knehrke

I don't have a dog in this fight, but I will mention that I know two older gentlemen who both hunt with a draw lock, and one of them uses a shooting stick when ground hunting. Looks unwieldy as all get out, but both guys say it's not bad at all. Both also switch to crossbow when it's legal. I've been with them when they've killed deer.

Good to know. I've never had one on me for more than 30 minutes (that I know of), but if I found one the next day, I'd certainly petition for a full course. Lyme is scary stuff. I know one of the guys on habitattalk.com's daughters had it bad, and she was unable to get out of bed most days. There's some tick borne illnesses that can transmit within 30 minutes, too, but so far as I know, not around here...so far as I know.

So, they were very responsive. I heard back yesterday evening from Fox, suggesting that it may be a browser issue or my cache. What's crazy is that when I opened their front page this morning, without doing anything else, the login button had magically appeared. Now, maybe there was a temporary glitch in the system, and I'm not much for conspiracy theories, but then there are things that make you go hmmm...

I've posted a handful of times in the comments section on Foxnew.com - nothing egregious or offensive, generally making simple points of logic or highlighting alternative interpretations. Things like, "maybe he's not wearing a mask because he's been forced to, but because he wants to. Seems easy enough to just ask him". Stuff like that. Like I say, a handful of times at most. I probably haven't posted anything at all in this calendar year; in general, I try to avoid biased news sources like CNN or Fox, but it's become increasingly hard to find any source that doesn't have an agenda. Regardless. I was flabbergasted this morning when I went to comment on a Fox article that not only was I unable to sign in, but the link to sign in and in fact the option to sign up to comment had themselves been removed from the webpage entirely. So far as I can figure, I must have been banned. Which makes zero sense to me, but with big brother watching, who knows? And this bothers me to no end, because the easiest way to shut someone down is to steal their voice - as I suspect many of us here appreciate. How wonderful to control both the message and the response to it! Compounded internet reverb - and let me be clear, my disdain here is apolitical, and if anything represents criticism of mass media rather than of one side or the other. Anyway, I will post an update if I hear back from Fox, after having submitted a ticket this evening. I wonder how often this sort of thing occurs? In our brave new world...

I believe that they need to be attached for at least a day to transmit Lyme. My doctor always prescribes a single dose of antibiotic prophylactically anyway. Babesiosis is generally mild and isn't treated unless you display symptoms. Folks who are most at risk include the usual suspects of immunocompromised and elderly. There's no vaccine, but it is treatable. I assume that all ticks are positive for these in our area. And I'm always right, 70% of the time lol...

Glad you made out okay. We have LastPass for everything, phones use fingerprints to unlock the VPN that all our accesses get routed through. And I'm still paranoid. Particularly when I'm having a conversation in a store, get home, and there's an ad on my computer for the thing I was talking about. It's a scary world sometimes. All my old passwords used to be some simple combination of a fish and a number. Lol. Twenty years ago. I've heard the stories too, and don't need another headache. The existing ones suffice.

I lost every one of the Dunstan that I planted seven years ago, but some of the Chinese that I've grown from seed are entering their sixth year and doing well. Not all, but some. I highly recommend cages and weed mats over tubes. The downside of tubes in the woods in that the trees grow spindly with multiple suckers, rodents inhabit them and girdle the trees, wasps and ants build nests in them, and even 5' tubes can get browsed by deer. Also, wooden stakes will rot over a couple seasons, and then your work is lying on the ground. Finally, you need to keep them clear of leaves and debris. Can you guess that I hate tubes? I'm not completely sold on Chestnut either, but the jury is still out. The trees in our backyard are >20 years old - production is vertical, with a short, but heavy fall. The squirrel get most of them. I suspect that there's a place in a whitetail minded forest, but only as part of diverse plantings.

Avoid Bourbon St. like the plague, obviously. Unless you like the smell of pee and vomit. I'd head South myself and explore the river delta. Lots of cool stuff going on down toward Venice, and some excellent bass fishing as well. We ran into Jimmy Houston and Roland Martin when we were there in December. True gentlemen, both of them, offering pics to those so inclined...we saw them fishing the pilings near the shrimp boat fleet later in the day.

