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Main Boards => PowWow => Topic started by: Captain*Kirk on November 03, 2019, 11:53:35 PM
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...."PUBLIC HUNTING".
Yep. That.
FWIW, I wouldn't be hunting at all if it weren't for PHL (public hunting land). Illinois has set it up so you really have to want it bad to get it.
Examples:
*Archery PHL hunters need to arrive at many designated PHL spots and wait your turn (first come, first served). There are a limited number of slots, so hunters begin lining up around 3am to see if they get in, or go home (you can imagine taking the day off from work, driving an hour or more to the PHL and being told they are full?)
*No tree stands are allowed overnight. This means carrying your stands, ladders, climbing sticks etc. in with you, and carrying them back out at night. So much for a scent-free sit. By the time one drags in his gear and sets it up, if you haven't spooked every deer within 3 miles, the remaining ones will smell you a mile away since you now smell like a rancid warthog.
*No screw-in steps, bow hangers, etc allowed.
* How nice to get set up and as the sun greets the morning, discover you're perched in a tree 15 yards from another guy, or worse yet, be set up and have the other guy fumbling in an hour after everything has finally settled down...
But, for some of us, this might be as good as it gets, so not knocking the whole system. It's better than not hunting at all. Just wondering how some of the rest of you deal with public hunting and if your state requirements are stifling to your hunt?
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No lines here. Everything else is the same though. The rules are so complex they reference multiple different documents to check back and forth. Clear as mud.
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I’m new to all this, but from what I’ve seen here in Kentucky they don’t make it overly difficult.
That first come, first serve sounds like the worst. It’s like they want to discourage you from using this “public” land.
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I love hunting public land here in Texas. I actually said yesterday that I can’t wait to be hunting public land again (it’s been closed the last 2 weekends) just so I can get away from people!
:thumbsup: :thumbsup:
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Doesn't sound very public if you have to jump through all those hoops in order to use it. Makes me appreciate the opportunities that I have a lot more!
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That sounds rough, are you ever successful? I hunt picking land in PA and NJ and it’s no different than hunting private land as far as rules go. I feel lucky now.
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Damn, I could never deal with that crap.
Pa is a great state to live in.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission owns and manages nearly 1.5 million acres of state game lands throughout the Commonwealth. The primary purpose of these lands is the management of habitat for wildlife and provide opportunities for lawful hunting and trapping.
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I'd move or lease some good hunting property !
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There are hundreds, maybe thousands of square miles of public land available for hunting in California. A fair-sized chunk of that is available for hunting deer or hogs simply by buying a hunting license and/or a deer or hog tag, without lines or any other requirements. Of course, your chances of actually getting a deer or hog in those areas are pretty remote. But every year people do manage to arrow some deer and hogs, so they keep coming back. Other areas are subject to a lottery, and the chances there are much better. There are a very few areas, like military bases or wildlife refuges, where people have to stand in line early in the morning, like you describe, but that is about 1% of the hunting that goes on in California.
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My advice, as an Illinois Bowhunter, is to find a way to buy a piece of hunting ground. I drive 110 miles each way to hunt my 10 acre, and 12 acre hunting ground. I paid a low price per acre a few years ago, and have never regretted it. The cost was about the price of a new truck. I drive a 19 year old truck so I can afford the land. I keep a little trailer there, and try to stay and hunt 3 days at a time. The benefits are worth more than the sacrifice needed to buy the land.
For those that think 10 acres is too small to hunt; I’ve killed 10 deer off that property in 10 years, including 3 large bucks. I took a “nice” 8 pointer just this past weekend.
The land is out there if you want to look for it. I have great land neighbors who help with deer recovery and access. Save your down payment and go for it.
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FWIW, I have found a 'loophole'. There is a newly designated PHL area not 5 miles from my house that requires entering a drawing. Each selected hunter chooses a one week (7 day) period (you get 3 choices or can throw yourself on the mercy of the court and let them select). Once awarded a spot, you can put your stand or blind up the day of, and may leave it there until the evening you are finished at sunset.
The bad news is, you are sharing PHL with hikers, bikers and dog walkers that are allowed to use the trails throughout the hunting season, so you have to go deep. (I walk in over a mile). But you are only sharing 900 acres with 9 other people per week, so it's way better than the earlier scenario. So far, I've drawn a permit 3 years out of 4. Haven't taken a deer out of this PHL yet, but I've been very, very close. Had a small doe (likely just lost her spots) grazing not 15 feet from me this season, but declined the shot...too small.
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That sounds like a nightmare in IL! Sheesh. The people need to take back the power. The smallest public tract I hunt here in FL is around 2K acres, and most days its me solo in there or maybe 2-3 other guys max. Private leases are so popular here the public land is true wilderness.
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Obviously public is going to vary from state to state and they all have their own unique challenges. I think they key to being successful on public ground trying to figure out how to be different than everyone else. This may be finding an alternate access point and approach your spots differently. Contact the neighboring land owner and ask for permission to use their land to access the public. If they know you are not going to hunt their ground, they may be more open to using their land. Maybe you need to walk in farther than everyone else. Do as much online scouting as possible. Scout the area and see how the hunters, hikers and dog walkers push the deer around the property. More than likely the deer are not leaving the area, they are just using it differently.
