Doc

I'm still looking for the mythical unicorn.

Ha-ha..... It wouldn't surprise be to find that in the next deer management plan.

That one is easy. My Bother-in-law from Canada brought two of his work buddies down to hunt deer one year. real nice guys .... BUT.... We went up to my target range just to see that al the shotguns came through their trip ok. The older guy stepped up to shoot and ripped off 5 shots just as quick as he could pull the trigger. I gave my B.I.L a look like, "what the hell just happened", and before I could catch myself, those exact words came out .... lol. Apparently, he was raised in some province where they hunt with dogs, and that is the way they shoot at their deer. That was pretty scary stuff, and we assured him that we don't use dogs down here and the first shot is all we really worry about. eventually, we got him slowed down a bit. So then we all started taking turns, then went up to see what kinds of damage we had each done to our targets. We got half way to our targets and all of a sudden there was a loud BANG right behind us. We turned around and found the younger guy fiddling with his shotgun. He accidently touched off the trigger while the rest of us were on our way up to check the targets. So I turned around and pointed to the far hill across the valley and said that is where you guys will be hunting. My B.I.L. and I hunted our usual spots on the hill behind the house. And even at that, I wasn't exactly feeling safe being even that close to those two.

There is a good chance that the DEC is in the process of doing PETA's work for them. If hunters are not leaving the ranks fast enough, the DEC seems determined to speed the process along.

A lot of my trail cams are not even set in my deer hunting areas. I like to get pictures of other critters too. Ha-ha-ha.... kind of like setting out a trapline to see what you can catch. Foxes, coyotes, coons, mink, muskrats, etc. are what I use my trail cams for. And I am still hoping to get some pics of a bear. In the past I have gotten so many deer pictures and then found that just because I can get pics of them, doesn't mean that I will ever see them again. Heck it doesn't even mean that the are still in the area or ever will be again. This year, I have not needed cameras for deer scouting purposes. This tropical rain forest that the woods is turning into leaves some very clear mudded up deer trails to tell the story.

I am estimating that my normal draw-hold is right around 5 seconds as I steady the pin down on the target (deer). That I my practice session draw-sight-shoot cycle duration. So anything longer than that disrupts my perfect shooting cycle. When do I start losing form or start shaking? I guess I have never timed that, but there certainly does have to be some limiting time.

I understand what you are saying, and believe me, I know that I get entirely too excited about these things when you consider how many years I actually have left to bowhunt. I know that I am staring at the final couple years of my participation. It probably is a bit silly for me to worry that much about what bow season is turning into. But unfortunately, I do get worried that the future of an activity that has meant so much to me over all these decades is being eroded piece by piece into something that I don't even recognize anymore. It's hard to watch all the gains that bowhunters fought so hard to establish being dismantled by some forced, whacked-out, DEC ideas of a weird half-bred version of a bow/gun season that basically destroys so much of what bowhunting is all about. I guess it's just human nature to try to preserve something that has always been the focus of so much of my life. I am not likely to change, so I keep on fighting, even if it really is a losing fight.....lol.

Pretty darn consistent poll. They don't usually come out all that unified.

Having had a small stroke (no lasting effects), I try to compromise between pure walking, and riding. I live at the base of what I have nick-named "Cardiac hill". We did lose a neighbor to a heart attack on that hill, so it is aptly named. So unless I am still-hunting my way up the hill, I take the ATV. I drive to just under the ridge of the hill and park and then start walking quite a ways back in. In the pre-dawn hours, that keeps me from getting all sweated up, and the machine is silent for at least a half hour while I quietly go up over the lip of the hill and back to my stand up on the level hilltop. The last couple of years, I have used the ATV for taking the deer off the hill when possible. During gun season, we usually have a bit of snow on the ground, and that makes the hill a bit treacherous for ATVs. It can and has turned into a bobsled. So when there is too much snow, I just take a very slow, post daybreak still-hunt up the killer hill and across the top. I don't have any problem with the use of ATVs, even for the youngsters as long as it doesn't interfere with someone else's hunt.

Oh come on. Where's your sense of fun. Don't you like the carnival atmosphere where you get all dressed up in your blaze orange finery wave at all the guys as they stumble past your stand? Look, your getting too hung up on all the skill and challenge of actually studying the habits of an un-stressed herd and trying to pattern the natural movements of deer and trying to figure out how to set up a harvest through outsmarting the critter. Let all the other hunters do the work for you. It will be like one huge all-day drive where you can test out your shooting skills at the panicked deer dashing by. Gee, doesn't that sound like fun?

Probably shouldn't be patting too many coyotes on the head over being such good friends for the bird population until they check with the turkey population out there ....lol. Yeah, the kitty population has been long known to be the scourge of the bird populations. But it isn't only the ones that have gone wild. I suspect that the domestic tabby that always shows up at home each day gets his share of birds as well. Pet owners who think it is great to let their pets run free, seldom think of the efficiency of these exceptional predators.

So now an already faulty harvest reporting system will be made even more unreliable as bowhunters turn in all kinds of doe take successes that never really happened, just to satisfy the DEC's secret bowhunter harvest goals.

Unfortunately, that is not the way the plan is actually laid out. When the bowhunters are unable to make the secret goals of the DEC, they will take that opportunity to insert a muzzleloader season into bow season. That is likely the goal since about decade ago, they tried to do that. This likely is their backdoor route to get what they wanted. Apparently we are not supposed to be smart enough to spot that.

