mattys281

Another for everyday. Who could blame ya?

This is my first year trying the salt-lick deal & I can tell you already that it takes a lot of time & effort to make it work. Deer don't just magically appear in a crap area because some a-hole walked 50 yards away from his car & scattered some salt. You still have to find good spots & do your scouting. I choose a tactic to suit the terrain. In the desert, binos & tripod. In thickn timber, treestand & salt. Spend some time in the thick, over grown stuff I'll be hunting this fall & then tell me how you plan to spot & stalk. Still hunting you could do, spot & stalk - forget it. You can't see a hundred yards, but there's a lot of animals there, so you adapt to the circumstances. Hunters need to keep their mouths shut about bashing other peoples methods. It doesn' suit your taste, fine don't hunt that way. You still have no right to dictate what the rest of us should do in the field, so consider yourself cordially invited to shut-up.

Here are some more. Enjoy.

Had this thing out for about 10 days. Went to check it & the counter said 1439 pictures! Obviously, a bunch of false triggers. There was nothing solid to mount it to, so a tied a few branches on a mesquite tree together & then strapped the camera to the bundle. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but the wind blew it all over the place, causing the false triggers. Did manage to get a few critter pics out of those 1400 terrain portraits though. Most were pretty dark & hard to see, as the animals were right at the edge of the flash, but these came out all right:

First time viewing for me. Thanks for sharing. I can't understand the post lately saying things like, "It's time to start getting excited." I've been on edge for months already, at least since I found out I drew an elk tag! I'm surprised that I haven't been either fired or abandoned by the GF, I seriously haven't been able to concentrate on a thing or even carry on a conversation without it turning to hunting. You should hear me talking to my boss: "Yeah, I looked over the drawing on that new fuel valve we're building. Has some grind work & a couple tight tolerances, but looks straight forward, shouldn't be any trouble. The one thing that concerns me though, is that I've only got pictures of one decent buck on my trail cam. Think it's just too dry out there..." Can you say obsessed?

That's amazing. Thanks for sharing. This is the kind of stuff that the non-hunting public needs to see. Sportsmen & women spending all year hauling water & doing whatever they can to help out the animals. Wonder when the last time was that a PETA member put down their picket sign & actually did something to help an animal, let alone bottle feed a young bull the was fading from dehydration?

Sure looks like it was a great trip. Awesome pics, thanks for sharing with us, Doug. Matt S.

No sense wasting your breath on that one. People that steal cameras, treestands, etc. don't give a crap about the law. I don't think one of them believes they're legally "claiming" abandoned property. They're stealing & they know it. They're either too lazy, cheap, & selfish to go get their own, or they're the self-appointed ethics police who believe that cameras give you an "unfair advantage" & they're going to teach you a lesson by taking or breaking it. The way I look at it is that I work, have a family, & run my own small business. Although I'd love to spend weeks or even months in the woods scouting, realistically I'm only going to get a few weekends here & there before season opens. Those cams help me make the most of my limited time & resources. If someone takes them, they're nothing but a rotten thief & should be chased out of town via torch-light & pitch forks, like they deserve.

At one time or another I probably bashed bait hunting as being unethical. After all, what's so difficult about waiting over a pile of food, or water, or whatever attractant you prefer & waiting out an animal, right? WRONG! If I made such a statement, and I think I have, it was out of complete and total ignorance. This year, for the first time, I've tried planting some mineral blocks & even tried setting up a bait station for deer using apples & corn, in addition to the mineral block. AFter weeks of checking the trail cam & not getting much, this weekend I went out to check it again, and much to my elation, all the apples & half the corn were gone & I had almost 100 pictures! I don't think my feet hit the ground on the way home, I was so excited to go see all those deer pictures. When I got home, I found most of the pictures were nothing more than an empty landscape shot with a seemingly magically shrinking pile of food. Turns out that the 12 or so pics I did have of the bait visitor revealed I was getting cleaned out by an incredibly fast moving (and now fat) ground squirrel. The moral of the story is, dropping a bunch of food somewhere only gets you a lot of winged & rodent visitors. To run a site that gets a lot of hits from deer, bear, elk, or whatever you're after takes a heck of a lot of hard work. Especially if you want a site that's not going to be visited by other bipeds. I'm just a beginner at it, but my impression after the last couple months is that it may be a very effective way to get close to animals, but it is certainly not a cheap or easy way. It doesn't have to cost lots of dollars, but you're going to pay in sweat.

You can count on that. You can also count on the next one sneakin up on me while I'm elk calling getting stuck, or at least the next one that does it after 8/31. Anyone that does it between now & then gets the kodak bullet & maybe some pepper spray if he wants to "investigate" too closely.

