Upstate Obsession
- Thread starter Elkaddict
- Start date
dogghr
Well-Known Member
Aren't those bears the cutest little things, Elk? You have some brutes. We now have season beginning in early Sept and thru out the year. Has put a hurt in a good way on the bear. I used to harbor 7, now I'm down to 2 young ones. I also quite putting out corn for cameras which is the worse thing for attracting them I think. I haven't seen a Fischer for a while now. They can be evil.
Elkaddict
Well-Known Member
Bears seem to stick around once all the berries are gone. I’ve seen them eating brassica tops, rutabaga tubers , clover/grains and of course the corn. Last year, they didn’t hibernate until Christmas and were back in the corn the end of March. As long as it’s just the boars (haven’t ever caught pics of a sow with cubs), I like having some around. It does make walking off the mountain in the dark interesting. I’m hoping the crew that will be up for rifle season can knock back the population a bit, our fawn survival was probably 20% this year. Because of ongoing health challenges, I’m still limited in what I can do so need to rely on my brother/friends.
Elkaddict
Well-Known Member
Time for an overdue update. Our season was adversely impacted by heavy acorn crop and below normal snow accumulations. Trespassers continued to be a problem, and we have no photos/sightings of our largest/oldest bucks the last month. Except for Thursday and Friday, we’ve had bitter cold temps. Friday’s heavy rains were followed by below 0 temps and heavy winds. I checked a number of cameras today and couldn’t even open the cases of 1/3 they were so covered in ice (I broke the latch on a browning just with my fingers). I’m hoping these unchecked cameras paint a different picture of some of our older bucks. Trespassers stole 3 cameras the last month and removed the SD cards of 2 more.....Season was modestly productive. Several does and 2 bucks were taken. Given the increase in our deer population, we need to take 2-3x as many does. My last sit in our biggest plot saw 28 deer....which is too many. Our plots have been decimated 3 months earlier than last year. They’ve wiped out 31/2 acres of corn/beans and 5 acres of brassicas. The other big change this year is the number of turkeys wintering here. The last couple years, we’ve had a dozen or so tom turkeys. We’ve got over 60 on the place now.
This is a picture of a Rutabaga/Winfred plot. A month ago, it was still knee high in most places. The stems are the Winfred.
Elkaddict
Well-Known Member
Plans for next year? My only solid conclusion is the need for more brassicas or corn. It’s pretty easy to add one additional acre. After that, it would require planting them closer to trespassing access and displacing grain/clover/chicory plots which are unpressured by trespassers during bowseason. Not sure what to do. On the hunting side, for the few family and friends that hunt the property, I think we’re going to require a doe as a condition of hunting. Because we are limited in doe tags, we have a problem that must be resolved with bow or MZ.
I’m going to have to monitor available browse pretty carefully this winter. May have to get some tree tops in reach. The good news is with all the hinge cuts we did a few years ago, we are in decent shape.
I’m going to have to monitor available browse pretty carefully this winter. May have to get some tree tops in reach. The good news is with all the hinge cuts we did a few years ago, we are in decent shape.
Elkaddict
Well-Known Member
Living in the north country has its ups and downs. Because we hadn’t been here in a month, I had to thaw locks (full of ice) and still struggling to get doors open on a truck and a tractor. The handles are a 1/2” of ice. It makes feeding a wood stove a pleasure. Today’s high was 5 but it was sunny with little wind. I love to walk the property in these conditions—very pretty, and most peaceful.
On the other hand,we rarely get hotter than mid 80s in the summer with cool nights and heavy dews. To me, it’s a good trade off.
I think we attracted all the deer in the neighborhood. Hoping the bucks will remember the spot during future ruts. Because all the tracks I saw today were from the last 24 hrs, I think most of the deer have moved off the mountain to traditional winter grounds.
On the other hand,we rarely get hotter than mid 80s in the summer with cool nights and heavy dews. To me, it’s a good trade off.
I think we attracted all the deer in the neighborhood. Hoping the bucks will remember the spot during future ruts. Because all the tracks I saw today were from the last 24 hrs, I think most of the deer have moved off the mountain to traditional winter grounds.
