wolc123

I think the waterfowlers use more open choke than turkey hunters because the lead-free shot does not deform and open up as much. I remember #2 steel patterning pretty good from a modified but way too tight from a full.

This is from Nolt's (Lowville NY) 2016 price list handout: "You'll recieve your own steaks & stew back. We do mix good venison with other good venison when processing Bologna, Sausages, Hot dogs Slim Jims, Stixs, and Jerky." They do not specifically mention grind, but the nice lady at the counter told me that it was my own when I picked it up 5 days later, and so did the one on the phone prior to my carcass delivery. I trust them and would definitely use them again. There were about 25 other deer and a bear in the skinning shop when I dropped mine off at about 10:00 in the morning on the day of the kill. The temperature was supposed to rise into the eighties that afternoon. The two skinners said they would have them all done and in the cooler within 2 hours. I found another good reason to take deer there in the future, after butchering the buck I killed up there later, during rifle season. It was absolutely loaded with tics. I don't care to bring any more of them home with me. That alone is well worth the $45 processing charge (for an average sized deer, $50 for large). I have never seen a tick on a deer that I killed at home. I did the best I could to kill the 100 or so that I picked off that Adirondack buck but I am certain that I missed a few. Hopefully they do not multiply around here.

I like the overseeding idea with turnips. They practically give that seed away in central VA. I will have to pick up a little more this summer and try that. There is some beautiful clover up close to a few of my stands but it looses most of it's attraction by late ML season. That is when turnips seem to have the best draw.

Some places posted signs are helpful, but others they are not. My parent's farm is located about 15 miles away. They are adjacent to a trailer park and posted signs are somewhat effective there. The problem with posted signs is that they only keep away the law-abiding folks. They make about as much sense as tougher gun laws in that respect. To the scumbags, "posted" means "good hunting". The more signs, the better the hunting must be. At our farm, we have always had more poaching and trespassing issues when we had posted signs up. Here, the best deterrent by far, is well placed blinds (or misplaced shots). Eleven years ago, I gave in to my wife's request and put up some posted signs at home. She was scared that she or my young daughters would get shot by hunters while they were playing out back. That year I was hunting from a blind near the back of our farm on the last weekend of gun season. I watched a couple women with a little dog on a leash and a big unleashed dog walk right over our bridge, crossing the creek (had posted signs on each side), and start walking towards me down our lane. They walked right on past about a half dozen posted signs, as if they were in a public park. When they got closer to me, the big dog caught my scent, started barking, and charged. Snarling and drooling, he leaped into the back of my blind. I fired a $3.00 sabot from my 12 gauge, just before he sunk his teeth into my leg. The shot missed (warning shots are illegal but a landowner is within his rights to fire in self defense). The loud noise and powder burns to the face were enough to turn him away yipping a bit. That was more than 10 years ago and I have not had any posted signs up, or any trespassing issues since then. I do have a couple strategically placed permanent blinds back there that resemble army pillboxes. I suppose they intimidate the poachers a bit, never knowing if they are occupied by the "crazy guy that shoots at dogs".

Do you have many coyotes there? Do you plant your soybeans in the spring? Do the deer still like them during archery season when they turn yellow and brown? The year I planted a lot of them in the spring, I never saw a deer on them after the leaves turned yellow and they started to dry up. There was lots of night time usage over the winter however, as the deer were eating the ripened, dried up beans. RR corn seed has always been free for me thanks to my contacts in the dairy business. Corn is only tough on the soil if you plant it consecutive years without rotation. Rotating it every 4-5 years on clover plots helps both do better. The clover builds up excessive nitrogen in the soil over the years (if you keep it mowed), leading to grass infestation. The corn consumes that nitrogen, making the environment better for the clover the following year and tougher for the grass.

