Doc

I've never hunted "bow only" areas, so I'm not sure how the deer react. However, I don't believe that the change in deer behavior when the gun season opens is completely due to guns. I've seen deer go into the invisible mode even in areas where no shots were fired. In fact, I swear that some of that defense can begin during bow season with as light a footprint as the typical bowhunter leaves on an area. I have some state land nearby that I hunt that is heavily pressured through the entire spring, summer, and fall by hikers and mountain bikers. In those areas where they have built and used trails, it is almost a waste of time to expect to see any deer during daylight hours even weeks after the hikers and bikers stop using it. So, if large amounts of hunters enter the woods, even during bow season, I wouldn't be real surprised if the deer went into the "invisible mode" there too. I do believe that bowhunters can over-pressure deer, and I do believe the deer will react by altering their habits and patterns and beginning to think defense. I think it all relates to hunter (or human) density and activity, and I don't think it takes that dense a hunter intrusion to put the entire herd on alert for a fairly long time. It's a subject that I wish we understood better. But, I don't know if anyone has gone out of their way to officially study deer reactions to various kinds of pressure in any sort of scientific fashion. My comments are based only on what I have personally observed in the relatively small area that I hunt and have wandered around in since I was a kid. These observations bear no resemblance to any sort of credible scientific study. Doc

I don't understand what it is with people who feel they must "tame" wildlife. It always is a story that has a rather bad ending one way or the other. Imagine if you were the proud hunter who killed that trophy. He will forever be the butt of jokes about killing Yogi Bear. Fair enough if he knew the bear was tame, but if he didn't, imagine how he felt when he found out.

Absolutely true... the structure of the pack acually keeps things balanced.. take out the alfa male and female and thats when the $hi+ starts happening Well, I am still having a problem with a theory that says that killing coyotes makes more coyotes. Perhaps there is something to the "pack dynamics" theory ...... perhaps. However, that assumes that all coyotes travel in an organized packs. That's abolutely not the case in our area at least. Coyotes around here actually occur as singles or doubles (thankfully). So if I shoot one or two, that generally means that there are one or two less. It's hard to imagine that shooting those one or two causes all the coyotes throughout the area to breed more to make up for the loss....lol. I would really like to read this phantom "study" some day and really understand exactly what they are actually trying to say. For all I know this may be some paper written up by the animal rights wackos to remove credibility of the population control reasons for hunting them.

This is all absolutely true. There are so many cultural changes that have occurred that impact opportunities and attitudes toward hunting. Every year more hunters get on the fence as to whether they will continue hunting or not. That's why we don't need to be providing new excuses for them not to hunt. Sometimes it doesn't take a lot to provide that little shove that sends them right out of hunting forever. Most of us have a hard time imagining that because hunting has been an important part of our lives for so long. However, there are a lot of hunters who have never had that thorough indoctrination. I see the growing lack of dedication and enthusiasm just in the way most people hunt. If you think about it, you can see where it really wouldn't take a whole lot to convince people in this category that they should take up some other recreation..... and they are doing exactly that every year. It's all a lot more complex a subject than most of us realize, and all the contributors to the problem are not necessarily just the big and obvious reasons. Doc

That's hard to say. Will the deer immediately forget about all the hunters that were wandering through their woods for the past bunch of weeks and resume their daytime pursuit of food? Probably not for a while, but eventually they do. Then too, I remember a couple of years ago when the deer were in my front yard in broad daylight, munching on some bushes on exactly the day after gun season closed, which would have still been muzzleloader/bow season. That was another year when the season was so quiet that the deer hardly even knew there had been a gun season going on ..... lol. I don't think that anyone can really say just how long the deer will hang onto their defensive gun-season tactics. I would think that the more hunter activity you have had, the longer it would take the deer to calm back down.

Yes that sounds something like number that I have heard. That actually sounds like a number that could be mathmatically arrived at and probably has some credibility. The question is just how many coyotes would humans have to harvest in conjunction with natural deaths to reach that 75% and stabilize or even decrease the population.

That's another view of coyotes that you don't hear very often, but she's right as far as her reasoning went. Predators do have their place. But I have to say that if we don't step in and act as a bit of a predator for them, then we do have to live with the consequences of having a species that has absolutely no natural enemies. When that is the case, then we have wildly swinging cycles that impact the species that they prey on. One of those species may very well be the deer. Also as uncontrolled coyote populations occur, the only control that will take effect is the various canine diseases. Some of which can spread to domestic animals and other carnivores.

That's what the deer do every year. That's why traditionally the overwhelming majority of deer are taken on opening day. The fact that after opening day (opening morning actually) they hunker down and have to be kicked in the butt to get them moving is nothing new. And they don't have to be shot at to go into this "hunkered down" mode. It's just what deer do as a defense when they feel their woods is being invaded. It's also one of the main reasons why so many hunters begin to claim that all the deer have been exterminated... . Doc

Lets wait to see what the license sales were this year. in any event,the DEC will invent some new machinations to pique hunter interests in the future. I think that old well is getting a bit dry. I know they are trying all kinds of gimmicks to get hunter numbers to reverse. Some even have some temporary success, but the over-all trend still winds up downward. I think those actions that tend to frustrate hunters are destined to accelerate our downward trend. I firmly believe that the license fee fiasco will eventually lead to more hunters dropping out or not starting hunting to begin with. I feel just as strong that enacting any of a number of restrictions that have been talked about on this forum could have similar effects.

