steve863

It become the.....

Carbonelement, I fixed my above post for you to be an equal opportunity name caller. One way or the other the spi* immigrant is probably way more productive than most white trash Americans, thus farmers keep hiring them.

How true. Farmers realized that they will get a decent days work from an immigrant compared to some lazy white trash American.

So illegal immigration started under the Obama administration? Just as many were coming over when Bush was president and what did he do about it?? NO, it will never be stopped. American business always used immigrant labor and they still are today, thus it will NEVER be stopped. Politicians saying that they will do something about it is all hot air, because NOTHING will be done about it. Illegal immigration COULD be stopped or seriously slowed down, but business gives money to politicians and politicians won't lose this stream of money by putting an end to it. Capitalists care for their bottom lines and could give a crap how illegal immigrants might be effecting you. That's just how the game is played, so you guys can continue to bitch all you want, but nothing will change.

I don't see why we have to admit to anything. What move isn't due to the politically connected in this state? I can't think of one. And what seems stupid to some is great to others. Take antler restictions for example. Ten hunters who may be part of a "sportsmans" group could be in the pockets of some politicians and they could have enough sway to get it to become law, while scores of others think the rule stinks and are pretty much voiceless on the matter. That's how dirty politics works. Politicians, no matter what party they belong to are as low as it gets on the scale of low-lifes. If you know of a way to get politics out of hunting and everything else, please let us know how to do it. I don't think anyone has figured that one out yet.

If the loss of revenue is caused solely by the drop in the cost of licenses, then why would the state or anyone be looking into this? They could do the math and the case would be closed. I somehow think their math isn't adding up to only the drop in license costs, thus this is being analyzed further. Again, I don't know JACK as to where anyone is going with this since I have not seen any links posted here. What do we do about it? Some of us have been giving our observations and reasons to why there has been a drop in hunter numbers. As to solutions? There are many, yet as is usual in the hunting world, NONE will make everyone happy. I myself can't see hunting gaining in any sort of popularity on a large scale. Yeah, you might have a few take it up, but then you'll have that many or more who will give it up. So in the end you'll still have a net loss in hunter numbers, which is exactly what I think is happening here. There is NO magic bullet here. One can't take up hunting as one would take up tennis, jogging, bicycling or many other activities. Hunting is a totally different animal. It depends on so many different factors, that for many it's becoming way more trouble than it's worth.

As you and others have stated, there has definitely been a drastic reduction in hunter numbers in the Catskill/Hudson valley region. Many of which were hunters from the NYC/LI area. People think that there aren't many hunters from that area, but they just don't realize the number of people that actually live there. Out of the MILLIONS of people there, only a small percentage hunt, but this still adds up to a LOT of people in comparison to population numbers in the rural parts of the state. Lets say 20,000 hunters have given it up from the region, which in my opinion is probably on the low side. Lets say on the average these people spent $60 on sporting licenses. If they are no longer buying sporting licenses, that's $1.2 million dollars right there of lost revenue.

I still haven't seen a link posted to verify this decrease in revenue, but if true, there is NO way that the lowering in price of sporting licenses could have decreased the revenue by as much as it is being claimed here. How much did prices go down by? A couple of bucks in total?? NO way that would add up to the millions we are talking about here.

It's surely become a selfish game, I'll give you that. Years ago neighbor allowed neighbor to hunt each others land, while these days most property boundaries are guarded better than our southern border with Mexico. I guess much of the distrust between hunters has been created by slob hunters, but it's usually a slob hunter who thinks everyone else is a slob hunter, just as a thief always thinks everyone else is a thief, so as I've always said, the demise of hunting has pretty much been our own doing. Even with the restrictions such as AR's. It was one group of hunters who pushed for it and made it become law, while the rest are now starting to give it up since legally there isn't much left to shoot at. The ones who pushed for the law are probably loving it that there will be fewer hunters out there to shoot "their" bucks, so it's a win-win for them on a couple of counts.

I know hunter numbers have been dropping drastically in the Catskill region of the state compared to what it was 20 or more years ago. And this is an area that had the NYC/LI hunters, and their numbers were not insignificant. Look at it this way, hunters now have antler restriction rules they have to abide by, plus doe tags have not been easy to get in quite a few units in the Catskills, so what reasons do these hunters have to make a 2 or 3 hour drive upstate to go hunting when there isn't much they can legally shoot? It's a no brainer for a lot of hunters, quite honestly. And yeah, you can shoot a doe with a bow, but we all know that bowhunters are not the what makes up the brunt of hunting license sales. It's the gun hunters, and I would not doubt that revenue from license sales has been taking a huge hit in recent years.

I read another report where there was talk about euthanizing the deer farmers so they wouldn't have to pay them out...

Can someone be more specific here? This is a drop in license sales only? And a drop over one year or several?? Please post links if you have them.

