Jennifer

This is my opinion, and it's okay with me if no one agrees, but I really think that every person that eats meat regularly should experience, first hand, what it is to kill an animal. Not necessarily taking a knife to a deer's throat ; which can go wrong if you are not experienced, and heck lets face it a deer is a powerful animal and can cause you serious injury even in death throes. Often another bullet, placed well, is a much kinder and safer thing to do. I am talking about the dispatching of any animal for food; there are still some farms out there that will let you come and they will show you the process with beef cows, chickens or other fowl, or pigs, etc. My friend did this last year (butchering chickens and turkeys by hand) and a few people thought it was brutal or dumb that she did it, it made me respect her all the more. She now has a much more solid impact of what it means to be responsible for an animal's death, and what it means to eat meat. Too many people (not usually hunters) are removed from the process... they sure do love their burgers or chicken, but could never do the deed (or even like to think that it happens! There are actually people out there that think that no animals were harmed in getting grocery store meats!). I feel we (people) should have more responsibility to the animals that we kill-- even if indirectly such as per-packaged grocery store meats-- and that everyone should have to face the reality of an animal's death for food at least once in their life. Same here. I'm glad to read so many say that it was a hard thing. It's never something to be taken lightly.

There are simply too many variables that come into play when someone asks if it matters or not. Things off the top of my head that impact scent and how deer react to it: - Temperature and relative humidity / dew point - Wind speed, direction, and flow over uneven landscape (updraft? downdraft?) - Barometric pressure - Deer's 'experience' with being hunted/hunting pressure and overall attitude which can change hourly or daily (wisened buck, cautious momma doe, dumb young fawn, distracted rutting buck, etc!!) - Deer's expectancy of the scent (deer that live near houses/constant bombardment of man-made and human smells vs. deeper woods deer, etc) There are probably a billion others that I'm not thinking of! If these factors were constant, then yes we could determine what works, what doesn't, and so forth. But they're not. There are too many variables to know if you see more deer any given day because you smell less, or because you smell like apples, or because the deer are simply moving that day. It's not wrong to think about scent, especially scent reduction, but I, too, wonder if some folks put too much thought into it. At the end of the day, if a deer is going to smell me then it is going to smell me no matter what. A deer is going to care if it's going to care, no matter what. I just try to enjoy my time hunting and don't stress over my scent to the point where it becomes labor instead of enjoyment. If someone gets a kick out of extreme scent control, then power to them!

Other side of the state, near Ceres NY.

Too warm! Just got in, a long boring day of nothing happening. Didn't see or hear a thing moving all day. I sat till noon in the stand then very slowly still hunted over just to check a little area that I don't want to hunt till later in the season, nothing going on anywhere. I didn't hear a single shot in NY all day but I could hear the fellas in PA sighting in..!! (we are very close to the border, can look across the valley and see PA) Getting ready for their opener on Monday. Good luck to anyone that hunts PA! The eye strain from looking at brown woods and brown goldenrod and beech brush all week is killing me!

I have no reception in the woods so I will have to post 'not so live' from my stand. Sat all day in my stand from 6:30a till 4:30p, the guys on the ridge above me were running ATVs up and down all day long; not my property so I can't complain but you know they were road hunting, though I can't prove it. About 8am a freight train of deer came crashing down the hill and through the brush quite a ways behind me, I couldn't tell what any of them were except brown, and I think there were 5 or 6 all together. They must have been doing at least mach 30. All I could see was the movement and hear the crashing. Later in the morning, I had a big doe come right to my stand, all by herself, panting and looking behind her. Oh boy! Was I excited. I thought a buck was pushing her. She left and no one else came through, darn. Maybe a guy put her out? Who knows. Sure wish I had a doe tag this year. Tomorrow gonna try bright and early. I hope to put my husband on his first deer one of these days! None of us drew a doe tag to sign over to him so we have to pray for an antler (two antlers would be even better).

The deer are moving... into people's yards. I had a nice conversation with two button bucks yesterday evening while I was out ranging my chickens, they must have been a whopping 10 or 12 yards away from me, I could see their button nubs as clear as could be. They didn't have a care in the world. It's funny, and sometimes frustrating, that the deer here are so lax around me and my husband when they come up to browse our woods/yard, after spending a long hard day in the woods seeing nothing! They know where they are safe.

Sort of like dark meat chicken, yeah. They are really lean so you need to use a method that either sears in the juices or slow cook in a liquid. They are good fried, and I also enjoy them in a crockpot.

Where in WNY do you get your raw milk? I've been wanting to find it.

That's great! I always hope to get my deer early in the season so I can get back out and squirrel hunt before winter hits...!

This is something quirky that sometimes happens with female grouse!! Sometimes they get really enamored with a human for some reason, which is pretty funny. Check out these videos: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=friendly+grouse&nfpr=0 Sometimes they are attracted to vehicles like ATVs, because of the low frequency 'putting' of the engine is similar to a male grouse drumming... but who knows why they are so friendly with people?! I think it's really cool.

The buck I shot two years ago, I hit him in the heart with a 12 gauge slug too, took the top of his heart right off (we examined it closely, because the landowner where we hunt likes the heart and we always give it to him). That buck still managed to run over 160 yards. It's incredible!

Saw a momma bear and her two cubs yesterday in 9X, very cool. We've never seen it before so we were excited-- we don't bear hunt, we just thought it was neat to see.

