knehrke

Wow, this gets old fast. Most age-related neurodegenerative diseases progress slowly. The longer you live, the more likely something will go wrong. Deer probably don't live long enough to see the worst of it. People do. Most neurodegenerative diseases aren't catching. But prion diseases are transmittable, though the precise mechanism isn't well understood. Like Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Huntingtons and a variety of other diseases, people survive. But it sucks. CWD is limited to deer, for now. I have absolutely no opinion on management options in the face of an outbreak. But it's like looking both ways before crossing the street: be aware, wear gloves when gutting, and don't eat the brain I'm not pushing an agenda. I'm not with a regulatory agency and I don't own a deer farm; in fact, I've never seen a deer with CWD. But it's silly to claim that there's no risk and that we just need to deal with it. You know that there's a promising new treatment for pancreatic cancer that came out of biomedical research recently? Lots of people who wouldn't have had a hope ten years ago are going to benefit. You don't know what's curable until you try. But you can't cure it until you understand it, and until that time historical precedent demands caution.

Getting permission anywhere has become tough. Brockport is so close to Rochester that it's a popular destination. And when you're looking for permission for you AND a friend, it's even harder. You might get an invite from somebody you know, but it's likely to be restricted to just you. Guys get prickly about "their" deer. There's a variety of public lands in the area, some where bow hunting is allowed but not guns. Your best bet is going to be to focus on public access. If you do get permission from a farmer, chances are he's given permission to a bunch of people and you're better off on public land anyway. Check out aerials and get away from the crowds. And instead of asking to hunt, explain that you're a student and that you're looking to trade work for hunting privileges. That seems to get more likes... Finally, I heard something about SUNY Brockport owning some land that's limited to students and by permit only. Not sure whether that's true or not. But when I went to Binghamton, they had a similar deal and I had some success that way. Good luck

I forgot the all important pee bottle. So, bursting to the gills, I got down 15 minutes early and took a short walk to change out some SD cards in the cameras and drain the pickle. Wouldn't you know that three doe show up just as I'm in the middle of my business? I managed a sneak to within 13 yards of them, still unzipped, as they blithely fed on the far side of a brush pile. And after all that, I let them walk. Too dang hot to shoot a doe yet.

I'm the same way in that if I'm not using something, I'd rather give it to somebody who will really appreciate it than just sell it to a guy who'll leave it unused in his basement for years or, if I put it on Craigslist cheap, is just looking for a "deal". In fact, I had a guy get something from me once nearly for free, then turn around and sell it for what it's worth. Once it's out of your hands, you've got no say, and that sucks. It also sucks that there's people who are willing to take advantage of someone's generosity. Anymore, I've started giving my stuff to kids. They usually don't have the means to acquire all the toys, so it's gladly received. And they still have the time and energy to use them! And since I don't ask them for any $, I don't feel stiffed. Just a little bit of a glow when I think of the geese still being killed from the layout blind or fish caught with that trolling motor.

Okay, my grants are reviewed and I can weigh in here...briefly. Right you are that understanding how transmission occurs doesn't make a disease less deadly. But it may prevent people from getting it. Seminal progress made with many diseases has involved just that critical insight. For example, malaria and mosquitoes. If you identify the vector, you can inform the public how to combat spreading. Not a cure, but important nonetheless. As for the other post: scientist or philosopher? Is there a difference??? <---that's my "white coat" emoticon Hoping everyone is having a great season so far! Stay safe.

Prion diseases are dangerous exactly because of what we don't know about their mode of transmission And my point about deer farming is that...no offense intended...it's somewhat lower of a concern than human health. Like most neurodegenerative diseases, prions may not kill an organism. But make no mistake, there are consequences. So yes, a deer might die of old age with CWD. But how do you measure dementia in a deer? This is why most mouse models of human neurodegenerative disease fail to show age-related pathologies. Mice die at two years of age. How much longer do people live than deer? That's a lot of years for the disease to manifest itself. It makes sense to be concerned. Now, maybe there's an overreaction at the legislative level. But scientists don't make laws. I can't say I follow CWD closely, as there are other health concerns that steal my time and focus. And I can't claim to be an expert on CWD specifically. But, from an informed perspective, prion diseases in general are scary. What if it turns out that CWD jumps species and ends up a new Alzheimers? There's precedent: think HIV. I wouldn't just dismiss the potential impact based upon your experience, sound though it may be. Since I have no vested interest or agenda here (nor virtual knife or gun, funny as that was...), this is where I stop. I'm not in the business of trying to change peoples' minds, just opening them.

