wolc123

My place is about 2 miles from the border in 9F. Action was good yesterday but nada today. Sat from 2:30 to dark and just seen a squirrel. The vermin had my gut-pile completely cleaned up though, and I picked up the all the surveyors ribbon that marked my blood trail, except the first piece that was about where he stood when shot. I could not find my "pass-thru" bolt and will have to send the kids back there in the spring to see if they have any luck. Not easy to find in a 12" high hay field.

By weight or antler size ? I am not sure on the antlered ones, might be a three-way tie on weight. This was likely my heaviest BB however, of the dozen or so that I have killed over the last 38 seasons. Per the PA chest girth chart, with the NY WMU 9FA correction applied, his dressed weight must have broke 100 pounds:

It don't look like I will need to fire up the deer fridge this year. I am glad that "global warming" has backed off a bit the last couple of seasons. I ain't had to fire up that fridge since 2016. It sucks quite a bit of juice but always starts when plugged in. With nighttime lows outside in the low thirties and daytime highs in the fourties, I can hold the skin-on carcasses at 32-42 F. inside that insulated garage, with no trouble. I had the "oysters" for lunch yesterday. They were spectacular, fried in olive oil with lots of pepper. Way better than any sea oysters that I have had. I still have not had time to run the numbers on the 39-1/4" chest girth. I am guessing around 160 pounds dressed. The buck was heavy in the rear and difficult to hoist up by myself with the cheap little hand pulley. It was not rutting hard yet and it was feeding on clover as it approached my two-story blind yesterday morning. I will probably skin it next Saturday night and cut it up Sunday. Hopefully it will yield 60 pounds or more of boneless meat. It looked to be pretty lean, so there will not be much fat to trim away (I hate processing does for that reason) and there is no wound damage to worry about.

Thanks, and good luck to you today and the other three forum members, who still have their archery buck tags after yesterday's slaughter. It is not often that I fill mine this early. Maybe this year, for the first time in 38 seasons, I will see a larger antlered buck (and wish I still had a tag) while I am out there trying to fill doe tags. I got thru yesterday afternoon's hunt with no more deer sightings. I have (5) more archery hunts planned before gun season and (5) antlerless tags available. Filling those at my place (where I got the buck yesterday) or over at my folk's place on the opposite corner of 9F, is extremely difficult, due to heavy pressure on them by farmers with nuisance permits prior to October 1. One more average sized deer will give us plenty of venison for the year, and the rest will get donated somewhere if I am so fortunate to get more chances.

You are right, and I am not (I am a Genny guy). We had a confirmation party for my daughter last weekend and my wife picked those up in case some of the beer snobs, from her side of the family, who were invited did not want Genny. There were quite a few left and I got to get rid of them, to make room for more Genny in the beer fridge. I got to admit they are pretty good, almost equal to Genny Octoberfest. Rinella is right about the pepper on the "oysters". I used plenty and they were very good. I skipped the butter, which he recommends, and went with extra virgin olive oil instead, which I always use for my tenderloins . The pepper is the key ingredient for sure.

This 2.5 year old 8-point may have been my easiest shot with my Barnett Recruit, since 2014, but it was the scariest recovery. For the first time, I did not hear a crash within 40 yards or see him go down. Chest girth was only 39-1/4" and I still have not calculated the dressed weight, from the PA chart (with the 9F NY correction factor applied), but definitely my highest scoring crossbow rack and the first in a long time with no "rut" damage. I passed up a 1.5 year 3 point at 8:00 am. This one followed the same path, but hung up 50 yards out and stared at me without even a twitch for almost 1/2 hour. Finally he started moving closer and I moved my crossbow into position in "super slow motion" When he entered the view in my "green dot" Barnett sight, I put the center dot on the spot and sent the bolt. It looked good but I waited a half hour to pursue. I thought I heard a "crash" in the nearby thicket. I said my usaual prayer for an easy recovery before getting down. I followed good blood, to the point I last saw him, where it appeared that he turned and entered the thicket, but the blood petered out at that point. I then did a 1/2 hour grid search of the thicket with no success. I had marked last blood with surveyors ribbon and I went back to it. I pulled the little red Bible out of my pack, opened it to a random verse in the book of John, said a quick prayer, and started looking for more blood. It turned out that he did not enter that thicket where I heard noise after he disappeared. There must have been other deer in there (maybe his little brother had circled back in there). I found blood leading across a field, and continued to mark it with bits of orange ribbon. He was headed towards another, larger thicket. I looked up, and there he laid, belly up, just about 5 yards into that one. My uncle lives next door. He is my God-father and is recovering from some recent surgery. I gave him one of the tenderloins and just finished up the other one for lunch. It looks like a good week to hang the carcass in our insulated garage.

They were big but the chest girth was only 39-1/4".

