Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors If wishes were horses

When I still lived and hunted in KS, I never saw a turkey. Now when I go back to visit I see large flocks of them.

Turkeys were booming here in the 2000s into early 2010s, but they seem to have really thinned out since. I haven't seen a big gaggle of them together in several years. Now when I see them it's maybe half a dozen, not 20-30.

Deer are way down locally (not statewide). The # of filled tags for my county per season has dropped by almost 60% since 2012, which was the peak year. There weren't that many trees around here to begin with, and a ton of them have been lost to McMansion developments and farm tract consolidation over the past 15 years. Most of the treelines that used to mark field borders are gone. The deer are pretty much all bunched up in the tree belts along creeks and rivers now and don't roam nearly as much as they used to.

In WV I only see turkey when they are on the other side of the window!

In the 1930's I have seen estimates that there were less than 500,000 whitetail deer in the United States. Today I've seen the number 30 million.

In the 30's 1/2 of those deer in the US lived inside the Adirondack Wilderness Area in NY state. My grandfather and his brothers made their living logging and guiding for the wealthy land owning logging barrens and families of the times. They guided not only very wealthy Americans but people from all over Europe who came to hunt deer. Mostly aristocrats and people from the royal families of all of Europe. He told me once that the guides shot most of the deer for the American hunters as they were drunk most of the time and only got out of camp to get their pictures taken in their fancy duds and new rifles with the deer the guides had shot.

The Europeans on the other hand he described as mostly dead series hunters and excellent marksmen. Especially the Austrians, Germans and Poles. He said most of them carried "fancy 3 barreled guns", some with 2 rifle barrels and a shotgun barrel and some with 2 shotgun barrels and a rifle barrel, what we would describe today as drillings.

Thats a heck of a price for that Savage. Cheapest Ive seen in a while

Fireball, I like the way you think !

Thanks hiho. I guess if we threw a party there'd be two of us. Or maybe we could draw a crowd if we did it in a cemetery. LOL

If I had a million dollars...
I'd buy a nice Reliant automobile!

Nope. I never did. Aim for where the wing meets the body. Now PA has taken the rifles out of our hands though

Interesting!

I had a handi rifle 8n 204 that head shot a Jake at about 75 yards.

Very nice looking rifle.

I didn't know that. When did that happen?

Rifle -- wing butt
shotgun--head

Gary,
PA banned all single projectile firearms for turkey hunting in 2021 because of declining turkey populations.

I used Speer 55 GR. Full Metal Jackets in a Vixen 222 Rem. and also shot for the wing joint. Humane kills w/o a lot of meat damage.

The only turkey I shot was from a tree stand in Georgia. I was deer hunting with a 30-06 and wasn't about to shoot it in the body so I shot it in the head. Probably 40 feet away.
My Father and his family lived in Georgia until about 1928. There were no deer. The land was all plantations. No good cover for deer. The depression came along and the plantations went broke and were bought up by lumber companies who planted trees. I think some deer were brought in from Michigan or somewhere and thrived. When I was spending the Winter there from 2005 to 2015 the hunting limit for deer was 2 bucks and 10 does. We saw a lot of dead deer along the highways. A lot of people considered them a nuisance.

The reason I moved to Virginia.
More liberal in what they allow,
Less liberal in their politics.
Moved from upstate NY. Night and day.

Same. I was born and raised in Oswego county, but my old family is from Lewis County.

Could not get out of NY state fast enough. Spent 30 years in Pa before I got to Va. Wild horses would not drag me back to NY state. The weather sucks, the politics suck and the taxes suck.

Thanks, Ted. I guess I won't take a .22 Hornet along to PA this fall for hunting. Oh wait, I still can as they allow its use for deer. Or did that change too? (Kidding, sort of. A .218 Bee is a much better deer cartridge. )

Same. I was born and raised in Oswego county, but my old family is from Lewis County.

Could not get out of NY state fast enough. Spent 30 years in Pa before I got to Va. Wild horses would not drag me back to NY state. The weather sucks, the politics suck and the taxes suck.

I lived in West Leyden. Had 150 acres. 6 months under snow. 1 month of mud. 4 months of biting bugs. I month to hunt.