Gator

Your kid talks some mean turkey! Today was not the day. Didn't even see a buck. Honestly, the past two seasons at our property near Northampton Park have been a drastic change from the first three or four. Many less deer overall, doe numbers are way down, and I don't know why. Food source? Local farmer with nuisance permits? Construction on Rt 31? All night lights on the corner (it's like an airport over there)? My dog tearing the place up once in a while during the summer months? Or maybe increased coyote numbers? Cameras don't lie. And neither do multiple sits with no sightings. Whatever is going on, the place has rotted the past two seasons. We've put a lot of work into it, just to have a nice place to sit in the woods.

I agree with all of the posts about the general lack of movement yesterday. We saw deer in the evening, but nothing rutty. My prediction - like lots of folks - was that this would be THE week. It's still possible, but if so then all he$$ needs to break loose fast. Maybe today is the day.

Rain sucks. I was in the stand getting wet without my raingear when around 7:30 am, a woman comes walking by...she shot an eight point last night and was trying to find it, but was unfamiliar with the property lines. I got down and helped her look for an hour, along with her boyfriend, but to no avail. She only got 8" of penetration, sounded like a single lung shot (her boyfriend saw the shot and the blood was bright red frothy). They tracked it for ~150 yards last night before deciding to let it lay, but low and behold the freakin' rain came and the blood trail was gone. They'd hoped it had bedded in my field and died. No such luck. So, I got soaked, didn't get to hunt, and she didn't find her deer. Not a day for the books.

That's a truly horrible predicament. I feel very sorry for you, so sorry I cried. Wiped my tears with $50 bills, in fact. Rich man problems lol! Seriously, though, of course you'd go all in. A 130" buck is nice, but he's not going to keep you awake at night. And who cares if you eat tag soup. You already have one in the freezer, the family won't starve, and it's early in the season yet. Journey before destination!!

That's a great boat! We fished next to Joe many times. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Add in rain to the mix this week. Crap weather to start the rut.

While shooting time may end at 6:30, it's too light with too much deer movement to get out of the stand and risk busting a set. I always wait until I can sneak out, generally after dark - much the same as when you get into a stand half an hour early, at least, in the morning.

OMG!! That is great. And so, so true...you could do one for "where I thought I shot him" vs "where I actually shot him" with a Texas heart shot meme, too, lol

Slow morning here. I had three big doe at 7 am at ten yards, but with the cloud cover I couldn't see well enough through my peep, so no shot. Old eyes suck. We ran the dogs at the South end of Hemlock this afternoon, and I picked three ticks off the red one - the black one is nearly 12 yrs old and stayed to the trail, which is just as good, since ticks are hard to see on her, particularly these little ones that are all over right now. My wife had five on herself from a walk in Mendon Park on Friday. Check your nether regions well. Lyme is no joke.

I've noticed that the detection circuit must be relatively slow on the Micro - I walked in front of it twice this morning, and both times I can see my hand on the far edge of the field of view, but that's it. Now, admittedly I walked within ten feet of the camera so I wasn't in frame for long, but still...you get what you pay for, I guess.

Last night's sit was a complete bust. Two fawns. Maybe it was just the day, or maybe the pack of 'yotes we heard the evening before made it onto my property. There was zero movement on the cell cams all day. Based on the yipping, I'd say that there were over half-a-dozen dogs in the pack. It was surreal.

C'mon Rob, you're not fat...you're just bulking up lol.

Taking the morning off, trying not to Old Spice too many stands early in the season. But speaking of stinking up stands, here's a couple of pictures from last night. I'm getting routine coyote movement in one area, and while there were deer moving through prior to the coyotes, there has been nothing since. Last year, a neighbor reported hearing lots and lots of yipping and howling, and our deer sightings were really low. Has anyone else had this issue? I'm hoping to let a friend of a friend trap this winter, but until then I guess my best best is to arrow one. It's too suburban for shooting them rifle after dark, unfortunately.

I had three bucks, all 2&1/2 year old eight points, come through in a bachelor group around 6 pm and a fox scare the pants off me running through as i was leaving the stand. I wasn't tempted to grab my bow, but I got some video footage of them feeding on acorns at less than 10 yards. Great first sit.

Good neighbors are invaluable. So is routine hunter presence. We have both. Thus far, in five years, I haven't had to kick anyone off either property. But if we did have trespassers, I would know about it ASAP - particularly with the advent of cell cams. Given that there's no way anybody would be hunting through either property without knowing full well that they are trespassing, I would simply hand them off to either DEC or the State Police and be done with it.

My naive take is that with 2,047 posts, he's referring to your probable lack of "newbie" status. I'm just throwing out the obvious answer, not shade. My assumption would be that you pm'd the guy for a friend or kid you know who's getting into it. Which is probably why MikeyP followed with an "lol".

That's either a short deer (albeit with a nice rack), or the picture was taken on McBroom's Wonderful One Acre Farm! Them are some big stalks of corn...

That video Rob posted is the bomb. I use Technu cleaner, but I also have a pack of washcloths that are dedicated to cleaning up after working in the woods. Hint: purchase a large pack at Lowes - I have a pack for the boat and one for home - and sacrifice the washcloth when you're done. For less than a dollar, it's cheap insurance. Don't try to wash it with you regular laundry, though! You might not like how your underwear feel afterward.

I had the same thing, updated the firmware and installed a new microSD card, and it's fine. Before the firmware update, it wouldn't even save pictures to the card, even though it ran fine all winter. I think they had a compatibility issue with an update, but didn't roll it back. Also, the Spypoint is definitely pickier about where it's located than my Moultrie cameras. Moving it 50 feet was like night and day.

First picture, then busted up by Yogi? You can't buy that kind of luck. Maybe it just lost signal? Mine took one picture, then stopped transmitting. I moved it fifty feet and it's been fine since. They can be finicky. But if it is in fact in pieces in a piece of bear scat....post it!!