So what's so bad about NYS deer management and the hunting season??

[Santamour123]

- Make DMAPs only available to farmers that allow a certain number of hunters access to their land during regular deer seasons

agree 1000000000000000000%

[HectorBuckBuster]

I know for a fact some on the vineyards in my area have only 20 acres of grapes and received 9 Nuisance permits alone. I have also had vineyard owners stand right next to me and tell ne that shot 39 deer on Nuisance permits and left everyone right where they shot them and this owner has less then 100 acres or land. Plus then these Vineyard owner then get Doe tags that can be used during regular deer season too. As Nuisance permits can not be used after Oct 1st.

[soupsamich]

New to NY, but does this state have a "Master Hunter" program.  Other states have this program that requires additional training and community service to better the forest land.  In return the states partner with farmers and those farmers allow the master hunters access to thier land to hunt during either regular or special seasons or to be able to use thier land owner permits.  Makes for good relationships and good stewardship.  I think that would be an improvement if they dont already have it.

[noodle one]

Leave the deer seasons alone. I am a bowhunter and gunhunter. The bowhunters in my area want to be careful what they ask for. I have a neighber who will not let  any bowhunters on his land. He feels that the bowhunters are taken all the bucks before gun season starts and he is not the only one that feels that way. I know people who will tell you to your face that the bowhunters are killing to many big bucks. Guess what, I have to agree. I am a bowhunter and I hunt on the ground, not out of a treestand. I take a buck every year with a bow and i can pick and chose my deer. Any bowhunter that doses his home work can do the same if they put in the time. To me taken a deer with a bow is much easier than with a gun. I have to laugh to my self when I hear someone say how much harder it is to take a deer with a bow than a gun. If most bowhunters would be truthful to them selfs and others ,they will agree.

There is only (1) thing the DEC and state need to do is open up XBOW IN BOW SEASON and let others enjoy hunting at that time of year, because it is a great time to be in the woods. Other than that, leave the deer seasons alone.

[bubba]

shorten the seasons, double license fees and let the elite have fun. 

[First-light]

Oh Bubba!

[jimbodwb]

I agree with starting bow season Oct 1st. But I also think gun season should start 1 week earlier and end 1 week earlier. The gun season in Southern Zone starts too late. Why shouldn't gun hunters have part of the chasing phase?

[First-light]

Alot of you are asking for an earlier bow season. If it opened on Oct 1st there would be alot of leaves on the trees limiting visibility. Do you see this as a problem? May have to use different stand locations on field edges???

[bubba]

bow season starts on 9/27 in the north. It seems to work.  But egular season stars earlier too, so it isnt all abot bow hunters.  We also have in parts an early ml season and a late ml season.  I am seeing more deer this year than I have in the past few, so something is working.  If you alowed more inplements, more peole would hunt.  I know i know I was thinking about cutting in on the bow hunters my bad.

[Recoil Rob]

I agree with starting bow season Oct 1st. But I also think gun season should start 1 week earlier and end 1 week earlier. The gun season in Southern Zone starts too late. Why shouldn't gun hunters have part of the chasing phase?

+1 and go back to a Monday opener.

[Doc]

So there you have it. Anyone who expects the gunners to quietly sit by and have their season hacked on can read some of these replies and start getting just an inkling of the firestorm that would result ..... lol.

[nyantler]

having attended numerous DEC forums over the years... I have to agree Doc... But, I have also noticed that any issue that the DEC has brought in front of hunters has been met by some sort of firestorm. That's why you'll never see the type of quality deer herds like in other states here in NY. And, hunters will just continue with the," I'm not seeing as many deer", "I'm not seeing as many big bucks",  "We don't have deer like that in my area" complaints forever. By the way.. Happy Thanksgiving Fellas...to you and your families

[Stretchhunts]

How about letting kids hunt younger. It's hard at the age of 14 to get kids into hunting when you have to fight with XBOX, Playstation etc. Kids play game systems and kill things all day long but don't wanna sit in the woods at 14 and not see wild life. I started my kids young on hunting and fishing to keep them off the streets and doing games. Now they are 50/50 when it comes to games and the outdoors.

[coyoteman]

I say have a two week season hunt them with  bow, rifle, crossbow or shotgun. Do not issue any DMP tags for two years. I have a feeling between the coyotes and the doe getting shot there is a real impact on the herd right now. Just because the State DEC says they are there and gives tags doesn't mean we have to use them.

[nyantler]

What you call impact on the herd is actually going from overpoulation to closer to where the populations need to be with the lessened habitat. Seeing deer, or not seeing deer, is not a reliable way of determining optimim herd size. Read some research on coyote impact on deer herds... you'll be surprised to know that they really don't have much impact at all where deer are healthy. You'll also learn that killing off the alfa male and/or female can be worse than leaving the pack intact. I'm not saying they can't impact the herd I'm saying research shows that it happens quite infrequently in New York.

[coyoteman]

NYANTLER, I understand what your saying about killing the Alpha female. It will open up the breeding for the other females in the pack. I remember when we hunted by Bath the farmers that we hunted with shot every deer they saw. We did it right along with them. We did this for about 3 years and after that time deer were hard to find. We then got together and stopped doing it and the deer came back after a few years. I believe with the farmland around here the land will support alot more deer than there is right now. In the last 10 years we stopped shooting the small bucks as well. The neighboring farmers shot 7 doe on one drive last year. This year during bow and gun season so far I have seen 6 doe. This is not like it was before they issued Doe tags. Before Doe tags were here you would see deer nearly everytime you went out. The winters are getting milder so I believe the herd will survive with a higher population. The Doe tags and Coyotes are the only thing that have changed in the last twenty years. There is actually less hunters but they shoot more Does.

