Sports

Opening weekend was wet and wild

By Dick Nelson

If you had to choose a weekend for the opening of New York’s Southern Zone deer hunting season it wouldn’t have been last weekend. Between 60-plus degree temperatures, rain and high winds, conditions weren’t what one would call ideal.

As it turned out, hunters either sat and got wet, stalked and got wet, and if they were hunting from a tree stand, had to hold on for dear life. Snow would have changed the picture dramatically, but given all the hullabaloo on global warming, that probably won’t happen until Dec. 7, and by then the season will have ended and bucks will be thumbing their noses at all the haughty hunters who didn’t fill their tag.

Actually the hunt is over for a lot of hunters. Guys (and gals) don’t put as much effort into getting a deer as they did 20 or 30 years ago. My friend Tred Barta had it right when he said hunters have become lazy.

Barta, as you may or may not know, has an outdoor show on the VERSUS Network. What’s unique about Tred’s show is that unlike other outdoor hunting and fishing shows, he uses traditional gear and hunts and fishes on public land and water most of the time. And — like the vast majority of hunters — fails to harvest an animal 70 percent of the time. In addition, Tred believes today’s hunter has lost the morality of hunting.

“Before they go out, they spray on nine chemicals to kill their scent, put on $2,000 worth of odor eliminating camo and download the photos from nine game cameras that are recording deer feeding in their Tecomate field where they have grown special grass to lure the animals from the neighbor’s property,” Barta said.

“Then,” he says, “they get on their ATV and ride to a box blind that has windows, heat and an Internet connection because they don’t want to go get bored while ‘hunting’. They then take a customized rifle capable of taking an animal at 650 yards and whack one.”

“The animal then gets winched onto an ATV, driven to the truck, hoisted into the back and then hauled off to the butcher. And that,” Barta concludes, “is not hunting.”

Barta, who hails from Long Island, doesn’t buy into that methodology one iota.

“It’s wrong, and it’s not teaching anything about hunting,” he said, adding that we have kids today that have no idea on how to track an animal, much less butcher it. Today’s hunter wants everything to be easy, and they want it fast.

Those of you who have watched Tred’s show know that he is dedicated to the old ways. So much so he hunts with a longbow, makes his own arrows and proudly boasts that he’s taken two animals using stone points he made. And you don’t want to know what he thinks about in-line muzzleloaders.

“To call one’s self a hunter, you have to work for your trophy. That means getting within reasonable range to your game, killing it, and dragging it out the old fashion way.”

He readily admits his way of hunting may not be for everyone, saying it represents his “line in the sand.” “But,” he said, “everything in life isn’t easy, nor should it be.

“I’ve fired hundreds of thousands of shots to get to know my equipment; I work at everything I do. I went turkey hunting six times on my show without getting one. This year, I finally got one with a longbow.”

That may be the attraction of The Best and Worst of Tred Barta. He believes the hard way (he calls it the Barta way) is best, and makes the hunt — and the harvest — special. For him, the hunting journey and the harvest are equally important.

“You don’t have to kill something every time you go hunting. What matters is putting your heart and soul into the hunt.”

In the meantime, we haven’t heard of too many deer being taken, so either all those shots I heard on Saturday missed their mark or were fired at makeshift targets by bored hunters looking for something to shoot at.

Waterfowl hunters haven’t been getting too much action either, especially along the Hudson River where mallards have been scarcer than a reasonably priced cup of coffee. However the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is asking waterfowlers and others who happen to find some unexplained diseased or dead waterfowl to call 607-652-7367.

The alert stems from a report of a dozen Canada geese found sick or dead on a pond in northern Clinton County. The sick geese were disoriented and unable to fly, and all are expected to die. A necropsy of the dead geese determined that they were infected with Aspergillosis, a fungus that grows in the birds’ lungs and air sacs causing respiratory distress and, eventually, suffocation.

The disease is transmitted to waterfowl by the ingestion of moldy grain, such as bread or livestock feed. It has been known to cause large-scale mortality events in waterfowl, and for every one dead bird recovered, many more may die in remote locations or go unnoticed. Aspergillosis is not contagious and does not present a health risk to humans.

To help prevent the spread of the disease, DEC wildlife biologists are asking the public to not feed geese, ducks and other waterfowl, as feeding causes poor nutrition, overcrowding, unnatural behavior and delayed migration.

Dropping anchor ’til next time.

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