I was working for Cornell one summer between junior and senior years of college, living at the fish hatchery inside the Adirondack League Club. I was coming home one Friday night from an evening where I'd had a couple drinks at the local tavern...my ride dropped me off at the club gate, where I had a moped parked to get back into the hatchery, which was a couple miles from the gate...and I dumped it trying to avoid a bear in the dirt road. You can imagine twenty years old, buzzed, a couple miles back in on a private road with absolutely no one else around at midnight - oh, and there had been a report of a coyote attacking a bear a few days prior, which they chalked up to rabies - so now I'm wondering if I've got a rabid bear looking to go Cujo on my a$$. I'm glad I didn't have bear spray. I probably would have lit myself up. Stupid kid lol.

I have a 14 acre and 3 acre field on one property that I trade hay to the local farmer in return for mowing - particularly in September to encourage new growth prior to the season. He helps with a couple small food plots, too, and drills some seed in when necessary. Frankly, I think that the deer use the fields as much or more than the brassica plots.

It's a shame when one of the good ones gets taken out by a vehicle. We own property across the street from a 700 acre park, and I remember one year when 3 out of 4 of our best animals on camera ended up on somebody's grille (instead of my grill lol).

St. Lawrence is great, as is Cummings in Ithaca and Northern Whitetail Crabs in PA, but many of their most common varieties, not excluding heirlooms, are spoken for by this time of year. From the sounds of it, I should be taking guidance from G-man! I've often played with the idea of grafting, and Cornell Cooperative Extension used to do a grafting class through the Rochester Civic Garden Center, but so far as I'm aware, the Center is now closed and I can't find anything else local. Our one property is blessed with 54 mature wild apple trees, at last count, some of which are gems and others that are pure spitters. I'm still learning how to prune these mature trees - I don't even try with several where the canopy is simply daunting - and so far I've managed not to kill them. Whether I've done any good or not, well: a little column A, a little column B.

Awesome! It sounds like you've done it right for a long time. Are the older trees semi-dwarf, too? I've always stuck with semi-standard because I want my grandkids to enjoy the fruit of my labor - any issue with trees aging out? I know that dwarf trees don't live long, but they're more like vines than trees IMHO.

Good looking trees, but I'd like to know what sort of rootstock they were grown on. It can make a big difference, of course, both in terms of dwarf, semi-dwarf, etc...but also soil compatibility and staking needs. Unsolicited advice: when I plant apples, I try to prune the branches so that the leaf mass doesn't overwhelm the root system. I also prefer my scaffolding limbs to be at least 5' off the ground, so the lower branches are the first to go. And the best favor you can do the trees is to protect them. 18" of aluminum (not plastic) screen double wrapped around the base, buried an inch into the soil, and stapled to prevent rodent damage. 5' high welded wire fencing with three stakes attached using zip ties - connect the ends of the wire by bending a couple free pieces over the other end to make it easy to disconnect when you need to prune or clean out inside the fencing. 3' square of ground cloth covered with stone to prevent weeds. You may want to consider protection against sun scalding this time of year, too, although the screen has worked well for me with young trees. This has been a failsafe method for me, with a hundred or so trees over two properties. Good luck!

Me thinks that you give the politicians of this great state too much credit. But one can dream. I shot my first two deer with a crossbow last year, after having owned a Ten Point Turbo for five years prior. I simply loved hunting with my Elite too much to give it up during the heart of the rut. Unfortunately, I needed to buy a new bow last spring, and for some reason I allowed myself to be convinced to purchase the new Hoyt Rx5 Ultra. Don't get me wrong, it's a really nice bow, and my 3D score shot up 15 points, but I found it clunky in the woods and unexpectedly heavy for a carbon frame. So, I put it down, hunted the XBow, shot a stud, and will probably continue to keep the Turbo in the mix. Regardless, I've always supported Xbow for older or disabled hunters, and I'm 90% with opening it to all for a longer portion of bow - but I think there needs to be a specific training course that incorporates the basic archery curriculum. Too many googans taking long, poor shots in my neck of the woods. I'm also convinced that what I think means nothing to the powers-that-be outside of DEC. Sigh.

