wolc123

It was actually a short length of braided line, not a rope and her odds of making it were pretty good. I never was one for catch and release fishing though, and the only legal fish I usually release are those that are too big to eat. All of that "senseless maiming" of a fine food source never made much sense to me.

It is definitely easier for them to run down mature deer in the deep snow than it is without. Those big padded paws are almost like snowshoes, while the narrow hoofs on a deer sink right thru, wasting tons of energy and making for an easy run-down. Nothing is easier for them to catch than an old rutted-out buck in the deep snow. While the fat does and yearlings leave him behind in the loose powder, he quickly becomes coyote food. After spring fawning season, that is the second "happy time" each year for the coyotes up in the north country.

I use a big, old GE household fridge that is from the 1950's. They don't seem to build them to last like that now days. It does use a little more electricity than the new ones, but I only plug it in when it is warm out and I have deer carcasses to hang. With all the racks and drawers removed, it will hold two average-sized deer, cut in half behind the rib cage. I hang the rear halfs from hooks on the top and rest the fronts on the necks on the bottom. It gets a little tight with two in there, but normally I only need to worry about one at a time. Aging those deer at 35 degrees (that's where the old fridge holds them) for about a week (longer for older deer) allows the rigor mortis to work its way out, making the steaks, chops, and roasts a lot more palatable. Keeping the door closed over that time allows the skinned carcasses to stay fairly moist. I prefer to hang and age the carcasses with the skins on (that insulates and keeps them from drying out to much on the outside) in our insulated garage, but "climate change" is forcing me to use that old fridge more and more it seems, especially early in the season. Hopefully I can get another 50 or so years out of it. It would be cool to age deer in a hundred year old fridge.

I also fish from 4 boats, which include my 17 ft deep-v, 12 foot rowboat, 17 foot canoe, and my father in law's 14 foot rowboat. There has been a few memorable times with the canoe. I always stay off the beer until I have my limit though. The first thing I loose, when I take a sip, is the ability to detect a strike. That is where downriggers and bobbers come in handy - they detect the strike for you. I remember taking my canoe up to Long lake in the Adirondacks, about 10 years ago, for a week long summer family vacation. There were guys in bass boats pounding the shorelines every morning, and I did not have much luck there, so I paddled up wind, and out to the middle of the lake. Using a 5-gallon bucket as a sea-anchor to slow my drift, it did not take long to get a limit of good-eating sized smallies each morning on 1/4 oz jigs. About 5 years ago, out on Cuba lake, in the south-western part of the state, I caught a big smallmouth from the canoe. She was on the edge of a weedbed that was near the opposite shore from our friend's cottage. I did not have a camera, so I used a small rope stringer, thru the lower jaw, to hold her to the back of the vessel as I paddled back across the lake. She kept pulling the back of the canoe off coarse, making for an interesting ride. That 21" long bass was way too big to be good eating, but with some extra effort, I got back across, got a picture, and released her relatively unharmed.

I am surprised to see and hear about all the electric winches. Those don't seem like they would be worth it to me, especially the 12 volt models. Batteries are a pain to mess around with. I just use cheap little multiple pulley block and tackles that were about $15 ea from Northern or Harbor Freight. It takes less than 30 pounds of force to lift a 150 pound deer with those. Skinning an average of 5-6 a year, for a long time, has been a piece of cake with those. The electric winch would probably be better for ripping the hide off, but I don't think I will attempt that again. I tried it on one last year, using a tractor and a pulley, and it did not work out so well. I will probably stick with the old-fashioned method, using the block and tackle and a sharp knife, from now on.

I think year-round open season for trapping and hunting coyotes would be good here in NY state. Unfortunately, it will probably take the loss of a toddler, and the resulting lawsuits for that to occur. Under the current restrictions, it is not so much a matter of "if", but "when" this will happen. Also, what makes things difficult in areas like where the OP dog-attack occurred, is the urban sprawl and the difficulties for hunters and trappers to gain access to the problem areas. I live just a few miles to the north, in a more agricultural area, and the coyotes are much less of a problem here. They would be virtually non-existent here if we could target them year-round. At no time are they easier to kill than they are out in the hay fields, after it is fresh cut and they are less than a year old. With current regs, they are "safe" at that time, except for the few strays that get struck by lightning or fall ill for some other mysterious cause.

