What's it like where you live?

[the skrat]

hello keith yes we have wolves here i have only seen 3 but here them at night and see there tracks on our logging jobs all the time. i walked up on one in the woods one time probably only 20 paces away we stared each other down for a minute i walked away the wolf just stayed there they walk through my dads yard once in a while and seem to raise heck with the deer population. they dont seem to be afraid of humans have walked past my employees while they were running machines didnt even care that we were there. a couple of years ago my wife seen a cougar a couple miles from the house i measured the tracks over 4 inches now i would love to see one of themthere are lots of sightings of cougar here after 30 years of denying it the dnr finally admits we have a very small cougar population.

 

[RiverRat]

It seems like no fellow Keystone'ers replyed to this so I'll give it a try. I moved here from NJ (occupied territory) in 1995. I have been shooting and collecting scence 1974. Crossing the Deleware river I noticed the state slogan "America Starts Here", (which has now been changed to a less radical slogan). Believe me, gun ownership and hunting were my passions and I have moved to the right place. We now have the instant check system and buying a firearm wether pistol, rifle or shotgun is no problem. I have had a concealed carry permit for nine years now. I live 6 miles from the New York state border and I have to be careful on not to carry my concealed pistol across state lines....I will instantly become a fellon. The schools are closed for the 1st day of buck season, it is like a state holiday....everbody seems to be hunting. I pray that things won't change, but they always will...I thank God that I made the move!

 

[Keith]

"I live 6 miles from the New York state border and I have to be careful on not to carry my concealed pistol across state lines...."
Yeah, definite no-no. New York law is real clear on that point.

Any non-Americans care to chime in about what there home is like? Any Ausies or Kiwis out there?

 

[arilar]

In my country hunting with BP is totaly banned. Permit/license needed for all weapons fabricated after 1890, even matchlock muskets. All cartridge-weapons needs license. More than one (maybe two) of a certain type is almost impossible to get, for instance one smothboore flintlockmusket and one percussionpistol et.c.Permit needed for having Blackpowder in your home (for the moment no more permits

 

Thia appeared in today's local newspaper for the Winona, MN area but is obviously a state-wide issue.

Carry Permits Under Fire

 

KY has pretty decent state laws that are infringed by local ordenances. There is a concealed carry law, and state law says one can carry any weapon unconcealed.

Local police will arrest you on sight if they see a weapon of any kind.

Rolling hills of hardwood forest broken by pastureland.

Urban sprawl is normally restricted to the main transportation arteries. I live ten miles from the Cencinatti city limits, five minutes from I-75, in the midst of suburbia, and I can be "lost in the woods" in 10 minutes.

Problem is there is virtually no public land accessable to hunters. This is in spite of the fact that almost %20 of the state is included in wildlife management areas, wilderness areas or U.S. government facilities.

Most private land is posted or leased and one must have written permission on hand if stoped by officials while hunting. If you do not "know someone", have big money or own a big block of land you do not hunt.

Range facilities are not a problem with Friendship IN only 45 minutes drive east.

 

[BigCity]

Hey Mike Roberts,

Where did you live in Maryland? The closer you are to DC, the worse it is for hunting and having guns. I am in Carroll County and can hunt 30 minutes from my house on farmland. It is allin who you know to gain access to hunting sites.
John :redthumb:

 

[kodiakemt414]

Depend on what you are hunting. In VA the laws don't seem to get worse the closer to DC you are.

 

[Alberta Black]

Hi folks

I live and hunt in southern Alberta near the city of Calgary. From mid September to the end of November we can hunt white tails and mule deer about an hours drive from town. In December there is a special muzzeloader and shotgun hunt around the city and we have permission to hunt from the local land owners who are driven crazy by the deer. From mid December to the end of March it is rabbit season and we hunt snow shoes in the mountains and jack rabbits in the prairies. Ducks and upland birds go from mid September to the end of November. We have lots of waterfowl, Hungarian partridge and ruffed grouse. Pheasants are a put and take resource so I don't hunt them anymore.

My hunting party of three use an assortment of flintlock rifles and shotguns and some percussion pieces.

Gun laws are gun laws and no one likes them. In Canada everything has to be licenced except for antiques and flintlocks. Don't tell the government how well flintlocks work.

Except for the special season around Calgary and Edmonton in December the only other muzzeloader season is on a northern military base Camp Wainwright. This combines both traditional and in-line guns.

Alberta still has a rural tradition so it is very gun and hunting firendly. Often we find ourselves at war (morally) with the central part of our country. Because of the oil business we are also the most friendly province towards our American neighbours. I believe that Calgary has the largest population of American citizens than any other city in Canada.