Ouch, this is starting to take a turn. I appreciate that at one point late in 2018, we tipped the balance from being a net oil importer to net exporter. So, at that point in time, we were "energy independent". But up until that point, we were importing 3 million barrels a day, net, and at that point, we were exporting 220,000 barrels a day...according to the numbers in the article. That's razor-thin. And it didn't last, unfortunately. In other words, it was a very transient independent. Depending how granular you want to be, we can be independent several times a day, until the next shipment of Russian oil arrives lol. I appreciate that folks want us to stand on our own. I do, too. But arguing the semantics of independence isn't going to win anybody points. I feel like this is one of those things where five minutes and a beer would have everybody on the same page.

I agree. There's a clear difference between something and nothing. Trending toward independence isn't independence, and clarity is important. And it's so easy to simply say that we were moving toward energy independence, and now we're not.

The Nike Air are my workout shoe - they never see the outside - but I only have them, a pair of light, Gore-tex hikers, and volleyball sneakers. If you were to talk hunting boots though...can I be a "boot head"? I suspect that there are those who would like to put a "boot to the head" lol

I mount Leupold on my most commonly used rifles, either VX2 or VX Freedom in the case of my MZ. Great, great stuff. But I was given a Vortex Diamondback from Christmas this year, and I am impressed. Can't speak to the test of time yet.

Trespass laws differ vastly depending on state, particularly in waterways. We were fishing Wyoming one time, where we often use a topo map to identify remote water, and we had a guide with a couple sports come up to us and say, "How'd you guys ever manage to get all the way up here?". Turns out that it was his honey hole, and in fifteen years he's never seen another person. He was cool about it, even warned us that when the stream entered a ranch it became off limits, and the rancher monitored his property closely. Sure enough, we had a guy on a 4x4 watchin us fish as we approached the barrier...which was clearly marked. They take their land and water rights serious out West.

I've owned at least a dozen pairs of Mucks, insulated, early fall, steel toe, and for years they were my go-to. Generally, the soles lasted well past when I'd tore the neoprene to shreds...which I repaired with rod building epoxy, lol. But the last four pair have all separated at the sole, and unfortunately for me, were no longer waterproof. Yes, I repaired them with Shoe Goo, but should I have to after two seasons of moderate use? Quality has greatly diminished lately. And so I've moved to Dry Shod. So far, so good, but this is my first winter in them. Surprisingly less bulky than Muck, but no less warm IMHO.

Two books, one for fun and one for learning.

Poor arguments couched in witty terms are still poor arguments. Grouse has a point about folks adopting, "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh!t". I don't see as it's restricted to the left, but then I'm pretty squarely in the middle. I appreciate fancy words as much as any academic, but IMHO if you can't win your argument in plain-speak, then maybe you should rethink your position. I'll walk that statement back to the extent that sometimes there are particulars that require specific knowledge to appreciate - but good use of analogies can substitute for years of education lol. I find that if I assume that there's always somebody who's smarter than me listening, it keeps me honest...

Sodus and Honeoye have been stingy to me this year. The fish are there, just not cooperating when I'm able to fish. I did manage to freeze my ATV solid last week running through the slush at Honeoye, so that was fun...got one walleye in return. Mmmmm....fish tacos. Sodus is typical dinksville, with a dozen or so 10" plus fish doing the run-and-gun thing. And now another snowstorm is here. It's a good think work is killing me or I'd be complaining about the weather lol.

We've done a bunch of training lately on implicit bias, and frankly I'm surprised to find that some of my attitudes are, while not blatantly offensive per se, perhaps less homogenous toward race than I'd suspected. I've also found that as a medical researcher, race is absolutely something that needs to be considered, as it can affect disease susceptibility on a genetic basis, plus it gives us insight into racial disparities in health care. So, you can't be color blind, either. It's a new world - adapt or become irrelevant. I'm trying, but I will be the first to admit, it's tough to be honest about things like racism. I'd guess that both sides are guilty, but the left disguises it better.