Oh boy.... Here we go again....

For starters, the Law concerning feeding wildlife in NYS is pretty clear. IT IS ILLEGAL. Exemption is for wild birds, and "incidental" feeding of other animal through seed dropping out of the feeder. YOU CANNOT FEED DEER IN NYS AT ALL. Hunting or non-hunting.

Now, you may improve your property through planting food plots, but spreading corn, apples, salt licks, anything "unnatural", meaning not rooted in the ground, growing food, is 100% illegal, and the DEC and NYS stregnthened this law after CWD was discovered in Oneida County.

Next - One Buck Rule. I see many on this thread are thumping for a one buck rule. Yet I see no factual information to support this move, or even illustrate that it is important. WMU specific or statewide, I challenge anyone in here to present the harvest numbers to support this One Buck Rule.

Here, I'll save you the time. According to the Region 9 Sr. Wildlife Biologist, the one buck rule is a smoke screen put forth by a small group of hunters. This actually came forth from the CNY Whitetails QDM proposal for Region 7, which got properly and rightfully shot down.

Here are the realities of the harvest, based on 2005 numbers. In 2005, @ 89,000 bucks were harvested by roughly 495,000 licensed hunters in NYS. Doing the basic math, this means nearly 18% of NY hunters successfuly harvested an antlered animal. In actuality, according to reported harvest figured, the real success rate was roughly 14% of NY hunters harvested one buck in 2005, with between 3% and 4% of those successful hunters reporting an additional buck harvested (2 bucks) - One buck during either early archery or extended and one buck during regular season. This is straight from the DEC, folks. This is also a rate that is historically shown to be the case, year in and year out.

So, let's take that 3% - 4% number, because that is the figure which will be affected by the one buck proposal. Based on 89,000 bucks harvested in 2005, the numbers would be between 2,670 bucks, statewide and 3,560 bucks, again, statewide. Considering the overall deer population is currently estimated at nearly 1 million animals, and, taking this at face vaule, the one buck per hunter rule would affect 0.4% of the deer herd numbers (less than 1/2 of a %). The bottom line is this, despite the emotional agruments, the one buck per hunter rule does NOTHING but restrict hunter opportunity. No biologicalbenefit whatsoever. But what this will indeed do is drive more hunters away. Heck, LY NY hunting witnessed a 10% decline in license sales, directly attributed to a 35% reduction in DMP issuance. Early returns this year show a 5% increase in license sales, with many believing that the 5% rise in DMP issuance this year over last year as the primary reason.

So, if we are to believe (and we have no real reason not to) that license sales are affected negatively by reduction in harvest opportunity, and affected positively by increases in harvest opportunity, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the one buck per hunter rule would do far more harm to NYS Hunters than the benefit (nil) to the deer herds.

For some exact information on this, please contact the NYS DEC.