wolc123

I agree with that completely and I think that the NY state DEC deserves a lot of the credit for that. As a pure meat hunter, I don’t believe there is a state where the deer population is managed any better. Prior to last year’s tweaks (early September antlerless, restored Adirondack ML antlerless, extra 1/2 hour early & late, and Holiday ML) each of which put a deer in my freezer, there may have been another state or two with a leg up on us. With those changes, as meat hunter living in NY, it couldn’t be much better. I guess maybe they could tack on full inclusion of crossbow for archery season next year, or at least one additional weekend up in the northern zone. Now that NY is in the number one state for a meat hunter, I think I would prefer that they leave the rules just as they were last year. Let the trophy hunters shuffle off to the other 49 states, if they are unsatisfied here.

One reason I don’t use cams, is that I love the excitement, that comes along with having no clue of what might come along. Knowing a particular big buck is out there, would make the hunt for it too anticlimactic, and too much like work for me. I much prefer to make up my mind, what the minimum size antlered buck that I will take is (ie 3 or 4 points on a side, 2.5 yr/3.5 yr, etc.), and then wait patiently, for the first one of those to offer me up a good shot. That has worked very well for me for at least the last 6 years. On all but one of those years, I was able to take the largest buck that I saw, in all of my time hunting that year. I don’t think I passed as many as I killed thru that stretch, and every time that I did pass one, a larger one showed up later. 4 days, last year, was the longest that I had to wait for that to happen. Other years, the bigger one showed up within 5 minutes of my giving the “scout” the pass. Speaking of “scouts”, I fear that “forky”, whom I passed twice last year, might have just got ran over by a car. My sister said she saw a dead one on the road yesterday, between her house and my parents. She asked if I wanted to come over to get it, but I couldn’t begin to squeeze another into our freezers. If it was him, then good riddance to him. He was a mean little bastard, He used those sharp little salad forks of his to punch a couple holes though his little brothers hide. I saw him do that once, and have now completely examined the evidence of the damage.

I think I could get by ok, if they banned fish-finders, but only because I know my local waters pretty good. It would make it tougher, and definitely add some time, to what it currently takes me to secure enough for some meals. As far as the cell cams go, I have not used them per se, but I did benefit from the direct live observation of others, on the single buck that I killed this year. Based on that, I can definitely understand how some could consider them an “unfair advantage”. I had received a phone call, after my previous hunt (in a different location), informing me that the buck had appeared , 10 yards from another of my stands, at 4:20 pm. Two days later, I was in that stand at 2:20 pm, and killed that buck at 4:18 pm. Without that phone call, I likely would have hunted another location, resulting in (4) unfilled tags in my soup, rather than the (3) I ended it with. The current atmosphere in NY seems to be, to do all they can, to keep up the harvest numbers. Pressure to ban cell cameras, could only come from selfish trophy hunters, who are in a very small minority here. I don’t think there is any reason to fear a ban.

If you think omicron is bad, just wait till you see comicon.

I always clean my guns, within a day after the last hunt. I didn’t have to press the load and bullet out of my ML first this year, so it went a little quicker than usual. I finished butchering the button buck, that took care of that job for me, last night. I hope to have all the other stuff put away by the end of this weekend.

I would have taken both of those shots, where he missed, if I was in that guy’s shoes. If he didn’t kill that old worn-down, rutted-out buck, it’s odds of surviving the winter up on the Canadian border would have likely been well under 50 %. Better to at least give it a chance at making it to Heaven, rather than leave it for the vermin. Any blood at all, even from a bad hit, would have slowed it down further, and made it easier to finish. It is a lot harder with a ML and he makes no secret, about wishing he had a little more lead to throw, with his 3600. Get close and spray lead, when an opportunity presents itself and tracking conditions are good, is the name of the game. The end justifies the means. If you always want to wait for a perfect broadside shot, the best bet is to stick with the “ambush” technique, that is employed by the vast majority of hunters these days, and let the bucks come to you. I don’t begrudge the trackers at all. It’s seems like a cool way to hunt. Way to much stress and energy usage for me in my off time though. While I still have a “day job”, I like to “relax” while hunting. If I am physically able, I try some tracking, after I retire.

