Doc

This was probably the first time I ever watched the accompanying advertisement all the way through. But the NASCAR ad was funny so I let it play. Also, even though I have already seen this guy shooting in a previous post, I was still amazed, and watched it all the way through again. Really .... splitting an incoming arrow in two in mid air? ...... Grabbing an incoming arrow and shooting it back? How the heck are these things even possible? Deer jumping the string are absolutely nothing compared with what this guy can do. If you can grab an incoming arrow out of the air, what's the big deal about ducking it? .... lol.

OK .... I GIVE!!!! Enough already. I'm getting too old for this crap. Maybe it's time to act my age and go south....lol. Man! Cabin fever is setting in early this year. This is not the coldest and snowiest year that I have ever endured by a long shot, but it seems to getting harder and harder to deal with every year.

That is why I said that the first response by the DEC when their computers find a tag that didn't have a report, might be to send out a warning letter asking for the report. So you get an additional chance to report or re-report if an error had occurred. A period of time is allowed for your response, and then a ticket is sent out. Remember, the offense is not reporting the results of your license or permit. The proof is, you either did or you didn't, and the computer has the data on that.

Ha-ha-ha .... Yes we always hear about these people who break this law and break that law, but when somebody asks, "What did the DEC do to them when you turned them in?", the answer always comes back, "Well gosh I didn't do that." But anyway, we cannot base wildlife management policies using these kinds of anecdotal statements and perhaps even imaginings. The fact is that we have absolutely no idea how prevalent these violations are. We have no clue as to whether any of that is even statistically significant. If we suspend all attempts at managing wildlife because here and there we find game law violators, my guess is that there shortly wouldn't be any wildlife to manage. We whine and cry about the terrible job that the DEC does and then we shoot down all attempts to do that job better. If those DEC guys develop an "attitude" when it comes to hunters, I think I am beginning to see why that might happen.

And those people are voted in or out by the residents, so the fate of such projects still is in the hands of the residents. It is all explained in a couple of sentences of your post ...... "I have some land in an area that was targeted for wind turbines. It all ended up getting shot down".

In this day of the internet, there is no reason for anyone to be uninformed about any of these kinds of threats to any community .... even rural ones. It is simply a measure of the will of the people. There are many townships who have successfully put regulations in place that effectively exclude windfarm exploitation, so the argument of the poor little community being steamrolled by the giant energy corporation does not fly. If these things get into a community against the will of the residents, it is purely apathy that allows it to happen.

Ha-ha-ha ..... And speaking of "trolls", this topic is covered with troll-tracks .... lol. Sorry, I'm not biting on this one. The bait is a bit too transparent.

You're dealing with people that have an existing system to defend. They maybe don't want people rocking their boat. To me what they are saying is that they want to maintain the status quo. If they admit that there is a crack in any part of their system, they leave the door open for the whole thing to be questioned and upset. It is frustrating. I understand how they might set up a defensive posture. Nobody likes their methods questioned. Perhaps had it been pointed out how such a system would save the DEC time effort and money they might have had a bit more interest ... lol.

All of that information is already required to be supplied by the hunters. It is already in the DEC computers or at least is mandated by law to be there. The problem is that hunters don't want to comply, and are allowed to get away with thumbing their noses at environmental conservation laws. I don't think that is right, and there are ways of fixing it.

Who's playing?

We have all kinds of land speculators who buy land with no concern for public good, or whether there are natural irreplaceable values that others appreciate that may be gone forever. Look at housing developments that virtually destroy open green-spaces that no one will ever see again. Ecological disasters that forever alter habitats, rural spaces. Whose fault is it. The developer? ... the wind power industry .... factory owners ... No in all cases. The real fault is the residents who did not have the foresight to set up adequate protections against destruction of those things that they supposedly treasure. I know of two local townships that came just short of attacking town hall with mobs carrying pitchforks and hoe handles and torches. Well, ha-ha-ha, maybe it wasn't that dramatic, but when the people spoke the elected town officials received their marching orders to protect what was valued by the residents. The same when industry tried to turn rural towns into little stepford style suburbs. Don't blame the landowner. Blame the residents who didn't value the views and community resources within the townships enough to protect them. We don't allow garbage dumps to proliferate, we don't allow tar paper shacks to dot the landscape, and there is no need that any town has to allow 400' whirligigs to blot out the wooded hills either.

Good come-back on her part .... lol.

There is nothing short of 100% individual DEC inspection that will fix any occasional lying on the reports. Any kind of hunter reporting will be subject to improper and illegal inputs. Hopefully that sort of nonsense winds up to be statistically insignificant. But recognizing that the current years harvest is an important ingredient in deer management, I am only thinking of a more accurate and cheap way to replace the archaic and labor intensive methods currently being used.

That's why I mentioned the complete loss of distance perception. Distance between eye reflections has nothing to relate to if these horses were some distance off. And my reply was clearly not intended to be a justification. But from what I have seen in some of these predator hunting videos, these guys are shooting at eye reflections with absolutely no idea of what those eyes are attached to.

