In my area the number of hunters has decreased over the past 20 years. I can't say it as fact but when there used to be trucks parked on top of trucks in the 80's there may be a truck or 2 parked on the roads now. Again that is in my localized area. However, there are still a lot of hunters in our DMU (7M), it is one of the most heavily hunted units in the state.
I still will say that the numbers of hunters is going down (don't know it for fact, and i am not going by the DEC). To me, it is pretty easy to see that hunting is not as much a part of the culture as when I was a kid. Kids (for one reason or another) just aren't getting into it like in the past and the average hunter age gets older and older. As the older hunters stop hunting, there are not as many young hunters to take their place (therefore hunter numbers decline). I think if you ask local/national hunting clubs, etc. that trend would hold. Again, not fact, just the way I see it.

If you dislike and mis trust the DEC so much and everyone in your area feels the same way, why not start a local campaign and try and get changes encated or raise a big stink. Maybe the herd is down in your area and with some input from a group of people you can have localized regulations (ie - no doe permits for a year - its been done in some units around here in the past)