Doc

Must be the DEC is doing a great job of getting rid of these phantom hogs ....Eh? At least that is likely the spin they would put on it. By the way, they are doing a great job of keeping the elephant population down too. You'll notice you never see any around NYS anywhere. Keep up the great work DEC!

The point is that they are calling bowhunters "selfish" who feel that crossbows should be excluded from bow seasons and then admit that they too will exclude others from that season now that they have elbowed their way into the bowseason. If you can't see the hypocrisy in that, then I haven't a shot at ever explaining it.

What a great attitude! Politics first - country be damned. It is looking like you and Obama have the same anti-American views. Now we have a pretty good idea of what you both are. So much for your credibility.

First of all, thank you for so generously welcoming me into the season that for years has been established exclusively for bows. That's damn nice of you. Secondly, it sounds like you are already eager to exclude gun hunters of all sorts which now puts you neck-deep in hypocrisy and selfishness. I guess you don't want all those gunners shooting YOUR deer. Now maybe you understand how stupid you sound repeating your goofy sounding selfish and elitism mantra. Your own arguments aren't even supported by yourself ..... lol. From what I have seen here all you can do is repeat yourself without ever reading or addressing any responses. That to me is not discussion, but rather propagandizing. So it really looks like there is no point in trying to have a discussion with you since you have no intent of doing so. I have recognized your attempts at hijacking the topic because you weren't having a whole lot of luck with the way it was going, and I refuse to allow you to do that. You have now been shown to be a hypocrite which pretty much voids every scrap of your credibility. I am willing to continue the debate with anyone else that is serious about listening to other opinions, but as near as I can determine, you are not even reading my responses. So why bother?

Unfortunately that is not a unique reaction. Today, hunting is lacking the "cool" factor. Society is succumbing to the pressures exerted by the anti-hunting organizations and their well-financed animal rights campaigns. While we sit here comfortable and making fun of their antics and feeling very confident that the public is viewing their nonsense in a mocking dismissive fashion, the hearts and minds of whole generations and even existing hunters themselves right under our naïve and self-deluded noses.

I am beginning to wonder if Obama is slipping over the edge a bit. Some of his most recent moves seem to be designed to deliberately sabotage the trump presidency with an attitude of "the country be damned". This Russian payback fiasco which may turn out to be an Obama pipe dream. And now the Obama orchestrated Jewish blind-side of the UN vote on their homeland settlement issue. What is going on with this guy. Has he lost it because his worthless legacy is likely going to be shown as trash? Or perhaps he is just holding his breath, laying on the floor and kicking his feet because Trump is getting more news attention than he is. He kind of indicated that that sort of bothers him with his "There can only be one President" remark. Is he going off the deep end because he presided over a most disastrous political loss in the recent election, the blame for which lies right on his doorstep. And now he is throwing Hillary under the bus stating that if he had been running instead of that clown Clinton they would have won the election. What more is a crazed lame duck president capable of? The possibilities are very scary. He is in a position of doing some real damage to the Trump presidency and the country, and lately it doesn't seem to bother him a whole bunch that his little hissy fits over his failed presidency is stirring up a lot of headaches for this country. Nothing compared to the damage done in his two terms, but reckless and irresponsible nonetheless. I won't be breathing easy until this guy is stripped of all political power and vacant from the political scene and a more mentally stable Trump finally takes over.

I was just thinking of much the same thing the other day as I glanced around the Christmas table and watched all the youngsters wearing their thumbs down feverishly pounding out messages. I even saw two of them that were sitting next to each other texting between themselves. And I was thinking to myself, "These are the kids we are supposed to interest in hunting? ...... It can't be done!" The harder we try to keep the activity alive, the more technological items that get invented to deflect new comers from hunting. That's why just dragging a kid out in the woods needs something new and untried to change the basic motivations. I thought this thread might uncover something, but I guess it is society that we would have to change. Sadly, it ain't going to happen.

Yes there is a feeling of self-sufficiency and independence that gets into my blood during every hunt. But in reality, if I am to be honest, I and my family would surely starve to death if we were dependent on my hunting for sustenance.