When the water temperature of Lake Erie gets up into the 70's (almost always after mid-July), the smallmouth move towards deep water. The farther south you go in NY state, the closer to shore you can find that deep water. If I were to target them any more this summer, I would trailer the boat down to Dunkirk and head south towards Vanburen point, or maybe even Barcelona, looking for structure at 40-45 feet. You might still find some smaller bass holding near the bottom, but the bigger ones will often suspend in the top 15 feet over those depths. They are spooky and don't respond well to trolling with a gas engine. I make long casts with light (1-8 - 1/4 oz jigs, and try and feel them pick it up on the fall). With so much water to cover, finding them can get pretty difficult. I am very thankful that we have plenty of bass in the freezer now, so it is time to head to Lake Ontario for kings and steelhead. Fortunately, that fishing gets easy just about the time the smallmouth fishing gets tough on Erie. How great it is to live within 1/2 hour of Erie and Ontario. I am also hoping to bring back an Olcott or Wilson harbor largemouth or two and a bucket full of bluegills to throw in our pond that I deepened after it dried up last summer. With all the rain we have had, It is at least 8 foot deep right now and full of frogs, bugs and crayfish for them to eat.

Was there any smallmouth action out there today ? We were out on Seneca shoal Saturday and also got a few sheephead like that, with the largest one about 12 pounds. There were bass out there but they were few and far between. We ended up with (4) that were all from 16 - 20 inches. The smaller ones were a little shallower at 22 ft, while the 20" hog was down at 38 ft on the outer edge of the shoal. There did not seem to be any left at the harbor gaps or in closer to shore, but we did not give it much time in there. The wind was not good, starting out about 10 mph NE at daybreak, but increasing to around 40 mph by 10 am. We were getting pounded pretty good out there on the shoal in 3-4 foot waves. I had to go up to 5/16 oz jigs and run the big sea anchor on our drifts to hold them near the bottom. The bass were hitting very light, in fact I did not feel any of them strike. They were just "there" all of sudden, just as the jig hit the bottom. A neighbor kid (who convinced me to fish Seneca shoal) recorded the fights Saturday of the biggest sheephead and bass on his go-pro camera. The video of the big bass fight lasted about about 5 minutes, while the sheephead, that probably weighted about 2X, was just under 3 minutes. The big sheephead pulled hard for a little bit, then gave up easily. The bass just kept pulling towards bottom. That just proves to me again that no freshwater, warm-water fish outfights the smallmouth bass pound per pound. That is the main reason they are my favorite. They also taste pretty good, but I give a slight edge to the largemouth in that department. I also noticed many years ago (when my fiance and I had to fillet a few sheephead, because we had no other food down at hunting camp and the bass were not biting that day), that there is a lot less meat on sheephead that there is on bass. It was a good thing that the guys at camp turned up their noses when they heard that it was sheephead that we had on the grill. There would not have been enough for us otherwise. Honestly though, they tasted about the same as the bass always did, grilled fresh. Sheephead may even be a bit like oysters in one respect, as I seem to recall the my old truck camper rocking most of the night that time.

I can relate to wheels falling off small JD's. The first tractor on our farm was a JD M that my grandad bought new in 1951 (before that, all they used was "real" horsepower). That was the only tractor here for many years and it accumulated a lot of hours. Eventually the axle splines wore out on both rear wheels. The last time a wheel came off, it was while grandpa was cultivating corn in the late seventies. He was probably not moving very fast at the time, because the steering was so badly worn that high speed cultivating would have cost him a lot of corn. It still must have been scary when that wheel came off, but at least the mounted front and rear cultivators held the tractor up and prevented a roll-over. In later years, I cultivated many acres of corn with nothing but welds holding the rear wheels on. Needless to say, I feel a lot safer on the lower-riding, low-hour Ford 8n that I used for cultivating this year. An added plus is that it does two rows at a time instead of just one like that JD M, or the crappy little Farmall cub that I used for the previous 14 years. Man I hated that thing with it's offset "cultivision". That forced me to look down at the corn, and gave me a stiff neck. The first time I used it, I wanted that old JD M back, but dad took it with him when my folks moved onto my grandparents (on my mom's side) larger farm. With the JD, you could keep your head up and just sight the row down the ridge on the hood. How great it was this spring, when I found a deal on craigslist, to trade a Farmall cub snowplow that I had, for a mint-condition Ford/Ferguson 2-row 3-point cultivator. I sold the cub tractor and cultivators cheap to a co-worker, basically at "parts-tractor" price. It feels very good to be rid of that maintenance nightmare. I will never again buy a used, high-hour tractor, especially a red one.