Interestingly, this afternoon after the really strong winds died down, right around 4:00pm, the shooting started. Didn't hear a shot all day then at 4pm-sunset it was like opening morning, lot of barrages... people shooting running or jumped deer. I wonder if the weekend hunters decided to do some driving in the afternoon as their weekend was winding down to a close? No shots at all, then the last hour sounded more like opening day than opening day did. I didn't see any deer all day-- winds were bad here. It was one of those days where you keep an eye on the tree canopy to make sure you aren't walking under a widow-maker, because the wind was screaming right along. Then we pull in to our driveway at home about 5:00 and my yard had no less than 16 deer in it. 16!! We had a good laugh at that one.

Not very odd, but cool: two years ago during deer season (gun), a male grouse would walk by my stand at the same time every day, hop onto a nearby log (maybe 20 yards) and drum for a few hours. He did this for the entirety of the gun season, off and on. There were a few days when he didn't show and we thought maybe he was something's lunch, but then he'd show up again the next day! It was very fun to watch. One time a whole family of grouse (mom with the grown-up chicks) came down to check him out. My husband and I named him and we agreed that when we went grousing after deer season was over that we weren't allowed to pop him! The story about the couple is too funny!

Pretty quiet morning here. Not too many shots, and none nearby. All the shots I heard-- for the first time that I've ever been out-- were singles. Usually you hear at least one series of shots where someone is shooting at a running deer, but not this year. I was actually quite happy to hear it. Watched some does this morning moving and poking around casually, not spooked or pushed at all. Was wishing all my kingdom that I had a doe tag as a big lady doe was hanging out near my stand!

I haven't had any close calls or accidents. My father drilled extreme firearm safety into me since I was probably 5 years old. He went as far as to scold me if I'd walk in front of the barrel on a gun that he'd removed the trigger assembly and was cleaning-- one that had no possible way of firing. Extreme? Yeah! But you know what, that stuck with me and now I am anal about control and safety. By the time I was old enough to start hunting, being safe about it wasn't even a second thought. My dad told me, every time we went out hunting, to remember: once you touch off the trigger, there's no taking it back. He made me stop hunting periodically and check my safety, etc. It was a constant safety lesson. I had a younger cousin that was always swinging his shotgun around and not watching where he was pointing it. I'd get onto him about safety but it never stuck. Then, I tried to appeal to his sense of humor-- I told him to imagine that his gun was always firing, like a machine gun with endless ammo, and that he could only ever point it at things that were safe to 'shoot'. The idea appealed to him, video game generation (hey, I am too), and you know what.. he was a lot safer after that. We all do have moments though-- no one is perfect. The biggest key, I think, is to slow down a little as the worst mistakes seem to be made when we are excited and loose our heads a little. I think I am preaching to the choir, though!! Please be safe, everyone!

If you have time to read, and skim for the topics most relevant to what you want, you'll find a wealth of info here: http://www.taxidermy.net/forum/index.php/board,13.0.html

Bad deal, how unfortunate... This is the best way of it; if the brain is still firing at all, the animal will blink if you poke its open eye with a stick or any other long object. Stay well back until you know for sure! My dad told me this story; he is a super 'by-the-law, extra caution, go slow' sort of fellow. He was out hunting with a bunch of my uncles and such, when he came across a 'dead' buck. It was laying, curled up, sort of half-bedded, like a deer will do to die if it's not hit hard. It wasn't quite 'right' and it was stretched out a bit, really looked dead as could be. Well, he got on his radio with my uncles (back then an old CB radio that took about 12 batteries!) to see if any of them had shot a deer, etc. No, no one had, but my one uncle came over to check it out. They stood a ways off, talking loudly-- no movement from the deer. No breathing movements (that they could see), no ear movements, nothing. My uncle wanted to look it over but my dad cautioned him to wait a minute, and he got a stick and poked that deer in the eye. Like a shot that buck stood up and ran off! Scared the crap out of my dad and uncle. They were too startled to even think about shooting him. They looked at his 'bed' and no blood. To this day he can't figure out of the buck was just THAT exhausted, or if it was deaf, or what the heck was wrong with it.

Many years ago, and I forget which year but I'd guess over 10 years now, there was an opening day of gun season over here where it was raging thunderstorms. Needless to say everyone (that I know) climbed down out of their stands in a quick hurry and spent the day at home cursing the weather.

Weather 'nerds' like me, may I suggest Weather Underground's advanced radar modes, it'll give you a lot more information than weather.com does: http://www.wunderground.com/

Watching the local radar, looks like rotation, tracking from Little Valley eastbound... The line going through the center of the state currently in the Finger Lakes region also has some potential for rotation. Be safe, everyone.

When I worked with the DEC they used to have folks around to nail the people that did this, now they don't have the staff/funding to try and catch people at it so much....

Still green behind the ears, but I've been self-employed since 2006, doing contract and freelance art work and jewelry making. www.featherdust.com

LOL okay you got me, because I've actually eaten them before.

Thanks, we'll give that a go. We started contacting land owners in the summer but no dice. I'll try again once the season is over. I don't even bother people this close to deer gun season, I know that's when everyone is getting desperate and sometimes making other hunters look bad. I am patient and can wait this season out. We have two places we can go for deer and that is okay by me.