Thanks to all who offered their opinions on this matter. For those of you who read this thread & didn’t offer any opinion, you should be ashamed. Those who don’t say anything before things change are the first ones to complain when they do. After getting feedback from this & many other sites, this is what has come up. There has been a positive feed back on antler restrictions & for lowering the youth age to hunt. Not many have liked the idea of an early muzzleloader season or for shortening the regular gun season. What I would suggest then is to incorporate both seasons into one where you can use your muzzleloader tag during the regular season. NYS does not have that in effect now. Some other interesting opinions & feed back have come up. The first one has to do with poaching. It seems that the state is rampart with it. A lot of hunters from all over the state are complaining about it, but none are doing any thing about it. They said that the DEC should do something about this. There is an easy solution for this: REPORT IT! If that doesn’t work, then call the state police & report that there is a trespasser with a firearm on your property. I find that this works better than calling the DEC & if the people get caught and word gets around, I don’t think you will have any more problems. At some point, people have to start taking action to protect what they want. The second thing is that some people say that if they buy a license it is their right to shoot whatever they want. The thing that they have to remember is that hunting, like driving, is a privilege and not a right. The idea of hunting is a management tool to control the deer population. The state owns the herd & it is up to the hunters to keep it a healthy one. Third, most are saying that the herd is too small & that too many does have been shot. I spoke to a biologist & he said that to maintain a healthy deer population there should be about 11 deer per square mile. On agricultural areas, he said about 16 deer per square mile would be sufficient. NYS has a land area of 47,379 square miles. Of this there are many city & urban areas where deer would not exist. If you do the math for 11 deer / sq. mile, the herd count for the state would be 521,169. For 16 / sq. mile it would be 758,064. Even if the state is correct with a deer population over 900,000, it is overpopulated. I think a lot of people are missing the point. The idea is to have a healthy herd for now & for future generations and not for everyone to shoot anything just to say that they got something. Let’s get rid of that “If it’s brown, it’s down” attitude. If it’s meat your after, do everyone a favor & shoot a doe. Thanks.