I live right across the Hudson from NY and you see deer in the woods along the road north of us, they can look up from their grazing to see the Manhattan skyline. So yeah, no way is private hunting a feasible way to get rid of them.
Maybe somewhere at some point reduced hunting is part of the reason there are so many that they migrated to within less than a mile of the biggest city, but probably also other causes and anyway the toothpaste is out of the tube now.
On single parent households I guess that would be among the general changes in society that’s parallel with declines in hobbies like hunting. Not that you can pin down what causes what vs. which different things are symptoms of the same underlying attitude changes. But it seems more to do with social change than some simple cause/effect of economics or laws, like it being much more/less necessary to hunt (probably not), more places off limits to it (probably not) etc. It seems like mainly people not wanting to do it as much and why people want or don’t want to do stuff is typically complicated.
I come from a long line of city folk, no hunters, never thought of taking it up.
Hunting is definitely reduced around here. When I first moved to the area opening day of main deer season was marked at the first legal light moment of dawn (or maybe just a hair before) by a fusillade of shots coming from all directions. (I used to wonder how many of the people firing actually had a deer in their sights.) And I’d have to fend off for a couple of weeks in advance multiple hunters, many of them from outside the area and some of them not really wanting to take no for an answer, scouting for a place to hunt and to put up stands. By the last few years it was down to maybe one or two requests a season, and this year I don’t think there were any new people asking. Last year there were no shots right at dawn, and only a handful that I heard all morning. (This year so far only bow season’s open.)
For safety reasons I only allow one party in a given year, and once I find a good crew they’ve got the hunting here for as long as they want it; the individual people in the party do vary some as older people drop out and younger ones come in. I never learned to hunt myself, don’t have the time to put into learning it now, and don’t want anybody out there shooting who doesn’t know what they’re doing even if it’s me.
Most of my immediate neighbors do hunt. They’re mostly Old Order Mennonite and they’re hunting for meat. The crew I allow are also hunting for meat – that’s one of my requirements in choosing hunters. They (and probably the Mennonites) certainly will brag about a many-pronged buck if they get one but they’ll also take doe. It’s now very easy to get doe permits around here – NY DEC is clearly trying to get the population down; most areas in this state have excess deer population. I think everybody in the hunting party has at least one doe/antlerless deer permit if not more along with their buck permits; and I get five doe permits every year, due to deer damage to farm crops, which are only good on this property but can be filled by anyone with a hunting license (the hunters’ permits are good only for that hunter, but anywhere in the state that it’s legal to hunt, and some of them hunt more than one property.) I’ll be surprised if we get all of everyone’s doe permits filled, but I don’t want anyone hesitating to take a doe because they don’t want to use their last permit in case they get a chance at a buck.
Whitetail deer hunting is basically sniping. You sit. Quietly. And wait. And wait. And wait. Hoping a deer will walk by. And when one’s within shooting range, you aim at its lungs and shoot it.
Assuming it was a good shot, the deer will (usually) run a few hundred yards and then die. If the vegetation is thick, you have to track the blood trail. That can take a while.
Once you find the deer, you place a tag on it. And then you need to “gut it.” This is the process of removing most of its organs using a sharp knife.
After you’ve gutted it, you need to drag it to your truck. If you’re alone, it’s harder than what you think.
After you’ve gutted it, you need to “check it in.” In some states it means you need to haul the deer to a check station. In other states you call a 1-800 number.
The deer then needs to be processed to harvest the meat. You can either do it yourself or take it to a butcher. Some people will also save and tan the hide. And some will mount the head.
So what are the “food safety” rules with a your newly harvested deer? You hear over and over again about how meat isn’t supposed to sit outside of the fridge more than two hours, but it hardly seems a practical timeframe to get the deer from the spot woods into your freezer? I’m assuming that it’s generally closer to freezing than closer to room temperature outside during deer season helps keep it fresh?
Yes it’s hard, you can also get a mentor, I wish there were easier ways to do that. I started at 25.
Short range sniping, because cover can often be heavy.
Mule deer hunting is a lot of hiking usually. Find some place high up a mountain where you can see far. Spot some and make your way over, shots usually farther. YMMV.
Yes, it’s a late fall/winter activity. You don’t need to get it to the freezer, you either have to get into an ice chest with skin off and quartered, or to a cold garage.
Domestic meat suggestions a) err on the side of caution and b) some factory meat handling processes are highly automated and not as sanitary.
You occasionally see people say that antelope is “not good.” Those people are uninformed. However it is an August/September activity, so quick meat processing and cooling is crucial. It might impart more off flavors than actual spoiling, even in 90 degree heat.
You may eat the meat of the animal you kill, and good on ya, but you don’t hunt because you have to. You’re not going to starve if you don’t shoot enough game before winter.
NO!!! Our dogs very often find and eat those gutpiles, then return to our house where they vomit.
Three or four (?) years ago a nice man came over, introduced himself, and asked if he could hunt deer on our land. We discussed it, then told him he could as long as he bagged the guts and hauled them out. He got a buck and in the excitement forgot to take the guts. Although he apologized profusely, since that experience we have not allowed hunters on our property.