What you described is the deer's number one defense. Once they detect the hunter invasion (and it doesn't have to mean being shot at), they figure out that it is much safer to hunker down and stay put and just let hunters walk on by. Also, I have seen situations where you almost have to kick them in the butt to get them to move. I remember one buck that I got a few years back that thought he was pulling off this "sitting tight" defense technique just perfectly. At 30 yards he was kind of hunkered into a grape vine and brush tangle. What he didn't take into consideration was that we had just had the first snow of the year ..... ;D . He thought that just like all the other times that he just laid there and let hunters just walk past, it would work just nicely one more time. It probably would have except apparently he didn't realize how totally silhouetted he was against the snow. Not a real swift thing on that particular day, but he did tip me off to how these deer appear to be swallowed up. Since that time, I have learned the proper use of binoculars in examining every square inch of what is ahead of me as I move into the wind at a painfully slow pace. An antler tine, that distinctive pattern of a deer muzzle, the outline of a tail, an ear, they are always visible to a hunter who is moving slow enough and constantly scanning every lump and bump that's out in front of him. Of course those that simply hunker down at the base of a tree and sit all day will swear that there isn't a deer in the woods. My gun season stands are used only on opening day or any other major hunting day when I expect hunters and deer to be moving. My gun hunting philosophy is to do exactly the opposite of what I expect most of the other hunters will be doing. If they are walking (or driving), I sit. If they are sitting I walk. Doc

I don't even go up on the hill for just a walk without my cell-phone, and I always check the charge level before going out the door. We have a tower right across the valley in plain sight. I have some special reasons for that being a necessary safety precaution, but it really makes sense for anyone of any age. If you get into places where the phone signal is not adequate, well, so be it. Not much you can do about that. But most of the time the phone service is there and might just be a life-saver. I don't ever want to be at the mercy of someone understanding what my 3-shot volley is supposed to mean .... lol. I am truly amazed that it actually worked this time. Doc

Ha-ha ..... Isn't that amazing? you used to be able to buy a high end bow for $150. The whole bow!! :

The idea of land management to the DEC is putting in a parking lot or two, and hanging some boundary signs. Oh, and occasionally putting up some signs along the road with the name of the particular parcel. We have a chunk of state land that has some old farm fields that they use to keep mowed once a year. This year they even skipped that. I noticed that the boundary signs are falling down and not being replaced. I wouldn't be looking for any of that to improve. Even if they wanted to, where would the money come from? Even the logging operations require DEC personel to administer the activity and they are chopping all of those guys. That ain't going to happen. Those guys are just trying to hang on to what's left of their jobs. We're watching the department crumbling right before our eyes. They are dying a slow death of starvation. Don't be expecting to get any blood out of that stone.

This is not something new. The deer always do their disappearing act during gun season. They really know how to pull it off, especially when there are no hunters in the woods, or on the few days the hunters do show up they just sit at the base of a tree all day and expect miracles.

When I was a kid, we didn't even lock the door on the house when we left. Things sure have changed haven't they.

No, I think he meant that he can not fill them in (as in bulldoze the dirt back in) for ten years.

My daughter is driving up to Rochester tomorrow morning. What are the conditions like up there? Keep an eye on it. Winds have turned out of the north and some time Sunday, some heavy lake effect snows are supposed to be dropping down from Lake Ontario and giving us some accumulations. Doc

Yes, I have heard that statement before, even though it absolutely defies logic. I have never seen the study that supposedly proves that theory, and I believe that where I first saw that stated was in a newspaper letter to the editor written by a clearly anti-hunting person who was appalled at the local coyote hunting contest.... : . However, I keep an open mind on the subject and if someone can show me a credible study that actually proves that "hunting coyotes makes more coyotes", I am willing to listen. Doc

Isn't "lake effect" grand?? :

Yes, I would imagine that the situation is different depending on where you are hunting. The differences that I am looking at also cover a rather long number of decades (A bit more than 5 of them to be exact) also. So I most likely have seen a more stark difference that a lot of people. Also, all of my years of hunting have happened on the same few hundred acres so I am in a unique situation to see changes to the exact same acreage over that long time span. But there is no doubt that NY is a big and diverse state, and there is very little that can be said universally about any aspect of hunting across all corners of the state. However, here we are once again on a Saturday (which should be one of the busier days) and the state parking lots are almost empty and I have only heard a couple of shots way off in the distance all day so far. That is not even close to anything you would have seen even 10 or 20 years or so ago. Doc

Everything needs some form of control. Let's face it other than disease and human predation, the coyote is at the top of its food chain and really has no other controlling species to contain their numbers. I really don't like disease to be the population containment system. It's Mother Natures method, but it can be a pretty ugly way to go in the wild. So, as hunters, I think we have some level of responsibility to do our part. Besides, the challenge is tremendous. What you do with the hide is a personal matter, but I really prefer to put it to some use (not that I get piles and piles of them ....lol). Also, I know there are people who will use it even if you do not want to. However, I wouldn't get too hung-up about somebody just letting the carcass lay. We don't worry about rat carcasses if we go the dump to shoot them. I never heard anybody get all excited about woodchuck remains, or crows, etc., etc. I'm not really sure why people get all bent out of shape about a coyote being shot and left. It must be the "doggy" thing ..... lol.

I do think that internet and TV (and magazines) put hunter expectations ridiculously high and I would guess that some of that gets reflected in what looks like today's half-hearted efforts and participation in deer hunting. However, I think there are many other forces at work such as competing activities, and a general culture change toward hunting. This is not something that I have just recently noticed, but over the past decade or two there has been changes in the activity lebel that seems to get worse every year, and it really has nothing to do with deer numbers. Doc

Yeah, that's why I made it a bowhunting only poll. I think a lot more people than just you split their hunting locations based on whether they are bow hunting or gun hunting. I would guess it's a safety thing. I don't know.

Ha-ha ... how are you going to see what happens if you pull the cameras?

No, I think the more accepted term that I've seen used is "cross-gun". Let's get it right folks!....