Doc

Ha-ha .... Stubby is our resident bowhunter-hater. I wouldn't take too much of that bowhunter bashing seriously.

Oh for crying out loud .... Let's stop pussy-footing around and simply turn the damn bow season over to a no-buck gun season and be done with it. That's where all this crap is heading anyway. I love all the play-acting. We have to go through all the steps of first introducing crossbows in part of the bow season. And then push farther to add them throughout the whole bowseason. And when the time is right they add the muzzleloaders to the bow season, just to make it all look like they were forced to hand bowseason over to the guns. Exactly what I said 3 or 4 or more years ago is what is in process right now.

Post number 59 started off that line of thought: "I know it is tough to build interest in managing a property if you don't own it, but if we all took matters into our own hands with some good boots on the ground knowledge of that property we can do what DEC can't or won't." And I have been arguing that we cannot do "what the DEC can't or won't" and that such suggestions simply muddy the waters and take focus off where our real efforts should lie. The limited actions of Co-ops and such are not doing what the DEC is supposed to be doing. The DEC is a statewide activity. Co-ops are isolated local activities that are nice for those involved but have no relationship to statewide management. Further, the scope of the co-op activity cannot even come close to matching what the DEC is up against, and that is why I say that it is insignificant and not relevant to statewide game management. We need to make the DEC work and stop breaking the focus with looking for distracting end-runs.

Oh now, you know how perfect their statistical methods of management are. Haven't they told you enough times? They even have some statistical gurus come in and swear to it. Don't ever offer suggestions for improvements or you will get the old "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" line. In other words they are convinced that their methods are flawless and everything is under control and on track.

The success of the DEC all hinges on motives and goals. I am suspicious as to who is really running the show there. I am still bothered by the implementation of CTFs and the sudden concern with finding super-ways to whack on the deer herd. I don't think it is a coincidence. There seems to be a correlation between the DEC institutionalizing financial interests into deer density goal setting, and the almost panicky fashion in which the DEC is determined to thin the herd. I think your (our) concern over the runaway efforts to clear the land of deer is something that the DEC has no concern over right at the moment. They are answering to another master, and I am not sure it has anything to do with hunters or habitat. Should the deer undergo a catastrophic decline, I believe the DEC people would be slapping each other on the back, and a whole lot of political/financial interests would be ecstatic.

That's very nice, but if you tell a perspective buyer about a problem and they buy the vehicle anyway, I believe you can sell the car with a clear conscience.

Messages sent in addition to my own letters.

Actually, according to your numbers, it is as insignificant as I make it out to be. And while it is great for those few that take part in it, I don't really ever see it rising to a level where it will be able to be relied on for credible state game management in any significant way. I really don't want anyone's attention to be diverted from keeping the feet of the DEC to the fire because of false hopes that the landowners will take care of it. The landowners will not take care of it anywhere but on a few selected parcels of land. And even those will vary all over the place as to how focused, correct and dedicated the efforts will actually be.

Isn't it amazing. The DEC has this huge army of "eyes and ears" out there and still has not figured out a way to properly use them other than as a financial source. It really does seem wrong that this free resource continues to go to waste at the same time the DEC cries poverty and watches their funding dwindling more and more every year. Free manpower! Nobody can figure out a way to capitalize on that???

Just curious ....... If you never do get any resolution on what the cause of that incident was, what exactly do you intend to do? Keep on driving it with your fingers crossed?... Park in the bushes somewhere or turn it into a planter? .... sell it for parts? I suspect going to dealers, and writing letters and making phone calls to the manufacturer will all be met with denials and thinly veiled notions that somehow you are wrong. So, I am curious as to what the proper disposition of such a problem car might be.

I would tell the dealer that I traded it to what happened. That puts the moral dilemma on him.

That is unbelievably high, but still a long way from impacting the necessity for a state game management agency. This still is quite insignificant and does not qualify as a viable statewide alternative to the DEC, which was my point.

I'll be honest.....if that happened to me, I probably would never feel comfortable in that car again. It would have to go. Especially when they couldn't locate the cause. It's not nice to have your friendly family car trying to kill you. That's like the airbags that blow up and kill the occupant when they deploy, throwing shards of metal into their body. Getting a little weird in the auto industry these days when the life-saving devices kill you.....lol.

Taking a whizz in the middle of the road is pretty mild stuff compared to the piles of stuff that I have found in the middle of my driveway, topped by a nice little dollop of toilet paper or something that served that purpose. People are pigs! Every Spring, I have an annual duty of cleaning up the road frontage where people have knowingly and purposely rolled their window down and pitched their garbage out the window. Nice people!

Every time I see the initialed pop deer management schemes mentioned, the big red flag goes up. AR, EAB, OBR, and all the others ... they all sound good, and somewhere in the state they may be appropriate. But are any of them really good management policy across the state or even within a WMU? Maybe, but probably not. Could any of them do more harm than good? Sure applied in the wrong area they could be exactly the wrong thing in the wrong place. So whenever we champion one of these new flavor-of-the-day management schemes, The first thing we should be thinking is what will be the effect in other parts of the WMU or state where conditions are different. Just like the doctor's creed, we need to adopt the philosophy of "Do no harm". It might be good if the DEC also adopted that motto.