We are in the same boat as you with our Corn and Brassica plots not being enough to make it through season. Actually most of our plots were toast by gun season. We upped our brassica acreage considerably, pretty discouraging. We have run out of tillable ground for more plots. The real answer is some serious doe management which we have also struggled with. Not unusual to see 20 or more deer while there is still food in a plot. The older guys in our camp always wait until later in the season to shoot a doe and then they become extremely hard to take. I wish NY had an early muzzleloader doe season like PA does, makes hitting your doe harvest goals much easier.
Elkaddict
Well-Known Member
Yes JD, NY DEC regs make it tough to deal with high doe numbers. No chance I’d ever let strangers hunt so I’ve got to get it done with family and friends. My aim is to take more with archery. I’m actually content with a late MZ season. Deer poor into the plots when the rifles quit going bang. Our deer are pretty spooked when guns go off around the plots.
dogghr
Well-Known Member
What no bear kill? Girl here killed a 500 pounder in paper today. Sorry about your trespassers that can be aggravating. Cover your locks with a flap of mining belt. Keeps moisture off and keeps from freezing. Got all mine covered that way. Even can make a little roof with them over your cameras nailed to tree. Been rough winter, luckily we had plenty of acorns, deer are fat. But I still went down for an hour Fri and dropped 30 trees, mainly maple, for more browse and edge feathering.
Chainsaw
Well-Known Member
Sorry to hear about stolen SD cards and cameras Tom. Once someone figures out how to see the cameras they stick out like a sore thumb. We'll have to put our heads together and come up with some new camera hiding techniques. I've got a couple of ideas that I'll work on this winter. Maybe on one of the 1/3 of the cameras that were frozen, you've already gotten a picture of one of the trespassing thieves. I'm sure you will make him a local movie star if you do.
On the does have you reapplied to DEC for more doe permits; now we are allowed to have one person use up to four of them. That makes it fairly easy with just three or four family members/friends to get the task done in a chosen and short time frame. Best time to reapply is early in the growing season when damage to an AG crop can be shown.
The flock of 60 turkeys on your property must be devouring the corn and soy. I see turkeys in the turnips from time to time but never like in the corn or soybeans. It appears it is the corn and soybeans that are really drawing the large amount of turkeys here when they are here. Are you witnessing the same?
I kind of thought the Browning latches might not take the abuse of ice and brutal cold weather and need a little more care in handling during those periods. That extreme cold makes plastic very brittle. I broke a piece off of my JD tractor two weeks ago when removing a side panel of the hood. The entire hood and side panels are plastic and the connecting piece of the side panel broke even though I handled it very carefully.
On the does have you reapplied to DEC for more doe permits; now we are allowed to have one person use up to four of them. That makes it fairly easy with just three or four family members/friends to get the task done in a chosen and short time frame. Best time to reapply is early in the growing season when damage to an AG crop can be shown.
The flock of 60 turkeys on your property must be devouring the corn and soy. I see turkeys in the turnips from time to time but never like in the corn or soybeans. It appears it is the corn and soybeans that are really drawing the large amount of turkeys here when they are here. Are you witnessing the same?
I kind of thought the Browning latches might not take the abuse of ice and brutal cold weather and need a little more care in handling during those periods. That extreme cold makes plastic very brittle. I broke a piece off of my JD tractor two weeks ago when removing a side panel of the hood. The entire hood and side panels are plastic and the connecting piece of the side panel broke even though I handled it very carefully.
Elkaddict
Well-Known Member
The turkeys are pretty much in the corn/beans non stop..... I’ve still got another 8 cameras on the mountain that are my trespasser set ups. Haven’t checked in more than a month. Because most are Brownings, I’m inclined leaves be till it warms and it easier to get to them.
I’m skeptical the DEC would give nuisance permits for crops meant to feed deer (no lost income at stake). Is your experience different?
I’m skeptical the DEC would give nuisance permits for crops meant to feed deer (no lost income at stake). Is your experience different?