I guess I'm one of those guys who inject mice and pour acid onto their brains I'm a Professor of Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center and a permanent member of the National Institute of Health's Neural Oxidative Metabolism and Death study section. As well as an avid bowhunter and long-time member (occasional contributor) here. Everyone is entitled to their opinions. And you can never prove a model, only disprove it...that's one of the main tenets of science. However, the people who do prion research are striving to understand a complex and deadly group of diseases. One that frankly scares the crap out of me. Nearly all neurodegenerative diseases involve protein aggregation. In prion diseases, the proteins themselves are the vector for transmission. Nobody is saying that the sky is falling, but given the choice, doesn't it make sense to be cautious when you're dealing with something that's deadly and, as you point out, not that well understood? Let me be clear in stating that most scientists don't have an agenda. There's more questions out there than there are people to answer them. The people I know work on things that they feel could make a real impact or could head-off a potential problem. They follow strict sets of rules and are subject to constant internal and external review. Most people don't realize that when scientist disagree, there's not some ethical breach, it's just part of the process. It's about interpreting the data and achieving consensus. But in order to interpret it, you have to understand it. As I said, you're entitled to your opinion, and I don't mean to offend. But please keep an open mind and remember that scientists, who often make enormous sacrifices to do what they do, also have opinions. Yes, I said opinions. But they are opinions based on fact and filtered through years of training. It doesn't make sense to have experts work for years to understand something, then discard their findings because it doesn't fit your personal view. And my guess is that most scientists who study prion diseases, of which CWD is one, have no idea that deer are farmed commercially. In the bigger picture, CWD is a smaller concern than the stuff that actually kills people. From which we can apply our models to CWD. And maybe prevent a disaster. If we're proactive. Always learning or never learning.

Yup, what WNYBuckHunter said. You got to shoot them. I mentioned that the end of the draw cycle is like hitting a brick wall with the Elite, ie, "it snaps into place". I like it, my buddy hates it. It's all about shooting a variety of brands and figuring out which brand you're most comfortable with. Try them all...if you're going to spend $600-900 on a bow, you better be certain before pulling the trigger. And when all is said and done, after a year under my belt I am still not shooting the Elite as well as I was my Parker Ultralite (which was less than half the price). It takes time to get comfortable. I hope.

I have an Elite Hunter, and while it's a nice bow, there's a distinct breaking point where the bow lets off. It almost snaps into place. A buddy of mine who shoots a Hoyt Carbon Element tried my bow and he said that would be a deal-breaker for him. I don't mind it, but I've got to say, his bow is SMOOTH. I guess when you pay $1400 it better be...

Thanks for the advice on the fixed broadheads. I agree that a quartering toward shot is not optimal...the shot I took was really a slight angle and so I chose to shoot...probably could have waited three seconds and had a better angle. I learned another lesson today, but no animal got injured, just my pride. I had a doe that gave me a twenty yard look broadside as she turned and walked over a rock wall toward the neighbors property. I was at full draw and there was a good window, so I let fly. Well, even when you think you're in the clear, branches near the tree are an obstacle that aren't easily seen, and your line of sight isn't the same as the arrow's line of flight. Or so I learned. Particularly when the obstacle is within a couple feet. I clipped a branch about two feet out that I thought I'd easily pass over and the arrow made a killing shot on some very large rocks. The doe startled, then calmly pushed onto the neighbor's property and walked within fifteen yards of me before disappearing into the thicket. No way I'm shooting onto the neighbor's property, even for a good buck, much less a doe, since that's part of the deal with leasing and one of the drawbacks of having a stand on the property line (the only spot for it in this particular high traffic area). So, she lived to see another day and I'm eating tag soup during the bow season this year. Wouldn't trade it for the world.