Exactly why I only use stuff marketed for deer. Note 1 in the regs for bear hunting, however, specifically states, "No person shall knowingly use any substance as bait at any time to attract or take bear." If a bear is hitting your salt lick, you'd better leave him alone.

As far as the baiting goes, when in bear country, I'm only using products that are specifically labeled, marketed & intended for deer, as baiting for bears is not allowed. If a bear comes into it, he'll be shot with a camera & his picture posted here for all to enjoy. The regs. say you can not intentionally use any substance to attract or take bear. Period. As for screw-in steps, I just got off the phone w/ the Alpine Range District Office, & according to them, they do not currently have a law against using the steps, but strongly discourage it, due to the damage they cause to the trees. They told me that any type of wound that penetrates through the bark increases the chance for parasites & disease to enter & subsequently kill the tree. That's for the Apache Sitgreaves NF, it may be different where you intend to hunt. As for the initial question, as far as I'm concerned if someone already has a blind built, treestand hung, salt lick out, bait set-up, or whatever, & it's obviously being actively maintained, it comes down to a question of courtesy. IMO, the courteous thing to do is find another spot. They beat you there, so deal with it & move on.

Don't think there's much you can do other than watch & wait. Crappy luck for that little fella, but good luck for a local lion, bear, or coyote...

I've returned a couple items to the one on Greenfield & never had anything but a pleasant experience. I also once sold a bow to a guy on e-bay & ended up not having the right size module to set the draw length for him, so I called up the SW in Phoenix & after explaining the situation, the guy in the archery department not only had the right module, but gave it to me for his wholesale price. I can't think of a bad thing to say about their service.

Then slap one of those naked chick silhouette stickers on your quiver hood & stick with the BH’s that work. I shoot the NAP Nitron 100s & have had no trouble getting them to group w/ field points.

There's gotta be some sticky felt or something you could put on those eye-cups to cushion the edge. For 1/3 the price, I'd dang sure figure out some way to deal with it.

I have no experience w/ these "performance chips", but I've screwed around with enough racing bike motors to tell you that you never gain performance without sacrificing something else. From what I hear, a lot of newer vehicles are set from the factory to run on the lean side to keep the EPA happy, so if this chip is simply richening the mix, you'd expect to see better performance for the same fuel economy, but you'd also probably see your emissions go up. I can tell you from experience that switching a 600cc supersport bike over to a free flowing exhaust system eliminates a ton of back pressure that increases the volumetric efficiency of the motor allowing you to stuff a much heavier fuel charge through it, but the "around town" fuel economy always dropped by more than 20%. Sure are a lot more fun to ride that way though! Good luck keepin the front down. I've yet to know someone who actually dynoed anything and found that they made a gain in HP & fuel economy with one modification. It is possible that the chip remaps the ignition & injection timing to alter the hp curve so that it puts out bigger numbers on the bottom end, thus making the "seat-of-the-pants" dynomometer feel better, while actually losing performance off the top. As I said, it's always a trade. If you gain in one place, you'll lose some where else.

It's definetely a buck. Look at the lower right hand corner of the second pic & you get a close up of his buttons. antelope does sometimes have horns as well.. It appears to be a doe to me as well.. cool pics! I was refering to the deer. The antelop looks like a doe.

I spoke w/ someone at the Alpine Ranger office this morning. As of this time, portions of the forest are still closed due to the Chitty fire. Depends on where you want to go. Hwy 191 reopened this morning, though, & according to the lady I spoke with, the fire is 75% contained, so it could possibly open up by this weekend. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Kinda grainy. My picture software at work doesn't have any smoothing options.

DUNNO?? It was at the SUNRISE 3-D shoot.... If he was pretty tall (6'2"-6'3" range) & reddish brown hair & from Ca. then it was Kevin. He's a cool guy. Real easy to deal with & very helpful. He's their sales rep for this region, so I imagine it was probably him. I know he's been out here a lot during the last few weeks.

Is Kevin Kaiser the rep you talked to?

It's definetely a buck. Look at the lower right hand corner of the second pic & you get a close up of his buttons. Probably just two young animals herding up, or perhaps he's the youngin & she adopted him for some reason or another. Probably will split once the "urge" takes hold of that antelope this August.

Couldn't open the attachment, as my computer is a piece of poop & keeps erroring out of the browser when ever I try. Was the X-force included in their test? I just got a press release from PSE last week that they now are offering and X-force 7, which is basically the same except w/ a 7" brace height instead of the 6" you get on the regular. IBO speed drops a few fps to 342. Still smokin & I like the sound of that roomier brace height a whole lot better.

Yeah right! You can be honest with us. I hope PETA never gets a hold of your critter porn collection, it'd give new definition to "animal exploitation!" I don't think I could have taken that javalina one w/out busting a gut. That guy looked so proud of himself...