greybeard

outdoorjay.. This is NOT^ criticism. It is just my analysis of LI hunting... I assume that you were on either the Rocky Point, or Otis Pike coop. because you wrote that you were told that you would share with a pheasant hunter.I saw that yesterday..I was at one spot, two pheasant(dog) guys passed me and I saw what I assumed (I didn't go close) was a deer hunter on a stand.. I was at spot 10, someone 12 and I assume the other guy was at spot 1. They all connect, as do many coop- sites.. It's just the way it is. Without the coop we got almost nothing. IF you're at the coop that will happen at times in most spots, so pick ones that are spaced better, no guarantee, but it's all you got. and the more hunters that there are the more likely the land stays open for us.. As far as separate days..Look at the other side of it.. The State stocks pheasants every week so to a bird guy you are the one that shouldn't be in his spot..Those birds are stocked for him. Maybe he can't get his good bird spot because you are parked in it. Deer hunters get 3 months of bow and almost one month with gun. Pheasant guys get about 60 days. Small game hunters in the coop can only hunt weekends in the coop in LI gun season.. Deer guys get all the weekdays. So from their prospective they may think that should get more time. When I was a coon hunter, some guys didn't like trappers to share their area, and I'm sure vice verse.. We actually met to not have an understanding..We both had equal rights to use the land for our passions, so we got to understand and respect each other. My best squirrel spot in the coop is a very good deer spot(I should have gone there yesterday). It's a 2 car spot, so it's a crap shoot of who is there with me..For me, the deer guys don't bother my squirrels, but at times they have taken up that spot so I can't hunt it..... AND, of course to them when I shoot I bother their deer.. When I bow hunted LI I figured hoped that my small game brothers ( we are all hunters) would push the deer all day, and they do. So in my opinion, as they say.. it's just life in the big city.. It is what it is.. not perfect, but like I wrote, and you know, it's just what we got and we live with it.. I hunted the coop since the mid 60's so I'm just used to it I guess, and hunting beats doing anything else for me. There is , or was some open land west of the coop where I used to crow hunt in October which is a popular bow hunting site. One day I was at a site and a bow hunter walked thru "MY" field and took a stand at rattled behind me...He was moving and crows could see that, so I , like you, wasn't happy..But then later I did shoot a crow and I'm sure that he wasn't happy..We had no ill words, we were just doing our thing..Equal rights I have had problems upstate too with too many hunters.. Cranberry Mt. and Big Buck Mtn. in particular...I once had to wait 3 hours to park and have access to Cranberry because the spots were filled.I lived with it. I could have left and gone North where there's more land, but I chose to stay. There really is no, and will never be a solution that will make all of us happy, so in my opinion, we just have to adjust and improvise, and respect other hunters. As far as separate days.. I'm retired so I don't care, but to a working guy, or someone with a young family he goes when he can. It wouldn't be right to restrict him( him can also be her..( I have to be politically correct). So that's my opinion..

First light.. You must know me... i would have paid for that info yesterday i have a comment about LI hunting,but I am havinga problem posting now. i'll be back..

It went over my head because I never saw Home Alone 2, so I just checked it on line, and saw the pigeon attack..I had a good laugh.. Thanks

It must be fun to spend money, my wife loves to

Lawdwaz.. nice photo, I hadn't thought about a retriever, but it makes sense....good lookin' dog ! How do you hunt them ? Do they taste the same as doves ? I have to learn about this. I may never be too successful at it, but I'll have a good time trying, and finding spots down here.

Thanks Pygmy..I like that plastic bottle idea...Now I gotta find some spots... I have some old duck decoys, maybe I'll paint them. BUT of course I gotta find them. I have 2 spots in mind.( One spot, I saw today).... , I need to scout... I appreciate the info from you guys.

First-light..There's pheasants back there too. The day he found the rack, I shot a hen pheasant.. I used to hunt that spot a lot.....It was a long time ago, but I used to coon hunt in there too.It's a good chunk of huntable land for here...

Thanks ...It sounds really good. I never heard about it until my friend told me.. Do you guys ever use decoys?

mbucks27.. No, not today, but I wasn't very quiet moving into my crow spot. I walked fast so I wasn't paying attention at that spot, I had crows on my mind, and wanted to get to where I thought I'd take some crows. I paid more attention at spot 10 and 12 because I was looking for squirrels. Are you thinking of deer hunting there ? .

