Which part of NY produces the biggest deer?

[DeerDuck]

Lima area has lots of big racks.....

[WNY Bowhunter]

I really can't complain about what my area of Region 8 produces. We can grow some bruisers if they escape the hunting  pressure for a few years.

[Taylormike]

Niagara/Erie county, flat farm land almost impenetrable, plus some of the areas are bow only...

Edited October 6, 2015 by Taylormike

[WNYBuckHunter]

Lima area has lots of big racks.....

 

Small bucks though

[bigbuck62191]

Have heard of monsters coming out of the adks but have only seen two in my whole life that were bigger than 8pts. My guess out west but not rly sure

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[WNY-Hunter]

WNY is where it's at. There are no big deer left on LI anymore.

errr LI is where it's at. There are very few deer left in WNY !!

 

Actually I hunt 9R, 9T, 9M and the population is way down compared to a few years back. Have lived here my entire life and have never see so few deer. There are a few exceptions, ie farmers with very large tracts of land that do not allow others to hunt their property. Permission to hunt private land is very very hard to come by now a days.

[pistolp71]

Nothing left on LI, federal sharpshooters took them all out last year. Western NY for sure.

[LIWaterman]

They may be here but I sure don't see them. Need to start sneaking on to property I don't have permission and restricted areas

[StevieSacs]

maybe in the 90s when it wasnt over run by anti hunting liberals....easier to get permission to screw the home owners daughter then hunt. 

 

Amen my brother.

[jjb4900]

They may be here but I sure don't see them. Need to start sneaking on to property I don't have permission and restricted areas

that's unheard of on L.I.......if you do, you'll be the first.

[wolc123]

I killed my heaviest buck in the Adirondacks last season, but have taken several lighter deer with larger racks in WNY. My buddy killed one of the largest racked non-typicals in the state a couple years ago there, and it did not field dress much over a hundred pounds. I agree that if antlers are your primary objective, Erie and Niagara counties are a good bet. Those are also "doe-only" areas for the first two weeks now. Maybe having so many does around helps bucks grow large racks. They don't have to fight over them so much. Climbing the mountains puts more weight on their hind-quarters, which is where most of the body mass is carried. That may be why the mountain deer are bigger, especially during seasons with heavy mast production. When you say "big", is it antlers or bodies you are referring to?

Edited October 7, 2015 by wolc123

[Rhwrhwrhw0426]

Region 8 sucks I heard all other regions don't suck though

[Rhwrhwrhw0426]

Wherever that 36 pt was shot prolly doesn't suck either

[skully]

Westchester in the mid 90s was incredible.  Then all the articles about how great it was( every gun hunter from area picked up a bow) coupled with everything else that was mentioned it has been getting worse every year. I still have some good spots but can not take all the BS that goes with it ( trespassing , stolen stands etc etc) so I stay away.  There are still some giants running around but nothing like it was.

[WNY Bowhunter]

Here are a few of the biggest bucks taken locally that I've had my hands on...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 7, 2015 by WNY Bowhunter

[nyantler]

I remember some of those bucks

[BuckThornBooners]

Any coincident that Steuben Co is home of http://charliealsheimer.com/ca/  who is a  advocate of QDMA and has been for over 20 years I read recently that he has QDMA cooperation from 100s of landowners/farmes in that area and that it is a true QDMA success story!   

 

 I also think WNY  BH might be a real estate agent because the price of land with deer like that goes for about 6K an acre in IOWA

 

 

At this point is anyone not convinced that NY could be the next big buck state if we protect young Bucks.  

[Trial153]

Westchester is a shadow of what it was, and the blame for that can be placed on us hunters. .....LI is such a pain in the ass it can't even be considered. The Adks and the Catskills are out, for obvious reasons. For that matter everyplace east of the i81 corridor can be eliminated ....

So that leaves the southern tier west of I81 with a few pockets in there that better then most ....

[nyantler]

Any coincident that Steuben Co is home of http://charliealsheimer.com/ca/  who is a  advocate of QDMA and has been for over 20 years I read recently that he has QDMA cooperation from 100s of landowners/farmes in that area and that it is a true QDMA success story!   

 

 I also think WNY  BH might be a real estate agent because the price of land with deer like that goes for about 6K an acre in IOWA

 

 

At this point is anyone not convinced that NY could be the next big buck state if we protect young Bucks.

I know Charlie quite well, and although I believe that he is a good steward of deer management.. he first and foremost made and still makes a living photographing big whitetails and writing books about them. He saw an opportunity to get big bucks to photograph and a new topic to write about on his own property when the Avery deer farm went south around 1997. In fact he started his own little deer farm with a buck from Avery's that I believe he named David. I think maybe Charlie's motives were a bit different back then... He did have a lot to do however with the promotion and success of QDM.. not really sure how involved he is with the QDMA.

[phade]

The conditions for big bucks really isn't a mystery.

 

Soil quality, hunting pressure, ability to age, and basic survival components (shelter, water, food) really add up to the answer. Genetics play a role, but its so minor that its hard to grasp how much in a free range location. Although, I will say with a caveat that state class or world class bucks seem to come from the same small pockets in areas where even they exceed the norm. Not sure why.

 

The difference is soil cation exchange capacity alone is a big difference between wNY and the areas out east in NY.

Edited October 7, 2015 by phade

[Nomad]

I also think WNY BH might be a real estate agent because the price of land with deer like that goes for about 6K an acre in IOWA

Farm land in parts of Ontario County is inching towards that......

[518BowSlayer]

pretty much all of New York has good hunting except the capital region... where I live

[ghug92]

I would probably say western NY has the healthiest and largest bucks of ny state in the largest numbers per square mile. But, if you're talking about small areas with giant bucks, i would say any suburb outside of larger cities usually have some slammers in them.  Deer have adapted so that they can live in small strips of woods and suburban areas also have lower amounts of hunting. If you have the proper habitat of food, water, shelter, good genetics, along with barely any hunting pressure, youre going to have some slammers. Its just too bad that they usually get killed by cars instead of going to proper use. In my experience, parts of niagara county have some monster suburban deer, albany county has a lot of big suburban deer and areas down near NYC and long island have some big ones as well. Along with that, the deer in suburbs are used to people. I've seen deer that will not run from a guy in camo in the middle of the woods within a suburban neighborhood, but I've also seen deer bolt from the same thing. That being said, I'm sure nothing really beats the feat of harvesting a truly wild monster buck taken in western or central ny. 

[NonTypical]

Here are a few of the biggest bucks taken locally that I've had my hands on...

Enough said. End of conversation. Thread closed. Thank you...

[Doc]

It is interesting how many huge bucks are found around major cities and suburbs where hunting is either nonexistent or severely curtailed. And yet, there is nothing about ground minerals or food plots or habitat that is particularly ideal. They all have just one thing in common, and that is long life. These are probably some of the worse managed deer herds anywhere and yet they thrive on not being managed.