AB

 

AB,
when did they start the ML SG season around the city???? when i lived in High River and worked in Okotoks, I lobbied fish and wildlife for that season and they said no chance. that was in 91-92. Glad to see that they came to thier sences. If you can imagine, the excuse they gave me at the time was that we couldn't have the first two weeks of dec because the bowhunters wanted that and we couldn't have the last two weeks of dec because the acreage owners said that hearing deer being shot would ruin their christmas. :shocking::shake:

Cody

 

[sprucefly]

I'm from Alaska so you know what the hunting is like. Also, we don't need no stinking permit to carry concealed.

 

[Alberta Black]

Cody

This season has been going for a few years and this is the first time that we have taken advantage of it. Saw lots of deer but no luck and no other hunters either.

As you know the bowhunters in Alberta are well organized and I suspect that they have something to do with keeping out a black powder/muzzelloader season that might run concurent with the Archery season or in the bow zone.

i also think that the performance of scoped inlines being so close to modern rifles that it may have caused some conern with Fish and Wildlife so they are reluctant to change the rules.

AB

 

[CG6018]

Riverrat did a fine job of describing our situation here in Pennsylvania concerning gun ownership and hunting. I came to PA in the 50's and have been an active bow-hunter, gun-hunter, and NRA advocate ever since. For the most part, PA is gun owner friendly; however, here in the southeastern part of the state, we seem to be coming under the liberal, anti-gun regulations filtering out of the Philadelphia area.
Four years ago, my grandson shocked his first grade teacher when he was asked who he'd vote for in the presidential election. He said, "George Bush, because Al Gore would like to take our guns." The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. The Second Amendment was America's original Home Land Security. :thumbsup:

 

[Birdwatcher]

I've been fortunate enough to spend major chunks of my life in three places; first England, then New York State, and then here in Texas. In England, for the non-rural non large-landowner (almost everybody) guns were essentially non-existent. I'm sure there must have been a few gun clubs but I never saw one. I still remember the fascination we felt as kids when a local young man would shoot his German air-powered pellet rifle in a local scrap(junk)yard. Hunting?? I'm sure there must have been some, but none that I was aware of.

New York State felt like quantum leap in space and freedom, miles and miles of State land. Vast expanses of sparsely populated rural areas, miles and miles of forests to hike through. And guns! As a teenager I was able to own a rifle and a shotgun with my parent's permission, and no Law Enforcement Officer presuming to step into our house to tell us how to store them.

Amazing though how what is the law quickly becomes the accepted norm. Handguns were few and far between, and it felt "normal" that anyone wanting one would have to go through a lengthy process, granted or not at the whim of the local Police Chief.

Hunting opportunities weren't bad though, even though the available public lands were crowded and said to be hazardous in hunting season.

Then on to Texas were _I_ could easily have a handgun too, and not just the criminals. A shock at first that handguns were about like popcorn poppers in the State; lots of folks had 'em. But once you assume freedoms, it becomes hard to imagine living without 'em. In Texas a handgun in the trunk is legal most anywhere, in the passenger compartment on long trips,and on the person while hunting and fishing. Plus there's a liberal "shall issue" concealed carry permit law.

In short, I can causally do stuff here that would send New York and British Lawmakers into absolute fits. Odd, I sure didn't feel any safer in England or in New York than I do now.

I still have family in New York, and it is a source of no little resentment to me that I can drive with a handgun in the trunk clear across the United States.... up until the New York State line. Whereupon, as others have pointed out, I would become an instant felon. In fact I am still subject to arrest even if I'm in transit to visit other family in Vermont. Vermont, where there ARE no guns laws to speak of, where myself or anyone legally entitled to own a firearm can carry concealed at whim. Guess what? absolutely no difference in crime rate between Vermont and adjacent areas of Upstate New York. Geeze! could it be that gun laws don't actually STOP CRIME???

Texas is still a gun-friendly state, but one thing it ain't got compared to New York where I was, or States out further west where I've been, is public lands availabel for hunting. Pretty much in Texas you're going to need a lease, which can easily amount to $1,000+ if you can afford to ante it up.

Birdwatcher

 

[guncobbler]

Virginia is a nice place to live if you are a gunowner or hunter. Living in the peoples republic of Arlington County smack up agaist Washinton DC we have the same rights to a shall issue Carry Permit that folks in the rest of the state have. It must irk our courthouse employees to no end. We are the only ones coming in with smiles to get our prints taken I have access to private and public land in both MD and VA but prefer to hunt deer 90 miles from home in a long valley that has lots of Nat Forest land and no houses. Suppose you could fire a modern rifle at 45 degrees and not worry about hitting too much. Wonderful empty country. Walk about a mile into the woods and 600 feet of elevation in the dark to my deer stand. Like to sit all day on a good stand and listen to the mice and chipmunks rustle in the leaves. Had a shrew pop out of the leaf litter and head for my lunch last year. Grew up in semi rural Mass where I had a wonderful time hunting or shooting. Have wanted to build guns since I was 8. A Dixie Gun Works catalog was all it took. What I miss in Virginia are the rabbits from the fields of old farms. I have lots of opportunity to hunt deer but would gladly trade some of that for a couple of days trailing behind a pack of beagles or walking them up on snow. Seriously looking at Vermont for a place to live when my contract with Uncle runs out GC

