For the first time in 20 years, Brian Yorck will not get up before dawn on Monday to go out hunting on the opening day of the deer season in southern New York State.
"My concern is the rabies problem," he said.Although the number of rabid deer is relatively small - only 13 confirmed cases in a deer population of almost a million - some hunters like Yorck think there is no point in taking a chance.
The State Department of Environmental Conservation shares that concern - to the point of issuing guidelines on how to handle carcasses for the tens of thousands of hunters who will be in the field for food or sport or camaraderie from Monday through Dec. 14.
But the department, which regulates hunting in the state, is more worried about long-term trends like a continuing decline in hunters and a rapid growth in the deer population. That has both environmental and economic implications in a state where hunters contribute an estimated $100 million a year to the economy.
"Kids in their formative years are spending their time in malls, not in the woods," said Ed Feldman, an official in the state's Bureau of Fish and Wildlife.
The total number of licenses to hunt deer fell from 811,000 in 1985 to 694,000 in 1992, according to the state's big-game experts. This year's figures are not yet available.
The decline in hunting in New York State reflects a national trend, according to three researchers at Cornell University.
"The future of hunting looks bleak, given social values coupled with recent and projected trends in American demographics," said the researchers, Daniel J. Decker, Jody W. Enck and Tommy L. Brown, members of the Human Dimensions Research Unit of the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell.
The wildlife experts said hunting was declining for reasons as varied as a rise in single-parent families, with fewer opportunities for children to learn hunting from their fathers, and a decrease in land available for hunting because many property owners don't allow it.
Coincident with the decline in hunting has been an increase in the deer population of New York and other states to the point where deer are considered pests in many areas.