I like to do late summer plantings (after august 15th) with a mix of wheat, soybeans, and white clover. That gives you a great 1-2-3 punch of getting the deer on the plots and keeping them there thru several years. You can get the ground tilled up over the summer (I don't use any spray on these, but that would be an option if you lack primary tillage equipment). Broadcast the wheat and soybeans, then cultipack. These larger seeds like to be buried a bit deeper and cultipacking them in to the "fluffy" soil puts them at just about the right depth. After that, broadcast the white clover and cultipack again at 90 degrees to the first direction. The clover seed does not like to be buried as deep and the prior and after cultipaction again puts them at at just the right depth. There is not much that you can plant that is more attractive to deer than soybeans when they start to sprout. They will draw the deer to the spot quickly. The soybeans are a "sacrificial" addition, used only to draw the deer to the spots, and the sprouts will be eaten and long gone by the time archery season begins (the first frost would wipe them out if they remained anyhow). Austrian winter peas (AWP) would survive the frost and are nearly as attractive but cost me money. I can always score free soybeans at the end of planting season. I would strongly recommend against spring plantings of soybeans as a foodplot. I did that a couple years ago and it backfired on me. It brought in a lot of does prior to fawning season. When the fawns came along, the coyotes followed, actually building dens at the edge of the soybean field. NY state does not let us hunt them over the summer, so all I could do was look on as they picked off all the fawns, leaving a little pile of sculls at the entrance to the dens. I was amazed at the boldness of the "she-wolfs" over the summer that year. They would come out in the broad daylight, pretend to be injured, and try and draw my attention away from the dens. It is best to let the does have their fawns someplace else and wait for the fawns to grow up a bit before attracting them to your ground. The winter wheat will kick in next and hold them there thru the end of ML season. Deer like wheat better than rye and it is also cheaper, and easier to get. It provides a great "nurse crop" for the clover, keeping down the weed growth. It should be mowed off the following spring before it goes to seed (if the deer don't keep it fully under control). Cerial rye would take less nitrogen out of the plots but that is no advantage on these because the soybeans and clover fix their own nitrogen anyhow. The white clover should then give you 3-5 more years from the plots with just a mowing or two per season as maintenance. Feeding deer is not the primary objective of the white clover that I plant, because it only really does that at night. These plots are great for the deer but a little hunting pressure will send them off them during the daylight hours. If you want a plot to hold the deer on your ground during daylight, the only option I know of is corn. That is why I always spend at least 3/4 of my foodplot budget on corn. Planting it on old clover plots improves yields, and save me a lot of cash on nitrogen. That is the main reason that I keep most of my plot acreage in white clover. By using a row planter with the corn and minimizing gly usage, the white clover usually comes back good without reseeding the following year. Most of my budget goes towards fuel and fertilizer for the corn.

I was about 12 when my grandad bought our first hay baler. It did not take long for me to miss the loose hay. Stacking those heavy bales up in the hot, dusty barn was tough, dirty work for a kid, and having to cut that twine to get some down at chore time was a pain. I don't remember any hard work with the loose hay, and getting just enough down to feed the animals was easy. We also used a hayloader behind the wagon for the loose hay. The old forks and rails are still up in our two old barns, that my great-great grandad built back in the Civil war days. My dad still tells stories from back when they used horses for power. Grandad got his first tractor (John Deere model M) back in 1950. My dad still uses that and it's 2-bottom plow on his garden every year, but that tractor is about as wore out as one could be and still run. I remember the spline wearing out and a rear wheel falling off one time while I was cultivating corn. All that holds it on today, is a perimeter weld around the end of the axle. I do like the sound of that old, 2-cylinder, big-bore gas engine and I liked cultivating with that better than the Farmall cub that I use on my foodplots these days. Sighting the corn row along the center ridge on the hood on that JD was a lot easier on the neck than looking right down at it with the "cultivision", offset-engine Farmall. It also made higher ground speed possible (about double the horsepower helped there also). One thing is for sure, growing crops to feed deer is a lot more fun than doing it to feed livestock. I am very glad that I don't do that anymore, and I feel sorry for those who do. We sold all the cattle after grandad died when I was 15, and it was the best thing we ever did. There is nothing fun about trying to get hay in before the rain, or getting combines and tractors stuck trying to harvest corn on a wet fall. Dealing with sick animals and vets and frozen water in the winter sucks. Raising crops for deer gives you all of the fun parts, and almost none of the bad, when it comes to farming. The deer harvest the crops themselves, water themselves all winter, don't ever seem to get sick, and taste as good or better than the beef. Certainly the venison is a lot better for your health than that fatty beef. Grandad died of a heart-attack at 69. Hopefully a venison-rich diet will give me a few more years to enjoy time with my own grandkids some day.

They made one heck of a speed trap there. Before they fixed the road, it was so rough that it was hard to stay between the ditches with my old pickup if I went much over 50. Now, with good drainage, new and wider roadbed, and fresh blacktop, the residents pushed for the speed reduction. As others have said, go to court and you won't get the points at least. The roadwork has been done on that stretch since the summer, so you don't need to worry about the doubling of the fine. A lot of deer get hit on that stretch, so the 40 limit is probably a good idea. If they pass full inclusion of the crossbow and thus help us get the deer under control, then maybe they will raise it back up to 55.

