wolc123

I moved that last one over to the right a bit. It’s only a 2x4 wall and I figured if someone slammed that door real hard, with him hanging right over it, he could fall and take out their eye. I’ll save that center spot for a smallmouth bass, if I ever get one that I want to mount.

It seems relatively easy for 1.5 thru 3.5. After that, it is probably a lot tougher. For this group (that I killed since 2015), I am going with 2.5, 1.5, 3.5, 3.5, 3.5, 2.5, 3.5 years old, starting from the bottom. Skull size seems pretty consistent thru that range. Body size and antler size do not seem to be such good age indicators. The smallest antlered 3.5 (est) shown here had the largest body, by a significant margin (over an inch of chest girth) while the largest antlered one had the smallest body by a significant margin (again by more than an inch of chest girth). The other two est 3.5’s had nearly the same sized body’s and antlers and were taken on the same farm. One of those weighed 182 pounds field-dressed on a certified, made in USA, butcher’s scale. I saved the lower jaws of the those two, just in case a dispute ever had to be settled. I brought last year’s est. 3.5 in from the barn today, now in the top spot, along with the slug that brought him down, and his lower jaw. have at it fsw

Happy birthday.

Small game or fishing, I like to have friends or family along, but deer hunting, I prefer being alone. I enjoyed deer drives with friends or family, when I was younger, up to the day when I had my hair parted by an errant 12 gauge slug. Since that day, alone and about 7 ft up on flatland is my second favorite place to be hunting deer. My favorite, is on the ground and in the mountains, far from the nearest other hunter. I like to have friends and family nearby, for help with carcass recovery when I am not at home, where my own loader tractor is always ready to go. My dad and father in law really get into it, with their own atv’s and tractors, and I will miss them a lot when they can’t help out with that anymore. I definitely agree with the op’s church comment, and never do I feel closer to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, than when I am alone and deer hunting. He gets all of the credit for my harvests.

Are these the same pair of glasses from your first post of pictures aka your current glasses? Same prescription, but different pair. I mostly go with single-prescription, $ 4.99 a pair Zeni optical glasses for hunting these days. Back then, I paid hundreds for imported lens, single-prescription glasses. For other than scoped-gun hunting usage, I usually go with the Zeni-optical $ 59 no-line bifocals. They are no good for hunting with a scope, because they throw off my vertical, somewhat randomly. Lawd clued me on that phenomena, which saved the lives of several deer a few years ago. I’ve killed every one that I shot at, since going back to single-prescription glasses with scopes.

I killed bucks with bigger antlers than my last year’s 9-point in 2019 and 2018, and one with a significantly bigger body in 2017. Don’t they count ? If you don’t remember the pictures; I can provide more. I even saved the lower jaw on one. I did settle for a 2.5 year in 2020 because he met my harvest criteria then of at least. 3 points on a side. My venison need wasn’t so dire last season so I upped it to 4 points per side minimum. It had been over 10 years since I tagged an antlered buck with less than 3 points per side but I still consider myself a meat hunter. Button bucks are welcome bonuses. You definitely got the trophy thing down though, and thank you got your contribution.

A supportive wife who’s family has some good hunting land helps out a bit also.

“Trophy” is probably not the best choice of words, when it comes to discussing a deer kill. “Meaningful” would be a lot better, and that is always in the eyes of the killer. I had never heard of checking a deer’s chest girth until g-man posted that PA chart back in 2016. That is a hell of a doe and that measurement falls very close to the two largest bucks that I have checked since then. I am sorry that I never got a chance to check the girth of that doe that I killed up in the Dack’s last year. She was big but lean, and I got very little meat back from the butcher. I was a little pissed about that, until the Friday after Thanksgiving, but now it don’t bother me much, mostly because of large quantity of meat that the Good Lord blessed me with, starting then. Had I got a chest girth measurement of that doe, I could have got a rough estimate of how much meat I should have gotten back. It was so warm at the time, that my biggest concern was getting her into a cooler. I am not sure how many deer I have killed, maybe a hundred, but if I thought about it real hard, I could probably remember something about every one. All were meaningful to me. I could give two shits about what anyone else thinks of any of them. They were all legally taken, to the best of my knowledge, when I pulled the trigger or released the arrow. All we can do for those folks who feel the need to shame others harvests, is pray for them. Hopefully they get their acts together, before it is too late.

