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I don’t know about all you hunters out there, but deer hunting this year has been slow, very slow, non-existent slow. I’ve been out quite a bit and in most areas not even a squirrel, bird, chipmunk, nothing.
There’s definitely not the feed in the woods that the animals rely on. The hunters aren’t seeing too many if any in the fields either. Could it be that the deer just aren’t there or all the hunters have gotten too lazy to sneak, crawl and slither to get the wily buck.
Lot of it has to with coydogs. I don’t care what DEC says about then not doing damage on the deer herd, when many of the hunters are hearing them howling in packs of them, they’re chasing something and it’s not a chipmunk.
Some bow hunters hunting in the southern zone have put their bows away and taken to carrying their rifle as they are seeing lots of coydogs and certainly not the deer they had been seeing in years past. There’s no getting around it, coydogs do a tremendous amount of damage to the deer herd, especially when the fawns are born. There should be an open season on them, which there is where most hunters are concerned.
And you know what’s amazing to me is, I go down to my granddaughter’s in Dutchess County and you can see 10 to 20 deer in the fields and very few, if any, coydogs being heard at night or being seen during the daytime. It’ll be only a matter of time before they show up down there if DEC doesn’t get off the fence to do something about them.
Can you believe the bears that are being seen all over the place? It goes to show that there’s no feed in the woods and the bear are coming to town looking for food before they den up for the winter. When was the last time you heard of at least five bear being seen in the village? I can’t remember ever seeing bear in the village. Be careful of your youngsters out there while playing in the yard. Never had to worry about this before.
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