Prior to that doe this year, it had been more than 12 years since I had one processed. The last one also went to the Buck and Doe Shop. It was a smaller, rutted-out 10-point that could not have field-dressed much over 140 pounds. I had skinned it and put the cape in my freezer and I think they charged me about $10 less than their normal price because they did not have to skin it (Nolt's charges $10 more if they don't get to keep the hide). The box I picked up held 10 pounds of pepper sticks (that were excellent), 50 pounds of grind, and 4 quart-sized packages of butterfly backstrap chops. I was surprised with that amount of meat from that deer. I remember thinking that maybe they just filled the boxes based on the info on the carcass tag (ie: antlerless/spike = small box, 3-6 point = medium box, 7-9 points = large box, 10 points or more = extra large box). I was very happy with the deal and the quality of their work.

I got my first one processed this year, during the early Northern zone ML season, because I was far from home and the temperature was predicted to get up into the eighties later in the day. We still had at least a full deer's worth of roasts in our freezer at home at that point, but my kids like venison tacos the best, and we were totally out of grind. Nolt's, in Tug Hill ground that whole deer for me, except for the tenderloins and backstraps. It was a fairly fat doe, but they must have trimmed it pretty good. The grind looks as clean as the stuff I do at home, after carefully trimming most of the fat, tenderloins, and silverskin. They say that they give you back all your own meat, unless you order sausage or jerky (I did not). The best part was the cost at just $47 for 45 pounds of freezer-packaged meat. If I could get that kind of service and price at home, I probably would stop butchering my own.

It would be a lot easier for me but the trouble is, I have never has an antlerless deer in range while I was armed with a crossbow. I am 2/2 on bucks with the crossbow. I never struggled much with them with my vertical either but killing bucks does little to control the burgeoning population. It is easy to wait for that single set of eyes on a buck to get behind a tree while making the draw. The antlerless deer are always in groups around here, which makes making that draw a lot tougher. The crossbow eliminates that "draw" issue. You can's shoot what you can't see however, and the antlerless deer have gone almost totally nocturnal around here, over the last three years, by the time crossbow opened up. I have no doubt that I could turn the tables if I could get at them with the crossbow starting October 1st. It has been painful watching the herds feeding out on the clover for the 1st few weeks of October over the last several years, and then dissappear by day a few weeks before crossbow opens. They are out again now, with nothing but auto's and coyotes to fear.

I don't think there will be a huge increase the first year of full inclusion, since many will not believe it until they see it and put off the purchase of a crossbow. By the second year, the archery take of antlerless deer will probably get close to the gun take, much as it has in Ohio. There is no need to speculate given all the data that exists from other states which have full inclusion.

A recent poll, in the bowhunting section on this site, showed that bowhunters support full inclusion of the crossbow by at least a 2:1 margin. This is a pretty good place to rally some more support. It sure would make it easier to fill DMP tags and give the DEC a better handle on the deer herd here in North-West NY. Most of the antlerless deer around here have gone fully nocturnal by the last two weeks of archery when the crossbow has been legal over the last three seasons. That has kept the collision shops very busy.

I have enough RR corn seed in my basement now for about 5 acres. That is a bit more than enough to get me thru this spring. I will scrounge up some more, by cleaning out some friends and relatives big planters, around the end of June, to get me thru the next few years. Finding plenty of free "left-over" corn, soybeans and wheat is never a problem, with much of my wife's and my own family in the dairy business. I don't buy much seed, but will probably get a little white clover and turnips towards the end of summer. I always find turnips the cheapest, in central VA, as we are driving across the state to visit family in VA beach. White clover always seems the cheapest at Rineharts in Middleport NY. That is where I spend most of my food plot allowance, on fertilizer. Off-brand gly is always cheapest there also. Hopefully, diesel and gas will be fairly cheap again this year. It should be, if Trump follows thru on his "Energy Independence" plans. We will have to do pretty good this year to beat what we did last year, when the cost of boneless venison came in at well under $1.00 per pound after subtracting all foodplot input costs.