I lost a decent buck on Friday night. It's not the first deer that I've ever lost, but it's been several years since I had one get away on me. In some ways, this was the most frustrating, because I don't know what went wrong, or what I could have done differently. My season thus far has been spent mainly watching does, with a few close encounters and a complete lock-down over the past week. Then Friday night I had a spike chasing a doe just behind the stand for ten minutes, another buck chasing in front, a couple of nervous doe walk past, then a decent eight strung out behind a doe that showed about half-an-hour before dark. The doe and eight-point wandered past at 30 yards, but I passed on the shot. I have a new Elite that I haven't shot as much as my old Parker and I limited myself to shots inside of 25 yards this season till I'm more comfortable with the bow. After moving past, the doe turned straight toward the stand and the buck, like an old drunk following a shot glass of whiskey, turned with her, about ten yards behind. I drew when he was behind a bush at twenty yards, waited after he stepped out until he was slightly more broadside, quartering toward me, let out a breath and released. The hit looked good, just behind the shoulder, though I was a bit concerned that the two-blade Rage had only penetrated halfway and that I could see half the arrow sticking out as the deer spun and headed North. Right at dark I had two of my friends I was hunting with come over and we started to trail the deer. Lesson #1: buy a good flashlight! I had a mini that was adequate, but not great, and I think we would have lost the trail earlier if it hadn't been for my one friend's 235 lumen light that he bought from Gander Mountain after having to track one at night a few weeks ago. I now have the same light in my pack. Anyway, we tracked the deer with minimal blood for 75 yards, found the upper arrow broken off, then we had a bit more blood for awhile. The blood was alternating bright and foamy, then dark almost purple. We guessed that I hit both lung and liver, and that the blood was pooling inside the deer. Still, not a great trail and eventually it gave out completely. We had gone about 150 yards from the site of the initial hit. With the threat of rain after midnight, I hated to give up, but we were on the edge of a large swampy area (not much water this year, though) and without blood to follow the deer could have gone anywhere. To finish up the story, I came back the next morning, but the light rain overnight made even the original blood trail difficult to see. So I set a GPS from where we'd lost the blood and went 250 yards three times in the general direction the deer had gone, making sure not to cover the same ground twice. Then I did circles around where we'd lost the blood. No luck, no deer. I wish I could have wandered further, but the trail ended near the property line and the neighbor won't let us cross over without a blood trail to follow. I wish I could say what Lesson #2 should be...maybe I could have waited until the deer quartered away from me? I replay the scene in my head, and the hit looked good, but I guess I can't rule out a graze to the shoulder that threw the trajectory off. But I did see the arrow in the deer clear as day as he took off, and it seemed to be just behind the shoulder, which is where I aimed for a quartering toward shot. Maybe the lesson is not to hunt near a swamp in the evening? Or not to shoot if it's going to rain overnight? I just don't know. Anyway, I've decided that, for me, that's my buck. I'm not trying to be goody-two shoes, but my personal feeling is that I couldn't handle losing two in one season, and the best way to do that is to not shoot at another. Plus, it's not fair to my hunting buddies, when we all pay the same to lease the land. Hopefully I will have a chance during gun season to redeem myself. Until then it's time to restore confidence in the bow by putting a few flatheads in the freezer. I think that writing this was meant to be cathartic, but advice is always appreciated. Remember: good flashlight! At least one lesson was learned.

We hunt primarily in Orleans County and this has been the worst season in ten years. We never saw the big guys sparring in early season in our fields back in by a swamp edge, the number of sighting of "shooter" bucks has never been lower (a total of three between three guys), and there's almost no does to speak of. I think that they must either be keyed into an alternate food source or still heavy in the corn. I hate to think that there's been disease or some such thing, but we saw incredible numbers of deer the past several years, so it's a very abrupt switch this year.

This past weekend I had an 8-pt with about 5 inch brow tines come crashing through a blow-down to my grunt. He was coming from directly behind my tree, so I had to swing and draw at the same time, and he must have seen me. He stopped at 20 yards directly facing me and looked up...we stared at each other until my arms couldn't take it anymore...seemed like ten minutes but probably more like two...then my cam tinked against the buckle of my harness and he was gone. Full draw, dead on and looking at me = no shot. I keep replaying it and trying to figure out whether there was some way I could have harvested that deer, and I keep coming to the same conclusion. I made a good choice. But it still sucks.

My own personal hunting is undoubtedly influenced more by luck than skill. I can recognize skilled hunters when I see them and I know what it takes to make a skilled hunter (scouting, scent control, mapping paths into the woods for minimum disturbance, choice of stands, weather-wise, knowledge of deer biology, etc...). Truly, you have to be a student of the game. However, while I try, I know that most of my efforts to become skilled are probably ineffective. I just don't have the time to spend doing what it takes. So I do my best and hope that the fates let a stupid one stumble into my path. I feel privileged to have been very lucky over the past few years, but I can't attribute it to any particular skill on my part.

