wolc123

Would it make someone a hypocrite if they opposed the Holliday season yet still hunted it ? (Asking for a couple friends).

Looks like another classic case of sunlight deprived vitamin D deficiency. That happens to lots of folks in NY at this time of year. TLR is in need of a sunny vacation.

Congrats, looks like a solid 2.6 year old. Those extra points bump it up by 3 in Rob’s contest. He will need to recalculate.

I think the value of whitetail deer meat, compared to antlers, would go way up if more hunters figured that “aging” thing out. It always amazes me that some folks here, including one supposedly educated chef, do not seem to understand that venison is red meat and subject to rigor mortis, just like beef. Many of them are eating their deer meat, right near the stage of maximum toughness, because of that. Inadequate temperature control, during the aging process, is a lame excuse. How hard is it to find an old refrigerator ? Thats mine (probably from the 1950’s in the background). I didn’t need it on that particular buck, which hung hide-on for 9 days in our insulated garage, because the outside temp was nearly ideal thru that stretch. Leaving the hide on thru the aging process helps insulate the meat against temperature extremes and keeps it from drying out too much. I pulled the tenderloins from that 3.5 year old buck, the day that it was killed, and put them in a ziplock bag in a newer fridge in the house for 6 days (photos #118 &119). Those are located on the inside of the carcass and are totally unprotected by the hide. They definitely would have dried up thru that 9 day aging process. They practically melted in my mouth after frying them up in olive oil.

Picture #117 shows the only measurement on that buck that matters much to me: Merry Christmas FSW. Are you heading down to Letchworth after to try for your southern target ? If so, I hope you get him.

I am really looking forward to it. I probably wouldn’t be, if I hadn’t finally broken a long slump with my in-line ML, during the early ML season up north this year. Also, I still have a buck tag. Antlerless deer get pretty sparse in my two local spots after October 1. I am planning on hitting it pretty hard, because I have 5 of those 7 days off of work and I only had to use one vacation day. I don’t know if I will do an all day sit, but there is a good chance that I could make 10 morning and evening hunts. The January 1st hunt(s) excite me the most. This is a great excuse to take it easy at this years New Years party (unless by some miracle I can punch all 4 of my remaining tags prior to that). I would be very thankful for just one more deer. We have enough meat in the freezers for about a year and a half now, but I have some extended family members and friends who I would like to give some more to. My grandpa’s old grinder kicked az, on the one deer that I put thru it after replacing the knife and screen with new ones this year. I’d rather not wait 10 months to use it again.

I only drink the negras up in the Northern zone where my FIL is buying. This is my favorite make and model at home in WNY:

What about the two broken off points on the right and the extra sticker on the left. He’d be lucky to net 70 points as a typical. Thanks for your generosity.

Good to hear. Is mountain lion and mountain goat good eating ? I have tried most of that other stuff, but not those. I would put moose ahead of corn-fed white tails (especially the tongue), and elk and caribou about equal. The only wild game that I didn’t care for at all was mule deer, antelope, fish eating duck, and spring Tom turkey. I also like squirrel a lot better than rabbit and hope to get a few of those yet, before the season closes in February. No warm weather vacations planned for me this winter, but work might send me to Southern CA. I am sorry if you felt that I attacked you. My intent is to help you into a better course. It really isn’t ALL about the antlers. I will admit that it isn’t ALL about the meat either (just mostly for me).

I don’t mind the personal attacks directed at myself, but not all are blessed with such thick skin. You may want to take a vacation in the sun some where, or at least take some vitamin D supplement. That may help you not to be so inclined to switch to attack mode, at this time of year. No worries though, and I hope you have a good Holiday season, even if you choose not to hunt.

Merry Christmas, any other requests ?

Why is that, do they taste different after they shed ? You and the other two ought to spend a little more time worshipping God and a little less worshiping antlers .

I love the trophy hunters because the “cute little” deer they pass up sometimes end up in Heaven over at our place.

That’s 90 pounds of meat in our freezer and I put it up again just for you , Chris, and FSW because they just love seeing it.

I am loving the changes they made this year and have been able to capitalize on three of them: 1) early antlerless season 2) early ML antlerless reopened in Adirondacks 3) extra half hour before and after Daylight. So, I wish to offer you a sincere “thank you” if your complaints helped contribute to those positive changes which have contributed greatly towards my own sending of 3 deer to Heaven so far this year. Hopefully, I will get to send at least one more there during the upcoming Holiday ML season. Another big Thankyou to my friends with the Northern Erie Snowseekers for doing what they have to make sure that special season takes place. May you all have the merriest of Christmasses , and thanks so much for your contributions to those three early gifts which the Good Lord had already blessed our family with.

What is you’re address there ?

They are trophy hunters and that’s what they do. I am thankful that God made me a meat hunter and I can’t think of any state that treats my kind better than NY. My advice to the complainers would be : pack your bags and move, if you don’t love it leave it.