My extended family has been hunted there on opening day for the last 60 or so years. I only made the trip twice, my first two years hunting, 34 and 35 years ago. I remember the first year, hunting with my dad, when I was 16. He said a bear walked between he and I while we were sitting against trees, about 75 yards apart. I never saw or heard it and we were not allowed to shoot them then anyhow. On my second year, I killed my first deer (a button buck) in the park while hunting with my uncle. He, my dad and myself were on a "party permit", which allowed one of three or four hunters to take one antlerless deer. Someone must have shot the mother of a set of twins up on a hill top and the two twins came running down the hill past us. I lined my shotgun up with an opening in the woods and pulled the trigger as they reached it. One of them folded up just like a pheasant hit with a full pattern, at the shot, struck perfectly thru the front shoulders. The family still talks about that shot to this day, but looking back, I was probably aiming for the lead deer and caught the follower. One year my uncle killed a pair of nearly identical 6-pointers with two shots that were running together. Back then you could put bucks on party permits. I don't remember stories of many real big deer down there in Allegheny state park. Several smaller 8 pointers, but mostly spikes, 3 and 4 pointers. Almost all were 1-1/2 year olds. This past fall, one of my nephews took a 7-point and that was it for about 8 guys over opening weekend. I have spent the last 33 openers on our family farm in NW NY, where the deer are a lot bigger and more numerous. Best of all, they taste better on a corn diet than they do on bark. I did miss the big woods though. Fortunately, I have got a taste of it again over the last few years. My in-laws built their retirement home on the NW edge of the 6.5 million acre Adirondack park. There is even some corn grown nearby. You talk about the best of both worlds, that is about it. I killed my largest-bodied ever buck up there 3 years ago. The one I took this past season was smaller, but the breath-taking scenery up there make it worth about double what a flat-land buck at home is worth to me. The only glitch last season was that the buck was loaded with tics. I have never seen one on a deer from around home. A couple Allegheny county bucks, that I butchered two seasons ago, also had a few tics on them.

12/10/16 was the first time you came down on me for "illegally" trapping raccoons. It might be a good idea for you to do a little more research prior to going on the offensive. None of us are perfect and I forgive you for your mistakes.

As you have stated, the law is clear and I have the right to kill the raccoons. They are cute and cuddly when they are little. Have you ever seen one out in daylight when they were suffering from distemper or rabies? They are not too cute then. That is how they often end up if they are not controlled. The collapse in fur prices has resulted in way too many raccoons around. Raccoons are particularly harmful to corn, both the sweet and the field variety. They climb the stalks and knock it down before it is ripe. It is a lot easier and more economical to remove the raccoons than it is to install an electric fence, but if that is your wish, have at it.

Sometimes it is just a minor issue that causes the trouble. My 10 year old hot water heater started acting up 3 years ago. I made a few phone calls and was told that they normally only last 6-7 years by several local plumbers. Rather than get a new one installed, I looked at it myself. First, I turned of the breaker and closed the gas and water valves to isolate it from all energy sources. Next, I removed a small cover plate and noted that there was some calcium buildup on the igniter. I scraped that off with a screwdriver, put it back together, opened the valves back up, turned the power back on, and re-lit the pilot. The repair took me less than 15 minutes. It has worked perfectly in the 3 years since then. It does seem like the older stuff lasted longer. I still use an old GE refrigerator from the 1950's to age deer carcasses when it is too warm for hanging them in my insulated garage. It worked great on two again this season. They always tell you: "the new ones might not last as long but they make up for that in greater efficiency". They would need to be very efficient to make up for the loss of several deer when they quit. My grandparents bought the old Montgomery-Ward upright freezer in our basement back in the early 1980's. A few years ago, during the "October storm" our basement flooded over a foot, covering the motor and condenser. After it dried out, I plugged it back in and it has continued to work perfectly. Right now it contains (4) vacuum-sealed, and one zip-locked deer. It might cost a little more to run, but the peace of mind not needing to worry about it quitting is well worth it.

I have had the most luck within a few days of a full moon (I think it will be the 14th this month) , and around 10 pm is a good time. A few years ago, I killed my last red fox (with a load of #4 shot) that came in to a dying rabbit mouth call. It was right around 10:00 pm, on a moonlit night. I only go out when there is plenty of moonlight and snow on the ground. That makes seeing them a piece of cake. Where you setup to call is important. Make sure you can see a long way downwind. Usually they stick to the cover as long as they can but they always seem to make their final approach from downwind.

