An article in the New York Times is claiming that scientists have tapped into the brains of deer and they now know how they see.

Sound too good to be true?  I thought so too, but it looks like the makers or Gore-Tex rain gear have found out how to use computer-generated images to camouflage a hunter so well that deer will just simply think there’s nothing there.  Not a tree, not some grass… nothing.

The psychologists who worked with Gore to develop it — Jay Neitz, an animal-vision expert at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and Timothy O’Neill, who pioneered the United States Army’s digital camouflage as a researcher at West Point — say they’re confident the deer will be fooled.

“A camouflage that makes a person look like a tree can work if you’re in a place where other trees look like that,” Dr. Neitz says. “But what if you’re somewhere else, or if the deer sees you move? This new camouflage is a totally different approach. It fools the deer’s vision system at its roots, so that it doesn’t recognize the person as anything.”

Expect the new camo patters to start showing up for next fall’s deer season.

Read the entire NYT article here.

Fully-Automatic 12 gauge shotgun that can fire 300 rounds per minute.  Strictly for military use, but think of the fun you could snow goose hunting!

Or even better.  Our sporting clays range used to do a thing called The Flurry at the 5-stand.  It was a 2-second delayed firing of sequential stations until 30 birds was reached.  This would make that little even a lot of fun!

The response from hunters to a postcard reminder to file mandatory reports on deer, elk and pronghorn hunt results overloaded the Idaho Fish and Game Web site and telephone lines on the evening of November 10.

Some hunters were unable to file their reports, and Fish and Game regrets the inconvenience. The problem has been resolved.

It’s important that Fish and Game receives the hunter reports. Hunters may file them online at www.idaho-hunt.com or by telephone at 1 877-268-9365, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These are the only ways to receive confirmation that the report has been received.

Hunters are required to file a report, even if they didn’t harvest an animal, within 10 days of the kill or the end of the hunting season.

To reduce paper, mailing and postage costs, Fish and Game will send out only one reminder postcard per household. Fish and Game also has eliminated the 80,000 reminder letters that would have gone out in December and January.

Instead Fish and Game will conduct a random telephone survey of some hunters whose reports have not been received after their hunts have ended.

Fish and Game needs the hunter reports in a timely manner to help make decisions for the coming 2009 hunting season. Biologists rely on the reports to estimate the number of animals harvested and the hunter’s success rate.

All reports need to be analyzed by the end of January in time for Fish and Game to make recommendations on season changes by March 2009.

I hate to post things like this, but if this accident can help save lives, it needs to get out.

An upstate toddler was killed by a stray bullet when a New York City deer hunter fired his rifle too close to her grandparents’ Hudson Valley home.

Edward Taibi, 45, of Queens was being held without bail Monday after arraignment on a second-degree manslaughter charge in the town of Bethel court. Taibi was hunting from a tree stand Sunday afternoon in rural Sullivan County when he shot a deer. He came down from the stand and fired the .30-caliber rifle again about 400 feet away from a trailer home in Swan Lake, a small community just south of the Catskill Mountains.

The bullet hit 16-month-old Charly Skala in the upper body. She was flown to Westchester Medical Center, where she died. Police said the child’s parents live in nearby Woodburne.

Taibi is friends with the owner of the neighboring property and had hunted there before, said State Police Lt. Pierce Gallagher.

His case was assigned to the Sullivan Legal Aid Bureau, where attorney Jeff Bradley said Monday it was too soon to comment on the case.

Several neighbors declined comment Monday afternoon when reached by The Associated Press.

The rifle season for deer opened Saturday in the region that includes Sullivan County. Under state law, it’s illegal to discharge a firearm or bow within 500 feet of any occupied residence or business unless the hunter owns or leases the property, or has the owner’s consent, according to Maureen Wren of the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Swan Lake is about 85 miles northwest of New York City.

Remember everyone, be ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE what is beyond your target before you squeeze that trigger.  This was an accident, but one that may have been preventable.  Mr. Taibi did not try to kill little Charly, but he should have looked beyond to see the trailer home.

