Sorry, Blackheart. While I respect your experience, I've fished and hunted in your "wilderness." While the Catskills and, especially, Adirondacks are far wilder than many outdoorsmen from the West would believe, but they do NOT compare. My medium-sized Montana county alone (out of 56 counties in the state) is as large as the Catskills Forest Preserve, and the rise from the bottom of the valley to the highest peak is more than the elevation of the highest peaks in either the Catskills or Adirondacks above sea level. Only about 6000 people live in the entire county, and there are nine species of big game animals, existing from the (just as thick as the Adirondacks) riverbottoms and north-slope mountain ridges to above timberline. If you have never hunted out here (and this is by no means the wildest part of the wild west) then you have no comprehension of what the country is like.
I also know this not just because of my experience in both places, but because my wife is originally from New York, and her brother (who fancied himself a real wilderness adventurer because he'd done so much hiking and canoeing in the Adirondacks) was blown away when he visited out here the first time. As are a lot of people I've hosted from the East.
I've been all over Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and the Dakotas. Hiked in the bitterrroots and the Bob Marshal. I spent a whole summer out there in the early 90's. I know what it's like. I also know you can only cover so much country in a days hunt and that applies here or there. Deer populations are extremely sparse in the wilderness areas of both the Adirondacks and the Catskills. I seriously doubt filling a tag gets much tougher anywhere when you're dealing with deer densities of less than 1 psm in an unbroken, heavily forested 10,000 - 192,000 acre tract of state land. You don't have the option of glassing game from afar and using the modern technology of a laser range finder and pricisely dialable scope to shoot a deer 500 - 1000 yards away across a canyon on the vast majority of state forest land here. You've got to get close because there ain't no way you're going to see or shoot it from afar. On the flip side of that, I've hunted the open farmlands of central NY many times with a slug gun. Sure I saw deer across big crop fields that were far out of slug range. That's hunting and you sure shouldn't expect to be able to shoot every animal right from where you are just because you can see it through a high magnification scope. I'm just not convinced there's much "fair chase" involved when you're bombing animals from distances beyond their ability to detect that they are being hunted and are in danger. Hell, I don't consider shooting woodchucks from 400 yards "hunting" either. It's just shooting/killing woodchucks. Sure you can miss one from 400 yards but until you do they have no clue they'e in mortal danger or that theres even a hunter in the same zip code.