What seems to be clear, if you hang around internet forums for any length of time, is that most people feel that they are a lot more expert than they really are. Untrained armchair deer experts tend to get involved with a lot of the popular myths and folklore handed down through generations with some embellishments added with each telling (and I am not excluding myself from occasionally dabbling in that myself ....lol). I am not trying to say that all those DEC employees trained and educated in wildlife biology and management and all the other associated relative courses, all graduated with honors. But I must say that if I were looking for good credible state of the art advice or answers or someone to manage my herd for me, it probably would be smarter for me to seek out someone who has at least been exposed to an organized study plan and graduated with some sort of degree in that area. It also doesn't hurt their credibility that this is their career rather than a part-time hobby. So yes, I am of the opinion that the state biologists probably are a more reliable competency center when it comes to population assessments or matters regarding deer management as opposed to most of the guys dabbling in hobby deer management and offering opinions on a forum. My only question is what is the metric that the DEC is applying to their educated judgments? Are they really concerned with too many deer for the habitat or instead too many deer for Joe-the-farmer or a whining landscape owner, or some other group of people with financial interests in seeing deer wiped out that they have gathered together to establish deer density goals? To say the least, and reading through the DEC internet page on CTFs, I have to say that I have some suspicions.

CTFs are a good example of spreading accountability around such that there winds up to be none. Something as basic to deer management as determining deer density targets has been off-loaded to a bunch of untrained laymen who are only responsible to representing their own segments of financial interests.

What is a "Smart Rifle"? Regarding the cams, I think people really over-estimate the advantages. Drones ..... watch out for these. I think they have a much larger potential for mis-use than most people can even imagine. That's funny that such things would be made into law by a state that has the motto "Live Free or Die" ..... lol.

Lol .... I always like a good surprise.

I like the idea of co-ops. I think it is great when people decide to actively manage their hunting lands and actually try to apply real science to their efforts. Is it the path to the salvation of NYS's deer management? ..... Not hardly. What it means is that there will be a few relatively limited areas that will be little hunting meccas in the middle of the vast mis-managed state. Also I am sure there are and will be a lot of organized private land that calls itself a co-op but simply results in some more locked-up, no-trespassing, land with or without any special management activities actually going on, or going on only in partial, semi-effective fashions. The bottom line is that the bulk of wildlife management will still be a function of the state. And while private activities are great, we still need to find ways to enhance the state's management effectiveness.

Yes, it is true that the early muzzleloader season is an established pet project of the DEC. It goes right along with their eager push of crossbows. The picture is clearing now as to what their real agenda is. I believe it is a serious concern about having established a very popular and effective and large chunk of the hunting year and handed it over to those who are least effectively using it to whack on the deer population......the bowhunters. It appears that they have been spooked by the general down-turn in hunter numbers. I think that they have envisioned a trend in hunter participation where they feel that they need ways to achieve higher deer takes by fewer hunters. It is clear now that these radical changes in season/weapon structure are a series of mini-experiments to see just how far they can go with turning a large, potentially productive, part of the hunting year into a season of higher takes by adding in more efficient weapons. I truly do not expect it to stop with muzzleloaders either. With the self-destruction of the New York Bowhunters as the only effective mouthpiece for bowhunter interests, the way is now cleared to develop that time slot and produce the kinds of deer-take numbers that will make up for any potential weaknesses in hunter numbers or participation in the future. And if guns in that time-slot are what's required, the way is now cleared to do so. It all starts with the muzzleloader.

I do believe that only trained biologists can determination whether there are the right number of deer. However, there are many different influences that make our paid biologists (DEC) use different metrics than just habitat. That is where we have to be vigilant. When outside financial interests begin to determine deer population targets, instead of biological wildlife concerns, we have to be very careful that those decisions are done correctly. Here's the deal ..... The DEC has the trained biologists and the management data and know-how to do as good a job at deer management as the resources that we are willing to expend will allow. The negative about that is that they are a political agency that does respond to financial/political pressures. So their recommendations do have to be watched very closely to ensure that they are not being overly influenced. How do we ensure that the proper balances are being applied? ...... That's what we have to figure out. Not whether there are too many deer or not enough deer.

That is not at all what I am saying or close to anything that I said. Those that want to manage deer on their own property should be applauded for doing so. But to rely on that as a statewide game management policy simply is not realistic. Those that make deer habitat improvements and biologically sound harvest decisions are not doing it to enhance the state herd. They are doing it to enhance their own hunting isolated opportunities and chances for success, and more power to them. Those are individual voluntary initiatives and cannot be viewed as a significant or reliable wildlife management program that will have any impact on the state game management. The state still carries the responsibility for managing NYS wildlife and even though they continue to try to off-load that responsibility, they still need to have their feet held to the fire and be kept accountable for the duties they are charged with.

The real DEC management plan: Keep increasing the permits until the uproar from the hunters exceeds the uproar from the CTF anti-deer interests. Then cut the number of permits until the uproar from the CTF anti-deer interests exceeds the uproar of the hunters and then issue more permits. Yeah, I realize that that is a very cynical view of things, but historically, that does seem to be the way it all turns out. And now the DEC is beginning to panic because they can't placate the anti-deer interests through permits anymore. And so they are going off the deep end with new hair-brained schemes to eliminate deer. And as already mentioned, we are simply passively letting all this stuff become firmly in place, and the other shoe will drop as it has before. The only difference is that it will not simply be permit numbers that will have to change to repair the damage.

You know, the DEC almost has it right. They just have chosen the wrong season to implement it in. If you took the first week of gun season and made it doe only, I have no doubt that they could harvest as many does as they want. It would be similar to the old Doe Day that they used to hold just before the implementation of the antlerless permit system. That day was tremendously popular and was a success as far as whacking on the deer population. The problem was that back then they made it statewide, and it was equally devastating in places that needed herd increases as well as those that needing herd reduction. If they were really serious about taking more does, that would be the proper season to put it in. I think they know that. These guys are not stupid. But they also know there would be a deafening uproar from the gun hunting community. They also know that the bowhunting community no longer has any organizational clout and that putting in a doe only restriction can easily be forced there. Why else would they implement it in the most inefficient season. It's just an acknowledgement of which group of hunters can most easily be pushed around with the least amount of backlash.