pitweiler

I agree. Time with family is more important. My wife is awesome and totally supports me getting out there. The problem I'm running into is that the only time I'm really able to get out there is from 8:30-2/2:30pm. Which I'd say isn't peak time to be out there. My son is 5 and has started showing great interest in going out so I'm going to take him for a few hours maybe tomorrow or Friday. I scouted a new location for exactly 1 hour this afternoon before I picked them up and found a number of trails converging on a few spots. Recorded it all in onX and picked a few spots for our blind. We'll See what happens.

I'm married, three kids under 5, wife is pregnant- due in January, and we both have demanding full time jobs. My wife is also going to school full time. Makes getting into the field difficult for me. Lots of demands and responsibility. It can get frustrating. Anyone else trying to work around the same kind of stuff? How do you do it?

Ruger M77 Hawkeye All Weather Ultralite in .243 Winchester. Loaded it with Federal 85gr Power Shok Copper. Topped with a Burris Fullfield E1 3-9x40. Sweet Rifle. Has to be at or under 8lbs. 20in barrel. The 85gr Power Shok only makes 2820fps, but I’m going to start loading for it this spring. 80gr TTSX and 85gr TSX.

100% Black Bear. Sweet if you ask me. I’ve had the pleasure of being literally 5 feet from one eating out of a PB jar at scout camp when I was a kid. Majestic animals. I have a lot of respect for them.

I really enjoy glassing with binos. I wish NYS offered more open spaces or better managed public land with fields that allowed more of it. Hunting the thick pines/hardwoods can be really slow and glassing is hard. I’d love to find a nice power line with some trails running across it to glass for whitetail.

That's one of the reasons I don't like hunting southern zone. Lots of hunters and they just show up out of the woodwork. Northern zone seems to be less crowded. I'm lucky that I live in CNY where either zone is 45min away.

Listen, Big Foot is real. There is a lot of evidence to support Sasquatch. I'm a firm believer. There is SOMETHING out there.

I used the Tinks 69 Hotshot yesterday. I think it would be best used in conjunction with wicks. It puts a lot of scent out quickly, but it seems to dissipate quickly. I think putting some wicks up around the area and then spraying the hot shot into the wind or every half hour or so might help. Like I said, someone or something was grunting at me yesterday but wouldn’t walk out into my shooting lanes so i never saw it.

That’s always possible. The location of the grunt moved to about 100yds from where it was and can hear what sounds like trotting in the woods. Too thick for my Binos.

Aren’t electronic calls a no-no for big game in NY?

Thought i put them back in when I dried it all out from my soaking wet rain hunt. Obvious fail here men. Im in a ground blind. He’s in the woods off to my right. Haven’t heard him in 20. Gonna try bleating. I’ll rattle at 1130 if I get nothing.

So you’re sitting on an open space spraying that Tinks 69 periodically and you get someone/thing grunting at you every 20 min or so. But you forgot your calls. Do you rattle at it???

Is it possible less bucks live in the areas we hunt? I see a fair share of them and does in suburbia and I’m starting to think seer are migrating to suburbia because it offers a lot of shelter, food and less pressure.

How about both? Nothing wrong with seeking out a trophy.

I think any QDMA needs to be done at the WMU level. I think adding a statewide DMP to each license purchase and then adjusting the lottery would go a long way to getting people to pass up small bucks if they knew they had a statewide DMP in their pocket.

Anywhere. I prefer outside of Onondaga so i can use a rifle. It’s close to where I live and I have a DMP there.

I get what you’re saying lol. Wish those companies did reasonable leases.

I’d rather not trespass. Lol

I’m looking for a place to hunt in 7J during regular firearms. I typically only hunt public land, but I’m interested in hunting private land. If you have some land or know of some land owners that might be agreeable to providing access in return for a payment, I would be interested in talking. I’m not looking for 100% access as my work schedule doesn’t allow that, but a couple days here and there in exchange for a reasonable amount of money would be nice. Thanks.

Honestly, after reading this thread it sounds to me like you're annoyed that you've put some time into your land and based on some circumstantial evidence you believe the deer are moving from your property to his property because you think he's putting out corn. He very well may be putting out corn, but you by your own admission haven't seen it. You posted on a public forum your thoughts and then get upset when people come on with dissenting opinions. If you don't want an opinion, don't post, even if it's a "rant". I think you're stirring up trouble. If this guy has money and resources I'm not sure you want to go barking up that tree with shaky allegations or hunches of baiting. Let's be real. Baiting may be "illegal", unethical, whatever have you, but in a few months municipalities all across the state will be paying the USDA to bait and shoot deer at night with suppressed rifles to cull the population. At the most we're allotted 6 deer a year. Pretty sure the DEC could allow us all to take 12 and the population would still be well in check. Baiting: Illegal for me and you; legal for .gov. One more thing: What is the actual difference between a food plot and a bait pile? Nothing. They're both a food attractant except one grows out of the ground and is legal and the other is placed on the ground and illegal. Still, the exact same concept.

