Rattler

I grew up in Woodbridge Twnshp NJ. Bought my place up here 20 years ago. I got a DMP for 4P this year. Had a preference point. Mule, where in NJ are you living?

I agree this is a problem the DEC created. The antler restrictions killed the visiting hunted numbers, but there hasn't been a huge reduction in small deer being taken, because youth hunters are still able to tag them. Every camp has a youth hunter and so every camp takes at least one small buck that the kid tags. Fewer hunters definitely means fewer yotes killed though, and that is causing a decline in fawn and doe numbers, so the DEC is certainly to blame for the yote population. To put it accurately, we have a yote problem that the DEC created.

I blame the coyote.

Yes 50 acres will get you land owner preference for DMP's in the area. Left field, where do you hail from?

I'm in 4P off of Rt 28 just past Bovina heading towards Delhi. Been here 20 years now. Lots of city watershed land to hunt and getting permission on private land isn't difficult either. Got a nice heavy mass 8 pointer last year on my land. Where in Andes are you?

There is already a thread regarding Walmart in the Political Forum. Nobody sees it though. https://huntingny.com/forums/topic/52213-walmart-announcement/

I have the exact same CZ Ringneck in 28 gauge. It gets a lot of use during Grouse hunting season. I don't reload shotgun shells, so I stock up on 28 gauge when I see a good buy. Probably have enough to last the rest of my life now, just like all other ammo I would need.

Article also says they are going to stop selling .223/5.56 ammo, then says they will continue to support hunting and target shooting enthusiasts. What the hell do they think a lot of target shooters use? It also says they will stop allowing concealed/open carry in their stores. This is another stupid "feel good" decision that will not accomplish anything. It may even produce a few mass shootings at newly established Walmart "gun free" zones, where everyone is defenseless. These places should not be boycotted. They should be sued for violating the Constitutional rights of responsible gun owners, as well as sued if anyone gets killed in their store because they were left defenseless.

Update: I love this lantern and use it a lot. The handle, which is very comfortable, but soft rubber, split in two because I hung it from a hook that pressed on the middle of the handle. I e-mailed the company (Intervine.com) and asked if i could get a new handle for it. They said they could not send me a new handle, but would be happy to send me A NEW LANTERN!! WOW!! Not only did they send me a new lantern for free, without asking me to return the old one, they sent me the upgraded version that is rechargeable. Now that's good old fashioned customer service. I plan to look into buying more of their products now. (BTW, the old one with the broken handle is still in use in my shed. I taped the handle together with Gorilla tape.)

I finally got the time to load some 7mm-08 with Barnes TTSX copper bullets last Thursday. I've been meaning to do that for at least 4 months. I have more empties for other rifles I want to do as well, but don't need to do right away. Always seems there are too many other more important things to do on my list.

I use a peep sight on my scopeless rifles. I find it works well if you know how to use a peep properly. Keep both eyes open and focus on putting the front sight where it needs to be. It's clear and fast. With both eyes open, the sight doesn't block out any of the target as you see a ghost of the sight on the target. Proper cheek weld will automatically put your eye in the peep and the front sight is all you need to worry about at that point.

What is CRS??

That's who I was trying to remember. I was thinking someone here had posted about custom Mausers but couldn't remember his handle. I could see the posts and his avatar in my head, but for the life of me couldn't remember his handle. A sign of the onset of old timers disease I guess.

I find the point of aim usually shifts slightly whenever the stock is removed from the barreled action. It's the Fajen stock the rifle came with it when I bought it. Nice piece of nothing fancy walnut, but not pillar or glass bedded. The original Jap safety is the big knob on the back of the bolt, which is very hard to operate. The new Timney trigger comes with a safety on it, but it requires a little wood modification to get it to fit in the stock. I would expect the zero to move a little after doing that to the stock, but I'd really like to have the safety on the trigger. That's just a bonus to a better trigger.

That's a classic sporter Dave. I've seen many beautiful sporterized Mausers as well as 03 Springfields. These military rifles were well built and will last. They can be real tack drivers. There were many suppliers making custom parts for those rifles. Custom parts for my Jap were always hard to come by. I just went on the Timney site to look at a trigger for my Arisaka. It was only a few years ago they began offering an Arisaka trigger. The price has gone down to $135! I was happily surprised. I think I'm going to pull the trigger on a new trigger for this rifle as I've been wanting to upgrade it for years. Just not sure I want to take it apart to install it just prior to hunting season. I just got it perfectly sighted in. LOL.

Many of these sporterized Japs were converted to .30-06. I was considering converting this one to .35 Whelen. But since it shoots so well as is, I figure if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Besides, I have about 200 rounds for this rifle and enough 7.7 reloading supplies to last the rest of my life. Just have to sell myself on adding a $200 Timney trigger.

While sighting in the Jap, I started to feel the scope wasn't right for the rifle. It seemed bigger than needed. In the end, I swapped it out for a Leupold VX1 2-7x33mm with a matte finish. It feels like it has better balance with that scope and is sighted in perfectly now. Gotta go with what feels right.

