Doc

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.

The most important lesson to be learned is that there are right and wrong ways to conduct a blood-trailing session, but even when done expertly, there are no guarantees. Lesson number two is that nobody knows everything about deer hunting, and each day afield only serves as another lesson and even the failures serve to educate for the next time. So no time should be wasted with self-pity, or excessive frustration, or destructive negative feelings. Simply accept that you have been taught a lesson from the school of hard knocks and commit what has been learned toward doing a better job next time. Lesson number three is that no matter how convincing detractors may sound, no one has all the answers. And if they are trying to tell you that they do, it's time to start listening to someone else. And the final lesson, is to take any criticism in the vein that it is given. Hopefully there is nothing personal, but if someone has noted a mistake that you have made and pointed it out, weigh the info and if it sounds like constructive advice, use it. It serves no one to recognize a mistake and not say anything about it. These are all points that should be forwarded to the shooter.

And so, who else would be the "motorist" stakeholder that the DEC listed?

The guy came within 80 yards of the carcass. From that I am very sure that he didn't even do the necessary fundamental circles or grid search that is the necessary end to a long blood-tracking job. So he may have done a terrific job of blood trailing, but did not finish it off with the most important part which would have yielded his deer. As for hunter #2, no one has said anything that indicates any intention of claiming it as his own kill. Like I said above, a lot of us collect sheds, antlers, skulls and other items found while out in the woods. Such a hobby or collection does not mean that anyone is claiming the remnants as something they harvested themselves. There simply is personal value to collecting such things. So hunter # 1 may be the one responsible for it being there, but hunter # 2 was the one responsible for actually turning it into something useful. I say offer the guy the opportunity to take pictures and perhaps score it if that's important to him and then put it back with the rest of your antler collection and enjoy it as much as any other item in your collection.

Not to be too critical, but when it turned out that the deer was found 80 yards from the last blood, It sure does strike me as a less than adequate job of tracking. It doesn't matter how much effort was put in prior to losing the blood, those final circles that are really part of a tracking job, should have been done and would have yielded the carcass. In most stretches of woods I can almost see a deer at 80 yards. Certainly with any kind of gridwork, it wouldn't take a whole lot of time to find a deer that was only 80 yards away. That whole situation probably never would have happened if the blood-trailing techniques had had that last final search activity. Quite often that loss of blood sign is an indicator of failing blood pressure indicating that the carcass is not really all that far away. In my mind, failing to do a complete job of blood trailing, the issue of possession goes to the guy that stumbled onto it.

If deer are dipping into your pocketbook, and you let that influence your opinion while serving as a CTF stakeholder, then I would call that an anti-deer bias. I think all of the financial interests that Cornell has established as members (stakeholders) of these CTFs could also be properly called anti-deer biased members. In the one narrow example that you noted, that matter really has no business being a decision of laymen. At one time that decision was made by educated biologists, but now they apparently have seen fit to hand over their responsibilities to laymen who have nothing more than self-serving uneducated "opinions". It doesn't become a question of whether a single isolated decision happened to come out correctly or not. It is the whole process that is flawed. We maintain a Department of Environmental Conservation to expertly study, recommend, and administer true scientific biological principles, not to hand it all over to the financial interests businesses to establish whatever is best for their pocketbooks. The DEC was never intended to simply be a "technical advisor" to a panel of entrepreneurs. And yet, here we are. That is exactly what they have carved out as their reason for being. That entire system stinks and is simply a method of shirking their responsibility and hand the decision-making over to a panel of squeaky wheels.

Yes, I assume that's what they mean by the stakeholders they called "Motorists". And of course they are hoping to come up with numbers that would exterminate deer. Also, we understand what "Farmers" want as far as deer numbers (I don't blame them). And when it comes to "foresters", I'm sure they have no use for deer. They have others that I have no clue about, such as The tourism industry, small businesses, conservationists. I am not even sure how they rate being a stakeholder. But the one thing that seems to stick out is that we seem to have game management by financial interest, and they are really quite blatant about that. It's peculiar that the DEC and their educated biologists are not considered stakeholders, but instead are relegated to a rather passive role as technical advisors.

Yes we see a lot of that mentality in government these days. If someone can imagine a negative scenario ..... Ban it! We see a lot of that in gun control mentality. Get rid of all things that have a potential for negative use or results. Kind of like guilty until proven innocent.....lol.

