Well, I hunt in the Catskills, and the public land hunting is no worse then the private land. I have a camp on a mountain that is mostly lots of small parcels of private land, and everybody hunts everybodies land. I see way more people there than I do when I hunt on public land. There are some areas of the Catskills that, while being very hard to hunt, have very little hunting pressure at all. The Balsam Lake Mountain Wild Forest (13,500 acres), The SLide Mountain Wilderness (47,500 acres), and The Big Indian Wilderness (33,500 acres) are all places worth checking out. The hunting is very difficult and the deer densities are lower, but there is plenty of land and not many hunters. I see people take some bruisers out of there every year. Also, yo could check out the DEP owned lands open to hunting. The DEP lands are technically owned by New York City to protect the watershed. There is around 33,000 acres of that land open to hunting, with more being open every year. I hunt quite a bit of it, and usually don't see many other hunters.