SteveBNy wrote: Right on! You've reduced all my babbling to a couple short concise sentences. Well I never claimed to be articulate!

Wow tying to get caught up on this post is like swatting black flies.

Do we understand that a healthy herd is determined more by the state of what's around the deer? Are their numbers impacting everything around them?

sometimes I think the complexities involved with the entire management of wildlife species is too much. It is therefore the individuals choice to turn away from these issues.

I'm curious, is everyone in favor of a balanced deer herd that is within reasonable agreement with the carrying capacity? We just don't agree on how this is to be achieved?

PA did not cave in to Insurance companies, timber etc so they could piss off their bread and butter, rather they took a chance that we could persuade our hunters to get with the times in order to save sport hunting and preserve the notion of the hunter as a conservationist. A large percentage of our hunters are ruining this so more support for birth control proponents. reduced deer numbers etc are going to happen because there are not enough hunters to stop it. if we don't adopt newer forms of thinking we are going to be extinct as a management tool.

Maybe the Hunters in NYS need to start on Non profit org to raise money so the state can plant food plots on state lands ,WMA or the farms that surrond these lands.

Think about how beneficial that could be, sort of like the NWTF does for Turkey habitat.

Steve is known to speak well here. Even if I disagree with him sometimes

Charlie -

Thats a good idea - I think Pennsylvania still does this -

Maybe some PA Guys could comment on how it works in PA? It sounds like a good idea anyhow.

FH

I'd like to think we could all agree on that.

Where I hunt - we had way too many deer for the land. We countered by initially taking a bunch of does and by planting abundant year round, food sources. In effect - we increassed the carrying capacity of the land. We still have alot of deer - more than many areas.

Now we use the doe harvest to micro-manage our property (200 acres) - doe permits, bow & BP tags.

This past year we only took 1 doe - but took 6 bucks. The year before we did about the opposite. Most years prior - we tried to take at least one doe for every buck - some years 2 does for every buck. We set our goals in September prior to the hunting season opening.

Phade - thanks. You know what they say about a blind squirrel! We probably agree on more than we realize - or else I seem to be setting you straight

Steve

Lol...a blind squirrel? I think even blind squirrels find a nut once in a while.....

Ghostfarm wrote: I don't think many would disagree with that statement but as they always say, "the devil is in the details". Where the disagreement will arise is in everyones perception of what it means to have a balanced deer herd and in the question of how close to the carrying capacity do you manage to.

Because there is such a wide range of goals as individual hunters, there will never be total agreement on what is the best herd scenario let alone the question of how to achieve it. There are hunters that absolutely focus on the meat side of hunting and and will take 5 or 6 deer a year if they can. They literally look forward to filling the freezers with venison to suppliment the cost of feeding their families. They don't give a damn about what sex the deer they take is or how big the antlers are on a buck, they just want to get the meat with as little time spent as possible. A great year is one when they can fill all of their tags in the first couple of days of shotgun season. I also know hunters that are pure trophy hunters and won't even eat a bite of the meat. A perfect season for them would be to kill 1 monster on the last possible day of the season after spending countless hours in a treestand and passing on dozens of smaller (but still big) buck. They might understand the need to trim doe from the population but would rather somebody else did it. They will shoot a doe only out of a sense of "it's the right thing to do" to improve their chances of killing a big buck in the future.

This of course describes 2 ends of the spectrum but it sort of puts in perspective the task the DEC has of trying to make everyone happy. It isn't hard to accept that herd management philosophies for the opposite ends of this spectrum would indeed be very very different. So what to do?

I for one would like to see a philosophy that targets more to the middle here and AR is absolutely not in the middle. AR is a management philosophy that is clearly skewed to the trophy side of the equation. Just look back through the posts or notice in conversation how the AR advocates talk about it. To steal a slogan from one of the president's campaingns... "It's about the horns stupid!"

But it shouldn't be just about the horns. It isn't change to AR or don't change anything. There are many ways to change here in NY without a focus on big racks. I've proposed a couple. Other states have different ways as well. We should all consider the alternatives before jumping on the AR bandwagon.

Good point Sylvan -

I am one person that would always like to take a big rack but I don't think there is anyone out there that would say they didn't go into the woods and hope to see the buck of a life time.

I will pass up alot of small bucks during archery because I know the big ones are out there and they aren't spooked yet. I get a decent one almost every year in archery, but if I need to still fill the freezer come shot gun all bets are off. I won't kill a bambie and try for a mature doe but I have take my share of button bucks and smaller does to fill the freezer. I have four kids to feed and having a full freezer after deer season helps alot.

One of my best friends hunts soley for a wall hanger but knows I can use all the meat I can get. He shoots a couple of deer every year that end up in my freezer. I usually make him up about 20 lbs of jerky and he's more than happy with the arrangement.

I try and manage the deer heard where I hunt to the best of my ability but, there is so many people could care less as long as they can say they filled thier tags that it makes it hard.