[rutstrut]

This year in four days of hunting between my buddie and I we saw 65 does and 2 bucks. A little off for the Buck to doe ratio

[Larry]

I think things are fine they way they are now. But I would like a youth hunt the 1st weekend in October with mandatory blazed orange the next weekend bow opens. The last thing I would like in the southern zone is the late bow ML season to run though the first Sunday after Jan. 1st.

This is just to address a couple of post. This year the DEC cut DMP’s in most WMU’s this would indicate that there is not a over abundance of doe’s in most WMU’s; also 70% of the WMU are at or below desired levels with 41% at below desired levels. (2009 deer harvest report page 13) the first think someone is going to say is that’s the buck take objective. The buck take objective is one of the prime factors use to determine the adult doe take

[Larry]

I would ask how many doe’s and how many were antlerless were there; remember up to 2/3’s could be fawn’s. If they are all doe’s I’m going to ask then where are the fawns. Next I would ask could you have seen some of them more than one time with a few of you hunting

[rutstrut]

It was one mother and two fawns usually. All deer that iwaa seeing were mother and two fawns

[nyantler]

The only problem I see with increased doe tags is that doe harvest on one peice of property may be much higher than on another in the same WMU. Depending on the amount of hunting and hunters a given property has. I am uncertain how this is factored in as part of the overall doe population control prescribed for a given WMU. On the 1000 acres of leased land that I hunt in 7j and 7f we control our own doe take regardless of the amount of tags we have. We do it based on yearly observations. It seems to have worked well over the years.

[Doc]

The one thing that we can not be expecting is that all localities will ever be managed properly. Across any WMU, the antlerless tag numbers issued, and the population density estimates are at best based on an average of past statistical results across the entire WMU. That means that likely some parcels within that WMU will have ridiculously high population densities and others will have actual deer scarcity, and the average looks great. The same WMU can have complaints of too many deer as well as complaints of too few deer and they all could be right. You can have deer numbers in a WMU that look wonderful for any particular WMU, but instead are comprised of local parcels that are absolutely wrong in both extremes. Such is the problem with a state agency trying to regulate populations on various lands that have all different levels of hunting pressures and habitats.

It's a poor situation, but is the best that anyone can expect unless they are able to take on micro-managing of their own land, which I believe actually happens on only a tiny, miniscule, number of hunting parcels across the state. That's why hunter observations are not useful in state management. The hunters may be (and probably are) absolutely correct in what they see and comment about, but they are only looking at a few acres of the whole WMU. If they were to hunt elsewhere in that same WMU, they might very well have an entire different assessment of deer populations.

Doc

[coyoteman]

Doc, good link to the Coyote study in the small game section. The way I read it is that 7 collared dogs killed 21 fawns. I am a firm believer that they have a large impact on the deer herd. If you multiply the assumed number of yotes x 3 that would be a huge impact. I don't believe the DEC figures those kills into the DMP allocations.

[nyantler]

I read that myself.. very interesting study... we have a ton of coyotes on our property.. but I haven't seen any change in the number or quality of the deer in the last 12 years.. maybe cuz we have a lot of good fawning areas on the property and the coyotes can't lock in on just one fawning spot to grab the fawns. I'm not sure.

[HUNT6246]

I agree that all WMU's are not the same and that there can even be variations within a given WMU.  I believe there are several key points about the NYS deer management system and problems with it;

1) I believe we as hunters have grown to be much more efficient in our hunting methods than we were prior to say the 1970's.  The advent of rifled shotguns, use of handguns with rifle calibers, expanded areas where rifles can be used, new developments in archery equipment, improved quality of muzzleloaders and the more widespread use of tree stands are a few examples.

2) The DEC figures on only a small percentage of deer kills actually being reported.  I believe the actual count of those reporting in is higher.  Thus the DEC reports of the actual deer take are incorrect.

3) The DEC is severely strapped for money and the number of employees has been and will be cut further.  But, how often do you see a DEC biologist or ECO, out of their car off the road and back in the woods?  They don't have time!  How can they accurately know what's going on without doing that?  Road kills aren't a 100% accurate measure of what's going on.

4) I look back in the 60's and 70's when I started deer hunting where you could hunt in areas such as Allegheny State Park and expect to see 20-30 deer a day during archery season and sometimes as many as 80-100 deer a day in gun season.  Most were antlerless deer.  Obviously, some were probably the same deer, just running around the hill, but seeing deer made the day so much more interesting.  As a young hunter then, it was fun going.  Now days when hunters (young and old) only see a few deer in a day, no wonder people get discouraged about taking up hunting.  I also hunted ASP in the spring for turkeys and we didn't find starved deer due to the herd size exceeding the capacity of the area and its' browse.  I hunted the Moose River Area in about 1969 when the DEC issued many, many antlerless permits for I believe a $5 fee.  The area was supposedly a wintering yard and severely overpopulated with deer.  As I recall, out of the many (maybe 100's) of hunters that participated in that 'event' only something like 13 deer were taken during the opening weekend.  Most hunters never saw a deer.  I believe we're getting told a LOAD about the deer herd, its' size, numbers and (grossly inflated) annual take.  In many case by people without a lot of field experience.

I live in Niagara county.  I have limited mobility and limited access on land to hunt.  I'll be lucky to see a deer this season, let alone being able to take one.  Consider now that posted property and lack of access may sustain the deer herd by creating sanctuaries that preserve a breeding population.  I think we're getting sold down the drain by NYS and the DEC as a way to generate funds with the DMP's.  I don't have a great deal of faith in the ability of our DEC to manage the deer herd to optimize it for all parties - homeowners, hunters etc.  I could probably go on - but enough said.