Gator

I spent the night dreaming of custom rods and chainsaws. Woke up to a stocking full of chocolate. 2020 has sucked, but life is still sweeter than the alternative. Merry X-mas to all - keep your families and friends close in your heart, and trust that next year will be so much better.

The wife and I bud capped hundreds of small conifers yesterday with aluminum screen to prevent browsing. It was too late this year for most of the small white pine. My wife was PO'd, but she's the one that removed the mesh cages earlier this year. Protect it or lose it in deer country.

I hunted more this season than ever before, but with less to show for it. I think that the dry conditions this summer impacted deer movement on one property and a combination of factors affected the other, but also I'm convinced that the constant tread of boots on the ground left danger signals that the deer picked up on quickly. Even rotating properties and stands, we put a pounding on both places. But everybody shot deer, even if there were no real studs taken, there were some nice bucks, some great stories, and most importantly we were all able to enjoy being away from the sh$t storm of 2020 for awhile. Onto offseason property management, which I enjoy as much as the hunting. No big projects planned for this year, but we are starting to develop a plan for a 13 acre field that hasn't done us any favors lately. A combination of food, cover, and screening for access are in order. It all begins today, ay wife and I are heading over shortly to cap small pine trees so as to protect the terminal leaders from browsing over the winter, something we do for hundreds of small pines every year to encourage "volunteers". I hope everyone enjoyed their season as much as I did and has a safe and happy holidays!

Ditto. I have a large manly sled and a smaller girly man sled for does and little bucks. I haven't had to break out the former yet this year lol. Nice buck and great stalk Andy!

Yeah, that would get a hard pass from me.

Man, she's been chowing well. Good find. I wish my food plot looked like Ken's! The stupid deer ate everything is sight before late October. One of the three still has some marble sized beets and radishes, but that's it. I'd put up a fence, but I'm not into the $$ and having to put it up and take it down every year. I'm still mulling possibilities. I may seek some professional guidance next year on food, cover and access improvements.

Nice job! I wish my wife had kicked my a$$ out of the house yesterday, too...

I just got back from dropping off venison at Swan Market, and i had a chance to try their new "Smoked Cajun Cranberry" sausage. Wow. I had half of the order made into that after tasting it.

I guess we know where that golden horseshoe went when it fell out of Brian's a$$ lol!! Congratulations.

My brother and I used to be like that. Now, I'm more like Manimal from the Muppets.

So he talks deer as well as turkey? I choose him for MY team. How is he at hanging stands?

I'm a tall crossbow.

I unfortunately had an owl come down and smash the grill on my truck on the way to my deer stand. I'm still picking feathers out of it. Oddly enough, thirty odd years ago I also hit an owl, that one being the first snowy owl to have shown up in the Hudson River Valley in many, many years. As I found out after making some calls, the Audubon Society had been following the owl, and they were understandably devastated when I told them I'd killed it. I did, however, donate the carcass to them. Lots of stink eye from the folks that came to pick it up, but what can you do when an owl decides to land in the road in front of your vehicle when you're doing 35 mph?

Heck of a deer - and great to have a history with him!

30 years ago, I in fact did hunt off the ice shelf at Russel Station during the late season. Lots of guys did, but of course the cops didn't like it one bit. One time, they sat on shore and refused me access to return to my vehicle, on behalf of RG&E. Luckily, one of the neighbors took pity on the stupid kid and told me I could access shore through his property. He even told me, right in front of the Greece Police, that I was welcome to hunt there whenever I wanted. But even young and stupid (and new to the area) as I was, I recognized a lost cause and never went back to that sh!t show.

I went to school in Binghamton back in the late '80s, and while we caught walleye in the Squashed Banana, it wasn't somewhere I'd put on my bucket list. It sounds like you were blessed to get on some great fishing soon after you arrived to the area. I was not. I had a few honeyholes where I could pull out two or three fish in an average evening. If I had to compare my personal experiences then with now, I'd deem the river comparable. Just saying that two people's experience of a fishery and its evolution can be dramatically different...and it's possible that your experience is more representative of the whole than mine. I don't know. But it is something to keep in mind. Glory days, right?

We have the same problem, and so far as I’ve been able to tell, there is no replacement since Wellcraft went bankrupt. Custom maybe, or new seats. Please let me know if you find anything!! Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United mobile app