Harvest Reporting

[Larry]

what I ment was not reporting your kill. an unuse tag is a unused tag. not tagging is poaching

[steve863]

I honestly don't think any changes will be made pertaining to this.  The state has a hard enough time balancing it's financial budgets, never mind counting deer carcasses.  I really don't think it's priority to anyone in power in NYS to have a more accurate count of the deer that get shot by hunters.  The state simply wants hunters to shoot deer and control their numbers and the statistical figures they currently use are good enough for them.  Whether they are off in the count by thousands or tens of thousands doesn't really matter to them.  Deer hunting in NYS is pretty good in general, so they surely won't go to extremes to change anything.  I remember a similar thread in the old forum.  People were coming up with ideas like deer check stations, etc.  Will NEVER happen!  Way too costly, with little to gain for anyone other than the most avid hunter.  And we shouldn't forget that hunters are far from priority in the scheme of things for the state of NY.

[Doc]

I honestly don't think any changes will be made pertaining to this.  The state has a hard enough time balancing it's financial budgets, never mind counting deer carcasses.  I really don't think it's priority to anyone in power in NYS to have a more accurate count of the deer that get shot by hunters.  The state simply wants hunters to shoot deer and control their numbers and the statistical figures they currently use are good enough for them.  Whether they are off in the count by thousands or tens of thousands doesn't really matter to them.  Deer hunting in NYS is pretty good in general, so they surely won't go to extremes to change anything.  I remember a similar thread in the old forum.  People were coming up with ideas like deer check stations, etc.  Will NEVER happen!  Way too costly, with little to gain for anyone other than the most avid hunter.  And we shouldn't forget that hunters are far from priority in the scheme of things for the state of NY.

Steve-

Go back an re-read the original proposal. It's about as close to a free change as anything you will ever find in the DEC. Nearly everything is in place. Very likely, it may even be a cost reduction because it would eliminate all the scurrying around by DEC biologists and other personel, from deer processor to deer processor, taking notes that later have to be manually inputted into the computer to come up with the "reporting rate".

Now whether they want to be bothered with any changes, that's something else. I can't really guess about that. I would say that the lack of replies that I've gotten from them on the two occasions that I sent in the suggestion would indicate that maybe they don't really want to rock the boat.

[Nomad]

I'd be all for it, but i don't think the numbers would change much . The math wiz's have all gone over the D.e.c.'s processes, sample sizes etc. and said it to be valid time and again.

record info from the meat cutters get 1,000's of tag info on deer known to be dead, compair with reported tags, see the number that they know killed but not reported .Build from there. One can get a nationwide poll that has + / - 4 % error with just 1,000 people.

For what its worth I have a friend and fellow hunter who is the head of the math/statistics dept. of a Rochester area college( hint starts with R) we've talked about this ,he feels they get valid info.

I don't know I hunt 8H,DEC says deer numbers are high there, I sure see a lot of them, they'er all over . Killed 4 last year could have killed tons more, so for me I feel they got it right where I hunt .

The big variable is road kill, some say as many as hunters kill ! But who can say for sure, few are reported at all . More roads more dead, more houses out in deer country more dead,more deer in the suburbs more dead. Hell the city of Rochester has a river bottom full of very big bucks....

[wztirem]

Doc,

I would that the DEC would prefer not to rock the bost. By only saying that reporting ones kill is mandatory and not clearly stating what the penalties are speaks volumes.

[wztirem]

I honestly don't think any changes will be made pertaining to this.  The state has a hard enough time balancing it's financial budgets, never mind counting deer carcasses.  I really don't think it's priority to anyone in power in NYS to have a more accurate count of the deer that get shot by hunters.  The state simply wants hunters to shoot deer and control their numbers and the statistical figures they currently use are good enough for them.  Whether they are off in the count by thousands or tens of thousands doesn't really matter to them.  Deer hunting in NYS is pretty good in general, so they surely won't go to extremes to change anything.  I remember a similar thread in the old forum.  People were coming up with ideas like deer check stations, etc.  Will NEVER happen!  Way too costly, with little to gain for anyone other than the most avid hunter.  And we shouldn't forget that hunters are far from priority in the scheme of things for the state of NY.

Good summary!

[steve863]

I'd be all for it, but i don't think the numbers would change much . The math wiz's have all gone over the D.e.c.'s processes, sample sizes etc. and said it to be valid time and again.

record info from the meat cutters get 1,000's of tag info on deer known to be dead, compair with reported tags, see the number that they know killed but not reported .Build from there. One can get a nationwide poll that has + / - 4 % error with just 1,000 people.

For what its worth I have a friend and fellow hunter who is the head of the math/statistics dept. of a Rochester area college( hint starts with R) we've talked about this ,he feels they get valid info.

I don't know I hunt 8H,DEC says deer numbers are high there, I sure see a lot of them, they'er all over . Killed 4 last year could have killed tons more, so for me I feel they got it right where I hunt .

The big variable is road kill, some say as many as hunters kill ! But who can say for sure, few are reported at all . More roads more dead, more houses out in deer country more dead,more deer in the suburbs more dead. Hell the city of Rochester has a river bottom full of very big bucks....

Very true!  Statistical sampling is pretty darned accurate.  Sometimes it's hard to believe how this could be so, but it has been proven time and again to be so.

[Doc]

I think I could buy into all that statistical stuff if there wasn't clear evidence that occasionally things go terribly wrong. I am remembering back in the late 80's and early 90's when the herd was basically out of control. I personally witnessed the massive yard at the end of Honeoye Lake, and the hundreds of deer standing in the field basically waiting to die. I assume that the staistical model was incapable of predicting and preventing that. Once it got to the point where it was publicly obvious, the only fix they had then was to flood the season with all kinds of excessive numbers of permits until the herd came back down. And then they over-shot the mark and had to slash permits dramatically because of all the (apparently legitimate) uproar about deer shortages. Now to me, that kind of see-sawing results is an indicator of a system that isn't working. They seem to simply be reacting (and over-reacting) to situations and not even using their statistics as any kind of preventive, predictive system. You can see it over and over in the cycles of reaction and over-reaction.

I know that statistics can work wonders in many situations when used on things that lend themselves to it, but the results that I've seen in person and also viewing their own numbers shows a system that's not completely under control.

However, getting back to the harvest reporting, I have never seen a system, statistical or otherwise, that could beat an actual count. Also, I am convinced that DEC personel have better things to do than visiting meat processors and typing data into a computer. I would think that since they are under a resource constraint, they might be more enthusiastic about something that would cut costs and improve accuracy.

[Larry]

Doc i have seen dec personel at meat processors and they were doing feild work down around Bath