wolc123

I would recommend having a backup, AC powered sump pump and all the required pipe fittings in case your primary pump fails again. The main pump should be a good one, but the backup can be a cheap one. I depended on a water backup pump during the "October storm" in WNY and ended up with over a foot of water in the basement. Those things do not work if the city water pressure drops, as occurred during that storm (they simply add to the flooding in that case). A loss in water pressure is very likely during a major storm (clue- all municipalities use electric powered pumps). I also had a smaller flood a few years ago when the pressure switch on my main pump failed. The battery-backup pump that I tried could not handle the volume. Now I have a good "5 year warranty" main pump, a cheap backup always ready to go, a 7500 watt generator, and no more flooded basements.

I got up in the tree at 7:45. There were tons of deer tracks on the way back but none from squirrels or coyotes (my neighbor has trapped 8 of them so far this season, hopefully including the whole litter that had a den in a topsoil pile out back along the creek at our place). The sunrise was beautiful, but not a creature was stirring in the woods after it came up. The corn is all gone now, but the deer had a very busy night based on all the dug up clover, turnips and wheat I saw on the way back. Up in the tree, I started loosing feeling in my toes around 8:45. Drinking a quart of hot cider helped a little but I had to climb down about 9:15. The best part of today's hunt was the "free" workout trudging thru the snow which was higher than a foot in many areas. I also got to double that workout because when I got almost back up to the house I realized that my quiver and two arrows were still hanging back in the tree. I nearly fired up the old pickup to run back there but by that time the feeling was back in my toes, so I went for the additional workout. Good luck this afternoon.

9F?, I am going to stick it out in up in my woods stand in 9F, as long as I can (hopefully the wind is not too bad and the tree rats are out). I will probably head over to 8G in the afternoon. My brother in law signed me over a DMP for there (there is also a lot more tree rats over there). Good luck

TF, So you can stop scratching: The kill zone, centered on the a-hole of a standing deer, using a 150 gr 30/06 from 50 yards, looking from the back side, is approximately 8" diameter. An adult deer brain is approximately 2-1/2" diameter (I know that from doing a few European mounts over the last few years). If we define an ethical shot as one that kills the deer quickly, such that it can be recovered an eaten, then the THS is more than twice as "ethical" as the head shot. The problem with the THS is not ethics, but how much meat is left to eat. If the deer is properly aligned and the bullet is kept within a 3/4" diameter point of impact, the amount of destroyed meat approaches that of the good head shot. I do confess to one head shot on a squirrel however. It was the last day of ML season many years ago when sidelocks, round balls, and no scopes were required. About 2 minutes before sundown, a big gray jumped up on a stump below my stand. I had to unload anyhow, so I aimed at it's head and pulled the trigger. I had a hang-fire (just the cap went off, with a delay before the main charge ignited). I held on his head for the additional time required to blow it clean off (less than 2 seconds). I aimed for the head on that one because I thought a 50 cal ball tru the lungs would destroy most of the meat on the squirrel. Now just because squirrels are smaller and more numerous than deer, does not mean that they are not still God's creatures that should be treated with respect. I enjoy eating squirrel from time to time as a change of pace. I like the flavor more than rabbit.

All of my deer guns are cleaned, oiled, and in long-term storage now. Hopefully the crossbow gets a little action this weekend. If not, at least there is an easy cleanup on that. Then it's time to break out the .22 and side-by side 16 ga and get after the squirrels and rabbits.

I hope the grey squirrels are moving this weekend, starting tomorrow morning. That is what I am most after now with my crossbow (filling DMP's is secondary). There is not much room left in our freezers, and I look forward to the challenge of the smaller kill-zone. I will aim for a center-lung shots, with 125 grain, fixed broadheads. Most of the meat on them is in the hind quarters, so no THS's on them, and I see head-shots as "unethical", even on squirrels. Good luck to all those hunting this, the last weekend (for most of us) of deer hunting in NY state.

