Where are all the hunters?

[GreeneHunter]

34 minutes ago, blackbeltbill said:

Perhaps all replying should have listed their Home County where they do the bulk of their Hunting.

 

Home County .... New York State !

[G-man]

I hear less shots  opening day gun but  i have bought  out 6 surrounding camps...sooo

[crappyice]

Yes to family licenses and yes to new hunters. The organic, farm to table movement had also created more "hunters" out of city areas. Not so sure how long they stick with but Covid also forced people outside and away from cities. I used to hunt some public shotgun only areas 30 minutes or so from the city/Bronx that would be loaded. I haven't been there in many many years but imagine it's a shitshow on opening weekends 

[blackbeltbill]

4 hours ago, GreeneHunter said:

Home County .... New York State !

   From what,I am reading above it is obvious  there are different  densities  of Hunters in different  parts of the State.

[blackbeltbill]

2 hours ago, crappyice said:

Yes to family licenses and yes to new hunters. The organic, farm to table movement had also created more "hunters" out of city areas. Not so sure how long they stick with but Covid also forced people outside and away from cities. I used to hunt some public shotgun only areas 30 minutes or so from the city/Bronx that would be loaded. I haven't been there in many many years but imagine it's a shitshow on opening weekends 

   In past Octobers,I would arrive at Stewart State Forest at Roughly 2am. If that was on either Friday,Saturday,  or Sunday,I would be Lucky to be less then 20 Vehicles back parked on Weed Road

  By 4am,I would have easily another 25 Vehicles  parked behind me. 

  A mixture of Bow Deer Hunters and Pheasant Hunters. Plenty of eager Hunting Dogs to keep one awake and many groups of Hunters standing outside and Talking and the never ending parade of Hunters walking up and down the car line with Flashlights to get to that 1 " plastic Bathroom". 

[Wolc123]

I wonder the same thing Rob.  I mostly just deer hunt on private land, but sometimes close to the property lines.  I can only recall seeing (2) other hunters, while I have been out deer hunting, in the last 11 years.  It’s such an infrequent occurrence, that I remember both of them more vividly than almost any deer that I observed over that period.  It has been so rare, that it was almost like a “Bigfoot” sighting, both times. 
 

In 2012, I had killed a button buck (imagine that) on the morning of opening day of gun season.  That was hanging in our garage, along with a second one that looked like a twin to it,  I had hauled that one home in my pickup, from my mom’s best friend’s house, a few miles away.
 

  She was a little heart broken over that kill, having thought that it was a mature doe.  I took it off her hands, to ease her suffering a bit, and to satisfy my wife, who had pressured me to go fetch it.  The old huntress had called our house before lunch time that day, because she knew that we depended heavily on venison, for our food supply.   
 

My wife was pregnant and eating for two at the time, so I didn’t argue too much, when she asked me to go fetch the prize.  
 

With all that primo meat hanging in our garage, I was not all that enthused about the afternoon hunt.  By golly, it was still my favorite day - opening day of gun season, so I decided to go out for the last couple hours.  
 

That morning, I had heard a fair number of other shots back on our block, but very few if any, in the block across the street.  The land directly across was owned by a friend.  I had hunted the woods back there, in back of a big hay field, since long before he purchased it.  I used to keep that hayfield mowed for him, and he let me hunt the woods in the back.  
 

The woods back there is one of the largest mature hardwood forests in our town, with lots of oak trees . I used to squirrel hunt back there a lot when I was in high school, using up the .22 rim fire ammo that our coach let me sweep up after our rifle team practices and matches.  
 

Mt 2012 sighting occurred about 30 minutes after I had settled into a small hang-on stand just like this one, but without the aluminum ladder.  I had a few screw in steel steps, and used pine branches, to get about 12 feet up into a pine tree.   

The clump of pine trees was surrounded by oaks, and it formed a thick bit of cover in the middle of the mature hardwood forest.  From up in that tree, I had pretty good visibility in all directions.  
 

That other hunter, clad head to toe in blaze orange, stood out like a light bulb, as he worked his way slowly thru the woods, a bit over a hundred yards to my north.  I don’t think my buddy’s property extended into the woods that far, so I can’t say for sure if he was “trespassing” or not.  
 

The second encounter occurred on another “opening-day”, this one of the northern zone early ML  season.  It was late morning, and I was hunting on the back side of a ridge across the gravel road fron my in-laws lake side retirement home.  
 

