horst

Re: Shoulda checked the forecast Im kicking around the idea of taking the day off, or at leat till after dinner off

Dropped the kids off this morning and went to work, I wasnt there for 5 minutes when my hands became so cold that my fingers were burning and my feet went numb.To top it off Im trying to finish a steel roof I started last week when it was still 40 degrees out.Came home for more clothing and looked at our current weather conditions on the local radio station. Clear Temp: -22°F Humidity: 76% Wind Speed: W 6 MPH Barometer: 30.56 in. Dewpoint: -27°F Heat Index: -22°F Wind Chill: -38°F Gonna need heavier gloves Im afraid

Was getting ready to leave a minute ago and got Josephs coat and shoes on.Its terribly cold out so I told him to watch tv for a second while I run out and start the car.I got to the car and seen him poking his head outside.I started the car and came back in, hes standing in the entryway bawling and saying his mouths on fire. I asked him what happened and he sticks his tounge out and the tip is bleeding.I ask him if he bit his tounge and he sobs, "No, I sticked it to the door" He learned his first lesson today about sticking his tounge on frozen metal, they grow up so fast

Re: Finished finally Everyones welcome, I got plenty

Re: Pennsylvania Deer Population [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] #4- They could lower the number of doe tags sold, raise the price of the remaining licenses a buck and everyone could go home happy, hunters would have more deer, The PGC would be doing its job, and the increase in cost would make up for the revenue lost due to license decreases.Dont know how accurate any of these figures are but here goes.From the PGC websight. [/ QUOTE ] BINGO! Everybody wins!!! [/ QUOTE ] I actually cant believe the doe tags are that cheap there.We gotta pay regular price for our first one at 26$ a pop, then any extras are 11$ a piece.Plus 26$ for our either sex tag to kill a buck for bow and 26$ to kill a buck with gun . And we sell out on doe tags most every year at that price

Put up 60 lbs of sausaage and brats the last two days.Heres the last batch.

Re: Pennsylvania Deer Population #4- They could lower the number of doe tags sold, raise the price of the remaining licenses a buck and everyone could go home happy, hunters would have more deer, The PGC would be doing its job, and the increase in cost would make up for the revenue lost due to license decreases.Dont know how accurate any of these figures are but here goes.From the PGC websight. Right now it looks like theres 859,000 antlerless tags available in your state.Looks like antlerless tags are $6 a piece.They lose $120,000 in revenue if they cut back 20,000 tags.That leaves 839,000 tags available.Raise em a dollar a tag and theyre making more then they would have originally by a long shot.Heck raise em 50 cents a pop and your still looking at $419,500 in additional revenue.The increase isnt that big, less then a cup of coffee costs and you have 20,000 extra deer running around that year.They have fawns in the spring you got 40 or 50,000 more deer the next season to shoot. Considering in a couple areas tags didnt sell out and there was around 9000 left over the difference hunters would notice in tags issues is negligible.After a couple years you got more money, more deer then before and it hardly effects anyone.I am so smart

Re: Not what you like to see. Coulda been a lotta things.I posted a couple years back about a buck we got that had been hit by a car or something, I opened him up to gut it and the infection was terrible inside it, green bloody crap oozed out of it and the smell was worse then anything Ive ever seen.I left it lay where it dropped but if someone had found it it woulda looked a lot like that except I didnt take the antlers.Wouldnt take long for the scavengers to clean up the guts and even cart off a hindquarter if it was cut loose already.If there was something wrong with the deer maybe the rack was all that was salvagable.

Re: Good eating I found the downside to making your own sausage.Out of 12 lbs of brats I have eaten one pack.Gave some to my parents, brother in law, sister, and grandma and now have to make more cuz Im down to 3 packs

Re: Diaper Etiquite Think after I took his morning diaper off Id stick him on the toilet right away

Re: Good eating John, thanks for the link to LEM, think next time Ill order from them.Wish Id of looked at thier grinders before ordering mine, seem real reasonable priced and a good variety of seasonings. P.S. Just finished my brats and they were excellent.Highly recomend the High Mountain brat sausage kit.MMMMmmmm

Re: Good eating Chris, yes I did mix in pork, the german sausage was about 50/50 mix and the brats called for something like 9 lbs pork and 3 lbs ground deer. Im gonna start another batch today and bought some fresh garlic, red onion, and shredded cheese to try adding into the mix, think it will give the german sausage a better flavor.Instead of ground pork I bought bacon end pices as well to try in this batch, cheaper then ground pork and hopefully more flavor.Ill let you know how they turn out. Got some of the brats I made last night on the stove now, havent tried em yet but they smell awesome.Unfortunately the windchills dropped to about - 20 the last 2 days so these will all be fresh meat, have to wait till it warms up to get the smoker out.

Had enough deer in the freezer to last me and the kids through the year and still had my buck to cut up.After I shot him I decided to try something different with this one.I ordered a buch of stuff the day I killed him and the night before last started my first attempt at home made sausage.As of last night Id turned out 15 lbs of ring sausage and 12 lbs of brats, still gotta grind the rest of the deer into burger and package it for later when I run out but I think it was worth the effort.Anyone else make thier own sausage in here?Havent tried the brats yet, the sausage was pretty good for my first attempt but Ill now to add more seasonings of my own along with the mix next time, it was kinda bland tasting to e anyway.

