Doc

Yeah a lot depends on the context. If you are talking about a deer hunting big woods, it may be more food and cover related. If you are talking hiking or camping, I have seen some "big woods" locally that could give anyone a very wilderness type atmosphere and the feeling of alone-ness. And then there was the "big woods" of Northern Ontario Canada where we went moose hunting. None of the trees were big, but it was a big woods. The features there were that there was no sound at all (not even an airplane) that wasn't a naturally caused sound. And absolutely no light that came from this planet. Some might call a big woods anything that you could dangerously get lost in (as in never found). It's all about what you are going to use it for and how "big" you consider big....lol. It is more of a perception than an actual definable thing.

What? ...... No classical enthusiasts? How about some War of 1812 Beethoven stuff by any good orchestra. That would make a great concert. Opera?? ... well that might be going a bit far ..... lol.

Yeah, I'm afraid we may be operating with less than 1/2 of the story. Unfortunately by the time we get the rest and see the results and how they really intend to use these buck management zones, it will be set in stone.

Not really, just keeping a close eye on what the DEC is doing for or to us. Seems like a reasonable thing to do these day, or any days.

Rock: Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Frankie Valley Actually, pick up any 1960's oldies collection, and I could pick out a pile of them that I would like to hear. Bee Gees, Ray Charles, Aaron Neville would be great too. Country: Merle Haggard, Hank Williams Sr., Josh Turner Instrumental: Al hirt, Dave Brubeck, Harry James, Glen Miller

I have to admit that I can't really imagine the actual details of how they are going to use these so-called "buck management units". I find it difficult to believe that you can effectively manage one unique segment of the herd by gender. But, maybe that's because I haven't seen a description that is better than just a bunch of generalities. We'll see what the actual use of these new units bring.

Yes, as you do, my first thought is the Adirondacks with undeveloped, forever wild, unused, heavy old-growth trees. Hardly great deer habitat but capable of holding some very old deer. However, from a deer hunting perspective, I also think of large unbroken tracts of mature timber that can be found in the more southern areas of the state (even western NY). Yeah there might be a house here and there, but little to no agriculture, and again with not a whole lot of deer browse. We do have a lot of that kind of habitat in NYS, and in fact the northeast part of the country, as family farms continue to disappear. It's some pretty tough deer hunting, with conditions that a lot of New Yorkers don't understand or even know about.

Yes, as I said, trophyism is just one item in a long list of emotional items that the antis use to beat us over the head with. If you want to know the most effective tool in the Anti-hunting arsenal, I would think it is hunting imagery. It is a powerful weapon to stir emotions to their max. It is something that we should use more frequently. We argue logic, encyclopedic stats, and mind-numbing facts and figures until whoever we are talking to begins to stare off into space in a semi-conscious, coma-like condition. I wonder what would happen if somebody dragged out that video that we had here recently of the starving doe that could hardly hold it's head up and was obviously in excruciating pain. Or how about a fox that has disgusting matter crusting over its eyes. Or maybe a raccoon staggering around with rabies or diphtheria. Perhaps old pictures of that deer yard over at Honeoye where a field was littered with mounds of snow-covered dead deer, or the starving deer barely standing with that blank stare that won't even move out of the road. Or how about the good old video of the moose that is being torn to shreds by wolves piece by piece. And on and on. These are all very emotional and riveting images that show that there is no such thing as a critter simply dying of old age, peacefully in its bed, in the wild. It puts the fate of wild critters a bit more into focus and shows that the lucky ones are those harvested during hunting season. Want to shut an anti up? ..... just pack your cell-phone full of those images to show them the alternative to hunting. Never mind the facts and figures and stats and studies. They just tune out with those things. Use their own tactics against them. Work their emotions for a change.

I don't have a problem with it. It just is not my purpose for being out there as I said.

Do you really believe that one particular gender of the herd can be managed separately without interactive consideration? I'm not sure that it is even possible to manage deer according to gender. And, I don't think you ever manage one without impacts to the other. So to say that it has nothing to do with doe management is really incorrect. And I am sure that you cannot manage bucks without concepts of "population management" being involved. So that part of your statement is incorrect also.

We really do know how this is all going to turn out. We will ride all this out for as long as possible as the noose of public opinion tightens around hunting and we continue to lose participants. Some like myself will make it to the end of our natural lives, but other younger hunters will tire of the increasing limits, regulations, and complex restrictions thrown on our backs by ourselves and the growing intolerance of the public. Trophyism? That's not even a blip on the radar of public opinion. It is only one more of the many overwhelming emotional arguments that the ever growing and heavily financed anti-hunting organizations are pedaling. Eventually what we call hunting will become the activity of only the most wealthy among us as public repudiation and over-regulation strangles the rest of us. The trophy instincts will actually be the last to die as that is the only motivation that will sustain the obscene amounts of money and the tolerance of irritating over-regulation that it will take to participate. Gloomy outlook? .... you bet. But I want somebody else to explain a logical more positive outlook for us. I am looking for a more positive scenario, but I'll be damned if I can see one.