 

[graybeard]

As the guy from the UP said, Michigan is pretty good shooting country. Southeast Michigan (Detroit, Ann Arbor, etc.) is full of soccer moms and tree huggers, but the rest of the state is fine. We have a "shall issue" concealed pistol law. Most of the southern third of the state is lacking in public land, but not in game. Northward the lumber barons cut down all the white pine and never paid any taxes, so there are huge sections of tax-reverted public land. In the Lower Peninsula we are getting development all over the place, but there still are plenty of places to hunt and most people think hunting is normal. We have a special season for muzzleloaders, but it's in December and can get pretty chilly in a deer blind at dawn. A friend of mine said it was so cold one year the sparks from his flintlock froze and didn't thaw out and fire until 10 a.m. He is not considered a particularly reliable person. Graybeard :huh:

 

[musketman]

What is it like where you live? I don't mean the weather, but the gun laws and the hunting.

Here in North-East Ohio there are many corn fields and hardwood stands of timber, so the whitetail deer populations are really big...

The down side is that many of the young farmers are selling off their inherited land to developers for condos, so the total acreage is dwindling at a study rate...

 

[aragorn]

When I'm not in the UK and Europe working I live in rural southern Ontario on a hundred acres, half cultivated and half mixed wood and wetland. I don't hunt on our land, respecting my elderly mother's wishes (my parents bought the place as a wildlife haven), but if I did I would have a field day: large whitetail population (see them almost every day), plenty of rabbits, squirrels, etc. Also foxes, mink, ermine, skunk, opossum, occasional beavers, groundhogs, all manner of small rodents, snakes, snapping turtles, game birds etc. But we also have a 'varmint' population of super-sized racoons, occasional porcupines and a roving pack of wolf-sized coyotes (called Brush Wolves here), all of which are fair game esp as they are a real threat to our two English Shepherds - the racoons especially if cornered in the barn, but also the coyotes which will maul even mid-size dogs or kidnap them. We hear them yipping and howling almost every night, sometimes audaciously close when the dogs are inside as if taunting them. They often have mange and are a scourge on surrounding chicken farms. One day one of them will be in my sights. But at the moment I'm content with walking on our trails, hoping for varmint, and with my 80 yd range in our back woods, far enough away from neighbours for noise not to be an issue -luckily all the neighbouring properties shoot anyway.
As far as the law goes, I only shoot a flintlock longarm, so, according to Canadian law, neither own nor shoot a firearm. (Though because the bang sounds like a firearm, I could be visited by a Township official if it was Sunday or after dusk, when only varmint shooting is allowed - at which point I would show him it was a flintlock, and he would be forced to agree that I was not, in legal terms, shooting). The less said about that the better - supposedly it was to allow student re-enactors to continue carrying muskets in their summer jobs at historic sites, and can only have come from some legislator with only the haziest knowledge of what constitutes a gun. We can only applaud! Too bad the same sense didn't apply to the monstrous Canadian gun registry, a billion dollar scandal that has failed to have any impact on the main problem with Canadian gun crime, handgun use by inner city gangs, many of them recent immigrants (who don't acquire their guns legally or register them. Even nice dull Canadian criminals aren't that law-abiding. Duh).

 

[Ashby]

Birdwatcher made the first reference to a New England state. New Englanders first banded together in 1637. There was that militia thing in 1775. There was even a time when New York and New Jersey were 'attached' to New England but that is another story....

Even though there is still a New England fraternity the guns laws vary and although I can only speak to Massachusetts it appears the Northern states are gun friendly and the Southern states look a lot like New York.

In Massachusetts you need a license to carry (LTC) and the regulation are a pain.

 

[J.M.]

HI Ashby, I live in Mass too. Been here my whole 46 years.
Love to hunt and fish (salt and fresh) flyfish especially.
I guess I'm use to the gun laws, so they are no big deal. Had a LTC since I was 18. Very diverse place with lots of things to do. Small game seems to be dropping off as upland
land gets developed. Posting and development are the biggest problems I see for hunters, but that seems to be common in a lot of places. Deer are all over, ducks can be good hunting. Bird hunting in my neck of the woods is put and take for pheasant (does'nt bother my springer that they are not wild!) Probably going to do more deer and turkey hunting in the future as the populations are good. Still debating on a smooth flintlock for all around use. Always daydream about relocating, so this thread is interesting.