If you say you go days without even seeing a deer then I would say that NY DEC isn't doing their job, unless their job is to get rid of whitetails in NYS.
As Newtown said, you should hunt the Adirondacks and some other places in NY and you might get humbled a bit. The DEC's responsibility is to control the deer numbers in the state and NOT to populate all areas so hunters will see no less than 20 or more deer a day. I think if I hunted in areas where I saw that many deer, I would have probably given up hunting altogether! I could care less about antlers and having deer all around me like at an arcade shooting gallery would not be much of a challenge. In general I also think that the DEC does a pretty good job handling things.
I also find your comment about rifle hunting interesting. What exactly is wrong with it in your opinion?