Re: Permission to hunt ????? I got some people I will call but theyre people that let me hunt every year, the call is just to see who Ill be sharing the ground with and see if theres anything I should stay out of due to cattle, family hunting it or other reasons. For the first time asking Ill always go in person if possible.Sometimes farmers are hard to catch up with though and the only way is to call at night.

Re: Nephews first Buck!!! Cool, congrats to him on a great deer

Re: Pennsylvania Deer Population i dont know the whole situation there in PA but as far as the hunter vs game management agency goes I cant help but agree with Doc.I reember when they implemented the antler restrictions there.A lot of opposition was raised to the idea but they passed it.So now you got the same amount of hunters, same number of tags, but have taken a large percentage of the legal deer out of the picture when they cant shoot smaller bucks.Stands to reason more does are going to get killed as a result.Expecting hunters to now decide not to shoot another large percentage of the legal deer in the state is nuts.No does, no small bucks, whats everyone going to hunt? If theres a problem with the deer numbers being low it makes more sense to expect the PGC to do thier job and lower the number of tags available rather then sit back and watch the herd get decimated for the sake of the revenue the tags create. Deer managements not a product, its thier job to know whats going on with the deer herd and manage it accordingly.The fact thier selling a million tags a year doesnt mean thier doing that job, it just means they can get away with it and not be held accountable for the consequences. If I was running a company producing something and mismanaged it to the point where the customers werent happy how long would I hold that job once the complaints started rolling in?

Re: RT and I need your Opinion Ive been on forums where theyve divided rooms into all these little sub catagories before and didnt care for them.Seems like several rooms see very little use anyway and if you want to find something you have to look through 4 rooms instead of one.I gotta agree with the ones that said most people should just learn how to use the search button.

Re: Road Hunting Done Right ?? [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] You cannot discharge a firearm within 100 feet of a traveled road here. So that would be Illegal. (here) [/ QUOTE ] Thats an interesting law, many of the public hunting grounds around here sit at intersections and arent very large.Taking 100 ft off two sides of them from the corner would dang near eliminate some of the smaller ones [/ QUOTE ] Well if they are at intersections and arent very large then maybe they should be eliminated. How would you like to be in a car full of kids on one of the roads illustrated below knowing there is a hunter within 100ft. of one of these roads with a firearm he can discharge? There is not many directions they can shoot without crossing a road and most are not as safety minded as you. [/ QUOTE ] Doughboy, that leaves 2 directions you can shoot without worrying about it., most of our public ground is also located on gravel roads where there is very little traffic.Many of them are unmaintained roads which are lucky to see 2 or 3 cars in the course of a day.Its also mostly grassland, not to difficult to see and hear a car coming.Ive never heard of a car being hit in over 20 years of hunting around here.

After one of the most dismal late muzzleloader seasons I can remember I finally got my deer.Three of us spotted 4 bucks in a huge 3 mile section this morning, Ive hunted deer in this section for years and never managed to get close to one in there.Me and my sister in law walked out in the middle and my brother started trying to push them towards us.After an hour and a half of constantly walking back and forth, trying to keep track of the deer, and trying to stay downwind of them they finally walked past my sister in law, she missed and to make mattters worse she even had a chance to re-load and take a second shot which she missed again. The deer headed south and she began to try helping my brother head them back to the west towards me.They lost track of them out in the middle and they walked back towards the road to call me and tell me the deer were gone from the truck.I was sitting in the corner of a fenceline and seen them walk out of the section then I noticed a head poking up over the hill about 300 yards in front of me, pretty soon all four bucks walked over the hill headed straight at me.I sat for another 20 minutes as they dissapeared into a gulley, just when i was begining to think they bedded down one appeared about 150 yrds out from me at the end of the gulley.They turned and headed towards me, 3 really nice bucks and a spike.They stopped about 100 yrds out and I got the gun up and the scope on them but the only one offering a clear shot was the smallest one.Finally I seen a good rack appear in front of him and then a head and shoulder.I put it on his shoulder and pulled the trigger, he dropped like a brick and it was over except for the 3/4 mile walk back to my truck.Luckily one of the farmers had an open driveway behind thier house and we could drive right up to him. He has 5 inch bases, 17 3/4 inch main beams and around a 17 inch spread, comes back around to just over 11 inches from antler tip to antler tip.What a way to end the season

