks for the tip. I am packing my foot locker tonight and space is limited. I will wear the "new" Woolrich pants on my Thanksgiving morning hunt at home instead. I have not killed an antlered buck wearing those since my first one back in 1983. I will bring a roll of electric tape to go around the outside of the bibs prior to the creek crossing. I will remember to carry that in an inside pocket so it unrolls easy in the cold.

Whatever gun you get, make sure to use the BH 209 powder so you won't have corrosion issues. The firing pin on my T/C Omega 50 cal is bound up right now and I have only used loose pyrodex and 777 pellets (last 3 years) in it. If I can not free it up by ML season, I will use my Barnett recruit crossbow instead. I just picked up some new NAP, 100 gr, mechanical broadheads "just in case".

Same here, especially after crossing a creek in sub-freezing temperatures and getting my feet soaked. I will pack along the Woolrich pants my wife recently bought me and tuck them into my waterproof "mickey-mouse" boots, cinch the laces tight, and see how that works. I did not have a pleasant experience on a late season doe that I had to retrieve from across a deep ditch at the back of our farm a couple years ago, but I don't think I had the laces tight, and my modern Cabelas "guide-gear" bibs were not tucked in. One foot was completely numb by the time I made the thousand yard walk back up to the house.

I may try some tracking up there this coming long weekend. My father in law gave me the green light to use his scoped Marlin 336 30/30 and I will also have my own fiber-optic sighted "big-loop" one, in case it is snowing. My preferred technique up there (with my big, heavy, scoped, bolt-action 30/06) has been to locate where the does are bedded, choose an ambush site downwind, and hope to catch a buck "checking up" on them. That worked good in 2014 and 2016. The snow/tracking conditions were perfect last year but I was "tag-less", so I spent some time zeroing in my father in law's "new in box" 30/30 on the range. Unless a huge one shows up at home on Thanksgiving morning this year, I should have a buck tag for my trip up there.

That is a cool looking buck. I had a very similar 12-pointer mounted back before the wife and kids came along. It had been killed by an automobile, on the road around the corner from our house. The driver of the wrecked car did not want it, and a buddy from the town highway department got it for me. It seemed a shame not to have such a beast mounted (it only cost $125 back then), and it yielded over a hundred pounds of boneless meat. One of the points was broke off in the crash, but the taxidermist repaired it for me. Earlier that year, another buck had been killed at the exact same spot, and the driver of the van that hit it was killed in the crash. I am waiting for an 11 pointer now, to complete my collection of 6 to 12 point shoulder mounts (only the 12 was a car-kill). I still have my gun tag, so you never know, this might be the year.

I put a small amount on the heel of each boot on the approach, when I am about 300 yards from my stand, and then rub some in a couple of spots on opposite diagonal corners of the shooting/safety rail after I am up in the stand. Sometimes, I re-apply that after a couple hours. I have only used the standard cheaper stuff in the black container, not the fancy doe-in-heat stuff.

It might be a coincidence, or maybe just a general improvement in WNY "trophy-hunting" conditions thanks to all of the voluntary passing of 1-1/2 year old bucks, but I have managed to kill a 3-1/2 year old buck in each of the last three years, since I started using Evercalm. I first thought this year's crossbow buck was a 2-1/2, based on his smaller chest girth than the last couple. After I finished the power-washer euro, the skull looks to be a 3-1/2. Apparently, he put more of his spare calories into his antlers. The wind conditions were nearly dead calm on this year's, last year's came in from directly down-wind, and I can not recall the wind conditions two years ago. I have never been an "antler guy", but these 3-1/2's taste exactly the same as the 1-1/2's and 2-1/2 that I usually ended up with before, but they have a lot more meat on them. For that reason, I will stick with the Evercalm, until something better comes along.

I have many (most of which have been told on this site multiple times) , but this one is my favorite. 2nd best 8-point: The buck on the left was my best 8-point until Nov 2, 2019 (see new #1 in crossbow harvest thread). I have always been a meat hunter. With two button bucks taken in the morning on opening day of gun season in 2012 (one by me and one a "gift" from a friend), already hanging on the meat hooks in our garage, I was not overly excited about the afternoon hunt. The gunfire had sounded like WW III back behind our house that morning, and I did not expect to see anything back there in the afternoon. With the two heafty bb's in the garage, our meat situation was in decent shape (kids were small and did not eat a lot back then). It was still opening day, and I had not heard too many shots across our road that morning. My wife had talked me into driving over to the friend's house to pick up the second bb (she really loves those). I hung it up next to the other one out in the garage and ate a quick lunch. With about two hours of daylight left (I always check sunrise/sunset times for the area on hunting days), I grabbed my grandad's old Ithaca model 37 16 gauge and headed for my stand in the woods at the back of a long field across the road. It was boring up in that stand and even the squirrels were not moving. The only thing I saw was another hunter slowly moving across the back of the woods. I passed the time by reading a book up in the stand. As dusk approached, that book slipped out of my hands and fell to the forest floor, below my hang-on stand. There was a small clump of mature pine trees in the middle of an oak woods, and the stand was up in one of those. That allowed me to see over the brushy thicket that surrounded the base of the pines. I checked my watch and saw that I still had a few minutes of legal daylight. Not really needing more meat, I decided to pack it in early. I carefully climbed down the pine tree, with my loaded pump gun on the sling (sorry safety police). Just after my feet touched the ground, I heard crashing sounds all around me in that little thicket. A flock of turkeys had descended right on my position there. Some were only 5 feet away. Suddenly the buck's head and neck appeared from behind a bush, about 10 feet away. I quickly aimed at the base of the neck and fired, dropping him dead there in his tracks. I looked at my watch an there was just under a minute to go. It was pitch black dark by the time I finished dragging him to the edge of the long field. I left him there and went back to my barn for the loader tractor and a flashlight. I have no doubt that wise old buck (probably a 3.5) was using them turkeys as scouts to make sure the "coast was clear" before taking up a position in that thicket. Had I still been up in that tree, the turkeys (with their sharp color vision) would have spotted my blaze orange camo jacket from a mile away. There was not much they could do for him while I was on the ground in the thicket, where the visibility was limited. They all flew away when my shotgun fired and the buck tipped over.