There is yet another possible reason for deer numbers shrinking. That reason is explained on the DEC page on Citizen task Forces. http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/7207.html The use of Task Forces have been part of a major effort to involve New Yorkers in the process of determining appropriate deer population sizes. CTFs are a committee of stakeholders who are asked to contact as many people as practical from their stakeholder group in order that they may gain an accurate perspective of their groups opinion of the deer population within the WMU. Task force recommendations are used to guide deer management actions in each WMU. Adult female harvest quotas, for example, are based on the relationship between the actual population trend and the population goal in each WMU. The number of Deer Management Permits (DMPs) available to hunters is, in turn, based on the adult female harvest quota each year. Stakeholders are people affected by deer who have a particular concern or interest in the overall population of deer in a WMU. Farmers, hunters, foresters, conservationists, motorists, the tourism industry, landowners, small business, etc., are all considered as potentially distinct stakeholder groups. DEC deer biologists serve only as technical advisors to the task force. -STOP- Look at that list of stakeholders again. These are the people behind planned deer densities and harvest targets. Break that list down into two categories: Pro-deer and anti-deer. Perhaps you can see as well as I can the bias in that group. It turns out that the so-called “stakeholders” have been running the show since 1990. Not the DEC, but rather this small, potentially biased, committee within the DEC. Perhaps we have the foxes in charge of the henhouse.

There are a lot of us that have collections of found antlers, and there is some feelings of ownership when you add another antler or skull to your collection. I have seen some pretty impressive collections of found antlers, and I'm sure the guy that found those was very happy to add that rack to his collection. Yeah, I can see where you might have a problem parting with it regardless of the story of failure behind it. In all respects, that deer was totally lost and the guy that found it was responsible for giving the thing any value of ownership that it might have. If it had not been found by guy #2, the thing would have become rodent food. So the only guy that reduced that deer to possession was the guy that found it.

One other thing that you might want to add to your list is the possibility that the DEC has absolutely no idea how many deer are out there and are just winging it with some occasional years of offering too many antlerless permits for the size of the population. A few years of that nonsense, and sure as hell you will be hearing some unanimous negative reports and results.

Here is the problem. I have had people pop out of the bushes dressed completely in camo (face paint and all). Today's camo is super effective, and a guy sitting in amongst some downed tree limbs and such is indeed virtually "invisible". These people have pulled this "gotcha" trick on very busy state property on opening day. And how they ever made it in and out of the woods alive can only be attributed to luck. They are gambling their lives on luck, or as nyantler said so well, they "made killing a deer more important than safety". Am I a believer in blaze orange as an absolutely necessary piece of safety equipment? .... I am fanatic about it !

So now the way the law reads, if you happen to come across some pigs that are ripping up your yard, crops, shrubs, or food plots, all you can do is wave at them and wish them well and send them on their way to breed and multiply and become a real problem, while the DEC sits in their office unaware that there is anything to worry about. It is amazing to hear them cry poverty about their shortage of manpower and all, and out of the other side of their mouths comes the claim that they have time to conduct personal trap and hunt activities that hunters could help with. Well, my question is, that if they really do have the resources to conduct such trapping expeditions, where are the numbers that show that they really are capable of exterminating these invasive critters. I don't want to hear some years later an apology for over-estimating their abilities to handle the situation without hunter help. That shrug of the shoulders and embarrassed expression on their faces is not going to put the genie back in the bottle if they are wrong.

Yes, that was my point. There seems to be a whole lot of government activity these days that focus on being "proactive" even without any science backing them up. When was it proven that urine transmits CWD? Being proactive has become the code word for "now that we have a panic to work with, let's quick slip all these agenda items through under the guise of being proactive". We see it all the time in the gun control world. My view of all this is that we do not try to put businesses out of business simply based on unproven, unscientific hunches under the pretense of being proactive. That works well as long as we are not the ones being involved in those businesses, but I believe in an individual's right to conduct business until it is proven that such business is harmful..... not guessed that it is harmful.

As long as we are into a guessing mode, I would put my money on the fact that nocturnal movement is caused by the fact that they are getting shot at and there is a huge home invasion underway by all the orange critters taking over the woods. Warm ... hot .... cold .... frigid, probably doesn't really enter into it unless perhaps when you hit extreme record numbers that have the critters laying down and panting to breathe. It occurs to me that deer down south eat, and it isn't always nighttime either. Out west you get the sun burning down so intense that humans can't hardly stand it. And yet it is not necessary for hunters to use lights at night to do their hunting. So I have to believe that temperatures are not really a factor at all and the nocturnal situation is due to a more obvious reason of safety more than a need for comfort.

Actually, these shows have become non-stop infomercials as the peddle one product after another. Even the hunting parts of the program are being blended with close-ups of various logos, and special attention to listing and labeling each miniscule item and gadget used during the hunt. Its never anything instructive or anything that adds to the story being portrayed on the show ...... just blatant, unabashed advertising. I can't even say that they are even clever about it anymore as the hawk their wares. But then that's where the money and desperation come from that drive these illegalities that are becoming common-place in the headlines, and making hunters in general look like unprincipled outlaws killing animals at any cost and without restraint. It's not the sort of thing that will strengthen hunting as more and more hunters drop out in disgust.