Deer Season in America

[Vince Green]

The thread on boar shooting with a shotgun caused me to re-visit old memories of deer season in America. For most of my working life I worked for Eastman Kodak and thirty years ago I had a placement for three and a half years in Rochester NY in an area described as "upstate New York"

For me in many ways it was shooting heaven but I also witnessed some crazy things and deer season was downright crazy. Deer season was about 5 weeks of the year. You paid about 50 dollars for a licence and that gave you three tags.

The thing was any idiot could buy a gun and provided they could actually work out how to load it off they would go deer hunting. The first people I ever saw wearing high viz clothing were hunters. Its no wonder why, across America as a whole over 1000 people are shot by other hunters every year. Many times the shooter is never traced

In Upstate New York  in 2017 they were actually congratulating themselves because they only had four fatal and thirteen non fatal accidental  shootings that season. That's their idea of good?

Upstate New York restricts deer hunting in many areas to shotguns with slugs in areas of 'high population' although high population is subjective. There are vast tracts of unfenced unregulated woodland where people just wandered in and hunted as they wished, no permissions, nothing of the sort.

People with no understanding of ballistics, backstops, shot placements would just wander around with a couple cases of booze and blaze away. It didn't matter how many deer they wounded or how many hunters they killed as long as they got their three tags filled.

People who lived in deer hunting areas would send their kids and dogs away to family in safer areas during deer season. Even in areas where hunting with rifles was allowed the only criterion was 'not rimfire' . People would shoot at deer on the skyline, on roads etc every house and barn had bullet holes.

It was total madness, and it was F-F F- 'flippin' dangerous. We have to be grateful we live in a country where rules may appear draconian but nobody dies

 

Edited January 27, 2018 by Vince Green

[Walker570]

.and I'm afraid it has not altered much in the interim.  There is also the pressure to get the meat whatever the cost or risk.  It does vary State to State. For instance Texas is almost all privately owned with only a very few public areas and some of those closely monitored by Texas Parks and Wildlife. I hunted on average 20 days a year for 10yrs in Texas and never ever felt in danger, however hunted in Wyoming and came across five or six hunters at a time climbing out of pickups on the side of the road with the intention of shooting at antelope but fortunately my guide walked over and suggested they didn't as it was his companies lease.  Hunted once up in the Rockies above Jackson Hole, rode in on horseback but on looking down into the valley we could see blaze orange dots moving in the trees everywhere. No motorized vehicles allowed so they had to walk in, so we had the advantage we could ride much higher and further, then saw just one hunter pushing a mountain bike with a whitetail buck strapped to the crossbar and seat.  It is very different for sure but some great country to hunt in.

First photo, not a bad mornings work on The Nail Ranch, in the Texas Pan Handle, all wild feral boars with some impressive dentures.

Second photo. Mule deer from the Rockies above Casper, Wyoming, not a big one, but my first.

Third photo is of my wife resting Snickers her horse after a hard climb, way up into the Rockies above Jackson Hole. The only way to go hunting in that country.

Edited January 26, 2018 by Walker570

[Harnser]

I too have hunted upstate New York many times at a place called hornell . I was very lucky to hunt a very large estate that was posted and was private hunting only . The guy who owned the estate was a real gentleman and big friend to my cousin who I used to,hunt with .part of the estate was dairy farming and the cows were free ranged . He used to write COW on the side of his cows with white wash during the hunting season . Over the years he had lost a number of beasts to over enthusiastic hunters .  Loved every minute I spent on this estate ,

harnser