I just couldn’t take listening to Mahomes yelling prior to the snaps. I am so thankful that I won’t have to listen to that during the Super Bowl. It will be the Bill’s to loose next season, if they can add a good player or two to their defense. Cinncy’s D sure shut the Chiefs down in the second half. Had they won the OT coin toss, I think I would have deferred.

Belo hit on some good points. I copied that post here where it was on the right topic. My first Adirondack deer was an early ML week doe and was definitely one of, if not my own personal favorite “trophy”. This one from last year, was also right up there. It took me 3 years and about 36 hunts to finally bring her down. Some folks make a big deal about how challenging it is to kill “mature” bucks, but mature does can be even more challenging. A rut crazed buck of any age is the dumbest animal in the woods and can easily be taken by a hunter of any skill level. No such “free ride” with a mature doe.

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Yes, redemption Chiefs loose a playoff game at home in spectacular fashion .

Try aiming for low heart rather than center lung. That way, you might end up with a center lung kill, when they duck your shot. Most high misses with bows have nothing to do with hunter nervousness. The deer goes to a state of high alert, when it catches a glimpse of your draw, then “ducks” when it hears the bow dump it’s energy. Another way to eliminate such misses (and high back wounding) during the peak two weeks of the rut in NY’s southern zone, is to switch to a crossbow. With no need to draw that, with a deer in close, there is no need to shoot at “alert” deer. That means it will probably be in the same place when your arrow hits, because only “alert” deer jump the string.

A better hunter is one who puts the needs of others ahead of his or her own. The rewards of doing that will always exceed the cost.

I have done a lot of business there over the years. That’s where I took grandpa’s old Ithaca 16 gauge model 37, back in 1982, and had this 1.5 Weaver put on it. I paid for that work with money made on muskrat hides. This combo has killed every deer that I have shot it at. If you check a recent post or two, you may find a pic of the buck that I killed with it last year. Most recently (maybe 2 years ago), I traded them my old Ruger .22/250 for a Marlin 336BL 30/30. I have yet to fire that at a deer. I have been doing just as well on the chucks with my Ruger 10/22, only now they sometimes make it back to the hole. They threw in a couple boxes of 30/30 bullets with the trade deal.

My wife hit it out of the park tonight with my favorite meal, venison stuffed cabbage: I could eat that every day and be happy. She went all out and made the rolls. I had already busted one up before I took the picture. Usually, she does the “lazy” style and mixes everything up together. I had to slow down and enjoy it a little more this way.

The only camo, left on the Lockport Walmart rack today, was a size small jacket. I got a good deal on hot-hands, brown thread and light bulbs. They had 4-packs of 60 watt equivalent LED’s for $ .97. Home Depot had most of the other electrical stuff that I needed, so it wasn’t a wasted trip.

I love the snow, and I feel sorry for the poor bastards down south, where they don’t often get it. In addition to making it about 10 times easier to see and kill the deer during hunting season, it sure makes it easy to see what they are eating and what they like best. Local conditions are very good for them right now. I imagine they are still packing on the fat. We got about 20 inches of snow a couple weeks ago, before the ground was frozen. Now, that snow is insulating the ground, keeping it from freezing. The deer don’t need to work very hard to get thru it, to the green winter wheat and turnip bulbs down below. It looks like they are hitting the wheat harder than even the remaining standing corn right now. I am glad that I switched to wheat, from rye, that I used to use as a nurse crop for the white clover. Deer like wheat a lot better than rye. I didn’t realize how much they liked it, before today’s snowshoe walk. Wheat is also cheaper and easier to find. It sounds like we are supposed to get a thaw, mid-week. That might make an ice layer, when it refreezes, making it much harder for the deer to get at the wheat and turnips. From the looks of the tracks and scat, they prefer the winter wheat over the white clover, by about 10X right now. The tracks indicate that there might be too many deer back there. I hope the DEC opens up an early antlerless season this September, like they did last year. If they do, I will try harder to use my (4) dmp tags on mature does, instead of button bucks. I only filled two of my four prior year dmp tags (one was technically filled this year). I couldn’t be that fussy, because my brother got married in the middle of the early antlerless gun season. That took out half of the weekend days, that I could have hunted during that “special” season. Between that wedding and our daughter’s playoff field hockey run (took away most of my crossbow season), I am thankful that I was able to take any deer last year.