How did you make out on the one from this Monday? If the skin was left on and your garage is insulated, you could probably get away with hanging for the full week with no issues. If you already skinned it and your garage is un-insulated, then it is going to be froze pretty solid by Saturday morning. Freezing stops the normal breakdown process and should be avoided if possible. It looks like the temps are going to be on the rise, starting late Friday. I have Friday morning, Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon hunts planned to try and fill my last (2) DMP's. The temps in the long range forecast look good after Friday, for hide-on, inside the insulated garage hanging. It don't matter to me though, and I won't be processing another deer until next year. My garage butcher shop is closed for the season and I just carried the heavy grinder back down to the basement. If I get another deer or two this weekend, I will pull the liver (BB or doe fawn only), heart, tenderloins, and tail to keep, and donate the rest to the Buck & Doe shop. We were extremely blessed, with a record year and we have enough venison in the freezer now for at least a year and on half, depending on how many Christmas presents I hand out.

I am sorry to hear about your dad. He has been in my prayers since you let us know of his illness back in October. I even sent a few, from up on a certain Adirondack ridge, where almost all my other prayers had been answered. It is hard to imagine a better way to go than doing what you love with your boy's by your side. Nobody can take those memories away. Hang in there, be strong, and keep the Faith.

This is one of the problems with low fur prices, not enough trapping and rabies breaks out.

Last weekend was the fist since opening of cross-bow that I did not see at least one deer. My mistake was over-hunting too small of an area. (3) hunts on less than 40 acres in two days was too much. I should have left our own farm for at least one of them. My folks always like to see me and they have over 60 acres of decent hunting ground. This weekend, I will be paying them a visit or two. I have one, long 3-day weekend left and two DMP's for adjacent zones. I took a vacation day Friday and had been planning a combination squirrel/bear crossbow hunt at my friends camp in the Southern Tier (no DMP's for there and no buck tags left) but the weather looks iffy for that and my wife's family decided to have an early Christmas party on Saturday night. They are leaving for their new Adirondack house to spend Christmas up there later next week. My new goals for this weekend are: 1) Kill squirrel(s) with crossbow 2) Fill DMP(s) with crossbow 3) Don't make any mistakes. If I can pull off any of those, from Friday thru Sunday, it would be the first time for me.

Stay on him. Maybe, if the cold weather holds, he will drop them antlers before the end of ML and you can use your DMP on him. You might even get lucky and find the sheds. That way you could legally have your "3-buck" year, shoulder mount and all. Many years ago, I missed a chip-shot on a big buck ,that had already dropped one of his antlers, on the last day of ML. My cap went off but the charge did not as he passed under my tree-stand. He looked up and then ran off, unharmed. Too bad in-lines were not legal back then.

No, but I have had a couple of hits that could have easily been taken as misses, based on all the evidence I saw. Each time there was excellent tracking snow on the ground, but it did not help me find one of the bucks. I think I hit that one close to where I aimed, with my 50 cal ML, from a range of about 175 yards. I had a good rest, a good scope, quartering away standing deer, and was very confident in making the shot. He showed no sign of being hit, but ran thru a creek and across a field, then crossed the road and ran into another half-overgrown field. I walked over to where he stood at the shot and there was not a drop of blood, or any hair on the fresh snow there. I picked up his trail on the other side of the creek in the snow and I followed his tracks for about 300 yards before loosing them amoung many other tracks. The whole way, not a drop of blood on the fresh snow. I circled wider and wider, for about 2 hours, from where I lost the trail, finding nothing. The next week I ran in to a neighbor who was hunting the back of that big field across the road. He said "I saw that doe run by me that you missed" (the buck had pushed the doe out of a cornfield below my stand). When he told me he did not see the buck, I knew he was dead somewhere. I found him in a clump of brush, half eaten by coyotes, with the help of the crows, a few days later, about 50 yards beyond the widest circle I had made. Probably a single-lung hit, based on the 500 or so yards he traveled after taking the hit. With my ML, the accuracy was there but the energy was lacking at that range. A little more and he probably would have shown some sign of a hit or left a little blood. The other one was a Button buck that I shot with an old, solid lead 12 gauge sabot from about 70 yards. He was standing broadside, feeding on clover, and I had a great rest - chip shot if there ever was one. At the shot, he bolted into some heavy cover. I walked immediately to the trail, expecting to see blood, but did not find a drop on the fresh snow. I backtracked to where he had been standing. Looking very carefully, I found a single drop the size of a pin-head. I got on his track and found him piled up in a little clearing, 30 yards into the brush, right next to the gut-pile of his momma, who I had killed 1 week earlier. It was a high, center lung hit and all the bleeding was internal. My money say's your doe is probably dead and was probably hit similarly. Sometimes snow makes it harder to find deer because their white belly does not show up as well when they are upended.

