Legacy- 2017 Deer Season

[steelie]

Tough forecast for Saturday and Sunday....
 
https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?w0=t&w1=td&w2=wc&w3=sfcwind&w3u=1&w4=sky&w5=pop&w6=rh&w7=rain&w8=thunder&w9=snow&w10=fzg&w11=sleet&w13u=0&w16u=1&w17u=1&AheadHour=0&FcstType=graphical&textField1=42.8162&textField2=-78.0448&site=all&unit=0&dd=&bw=&AheadDay.x=71&AheadDay.y=11&AheadDay=48

Ya, I'm actually pondering going duck hunting... Never thought I would even think that but that forecast is just ugly

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[reeleyz]

Things are definitely headed in a better direction the past several years without any government regulation.


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[Capt Vince Pierleoni]

Good posts guys. The most important thing(especially with whats happening with the "TV hunters") is APPRECIATE the deer and even each other--as long as good sportsmanship is practiced. Too many horror stories of deer disrespected because "it was the wrong one". WHAT?  Of course all hunters want the big racks, but its definitely gone too far and is ruining it for some. We have to have "numbers"-- each other--or the pursuit will be slowly legislated away.

We can't lose sight of what deer hunting is truly about--venison for the table. That is truly the only way to hold off the anti hunters. It is the only justification that will stand the test of time as society drifts further and further away from this type of pursuit and heritage. Hunting is for managing deer numbers and harvesting (what is obvious to many) food for humans. For centuries big racks have been desired and revered but it was a bonus. Certainly there is nothing wrong with hunting for big racks as long as the venison is used, and certainly letting the young bucks grow is a good practice. It is sad however, to hear a young hunter criticize another because of a deer he took cleanly in a sporting manner.

There is certainly room for all of it, some land is fit to be managed and some parcels are void of game an hour after the crops are cut or the first shot rings out. The most important thing is respecting the game and each other while realizing there are far more people that are indifferent to hunting that we don't want to see join the ranks of the antis.

[momay4000]

32 minutes ago, longspurs said:

It's too tough for people to manage land when the parcels are too small which means a lot more Hunters in some areas.
Say there's 2 200 acre chunks of land .
The 1st chunk is owned by one guy. 2 hunters on it.
The 2nd is owned by 7 different people to make up the other 200. Each has a partner.
So now u have 2 hunters to 200 acres, and 14 to the other 200 ..... Witch do u think will have bigger bucks and more deer? It's not rocket science.
The only thing u can do is make your own decision on what u want to shoot and hope your neighbor follows along


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I disagree - I think you can do a lot to manage your land even if you have a small chunk. Is it easier to manage a 200 acre piece vs a 40 acre piece? Absolutely. However, with proper techniques at creating cover, food sources, and strategies of low impact hunting, you can still create a gold mine on even a small piece of land

[BSmaster]

Depends what type and where the 40 acre piece is.  I would take a 5 acre lot in some areas and plant early, mid and late season food plots and just wait in the comfort of a heated blind.  these are low browse areas.  they do exist and if you provide a food source harvesting becomes easier.  Security and food.  Doesn't take many aces for that.  The sanctuary by me is 13 acres.  I also hunt in an area where there is numerous food sources and numerous security areas.  I am in the process of creating more sanctuary on our farm.  This is where I believe my best outlook is for the future herd health and thus my opportunities.

 

[longspurs]

I disagree - I think you can do a lot to manage your land even if you have a small chunk. Is it easier to manage a 200 acre piece vs a 40 acre piece? Absolutely. However, with proper techniques at creating cover, food sources, and strategies of low impact hunting, you can still create a gold mine on even a small piece of land

I agree with you on 40-acre parcels but I was talking about 10. The area that I live in New York state there are lots of land owners that's why I deer in my area get killed at a very young age. A lot more Hunters in an area mean a lot more deer or going to get killed. I hunt big bucks at the start of the seasons and my standards go down drastically as time goes on you can't eat horn. Good luck to all as the days ahead

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[Reel-E-Hooked]

I work in Indiana a lot. Talking to the hunters there the single biggest improvement in the quality of the deer in their state was when they went to 1 buck per hunter. Take it during Bow your done buck hunting. I went to my processors last night to pick up some meat and saw 7 first rack bucks hanging. I wonder how many of those would not have been harvested if that was their only buck tag. I'm sure a lot of small bucks will be killed this week. I know I have been guilty of lowering my own standard to a good 2.5 yr old during the end of the bow season rationalizing that it most likely will not make it through the gun season because I pass several of them every year but don't see them make it to 3.5. That's my 2 cents, I would be in favor of one buck. Shoot what ever makes you happy. But only shoot one of them.

