No dice in New York

[Turkeygirl]

Re: No dice in New York

I think how the way DEC is doing things like season dates and permits is fine and works, I don't want the DEC to change anything. The DEC though doesn't take into account though, I think, thatsome parts of the state have more deer than other. I mean look at city areas. Near Buffalo they are overpopulated with deer and Andy works up there and sees huge bucks because they don't allow any hunting. Also roadkill plays a role in deer population. I have seen more deer dead on the road before hunting season than during. And the sad thing is the number of deer that look edible but the people who hit them don't want to deal with it, not too mention I don't think people really report car/deer collisions as much anymore. And with the weather? Well snow makes the deer easier to see and colder weather makes the deer move more but sometimes you just have to be patient. No offense to anyone

[buckshot]

Re: No dice in New York

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Ok, enough with all the excuses already

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Excuses?? Well they may be excuses to you but to me they are facts.

Two yrs ago my father found 4 or 5 dead deer on his property that had starved to death and he only has 35acres.I also found a number of deer carcasses that Spring.

Coyotes??? I believe they also have had a major impact on the deer popultion.Iv'e heard numerous stories from others about coyotes taking whitetail fawns.The most shocking was when someone discovered a coyote den and then set up a trail cam to take pictures of the mother and pups.Well them pups had whitetail veal for dinner on 8 different occasions! That's just one coyote feeding it's pups!

I also believe like adkhunter that poaching is a major factor hurting the deer population.I think most of us would be appalled if we knew how many deer are poached in our own community.

These are not excuses these are facts and there are more.

I think it's to easy to put all the blame on the DEC.

[BuckNrut]

Re: No dice in New York

It sounds like very few of us here plan on buying a muzzleloading "stamp" next year.

[Doc]

Re: No dice in New York

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Two yrs ago my father found 4 or 5 dead deer on his property that had starved to death and he only has 35acres.I also found a number of deer carcasses that Spring.

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I assume that you all did autopsies on those deer and that's how you know it was starvation rather than predation, disease, poaching, or some other cause. Generally, starvation deaths of any magnitude are the result of too large a deer population for the carrying capacity of the habitat. If that's the cause, then the DEC would be correct in issuing more permits.

Coyotes and poaching are certainly very real local problems for the deer population in some areas, however if these are factors for a particular WMU, and the DEC recognizes that, why do they continue issuing more permits? Whatever the reason for low deer populations, the answer is not to arm every hunter with multiple antlerless permits. It sounds to me like you are saying the same thing as I am. The herd levels are down and the DEC is not recognizing the fact and is still issuing TOO MANY PERMITS. That's the real reason the herd is continuing to plummet. When you take all the factors that you mentioned and then compound the problem by giving hunters the tools to decimate the herd even more, the real excuse for low deer takes gets real obvious. Now if you are experiencing all those problems, and the DEC has cut the number of permits in your WMU to compensate, then I will agree that your area is being managed as effectively as possible. In that case no excuses are needed. Otherwise you fall into the same category as the many people that are complaining here and the true excuse for the results is the fact that the DEC has and continues to go too far with their herd-cutting efforts.

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I think it's to easy to put all the blame on the DEC.

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Your right, it is easy, because when it comes to deer herd management, the only agency that is charged with properly performing that task is the DEC. You've heard the term, "The buck stops here"? Well when it comes to herd management, the buck stops with the DEC. They are not a volunteer organization. We pay a lot of money and hand over a lot of power for this service and I think we deserve to have the job done right or at least hear the correct reasons when their efforts go astray. And if some of us call them to account, I think it's reasonable to expect that we should not hear a bunch of lame excuses. Last year, they blamed the low deer take numbers on bad weather on certain key hunting days. With that excuse completely bought by the public they continued issuing massive numbers of antlerless permits. Did it ever occur to anyone that the deer take was down because there are more than a few areas where the deer population has simply been over-hunted because of their failure to identify areas where permit numbers should be cut?. I just don't want to hear any of these bogus excuses this year. To me it is an insult and I want them to do more than simply reviewing weather reports and forming conclusions from that. I think the system is showing signs of failing, and I want the people charged with herd management responsibility to react with the proper sense of urgency and find out why it is failing and how to fix it. That's what they are being paid to do, not concoct excuses that allow them to carry on in a "business as usual" fashion.

Doc

[Doc]

Re: No dice in New York

It has to be a real pain to be the DEC and be confronted with private property. For one thing, they cannot even mandate that those properties even get hunted at all. Believe me, there are significant areas that are owned by people with anti-hunting ideas and I'm sure the deer that are in those areas probably don't even know what a hunting season is. However, spraying around gobs of permits everywhere else is not going to solve that problem. Education along with incentives is the only hope for busting open that land.

The moose is a different matter. I don't think they really compete with the deer for the same kinds of browse and probably don't offer much of a problem in that respect. You would know better than I do about that. We don't have a significant moose population and over here in western NY, there are none at all. But, I have read that there is some kind of a brain worm that can be passed from deer to moose or vice-versa. It is benign in one species and deadly to the other. I'm not sure which direction it goes, but that probably makes shared habitat kind of risky for one of the two species.

It is still the DEC's responsibility to first recognize those problems and then begin working on the solutions. That's what they are chartered to do. Again, the game management buck stops with the DEC. If they handle it fine....they get congratulations and the ability to feel like they earned their paycheck. If they fail, they deserve all the criticism that comes their way. These people work for us and it is no different than any business. Success gets rewarded....failure gets criticised (or worse).

Doc