Just Out of October but goes good with filet mignon and "oysters".

BBD (8 pt 110ish C and

Same thing happened to me. I got my (2) 9F tags but the cashier did not have a clue when I asked if I could donate $10 for the Hunters feeding the hungry program. He tried to find something on the DEC site with no success. The computers were extra slow noon, probably due to volume traffic. I felt sorry for the long line of folks behind me, trying to score free tags on their lunch brake. Now my plan is to pay for the butchering, if I get an extra deer to donate. It is too bad the DEC cant get this deal straightened out. I have heard that others had similar results when they tried to make donations at various retail outlets, besides just Walmart.

I am wondering why you would release them alive ? Now that trapping season is open, you don't need to bury or burn the carcasses, you can just throw them out in the field to feed the buzzards. Dead coons save turkey and grouse eggs, and reduce the rabbies threat to pets. I cant think of any good reason to release one alive.

The nats are making some history tonight.

If you already paid the $10 fee for dmp tags, then there is no charge for two additional "leftover" tags. I plan on donating $ 10 to the Hunters Feeding the Hungry program, when I go to Walmart for my extra tags on Friday. It seems that they always have plenty of donated deer, but struggle a bit to get the money to process them. I don't often fill those "extra" dmps (or even both of my first two), but it would be good to know that some folks might benefit from that $10 donation. If everyone that got two extra tags donated $10, then I doubt there would be a struggle to pay for the processing of all the donated deer. think about that when you go to pick up your "free" dmp tags.

That set was by far the hottest one I ever had. I used sticks to block off a ditch, which drained a low marsh area of about 5 acres, into a creek. The stick barrier forced the muskrats thru a 110 conibear trap. There were only a couple of days, thru about two months of the season, when there was not a muskrat caught in that trap. One day I caught a mallard duck in that trap, which was pretty tasty. I have always wanted to try a young coon in the crockpot but that duck was the only thing I ever cooked and ate out of a trap. The spot was about a mile down the road from our house, and I would ride my bike to check it every day. One day, about 3/4 of the way thru trapping season, someone stole the trap. I was thankful to have had it produce for as long as it did, but I never tried setting another trap in that spot after that one came up missing. I had a few other sets that may have produced several muskrats, but nothing close to the 50 or more of that set. The ditch was the only way out of a big marsh, and the creek and ditch always had flowing water, until freeze up in late December. In that situation, it did not seem possible to take too many and wipe them out. On smaller areas, such as the 1 acre pond at a neighbor's horse farm, I was able to clean them all out (around 6) in a week with couple of traps. The next year, there was always more that would move in.

Those were the days when it came to fur prices. I bought my first boat, while I was in high school in the early 80's, with fur money. I had one set that produced a muskrat almost every day of the season, and the adults peaked at $ 8 ea that year.

It is a tradeoff. I always like the corn to last until the end of ML season, and that often requires taking out some coons. There is no doubt that corn, which has been ravaged by coons, is a bit more attractive to deer and a lot more attractive to turkeys. I don't think turkeys are able to pick standing corn at all, but deer are very efficient users of it. They will consume a whole ear, prior to starting on the next one. I will never forget watching a 2-1/2 year old buck walk into a plot of standing corn (where coons had been eradicated), 3 seasons ago. I had just passed his little 1-1/2 year old buddy, a few minutes prior to seeing him. As he approached my stand from upwind, I could clearly hear him munching on the corn as he got closer. It was peak-rut, and I could also smell him, just before he emerged from the corn, 15 yards away.

I always carry my Ruger 10/22, when checking traps. Whenever I caught a skunk, I went back the the house for a shotgun, prior to dealing with it. A 12 or16 ga. load of # 4, 6, or 7-1/2 to the head, with a modified choke, from about 10 - 15 yards upwind, has put their lights out every time without any spray. At that range, there has also never been any damage to the box traps, as would occur if you were too close and the load was still contained by the wad when it struck the cage. Coons get a single .22 at the intersection of an "x" formed between the ears and the eyes. Possums get that, and a second "double-lunger" . They have a tiny pea-brain and often "play possum" after the head shot, only to rise up and take off later. Their lungs are normal size though, so that second shot is always effective. Last year, I don't think think many fur-buyers were taking coon hides. I remember getting up to $ 40 for them in the early eighties and you could buy a lot more with that back then. These days, it is mostly just trap and kill, to keep their numbers under control and to prevent crop damage. Coons are responsible for more corn damage than any other animal. They begin the chain of destruction by knocking down the stalks, taking just a small bite out of every ear before moving on the the next stalk. Other species, like wild turkey, deer, ducks, geese, and morning doves then move in to finish off the corn that the coons have knocked down for them.

