Doc

BUT ........ All that may be true for appliances and such, but I have not forgotten back when it was rare to see a car that had 100,000 miles on it. I remember when the guy at Grossmans put that pallet of shingles down through the bed of my Ford pick-up because all that was left there was the paint. I remember when almost every vehicle on the road had those rusty lace rocker-panels. Remember the cars of the 70's. I used to see a lot of duct tape and baling wire. Yeah, the quality is pretty darn good on some things. It seems like quality can be a just a marketing buzzword depending on what part of the cycle you happen to be living in. Look at all those Ford 8Ns that still are in use today. Those people understood quality back then. And then they figured out how to cheapen things up. Remember how Japanese products were synonymous with crap? And then it was the Japanese who kicked our butt with their emphasis on quality and eventually were teaching the concept back to us. Emphasis on quality is an ever-changing mindset. And unfortunately household appliances seem to be on the downside of quality today.

Is there really anything more exciting than standing on the ground, eyeball to eyeball with a deer (any deer), knowing that the slightest screw-up will lose the opportunity for you? I have had deer so close on the ground that I could have reached out and touch them. Now that is some exciting stuff that will get that old heart racing ..... lol. And then there is the fact that you have to get the bow up, drawn and sighted all of this without him seeing you or any o that movement .... right there on his level. Man it doesn't get much more intense than that. And that all sums up the very reason I am out there with the stupid bow. There are no guarantees right up to the point where you roll him over to star the gutting. "Intense" .... Yeah, that's the right word.

Ok, I cannot comment on all of this until all 157 pages are read. I'll be back. Scanning the material, it looks like an all-out war on deer is being launched in NYS. The effort to eliminate deer in NYS is now not only the agenda of the DEC, but also the USDA and the Department of fish and wildlife along with all of the interests of the Citizen Task Forces. This ain't a good time to be a whitetail .... lol.

They have a small book of excuses that they keep for years when the harvest is down. They will just fish around in there and find one that they believe everyone will swallow .... lol. Sorry, I guess I'm just getting old and cynical, but I have seen a lot of these "stories".

They are trying their hardest to change that little feature of bowhunting as much as possible .... lol.

Not to mention that the critters would have had their way with the carcass (including the cape).

Well, the dispute is not over the cape. It is the antlers that the hunter #2 took home. If the original hunter wants the cape, it is probably still there rotting away.....lol. But of course, even that would not be available if it were not for the fact that hunter #2 actually found it. The thing for hunter #1 to do is to be satisfied that he even found out the fate of the deer that he shot and lost and let the antler collector add his find to his collection without harassment.

The grass does always seem greener on the other side of the fence doesn't it? .... lol. Yes, I can jump in my car and drive all over the nation or maybe even Canada to find a few extra inches of bone, or I can step out my back door and climb the hill and try to take the best animal available right there. Heck, if all I am interested in is something to hang on the wall, I can pony up the bucks to head for one of these guaranteed canned hunt kind of places where they provide genetically constructed build-a-buck trophies, and put all those Ohio or whatever bucks to shame. Is the easiest hunt the best for everyone? Apparently to the author of this article it is. Sorry, but I think I am intelligent to figure out the hunting area that best suits all of my needs and wants. I don't need someone else to figure out what kind of hunt that I need and what I am supposed to be setting as goals and measures of success.

Absolutely it is a part of a natural process. Life and death are natural acts in nature, and once a deer has been lost, it becomes carrion, and part of nature's waste, antlers and all. There is no difference how or why it became part of natures waste or got to where it got. It has been reduced to decaying natural resources, absolutely no different from the rest of the rotting carcass and truly the same as a shed or old dried up skull and antlers from a earlier year and is legitimately available to the finder with all legal and logical and moral rights to it. I have a rather extensive collection myself of the same kinds of natural forest remnants and I also have included in that collection skulls with antlers attached or separated. It's all the same kind of stuff. That hunter lost any claim to it the minute he permanently abandoned the trail. At least that's the way I see it.

Not something to eat, but this item kind of goes along with the tone of the conversation .... lol. http://www.walkingequipment.com/440.html

I was watching a show the other night on "The Last Alaskans" or something like that. The guy came across a frozen shrew laying in the middle of the trail. Apparently it came out from under the snow and tried to cross the trail to the other side. The temp was 30 or 40 degrees below zero, so when he left the insulation of the snow and was exposed, he pretty much instantly froze to death right in the middle of the trail. Snow is a great insulator and is responsible for a lot of things surviving the winter in fine shape. It's likely that ticks are also an example of snow's insulating value.

I sit in a tree and make a noise like an acorn..........sorry, I couldn't help myself.

It seems to me that once the animal has been reduced to non-edible carrion, it is no longer a "harvest", but simply a search of antlers. The only salvageable part of the find is the antlers, so the shooter is no longer looking for a deer. ....just the antlers. At that point the antlers become the same as sheds and whoever finds them gets the ownership.