Eddie- It's not whether I can get a doe or even a buck that has me upset. It is simply the stupidity of the change, and the fact that the DEC seems to be going out of their way to single out bowhunters with the responsibility of maintaining deer population management (or else!). Their current attitudes toward bowhunters indicates that they really have a problem with bowhunters occupying some premium season time and intend to change that situation, which of course cannot bode well for anyone who enjoys the change of pace that bowhunting provides. I too have a pile of days to fill the freezer, but still the shoddy treatment and strong-arm tactics being used on bowhunters is pretty irritating to me. And so, I am not ok with it.

So, how do they justify whining about the overpopulation crisis and then lowering the number of permits? That really doesn't make sense. The words don't match the actions.

I was trying to find last year's permit allocations for these WMUs and was unsuccessful. I suspected this might be the case but was unable to get ahold of the data. They have lost all credibility as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, the new regulations are not assumptions. They are indeed fact, and the bowhunters and muzzleloaders are being singled out as the sole population control with some nasty threats being leveled by the DEC if they fail to do the impossible. Those are public declarations without any need for assumptions. They are documented facts and actual regulation changes that anybody can take as a reason for bitching or a reason to applaud. By the way, something that occurred to me just now, is that the only ones that should be upset by all this is the bowhunters only, because if the muzzleloaders hold back on doe harvests, they will be rewarded with a brand new early muzzleloader season. It a no-lose situation for them, and they should be applauding this situation. Sorry, a bit of a side-thought that just popped into my mind.

Generally, the older I get, the later I get on stand.....lol. During bow season, if I can time it exactly right, I will get on my stand a few minutes before legal shooting time. I get a quieter entrance, and do not have deer trying to walk over me prior to when I can shoot. That's important because I use ground stands. Opening day of gun, I have a spot that generally gets me at least a doe opening morning and quite frequently a buck. It is one of those escape routes that deer use when the guys come up the hill from the state parking lot. Its about as close to being a guaranteed spot as I have ever seen. I generally am on stand there at least an hour before the first sign of light, armed with a flashlight to alert approaching hunters that I am there. After opening day, I become a still-hunter and whenever I happen to naturally wake up, that starts my day.

You want us to read minds and establish motives. We do not have enough information to establish the motives behind why they chose to put the deer population management on only the backs of the bowhunters and muzzleloaders. So there is no "yes" or "no" answer. I'm not sure why that is such a hard concept for you to understand. You may not like that answer, because it doesn't validate your assumptions, but really that is the answer. No hate card, just my opinion. So try to control yourself when I offer the opinion that you asked for.

I already have. Try to pay attention and keep up. Repeating one more time for those that are having trouble understanding, the real options for cutting deer populations lie in the more efficient gun season, if the population cuts really are the goal. Pretty simple concept actually.

I think I heard Hurst say that this doe only archery experiment where bowhunters are mandated to manage the deer population, will go for two years and then the next phase of an early muzzleloader season will be implemented when bowhunters fail to satisfy the DEC with proper deer population numbers. So we have two years before a lot of those items happen. They are using the deer population to drive all the items on their wish-list that they have wanted for years.

It does seem like there I a whole lot of thought being given these days in ways to establish non-hunting ways of controlling wildlife populations. We have always felt very secure in the thought that hunting is needed to reliably control populations of various species. But now it seems that hunters are not up to the task. Hunter numbers are slipping. Hunter enthusiasm and effort may also be slipping and now we have documentation that some areas are not being controlled. And so it has occurred to me that society is now looking at hunting as a necessary evil to be put up with only until an acceptable alternative is found. There seems to be a lot of people working on these alternative ways, and perhaps it is just a matter of time before they find, or think they have found, a population management technique that works better than hunters. Is the tolerance and even protection of coyotes part of this? Is this crazy talk about introducing mountain lions and wolves part of this as well? I have heard that the efficiency of these critters is pretty high, particularly when it comes to cervids. Maybe they are more efficient than we hunters are.

Pay attention to all that crap. You might just be able to open up your mind and understand what is likely happening right in front of your eyes or at least get a new perspective on what is happening. I know that is inconvenient, but don't be so darned eager to drink that DEC kool-aid that you refuse to examine other alternative opinions.

But apparently from some of the comments that I have read on this thread, that is a bowhunter phenomenon only. Gun hunters don't have that affliction at all .... lol. I guess that must be what the DEC believes, and we bowhunters will be flogged until we learn the proper hunting motivations and behavior.

Your assumption attempts to make sense of an idiotic, illogical plan. You are pretending to understand their motives with that assumption. I can take that same information in the light of their long-standing desire to hand over parts of bow season to muzzleloaders, and come up with other scenarios and motives for them placing the burden of herd population management on the backs of archers only. I have little respect remaining for the DEC's intellect, but I believe there reasons for placing the impossible task on bowhunters is to justify the implementation of deer hunting with firearms inside of bow seasons by setting bowhunters up for logical failure. And yes that in their minds will cause more does to be taken in what used to be bow season. The real difference in our two assumptions is that you believe that there really is something bowhunters can do about it. I am facing up to the more likely reality that they have no intention of declaring us successful. They want that muzzleloading season in the bowhunting time slot ..... period, and you can kill all the does you want, and they will declare your failure. We differ in assumed motives and outcomes. Are you wrong? Only time will tell.