Jennifer

By the very strictest definitions, this is true, but you are very very unlikely to get a ticket based on simply walking in/out of the woods during non-hunting hours unless you are actively harassing or intentionally disturbing wildlife (and/or you are giving the ECO a hard time). Simply walking through the woods to/from your hunting area is not considered worrying wildlife. Things like throwing rocks at a hawk, actively stalking a deer or chasing a deer on an ATV, or messing with a turkey nest, banging on a den tree.. etc, are considered harassing/worrying wildlife.

All vultures are classified as birds of prey-- that siad, they prefer prey that is already deceased! They are not adapted to hunt and kill live critters. Their feet are weak compared to other raptors, but their beak is wicked, for cutting into carcasses.

Those are turkey vultures, and very important to our ecosystem as a whole. Vultures can prevent the spread of disease. In one study in which vultures were fed disease-causing organisms, including anthrax and botulism (this should be of note to hunters, ESPECIALLY waterfowl hunters, where botulism is a real concern!), it was found that most bacteria were killed in the vultures' highly acidic stomachs. Without vultures to efficiently remove large amounts of decaying meat, both air and groundwater could show increased contamination. Some people don't like them because they're ugly, but they aren't much 'uglier' than their namesake, the wild turkey, which many of us love a great deal.

I thought so too until I saw this. Maybe not...

Sadly I have nothing to trade as once again I donated my $10 and got turned down for the third year in a row. I doubt it since there were very few this year, but if anyone has a 9X tag they don't expect they will use, you'd have my immense thanks and I'd be happy to send you a Christmas card or something in appreciation!

If there is no snow on, I like to use toilet paper. I tie a tiny bit to brush, twigs, etc.. when tracking, to help follow the trail. If I forget to go back and take it down or miss a piece, it just biodegrades back into the loam by spring, unlike the survey ribbon/flagging tape. Also, as others have said, it is very helpful when tracking in maple trees, where the leaf litter can have a lot of red in it naturally! Dab if you need to inspect the blood. In the snow, though, I use the flagging tape and make sure to go back and remove it afterward.

Oh, I agree! They really don't eat much trash. They'll eat handouts, but yes for the most part they are eating nuts and a lot of seed from birdfeeders, which isn't bad. My experience was that the extra fat actually made them taste worse. I'm not sure what it is about squirrels... the fatty ones are not as good (to me)!

I've worked with feathers very often (though not for fletching) and I am fairly confident you might have a hard time with anything other than flight feathers-- tails and such are very soft, and don't have the right 'zip' and spring to them. I imagine that having part of the fletching collapse while shooting could cause the arrow to fly awry! Anyhow if I take a turkey this fall the flights are yours. If you need some before then, try eBay believe it or not. Most guys don't keep the wings and you will find turkey wings popping up this time of year, and also in the spring, for pretty cheap prices. Turkey feathers are legal to sell and trade, in case you were nervous about that.

I don't worry about putting them on ice or immediately dressing them even when there is warm weather. They'd need to be warm for quite some time to spoil. That said, do what you are personally comfortable with. The most important thing is safe food handling when preparing them to eat. There are all sorts of levels of 'safe'. This is a personal decision. In terms of toxic residues within the squirrel's body-- yeah! I bet there are some. If they are worse than commercially farmed produce or meats I cannot say, but you probably ingest a lot more chemical reside on commercial vegetation (and processed vegetation such as wheat, soy, corn, etc) than you'd get from eating a city squirrel or two. Now then, the taste of the meat can really differ! I have eaten city/town dwelling squirrel before, and the diet of the squirrel seems to make a big difference in the meat. I'll take a woods-squirrel any day for flavor.

You need flight feathers right? Forgive my ignorance, I've never made fletchings.

That's a beauty.

Additionally, we export the majority of our domestic oil. Also, the folks doing the exporting are foreign companies, so we (American companies) don't even see that much of the profit. Drilling more here in the states will not help gas prices. It does make sense that drilling more here in the US would mean we have more petroleum products and hence lower prices, but sadly it's a lot more complicated than that. It comes down to the highest bidder, in most cases.

Was there an official statement from the DEC before the cat was hit and killed? I am not being snarky-- I am genuinely curious. I didn't hear one but I might have missed it. The only official statement that I know of was after they were able to test the scat found in NY state and confirm with proof that it came through.

I'm not saying it's impossible.. but every time I've read or seen one of these "mountain lion spotted!" posts it's always been an accidental hoax or mistaken identity. The cat in the picture above is obviously a mountain lion, but it obsiously isn't from NY as earlier stated... http://tinyurl.com/8o4ften MI isn't that far away, and if someone gets images of cougars that they can prove were taken in NY, I doubt the DEC would deny that. When that cougar came though the state they didn't deny it, but there was evidence that it was the same one that was killed in CT. All I'm trying to say is that I doubt there is a huge coverup-- more likely there is just very little evidence.