Which leads to another question, how tdo hunters know where they’re allowed to hunt. I assume parks are off limits, and everything else is private property.
Pennsylvania has zillions of acres of State Game Lands. Most people I know hunt on public land or have a friend with property. Our land is posted NO HUNTING and NO TRESPASSING.
Whether parks allow hunting, and if so whether they limit the number of hunters and one has to apply through their own permitting system, depends on the park.
In NYState, at least (I expect other states have similar regulations):
First, it’s illegal to shoot across or from a public road; or to shoot within 500 feet (firearm; 250 feet for a crossbow, 150 feet for a regular bow) of a school, playground, occupied factory or church, or of a house or a farm barn in use unless you are or have the permission of the owner/tenant.
Outside those limits: people who don’t want hunters on private property are supposed to post it – one generally buys standard signs which are routinely on the market; signs them with landowner’s name and address; and staples them to trees or to posts every couple of hundred feet around the property. If the land’s not posted, the assumption is that people can hunt there, though if the landowner tells them to leave they’re supposed to leave. In some areas there’s still quite a bit of unposted land. In others there’s very little, and people who want to hunt in that area have to either hunt their own land if they have some, or find a landowner who will give them permission. Some people wind up paying significant cash for the permission, though in other cases compensation may just be a share of the meat, help with checking and putting up posted signs, and/or things of that sort.
I was stopped once by a game warden for not having a hunting license. I explained that I wasn’t hunting, I was walking my own property and was armed for personal protection. I then pointed out that he was trespassing, as our property was posted.
We discussed the situation for a while and parted on good terms. I agreed that he was welcome on our land and he agreed to take care of anyone ignoring our signs.
Yes, that’s why I said “normally.” If you are hunting on private land, the landowner can certainly require you to bag and remove the gut pile. But (based on my experience) most of the time the homeowner doesn’t have an issue with it. And I believe most hunters simply leave the gut pile on the ground when hunting on public land.
And if that “Dad” is behind on child support he will most likely not be eligible to purchase a hunting license.
Our 12 year old children are required to submit their social security number to the State before they can get their Firearms Safety Certificate just to have it on file for dead beat dads and it is enforced across the nation. I am told their are an exception or 2 but i haven’t seen any.
Loss of public hunting land is a huge reason for decline in hunting.
Large land corporations are leasing land to offset taxes and by doing that they still get the tax breaks for public access because the lease only keeps out other hunters.
I have been involved in Youth Hunter Education/Firearms Safety for over 35 years and the number of students are very low. Today the classes run almost even boys and girls, i even had a class a couple years ago where there were more girls! Back in the '80s very few girls were taking the training.
Forest management isn’t helping either. The aspen forests are disappearing via the bulldozer and herbicides to re-forest in Red and White Pine.
As a kid, my friend’s family hunted for deer when they could, for the meat.
I didn’t get the impression that they’d starve without the deer, but it was a lot of meat for - effectively - the cost of a bullet. If you spare the cost of meat for a dozen or so meals, that could mean the difference between socks for Christmas or a gaming console. For a poor family, that’s fairly significant.
That said, guns are so expensive these days that you’d probably need to kill a whole lot of deer to really start living that dream.
I figure the coyotes will usually get it before the dogs will.
Note that ‘usually’, though.
This.
Hunted meat can make quite a difference in whether funds are available for other things. And one deer, in the Northeast, will probably field dress at somewhere more than 100 lbs, and yield somewhere more than 50 lbs boneless meat. Unless the family is large, that’s likely to be a good bit more than a dozen meals; and the family – especially if it’s a large one – may well take more than one deer.
Guns keep, though. Many people are hunting with their parent’s or grandparent’s guns, and don’t need to go out and buy new ones.
Map. Almost anywhere yellow or olive green is fair game. Brown too, I think. Most but not all of the medium green is off limits. Other places vary depending on which location, or personal status (red is often only tribal members, blue may have limited application-based opportunities).
Map doesn’t cover state land, which varies greatly and is a declining resource. Everything private requires ownership, permission, or purchasing a lease.
AFAIK, it’s declining, but I think the main reason for the decline is a decrease in the number of people living in rural areas vs. urban/suburban ones and/or having land to hunt on. Most people I know don’t have huntable land, or don’t know anyone who does, so there’s little opportunity to go hunting, even if you happen to have the requisite armament and gear. I’ve personally been bird hunting a handful of times, and always with people who happened to have land to hunt on- friends of my grandfather or a friend-of-a-friend whose father had some agricultural acreage out in the country.
But without that kind of connection, I would be entirely out of luck save the small handful of public hunting areas, most of which are at least an hour, if not more away.
This is, in fact, a large part of the draw for some of the hunters 'round here, in this dirt-poor mining community I live in (seriously: Iron County is like the 9th-poorest county in Missouri). Starvation: probably not. The difference between socks or a gaming console: very likely.
Although to be fair, the starvation issues has come up sometimes. There are people around here for whom bagging a deer or not determines whether or not they’ll eat. The Game Warden has been known to look the other way at “off-season hunting,” as it’s jokingly called.