It is comfortable, but I have yet to take a shot at something out of it. The closest I came to that, was two springs ago when I called in a big Tom turkey. He came in quiet, about 10 or 15 minutes after I called. I was not ready, and he got within 10 yards before I saw him. The winter before that, I blew a chance at a coyote, because I didn’t open the little front window in the front, which was facing the wind. It was frozen shut and wouldn’t budge when I saw the yote and tried to open it. What I like about it, is that it is portable, and I can pick it up and move it with the loader on my tractor, using fork extensions. One of these years, I might place it in a good spot, and kill a deer out of it.

This morning’s workout was a slow snowshoe walk around the back 30. It looks like a quite a few deer must have survived hunting season, and are now using our place for winter food. My back 1.5 acre corn plot is nearly picked clean now, but still holding a little. The front 2.5 acre corn plot is long gone, but did not yield nearly as heavy as the smaller, back one. I kicked out just one dove, while walking thru the back one. Doves will only stay in standing corn while there are still some kernels of corn on it. All the greens are eaten off the little turnip plot next to it, and some of the bulbs are dug up. It looks like the deer are digging thru a foot of so of snow for clover in a couple spots. The heaviest deer feeding activity right now looks to be in the winter wheat, that I planted last fall (as a nurse crop with white clover), in 1.5 and 2.5 acre plots. I didn’t take a deer off this farm last year. I saw a spike, a small 4 point, a 2.5 year 8 point, and one doe, during the September antlerless season, and 3 unidentified deer during the late and Holiday ML seasons. Those three were in, or headed to that small corn plot.

I wonder what he charged for a filling ?

I may run up to Lockport today and check out Walmart. I got a “Scent factor” camo jacket there a few years ago, that I really like, and it was cheap. I am also out of brown thread, for tying bucktail jigs, and that is usually the cheapest place to find that. The only hunting item, I could really use, is a few pair of light camo gloves. I will definitely check out their ice fishing stuff , and probably maybe hit Runnings also. My main stop will be Home Depot, for electric supplies to wire my shop.

The two things I don’t like about ice fishing are: winds and lethargic warm-water fish. That means perch, walleye (neither of which fights worth a crap even in the summer), but also bass and northern pike, which loose most of their power in the cold water. It is fun, if you can find trout through the ice on calm days. I am hoping for some brookies over President’s weekend. I only ever caught one Laker, and it fought like crazy, as did a few rainbows that I have taken. I’ll probably have to settle for the usual dozen or so smallmouth bass and a perch or two. The bass all go back, but they break up the monotony. I don’t mind catching them, when it’s not too windy.

Most of the time, I hate high winds (more than 10 mph) when fishing, but there are couple places and times where I like it, especially if it is warm and from the south west direction. I remember killing the walleyes on the Allegheny reservoir a few times, backtrolling into the wind in May. The other is up on the St Lawrence River in the summer. When that SW wind kicks up, the largemouth get real aggressive, and fall easily to spinner baits, slow rolled over the big weed beds, in the bays. My 17 ft deep v aluminum hull mostly sucks in the wind, but it does ok in those two scenarios. It is horrible in the wind out on Lake Ontario, trolling for salmon. I don’t even try that, when winds over 10 mph are predicted. I don’t love hunting in the wind, because it covers the sound of the deer’s approach. On average, I probably hear four deer first for every one that I see first. More than half that I see first, see me before I see them. That makes killing them difficult. I have been able to kill most of the ones that I wanted to, when I heard them first.