I bush-hogged about 10 acres of over-ripe timothy hay today. I was leaving it for my neighbor, in case he ran short for his livestock due to all the rain, but he has enough now. I just finished disking a 1/4 acre plot that will get fertilized, dragged, and planted with purple top turnips later today or tomorrow. I also disked another 1-1/2 acre plot that will get planted with wheat/soybean/clover mix in mid August. That was corn last year. I bush hogged it in the spring a sprayed it with gly 2 weeks ago. I am going to skip the spray and plow and disk another acre that was also corn last year, seed the same thing, and see which one does better. As fuel gets cheaper (I paid $1.95/gallon for off-road diesel the last time) I prefer to use more plow and less herbicide on my plots. We spent most of the day out on Lake Erie yesterday, and now have enough fish to last thru the year, so now it is time to work on the foodplots. The deer hunting at home is probably going to be a little tougher this year, because the local farmers are really hammering them with their nuisance permits. I am going to need all the food-plot draw that I can get. My corn is looking spectacular, so that should help.

I like a lot of the older country, but some of the new artists are not too bad. Luke Bryant and Florida Georgia Line sound pretty good to me. Some of the old ones are also still coming up with good new stuff, like Willy Nelson's "I woke up not yet dead again today". Personally, I only recognize three types of music: Country, Church music, and Disco. I consider anything that is not country or Church music, to be disco, and I don't care for that.

How is that worse than fat, well fed coyotes and buzzards? Also, they will still be limited by the number of permits they are issued. If they can sell the meat, their "aim" should improve considerably.

My biggest problem with the nuisance permits is the waste of all the deer. It just seems to be a shame that so much fine, healthy meat is left out in the fields and hedgerows to rot. These are not "bark-eating", foul tasting big-woods deer we are talking about. The meat from cropland deer tastes as good as beef and is better for you. A solution to the problem might be to educate the public on the health benefits of venison (it should not be difficult with all the interest in "organic" foods lately) and legalize the sale of venison taken on nuisance permits. That would give the farmers an extra source of income and eliminate the waste. It would also make it easier for the DEC to regulate the number of deer killed, and make it easier to maintain optimum populations. The way it is going currently, the nuisance permits give the farmers the right to use a rifle at night to kill deer. Most of the deer they shoot are not tagged, and just left to scavengers or to rot where they fall. A farmer might only be issued 5 permits, but there is no limit to the number of deer he "misses".

What do you suppose it cost the farmer to produce that $10 bushel of corn? Not including equipment costs, my input cost works out to about 25 cents per bushel. I am saving some money on seed, but he has a big advantage of scale with 12 row equipment compared to my two-row stuff. If it were not for government regulations forcing the use of so much corn to burn as ethanol, then he could make that corn a lot cheaper, and you could probably buy it for $ 5 a bushel. All I am doing is "eliminating the middle man". More importantly, there is a big difference in growing corn to sell and growing it to attract deer. My 100 bu/acre stuff, which contains some weeds between the rows, where I intentionally "go wide" with the planter (to allow grassy bedding areas to form) or where the cultivator shovels miss some, is a lot more attractive to deer than "clean" 200 bu/acre stuff that most farmers aim for. Their livelihood depends on squeezing every bit of yield possible out of their limited tillable acreage. They profit from that "clean" corn being less attractive to deer, which is why they go heavy on the herbicides. Even if I included the equipment costs (I could get by with just my old 8n, a plow, a disk, a planter, a sprayer, and a cultivator), it would add up to about $ 70 more per year. That brings my cost per bushel up to 41 cents. As a strict meat-hunter, I determine food plot effectiveness by calculating the cost of boneless venison per pound after subtracting input costs. I only include the deer taken in and adjacent to the plots for these calculations. $1.00 per pound is the target I usually aim to beat. ps (for DOC): As far as my time spent working on foodplots, I value that significantly higher than my time spent playing golf and just slightly less than my time spent hunting or fishing. As I mentioned earlier, that time involves all of the good stuff that you get from farming and very little of the bad.

It is hard to imagine that the deer hunting could get much better than it is now in NY state for us meat hunters. A couple little tweaks, that might make things a touch better, would be full inclusion of the crossbow, and a third buck tag for those of us who purchase a gun, archery, and ML licences. Maybe we will see one or both of those within the next 100 years.

If that is the case, I hope he tastes more like his momma than his poppa. I don't care for the flavor of mule deer, it tastes a little too much like sage brush for me.

It looks like that whitetail has a little mule blood in him.