A creek wound it’s way thru the valley back there, and it is always getting damned up by beavers, making for a large swampy area.  After sitting there quietly for the first hour or so of daylight, I decided to try some rattling.  
 

I had a nice set of “real” rattling horns that I had cut from a road kill buck.  I did my best to make it sound real, with plenty of leaf scratching and stuff.  
 

About 5 minutes after my 4th or 5th rattling sequence, I noted a dark form moving towards me, coming from the direction of the swamp.  At first I thought it must be a buck responding to my calls.

When it got closer, I realized that it was too tall.  I thought briefly that  maybe it was a bear, standing up on its back legs. The chartreuse hat was the giveaway though.  
 

Turns out that I didn’t fool a buck or a bear, but I did fool the neighbor, who owns the old lodge down at the end of the lake.  He swears to this day that he thought he was sneaking in on some real bucks that were fighting up in the ridge.  He still wears that chartreuse hat when he’s out on the lake fishing, but that was the first and the last time that I saw him out in the woods hunting. 

[GreeneHunter]

I hunt on my property but for quite a few years (in the distant past ) I used to look forward to the Orange Army walking in along my property line  which is along the other side of my stream and they would push - unknowingly - the Deer to my side of the stream ! I  would say that is the past 20 or so years I might have seen a total of 5 hunters ( Orange Army ) on that side of the stream !

[Versatile Hunter]

License sales going but fewer encounters in woods? That sounds like a good deal to me. 

[Caveman]

I usually spend the first weekend of gun on friends' property in 9T. Just 10 years ago it was just as you guys describe. First shots were always right around first light, and they were steady all day. You wondered how there were any deer left in the valley. Mid day you'd drive around and just about everywhere there were trucks pulled off the road. Every vehicle at a red light seemed to be full of people in camo and orange. 

 

It seems like the last few years that's all gone. You see some orange out on the ridges and the occasional truck on the side of the road. But the last few years I've heard maybe 20 shots on opening morning total. It's nothing like it was just a decade ago.

[DirtTime]

It's going to drop more now that people cannot get ammunition for their guns. I hear a lot of horror stories and even LEO's being denied ammo and firearm purchases. That's not being political, it's just pointing out what tomorrow looks like for hunters in general.

 

Here, around the Capital District, it depends where you go. There are a couple of places where you will see a bow hunter in every other tree and a gun hunter at every tree (exaggeration, but not by much), and in other areas, you might only see one or two other hunters. There are still state lands in the Catskills and of course, the Dacks where you won't see another soul. 

 

A lot of the people from downstate moved upstate when Covid was bad, so there are fewer hunting public land and hunting their own.

 

I don't think the numbers DEC puts out have ever been correct on hunter numbers or harvests. Buying tags doesn't mean you hunt, I have heard people talking in stores to get tags and DPM's just so actual hunters don't get them. There's a lot of people out there who do crappy stuff, and not just having the wife buy tags for them.

[crappyice]

Interestingly at my buddy's place in Columbia county very few of the locals hunt. Occasionally they will talk about sitting in a back field at dusk and seeing if one pops out, but they make no efforts like "we" do. They think we are crazy to spend that much time, effort, expense for something that they see quite regularly and/or could shoot from their porch. 

[Versatile Hunter]

2 minutes ago, Rusty said:

Sad but true.  

That’s doesn’t make sense. It’s not like we have a lottery draw for our tags here outside of DMPs…

[DirtTime]

1 minute ago, Versatile Hunter said:

That’s doesn’t make sense. It’s not like we have a lottery draw for our tags here outside of DMPs…

It makes sense and it does happen. I realize some people think the world is nothing but Skittles and unicorns, but the real world isn't like that.

[Mike103]

We hold hunter safety classes at our club. We have no difficulty filling those classes.

But with that said where I hunt in the Catskills sounded like a war zone in the 70’s. Now opening day you hear a few shots. By last weekend nothing. 

[Versatile Hunter]

14 minutes ago, DirtTime said:

It makes sense and it does happen. I realize some people think the world is nothing but Skittles and unicorns, but the real world isn't like that.

If they want to contribute to the DEC pot, no issue there. Let them buy all the licenses they want. Maybe this presents a long term challenge to wildlife biologist charged with making carrying capacity vs harvest prediction calculations. But they go more off reported harvest and hunter surveys than on number of licenses purchased for their models.