Core

I'm not. I'm back after my annual hiatus now. You guys will end up seeing more of me in coming weeks, then I'll go into hibernation again in december hehe I have not shot my bow in months. Will get to it soon I am sure Good news is that it looks like we may be moving so that I can actually, finally shoot my bow in the backyard.

I suspect the same of me. If I had property behind my house packed with deer and just taking my pick of the litter, this wouldn't be the case, but with the time I put in with driving and everything else, I'd be hard-pressed to willingly take a more difficult tool into the woods if I don't have to. First, competition shooting by a professional who trains 12 months/year isn't the same as the average joe hunting. Second, your KE numbers are left wanting--you are are comparing a very average crossbow to an absurdly fast vertical bow, which basically nobody has. I have a 305 IBO bow with a 29" draw length I pull at 60 lbs. It shoots around 410 grain arrows and clocks at 255 FPS. It would need to be a 330 ibo bow pulling 70 lbs to get up to 300 FPS. My vertical KE is around half that of my entry level centerpoint Xbow, which shoots around 440 grain and I clocked at 355 FPS. I also practice tons more with my vertical and I'm still nowhere near as accurate as I am with the xbow. Not sure which vertical bow hunters you've been seeing. At my range most of them are absolutely hideous shots. e.g. they'll go out hunting as long as their group is as tight as a paper plate at 20 yards.

Well some people who are either dishonest or ignorant of the difficulty of shooting a vertical bow like to pretend that an xbow is no more lethal, and it sure as hell is. My cheap xbow hits harder than any vertical bow on the planet, has 3X optical zoom, and shoots tighter groups as well. I was looking forward to xbow this year because I had to miss a bunch of shot chances with my compound that, had I been with my xbow, I would have taken. Anybody who hunts with both will admit that in equal conditions (range, angles, etc.) the xbow is just a superior harvesting tool.

Sure you do. Full inclusion means more hunters early on means more pressure. I assume you appreciate how if we opened up gun season to October 1st it would increase pressure that vertical guys have to face. If you do, you ought to see how inclusion of xbow would do the same, albeit to a lesser degree. It seems to me most guys are still for whatever reason never going to bother with xbow, but I do like some season separation just so that the more difficult tool to use has minimum deer pressure. I wouldn't even mind dropping down bow-only to the first two weeks of october, then opening xbow up to a full month or so, but I like some separation.

Never understood the need to spend that sort of money on a vacuum cleaner until a black friday years back and we got one of them. Made me a believer. But honestly, I was holding out for a powerful battery powered vacuum capable of doing legitimate carpet vacuuming, and when Dyson came out with that we got it and it's been amazing. Dyson are awesome. I made a killing today @ Lowes. Got a 12" sliding compound double bevel miter saw for $350 with a $200-250 stand (may sell the stand on facebook).

YES. That one I mentioned above in the snow? I took a "perfect" shot on the deer and proceeded to watch as it would keel over. Which it didn't do. After a hop and skip it started to walk. And I lost a very easy follow-up shot opportunity. By the time I got with my senses and realized it was not going down I aimed again, but by now my scope was so covered with snow (and it started a bit like this--teaching me a lesson about using scope covers in inclement weather) that the deer was just a blob. I even when to where I had hit it, could not find any blood (on snow) and concluded I had somehow missed at not very far away with a gun I knew was accurate as hell. By the time I found the trail the snow was falling heavy and I had to be on hands and knees brushing snow off a deer trail to figure out which one was his, brushing snow off to find red spots. Finally it got too weak with too heavy snow fall for me to even keep on the trail.

In an opposite way a very hard track is when it's snowing a lot. If you're not right on it the trail goes cold very fast. Ask me how I know

Anything it doesn't recover from is fatal, even if it's days. A GOOD shot should have the deer drop inside 100 yards, or however long a deer can run without a heart or with two punctured lungs (assuming you don't neck/head shot them).

I made it two hours. Still have yet to ever harvest a deer during gun season. I find it a much harder season than archery.

Bag over socks idea I would have thought feet would sweat, but on the other hand most of us have waterproof boots anyway, which don't realistically let much vapor through, so it's probably no worse than with those. I could see the latex gloves, right against the skin, causing an issue with sweat if you're overheating much, but maybe it works, too! My "waterproof" gloves tend not to be after long (thorns, etc.). I just 3M sprayed a pair yesterday.

Who's going out tomorrow? I'm thinking about it. Will be extremely unpleasant/cold, but I may be able to suffer an hour or hour and a half if I bring a lot of coffee. Says 18 and 4 with windchill.

I use a large stanley, it holds 3-4 good mugs of coffee. I also duct taped the handle, so it's quiet. What I do is I bring it and I also bring a small vacuum insulated coffee cup and I pour from the large thermos to the small. A large vacuum insulated thermos like I have works so damn well that before I leave I bring my coffee up to boil temps (I brew it and then microwave until it is at or close to 100C). I put it in the thermos and it is scalding, undrinkably hot 2-3 hours later even in cold temps. I demand my tea or coffee to be extremely hot (as in freshly brewed--won't tolerate luke warm) and this keeps it that way for several hours. Honestly though any vacuum insulated canister will work and the larger the volume vs size of cap the longer it will keep fluid hot.

Yep definitely hard. It gets easier as the kids age up a bit and can babysit themselves, etc. I've definitely had to skip a few trips because of driving kids or whatever.

Never used one. I don't have a lot to vacuum seal, just basically some venison and then I wouldn't mind vacuum sealing some of the stuff I keep in my end-of-world-stash. I could cut this with scissors, right, then I guess it must heat seal one end to make a bag, then you throw food in, hit vacuum seal, it does the rest...?

I actually kind of "need" a vacuum seal system. Will keep this in mind.

I'm off shortly.

I hunted Lake shore marsh WMA in 2015, 2016. Very hard--not deer as season gets going Last year I managed to hunt private land and this year hunted that same private land during archery. However, I wanted to get back out to lake shore during gun because it's the closest decent public land east of Rochester. The older section by sodus bay is I think 600 acres, very hilly, hard to access. It's knarly and a major chore to get deer out (you need a buddy or you need to be very determined). I only saw a few cars on the entire section as I drove up before sun rise, and just a few when I drove home. I saw nothing but gobs of deer tracks in the snow. Anyway, on the way home I wanted to drive past the new acquisition by DEC at shaker tract road and to my shock and horror and amusement I counted no less than 11 cars parked in front of this section of forest over about 1/3rd mile of road. I laughed out loud when I saw one guy about 200 yards off the road in the tree line sitting in his tree. I finally saw what orange army means. Of actual forested area I'd say these 11 cars worth of hunters were sharing around 100 acres of hunting ground.

I think dicks has 25% off on Friday on basically everything (not firearms).

Sounds like machine gun fire since 6:30. These f***ing duck hunters. This is why I hate public land. Tons of tracks everywhere but I haven’t seen anything yet. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Evidently I woke up at 4:00

30 min ATV ride to stand?! Where are you hunting, alaska?

One is too many.

Assuming you are not a perfectly proportioned midget can you explain how that doe looks like it weighs 250?

Grampy had me until his last sentence, and on that point I agree with Al. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear is a dangerous precedent and reminds me of secret police, frankly. I'm sure DEC have to abide by the same rules as other cops. No trespassing without cause. A cop can kick your door down and run through your house if he has cause, and he doesn't need a warrant for that. BTW I've never had a bad run in with police in my life.

12:30 AM for 3 hour drive, 1 hour swim, 4 hour bike ride, and finally, 2 hour hike up hill to stand around lunch time. Actually not positive I will go, if I do I'll be up 4:30-5 i guess.