So, I guess that a picture of the deer wearing sunglasses and a cowboy hat and a cigarette stuck in it's mouth probably isn't what is being talked about here .....right?

I have a 1000' driveway through a swampy thicket in front of the house. I have learned not to walk down that driveway during gun season without a gun, even if it is just to get the mail. One time I went down to get the mail and looked over to the side to see a huge 8-point hunkered under a huge pile of grape vine about 30 yards away, looking at me. I kept walking, un-shouldering my gun stopped and pivoted and shot him right in his bed. He was convinced that I would not see him, and held tight as he probably had done dozens of times before. What he didn't count on was the first snow of the year and he really stuck out like a sore thumb with that white background. So yes, I am sure that sitting tight is a proven defense to them. And when it seems that all the deer have found some big hole in the ground, chances are that they have just successfully found some thicket where they know (or think) they cannot be seen, and they will simply let you sneak right on by.

Actually the problem is that a lot of people judge hunting across the state by what they see in their own tiny hunting areas. I believe there are places where winter could likely have decimated the herd. I believe there are areas of NYS where for all kinds of reasons, the deer are getting under-hunted. I also believe that DEC successes at making proper guestimates and remedial actions are not all as accurate as they could be, producing over and under-population circumstances. About the only correct assessment about the NYS deer populations is that it will differ wildly by region, by WMU, by township, by one parcel of property to the next. And that is why we hear claims of deer shortages being immediately followed by the replies that say, "Gee, everything is great here". The implication being that the first guy is wrong, or perhaps he's just not as great a hunter or as observant as the second guy. The fact is that both are likely correct about their little patch of hunting ground and neither has any bearing on the other's observations.

The winter is still early. This wouldn't be the first winter that people have been weeping about not having their white Christmas. As I recall, most of those other brown Christmases eventually made up for the warm temperatures and the lack of snow (and then some).

Lol ...... It's funny how hunters all became stupid this year. Maybe next year everybody will get smart again and the harvest numbers will come back up. I do find all the theories entertaining, but it just might be that there really are fewer deer this year..... lol.

A word of advice ........ LOOK UP. All the deer are in the tree-tops, bear-hugging the tops of the trees where hunters never think to look. Where else could they be?

Well, like I said, I know nothing about the insurance industry, but just applying logic, makes me wonder why they or any other stakeholder interests that might be traveling under a "motorist" category would be a pro-deer segment of any CTF. I'm thinking cars and deer are not a very friendly coupling ..... lol. And that was my original point. So whether this "motorist" category is insurance companies or AAA or whatever, I cannot see any way that anyone representing the motorists would be pushing for more deer. And so I see that category aligning with the rest of the anti-deer financial interests on the CTFs. At any rate I don't want this insurance company discussion taking away from my original point that the deer density numbers, and the remedial population-cutting antlerless tag numbers has moved under the control of a handful of financial interests, many of which have strong monetary motives to see the populations as low as the public will stand for. The DEC (the ones that our tax and fee money hires), has stepped aside and only plays an passive advisory capacity in the deer population deciding body. Deer population control doesn't really relate to carrying capacity anymore but instead is all about which financial entities can gain the most influence in these committees. So whenever I hear the DEC crying about the burgeoning deer populations, all I hear is that the money interests of the state are tightening their grip within these CTFs.

Tim Allen ...... Very funny man!

I do wonder how likely that it is that northern states will ever see over-running populations of wild hogs given our climate. There has to be some reason why they haven't simply migrated here on their own and established themselves to the extent they have in the southern states. I am not questioning their abilities to live in this climate (Russian Boars live in Siberia), but perhaps that wild out-of-control breeding cycles or successes are impacted in some way by the colder climate..... Just wondering

Damn! I hope not. I have shelves full of racks, antlers, pieces of antlers, animal skulls, etc. that I have been collecting for decades since I was a kid, and there are no tags for any of them. These are just little oddities and items of interest that I pick up whenever I find them in the woods. No tag or licenses ever involved. I know I have seen threads on this site, and other forums about guys that collect sheds, with some even having trained dogs for such activities, and I am sure none of them ever have tagged any of them. It is a bona fide collection activity that a lot of people engage in. Tags for antlers? Not that I'm aware of. The fact is that I have whole wall mounts that I would never be able to find tags for.

How many past years do you recall when there was concerned speculation about a "brown Christmas"? I recall quite a few of them. I am sure that they will assess this fall as having some warmer than normal weather, but I'll also bet that it will only be a matter of a few degrees. Probably not enough for impacting the harvests at all.

Well, I'll have to take your word for the fact that you have inside information and can speak for the insurance industry at a administration level, but I'll also have to wonder why the DEC included that "motorist" stakeholder category. Logic would tell me that the insurance industry might be a hugely competitive business where each company fights to keep every penny of premiums as low as they possibly can. That of course would provide plenty of motive to eliminate as many payouts as possible. But I also have to admit that I have not had any dealings with insurance management people, so I have no first hand knowledge regarding whether they cheerfully pay out damages for auto/deer collisions.