To help keep the cameras around check out cam lock boxes. Pretty cheap insurance and they make them for just about every camera out there. You can lag screw them to the tree and lock the cameras in the metal boxes. I use treated deck screws with extra large heads on them. Even if they see the camera they wont be able to get them out.
Chainsaw
Well-Known Member
No My experience is not different. The DEC does not give permits for crops meant to feed deer. I did receive nuisance tags the one time I "applied" and that was for deer eating my daylilies. The deer actually picked out the single, one of a kind best daylily I have ever produced in years of hybridizing(the only one in the world); it was the top plant out of 200,000 plus seedlings and they destroyed it, destroying the culmination of years of work at the same time. My bad--should have had that plant separately fenced and protected like Fort Knox rather than just the double perimeter electric fence. I didn't kill any deer with that permit but it allowed me to legally sleep in the garden with my rifle and scare the daylights out of them when ever one dared to step ft. in the garden. A couple of days of that did it for that year once the farmers crops germinated and drew them away from the daylilies.
Actually though I was referring to the DMAP tags which are given when deer are over populating a property and doing damage to crops grown for agricultural purposes ie; resale and/or people/animal consumption. My property meets three criteria for that with any one of them being ample to fit the program. I have found the DEC to be a huge help in managing our property in many ways. Regarding doe tags, here are the reasons we qualify.
1. The two thousand plus wild apple trees we released were released to save the apple trees and encourage apple production. While it does benefit the deer and our hunting, the core reason for releasing them is to have apples for cider making during ample apple years. Wild apples actually can make way better ciders than commercial varieties can. And I plan on being a direct user of the apples for making cider for resale. And we also eat them day and night and every day we can. The apples are an important product of this property for us.
2. My daylily garden though I enjoy it also fits the Ag requirements definition. It is a Plant hybridizing operation intending to show a profit. We have taken every reasonable effort to keep the deer out (including double electric fencing) but still when the deer population is too high on this property there are breaches in our efforts to keep them away from the daylily plants.
3. We rent forty acres of tillable to a dairy farmer who grows crops to help feed his herd. Renting land to a viable AG business for growing crops to feed cows and experiencing unacceptable deer damage to said crops also qualifies property for the DMAP program.
There are many other reasons to be included in the DMAP but these are the ones that apply to us. It is important to note that they are not loop holes in the system but are some of the reasons for the system. We do not abuse the privilege it affords us but simply use it to keep the deer population on this property in line within a tolerable amount of deer damage to our various enterprises. Some years the winters control the population for us but surprisingly not so often as one would think.
Actually though I was referring to the DMAP tags which are given when deer are over populating a property and doing damage to crops grown for agricultural purposes ie; resale and/or people/animal consumption. My property meets three criteria for that with any one of them being ample to fit the program. I have found the DEC to be a huge help in managing our property in many ways. Regarding doe tags, here are the reasons we qualify.
1. The two thousand plus wild apple trees we released were released to save the apple trees and encourage apple production. While it does benefit the deer and our hunting, the core reason for releasing them is to have apples for cider making during ample apple years. Wild apples actually can make way better ciders than commercial varieties can. And I plan on being a direct user of the apples for making cider for resale. And we also eat them day and night and every day we can. The apples are an important product of this property for us.
2. My daylily garden though I enjoy it also fits the Ag requirements definition. It is a Plant hybridizing operation intending to show a profit. We have taken every reasonable effort to keep the deer out (including double electric fencing) but still when the deer population is too high on this property there are breaches in our efforts to keep them away from the daylily plants.
3. We rent forty acres of tillable to a dairy farmer who grows crops to help feed his herd. Renting land to a viable AG business for growing crops to feed cows and experiencing unacceptable deer damage to said crops also qualifies property for the DMAP program.
There are many other reasons to be included in the DMAP but these are the ones that apply to us. It is important to note that they are not loop holes in the system but are some of the reasons for the system. We do not abuse the privilege it affords us but simply use it to keep the deer population on this property in line within a tolerable amount of deer damage to our various enterprises. Some years the winters control the population for us but surprisingly not so often as one would think.
