I was out along the Abbots Loop this morning and was surprised to hear all the gunfire, especially near the Pinnacles. Maybe practice? But the sounds were coming from a lot of different directions. And then I actually saw a hunter along the trail.
I checked the DEC website and the only season open right now is bow. But maybe I am missing something?
Either way you may want to wear your hunter orange and sing as you run. I didn’t have the orange but it’s possible I sang.
Thanks for the warning, @ydeboer! When I ran the Danby Down & Dirty course on October 3rd with some friends, we also heard quite a few gunshots, and @Petorius had said something about hunting season. I thought it was only bow season too, and it does indeed seem to be for deer, but it seems that October 1st marks the start of ruffed grouse and cottontail rabbit season.
I ran that loop back in March when it was outside of hunting season and I heard tons of gunshots halfway up to the Pinnacles. A hiker told me there’s a tract of private land on the edge of the forest off Bald Hill Road, and that people go there for target practice even though they were asked not to except during hunting season. The hiker said he lives adjacent to the state forest, hikes there regularly, and has been hearing noise from the target shooters for years.
When we were there, the gunshots seemed fairly close at the parking area; I can’t remember exactly where we were at other times when we heard them.
Over the summer, my friend Oliver and I were hiking bits of the Finger Lakes Trail, and we parked at the intersection of Coddington and Ridgeway, where there’s a trail head. It’s changed a lot (there’s a house right there) since I last ran Triennial out there, but what was more disconcerting is that when we hiked down toward the railroad bed, the trail went by someone’s property at some point and they were doing some serious target practice. It was really close the trail, and frankly scary as all get out, since we couldn’t see where they were or what direction they were shooting. Nothing came whizzing by, luckily, and we refrained from “duck season!” comments.
