Will there be a moose season for New York?

By DENNIS APRILL, Outdoor Perspective

May 10, 2009 03:22 am

— A resolution has been sent to the New York State Conservation Council requesting that not only a moose hunting season be an option for the Department of Environmental Conservation, but a lottery system for permits be considered.

The Onondaga County Federation of Sportsman's Clubs is the sponsor, and they base their rationale on the New York moose population being more than 500 and an increase in auto-moose collisions, among other things.

The key is that there is no scientific evidence to support their proposal now.

Probably the only good reason to consider a moose hunt at all is so DEC can have some avenue to control moose numbers, if and when they get to the point of saturation. Other than that, most of the logic is faulty, and here's why.

For one, neither DEC nor anyone else knows how many moose are roaming New York. If you live in the Standish-Lyon Mountain area on the Clinton-Franklin County line, you might think there are a lot of moose around, but in Onondaga County you might never see one.

There have been no scientific-based studies so far that can come close to approximating the moose population. If there were, they would have included data from grid-based fly-overs, ground work and precise auto-moose collision data. Even then, there would be a margin of error, but at least it would be some basis to go by.

I remember five years ago writing that there were a guesstimated 500 moose in New York, a figure I thought reasonable because there seemed to be more than 300, the DEC projection at the time, and less than 1,000. The 500 had no basis in science, yet the number took hold. What makes counting difficult is that the Adirondacks and Tug Hill are larger than the entire state of Vermont.

Moose-vehicle collisions are on the increase, generally, but were down to six last year from double digits the year before that. So far, there has been one moose-vehicle encounter this spring near Lyon Mountain, with the bull moose dying. However, no one will question that the accident numbers will rise, but they are nowhere near those of Vermont, not even by 10 percent, and supposedly Vermont has 5,000 moose. This is also a guesstimate on their part, but a reasonable one based on the research factors mentioned above.

There are some who think Vermont overestimates moose numbers to raise the number of hunting permits and revenues they bring in. Vermont is a very small state with a small state budget compared to New York. How much money could a permit to shoot one bull moose in New York bring in? If an exorbitant application or license fee is required (North Dakota once charged $10,000 each to hunt five bighorn sheep in the 1990s), then such a lottery would only be for the rich. Would such application fees really put a dent in the $14 million or so Conservation Fund deficit? More importantly, like SUNY, where tuition was raised, most going to the state not the colleges, would some or all of these meager proceeds be pilfered by the state as well?

Another factor is tourism. In northern New Hampshire's Coos County, there are moose sighting areas and festivals that bring in thousands of moose watchers each year. New Hampshire Fish & Wildlife manages the population so those sightings continue, yet the herd is still thinned through regulated hunting, and there are quite a few moose in the area.

In contrast, in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, where moose are as popular as cockroaches in some quarters, the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department has created what some would consider outlandish quotas in order to keep the moose population as low as possible. Moose will ride down saplings to get at the tender young tops, so the timber industry, an important economic power there, is in favor of less moose.

In New York, if you want moose as a tourist draw, like that cow outside Lake Placid last fall, you have to let the numbers grow, and of course deal with more moose-vehicle collisions.

The Onondaga proposal has cleared the big-game committee and will have to go to member clubs throughout the state, including those in Clinton, Essex and Franklin counties; recommendations will be made before it is agreed, if it is agreed upon, to get a senate and assembly sponsor, or an assemblyman or senator could introduce a bill on his or her own. The bill would have to pass in both houses and be approved by the governor, no easy process. In addition, John Rybinski, president of the Onondaga County Sportsman's Clubs, told me Thursday he may revise his proposal or pull it altogether.

I believe any real consideration for a hunting season on moose now is a bad one; maybe 10 years from now when research is done and moose continue to increase, a hunting season should be considered, and that is why I agree DEC needs that option, and it needs it now.

E-mail Dennis Aprill at daprill2000@yahoo.com and check out our Web site at www.pressrepublican.com/0105_outdoor_perspective for more photos and articles.

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