Last time I checked you need a license to fish on your own land. If you can find a regulation allowing it, it's news to me. You can hunt small game on your own farm, but it must be a farm and you primary occupation must be in farming. Deer, bear,turkey, ducks and geese, trapping all require a license to be legal as far as I can find.
I grew up in North Creek. I lived in Tupper and Long Lake. I likely know your widow woman neighbor since I worked in Indian Lake for many years. If she's been there that long she's likely a Virgil, Hutchins, Parker, Stanton, Farrell or Lanphear. I'm related to half of them. My mother lived in Raquette Lake till she passed and my step father still lives there. Owning a vacation home and judging what you see isn't the same as growing up there and seeing the change. You didn't grow up seeing the sawmills and mines close one by one and the state buy more and more land, cutting off any chance for the locals to buy it. You didn't see the APA encroach more and more into our daily lives. You didn't see North Creek when you could hardly move through town for the log trucks, trucks hauling garnet, when the trains ran twice a day hauling from Tahawus. 3 barbershops, a jewlery store, a variety store, 2 appliance stores, 3 groceries, 7 restaurants and bars, 2 hotels, a motel, auto parts store, 2 car dealerships, a Mcculloch dealer, a dry goods, a tailor, a movie theater, hardware, liquor store, funeral home, gun shop, newspaper, a sawmill and handle mill, bowling alley....the list is long. North River had 2 general stores and a tavern to serve the mines. Go to Newcomb and see a ghost town filled with retirees and the unemployed. Go to Bakers Mills or Johnsburg and look at the empty stores and gas stations. Sure, Saranac and Placid are doing fine, but go to Blue Mtn or Long Lake in the winter on a weekday and what do you see? A closed up grocery store and a bar, not even the bar in Blue.
Anywhere you go you will find life is easier to live with power and modern roads, I'm not sure what the point of that was LJD.
Get off Main St in North Creek and outside of the skiers condos, what do you find? Not the well kept homes of my youth, those are mostly gone along with the beach at the swimming hole the state shut down (IIRC). I used to be a life guard there. Gone now.
The skiers used to come by train and stay in what would be called bed and breakfasts and a few hotels and cabins. Now, most of them stay in Lake George or Glens Falls or don't come at all. They go to Vermont where they have a choice of areas within an hours drive, just like it used to be before the State built Gore. As I remember it there were 7 ski areas within 1/2 hour of North Creek back then, maybe more. Now there's Gore- period. You'll need to be a registered nnalert and have a friend that's a Committeeman at least to get a job there.
As far as "...I'd rather see my NY tax-dollars go to preserving what is left of Adirondacks that giving raises and extra benefits to union state workers, friends of politicians, school teachers, welfare recipients, etc.", well, I'd rather see the money returned to the taxpayers! Get a map of the Park and see how much land the State already owns. 6 million acres and the state own 45% of it so far. Do we really need all of it? Once the State gets a piece of land it's never, ever going to be able to be used again- ever. No logging, no mining, no snowmobiles, no horses, no ATVs, no nuthin'. They bought the Whitney Tract which was crisscrossed with roads and what did they do? Closed off all the roads so Gram and Gramps can't drive in to a lake or pond. And who do they listen to when deciding land use? The locals? Heck no, they listen to the environmental groups with lobbyists and huge bankrolls. So instead of conservation they practice preservation.
Like I said, nice to look at, just don't try and live there.