The costs really start to favor the venison, when you factor in the additional open heart surgeries, and medications required to support a heavy beef diet. Old farm equipment is cheap compared to medical expenses these days. What price can you put on getting to spend a few more healthy years hanging out with your grandchildren ? My input costs (not including tractors and equipment) was less than $100 for 4 acres of corn last year and this year, including fuel (aprox $50), fertilizer ($40) and herbicide ($5). Last year's 4 acres yielded (6) deer including (2) 2-1/2 year old bucks, one 1-1/2, (2) mature does and (1) button buck. My neighbor to the east killed the 1-1/2 buck (which he kept), right after it stepped out of my smaller corn plot and our neighbor to the west shot a 2-1/2 buck (which he kept) and a doe (which he gave to us) on the other edge of my larger corn plot (both expired inside of it). I am not sure how much the neighbor's put in their freezers (the 1-1/2 buck was tiny - only slightly larger than the button buck that I kept), but we ended up with well over 100 pounds in our freezer from the (4) that we kept from home. When added to a doe and a buck, from up in the Northern zone, that made for a record year. Even including ammunition and licence fees, our venison came in at well under $1.00 per pound last year. You are correct that food plot equipment could greatly increase that cost. I bought a one-owner 8n for $1200 about 30 years ago and still use that for lots of food plot work. I also paid more than I did for our house on a new 4wd diesel tractor that came in very handy getting the corn in on this muddy spring. I don't include the cost of that stuff in my venison cost calculations because it is needed for property maintenance anyhow.

4 acres should last me thru the end of Southern Zone late ML season, if I can control the coons. They will wipe out small plots in a hurry, but fortunately are about the easiest fur-bearer there is to trap. I am going to start digging holes as soon as the corn starts to tassle (NY state DEC requires burying or burning the carcasses of crop-damaging coons taken before trapping season opens). 4 acres made it that far for me last year, even with the record drought we had last summer.

Cash

That is always my second largest input cost. I can usually get by with just a light application of 15-15-15 starter along the rows with the planter. Most of the nitrogen needed for decent yields is banked in the soil from old white clover plots. Corn is the heavy hitter, when it comes to putting meat in the freezer, but 3/4 of my plot acreage is always in clover. That also feeds the deer at night (they don't like to leave the cover of the corn by day after the guns start going off). Eliminating the need for lots of synthetic fertilizer, thanks to all that clover, also eliminates the need for lime. My herbicide cost is minimized by applying it only on the corn rows, where the fertilizer also goes and where the weeds would otherwise grow the thickest. Finally, I have not paid for any corn seed since we got rid of the cattle. I cultivate, but use no herbicide between the corn rows, planted at 36" width. That enables the clover to bounce back on it's own, the year after the corn, often without the need to reseed.

Prayers sent.

A problem that I see with bagged corn, is that it does not come with the free "cover" like you get from the stalks on a food plot. That might make filling them tags a little tougher. On good years , my boneless venison costs under $1.00 per pound, after subtracting all food plot input costs. You are on track on one point though, fuel is usually my biggest cost. Not so bad this year though, with off-road diesel back under $2.00 per gallon.

I consider food plotting to be better than baiting for many reasons. The most important one is that it is legal in NY state. A close second, is that it is a very cost-effective way of putting meat in the freezer and that is always my biggest concern. Also important, is the fact that corn-fed venison tastes great and is very good for you. I can grow corn cheaper than I can buy it, so why would I ever want to bait ? Our family raised beef on our farm for many generations, starting before the Civil war. That was hard work and seldom profitable. There was some fun involved though, and food-plotting for deer maintains all of that, but gets rid of the bad stuff. Ain't it wonderful, that the deer harvest the crops and care for themselves year round. No more rushing to get hay in before the rain, dealing with stuck tractors and combines during wet fall harvests, frozen water in the winter, vets, etc.. Do I consider food plotting baiting? Definitely not, because it is legal and cheaper. I do wonder why anyone would want to bait. It must be some combination of lazyness and stupidity. Heck, I don't even use bait for fish. That is also expensive.

The cardio is a good idea, and it really helps out for some deer hunting situations. I never worried about it too much, until I started hunting the Adirondacks about 10 years ago. The first few years up there, I found out how out of shape I was, and how much different that was than shooting a deer out of a stand on the flat-lands at home. About 4 years ago, I added some cardio to my workouts. Except for one little hick-up (2) years ago (more on that later), it has made hunting up there a lot easier and more enjoyable. Low-impact stuff is a great idea, and that will minimize risk of joint issues and arthritis when you get older. With a bad knee, that is especially important for you. Rowing machine, stationary bike, and swimming are some low-impact cardio methods that I now use regularly, before and after work, during the week. On weekends, I try and mix in some "fun" stuff like mountain biking, road biking, ice skating, snowshowing, and cross-country skiing, depending on the season and weather conditions. I eliminated the treadmill, after suffering from some sciatica issues shortly after starting that, and I would suggest that you also steer clear of those. (2) years ago, I was hobbled up pretty good thru hunting season. Thankfully, that sciatica went away shortly after I gave up on the treadmill, and started some new leg-stretching exercises. It is hard to exaggerate how much easier it is to kill a deer up in the mountains, when you can move thru them easily on foot without pain. I see about (4) deer up there while walking for every one that I see while standing or seated.