Although the citified dandies were not always the most capable woodsmen, their guides certainly were, and Adirondack “white-tailed” beef was soon to be the most popular item on the camp menu. If the metropolitans could not achieve the necessary kill shot, their guides would let loose hounds that would drive deer to seek refuge in the lakes, where they became easy prey. Although hunting seasons had been established, enforcement measures were rarely enforced.

It was an era of excess, as vacationers vacated the crime and grime of the cities to seek adventures among the towering pines and wild waters of the Adirondacks.

Many campers complained about the horrors of hordes of biting bugs, the cold, wet weather and the notorious, rascally guides who commanded small fleets of paper-thin, double-ended rowing canoes. But the actual victim in this forgotten tale of woodland woe was more often to be a hapless whitetail deer that was illegally taken out of season, when it was paralyzed by a jacklight and shot in the shallows of a backwoods pond.

Between the hounding, jacklighting and similarly illegal measures, it’s easy to understand how whitetails were nearly wiped out of the woods for good.

New York state’s whitetail deer population had been widely diminished by the early 1900s. Early management strategies that focused primarily on harvesting does resulted in a serious imbalance in the herd. There were far too many does roaming the land, while bucks seldom reached maturity.

Wildlife management efforts were eventually developed and the measures have restored a diminished herd that once numbered less than 20,000 animals, to more than a million today. In just the last 20 years, New York’s total harvest of whitetail deer has doubled.

Although game managers have been very successful in repopulating the state’s whitetails, a variety of problems have arisen, including the fact that the herd is now concentrated in the middle and western portions of the state. With the number of hunters decreasing, and less land available for them to hunt, New York is now depending on hunters to maintain the herds at desired levels.

At present, deer hunting licenses are provided to hunters in areas that need thinning out or additional control. This management process is dependent upon data used to estimate harvest totals. The animal’s age, health and many other considerations are reviewed, and regulations are determined for each area in this manner.

There are now plenty of deer in the state, and with continued efforts to utilize hunting as the primary management tool, New York hunters will collectively affect the outcome.

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New York deer hunting by the numbers

There are currently more than one million deer available to approximately 500,000 hunters. Although the number of hunters is diminishing, nearly 200,000 white-tailed deer continue to be harvested statewide annually.

It is a story of unrivaled wildlife management success. By the early 1900s, there were only about 500,000 whitetail deer left in the entire United States. Unregulated commercial and subsistence hunting had nearly eliminated white-tailed deer from much of their traditional range.

At that time, many state wildlife agencies were in the process of being established with the goal of conserving the nation’s depleted wildlife resources. Unfortunately, it was too late to save passenger pigeons and a number of similarly exploited species from the uncontrolled hunting practices of the era.

However, by the turn of the century, conservationists began to sound the alarm as buffalo continued to be slaughtered on the Great Plains. Fortunately, regulations and bag limits were eventually put in place, and the harvest of antler-less (female) deer was prohibited in New York state.

The rebound of the white-tailed deer populations that followed is considered a wildlife management success story. Today there are more than 20 million white-tailed deer in the United States, and their numbers continue to rise.

It wasn’t an easy feat. Following the near extirpation of whitetail deer across the majority of the northeastern states, the New York legislature created the state fisheries, game and forest commission in 1895, and charged it with the responsibility to manage the state’s vast natural resources.

By the late 1890s, whitetail deer and moose had largely been extirpated from the Adirondacks, as had beaver, mountain lion and black bear. In a little over a century’s time, the fabled hunting ground of the Iroquois had nearly lost its landscape species. As a result, the region’s fish and game populations received better protection, predominantly marked by closed seasons and limited antler-less harvests.

In less than two decades, white-tailed deer returned to New York as a result of migration from remnant populations in the Adirondacks, Vermont, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. There was also a small deer herd that was relocated from the Adirondacks to the southern Catskills.

With very few natural predators, whitetail populations recovered rapidly throughout the 20th century, in terms of both distribution and density. The state’s whitetail population eventually peaked during the decade between 2000 and 2010, with more than a million deer inhabiting all areas of the state – from Long Island to Buffalo and north to the St. Lawrence River valley.

Concurrent with deer population changes over the past century, the number of participating deer hunters also fluctuated wildly, before reaching a peak in the mid-1980s.

Reflecting national trends, hunter numbers eventually began to decline at a rate of roughly two percent per year in New York. This decline is believed to be the result of increasing urbanization and changing demographic factors of society. These trends will likely continue to present unique challenges for the future of deer management. Although the Adirondack region was once considered the last bastion of whitetail deer in the eastern United States, it now has one of the lowest deer densities in the entire state.

On a landscape scale, regulated hunting is now the only viable tool available to maintain the desired statewide deer management objectives. In much of northern New York, deer populations are low and mainly controlled by severe winter conditions. However, in most downstate counties, deer management objectives are still accomplished primarily through deer management permits that rely on hunters to reduce the population of does.

The state Deparment of Environmental Conservation will continue to conduct scientific research to support deer management while it works with stakeholders in the wildlife rehabilitation community to assess current rehabilitation practices for deer and take appropriate measures to control the threat of potential disease that include chronic wasting disease, epizootic hemorrhagic disease and cutaneous fibromas, aka deer acne.