Gator

Awesome videos! We had to use pole spears in the Bahamas, but man those reefs...sometimes I felt like we "needed a bigger boat", sometimes bigger underwear, you know? Turn around and there's a blacktip getting aggressive or a 50 lb cuda staring at you like you're a bug he'd like to squish. The reefs on the Abaco Cays is only ~20 ft deep, so you'd get a good long look once you went down. And back to the thread, sometimes it's hard to stay frosty when you feel attacked. Righteous indignation is about the most powerful emotion around. Makes you write some stupid stuff, me included on occasion, hopefully not too often. All in all, this is one of the better sites though.

Last sit of the year tonight. I hunted my bow with a buddy who just started this year and has yet to tag his first deer. Around 4:20, I saw a couple of bodies moving through the thick stuff from a bedding area toward my friend, one with what looked to be a small rack. I waited a couple minutes for the call, then...the dreaded snort...busted! Zero wind and the deer held up at 40 yards. That'll keep him interested until next year! It's been a good season.

It looks like the predicted warm up this weekend may not amount to much. Then it's off to the races! Get your gear ready!

I hunted with my bow tonight and had one heck of a great evening. There was chasing in the bedding area, must have been some late does, and I watched a great looking eight point circumnavigate a small swamp along with two doe for over an hour. Ultimately, he gave me a twenty yard quartering away shot. I came to full draw...and passed on him. There's three doe in the freezer and he'll be truly special next year. Funny, but if he'd been smaller, I'd have probably let fly. Pre-storm activity and some full moon December rut going on made it one of the more exciting sits this year.

Great job! Tough this time of year...they've almost got to make a mistake. I'm hoping that we're going to do the annual drives on our lease this morning, as well. One guy with a bad back and the other getting sick though, we'll see. I love small targeted drives, but every year we get a little bit older and the drives get a little bit fewer. Kinda sucks.

Looks like you've started to do up spoons! Cool. Post some pics from the trip north...

I took my bow over to a buddy's place who doesn't allow gun hunting last night, just to see if anything had gotten pushed around and found a sanctuary. Nothing doing from the stand. But when I got back to the truck it was still really good light ("sunset" comes awfully early), wouldn't you know two eight points moved through the open field not forty yards away? Almost twins and they looked together rather than on a doe. Second rut should be this coming weekend though...

I thought about stopping by on Sunday when I saw your truck there on my way home, but there was no sign of you guys so I figured that you were still in the woods dragging the beast out. And a beast it is. Savor the glory, man!

We almost went this morning, but those stupid deer are addictive. It was an awesome sunrise!

I walked up on what I thought was a giant doe at a semi-frozen watering hole yesterday afternoon, 30 yards away max, head down drinking through a hole "she'd" stomped in the ice. I'd decided to take a big doe if I saw one early, so it seemed perfect. Scope up, safety off. Steady... Hold on, did I just see a glint of bone? Safety back on. Sure enough, when the "doe" lifted her head, she turned out to be a six point lacking half a rack on the side facing me. The other side wasn't visible to me with the head down and quartering away. Explains why she was so big! The rest of the afternoon, I had some small bucks running around, some small doe pass by, and some large doe right at dark when I was too frozen to want to deal with a deer

There's a lot of skepticism regarding the DEC's position on lions. It wasn't helped by the fact that there was one animal killed on the highway that was moving through the area a couple of years ago, and the DEC discounted what were later determined to be valid sightings. That having been said, other than the stray beast wandering through, if there were a presence it would be more widely known. Most of the routinely touted pictures are in fact known to be from other states...there's three or four good ones circulating on the net. Still, wouldn't it be cool...

And I agree with the above comments regarding deer movement. Very little and what did occur was mid-day, for me at least. I passed on a seven and a couple of doe. Another buddy didn't see a deer all day. Very quiet overall.

I just reported a doe from last week, and in general it worked, but talk about a counter-intuitive interface! Once I'd entered all of my information, it was then on the next page "hidden" in a sub-menu. I had to click continue to confirm that it was correct, but I couldn't see the information I'd just entered until I'd expanded all of the relevant sub-menus...of which there were three...so how was I to know whether it was correct or not? Okay, wasted time. Then I end up on a third page that's identical to where you'd buy a license and it asks me if I want to continue with my purchase. WTH? But I go ahead and click, "continue" and everything's fine, I reported my kill. Okay, confusing directions. So yeah, it works, but my kid's eighth grade teach has put together a better system to communicate homework, upcoming tests, and grades. There are some adjustments needed, and it's not rocket science, just common sense. If you want someone to confirm some information they just entered, freakin' show it to them! Don't use words like purchase when there's no cost involved! Between this and the SNAFU with the DMPs on Nov. 1st, I'd say the new system leaves much to be desired.

Light snow and little wind = one four point chasing in six hours in the stand yesterday. And a doe we walked up to on the way in. Brutally slow. Off to give it one last hurrah before the onslaught.

Awesome! Any story to go with it?

DD got it right on. I've had few deer sightings this week, although one of them was a hammer and the other was a giant mature doe that had just been bred (as I found out after I shot her). My buddy I hunt with has been in the thick of it a couple of times though, often less than 200 yards away. Scrapes go cold, baby deer wandering, more bucks sighted than does...we're in it. The rest is just luck of the draw. Boom or bust. And here we go again for the afternoon sit...

It's just the rut. Where you are is everything. Friday night after the storm there were deer everywhere and I had one chasing hard at dark. Saturday morning on the same property we couldn't buy a look. I sat for six hours cumulative yesterday and saw one four point, tracing and retracing his path to and from the swamp, once in the morning, once in the evening. My buddy saw some nicer bucks on the field edges paired-up. Just hope for hot does, I guess. Feast or famine.

It sucks your buddy missed, but I'm glad you got yours. Still a bunch of season left, with things really heating up now.