Doc

Ha-ha-ha-ha.......So there does come a point where genetically manufactured deer can be made to look quite ridiculous. I think there is a point that is too far. Some of these have reached that point.

Nice crop of deer coming up in your area. I'm not seeing a lot of survivors in our area. But I have no cameras out right now and I haven't been wandering around the woods all that much lately. Usually I see them walking around in the yard almost as soon as the season ends. Not this year.

Aw....Come-on and smile.

Not many here have been members long enough to know the history of its origin. This forum was started by Burmjohn at a time when an existing forum suddenly shut down leaving a pile of us hanging without a New York State hunting forum. For that I thank him for the years of interesting discussions and interfaces that he made available for us to use. Now we find that he is no longer in contact with the forum for whatever reason. Most of you have made an assumption that he has just arbitrarily abandoned the site. But none of us know the actual reason for his absence. As for myself, I am not in a hurry to judge without any facts. I can only say thanks for the 13 years that we have had the site. It was a good thing that he picked up the ball when no other New York State hunter was willing to do so. Now let's see if the current members are adult enough to keep things going along smoothly without so much of the petty and small-minded bickering that makes the atmosphere here so strained and unfriendly at times. We don't really need all the static.

So that's where red squirrels come from......lol.

I have to admit that when I heard my dad describe me as the outdoorsman of the family, that I did feel some pride from that. But that did not become the driver for my reasons for hunting. Frankly, I have to say that now-a-days, the best that you could ever get from most people is a polite, "That's nice". My reasons for hunting are personal and within myself. My accomplishments are internally valued. Do I need the approval of others in order to enjoy hunting?......Absolutely not. If I did, I probably would not be into it because there really isn't a whole lot of approval for hunting going on these days. I never needed recognition from anybody for the fish that I catch or the trapping successes that I had as a kid. None of these things has anything to do with anyone's approval but my own. These things are between me and nature's creatures and my ability to best them. That's where my satisfaction comes from, not other people's approvals or out-doing other hunters. I don't need scoring systems and such to measure my satisfactions and fulfillment. I don't compete against anyone but the critters that I take.

I am starting to wonder if something has happened that he lost control of the site. Nothing else makes any sense. Maybe something crashed and burned or something. I don't know.....I'm just trying to make some sense of his abandonment.

Yes, hunting areas have seen a lot of changes over the decades. You are right, it has morphed into situations where money has kind of locked up gobs of hunting land with huge leases and or clubs, or simply those that want to keep people out. That does make it a challenge for existing hunters and also new ones that want to come into the activity. We even have those that see hunting as an agricultural activity, buying up tractors and fitting and seeding equipment along with the huge tracts of land. Who the heck ever thought that that would happen. few parents can or will do that to get their kids involved in hunting, and yet the TV programs and magazine articles tout this activity as almost a "must" for deer hunting.

So are there those among us that hunt for the "recognition"? Is it all about "bragging rights" for you? Do you see the activity as a competition with other hunters? Do you need the recognition from the rest of the hunting community? It seems to me that I see a lot of that sort of need for recognition with a lot of hunters. How many of you have that sort of thing as a part of your reason for hunting?

I don't remember hunting being so competitive between hunters. For most of my hunting years, I was totally unaware of an antler scoring system. I have no idea when that all started. It seems to me that when people started talking about the scoring of antlers, the heavy competition among hunters began. Instead of competing against the deer hunters began competing against each other. Yes there always was the guy who took the big 12 pointer, but nobody bothered to reduce the act down to some kind of mathematical achievement other that the number of points. Most of us made up our own goals and satisfactions and didn't really need ways of keeping score as to who was the "greatest hunter" in our group. It was a lot more enjoyable back then too when the competition was between a hunter and the deer he was hunting rather than hunter vs. hunter. I wish there was some way to get back to that more personal motivation for hunting.

So if something happens to your password, and you try to re-join, your just plain out of luck. So it could be that a lot of people that we thought had abandoned us may simply not been allowed to rejoin when something accidently happened to their account. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.....perhaps Burmjohn got locked out of his own site. Hey! That's not funny.

I could see some kind of almost head-on shot with a broadhead doing that. It's hard to imagine barbed wire staying engaged with the deer's hide long enough to do that, but I suppose anything is possible. That's pretty weird that we have two pictures of deer with that same kind of wound, isn't it?

Interesting. Are we saying that the site is abandoned and will just keep afloat for as long as the provider doesn't need the use of the bandwidth? That sounds a little tenuous. Is there a way that the site can be taken over by someone else? It is kind of a weird situation, isn't it?

But the original topic question is "How do we reverse hunting's demise. There is another topic that deals with why hunting is slipping in popularity. This topic is about how do we fix it, or what may slow it down a bit. Nobody is saying that hunting will disappear tomorrow, but I don't know too many people who are thinking that the activity is as popular as it once was. So, if we recognize the problem, do we have any ideas as to how to solve or slow the problem down as much as possible? Or have we all just resigned ourselves to the fact that the sport that we all have attached ourselves to so rigidly will someday not exist as we have enjoyed it?