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[Reelfanatic]

Those corn belt states don't have a month long gun season followed by 2 weeks of muzzleloader either.


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[JakeyBaby]

Anyone know where I can get Barnes Muzzleloader bullets in the Rochester area? I've called just about everywhere and no one seems to cary them anymore!

[Reel-E-Hooked]

Those corn belt states don't have a month long gun season followed by 2 weeks of muzzleloader either.


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Good point.

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[machzrcr]

,

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[momay4000]

1 hour ago, longspurs said:

I agree with you on 40-acre parcels but I was talking about 10. The area that I live in New York state there are lots of land owners that's why I deer in my area get killed at a very young age. A lot more Hunters in an area mean a lot more deer or going to get killed. I hunt big bucks at the start of the seasons and my standards go down drastically as time goes on you can't eat horn. Good luck to all as the days ahead

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Good points on the hunter density issue. The key is to hunt to your own objectives the best you can. I hunt very similarly to you - I have high standards to harvest a mature buck early on, but my standards do decline as the season winds down as my family values venison in the freezer. Will I harvest a spike, a young doe or a button buck - absolutely not, but a 1.5 year old six point on the last weekend of the season may be in my crosshairs. I am 100% against more DEC regs with antler restrictions simply because we are over regulated as it is.

 

Do whatever you can to make your property the haven for deer by increasing cover, food, and as I mentioned low impact hunting and it can really make an incredible difference

 

Good luck this year

[HOLY DIVER]

I wish everyone on here would just shoot the first 4pt they see and go home for the season.  I'm sick of competing with guys that work as hard as I do to shoot mature deer. .. 

 

I support QDM,  but honestly if you wanna shoot a 4pt and go home and watch football the rest of the season that's great one less guy in the woods to shoot the buck I'm after!   

 

Unfortunately too many good ol boys treat deer like the enemy and try to exterminate them with total disregarded for laws or managment. Tags are plentiful and ECO are spread so thin in my area it just makes it easy. 

[PeltHunter]

There’s good and bad of the qdma approach imo depending on the attitude of the hunters involved. I could care less what others shoot for the most part. Would I like to see the neighbors pass on year and a half old and two and a half year old deer? For sure, does it bother me if they don’t? Not really, what bothers me is when the same people with a Facebook picture of a spike on opening day rag on the deer in this state and people who wait for mature deer. The “can’t eat the horns” guys who are constantly pushing their opinion on the “qdma” guys

On the other hand you have the qdma TV show wannabe guys who think any mature deer they have on camera is “their deer” and freak if the neighbor shoots them. We had a neighbor like that at a property I used to hunt a lot I shot a nice 130ish inch deer and my dad shot a 170” inch monster. The guy saw the 170” deer by the house afterwards and felt he needed to stop and cause a scene and saw my post on here and did the same in private messages. Told a neighboring landowner who doesn’t allow hunting that we were poaching deer of his land and everything, because we shot “his” deer. Generally these are same guys who are constantly talking down on and vocal to the neighbors who shoot smaller bucks.

Then there is the middle ground (like the contributors in here) of people who want to kill mature and may have a hit list but are just as quick to congratulate the neighbor on killing one of those deer. I think within the hunting community these three groups (really the butting heads of the first two) has caused a pretty big rift as a whole and with declining numbers as it is it’s not great for the sport. I was in dicks the other day talking to a kid about my age who had just gotten into hunting and he was telling me about guys at work and buddies telling him to wait for a mature buck, he’s not much of a hunter if he doesn’t, etc. He said that he had a couple smaller bucks in bow range he wanted to shoot but didn’t wanna get ragged on by his buddies. I told him I target mature deer now but when I started I’d shoot anything with horns especially with a bow and don’t let anyone make up his mind not to. He shot a little six point and sent me a pic earlier this week he was fired up like you couldn’t believe. I think the sport needs to show more support like that for new hunters as I think a lot of this stuff is what’s pushing new hunters away.


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[momay4000]

1 hour ago, PeltHunter said:

There’s good and bad of the qdma approach imo depending on the attitude of the hunters involved. I could care less what others shoot for the most part. Would I like to see the neighbors pass on year and a half old and two and a half year old deer? For sure, does it bother me if they don’t? Not really, what bothers me is when the same people with a Facebook picture of a spike on opening day rag on the deer in this state and people who wait for mature deer. The “can’t eat the horns” guys who are constantly pushing their opinion on the “qdma” guys

On the other hand you have the qdma TV show wannabe guys who think any mature deer they have on camera is “their deer” and freak if the neighbor shoots them. We had a neighbor like that at a property I used to hunt a lot I shot a nice 130ish inch deer and my dad shot a 170” inch monster. The guy saw the 170” deer by the house afterwards and felt he needed to stop and cause a scene and saw my post on here and did the same in private messages. Told a neighboring landowner who doesn’t allow hunting that we were poaching deer of his land and everything, because we shot “his” deer. Generally these are same guys who are constantly talking down on and vocal to the neighbors who shoot smaller bucks.