I saw 2 rubs at 10 today.. The dead button buck was at 12. I don't deer hunt anymore, but I still find myself looking for deer sign. I like spots 9 , 10 and 12, because, as you wrote, there is a good amount of game. There are a lot of good spots, as I'm sure you know. I don't know which are best for deer. I took a friend once to the coop to show him what it was like. I took him to spot 2. When we got back by the ponds he was fascinated,, he said that he couldn't believe that we were on L.I. That day, he found a beautiful 8 point rack on a skull. I have unsuccessfully looked for sheds for years and never found one, he goes one day and finds that. I guess that the bucks haven't shed yet because I saw a small fork horn last week when I was out. Good luck on your hunt.

A guy that I used to hunt with at his place upstate, told me that he and a relative did some pigeon hunting .. They'd get permission from farmers and put out decoys in a field and did really well. He told me that you can burn up a whole lot of shotgun shells, and get a lot of birds. He said that pigeons up there, as opposed to city pigeons, were good to eat. I think that he said dark meat. I remember a poultry store on LI used to sell pigeons to eat.. They called them squab, but sure looked like pigeons to me. My fiend drove me around and showed me some farms and how many pigeons were around, there were loads of them. I never got to do it with him because our lives changed. I forgot about it, but today I was looking for crows and in some areas and saw a number of pigeons, and made me think of it. I don't know how you can tell feral from domestic pigeons, like the one that race, but I guess if they're hangin' around farms they are wild We may never get a dove season, but I guess it could be like dove hunting . Does anyone pigeon hunt ?

First-light... All Otis Pike: Spot 40(Fresh Pond Road).. rabbit/crow spot where I heard the squirrel Spot 36(25a)..( I'm pretty sure that that's the #), It's east on 25 from the check station.. left from 25 to 25a(you see the jet on the right before the turn).. 2nd parking area, it's on the right..used to be my crow spot . I have gotten pheasants there, but birds are stocked so in my opinion it's a crap shoot. Spots 10 and 12

I'm glad it wasn't that

I went to Otis Pike for a few hours this morning for crow/squirrel, and a little push for cottontail. I haven't been to these spots in a while. There is going to be some kind of Audobon(I can't spell it right) Christmas Bird count in some spots in the coop , I think it said Dec. 27th, but don't go by my lousy memory, I repeated it in my head all the way home and I still may be wrong. It's around then anyway. It will be done in certain spots so those spots open later that day, I THINK it said the designated spots open at 11 am. I'm writing this because some guys here bow, and small game hunt there and may want to call to verify this . I didn't ask, it was on a sign, and don't rely on me, my brain is empty. So call if it's of interest I got nothing so that's the bottom line, so you may not want to read further.. A BIG 0 !!! There was almost no water in two of the ponds .Some ice on the little water that was there. I didn't check other ponds. I started at a rabbit/crow spot.. There's no snow, so no tracks, but I saw coon tracks in mud and rabbit pellets. I tried , but didn't see any rabbits. Then, I tried predator calling, and had heard a a squirrel barking a lot, then birds were acting spooked. That's a good indicator of fox, or other predator, but I didn't see anything, so maybe it was nothing. I really should have called longer, but I wanted that squirrel, more than seeing a fox, so I went looking, but to no avail... I was very surprised that, there were no crows around, but the damn Canada geese flew over my head a few times, but I got lead, and am not signed in for waterfowl, so no shooting for me. I moved to my crow spot... this was always my go to spot for crows.. I ALWAYS saw them at this spot, lots of them!!. I didn't always get them, but they were always there.I haven't been there in a while, but until today, it was always a winner to see crows, and quite often call them in.. Again, geese, no crows. I didn't hear, or see any. I'd blame my calling, but there was no crows to hear me. ( There were no crows ANYWHERE today.) I saw only one on the way there, and none while I drove around, and none on my way home...VERY unusual, and don't know why. I tried a squirrel/pheasant spot for an hour and got 0... I found a dead pheasant(rooster), that was half eaten and a dead button buck that was partially eaten. It has to be those damn Mountain Lions !!! I plucked the feathers from the pheasants tail, so something will get used , The deer stunk, and It's probably illegal to cut anything off of him, so I left him, and later told the DEC... After I checked out, of course, I saw 2 pheasants walking near the check station, I had a good laugh with another hunter about it.