Aren't they remarkable animals? I have seen a couple of deer that have had legs shot off and still able to keep up with other deer that are running away. I shot one that was missing a front leg and it had skin grown over the wound and was one of the fattest deer I have ever shot. Just amazing. I am wondering if these kinds of long slices are from buck fights.

I didn't see that as a reason-for-hunting in the other topic on why we hunt. Is that what it is all about?......recognition? Do we need recognition for our hunting achievements? Maybe so. If that's the case nothing we can do in hunting will ever satisfy new hunters because the general public really doesn't give a damn how big the deer are that we get. Quite the opposite. You are more likely to get spit on for killing Bambi.....lol.

I'm afraid that deer hunting has taken a turn toward measuring success by the numbers. This has been sold so hard that I doubt that we will ever get back to a simpler measure of satisfaction. It is too bad, because I suspect that our losses due to elitism may be higher than we imagine.

I do have to say that some of the trail camera photos hear show that the cameras are not really a secret. The pictures of deer noses kind of show that. Also, I have seen some pictures that show the deer running away. In fact, those are the picture that prompted me to ask the question. I know that too much human pressure will change deer patterns. The question is, are these cameras just another form of "pressure"? In addition to the cameras, there are also the visits to monitor the cameras by the hunter. Especially when the cameras are inside of bedding areas. Too many visits to bedding areas, and pretty soon they no longer are bedding areas. I don't know the answer, but it seems to be a reasonable question.

One thing we need is for DEC personnel to interface more with schools and have a more visible public presence. Also, we need the DEC to understand that we have a problem and they are part of it. What I am talking about id the closing of the DEC national hunting and fishing day in region 8. That was the most popular interface with potential hunters that we ever had going and then they shut it off. I don't know what their problem was, but it certainly is something that should have been solved rather than just shutting it down. I place a lot of emphasis on the DEC becoming part of the solution because they are the ones that will someday be faced with the problem of no way of controlling future game populations as the hunters continue to phase out of the sport. Also, every fish and game club, archery club, and such need to take a more active part in recruitment and in the politics of hunting, fishing and trapping. I know that most of them do have some kind of recruitment activities, but they have to step up the efforts even more. They all have to push membership drives that focus on youth participation. Annual youth hunts (plural) must become part of their itinerary. These are the organizations that can have some impact on hunter recruitment. There needs to be more emphasis put on opening up private lands to hunting. That sounds good, and I have to admit that I haven't a clue how to attack that one. Perhaps habitat improvement on state lands. I often thought that it might be useful to renting out open fields to local farmers either for free or for a very small rent, so some of the land can be returned to agricultural uses (one of the best animal attractants going). Encourage selective logging on state lands to open up maturing state forests for better forage and undergrowth. Maybe offering tax breaks to those farmers who allow open public hunting might also provide some additional hunting areas. I don't know whether some of these ideas might be impossible to implement, but these ideas or some version of them could help acquaint the public with what hunting is and how it benefits wild critters and the environment in general. Hunting population importance has to become a prime focus of the DEC and outdoor activities clubs and organizations and the dangers of losing hunting as a resource has to be made clear to the public. Just a few thoughts on the subject.

How about it. Have any of you seen any evidence that the game cameras spook the very deer you're trying to hunt? Do they change the patterns of the more cautious deer?

Well, we have discussed why we think hunting is losing popularity. So I guess the next logical question has to be, "How do we reverse hunting's demise?"

No problem. That was an interesting direction for the thread to go.

What a fantastic mount.

I also agree with Grouse regarding the effects of the anti-hunting organizations. While we were laughing at their idiotic antics and ravings and never took them seriously. Their outlandish claims and tugging at people's heart-strings and their well-funded organizations were converting more and more people. Some of the converts were even hunters. I hate to admit it, but they are winning. We are getting beaten by a bunch of crazy wackos. It's probably way past time to admit that, but it is looking like fact. That along with so many cultural impacts is threatening the entire activity of hunting nation-wide.

I'll tell you another influence that kept my mind in these kinds of outdoor activities was other kids in school. It's hard to believe but back then there were a lot of kids that ran traplines and hunted and fished and all of that stuff. Is that how it is today? When I went to school, opening day of deer season was an unquestioned excused absence. Imagine that! Also another hard-to-believe fact is that I took my hunter safety course in the bus garage at school. Yes, we even had real guns there and did some shooting. Imagine that today.....A school resourced hunter safety class....lol......With guns! Yes, times were a whole lot different back then. they were a lot more hunter-friendly and made it a lot easier for a kid to become self-motivated to get into hunting.