Then there is the middle ground (like the contributors in here) of people who want to kill mature and may have a hit list but are just as quick to congratulate the neighbor on killing one of those deer. I think within the hunting community these three groups (really the butting heads of the first two) has caused a pretty big rift as a whole and with declining numbers as it is it’s not great for the sport. I was in dicks the other day talking to a kid about my age who had just gotten into hunting and he was telling me about guys at work and buddies telling him to wait for a mature buck, he’s not much of a hunter if he doesn’t, etc. He said that he had a couple smaller bucks in bow range he wanted to shoot but didn’t wanna get ragged on by his buddies. I told him I target mature deer now but when I started I’d shoot anything with horns especially with a bow and don’t let anyone make up his mind not to. He shot a little six point and sent me a pic earlier this week he was fired up like you couldn’t believe. I think the sport needs to show more support like that for new hunters as I think a lot of this stuff is what’s pushing new hunters away.


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Good post!!!

[Legacy]

Well I sidelined myself today to take care of a few hunting related things. I had a few posted signs that needed to be put up on a property so I thought it would be good to do before Saturday. I aggressively moved a stand after witnessing the deer activity the other night. It's a long walk but it should prove to be a killer spot. I also went to southern tier today and moved two stands for Saturday. They have been in place for bow hunting but I moved them in order to cover more ground for opening weekend.

I plan on enjoying the last day of the season on stand before the orange army invades.

 

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[PeltHunter]

I switched up big time today. My great aunt owns a 60 acre little farm in Marion that I haven’t hunted in years. All my dads cousins used to hunt here and they’re big time Brown it’s down meat hunters. I stopped over to visit her this weekend and she mentioned that nobody had hunted here in 2 years and I should try it. After seeing one doe this morning I figured I’d come check it out again. On my walk in I bumped an unknown deer as soon as I got back away from the house. On the rest of my walk in there’s tree rubs everywhere imaginable and some ground scrapes one with a large fresher track that had to be all of a 6 foot circle. The only catch with this spot is that she doesn’t think treestands should be allowed so it’s all ground hunting.


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[Sean Youngblood]

21 hours ago, EsoxAC3 said:

Nice Buck!! I see he was an organ doner.


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If you look you can see whats left of the arrow shaft sticking threw the heart.He didn't go 50 yards.

[EsoxAC3]

Awesome!! Nice shot[emoji1303][emoji1303]


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[bout time]

I took my nephew (who is 22) hunting the first time this year. Needless to say he was like a kid on Christmas. I asked him to meet me at 545am and he was there at 4 waiting because he couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to be late. We did an all day sit with a short break in between without seeing a deer. He was disappointed but not discouraged. He has hunted everyday since, on state land no less, because he has no where of his own to go and he managed to take his first deer ever. It was a 4pt but to him it might as well have been a B&C. He couldn’t wait to call me and tell me the story of how the hunt went down and what he did to finally get his first deer.

To me this is what hunting is about. I for one have shot my share of Spike, 4 Pt, and 2 year old 6s in my life when I first started. Now I have moved into the “mature” phase of hunting. I still enjoy sitting in the stand and seeing the spikes and 4 PTs running around I just choose not to harvest them. But as stated by many above if a hunter decides to and does it ethically and legally that is their right.

I will say that when my nephew called me it brought back many feelings and emotions of my first deer and I will never forget that.

Just my .02


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[Giz9219]

My nephew got a nice one in North lake


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[Duckman1]

Great looking buck congrats

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[dvdegeorge]

11 hours ago, T_barb said:

 

In my opinion this press release is an absolute cop out by the DEC..   Either make a "ballsy" decision and put antler restrictions in place or keep your mouth shut.     I feel strongly that if managed properly, our deer heard can stack up against some of the best states in the country...

Bingo

[dvdegeorge]

8 hours ago, JakeyBaby said:

Anyone know where I can get Barnes Muzzleloader bullets in the Rochester area? I've called just about everywhere and no one seems to cary them anymore!

Call me if you can't find um I can spare a few

[Sean Youngblood]

One of the coolest things I have seen this season.One day last week I had a Peregrine Falcon Land about 20 ft. from me in a tree.I believe I have seen a few others in the past but not up close and personal.What a beautiful bird.Bright yellow talons and a very unique call.It was very cool.