Re: Fair Chase I used trail cameras on and off for a couple years now.I think theyre just kinda fun to put out.Just something to think about but when I put one in an area its because Ive already scouted the area and think it has the potential to hold deer, if I didnt have a camera odds are Id be hunting the place anyway for the same reason I put the camera there to start with. The first year I had mine out I got hundreds of pics of deer including lots of bucks.in person while hunting those same areas I seen maybe 3 of the same bucks I got pics of, I didnt shoot any of them.Most of the bucjs I got pics of came through well after dark or they were no longer in the area when season started.Aside from some pretty cool photos I cant see where a cameras helped me much at all in scouting deer.Not saying they cant be usefull, guesse it just depends on how and why you use them. Food plots I think the benifits outwiegh anything negative about them.They provide food, and shelter to many animals besides just deer.Ive seen winters up here where theres 3 or 4 ft of snow on the ground with layers of ice in between the snow, its like bad cement some years.After these winters I usually find dozens of dead deer while Im out looking for sheds.Pheasant numbers go down, one year we lost a huge chunk of the turkey population that was just starting to expand in the area.The only ones that seem to do well are the coyotes in those years. As you said theyre put out to keep deer on your property, that doesnt guarantee anything in a fair chase set up.They can still leave your property, come in after dark, or if the weather holds and stays good as it has here this winter ignore the foodplots completely as there no shortage of food.They can feed and get big on your property during the off season and wind up getting killed 3 miles away during the rut while chasing does. Lots of things give us a slight edge, and its easy to pick apart anyones hunting methods and find fault with almost anything that doesnt fit in our own little picture of what hunting should be.

Re: Where to hunt in IOWA?? You can apply for your licenses here. https://www2.wildlifelicense.com/ia/start.php Heres a list of the public hunting grounds by county, it gives you a brief description, size of the property, and location. http://www.iowadnr.com/wildlife/wmamaps/pubhunt.html Heres a map I found, if I were picking a place Id go somewhere in the light blue shaded area at the bottom.Since its the better area for big bucks youll have more trouble getting into private ground around there, lot of leasing and out of state landowners down there.Id look for a county with a lot of public oppurtunities or plan to make a trip up here once before season to knock on a few doors. And like Billkay said, if you dont have preference points you may not even get drawn this year.Good Luck. Found this also, top 10 counties with record bucks registered in the state.Might help when picking a spot.

Re: Road Hunting Done Right ?? [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] To be legal here the officer said that you must be "Off the shoulder of the road". [/ QUOTE ] I have always heard they consider the road and the shoulder this way. From measuring from the centerline of the road...33 ft in either direction over the shoulder is what is considered the road and the "right of way". [/ QUOTE ] Thats true here but the ditches are considered public property and are legal to hunt upland game or waterfowl from{not deer anymore}.Pheasant hunters and a lot of goose hunters utilize the ditches here, we have a large boundary here where its illegal to hunt geese inside it, but by the late season when theyve been shot at not many come out of the zone and they dont decoy.Pass shooting them around the edge of the boundary is the best bet you have at killing a goose. A lot of sections the ditches are about the only cover left in as well and its where the pheasants hang out, of course staying away from the busy paved roads is usually just comon sense or you wind up with a dead dog eventualy.

Re: Road hunting?? [ QUOTE ] You said the boy was up against the truck. Just don't think the way I personally view hunting that I would agree that is what he was doing [/ QUOTE ] Ok I see where your going with this.No, I wouldnt actually consider it a hunt, but at the same time if a bucks going stand there and just stare as someone stops, backs up, pulls into a driveway, loads a gun, gets out of the truck, and goes around the truck to the deers side of it Id view it more as a dumb deer then anything unethical being done as long as no laws were broke.Honestly, Id of killed him if Id had a tag and been in the same situation. On the other hand I could have easily backed into the driveway so the deer was on the kids side and let him pop it out the window, nobody woulda ever known. For that matter I coulda taken the kids gun, wacked the deer and put the kids tag on it.As long as I had a valid deer license and we were hunting together it woulda been perfectly legal for me to do so with our party hunting laws.Guese my point is if I was doing something unethical and really wanted the deer dead there were options, both legal and illegal methods I coulda used. Shooting out of the house I guesse I feel the same as you do, I wouldnt do it regularly by any means but if the right buck came in the yard it woulds be an oppurtunity I couldnt resist.Wouldnt the same as stalking one or taking one from the stand but I certainly wouldnt be able to pass up the oppurtunity.

Re: Road Hunting Done Right ?? [ QUOTE ] You cannot discharge a firearm within 100 feet of a traveled road here. So that would be Illegal. (here) [/ QUOTE ] Thats an interesting law, many of the public hunting grounds around here sit at intersections and arent very large.Taking 100 ft off two sides of them from the corner would dang near eliminate some of the smaller ones

Re: HELP ME Might sound strange but deer move around to different areas {here anyway} when the rut really picks up.The best example I can think of is a set of terraces out east of town here.The entire month of Oct. i hunt the sections around it, see plenty of deer, lots of rubs and scrapes, then they start chasing and Ill see plenty of small bucks and does moving.But when it gets into the best part of the rut where the big boys really start moving I might as well forget every stand I have out in about a 4 sq mile radius of that place, the does and bucks all congregate into a 2 sq mile section in the middle of it and stay out in the open on these terraces on the north side of the section.Its been that way for as long as I can remember and I have no idea what causes them to do it.I can think of 3 or 4 other spots around here that have the same effect on deer movement during the rut, theyre like magnets for em and every deer in the area heads there.The one thing they all have in common is nobody can hunt these properties and the deer can chase eacxh other all day without worry