Thanks for bringing Him up Belo. None of the other stuff really matters that much in comparison. The Bible says that "He knows where every sparrow falls" and that "Man should eat animals with split, cloven hoofs that chew their cud" (sounds like deer to me). That tells me that He can put them deer wherever He wants to. Keeping things right with Him has been working out very well for me to insure that He puts them in my families food supply. Receiving blessings from Him beats the heck out of fighting the crowds at the grocery store or raising beef cattle (I have done those and they are not always fun).

That is a great point on the mechanicals. There are pros and cons to just about everything and that is surely a con for them. What type of broadhead you used, should certainly play a role in your decision to start a "hot pursuit", or back out and wait. I don't think the mechanical was invented yet when I struck low and forward on that BB (I used a 3-blade, 125 gr fixed Wasp). I killed an 8-point buck with my shotgun, about 9 years ago, that had a mechanical broadhead and about 4" of shaft stuck under the skin on the outboard side. The arrow had nearly passed thru, just above the spine and just behind the shoulder. I lost about 6 chops on that buck, trimming out the questionable looking stuff around the wound. Being a meat hunter, that pissed me off a bit and made me wish that I had shot the smaller buck that came in with it, and had offered me a closer shot. I was thankful that it was a mechanical though, because I probably would have got some nasty cuts on my hands while skinning if it had been a fixed.

I think we all have suffered a bit from that one, known more commonly as "buck fever". The way I got over it was to immediately look away from the antlers and at the hair I wanted to hit, after making the quick decision that it was a "shooter". I may not have shot the 2-1/2 year old I did this year with my crossbow, if I had stayed focused on his rack. His body was big and he looked like a solid 8 when I first saw him (turned out to be a busted up 5). No big deal, because I am a meat hunter primarily. I am thankful the bolt hit very near the hair I wanted, from a somewhat difficult angle.

That brings up another mistake, actually more of an accident that I had a few years ago. The rope broke while I was lifting my shotgun up into my treestand (while unloaded of coarse). It fell down about 15 feet, landing on the scope and shearing the base-mount bolts clean off. I had to go up to the house and grab a backup gun for that hunt. I drilled and retapped the holes a size larger (were #10, and I went with 1/4".) Maybe the smaller ones were designed to shear and save the scope, but it is a cheapo anyhow (Bushnell Banner). It has always been very clear and easy to adjust. I am looking for an excuse to upgrade it but have not really had one yet. That gun/scope has got the job done every time, with only two "2nd shots" required that were not on different deer. I did have to shim a little under the base, while bore-sighting, to get the crosshairs close to the barrel bore after the remount. I always make sure all the scope and base mounting screws are torqued well prior to sighting in.

I can't judge that one, because I don't recall ever trying a doe fawn. I have been blessed with a BB, almost every other year since I started hunting 35 years ago, including my first deer with a gun, and first with a bow. I have also eaten several that were struck by autos. I really can't explain the lack of doe fawns other than the fact that I always target the largest antlerless deer first, when filling DMP tags. That often means that momma gets the first shot and big brother the second. Little sister gets away I guess. Approximately 25% of my antlerless tags have been used on BB's. This season I was blessed again when I transffered a DMP to a friend from work, who promptly used it on a BB, which he gave to me (he does not like venison). That is definitely why I rate ruffed grouse high and turkey low. It is the only bird I have tried where the white meat has a good, rich, nutty flavor. To me turkey and chicken are flavorless, almost like eating cardboard.

My neighbor's nephew shot one on Thanksgiving morning that looked almost exactly like that one, but he had a little sticker point off the spike on one side. The odd thing was, that little buck had almost begged me to shoot him on an earlier hunt, with my crossbow. He walked fifteen yards from my stand, in an open hay field, stood broadside, and turned away. He stood there like that for about 5 minutes, then walked right over to the spot where I heard the two gunshots that marked his demise on Thanksgiving morning. 5 minutes after he dissappeared, a much larger bodied deer appeared from the same trail that the little guy had first approached on. It was almost like that larger, 2-1/2 year buck sent his younger brother out first, to make sure the coast was clear. He traveled a slightly different path however, detouring thru a standing corn field on the other side of the hedge-row that my stand is on. That might explain his much larger body size (about 1.5X). I could hear him munching on the corn as he worked his way thru and got a good whiff of that rutting buck smell when he got closer. When he stepped out of the corn, he was 20 yards from my stand and I put a bolt diagonally thru, from chest to butt. He staggered 50 or so yards out into an open field and dropped over in sight. The bolt had passed thru and stuck a couple inches into the ground. Days later, when I heard those two shots Thanksgiving morning, I was wondering if it was the little guy. We drove by the neighbors house, later that morning, on our way up the my wife's families place in the Adirondacks. I caught a glimpse of a small deer laying next to a jeep out by the road. I ran into the neighbor's nephews, who hunt his place, last week while I tossing the carcass of my Adirondack rifle buck back on my "coyote bait" pile. One of them confirmed that it was him who shot the little 3-point when I asked about the two shots I heard Thanksgiving morning. He did not look to happy about it, and said he thought it was a doe. I bet it was very good eating anyhow, probably almost as good as a BB.

