Doc

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.

Logic tells me that the more technologically advanced weapon that you use, the more accuracy you will achieve and the less possibility of wounding there is. That would apply from a self-bow with sinew strings and stone arrow heads right on up the most sophisticated rifle and scope combinations. So if your prime consideration is solely about never encountering a wounding loss, it is probably best to forget about any kind of bow and go straight for the super-tech rifle with the high-dollar optics, and always keep your shots to mere chip-shots that are almost impossible to miss. When I took up bowhunting, it was with the understanding that I most likely was taking on a hunting activity and style of weapon where things will not always go right. Its a cold hard fact of limiting your equipment as part of the challenge. Even perfect shots can come up with bad results purely because of equipment shortfalls. If that's not a part of the challenge that you are willing and able to live with, then I have to say that there is no such thing as any archery equipment of any level that will erase the potential for wounding losses, and rifle hunting may be what you have to get into instead.

Yes, even within my own lifetime, I have seen extremes of the DEC being a day late and a dollar short even with all the touting of their statistical perfection and success. In the late 80's I watched deer in Honeoye dying off by the hundreds in the Honeoye yards because the herd size had been allowed to get so big ( a disgusting scene I will never forget. I also saw situations where all that was over-reacted to and large areas of the state were struck with deer "shortages". The populations seem to see-saw back and forth in what for all the world really looks like simply over-reaction in one direction, followed by over-reaction in the other direction. Yes that's one way of managing .... lol. But that is not the kind of preemptive statistical management that they are advertising. That is why I say that they have a lot more work to do on the fundamentals of population control before they start blowing resources on all the bells and whistles that hunters are lobbying for. Basics first. get it right and then move on.

What a great idea. I'll bet that will taste good!

Everybody worries about how long our gun season is. From what shooting I have heard in recent years, anytime after opening weekend is only sporadically used anyway. I think there comes a time when you could add a couple weeks onto the gun season and still not impact he take significantly. I am beginning to think that most hunters completely lose interest after opening day. Even Thanksgiving day is just a shell of what it used to be. I wouldn't get too concerned about the length of NYS's gun season. I don't think it makes a bit of difference one way or the other.

Ha-ha .... Nobody shrugs off 2' of snow, but yes, Western NY residents are no strangers to that kind of a storm. But I can't recall ever experiencing 2' of snow with hurricane or near-hurricane force winds.

You're going to be a fun Granny. Congratulations!! Nice thing about grandkids is that you can spoil the hell out of them and then simply send them home. It's great!

Frankly I don't give a damn what hunters are thinking. All I want right now is for the DEC to be working on perfecting their methodology for controlling deer populations relative to localized habitat. I don't want them wasting one more minute or dollar worrying about how to get older deer, or bigger racks, or any of that meaningless crap. I don't think that anyone including the most deluded DEC employee believes that they have maximized deer population control (which is their prime directive), and here we are running around talking about NYS becoming a trophy state, and whining about 1-1/2 year old bucks being taken. Somehow we have to get our priorities straightened out. So they can run all the polls they want, whether it is some supposed wonderful Cornell scientific poll/survey or some newspaper running a just-for-fun poll. It all means nothing as long as they still cannot perform the most basic management function....population control. Get the fundamentals perfected, and then maybe it's time to worry about adding a few bells and whistles. Hunters are not the management agency that we pay the big dollars for, and since when do we rely on hunters as being the college trained biologists that should be running the DEC. Who the hell is running the show anyway? I hate to see our taxes and fee money going to an agency that relies solely on polling hunters to determine wildlife management and what directions that management should be heading. How about they make their own decisions for a change based on what they were taught when they got their degrees in their fields of expertise. That's what we pay them for.

Anyone wondering what instinctive archery is ....... That's it, done as well as you will ever see it done. It does make me wish that I had never put that damned first sight pin on my old recurve. It was all downhill from there. Berger buttons, Flipper rests, more exotic sights, aluminum arrows, and then my first compound bow. There was no stopping all the gadgets, trinkets, quest for speed, and all the craziness that followed. And now to see this guy who is just a beautiful thing to watch, makes me wish that I had not taken archery to where I did. Of course I would never have gotten to this guys level of skills. You have to have some serious born-in talent and one powerful drive to excel. But to be able to shoot a weapon that is simply an extension of your body and mind with none of the help from gadget-manufacturers, is indeed a skill to be proud of. But there is a point I believe when your eye-hand coordination is totally ruined my all the crutches used over the decades. I don't believe there is any going back. Oh, and as far as all that jumping around and bouncing off the walls ...... forget it! I haven't done anything like that in a couple decades .... lol.