Early..A bay constable told me to make it like carp..cook the meat on a board, throw the meat away and eat the board..funny at the time. The last one that I cooked smelled like swamp mud, and oozed some horrible looking blood . I had taken it from the freezer and thought that it was a mallard until it thawed. I had been hoping to serve the brant to someone who I didn't like, but now I had to eat it. I tried that one plain on the bbq.. horrible. That was the last one I ever shot I am the worst cook, so forget my recipes, my wife is the cook.. The limit was either 2, or 3 a day and when I found them, I could usually limit out..Usually I'd save up a bunch and then give them to my wife to cook. My wife made them a kind of Chinese style with an orange sauce, garlic, (some kind of oil, I think), ginger, soy sauce, peppers, , I think snow peas, and onions. There was pineapple in it too.. It was a packaged mix, but I don't have a clue as to how she did it.....That was good, but she wouldn't eat it, so I'd have it for lunch and it was too much of a bother. I served a bunch of them like that at a game dinner and the guys ate it and didn't complain. They make good crab bait, and a friend took some to his place and baited for coyotes.. I don't know if it worked. I had some good spots, but needed my kayak to get to them and in winter the weather makes that kind of hunting pretty restrictive.

Gun racks, I made on in 1973 and it's still as good as new. lamps... look at taxidermy catalogs to.see what the lamps look like. They usually show 4 feet as I recall, but I made one out of one foot, so if you liked something like that I'm sure a taxidermist can do it.. The lamp shades are shown in taxidermy catalogs. Van Dyke's used to have them. I had trouble making the 4 foot lamp when I tried it, but I like the way it looks. No one smokes anymore, I guess, but at one time I took 2 wild boar feet and put them together to hold an ashtray. I guess deer feet would work, but they're narrower then the feet I used. I made pen holders from some.. it looks like a hollow foot, but if done correctly stands on its own and holds pens.. Nice conversation piece. I made a weird thing called a footalow, but I really can't describe it.. I found how to do it in a taxidermy ,magazine. I gave 2 as gifts and the people loved them, but like I said they're weird looking. I saw a guy once who had a small deer hoof that someone made into a knife handle that was on his knife in a sheath.. I really liked it, but never tried to make one. I wanted to examine how it was done, but didn't know the guy so I didn't ask.. Probably your taxidermist will have other ideas.

Doc, On Long island the deer season(gun) is weekdays, but being a small game/duck hunter it's good for me. I can't hunt the coop Mon. thru Fri.in January because it's deer only, so I go on weekends for squirrel, crow, etc. So we all get a chance to hunt in the coop in January. I wouldn't complain if they had deer hunting 7 days a week, but like I wrote, the weekend small game hunting has always worked for me.

I was down walking at the surf today just to chill, and at one point looked out into the bay on the other side. The brant were coming in, as they do during low tide, and there were hundreds of them. I know that the season isn't open yet,and it is not unusual to see that many, but figured I'd pass it on for the new waterfowlers,. Some guys may want to scout for them in the south shore bays, while duck hunting so that they know where the Brant should be during the open season....Where I hunted for them, they had the same hangouts throughout most of the season, so scouting saved time, and increased the odds. I haven't hunted for them in a few years because I can't stand eating them, but they are fun to hunt.

Cusehuter.. I apologize, I WAS too sensitive, and as I look at it now, I should have seen the humor at the end of it.. .I think I've been inside too long, but that's no excuse. I get angry when hunters turn on hunters and that's what I did. I should practice what I preach...I hate being a hypocrite, but I was.

Jeremy K... That's a good looking hound...Nice colors(my favorite).. How's it's voice ?? I miss hearing the singing of my dogs..I think most times I hunted coons just to hear the music, especially when mixed with other hunter's dogs.

Cusehunter...Do you mean that people up where you are approve of that being put on a website for anyone to see. I doubt it... But you did substantiate my statement about hunters who stereotype. So thanks for the verification.

