Doc

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.

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.