Safety first!

The North Dakota deer rifle season started last Friday, November 7th, but a fall blizzard dumped 9-15 inches of snow across most of the western part of the state, paralyzing much of the deer hunting.

I personally didn’t leave my home in Mandan until late Friday for Dickinson, and didn’t get any hunting in that day.

What I saw on Saturday was nothing short of amazing.  With the cutting of much of the CRP, and many of the draws and tree rows snowed over, herds of whitetail deer were sprinkled across the landscape, sometimes gathering 30-50 at a time.  Of course they were miles away from the main roads, and the section lines were blow in and impassible (see image above).

Even the pheasants were forced out of the cover in an attempt to get warm and find food.  After seeing literally thousands of pheasants in the fields I had to take a photo out the window. You’ll have to click on it to enlarge, but this is a small sampling of the number of birds forced from habitat due to the weather.

Now, back to the deer hunting.

We knew that to get to the deer we would have to take some chances and walk in to the back side of some hills.  But since the roads were in such tough shape, that meant walking in, and back out, all through wind-blown hard-packed snow that was waist deep at times.

But then we saw the muley.  He was standing on posted land, proud as hell, at the end of a tree row.  He was watching some does, and seemed oblivious to the traffic on the road to his west.

After debating for nearly an hour, I finally decided to call the landowner and get permission.  He generously granted us access, and less than 1/2 hour later, he was down.

At 39 years old I finally got my first mule deer, and the biggest deer I’ve ever shot.  He’s not a monster by any means, but a respectable buck for my area and North Dakota in general.

Take a look.

All Jeffrey Howe wanted to do was take advantage of the evening walleye bite on Owasco Lake and maybe get a few tasty fillets.

The 32-year-old town of Ira resident ended up getting skunked on Saturday – but he did catch the attention of Cayuga County 911, three volunteer fire companies and the Air One helicopter from Syracuse.

It all started with Howe wanting to try Owasco Lake for walleyes after reading on the Fishing Forum on Syracuse.com about anglers who have been having luck on that lake. This is the time of year when walleyes come close to shore after dark in a number of local lakes – most notably on Oneida Lake – to feed and bulk up on bait fish to get ready for winter.

Unfamiliar with Owasco Lake or where the walleyes were being caught, Howe parked in a pull-off by the traffic circle near Emerson Park. With waders on and pole in hand, he walked out about 300 yards from shore over the silty, sandy bottom to the right of the swimming area off Deauville Island.

“It was just before sunset,” said Howe who wrote Tuesday about his experience in the Fishing Forum under his nickname, MeatHunter30. “I wasn’t feeling good about finding fish there, but figured I would try it anyway.”

As darkness fell, Howe was nearly chest deep and didn’t bother to put his head lamp on.

At about 6:30 p.m., Cayuga County 911 got a call from an unidentified person on the western side of the lake, noting there was a man in the water and that he possibly needed help.

At about 7 p.m., Howe said he heard “the fire whistle, and suddenly police, ambulances and fire trucks were pulling into the parking area where my car was.” The two fire companies from Owasco and one from Fleming answered the call.

Travis Poole, Owasco’s assistant fire chief, said they could see Howe with binoculars, and firefighters unsuccessfully tried to signal him with lights and horns. He said Howe didn’t have any reflective clothing or light on. Poole didn’t want to take any chances as Howe disappeared from sight in the darkness.

Howe figured the sudden gathering of emergency vehicles and ensuing ruckus was “odd.” But he figured he’d keep on fishing since it was “just getting to be prime time for the ‘eyes.” He said he kept casting for about 20 minutes.

Suddenly, Howe heard a helicopter flying nearby. Then he noticed a rubber boat with several men in wetsuits coming toward him.

“I turned on my hat light, and the ‘copter puts the spotlight on me,” he said. “Now I thought I was in trouble or mistaken for someone else.”