I get about a year out of the big (54) pack of Hot hands. I usually use just one in my muff. It has a separate, inner pocket, that holds one. They last 10 hours. I usually add a second, fresh one to the muff on real cold days at lunch time, if I am doing an afternoon hunt. I am getting low on them now, and just picked up 10 of another brand at Runnings. Most of the Hot hands brand that I have used so far this year were purchased mid-winter last year, and they have still been lasting 10 hours.

I’d go with the rubber mats.

I see them as mostly nocturnal year round, but much more so after gun season opens in the southern zone. This is due to hunting pressure, gunshots, and most of the breeding having been concluded. There is always exceptions, but a quick look at the gun harvest thread's dates and numbers on this site, proves this to be true each season. There is always a significant uptick in daylight activity, for a two-week period centered on Veteran's day, corresponding to the rut. That ends right around opening day of gun, a double whammy that almost stops all daylight activity, unless the deer are pushed from cover. The extra half hour, before and after sunrise/sunset, probably resulted in a significant increase in gun harvest this year. I know that it enabled my only gun season kill after opening day in several years. Fewer daylight hours, fewer hunters, and the need to feed before winter, will soon cause another uptick in daylight activity, but it sure as hell hasn't happened yet. The only deer that I saw all weekend was holed up in the standing corn and didn't bolt out until I got within 30 yards. I am expecting good daylight movement during the Holiday ML season next week. The week off should do a world of good as far as getting them deer out in the daylight again. I still have (4) tags to fill, hungry folks to feed, plenty of powder, bullets, and primers, multiple paid days off of work in that stretch, and I can't wait for it. This is the best thing to come along since the early antlerless season and the hour of night-time hunting.

I don’t use much roundup, and hopefully I can stretch my current supply of that until things get back under control. I can also stretch the nitrogen pretty far, by growing all of my corn on old clover ground. I will probably skip the brassicas next year, because the deer haven’t touched then much this year and it takes a lot of nitrogen to make decent yields.

The cold wind forced me out of my $20 goosifer double ladder stand back in the woods after 2 hours. I’d have only made an hour without the quart of hot cider that I drank back there. Now I am up in my new, front barnwood wrapped blind where at least I have a little wind protection. The field am looking over, for the last hour, is the same one that I filled my only late ML tag on(from that big white heated blind in the background) about 10 years ago.

In stand at 1:56. Just as I suspected, no deer action whatsoever in the 10-2 time frame.

The only tag tag that I remember filling, during the late ML season, was a button buck that i shot out of my bedroom window. There was 5 minutes of legal daylight left on the last day of the season. I had worked 8 hours, rushed home, and did not have time to change into my hunting clothes. That one tasted as good or better than any that I killed deep in the woods. I am trying to muster up the gumption to get out there right now. I saw a big deer way out back yesterday, around 3:00 pm, but couldn’t tell if it was a buck or a doe. I have a stand over in the area it ran to, with pretty good protection from the north east wind, so that’s where I will go. It will need to have no antlers, or more than 3 points on a side, to get a shot out of me.

Our two girls were born just 10 months apart. The years have really flown by and I remember those days fondly, even though our oldest is now in college (home now for Christmas/New Years) and our youngest is in her last year of high school. They still get super excited about Christmas, and this remains their favorite time of the year. It didn't take much snow and freezing rain yesterday, for me to pull the plug on a planned late ML season overnight trip to my buddy's souther tier hunting camp, just so that I could stay home and be a bigger part of that excitement. There may be a lot more deer down there, and the odds of punching my ML tag would be better if I had gone, but it would not be worth the time I would have lost with the family. I went deer hunting with my ML for a few hours behind our house yesterday, and at least I got to see a deer back there, for the first time since the early September antlerless gun season. I could not tell if it was a buck or a doe, but it looked big. Maybe we will meet up again, during the new Holiday ML season after Christmas, when I will have 5 days off work and a lot more "free" time. Family time has consumed more than the usual amount of my hunting time this year, due to our youngest daughter's high school field hockey team's playoff run to the state championship downstate. Our oldest daughter goes to college down there, so that brought us all together, for a few days in November. Things always seem to balance out, and even though I lost most of my hunting time during the southern zone two week crossbow season (I have not had the time to maintain proficiency with a vertical bow since our kids were born), the new Holiday ML season will still give me a crack at punching that tag. I am very thankful that my wife and our girls love venison. Our meat situation is good right now, because sharing some time with my parents has yielded a button buck (my wife's favorite kind), during the early antlerless season, and a fine mature 9-pointer during gun season. Sharing some time with my wife's parents up north tacked on a mature doe during the early ML season. Another deer or two, during the late and Holiday ML season, would be the icing on the cake. I will keep trying, because I would like to share some more meat with extended family members, who could really use it. I cant help but notice how all three of the deer, that I have killed so far this year, have involved giving up some of my time to do something for others.