Geez I hate it... (where have I been?)

Yeah! I hate it when I've been away for ten days and have to go through 100+ unread messages !

But I did due dilligence, and everything has been reviewed.

Where have I been? I lost myself in the woods, sat for hours on end waiting for deer to show up, but none showed up. Days of listening for the faint sound of deer hooves, forest sounds, smelling the wind, under rain, sunshine and snow. The eerie silence of a wet snow covered forest and the postcard-like scenery of the forest under heavy snow was an almost magical experience.

At this time of the year, most trees have lost their leaves, and you can see farther in the woods.

Deer hunting week is my fave week, this year, my only week of vacation.

Now I'm back into the grey rodent race.

[FeTiShLaDy]

welcome back Feynman. glad to hear you've enjoyed your vacation.

[Funbrunette]

Welcome Back! I was about to send the search dogs at your place!

[Evil Chris]

Bambi escaped.... this time. :P

[XXXPhoto]

Feynman,

Where'd you hunt? Black powder, rifle or bow?

Evil Chris: Bambi did not exactly escape from everyone. My bro got it.

Originally posted by XXXPhoto
Feynman,

Where'd you hunt? Black powder, rifle or bow?

I hunt around N46deg 30' and W76deg 00'. That's in Canada, near Maniwaki, QC.

I hunt with an Excalibur Exocet crossbow, 175lbs, 310 fps, and very precise.

http://www.excaliburcrossbow.com/exocet.html

I reliably group in the 2" target dot without any problems at 40yds.

I use an excalibur drop-zone (tm) 2.5 x 32mm scope for two reasons:

1- it is great for estimating the drop vs distance and thus minimizes the chances of wounding-without-killing the animal

2- it gives superior aiming in low light (dusk and dawn), which is precisely when you sight most deers. Again, this is for increasing precision and safety.

In Quebec, by default, with firearms and crossbows, we can shoot only males. There is a draw for distributing female and no-antlers deers permits. This year, they distributed a huge amount. The number of hunters is declining, thanks to all the hoops we have to jump through to possess firearms.

Simple possession of a firearm is a crime in Canada, unless you have a conditional waiver of prosecution, also know as a "permit". Note that formally, having a permit does not make you a non-criminal, it simply ensure that you won't get prosecuted for having commited that specific crime...

Since I am a law abiding citizen, I choose to not request a conditional waiver of prosecution and now hunt with a crossbow.

I found the use of the crossbow very enjoyable. I even consider start practicing for passing my bow proficiency certificate to be able to enjoy the early (and extended) bow deer season.

There is a special 3 days pre-season for black powder and crossbow only but I never took advantage of it because it would cost me another 5 days of absence from work. Maybe next year.

This year, they issued a very large number of female permits because the herd is growing too much, and there is an increased number of dammages to crops, private property and life-threatening road accidents. Just the number of road accidents increase probably offsets any benefit from an alledged reduction in crime commited with firearms in Canada due to the new firearms law.


Hitting a 150 lbs deer at 60 mph is extremely dangerous (compare that with the destructive potential of a baseball weighing a few ounces and thrown at the same speed...). So, short of being able to attract more hunters, they allocate more female permits.

My bro won a female permit this year and shot a small female calf. That is all that we saw. We saw plenty of large tracks but the wind played tricks on us for the whole week and kept the deers away from our posting spots. We dumped 50 lbs of carrots and 50 lbs of apples the first day we got there and they ate all the apples but about 15 of them during the first night. Then, they got unto the carrots. Yet, we failed to attract any older, wiser ones during the time we were posted.

Many people thinks that guns and technology makes it easier for us to kill deer than for deer to stay alive. They have no idea how sophisticated a surviving machine a deer is...

This year, at the registration station, I saw a ratio of 2:1 in female to males, and BIG mothers, 150+ lbs were very common. This means that they are old, that the herd is under-exploited and growing.

Overpopulation also increases the risks of pandemics that would lead to the death a huge percentage of the population, requiring years to recover.

The lady with me is my mom, who is not too keen on having her pic on adult webmaster boards... :-) This pic (of me) was taken tuesday, just before we prepared it for the freezer. The bullet hole you see is not the entry point but the bullet exit point. We are not stupid enough to waste shoulder meat on purpose... It was shot with a hand-reloaded 150g Nosler Ballistic Tip Boat Tail Spire Point .308" bullet in a medium-power bolt-action rifle.

