ORIGINAL: jgbennett6
its not teh fact of increasing the numbers its increasing teh quality and reducing the herd to meet the holding amount that thw environment can provide. I see poaching as a huge problem, how can you not?...listen dont preach to me that money can be better spent elsewhere..money is wasted all the time in NY. and trust me its not on DEC officers... are you one of the hunters that goes out once in a while, shoots what they see and call it a year. or do you put in hrs and hrs of scouting and tracking and stand placement trying to kil a mature whitetail?..and dont say you shoot whatever for food, for the money you spend on hunting clothes and shells and guns and the price of a liscnece you could buy a months worth of steaks.
Doesn't matter what kind of hunter he is, or what kind of hunter you are. You hunt the way you hunt, he hunts the way he hunts, and so long as both ways are legal, that is that.
I love these conversations about do you "shoot the first deer you see?". The red flag always waves when I read or hear that question. The naswer, for me personally, is no, I do not shoot the first deer I see, I shoot the first deer that gives me a quality shot. If its a 10 point or a spike, or a doe, its meat in the freezer and quality shots are a lot harder to come by than seeing deer. Once I have filled by buck tag, I'm done chasing bucks. Even if that monster came walking out, begging for a kill shot, I wouldn't take it, and have been in that scenario more times than I care to remember. Shoot a decent 6 point on day one, only to have monster 12 walk 40 yards by me on day two. That's hunting. If I shoot that second buck, that's called poaching, which I am dead set against. Doesn't mean I am done hunting, just hunting skinheads until the tags are gone. Once my DMPs are gone (and I have never, ever, filled all my tags) I am done, until extended when those tags are valid once again.
But we have lawbreakers out there. We also have willing accomplices (those who know, but don't report), and quite frankly, when we examine success ratios (actual number of hunters who harvest a buck) of reported harvests, we can readily see that the only thing increased AR would do is drive hunters from the wood. And that is really how AR improves the bucks. Get rid of hunters, and more deer live because not as many bullets are flying. And that is no good, either, because without strong hunter numbers, the Conservation Fund goes in the tank, and we can no longer spend the money to manage the herd we want to manage in the first palce.