Let me be the first to speak up. I'm sure some of the old timers here will remember this picture. It's a picture of me and my buddy Doewhacker from a few years back. We shot this buck on First-lights property. We trespassed on his land the weekend he wasn't up there. We are immigrants from Tanzania, and eventhough our own family members were not in this country when slavery was legal we still are VERY offended by the confederate flag. Maybe now the thread could officially be put to bed.

I completely agree, the see thru mounts are the absolute worse thing one could put on a rifle.

I don't know how many people here will know him. Maybe if he played the banjo they would. LOL

I have considered the confederate flag as a symbol of prejudice well before these current events, but you do make a very valid point. In my honest opinion the biggest culprit to all this is the President of the United States Barak H. Obama. Instead of race relations getting better in this country they have gotten considerably WORSE since he has been in office. He has fools like Al Sharpton frequent the White House way too often, and all of them together have just fanned the flames to all this. Who would have thunk it? The first black president gets elected and all hell starts breaking loose with race relations. Obama could have capitalized on all this and taken the high road (most especially since he is bi-racial), but instead he took the low road. Very sad, and I can assure him and anyone else who agrees with his methodology that white Americans will not soon forget what his tactics have been. If he thinks that this will somehow raise the status of blacks in this country, he is sadly mistaken. Don't really care if anyone thinks these comments have racial overtones or not, but they are the simple truth here.

I saw a news clip last night where a fight broke out between some blacks and whites over the confederate flag being displayed. I think it was in SC. The funny part was that the white dudes who wanted to display the flag wore camo hunting caps on their heads. Now wasn't that a surprise? LOL Probably pals of some of the folks on this site.

Not a mt biker, but during the Spring and Summer I ride 50 miles per week on a road bike. Basically just for the exercise. Have been doing this for years and used to ride way more in the past. My kids are getting older and have now started enjoying cycling also. We've been going out at least once on the weekends and we do another 5-10 miles together which is a lot of fun. I guess mt biking could be fun, but most people have to travel a good distance to do it. Biking on the road I ride right out of my garage, so you can't beat that for convenience.

Didn't think girls brought subjects like that up in 1923.

Hey, do you like hearing and reading about it non-stop whether you turn on the TV or computer?? If it isn't gay marriage it's Bruce Jenner and transgender people. WTF is this?? It seems like the media is putting them up on a pedestal and flaunting all this nonsense in everyones face. I hold the same opinion when loud mouth idiots like Ted Nugent try to speak on behalf of gun owners/hunters. It turns off more people than they will ever realize.

Of course the difference is that I don't go around showing my prejudices by waving a flag like you guys do. I have my opinions and that's it. I don't go around waving a flag that may be offensive to gays like you guys do with a flag that is definitely offensive to a lot of blacks. You guys start out with a strike against you from the get go.

I don't know what reactions were in the past, but to me this gay marriage issue is NOT a civil rights issue. Gays have had the same rights as anyone else in everything except marriage, but I and MANY others simply don't believe that two people of the same sex should have the right to marry. I won't base my opinion on religion, biology or the way I was brought up, but for me two people of the same sex making the claim of marriage simply doesn't hold water. They can live together, have sex with each other, I don't care what else, but for me it's simply NOT a marriage from what I consider the definition of marriage to be. Obviously my point of view has lost out here, however there is absolutely NO reason that I must change my position on this issue. I can assure you that it won't change.

I guess that might make me the only one against gay marriage AND the confederate flag. Like I said in another post. Gays can have gay sex until the cows come home, but I just don't want to hear about any of it. Gays and gay marriage has been getting so much damned publicity in the last few years, that I am sick and tired of hearing about it. Maybe if they weren't so vocal about it, I could be more accepting, but since they are, they have turned me off completely. I am against gay marriage, and will not change my opinion about it just because it's in vogue to support it. They have their opinions and I will have mine. For me the case is closed.

You obviously have way more luck than most people. Finding places to hunt within a couple of hours of NYC is a whole different animal. Even trying to get in on a lease is not easy. They want big money for leases and then they have like 10 people hunting 50 acres of land. To heck with that! In other cases not even money will get the landowner to give you permission. You can ask the few people on this site who live around NYC what their experiences finding private land has been like if you don't believe me. Not an easy undertaking, that's for sure. I've seen more than a few give up on hunting completely because of the difficulty in finding private land to hunt. Just last year I lost the only private hunting spot that I had. Had it for 23 seasons, so it was a very big disappointment to lose it. Didn't even bother looking for another. Found an inexpensive outfitted hunt in another state not too far away from NY, where I was also issued a handful of doe tags, so for me it was a NO brainer which was the better deal. Just not worth the headaches in NY for me.

Since you are from the city without any hunting friends, finding private land to hunt will be a monumental challenge for you. If you lived in a rural area things might be a little easier, but treking upstate on summer weekends to look for places to hunt will require a LOT of effort with probably very little to show for it. I don't mean to discourage you, just giving you some straight facts here. If I were you, I'd look into public land areas. The time you'll waste looking for private land, you can find a few public areas and maybe scout them before the season.