Doc

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.

It doesn't matter what any of us "believe". What matters is the evidence of action.

One of the problems with land stewardship, is the huge variety of land uses, and land owner's motives. From our perspective, there is only one reason to own land and that is to hunt it. That's because we are all hunters. But when we look at the owners of most wild land, I think we would find all kinds of people, many or perhaps even most, who have no interest in hunting or deer, and wouldn't spend a dime or a second on deer management. There are anti-hunters, land speculators, non-hunting farmers, out-of-town landowners, loggers, inheritance recipients and all kinds of other people who really don't give a rip about the wildlife on their property. And then there are the residential kind of landowners that really don't own enough land to perform any kind of management, but when taken as a group, lock up a huge amount of deer habitat. So for us individually, it may make a lot of sense to manage our own deer grounds, but I'm afraid that is only an insignificant drop in the bucket.

We have talked about a near-perfect way of ensuring harvest reporting. That being the "one permit-one report system where every tag requires a report successful or not. A simple computer sort determines who has complied and who has not. The DEC has no interest in plans to make harvest reporting better. Their comment is that "if it's not broken, don't fix it". In other words, they are perfectly satisfied with the system they've got. I think your fears of the DEC over-shooting their goals are valid. I mean it would not be the first time that that has happened.

When it comes to access, the problem is not an easy one to solve. You cannot order people to open up their land. You can bribe them to if you can find a big pot of money laying around to use for that. But you cannot command it to be done nor use excessive strong-arm tactics to try to force it. I don't know what the answer is to the access problem. I only know that whatever methods that are effective on private closed-off lands will be flat out disasters on public lands or open private lands where the population picture looks entirely different. It is a tricky thing to manage. And I know that expecting bowhunters to be punished until the problem improves is not really going to be the answer or even part of the answer.

I really hate to say it, because I am merely an outsider looking in, but I think I am seeing another highly politicized agency that truly has far more interest in trying to keep everybody happy than anything to do with what is in the best interest of the game. When the two collide, it is the political interests that take precedence. The stakeholders rule the roost and deer be damned.

That's where all of this is coming from. It's not new news. It is simply the clarity that it all has as to where it is heading. We are now seeing the implementation and that is what is becoming the news.

I don't think that anyone is arguing that region 8 has some pretty darn good deer hunting. I think there are a lot of areas of the state that would like their hunting to be as good as ours. But as is noted in most of this thread there is a real question about some of the ridiculous ways that the DEC thinks they can change all that through singling out bowhunters-only to fix the great hunting that we are currently burdened with.

So I just got my latest issue of New York Outdoor News and they have a pretty good article on what I am starting to call the "DEC's war on bow hunting" .... lol. Well maybe it's not a war on bowhunting, but they now recognize that the crossbow issue has neutered the NY Bowhunters, and we now make an easy mark for anything they want to do to bow season. This antlerless mandate for bowhunters only, now has a part 2 added in as part of their grand plan for deer management balanced in the backs of bowhunters. Apparently there is a provision that they also have in mind that says that if the bowhunters don't do a good enough job of singlehandedly controlling the deer population, that old "early muzzleloader season" that was beaten back by NY Bowhunters a decade back, comes back as a punishment. The quote from DEC's Stang: "The next step - outlined in the Deer Management Plan - would be the implementation of a special antlerless only muzzleloader season in select WMUs. We could start to consider more aggressive tactics like an early muzzleloader season" Stang said. I believe you can interpret all of that as when the bowhunters don't take care of the antlerless harvest requirements, we will jam guns into the regular bow season to whatever extent is necessary to handle the management needs. I will resist the temptation to say "I told you so", but here comes the guns into bow season. Starts with the muzzleloaders just to set the precedent and after that? ..... Whatever they want to do. I haven't heard any of the doe harvest remedies aimed at the gun season, so I can only assume that the bowhunters organization being properly trashed now, the DEC feels that the opposition is sufficiently crippled and the time to turn bow season into a more efficient doe harvest time-slot through whatever means possible is now. And now the blueprint for doing that is publicly laid out.

I wonder if it has occurred to any of these geniuses that by restricting harvests to "doe only" that likely the overall hunting pressure in those select high population areas likely will go down as hunters opt to hunt other areas where they don't have to watch the buck of a lifetime walk by. Exactly the opposite of what they are trying to do. (Cross-posted from the other thread)

I would suggest that you more thoroughly examine the details of the DEC web page on CTFs so that you ask the right questions and understand if someone is trying to tell you something other than what they have indicated on their own page. Because I have to say that what they have described there on that page looks to me like they are trying to hand off deer management decisions that should be made in their own shop.

I'm not saying that the DEC is exercising an agenda of their own, but simply creating proposals, regulations, and rules based not on their biological data, but instead on the recommendations of laymen who are selected from a group of people predominantly with an anti-deer agenda. So while we are imagining that the DEC is applying all these biological principles, studies and research in establishing seasons, regulations and deer density, it appears that those decisions are really being controlled by all kinds of people with all kinds of non-biological agendas that may not necessarily be of benefit to the deer herd. So while we are envisioning a trained, educated, and expert staff of DEC personnel applying their expertise to manage the size of the herd, it appears that they have abrogated those responsibilities to a small group of people that consist mostly of those with vested interests in keeping herd sizes as low as the public will tolerate. At least that is the way it appears if you read the webpage that I linked. The problem with letting those people dictate deer density goals, is that you begin to get ridiculous proposals like have been mentioned just so that the CTF goals can be met. If you are saying that the DEC is incapable of managing the herd, I don't believe the answer is to turn management over to a handful of untrained people that would just as soon that there be no such thing as a deer. Do you think that is a great idea? .... I don't

I am still confused as to why if the DEC is so panicked to knock down deer numbers in certain WMUs, why did they implement the fee for applying for antlerless permits. In fact, why are these permits not given out free and easily available as a printed out internet page. How seriously can one take all this panic attack that the DEC is going through over high populations when the best they can come up is to penalize bow hunters (only). You have to wonder why their actions do not involve gun hunters at all, even though that is where they would get their biggest bang for the buck. And then there is the thought that if you really want to cut deer populations down in certain select areas, why would you place doe only restrictions on those areas and likely convince hunters to vacate the problem areas and hunt other areas? Does that make sense? Not to me.