Go back and get that liver if the foxes have not already snatched it up. That right there is about as good of eating as you will find in a wild animal, just one notch below moose tongue.

SSS, perpetuate the myth

I always wanted to try one of them but most that I take are in the summer when they are eating the sweetcorn in my garden. The NY state regulations state that coon taken outside of trapping season must be buried or cremated immediately (is that why you say not to eat them?). I suppose I could legally grab a bite during the cremation process. I never tried that but there is so much fat on them that a little squirt of charcoal lighter and a match would probably be enough to burn them up completely when they are freshly killed. If I ever did try one (after trapping season opens) I plan on putting it in the crockpot with plenty of bbq sauce and cayane pepper. I am guessing it might taste a little like pulled pork? Mid October in central CO about 15 years ago. The local we hunted with out there loves to come to NY for whitetails because they taste so much better. The Elk out there were fantastic tasting however (we did a combination hunt), but I still give a slight edge in flavor to corn-fed NY whitetail, and the BB's are definitely in a class by themselves. It is a good thing all of us hunters have different tastes or one particular species that was universally the best would get wiped out.

I doubt that aging has any effect of the flavor, but it sure does change the texture. In red meat, whether it be beef, moose, elk, or whitetail, riggermortice starts within a couple hours of the kill. That is what makes the legs stick straight out on the road-kills when you see them on the shoulder. You got to be very fast with your processing if you want to get ahead of it. If you process them later the same day or early the next, then freeze, you are just about maxing out the "toughness" of the meat. Even the grind is chewier if you do that. The old refrigerator makes controlling aging fairly easy but I still like it when the outside temps are predicted to be in the 30 - 50 degree range over the week to 10 day aging period. Then I can just hang them, inside my insulated garage, with the hide on until the day prior to processing. That hide does a great job of insulating against daily temperature extremes and keeps the meat from drying out (except for the tenderloins which should always be removed the day of he kill and put in the fridge for a day or two before consumption).

They do real well on 3 legs but not so good on two. That 3 legged buck I killed was showing no sign of injury when I took my first shot.

Top 3: Moose tongue, Whitetail Button Buck Liver, Ruffed Grouse Worst: Mule deer, second worst: wild Turkey (I don't even like the tame farm-raised stuff)

Many years ago I harvested a 3-legged buck just like the one you are describing. I had to check the date to make sure it was not the same one. That remains the largest-antlered deer I have killed (I am a pure meat hunter), and the second heaviest. I made a mistake on it, but the mistake the guy made a week earlier cancelled out my own. I was many years younger and a lot faster back then and was easily able to catch up to the buck who had only two good legs, after my first shot hit high on a front leg breaking the bone. He stumbled thru the thick bush, hindered by his very wide rack, broken front upper leg and shot off rear hoof (the other guy did that). After my first shot, my scope fogged over and I emptied the magazine as he stumbled by, close under my stand, not touching him with the other 4 shots. I got down, reloaded, and caught up to him in the brush, using my last slug on his neck from point blank range. I have been carrying 10 bullets ever since that. I have not used more than three in over 20 years since, but you never know. When mistakes are made, two things should be done: First is to minimize the damage, and second is to learn from it so it is not repeated. I minimized the damage on that doe this year by delivering a second shot ASAP. Next season I will sight that gun in properly so it is not repeated, even if it takes a few more of the $3.00 each slugs. I minimized the damage on that heavy buck two years ago by taking two more shots ($1.00 ea bullets), finally connecting on the last. I prevented a possible repeat this year by hunting areas where closer shots were more likely.