The coon parts will definitely make great coyote bait. The DEC requires "damaging coons", taken before the opening of regular trapping season (Oct 25 I think), to be burried or burned. I did not always bury them deep enough and the coyotes would often dig them up within a few days. I did not trap any this year, because it was too wet to plant corn. If I do next year, I will try burning them. With all that fat, they would probably burn pretty good, and fast. I had pretty good luck with cat food in the duke dog-proof traps.

Yeah, I did no learn that part of the lesson yet by that time. Fortunately, he showed up the next week, right after I finished my drink and had it stowed back in my pack. Last week, while hunting up in the northern zone, I wrapped that shiny chrome Stanley with dull black electrical tape. Hopefully, I don't get busted with it again this year.

Don't despair, the story might not be over yet. I had a similar thing happen last season (but it involved a bright chrome cup of hot cider - I learned the "text/phone" lesson a few years prior). When the bruiser swamp buck caught a glimpse of me taking a sip, he walked out of range before I could get to my crossbow. I watched where he went and moved my hang-on stand to a strategic location. A week later, I had the last laugh.

That is exactly what happened. The relaxed limb width of my Barnett Recruit use to be 18-1/16" (just above the state limit of 18"), and now it is 18-1/2". I was going to get it restrung next season, but I have decided to pick up a new crossbow instead. Hopefully, they will get a few more of the "bugs" worked out of the Centerpoint by then (a smoother trigger and a better scope maybe). My Barnett has been great, but I need to stay within it's new limitations this year (40 yards max). It was marginal at 59 yards, right out of the box, back in 2014. If the Centerpoint don't perform to my expectations, I might get the Barnett restrung and keep it in service for another half decade or so. The Centerpoint looks to be a bit wider and heavier than my Barnett, but 70 fps more should make it shoot a lot flatter and give it a legit 60 yard range. My Recruit (300 fps when brand new) only provided 8" of penetration into a deer at 59 yards (fortunately all the way thru the heart). Because of that piss-poor long range penetration, I only considered it a 50 yard weapon after that shot, and now it is down to 40. With (4) bucks, including a very heavy 3-1/2 year old, and my personal best button last season, I think I already got my $250 worth out of this Barnett Recruit.

I was out this morning with the shotgun hoping one of those would show up, but nothing did. I think the afternoons are where the fall turkey action is. That is where it was last year for me anyhow. I will try and get out for the last couple hours tomorrow. No more hunting for me after that until next Saturday when southern zone crossbow deer season opens up.

I have one day under my belt already with the crossbow (last Friday up in the northern zone). I did not see anything up there until Saturday, when I had my muzzleloader. I passed on three unidentified deer (probably a doe with two fawns) while still-hunting. I had an antlerless and an either/or tag and a very good "quartering away" 40 yard opportunity on one of them. I did not shoot, because our freezer is still half full of venison from last year, and I was afraid it would turn out to be a 3-1/4" unicorn. There are a couple of nice, heavy 2.5 and 3.5 year old bucks at home in the Southern zone. I am hoping to use that "either/or" tag with the crossbow on one of them, starting next Saturday. I sat the first hour of daylight today in one of my blinds, for turkey with the shotgun, but did not see any birds or deer. I did see a ton of tracks on one small foodplot (1/4 turnips, 3/4 wheat - soybean - white clover mix). It looks like the deer have cleaned out most of the soybeans, but the wheat and clover is holding up well. I opened up a couple of shooting lanes to that plot from a nearby ladder stand. That should make it a great spot for the crossbow next weekend. I am a little bit concerned about my crossbow, because it is not shooting as flat as it did when new. I use to be able to use the top illuminated dot on the sight, all the way out to 40 yards, but now that only gets me to 20 yards. I need the middle dot for 20-30 yards, and the bottom one from 30-40 yards. My plan for this season is to sight objects at these ranges from all of my stands with my laser range-finder and to use the right dot for a shot. I am also down to my last mechanical, 125 gr broadhead, with which I have been 100 % sucessful with that crossbow (4 for 4) on deer since 2014. I have a few muzzy and wasp 125 grain fixed-blade broadheads, which hit targets exactly the same as the mechanicals, but I have never tried them on deer with the crossbow. I will have to this season if I get more than one shot. My plan for next year is to pick up a new, slightly upgraded crossbow and (6) mechanical 100 grain broadheads. Those are easier to find than 125 grain, and should shoot flatter from my old crossbow, which I will keep for backup. I was going to wait for full inclusion to upgrade, but the diminishing performance of my 2014 crossbow (which has around 100 shots on it) has forced my hand. Also, I don't believe we will ever see full-inclusion in NY. That is no big deal for me. If we had it, I would probably not make those trips up to the northern zone, where I get to enjoy my mother in law's spectacular cooking and some breath-taking scenery.