I hope the single-shot argument never becomes a criteria for inclusion into bow season, or we will have the muzzleloaders, and single-shot rifles and shotguns alongside us (But that would make us unselfish....lol). But using only one shot is no strange concept for a whole lot of us gun hunters. In fact many very popular rifles and shotguns are single shot. I suspect the number of bowhunters who would really give a damn about being booted out of the regular gun season could be counted on one hand with fingers left over ..... lol.

Here are some observations that are kind of peripheral to the topic: I remember that for a good chunk of my life coyotes were like the mountain lions here in our stretch of NYS. Not a one present. Not even rumors of them. At that time coyotes were some kind of western critter far from our state borders. It is strange that this supposed deer scourge is now somewhere between common to plentiful everywhere here in NYS, and the deer herd has coincidentally reached the point where several WMUs are declared in a near state of emergency because the DEC claims they are eating themselves out of house and home and jeopardizing the reestablishment of woodland flora. Can anybody explain why that is. We seem to have the coyotes and deer populations spiking at the same time. If coyotes are eating all the deer what's wrong with the lazy coyotes in areas 8 and 9 that they can't keep up with the deer populations. This same point about the decades (centuries?) that coyotes never existed here, brings on another curious question. How is it now that they are touted as an ecological necessity? I mean other than being a new source of rabies, distemper, and mange for some of the more normal resident predators of the area, how did the coyote become a "must have" predator in NY? So anyways, there does seem to be a whole lot of urban legend that is not really standing up to historical evidence, or so it seems. I'm sure somebody has logical answers to these things, and I for one would like to hear them.

It could be that if we understood the motivations, both internal and external, we might stumble on to real effective programs that might developed to reverse the decline of hunter populations. At least it would give us some real ideas of what to work on.

Here is what I am thinking. You could have an open season year around, but most likely you will never coax hunters out in the 80 or 90 degree heat of the summer. There is no way that I would camo-up during the summer months, or do I even know anyone who would do it. Is there anything that could lure me out into the skeeters and the heat with the sweat running down the center of my back just to harvest an absolutely worthless, unprimed pelt off some mangy coyote? ...... not likely. In fact it is likely that you would be opening a season that simply would never be significantly used by anyone. So I don't see any good arguments one way or the other regarding a year around season. Would it have much impact? ...... Probably not. I will say one thing that kind of draws my curiosity a bit. In our area, the coyote population has taken a very distinct down-turn since a couple of decades ago. The population seems to go up and down in some pretty wild cycles. And since they reside at the top of the natural food chain, there definitely is something that is a significant natural population control. I have absolutely no idea what the control is, but something has cut down the population from a bunch of years ago.

I use a glove on my recurve. I was once told that releases are a bit too harsh on traditional equipment ...... just a little too close to dry-firing. I don't know for sure, but the philosophy of shooting traditional equipment really doesn't fit with releases anyway .... lol.

Yes, when they talk about the aging of the hunter population, they are not kidding. I am 72 and will be picking up another year January 3rd. It truly is a case of: "If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself." I never spent more than a quarter of a second thinking about myself as being in my 70's, but here we are. The one thing that is for sure is that no one will be able to predict exactly when that date will come that we are going to be forced to hang it all up. And when that day comes, I think it will be a hell of a shock. Something that was a large part of my life will come to an end, and there won't be any replacing it. And here I am today trying to figure out exactly why it is that I ever did it. So many possible answers, but none of them very definitive.

I have been wondering the same thing I know we cannot go on forever, but every guess I have ever made as to what age I will have to give it up has come up short (thankfully). I wonder what the personal reaction will be when the day finally comes that I will have to call it quits? The motives and drives to hunt are so engrained from a lifetime of outdoor activities and what I call my natural instincts and born-in predatory needs, that it will not be a very good day when things finally give out and force me to hang up the bow and case my deer rifle for the last time. The fact that it will happen some day is what prompted me to ask the original question of this thread. What the heck kind of powerful internal forces are there that would make me endure the discomforts and hardships that hunting can throw at us?

Purdy gun! Will you be adding a scope (What kind)?

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Yeah, crossbow threads do seem to take on a life of there own. But I think it is a viable discussion because there are some pretty important principles at work here in terms of what a "special" season really means anymore. Also, if anyone thinks that the evolution of bow season will stop with crossbows, understand that the blueprint for season invasion was written here with the crossbow, primarily using the principle of incremental precedents. There are many others who are looking at this successful invasion with a jealous eye toward following that blueprint. The story is not ended yet.