I tried to post here before and lost it.. My last 3 dogs were Black and Tan Coon Hounds, one was an old fashioned Black and Tan with ears like Dumbo. I loved having those hounds and they made me a "coon hunter", even though they were the ones hunting, I just followed their lead. I have many great memories, in my head, from those hounds. One night we were hunting on Long Island and the dogs treed, and I shot a big boar coon. I grabbed the coon and threw it over my back and my Buckwheat jumped and grabbed it to try to pull it away from me. That was VERY unusual for her.. I had a tug of war with her and I finally let go. The "dead coon" grabbed Buckwheat by the ears, with it's teeth. It didn't end well for the coon, and could have ended up bad for me if it wasn't for that hound....She knew it was alive and saved my little ass, I woulda been the one gettin' chewed on instead of her. Now that was loyalty !! I had beagles as a kid, one, when I was a teenager, taught me to rabbit hunt. I never had money back then so one New Years Eve I took my girl friend, now wife, out to a woodlot to show her how my little beagle ran rabbits. It was snowing lightly and we heard and saw that little hound run 3 cottontails.. Whatta date !! My wife loved it.. She hated the dog though because she said it gave her dirty looks, which I swear was true. They weren't on good terms. But that little hound loved me(She was born in my house on my birthday )

If you were a non hunter and lived on the East end of Long Island would you want the guy who posted that on the internet to hunt in your backyard, or would you opt for a "professional" for the upcoming cull. You may say that the picture with the comment does not represent all hunters, which is true, but don't hunters paint all tree hugging liberals with the same brush. If you think not, then read posts on this site. Both sides stereotype.

Culver, I hope that you are correct, however I see it differently . That's life, isn't it. I am curious, what is the age of the average hunter in NY ? I guess what I should have written was, if hunters decrease in numbers then there will be less money in the till. If our money isn't there, they'll get it another way... You know, like more traffic cameras. One small example.. Fishermen pay for a special permit for some area beaches here. Some said that we support them and the State needs our money. Now others pay fees for their passions also.. Metal detectors, and I recently heard that there is now a fee for star gazers. So fishermen are not the only money generators for that area anymore. I just don't think that we should ever become so secure in our beliefs, to think, that we, as hunters, are a never ending breed. I believe that we need to project an image as intelligent and skilled sportsmen to attract and keep new hunters. In conclusion, as I wrote above, I know that non hunters read hunting sites. Also, look at the comments on hunting shows on youtube by antis.So I believe that we should be mindful of that and act and post accordingly. Time will tell, as they say.

I had a discussion with a business man one evening regarding hunting. At the end we agreed that it was not hunting, but it was the hunters that he objected to. I was told by a young woman that she'd rather a deer starve then be shot by a hunter, and if it wasn't for hunters she would not have had a job. The above was some time back, but our image today is worse. I have friends (Limbaugh conservatives) some who fish, but think hunters have no skill except to shoot a baited animal, or in a baited field(taught by tv).. I hear ore and more conservatives, not all from down here, are not in our corner and that is scarey for the future. We are losing ground rapidly. Recently a L.I. newspaper had a letter from a reader who wrote that hunters should be allowed to bait and shoot deer on L.I. I got his point, but it would appear to the public that we can't even shoot a backyard deer without help(BAIT). It'd be like shooting birds out of a bird feeder in my yard, which is how many will see it. We all know that anti hunters and anti gun people read our sites and then use our words to fight us. We don't read their sites, but they read ours. Having a pro hunter quote an anti is fine, but these people can point directly at our words and pictures and let the reader see it for themselves, rather then interpret. More antis are bird watching, apple picking,wildlife photographing, hiking, snowmobiling and otherwise using the woods. We are not the only ones supporting businesses in "hunting areas", and spending money on wildlife . So when I see a picture, on line, with that caption it just substantiates that we, often times, invite criticism. Hunters have lost, and are continuing to lose, the RESPECT that we deserve. I'm ranting because in the last year, since the gun control debates, I have seen more and more antis become vocal against hunters.And more and more people that were in our corner turn from us. I'll get to hunt until my end, but I'm not so sure about our future generations.