Outdoors: Bowhunters now train sights on bagging bucks
Sunday, September 16, 2007
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Despite a beach-weather opening day last weekend, some archers did well enough bagging does to later tag big bucks.
The season that started Sept. 8 in 31 Deer Management Zones requires bowhunters to first tag a doe before they can kill a buck, and heat-tolerant hunters did, as proved by photos of racks up to 10 points posted last week on newjerseyhunter.com, a popular statewide website based in Morris County.
After this early season ends on Sept. 28, bowhunters during the fall season Sept. 29-Oct. 26 can take an antlered buck first if they choose. Cooler weather last week made it seem more like a hunting season at dawn, and there's still time to get first crack at the best deer around.
Bowhunting has come a long way from my first season 53 years ago when a Bear Cub bow, a bow quiver, and some shafts with super-Hilbre heads cost under $30 and so few hunted that licenses were issued on 8 by 10 sheets of paper.
Today's good compound bows are more likely priced at $500-$800, and by the time all the other gear is added, far over that.
But today's archers and their gear are super deadly, so antihunters who whine about bowhunting should find statistics and arguments against bowhunting newer than what they started saying in the last century.
And gun hunters who aren't archers and want an early shot at the best bucks, ought to join the sport.
No Tinc's
One of the most popular deer butchers around, Tinc's on Tinc Road in Mount Olive, isn't open this year because of illness, so hunters who used to bring their deer there have to find somewhere else to handle their deer. This year's deer checking stations are listed in the 2007 Hunting and Trapping Fish & Wildlife Digest.
Helpful information
The free publication of the Division of Fish and Wildlife is full of good information, including the Director's Message from Dave Chanda of Schooley's Mountain.
He noted that deer hunters saved millions of dollars for New Jersey's taxpayers last year by harvesting 56,673 deer. Some towns that don't allow hunting paid up to $400 a deer to have hired agents cull them.
The Department of Agriculture has begun its third year of a cost-sharing program providing fencing material and 30% of the line posts to qualified farmers who suffer deer damage to their crops.
The Ag department could save millions by convincing farmers to allow hunting if they don't, or tell them to allow only efficient hunters if the ones they have are not doing the job.
Farmer vs. BEAR
A 77-year-old farmer looking for advice about how to prevent bears from eating his cornfields went to the wrong place when he asked for it from BEAR, the antihunting outfit that had invited the public to hear about bears at a "focus on education" meeting in Blairstown Wednesday night.
Farmer Andrew Borisuk said he hadn't had any bear problems until the 1990s, that bears got into the middle of cornfields and ate so much they sometimes threw up. He was told to put an electric fence around his 150 acres and accused of wanting to kill all the bears.
The BEAR head, Janet Piszar of Millburn, bragged that the group had stopped bear hunts and taken bear management from the Division of Fish and Wildlife and put politicians in charge.
She also recited the antis' mantra of the Fish and Game Council and Division wanting "recreational trophy hunts."
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Post Comment
Despite a beach-weather opening day last weekend, some archers did well enough bagging does to later tag big bucks.
The season that started Sept. 8 in 31 Deer Management Zones requires bowhunters to first tag a doe before they can kill a buck, and heat-tolerant hunters did, as proved by photos of racks up to 10 points posted last week on newjerseyhunter.com, a popular statewide website based in Morris County.
After this early season ends on Sept. 28, bowhunters during the fall season Sept. 29-Oct. 26 can take an antlered buck first if they choose. Cooler weather last week made it seem more like a hunting season at dawn, and there's still time to get first crack at the best deer around.
Bowhunting has come a long way from my first season 53 years ago when a Bear Cub bow, a bow quiver, and some shafts with super-Hilbre heads cost under $30 and so few hunted that licenses were issued on 8 by 10 sheets of paper.
Today's good compound bows are more likely priced at $500-$800, and by the time all the other gear is added, far over that.
But today's archers and their gear are super deadly, so antihunters who whine about bowhunting should find statistics and arguments against bowhunting newer than what they started saying in the last century.
And gun hunters who aren't archers and want an early shot at the best bucks, ought to join the sport.
No Tinc's
One of the most popular deer butchers around, Tinc's on Tinc Road in Mount Olive, isn't open this year because of illness, so hunters who used to bring their deer there have to find somewhere else to handle their deer. This year's deer checking stations are listed in the 2007 Hunting and Trapping Fish & Wildlife Digest.
Helpful information
The free publication of the Division of Fish and Wildlife is full of good information, including the Director's Message from Dave Chanda of Schooley's Mountain.
He noted that deer hunters saved millions of dollars for New Jersey's taxpayers last year by harvesting 56,673 deer. Some towns that don't allow hunting paid up to $400 a deer to have hired agents cull them.
The Department of Agriculture has begun its third year of a cost-sharing program providing fencing material and 30% of the line posts to qualified farmers who suffer deer damage to their crops.
The Ag department could save millions by convincing farmers to allow hunting if they don't, or tell them to allow only efficient hunters if the ones they have are not doing the job.
Farmer vs. BEAR
A 77-year-old farmer looking for advice about how to prevent bears from eating his cornfields went to the wrong place when he asked for it from BEAR, the antihunting outfit that had invited the public to hear about bears at a "focus on education" meeting in Blairstown Wednesday night.
Farmer Andrew Borisuk said he hadn't had any bear problems until the 1990s, that bears got into the middle of cornfields and ate so much they sometimes threw up. He was told to put an electric fence around his 150 acres and accused of wanting to kill all the bears.
The BEAR head, Janet Piszar of Millburn, bragged that the group had stopped bear hunts and taken bear management from the Division of Fish and Wildlife and put politicians in charge.
She also recited the antis' mantra of the Fish and Game Council and Division wanting "recreational trophy hunts."