122 gross / 106 net

A modern, frost-free fridge probably don't work so hot. That is likely why it dried out. They stay pretty moist in this old 1950's GE model, but I still prefer the hanging them in the garage, with the hide on, if the outside temp is ok to do it. The cardboard covered-window in back can be opened at night or closed during the day as necessary, and the concrete slab floor holds the temp quite well. The thermometer on the wall measures the garage temp, and I stick a meat thermometer into the thick parts on occasion. These two came out real good this year with the in-the garage, hide-on, 6-day hang.

Now that the snow is gone, and the dumber ones have been killed off, it is going to be tough to get out of this god-forsaken group. If I can pass along just one little tip to help you all, it would be to use your smartphones to look at a Bible app, rather than constantly lamenting you current situation. Start with Matthew 29, the part about Him knowing where every sparrow falls. If you want Him to provide you with a buck, would it not make sense to study the rule-book at least a little bit ? There is no such thing as luck.

There is a small group on this site who seem to lack an understanding of basic biology and deny that fact that venison is red meat and subject to rigor mortis exactly like beef is. It does not take long to search on-line and find many sources that reveal the true value of aging deer carcasses prior to processing. You are correct that the weather has been close to perfect for this aging process, since November 2 when I hung my first this year. What happened to "global warming" ? I have not needed to plug in my "deer-fridge" for the last 2 seasons. I like to age 3.5 year old deer for 3 weeks, 2.5's 10 days, 1.5's for a week. One day is plenty for six month olds (my personal favorites). If the temperature is on the high end or slightly above the preferred 32 - 42 F range, then these times can be shortened. The temp got up in the mid to upper 40's a couple times during each of my 2.5 and 3.5 year old deer carcass hangs this year, so I shortened to 6 days. I prefer to age with the hide on because it keeps the meat from drying out and insulates from daily temperature swings. I cover the windows of our insulated garage and that makes a great place to hang the deer. If It is too warm outside over this period, I skin them, cut the back half's off, and hang in the "deer-fridge". Aging has little if any effect on the flavor of the meat, but has a big effect on the texture. You won't notice it as much on the prime cuts like back-straps and tenderloins (inner tenderloins should always be removed before aging or they will dry out), but the improvement on lesser cuts is huge. The grind especially, will be a lot more enjoyable to eat if the deer was aged before grinding and freezing. Now the usual rebuttal will begin .....

I skinned the doe that I spined with the 16 gauge Remington "slugger" tonight, and the meat damage looks pretty intense. The front quarters and hind quarters are good, but there is not much usable meat at all left on the backstraps. The damage from that single 16 gauge foster slug on the spine from 80 yards away is at least 4X that from (2) 12 gauge Hornady SST sabots from 100 yards away on a buck the year before (one on the spine and one just below). I only lost a chop or two on that one. Both deer were struck on the spine about half way between the front and back legs, and all (3) of the slugs passed thru. They were also each shot from the same tree stand, 7 feet up. I guess I will have to call that: "the spine stand". I certainly do not advocate the spine shot and these were just the result of a bad scope last season, and a bit of a far shot for the gun this season. I am going to do my best to try for center lung shots from here on out this year, no matter where I am hunting or what weapon I am hunting with.

Don't discount the "beginners luck" factor. Some deer live thru many seasons by doing things that "expert" hunters would never predict. Your lack of experience gives you an edge in that situation. Here an easy tip for you: Lots of hunters like to follow deer tracks in the snow. Deer can hide themselves, but they can not hide their tracks. If you hunt near spots of heavy cover, where you have seen tracks, you stand a good chance of getting a shot at a deer that is being pushed by a "tracker". There should be plenty of "trackers" on public land, especially on the weekends. Stalking to a shooting position on a deer takes a certain amount of experience and know-how. Ambushing one that was pushed by another is the quickest way for a beginner to score.

(2) from stands 7 ft up so far this year (20 yard shot on crossbow buck and 80 yard shot on slug gun doe).

How did you all make out with your guns and caliber ? The old Ithaca got the job done on a doe at 80 yards on Saturday, just like it has every time since I put the Weaver 1.5X scope on it back around 1984. I think I will take it back there again this coming Saturday morning (still have a buck tag and three more 9f DMP's). Besides always getting the job done, my favorite thing about that gun is: the 16 gauge slugs only cost me 20 cents each. I bought all they had for $ 1 a box at a Sporting goods store "going out of business sale" up in Brewerton about 16 years ago. I will have to check out the meat damage, compared to the 12 gage Hornady SST's that I used last year. That 3.5 year old buck was also hit thru the spine from about 20 yards farther away. I could not believe how little meat was damaged by those Hornady sabots. I am thinking that the full-diameter, 16 gauge Remington sluggers might have done considerably more. I will find out Friday night when I process that doe. The doe also looks to be about 3.5 years old. Most of the rigor mortis should be gone after hide-on hanging for 6 days at 32 - 42 F in our insulated garage, so she will be ready for the freezer. I would let her go a few more days, but I have too much going on over the weekend, and I have to clear the hook in case other(s) arrive.