BowmanMike

Try to stay calm and quiet after the shot. Mark spots mentally that the deer travelled by that you can find from the ground. Listen for the deers direction of travel after you loose sight. After 30 mins climb down quietly and check the hit site. Your arrow can give you a lot of clues as to where you hit,as will the hair. Smell your arrow to make sure you didnt hit guts. Dark blood generally means a liver hit. Bright blood with little bubbles is a lung hit. On quartering shots you can get all three which makes it hard to decide what to do next. When in doubt back out and give the deer more time to expire. If you dont push the deer they will generally bed fairly close and die in their first bed. For liver hits the rule of thumb is 4-6 hrs,gut shot over 12hrs.

I would think that elk hunting is different enough from whitetail hunting that it wouldn't ruin me on whitetails. I love the fact that my farthest drive to a hunting deer is 40 mins,and that is when i feel adventurous. I can hunt out my back door or drive a few minutes to more private or 5 or 10 minutes to public. The whole elk thing takes so much more planning and preparation to just be able to survive out there when camping and hiking. No warm house to come back to at night. I can also understand in people getting hooked on the whole elk hunting thing,but to me it is two completely different things. And why not do both,right? Isn't elk season generally in September for archery?

No but i want to. Same as you,i should probably get after it sooner rather than later,like the rest of us i am not getting younger. I think you have a great advantage with having someone there locally that could help you figure a few things out. Not having to pack a whole elks worth of meat out would be huge. That is the biggest drawback of going alone i would think,and the risk of getting hurt and being alone in the wilderness.

What broadheads are you shooting now? And is your bow tuned well? I dont think one needs to shoot 70# to have good penetration. The recurve guys shoot 45# or so.

I enjoy shooting my bow,so generally i shoot 3 to 4 times a week. Sometimrs just 5 or 6 arrows,other times 20 to 30. I have been shooting from elevation lately and also kneeling or sitting,basically anything that messes with your form. This is just my fifth or sixth bowseason so i feel like i need the practice,and the practice of killing deer. If i can i would love to fill all my tags besides the regular season buck tag with the bow.

I have been shooting from my saddle. Real woirld practice is the best.

This exactly. I requested them before...

Thats what i started doing. Braise them and then cook in a pot for an hour or so with a bunch of other goodies.

100% correct advice.

I hope so. I don't understand why they did away with it in the first place.

Yes,I hope they bring that back. I was a newbie on the site and that feedback feature helped me stay away from a guy with a -1 rating.

My guess is chardonnay...

I got lucky with my bow i bought of archery talk. It was in good shape and not too far out of tune. I had to have things changed anyway since it went from 26" draw to 30" draw. And i did have new strings put on just to be sure they are ok. I can't see spending $1000 or more on a bow,and i have the archery bug bad. I always think the user is more important than the equipment.

Tug hill is northern zone,no? That would be unaffected. I don't see where one week would make a bug difference to the snowmobile crowd. Hunting would be open for 3 months,where most of the time the snow cover isnt great anyway,then 3 months for snowmobiling until the end of march when generally more snow is on the ground. That seems like an ok arrangement,especially when you consider how much snowmobiling relies on private land owner cooperation. Hunting does not require that.

I would love it,more hunting time especially when i have time off? What's not to like? Here in 4F the woods are almost empty of hunters during muzzleloader season anyways. I am not worried about pressure at all or too many deer being taken. We have too many in the state,most woods around here have very little undergrowth because of browse pressure. Deer eat anything but the beech saplings. I dont think it will make much difference in the total deer harvest but is a good idea to try.

I got no problem with coyotes,never shot one and I don't think i will. Almost a million deer in NY,i dont think they do much damage.

I wish i could find some white oaks around here,nothing but reds...

I will be hunting very similar to you. I got a saddle this year and i am not prepping anything,which is really nice. I plan to sit only once in a spot,and scout my way in until i find sign to good to pass up. By hunting public land i will spread out the pressure and not over hunt my private spots. I also enjoy hunting from the ground,that gets the heart rate way up.

Haha,glad i could help. The rocks probably would be ok unless you get a raging fire going,but sometimes that happens,at least to me.

They look like sedimentary rocks to me.

I like to hunt apples early in the season,but i also have seen sign of deer eating acorns already. I have not been able to pinpoint them feeding on beechnuts,i am not sure where they fall on the preferred scale for deer. Hunting on oaks can be difficult because we have quite a few of them all through the woods here,so deer could be just about anywhere.

Happy birthday Mr. Antlers.

Deer get used to people on trails,but they will react when you go off trail. They know the difference.

More often than not the big rocks are metamorphic. But pics will help.

Are those birds sunbathing?