Great opportunity for a creative entrepreneur. A new product for the hunting market .....ADD-A-POINT. A deer antler point with a lag-screw point on it. In a bind? Deer down that isn't quite up to legal requirements? Buy Add-A-Point for only $19.95 and convert that deer to one you can be proud of. Never go afield without it!

That's pretty much it for me too. I run through the list of "wants" and "don't wants" when the opportunity presents itself. I would like to think that I have the ability to pick a deer, and hunt it until I get it, but that seldom really happens. Most of the bigger bucks that I have gotten was at the very first time I had ever laid eyes on them. I can't lay a lot of skill on many of them and have to chalk it up to dumb luck.

Sure, I get it. I'm not out there to watch deer walk by. Will have venison in the freezer, and whether it has some huge rack on its head or not, I will still expect to have venison. I will say that I don't have all the nice crop land that a lot of people have. It is a form of mature woods hunting and I don't have the luxury of sitting there saying to myself, "Oh gee, does that one score enough or do the other dozen deer that will be walking by today have more points ..... decisions ....decisions". It is deer killing not deer watching.

Yeah, use your crayons or use common sense if you choose, whatever. But don't try to tell me that you can add a secondary overlaid redundant system of zoned management without cost increases. Basically they will be using region sized zones instead of WMUs. One would think that if that were adequate for bucks, they could save a pile of money by managing does in those same huge areas. I want to offer an example that will clarify my point. This recent regulation that they have been tossing around about declaring the 1st 2-weeks of bow season to be doe only, based on size of doe populations in out-of-control areas. If they declare that a buck management decision, it could wind up applying to a whole lot of land areas than the target WMU. Now I'm not sure that they will declare that a buck management decision or not, but that does point up the potential kinds of problems to hunters of wildly expanding the management zone size for bucks and how it may impact WMUs that can not afford that kind of restriction. In other words, just like any kind of expansion of zones. you start working your way back to inappropriate regulations on areas that shouldn't be affected. AR regs also may impact WMUs that can't support them just because some of the included WMUs can. If these huge zones are used to determine where AR is to be applied, it very well may turn out that some of the WMUs with those huge buck zones have zero or very few available antlerless permits. The impact on hunters is obvious. I see conflicts of buck management with doe management simply because you have two conflicting systems at work on the same land. Staying with the WMU zones for buck management allows a flexibility to declare individual WMUs to be AR, depending on local situations and conditions, which makes a whole lot more sense to me. Actually the individual WMU AR locations shows very well how WMUs can be used for buck management. I'm sure that conflicts will not be limited to only these examples. Such is the nature of maintaining two systems for the same land. And all for no reason. Everyone thinks that complication involves a solution ...... It doesn't. You have a system, use it! It is not designed only for does. It can work for bucks as well as does (imagine that).

And, in fact it sounds like we are indeed losing the WMU management system for bucks. It sure does seem a bit convoluted to be managing the whole herd with one system, and bucks with another separate and additional system. And you are claiming all this comes for less dollars? I don't know how familiar you are with the current WMU system and the history of it, but those exact same words of regionality, contiguous and common habitat and land use were used when they spent all that time and energy designing up that system. Supposedly they were formed to eliminate management rules made in the Catskills and Adirondacks being inappropriately applied here in Western NY and vice-versa. I mean this isn't the first time they considered all of these things. All that was accounted for when they set up WMUs and regions. How many times does the wheel have to be re-invented? And now for bucks, we go back to square one with regions so huge that you cannot avoid running wildly divergent habitats and population densities and hunting pressures together. The current system is DEC staffed, understood by hunters and already takes in regional uniqueness even better than what is proposed. To me it is just another set of rules and new boundaries to further confuse hunters and maybe draw a little more fine money. Quote: "If you dont understand how it is less expensive to manage 9 zones vs 89 WMUs, especially when there is no need to, well I dont know what to tell you." Well maybe you can figure out a way to explain the new math that makes it cheaper to manage the existing 89 units for the entire herd (We both agree that they aren't going anywhere) and then overlay another 9 units on top with assumedly some corresponding increases in staff to somehow manage bucks separately ....and I am supposed to believe this is a cost savings? They also already have decades of data gathered and in the computers that are all defined by WMU. As far as the bucks are concerned, all that stuff starts over from the beginning with new boundaries. Where is the savings? Stop a second and logically think about that and I think you might begin to catch on to why I am confused. I know that I tend to get a bit long with some of these explanations, but it is only because I want to be understood. What I fear is that people speed read these messages and lose 90% of what I am trying to say. Try reading one of these responses, point by point, and I will be surprised if you don't agree with what I am saying. The preponderance of all of these points has to simply leave you puzzled and wondering just what is going on.

Yeah, I have no idea what these people are like tat shot those deer are like. I only know that the best crack shots make a mistake occasionally and of course deer don't stand still like targets do. I kind of like the kill zones that put the odds in my favor. But that's just me.