Years ago my buddy had a Jeep CJ7 with a straight six engine, 4 speed and manually locking front hubs. Now there was a true off road vehicle that would go anywhere. When you locked the hubs and put it in gear, you knew all 4 wheels were turning at the same rate no matter what they were rolling on. That thing would go anywhere. It was also lacking any of the luxury bells and whistles you cannot avoid in today's Jeeps which add a lot to the price, yet offer nothing for the hunter. It didn't even have A/C. It cost no more than the average car back then too. The only drawback to the CJ7 was lack of room. It could only take 2 hunters and their gear unless you strapped all the gear on the roof. We drove so many mountain logging roads in that thing, in all sorts of weather, without fear. Never got stuck. Never saw any need for a winch either. Wish they still made them like that for a fair price.

It's true they were modeled after the .303 but I didn't have a .303 for comparison. The 7.7 uses .311 diameter bullets too, just like a .303 British. I also saw that strength test. It's amazing how much that action can take.

My knowledge of coyotes comes from written info as well as years of first hand experience. I've personally seen many things that prove the book smart information is absolutely wrong, at least in my neck of the woods. I would say I'm not working off of misinformation as much as coyote lovers are. No one here is scared of them. We just see them as vermin. I was here 45 years ago and never saw a coyote then. We didn't need them then, and we don't need them now. When I say a "large pack" I'm talking 5 or 6. That is very common around here and there are quite a few of them spread around. They are territorial, but when overpopulated, their territories are smaller and the deer in those territories are fewer. These packs run down and kill perfectly healthy full grown deer. They are not like fox, they are like wolves. The only thing that prevents me from hunting them more is the need to invest in night vision equipment and spend more nights without sleep in the woods trying to hunt them. This isn't long range field shooting up here, these are big woods forest areas. Hunting them isn't easy, calling isn't very effective and shooting them through thick woods isn't easy, especially when you can hardly see farther than 100 yards. We don't have a quick rut here either. The Catskills are vast and the deer density sparse. Many deer are bred in December. Fawning season here goes on over a two month period, though not at a constant rate. No hard feelings or offense taken when people talk about yotes from a general perspective of available literature. What I'm saying is, not all areas follow the book and not all yotes comply with the established norms. Many areas do not follow the rules. This area of the Catskills happens to be one of them. People who have never been here and lived through one winter, don't understand what's really true.

Currently it will do 1.5 inch groups with my reloads. That's why I'm considering a Timney trigger. The original trigger is not the greatest and I've gotten used to the Kimber triggers on my other rifles. Back then, sporterized military rifles were very common, but a Jap rifle was an odd ball. The cartridges cost me $20 a box when I bought it, where .30-06 could be found for $5. Today for some reason, I can still find new Hornady cartridges for it for $20 a box. Weird.

When I was 17 I had my first opportunity to hunt deer in the rifle zone of upstate NY. I didn't have a deer rifle or a lot of cash at the time. I found this semi sporterized Arisaka 7.7 Jap rifle in a gun shop for $45. My Dad had to buy it for me as I was only 17 then. It came with the scope mount, so I only needed to add sling studs, a scope and sight it in and I was good to go. Over the years I have changed the scope, refinished the stock, jeweled the bolt, worked the trigger, re-blued it, and added a nicer floor plate and trigger guard. I finally decided it deserves a good Leupold scope and put that on yesterday. It needs to be sighted in now. It has a great bore and is very accurate. I think it needs to kill a deer this year. The first photo is how this rifle look in the hands of the Japanese during WWII. The rest are the end result of 47 years of ownership. ( I'm considering a Timney trigger now ) The last photo compares a .308 round (on the left) to a 7.7 Jap round. Ballistically, using 150 grain bullets, they are almost equal.

I gotta laugh at how many suburban housewives drive radical Wranglers, Rubicons, Saharas and the like. It's not as if they will ever go off road with the thing. I doubt they could change a flat tire on it if they had to. What's the attraction to these women? All I can imagine is that it's trendy.

If you read any of the links I posted and some of the other posts here, you will see yotes in this area average 45 pounds, not 35. A 60 pound yote here is not a unicorn, just not taken as often as the average yote. If a pack of a half dozen yotes pushing 50 pounds runs down a deer, any deer, that deer is dead. Fawns are merely a snack for these predators, unless it's a female feeding a den full of pups. A coyote pup can consume a whole newborn fawn every day. If there are 4 pups in the den, that's 4 fawn a day. Figure how many days there are in the fawning period and multiply by 4 and you get an idea how many fawns the breeding females can kill every season. Every coyote area is different. The Catskills are a far cry from PA farmlands and even the Poconos. The yotes up here are big. I hunt them whenever possible and I'm not using my .223 Rem when I do, as I have found it sometimes isn't very effective. They can run off when hit in the lungs with the .55 grain .22 caliber slug. I use my 7mm-08 and sometimes my .30-06 with 150 soft points. Even then, they have run 75 yards before stopping to howl as they finally expire. Over the years it has become clear to me, the more coyote in the area, the fewer deer. I just wish more people here would hunt them and NY would allow yote hunting year round. Too many deer hunters let them pass when deer hunting too.

And contests usually take the average yotes. The really big ones are the hardest to hunt and are rarely taken during the contests. The best time to take one is when the fawns are dropping, and NY won't allow yote hunting at that time. As far as bobcats go, they will take a fawn if the opportunity presents itself, but since bobs are not numerous, they're impact on deer is very small. But I'll take them whenever I get the chance as well.