My favorite part of the video was the end where he thanks God for blessing him with the harvest. That is the part of hunting that too many ignore at their peril. All creatures, great and small, end up exactly where The Big Guy wants them to go. For a buck, sometimes, that is coyote excrement, and sometimes it is Heaven - mankind’s food supply.

Yesterday’s dinner and leftovers for lunch at work today: I only got one meal, from a 4 month old button buck liver last September, but his 7 month old twin made two. They both tasted equally delicious.

I can relate to that. Never been a big antler guy, but when I killed my biggest bodied deer in recent years (43” chest girth back in 2017, I think), I left my crossbow rope/pulley in the woods somewhere. Fortunately, my crossbow at the time was a small, entry-level model, and I was able to draw it without it on my next few hunts (for antlerless deer). It was a little tough on the fingers but I got it drawn back ok a few times. Since then, I made up a couple of pull handles with steel hooks, short lengths of chain, and comfortable handles. They work better than the rope pulley ever did, on that lighter draw weight crossbow, and allow for faster reload if a second shot were ever needed. I have also lost knives, hats, gloves, and multiple other items thru the years including a heart and liver from an old doe up in the Adirondacks last fall. Now, I usually try to make a special point of piling all my junk up under my stand before I start gutting and when I finish. That seems to have cured the problem. If I forget anything I can usually find it on a return trip.

You can get very little meat damage, and super clean gutting, if you hit them in the “under the tail pocket”, when they are facing directly away from you. That is a much smaller target though. If you miss it by more than 1/4”, in any direction, then the meat damage would be pretty intense, and gutting would be a mess.

That one was my great grandfathers and I would guess that it was first put together in the early 1920’s. If it’s not a hundred yet, it is pretty close. I put a different motor on it after the one my grandfather had on it drowned in the basement after the old house burned. I also put a new #12 knife and 3/16 screen on it, about 100 deer ago, and again right before the last one last year. In the old days, my grandfather would get them sharpened, but nobody seems to do that anymore. A new set was $30 on Amazon last year. It plugged up on me a few times, on my last deer, 2 years ago. It ran a whole bigger one thru last year, as fast as I could load it, without missing a beat. I am afraid to look inside the gear-reduction assembly, which looks like it came off of a model T Ford. I also changed the belt one time, maybe 10 years ago. I don’t think I am going to use it on the deer that’s hanging in the garage now. We have a very good supply of grind already, and those button bucks make real tender stew meat for in the crockpot.

The only buck that I weighed, in the last 10 years, was killed on opening day of sz gun season and weighed 182 pounds field-dressed on a “legal for trade” butcher’s scale. I only did that to calibrate the PA chest girth chart, which one of our members was kind enough to post on here a few years ago. I can now get a pretty good idea of their weight, and approximate edible yield, using just a tape measure and that chart. In my area (wmu 9F) that’s about the average field-dressed weight of a 3.5 year old buck on that date. 4 or 5 other members (mostly from wNY) also weighed and measured their bucks that year. It seems that the PA chest girth chart consistently underestimates the weight of a wNY deer. I can only assume that is because whitetail deer tend to be heavier, near the northern edge of their range . The little ones they have down in FL illustrate that pretty well. The only antlered buck that I killed last year might have been a few pounds heavier. It’s chest girth measured 1/4” more than the 182 pounder’s. One of the issues with weighing field dressed deer, is that the weight varies so much with time. When the guts are first removed, well over half of the measured weight is made up of water, which has no nutritional value. The longer the deer hangs, before it goes on the scale, the more that water percentage drops, and the weight drops accordingly. The chest girth method provides for more time-independent results and better approximation of edible yield volume. I always want to know how many quart sized bags I will need to package my meat, That is a volume, not a weight measurement.