How about addressing the more obvious selfishness where you will try to block firearms from your new crossbow season. You know..... the season that you people bulldozed your way into. Do you ever intend to address what makes you not selfish when you want to exclude guns? Does God give you some special dispensation because it is you that is excluding people from hunting "your" deer ...... lol. You throw that selfish term around pretty freely, apparently thinking that as long as your hero Babe Winkleman said it that it can only be used against bow hunters. But take a look in the mirror and you will see more selfishness and self-serving attitudes than any bowhunter ever displayed and you will also see a guy that would also attempt to preserve his season through exclusion of others. So now when you feel like getting involved with the name-calling and insults understand that you are part of it all now too. I'm sorry that I have to be the one that keeps bringing up that fact that you keep ignoring (what has it been, maybe a dozen times that I have brought that uncomfortable fact up to you). Sorry, but running away from that fact does not really make it go away.... Nor does the tactic of not reading or responding to any of the replies that come back from your senseless rhetoric.

I'm not sidestepping anything, I am simply stopping you from ducking out of the topic through irrelevant questions that are none of your business and that have no bearing on the topic. It's obvious that you are trying to badmouth bows as being inefficient and inhumane deer hunting weapons, and I won't side-track the thread with that kind of discussion. Stick to the topic, and start reading the responses and perhaps we can have a discussion. But if you are trying to skip out from under your failed arguments by changing the subject, I'm sorry but I am not going to enable that tactic.

Now, lets add some reality to this debate. The fact is that the die is cast. We already have had the bow season take-over. We already have muzzleloaders moving into bow season. We already have rifles coexisting briefly with bow season. We already have further encroachments of muzzleloaders into bow seasons being threatened by the DEC. So trying to maintain bow seasons for bows is already a lost cause. However the debate is still fun, and we do need reminding periodically as to what has been done to the bow season and what will continue to be done to the season as hunter attitudes and motives continue to evolve. I do believe that it is all moving in the same directions that most of the hunting attitudes are. And while the challenge of bowhunting was always a treasured part of my bow hunting experiences, the majority is being satisfied. And let's face it, I am reaching a point in my life where most of this will soon become a moot point anyway. But I still like the debate.

And coming from the wise words of your new hero you decided that turning yourself into a parrot and repeating his words somehow made you sound so brilliant. However you fail to understand how that makes you a complete hypocrite when you then turn around and want to exclude rifles and shotguns. You too are exclusionary which you claim is another word for selfish and elitist. Or are you now saying that rifles and all other weapons should also be crammed into bow season?

First of all, it is not my position to add or change any of the seasons or weapons to accommodate anything. So I do not understand what the hell you are talking about in this new obfuscation attempt regarding Olympians. It has nothing to do with this thread. So now it sounds like you are trying to shift your arguments to saying that longbows and recurves are inhumane weapons that should not be allowed at all? Yes, I agree that crossbows, shotguns and rifles are all more efficient than a bow. I'm not sure anyone has even hinted anything any different. Bow season was never intended to be something that rivaled the efficiency or accuracy of rifles, and I have no idea where you ever got the idea that is was. It was created for the use of bows and arrows ...... period. The point that I keep repeating and you keep consciously sidestepping is that the special bow hunting season was never intended to involve a more efficient weapon than a bow. The whole purpose of the season was to emphasize challenge. To me it sounds like just as I suspected your true intent is to argue that bows should be replaced by more efficient weaponry. Your emphasis seems to have now shifted in that direction. If that is so, then we no longer have anything to talk about. That is a direction that I believe you will find very little support for. But then, maybe I am wrong about that. Hunter attitudes toward bow hunting seem to have changed dramatically. Oh and in regards to your question of where am I, I will have to confess that I do not spend the entire day here on the internet. Yes, sadly it's true, I do have a life outside of internet forums......lol.

Unfortunately you are more right than wrong. Game management has become an exercise in reacting to those that throw the biggest tantrum. They reflect the fact that they report to the governor, and being a political entity, must do what is politically acceptable, biological management principles be damned. It kind of makes you wonder why they go to all the effort and expense of hiring trained individuals to work game management issues when all they really need any more is poll takers.