I'm doing it a little differently this year. I experimented with it last year and almost had success. I still hunt through the pines and hardwoods until I find a trail or set of tracks. Then I back track it to see where it originated from. Then, if I have time, I following it to see where it goes. I make note of where the trail was and then slowly work that area to look for additional signs of movement. In the place I've decided to hunt for northern zone I think I found either a bedding area or movement zone: Its a swampy/creek area with tall grass that provides good cover, bordered by pines and then hardwoods about 200 yards from the start of the pines. There are acorns on the ground and the tracks I could find were all walking from the grassy area toward the hardwoods. Fresh pee and poop on the ground too. The ground was covered in leaves so it was hard to find a lot of tracks, but enough to figure out direction of movement. Now, here's the thing. I couldn't tell if it was a buck or a doe. I didn't find a bunch of different size tracks like you would with a pack of does, but I also didn't see any licks or scrapes or rubs. Its all ridges and dips in the pines. I think I'm going to set up an ambush on the ridges using some kind of tinks / call and see if anything shows up. I really don't have a clue what I'm doing so take everything I say with a grain of salt

I think the 6.5 and 6.8 are splitting hairs out to 500. I agree, for a general purpose rifle the 6.5 is probably the better option. It has better market support too.

The BC of the Barnes TSX bullets in those weights / calibers are so similar that inside 150yds it’s a wash. Energy is an outdated and skewed formula. I’m not washing out the 6.8. I’ve been mulling over the idea of building an AR in 6.5 or 6.8 just for hunting. I sort of dismissed the 6.5 since both the 6.5 and 6.8 are splitting hairs to 500yds and where would I shoot game at 500+yds in NYS? Not many places. That brought me back to the 6.8. Then I figured if I was going to do this I’m going to make it a pistol with a 12 in barrel so I can hunt with it in the shotgun, pistol, muzzy zones. I just can’t decide if the 6.8 is worth the additional cost. Probably moot if I reload for it.

I’m interested in the 6.8 as well. I’m just not sure it offers much more than what a 5.56 can do, given the type of bullet used and the type of game pursued. I’m moving to copper and I’m just not sure I see a benefit to going 6.8. For example, 85gr all copper projectiles out of my 20in .243 average around 2800fps. I could probably push that closer to 3000 with some handloads. 55-62gr bullets from my 5.56 average around 3000fps from my 18in. Tables and charts aside, what is the real world difference in terminal performance between a 62-70gr projectile moving at roughly the same speed as an 85gr projectile that is .5mm larger in diameter? All copper bullets have really rewritten terminal performance understanding in many ways. Old cup and core lead jacket projectiles that shed 60% or so of their weight are a thing of the past. Even bonded core lead jacketed ammunition is changing our understanding of terminal performance. Foot pounds of kinetic energy are sales and marketing pitches. The real question is will this projectile adequately penetrate to destroy vital structures. Bonded and all copper projectiles have shown us that smaller/lighter bullets of though construction are capable of accomplishing those tasks in medium sized game. Sure, a 6.8 firing a 110gr bullet at 2600fps will have more freight behind it than a 62gr bullet at 2800fps, but what is the real world terminal performance difference? Is it that great of a difference to warrant the added cost of shooting 6.8 over 5.56? I’m not sure. I think inside 300yds it’s mostly a wash between 5.56, 6.5, and 6.8 when bullets of the same type of construction are used. In my opinion, past 250-300yds is when the separation begins, which then begs the question of will you actually ever shoot at game that far away? Maybe you hunt in those kinds of areas. If you do, and you want a semi-auto, why not just use an AR-10 based rifle and actually see some performance increase at those extended ranges? I don’t doubt the 6.8 is more powerful than 5.56. It definitely is. However, with all things being equal, when hunting whitetail deer, maybe even black bear, is it that much “better” when a good shot is made? I’m not sure. I think going down that road is filled more with opinion, emotion and anecdotal evidence than facts.

I don't know. I think that isn't necessary. I've been seeing a lot of deer lately, saw 10 the other night and most of them are pretty small. I think it depends where in NYS you are. Up north they're probably 1.5x the size of the suburban deer in CNY.