The several deer that I finished with my knife did not have every chance to recover and in all cases I obtained proper tags from the police. I assume that they would have issued me some type of violation ticket if it was illegal. With the doe, the officer at the desk had taken a call earlier from the homeowner who's house she was struck in front of. When I showed up at the police station for a carcass tag, with the dead doe in the back of my truck, he asked me if the deer had to be shot. I replied: No, I killed it with my knife. That one had kicked a bit, and sprayed a lot of blood on me, as I slit its jugular. I had not yet cleaned myself up. The officer said: "that would be no", and seemed appreciative that I saved them some work. The BB with the wind knocked out of it was not able to get back up on its feet, and would surely have died from it's injuries. The quicker a deer is killed, the better the quality of the meat. The one that wrecked your car will most likely end up as food for coyotes, but they need to eat to.

three important lessons here: #1): always carry a sharp knife in your car. The concussion probably knocked that BB out cold. You could have slit his throat and had some fine eating to take some of the edge off that $500 insurance bill. A BB liver alone is worth about $25 to me. Three years, ago a hit and run driver broadsided and knocked the wind out of a BB at the end of our driveway. I finished it with my knife and had some fine eating. The meat was good, other than some minor bruising on the shoulders. All the damage to your BB was probably limited to his head and you would have had quite the prize if you were quick with a knife. I once finished a doe with my knife that had struck it's head on a car, knocking itself out and there was not a mark on it's body or any wasted meat. #2): don't be too fussy about filling as many antlerless tags as you can, and keep hunting after you have all the meat you need, if you still have some tags. Almost any processor will accept donations, which are used to feed homeless people. Not only will you be providing some hungry folks with some excellent food, you might also save yourself from what just happened to you. #3) never assume a deer is dead until you stick the muzzle of your loaded gun (or knife) into it's eye and it does not blink.

http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/9358.htm This link shows that raccoons can be killed by homeowners if they are causing damage. Most that I have killed were damaging sweetcorn that I grow to feed my family. I have also trapped some that were damaging fieldcorn that I planted as foodplots for deer. Damage is damage, and does not need to be agricultural. Trapping and eliminating raccoons is actually good for them because, with the collapse of the fur market, not many trappers go for them anymore. That leads to overpopulation and disease like distemper and rabies. The last time you questioned me on this, I located another link where there was a table that showed that raccoons killed by homeowners should be burried or burned, if taken before trapping season opens. I have not always done that in the past but will be sure to do so in the future. I thank you for making me aware of that technicality. It is no big deal for me to dig a hole with the bucket of my tractor and throw them in as I get them in the early summer. After trapping season opens, I will continue to just toss them out in the field for the buzzards. I am going to order a dozen or so more of those dog-proof traps. Them things work very slick compared to the box traps I usually use.

Chef, I assume every shot I take at a deer connects. That means I will continue to fire as long as a safe shot presents itself, if the animal remains on it's feet (or if it appears to be suffering). I am very confident in my marksmanship and only fire on deer (the first time) when I am more than 90% sure of a clean kill. After that first shot, I assume there is a bullet in the deer already and there is nothing to loose but a little more meat in taking additional shots. Over the last 10 years I only missed those two shots on that buck, but I also used second shots (to the head or neck) to end the suffering of (3) different does. None of us down here is perfect. Are you still hunting? Good luck if you are.

How did the field dressing go on that caribou? My biggest surprise on this whitetail 6-point was how clean that went. The Butt-out 2 even worked perfectly after failures on my previous (2) uses. Grow: this 6-point Adirondack buck was not "skylined". I only fired the one shot at it, dropping it in its tracks. The two misses you are referring to were on a larger, 8-point Adirondack buck that I killed in 2014. A careful investigation of the scene of those misses this fall indicated that the first miss was most likely due to the bullet hitting a branch, while the second was due to firing at a 300+ yard range offhand without a rest. I assumed the first shot was a hit and that was the only reason I took the second shot offhand when the buck reached another opening. Fortunately that buck stopped walking when he heard the second shot, giving me time to rest my rifle on a tree for the fatal third shot. That one struck him perfectly, diagonally thru the chest, and he dropped dead there in his tracks. I am sorry for the confusion I caused by mentioning those earlier misses. I just wanted to show you that I am not perfect, and have missed deer before. I do feel extremely blessed to have cleanly killed every deer I have shot at over the last 10 years or so however. I don't want to take much of the credit for that, preferring to give it to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He blessed me with more venison than he ever has this fall. Hunting (and fishing) go a lot better when you realize who controls how and where the blessings flow. It was quite a blessing not to have a stinky mess when field dressing that THS buck this fall.

Nice gun. My father in law has one with open sights and I am going to try and talk him into letting me use it this fall. Speaking of smelling deer, I got a good whiff of that this fall on the 2-1/2 year old buck that I killed at home with my crossbow. I saw him go into a corn field, about 75 yards away, and could hear him munching on corn as he made his way closer. He was directly upwind, it was peak-rut time, and that piss smell was unmistakable. Now I can understand how that would give away their location in heavy cover as you sneak along downwind. It would probably only work at peak rut time however.