I look at the super labor intensive way that DEC personnel go about coming up with a harvest count, and it seems that in this age of computers, and automated hunter provided reports, a much simpler and cheaper system could be utilized. Think about DEC personnel running all over the countryside visiting processors, hunt camps, taxidermists and such, writing down data, then inputting all that data into computers and then eventually coming up with estimates of harvests along with estimates of reporting rates (which always seem to have some credibility questions). Computers are used in buying licenses, so the DEC computers already know who's got licenses and permits. We already do our reporting via computerized phone input or P.C. inputting. So the DEC computers are already fed the input by hunters. If the reporting rules were changed to require that every license or permit issued had to be reported (successful or not) a simple computer count would tally up the numbers, and a simple computer sort would identify exactly how many hunters did not report and exactly who it was that broke the reporting laws. Want to go further with this technology? How about automatic reminder (warning) mailings, followed by automated tickets for those that ignored the reminder. The only DEC manpower required by the whole process would be the software writers that it takes to set up the process. In fact that would be paid for by those that refuse to abide by the reporting laws. I'll guarantee that almost all reports would be sent in, particularly if next year's licenses and/or permits were contingent on compliance.

That's what comes to mind. That is one thing that makes me a bit uneasy about people calling game and relying on their spotlight to define the target. At night, occasionally all that is seen is a pair of eyes reflecting back. In total darkness, and lack of distance perception, anyone shooting in that specific condition has no idea what the hell they are shooting at. And yet from some videos that I have seen, that's not an unusual scenario for night-time predator hunting.

I like to hear opinions on any subject. It is hard to appreciate without actually seeing these monstrosities, particularly if you were there before they took over the hills. I tend to get a bit opinionated on the subject since I was neck deep in the effort to keep these things out of our town. But I do not want to discourage any discussion. That's pretty much what we do here .... lol.

Driving south on Main Street Naples, those things are the very first thing that you see. They don't blend in with anything. You cannot get used to them to the point where the view looks anything like it did before they were plunked in there. They are a scar on the landscape that perhaps can be enjoyed only by those collecting cash from that kind of exploitation. Many in the surrounding towns did not knuckle under to the threats and pressures of these power companies and have successfully beat them back ..... for now.

Actually, dozens of white structures the size of some of Rochester's skyscrapers, clustered throughout the wooded hills are really quite difficult (make that impossible) to ignore. They truly do dominate the view-scape that used to be something pleasant, rare and treasured to look at. So yes, they are much more invasive than outdoor furnaces. Perhaps if the stacks on the outdoor furnaces reached 300' - 400' and were topped with huge whirling blades, and were clustered throughout the entire wooded area, that might not be true. However, while there are many ways to screw up the environment, and perhaps there are a lot of them that should be independently studied, the topic here was windmill corporations that are exploiting small towns of the Finger Lakes.

We (NYS) do a little better job using a wider variety of stakeholders to man these Citizen task forces (CTFs). "Farmers, hunters, foresters, conservationists, motorists, the tourism industry, landowners, small business, etc, are all considered as potentially distinct stakeholder groups". So what do these CTFs do? .... "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 DEC website has a pretty good page all about CTFs : http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/7207.html

I hope they are paying well for the destruction of the viewscape of some of our most prized vistas. Oh, but then most of the people who have to look at those huge whirly-gigs don't get a cent do they?

I have no problems with the DEC polling hunters for opinions as long as the results don't start replacing the principles of game management. And from where I sit I have to say that it sure looks like that is exactly what's happening. Far better that the DEC should be shaping public education and opinions rather than public opinions being gathered as marching orders of the DEC.

Actually, in my recurve days, my recovery rate was 100%. I think SOB had it quite correct. My shots with the recurve were so close that I pretty much couldn't miss. The deer that I got with a recurve were all under 15 yards. I started bowhunting with an emphasis on the hunting part of it all. I didn't start missing until I began thinking that my equipment could replace stealth and getting close. Like everybody else, I began looking to buy shortcuts. I have gone back to understanding that no matter what kind of bow (recurve or compound) I have, the sport is still all about getting close ..... real close ..... so close I pretty much can't miss .... lol. So I guess I will change my original reply to say that recovery rates are more dependent on hunting attitude and understanding the limits of your skill and equipment than on what kind of bow you are carrying.

I guess you had to have seen it to know what was going on there. The deer that were there were not resident deer. The sheer numbers of them would tell you that. It was a massive area deer yard. So it was not anything that was under the control of any one landowner. Also, the yard extended for many miles up and down the road all the way into the outskirts of Honeoye (both sides of the lake), and most of the way down to Naples. Yes, it was centered on Emil Mueller's land, but there were hundreds of other property owners whose property was literally covered with deer. The fact is that deer numbers of the whole area were completely out of control. How much of the state was similarly effected, I have no idea, but all of a sudden the DEC reacted in a big way and began issuing unprecedented numbers of permits. Again....reactive management....nothing to do with statistical data management. It was purely another case of simple observation and necessary reactive corrections.