“So the guys in the boat come over to me, and I’m waving ‘Hi’ to the ‘copter. They ask me what I was doing and I said, ‘I’m trying to catch some walleyes.’ ”

The firefighters told him how they had received a 911 report of a man in the lake.

“Comically, I said, ‘I didn’t realize there was a curfew on this lake, since I’ve never fished it before,’ ” he said, heading toward shore.

Howe said when he reached shore, there were a few firemen left and they kidded him that nobody catches anything where he was fishing. He said he told them every bay on Oneida Lake has people wading this time of year for walleyes and he just wanted to try his luck here.

“To make a long story short, I will never fish Owasco again . . . and no, I wasn’t issued any tickets,” he said.

Story was posted from Syracuse.com.

Finally, the Brits come up with something you can use.

You see, this guy doesn’t like to get dirty, doesn’t like to get a sore back, and doesn’t seem to mind pointing a shotgun directly at the ground and firing it, putting himself and his workmates in danger.

But, it is a plausible method for removing undesired plants.  (Just don’t try this at home, kids)

Remember that monster whitetail that was videoed in Wisconsin a couple of weeks back?

Well, if you don’t here’s the video.

And now to the real star of this post… the GUY WHO SHOT THAT DEER!

Yep, that’s right kids, that deer on the video was harvested in Wisconsin, with a bow, by Mr. Bob Decker.  Congrats Bob on a massive whitetail!

Image from www.leadertelegram.com

I’ve lived in North Dakota most all of my life.  During that time I’ve lived in four different cities, and have hunted and fished in most of the rest.

And yet nearly every weekend during hunting season I get lost… and love every minute of it.

Patrick McMannus wrote several stories about the art of getting lost.

You see, the best part of being lost in North Dakota is that you can only do it once in a particular location.  Our state is criss-crossed with neatly layed out minimum maintenance “section” lines, marking 1 mile units of land.  In the rare case that a landowner has plowed up a section line or the road has disappeared due to non-use, you just drive to the second mile.

And while I have my usual hunting spots and landmarks, occasionally I see that section line I haven’t been on before, and it looks like it will get me where I want to be, so I take it.  But it doesn’t always work out.

Yesterday I ended up on a road I had never been on.  And then another, and another, and another until I ended up taking a 10-mile drive to the very point I had started.

But was it worth the drive?  Yep.  First, I learned never to take that road again.  But more importantly, I saw some amazing country (unfortunatly posted) that was home to some whitetail does, a lonely coyote, a couple of rooster pheasants, and one really big snow owl.  If I hadn’t taken that little detour I wound’t have seen any of those things.

But have I ever been in danger being lost in ND?   Yes.  Hunting in the Badlands of SW North Dakota, I got caught in a freak snow storm.  The day started out at 60 degrees and we were hunting turkeys.  The hunt took us about two miles from the road and then the temp dropped and it started to rain.  And then it started snowing. Not “normal” snow, but that huge-flake, stick-to-anything type of snow.  And within minutes the entire countryside was covered with a sparkling blanket of fresh snow.

For a moment, I was pretty scared.  I tried to find the vehicle, or the road, or anything that might give us a hint on how to get back.  No luck, so I had to scramble up a clay butte, not an easy task carrying a shotgun and in fresh Badlands mud, and start looking.  Minutes went by as I scanned the countryside with my binoculars, and then I saw it… a telephone pole.  That had to be by the road, so I scanned right and saw another, and then a few more, and after a few moments I saw what looked like two tires.   My truck had been completely covered with the sticky snow, except for the tires and a small spot on the windshield.

We started the 2-mile hike back to the truck, got in and got the hell out of there.

That was scary, and could have been life threatening in a more extreme circumstance.  But it illustrates the best part of being lost… the story.  If you don’t get lost, you don’t have any stories.

So go ahead, get lost once in a while.  You might see someting interesting, and you’ll have something to talk about next time you and your buddies get together.