[XXXPhoto]

Feynman,

Thank you for excellent post... Never hunted with crossbow; AFAIK they aren't allowed for deer hunting here in MO.

Heards getting too big is a problem; check stations were keeping the heads last year (if hunter offered) to check for the cronic wasting disease.

I never hit a 150 pounder on the road but put a yearling through the radiator of my truck coming home on leave back in 94... That'll make your butt pucker them jumping out at ya!

Last item... the horseshoe behind your head is hung upside down... luck is running outta it... ;o)

the horseshow in mom's garage not hung for luck, it's just been chucked there for storage.

But let me comment a tad more...

In the family, the tradition was to hang the horseshoes like that, and I had one at home in that same position.

Panky's BF once told me the orientation vs luck thingie, which I has always been utterly oblivious to.

Now, let me remind the unaware public that I have a scientific university degree and that I am a born experimenter...

Because of that remark, the Rutherford (or Richard Feynman) in me started ticking so I decided to flip the horseshoe it unto it's more traditionally favored way, just for the sake of seeking scientific truth.

The result? Within a few days, all our sponsors crapped out on us, we got cheated by a triple-X-shaving outfit, we got hotlinked to the tune of 20 terabytes of transfer and our servers went haywire. That's just concerning the net business, for various and miscelaneous other misfortune hit the place.

So one day, maybe two weeks after the experimental flip, in full exasperation, if not desperation, I flipped it back to it's alledgedly unlucky side and well, things started to get better.

Now, you've got my full scientific report on horseshoe orientation.

So my mom's horseshoe will remain hung as it is.

It makes me wonder what does dear taste like? I wonder if it tastes like kangaroo.

It is akin lamb. The fat is un-edible, even thicker than sheep's fat, and good only for making candles.

The younger they are, the more tender they are. The meat has a lot of fibrous membranes in between each muscles, like goat. Same family of animal after all...

They are also as susceptible to the same diseases than sheeps and goats (hoof and mouth disease, mad cow disease, etc).

But they taste better, IMHO. The meat is redder than sheep. like a cross between the best beef and lamb.

[Rochard]

For years I used to hunt on the farm that was next to my house - It was huge, and I spent years exploring it and never saw a soul.

There was this one hill covered with pine trees that the deer used to love to hang out in, or do what ever deer do when they aren't eating or romping around. Three or four of us armed with shotguns would create a line, and another person would sneak up on them from the other direction and fire off a few shots. The deer would come running towards us and it was a slaughter house.

Kind of took all the sport out of it.

[nanda]

Originally posted by monaro
It makes me wonder what does dear taste like? I wonder if it tastes like kangaroo.

You'v eaten kangaroo meat? OISH!! Bleive it or not there is a Brazilian restaruant in New York that sales it! Never had it, and never wnat to have it! Also deer....I am just not a real meat eater...but I have nothing against people who do!
Glad you had a good time Feyman, my uncle learned to haunt in Indiana, recently moved to Tennesse, just went hunting...I believe he uses bow and arrow.

Originally posted by nanda
You'v eaten kangaroo meat? OISH!! Bleive it or not there is a Brazilian restaruant in New York that sales it! Never had it, and never wnat to have it! Also deer....I am just not a real meat eater...but I have nothing against people who do!
Glad you had a good time Feyman, my uncle learned to haunt in Indiana, recently moved to Tennesse, just went hunting...I believe he uses bow and arrow.

Well the only of knowing what it taste like is to try the lean red meat.

I had to look these other facts up.
"high in iron and zinc, but most importantly it has a low fat content and is very low in saturated fats"

When I buy an aussie meat pie from a no name corner pie shop I always wonder is this Kangaroo or Wombat the sauce just hides the taste

[XXXPhoto]

Feynman,

Well I'd have flipped it back over too with mishaps such as those... The other school of thought on the horseshoe orientation is to have them upside down so the luck CAN pour out (and over those around it).

I concur on your other point as well... Big papa buck might look good mounted on the wall but lil young and tender bambi tastes MUCH better...lol