Ha-ha-ha, I knew where you were trying to drag this thread. I was just pulling your chain ..... lol. But honestly I am not motivated by antlers, and I am a firm believer that the worse thing that ever happened to hunting was when we all decided to measure success by the inches of antler that our kill has. Yes hunting today is a whole different world where everyone seems to be intent on impressing their peers. And they even came up with a scoring system because just plain old hunting wasn't enough. Its kind of comical to watch sometimes. Now hunting has become some sort of agricultural enterprise .... lol. Yup times change, but they haven't changed me. I still appreciate a good buck, but it doesn't drive my hunting. If a big buck was to step into my line of sight, I would be thrilled as much as anyone. But I don't hang my head and feel like the entire season was just trashed when it doesn't happen like so many others who learned their hunting appreciation from the Saturday morning hunting shows. I don't approach my hunting like it was a career. To me it is still recreation and I really have no need to impress anyone but myself with my hunting.

Well, maybe not always. I did see one that someone thought they could head-shoot. He had his entire lower jaw swinging in the breeze. not exactly lethal, and I always wondered just how long that critter lived until it finally croaked. Had another one on the other side of a steep, deep ravine that was wheezing like one of those anti-cigarette commercials that they show at supper time on the TV. I figured that was a severed wind pipe. There's a heck of a lot non-lethal meat for those head and neck shooters to hit.

Yeah, I ashamedly have to confess that I actually like venison. What do you do? ..... throw the meat away? And so far all of my deer have been legal and brown although I wouldn't hesitate to take a piebald if the opportunity arose. And yes they have all gone down when I shot them. I try real hard to make that happen. Yeah, and fortunately, so far, we do have a few choices left. Ain't America great!

Ha ha... I do understand that we tend to put forward an image of delusional prowess sometimes just to impress readers, but I tend to take a more honest and realistic view of things. In terms of what makes me decide what deer to shoot, it generally relies on an instant decision based on whatever deer offers a good ethical, high percentage, shot and contains an adequate amount of meat to make my time worthwhile. Oh, and of course it has to be a deer that is legal for the tags that I have.

And I never said that they intended to. But their new "buck management" scheme is based on the new 9 unit zoning of the state, which is a less accurate, redundant zoning system overlaid on the existing WMU divisions, (and you were worried about extra tax burdens .... lol). So why wouldn't you use the existing finer broken down, system of management units (which by the way all of the NYS statistics history is based off of) rather than diluting your statistics with larger more diversified areas. Larger areas do make it easier to over generalize results. It also makes it easier to pass inappropriate regulations because of all the additional land being lumped together. Larger areas do not allow for incorporation of unique habitat or population densities? Larger units do not account for changes in hunter densities that impact buck harvests and pressure. Whether it is bucks or does that you are managing, I cannot think of one good reason to manage bucks on a larger area basis and I haven't heard anyone else offer a logical explanation either.

Did you ever try to figure out exactly how many squirrels or rabbits or game birds you would have to kill in order to equal the amount of meals from just one deer. Hunting for deer is simply a more efficient way of meat-gathering. Bigger animal - more meat. From a sporting standpoint, the deer (any deer) is a whole lot more intelligent than a lot of other game. There is a challenge component to it all. That is also one of the big draws to predator hunting. Anyone who is trying to imply that shooting a deer lacks challenge is either delusional, dishonest, or lives in an area that has a whole lot more deer than we've got. Or maybe there is something in the water there that makes their deer stupid. So yeah, there is a whole lot more challenge and accomplishment in shooting a deer vs. shooting a squirrel. Anybody want to argue that point?......lol.

And so, my fellow animal serial killers, there you have it. The rhetoric of the animal rights people. The images and words of these people have got to have impacts on those not involved in hunting. They have to be gathering supporters, and more money to wage these kinds of campaigns. Given that we hunters are a documented shrinking minority in society, can there really be any doubt that these people are a formidable force to be reckoned with? We tend to paint them as wackos, extremists, and people that no one ever takes seriously. Somehow those images comfort us and make us feel that no one really takes them seriously. Those rationalizations make us feel that it is unnecessary to join and support any pro-hunting organizations. We find it difficult to imagine a society that would outlaw or force impractical limits on our sport hunting. Well, right or wrong, I can imagine it. These people are organized, single-minded, and dedicated. They do not engage in in-fighting and bickering. Once they have been convinced by videos such as this, they become part of a force that makes our paltry, half-hearted defenses and campaigns pretty much a joke. These people are politically connected and know exactly how to become a huge thorn in our side. I take them very seriously. Yes, I do consider them whackos, extremist and a bit deluded. But you will never find me calling them harmless and no threat to hunting.

Super-handy! I used to have to go out to the shed, hand-carry the wood up some steps of a long sidewalk, into the front entrance, up a 1/2 flight set of stairs (raised ranch), through the living room, and over to the wood stove. Talk about failure to plan ..... ha-ha. Getting rid of the ashes was kind of the same process in reverse.