My unit takes both those prizes, hands down.

Some of us are afraid to post pictures of our deer, and others (like me) are afraid of deer drives. You can find a few photos, of the only deer that I killed so far this year, on the 2022 “live” thread in the deer hunting section. I’d throw up a few more photos of it, and a few from last year here, but I don’t want to offend some of our thinner-skinned brethren.

Too much non-deer talk in last years thread. I wonder how the LI and PA folks are doing ?

It helped on two of the deer that I killed last year, the first being about 15 minutes after sunset during the early antlerless season. The second, was this 3.5 year old buck that first appeared 5 minutes after sunset on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Even with the extra time, I never would have seen him, in the thick woods, without the light dusting of snow we had that day. When I took the shot, it was 7 minutes past sunset. The only thing I didn’t like about it was gutting in the more or less pitch black dark both times. I have to remember to keep a good headlamp in my pack for that reason from now on. My mom standing behind me, gaging from the blood and guts and shaking while holding a flashlight didn’t cut it. I noticed, mostly during the early September season when the leaves hadn’t even changed color yet, that about 20 minutes after sunset and 10 minutes before sunrise were the only useful portions of the new time. Beyond that, on either side of daylight, it was too dark to see the crosshairs on my scopes. Maybe some real expensive, modern European glass would help, but my old and new Redfields were not quite up to it.

Somebodies got to put up some deer pics since your too scared to put up any.

That’s not as easy as it sounds. This button buck was pretty elusive when he stepped out onto my clover plot at 4:18 pm yesterday. He showed up two minutes prior to the previous time, two days prior, so I wasn’t quite ready. My gun was pointed in the wrong direction, and he came from a place I didn’t expect. He would take a step or two, then turn away. Each time he turned, I inched my gun his way, but he would turn back stared me down. I had to freeze (he probably saw my orange hat), and try not to blink.

Did you see the one with the new antler ornament in it: That is my twenty cent, 16-gauge, Remington slugger that he caught with his rib cage. I pressed it back into the original hull. I held it over the propane heater a little too long, so it’s a little shorter than it once was. The powder is burnt, the primer is punched, and I couldn’t find the wad. I was going to melt that 4/5 oz of lead, and cast it into a few jig heads, but another forum member gave me this idea. It sort of balances out the lower jaw hanging on the other side. I am saving that in case I decide to do a “proper” aging, rather than my usual “skull size” method.

He hunts the southern zone also, and gives plenty of deer to folks who appreciate it.

I can think of lots of good reasons. Doing something that you love, while helping to manage the deer herd, tops the list. No one benefits from an unmanaged deer herd, nor do the deer. Disease would likely wipe them out entirely, if they were not managed. I agree with you on catch an release fishing though. To me, that is just the senseless maiming of a fine food source. It’s kind of sadistic to torcher those beautiful creatures “for sport”.

For many, it is not ALL about the meat. I see nothing wrong with that, so long as the meat goes somewhere where it is appreciated. There will always be vegetarians and folks who prefer eating domesticated animals.

Same here. I saw more deer thru the Holiday week, than I did thru all of southern zone gun season after opening day. I only killed one on the last day, but it was fun getting out there and seeing some. The weather was almost perfect thru most of it. Warm enough, to not freeze my but, yet cool enough for easy meat handling and to keep the deer active. My favorite part about it was only needing to use 1 vacation day from work, and being able hunt 5 of those 7 days. That was a big plus for working folks, especially those of us who have had to bust our ass continuously, going into work each weekday thru the pandemic. I liked all of the changes that the NY DEC put in place for deer season this year, but the Holiday ML season was my favorite. In these days of full-on global warming, one other great thing about this extra late season, is that it is finally cold enough to properly age a carcass in my garage, without having to use my deer fridge. The week after Thanksgiving was the only other week that was good for that last year, thru all of the other southern and northern zone deer seasons. Thankfully, I was also able to take advantage of that one.