Maybe a six? I actually shot a 150-inch buck the first week of season...kinda stupid'd into him, actually, five minutes into the stand...so I was looking for a doe the rest of the season. It takes the edge off, which in my mind is unfortunate. And from there out, the deer were not nearly as plentiful as I've seen in the past. Couple of crotchety fours passed by the stand, numerous small does and buttons, and one big doe that I hit but didn't recover. It was the strangest thing, she bucked three times, went thirty yards and lay down like she was dead. Ten minutes later she raised her head, spun a couple of drunk circles and went onto the neighbor's property. After I got permission to track her, my buddy and I followed the blood trail 200 yards til it petered out. Go figure. Anyway, points added for the good buck, and detracted for a general lack of deer and a lost doe. I enjoyed the time in the stand, but it also seemed like when I had time to get out, the weather wasn't cooperating.

I love these stories! They remind me of some of the incidents in my own youth, before we leased and regulated who was going to hunt where, etc... I was driving a thick section of vineyard down near Bath one day with my buddy on the other end. I must have pushed a large eight out the back, cause mid-way through the tangle I hear some guy shoot behind me. I'm thinking to myself, "That's not where he's supposed to be standing". Next thing you know, some yahoo (not my hunting partner) starts running through the vineyard, stopping every 30 or 40 yards to shoot, and yelling, "I got you, you POS. You're dead. I got you." Now, I don't know what's going on, but I decide to get out of the thick stuff and find out. Turns out he's one of the neighbor's kin and had hit the deer in the hindquarters so it couldn't run very well. He was chasing it through the vineyard, shouting the whole way. My buddy just took cover, cause the shots were coming straight at him. When the yahoo finally put down the deer, he had the audacity to brag to us about how great he was, then ask for a lift in our pickup to cart the deer off the hill and back to his car! I guess I shouldn't have been surprised...this was the same guy who was banned for five years from hunting the property based on a number of other incidents. Such as waving a loaded gun around like a blackboard pointer; of course, the safety wasn't on. Bad situation. Or my personal favorite, shooting uphill at a running deer while I was directly in the line of fire, shouting and waving the whole time. He blew the deer's muzzle off, what a sad sight that was, so I ended up finishing the animal as it ran by me at less than 30 yards. He comes hauling up the hill to tell me what a great shot he'd made, then after literally five minutes of bragging, looks at the deer and says, "Spit, that's a doe! I don't have a doe permit. Spit!" Anyway, I ended up using one of my permits on this tiny little dog-like doe. And the guy gives me his phone # and tells me to call him when the meat is ready so I can drop it off! WTF!?! Needless to say, after many incidents of this nature, following the vineyard saga I haven't been back to hunt. It's too bad, as I grew up on that land, but in retrospect I wonder how nobody got killed. It just goes to show how one person can mess it up for everybody.

I'm greedy...I know that if I shoot a deer, my hunt is over. And I really enjoy being in the woods. So, I usually pass on most everything, unless it's bigger than anything I've shot before. I've got no problem eating a tag. No problem shooting a five-point, 1 1/2 yr old deer, either, under the right circumstances. But as my own personal standards have gotten higher (emphasis here on "personal", as a trophy is in the eye of the beholder), I've gotten used to seeing lots of good bucks up close and personal. That's been enough on it's own to convince me to hold off. If I'd shot them, then I'd have lost the privilege of observing them.

Took this guy during the first week of bow season in the Southern zone. Unfortunately, my girl couldn't hunt with me that night and missed the kill shot. Next time...

My first shot of the year, usually sometime in August, is often within 1/2" of where I'm aiming...then it goes down from there. Certainly possible to be a one shot wonder , but not the norm. Maybe the guy's like the Michael Jordan of bow hunting? I've had my sights need to be re-tuned, all kinds of stuff to check up on before sticking the big one. A lot of it has to do with muscle memory. The new bows are incredibly easy to shoot, but you need to be able to draw, aim, and fire without thinking about anything except that hair you want to hit. Kudos to this guy if he can do it year in and year out with one shot, but a big part of the pleasure for me is in the preparation.

I hunt 8G as well (along with 8H and 8A). I'm seeing groups of does nearly every time I go out, though the activity might have dropped off a bit over the past week. I'm done with bucks till gun season (8pt, 22" spread), but I'm hoping that a breeding nucleus will work it's way past me as the rut progresses. Mature doe are just as tough as big bucks once the pressure starts.

I practice to 50 and am comfortable in open situations at 35 yards. I recently spoke to someone who said that they have no problem taking a deer at 70 yards. Shooting at 63 lbs. All I could say was, "Wow, you're a much better shot than I am". I'm not sure what the dropoff in kinetic energy does to a 350 grain arrow at 70 yards, but I'm reasonably certain that it's not in our favor. Anybody care to venture an opinion?