When I interned with the DEC, you would not believe how many "cougar" sigtings and trailcam photos ended up being bobcats or even housecats at a distance. When there is no easy size reference, a big feral tom a long ways off can look much bigger than he is. I once saw a trailcam photo where people were arguing... some were 100% sure it was a cougar, and then the owner showed a size reference of themselves in the next shot and you could see it was clearly a domestic cat. A lot of people really just don't know what they are seeing and their imagination gets the better of them. How many times have you gone to your stand or entered the woods in the dark, and every little sound seems like it could be a bear? Haha-- I'm guilty of that one too. I am not saying that everyone that's seen a cougar is crazy, not at all. I think that it's possible that there have been a few in our state in the last few decades. The one was confirmed, after all. But I think a lot of it is mistaken identities of other animals, and a few hoaxes. As a scientist, I like to see some reputible evidence. The DEC "fessed up" to wild boar because they were able to prove their existence in the state with reputible evidence.

I hope they never get established. Trust me, I would love the wild pork too-- I'm one of those hippies that feels strongly about meat origins (I don't buy factory farmed meat) and to take wild pigs/boars would be a blessing. BUT... the same could be said of many game animals that don't live in NY, and I don't think that they should be here any more than boar. We can't have it all! If anyone is fortunate/unfortunate enough to see them, I hope the kill is swift and it's good eating for you. My best wishes!

I find that squirrel hunting as if you were still hunting for deer provides a lot of fun and sometimes a lot of squirrels. It's also a great way to teach new hunters!

I will be once our season opens here on the 20th. I can't bowhunt at this point in life.

Sometimes I hear those guys start chirping/peeping even as late as December, if the daytime temps get above freezing! There have been lots of long days on my stand where they are the only critter I hear.

No problem Rev Ev, I just wanted to make sure that anyone that came across this and read it had some information about how to approach Lyme. I'd hate to see someone not get taken care of, as this disease can either be very mild or really kick your butt, and no one knows how they will react! It's a reall pain because it seems almost random how it effect different people. Back when I was diagnosed 18 years ago, there wasn't a whole lot of information about this as it was still a fairly new disease. My dad had only heard about it from-- you guessed-- hunting magazines and so recognized the bulls-eye rash when I was young and was bitten. I was taken to the ER and was treated by a Lyme-ignorant staff (not really their fault, not mad with them or anything) and long story short I wasn't given the proper dose or length of antibiotics (according to today's findings).

Dom if you ever need a chat, I have chonic Lyme disease. Rev Ev, that's only partially true. Lyme has been proven by independent study to linger in the lymph system of some individuals, and even after an antibiotic course can cause chonic problems in some people. Some people never see another problem from it but some do. Unfortunately, this is further complicated by the fact that ticks can carry more than Lyme.. they can cause co-infections of other tick borne diseases! These include Babesiosis, Ehrlichiosis/anaplasmosis, Bartonellosis (this is usually very mild), and a few others that you generally are safe from in this area. The good news is that an antibiotics course nukes it in most people, if caught early. The people that experience a full recovery outnumer the people that experience chronic problems. Lyme tests can also be inaccurate, and throw false readings depending on many factors. Which is why most recommend that if you think you have Lyme, to request all three tests be done. The tests are called Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), Indirect fluorescent antibody (IFA), which if either show a positive or indeterminate result, should be followed by a Western blot test. Be aware that most doctors run only one of these tests, and sadly a lot of doctors only have a very basic knowledge on Lyme disease.

ants, yeah I know better now. Thanks for your support. It just hit me hard as a kid. One of those things that you never forget! Gosh she was mad with us.

Since it was asked, years ago when I was young, maybe 12, 13 years old and just of legal hunting age for small game. My father and I had permission to hunt a large farm, some hundreds of acres, and the only access to the area we were going to was to cross a field (owned by the farm) that was in view of several other nearby homes on small lots. We used the field to cross only, and respected the legal prohibitions and ethics of not hunting near other people's homes. We were turkey hunting and I had full camo on, facemask and all, and a woman came out and verbally harassed us all the way to the woodline. My dad told me to ignore her, but beyond that couldn't do much. The lady was one of my school teachers, and she didn't recognize me because of my camo getup. She screamed some pretty terrible things about us and I remember feeling very miserable about it for years. Not that it should matter, but I was a shy kid growing up, and it was hard being the only female hunter that I knew of (in my area). It really scared me at that age to have a teacher tell me that I was scum, and I never told anyone that I hunted after that until I was an adult, which is sort of a bummer because maybe I missed out on some of the comradarae that hunters have when growing up together.

Though I don't for a moment want anyone to take deer ticks lightly, the snake photo is almost surely a case of someone finding a photo on the internet and twisting the story to make it something else. The snake looks like a ball python (not native to the US) that is covered with African Ticks, and fortunately you don't have to worry about that species unless you work with imported reptiles or go to Africa.

Sorry to hear that. I hope it gets better instead of worse for you. Mine's been giving me a hard time lately too.