In my state of KS you can leave your stands up during the season. It is frustrating to walk into any public spot and find stands hanging all over the place. I personally hunt portable and carry all my gear in every hunt, including my private spots. I learned from a buddy how to hunt effectively using a portable system and I only see advantages to using this type of set up. Being portable allows you to change quickly and sometimes that may only be 20 yards. This also allows you to be invisible to the other hunters.
I used to live in Texas and there wasn’t any public ground around me. I had to pay $1500 (that was cheap) for a lease and drive two hours to get there. It was miserable. Now that I live near my hunting ground, I can’t image driving 100 plus miles every time I wanted to hunt. Be thankful for the public access that is available and once you figure it out you will not have to worry about your lease payment, someone paying more and taking your lease from you or any of the other things that come with leasing ground.
Don’t get me wrong, I would prefer to hunt private over public, but I often think I should spend all my time learning the public better. Private ground is changing all the time and I don’t want to have all my eggs in that basket and have it taken from me
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I live in N. E. Illinois and can relate, PHL is usually very pressured, there's lottery's for places close but your maybe one in a thousand of getting picked and the hunting can still be in pressured area's with people still allowed to walk the path's. Alot of PHL has site specific rules so you better read them and obey, if not and caught you can lose hunting privileges for a year at least in most Il. PHL places. Also to hunt most PHL in IL. you have to sign in and out or register online for each area you want to hunt and report weather your successful or not by the end of hunting season besides registering within 24 hrs. to the DNR if successful, or lose your hunting privileges. I can drive two hours one way to be in better PHL the designated parking area's might be full on a weekend, no way of telling before hand, still in that area there's plenty places to hunt so better than nothing. Now across the street from me there's about five full sections of forest preserve but no hunting allowed, its full of deer some big one's, there only Predator is a motor vehicle, and every two years or so the FP has to go in and round them up and cull them to keep it from being over grazed. In some area's west of me the wild Turkeys if you can call them that run around the neighborhood. Good hunting land close by is gold in certain area's so be very thankful if you got it.
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I live in N. E. Illinois and can relate, PHL is usually very pressured, there's lottery's for places close but your maybe one in a thousand of getting picked and the hunting can still be in pressured area's with people still allowed to walk the path's. Alot of PHL has site specific rules so you better read them and obey, if not and caught you can lose hunting privileges for a year at least in most Il. PHL places. Also to hunt most PHL in IL. you have to sign in and out or register online for each area you want to hunt and report weather your successful or not by the end of hunting season besides registering within 24 hrs. to the DNR if successful, or lose your hunting privileges. I can drive two hours one way to be in better PHL the designated parking area's might be full on a weekend, no way of telling before hand, still in that area there's plenty places to hunt so better than nothing. Now across the street from me there's about five full sections of forest preserve but no hunting allowed, its full of deer some big one's, there only Predator is a motor vehicle, and every two years or so the FP has to go in and round them up and cull them to keep it from being over grazed. In some area's west of me the wild Turkeys if you can call them that run around the neighborhood. Good hunting land close by is gold in certain area's so be very thankful if you got it.
Mark, you sound like you live and hunt very close to me. So you know the drill, then. It's not like the old days where you could walk the train tracks right-of-way and nobody would bat an eyelash.
Bottom line; like the game we hunt, us hunters need to adapt to survive.
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Walking the tracks, when I was a kid no more than a 15 min. drive we had a spot we could walk and hunt all day, now they replaced the woods and fields with suburban sprawl no hunting allowed, I think the Deer know this because I see just as many now as before.
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On Public hunting land in Oklahoma...
- No stands or blinds left overnight
I wouldn't want to leave a couple hundred dollars worth of gear overnight on property I don't control anyway. Agency staff would be spending all their time trying to run down missing gear. Besides, what recourse do you have if when you get to your stand, someone else is in it? It's public land after all. SOLUTION... hunt on the ground, it can be just as effective. Especially where most folks hunt from stands.
- No screw-in steps etc.
I don't have a problem with this either. It's a bad idea for hunters to constantly poke holes in all the trees. I don't like screw-in anything to be honest. SOLUTION... Again, hunt on the ground. If you must climb, there are minimally destructive methods like strap on climbing sticks and rails.
- Public land is... well, public.
The farther you walk the fewer you see. SOLUTION... Hunt when you can of course. Try off days that others might not be in there for or just go farther than everyone else.
- First come, first served.
For Oklahoma's public lands that have deer we don't have this situation. There isn't any mention of how many acres are in the public access area. My thought is that it is a way to try and control the hunting pressure on limited acres. If there wasn't a limit on the number of hunters it would get pretty hammered I expect. The quality of the hunt would also be effected if there was a dude in EVERY tree. This situation is managed in Oklahoma by draw hunts. We do have some waterfowl hunting areas that are accessed based on who gets there first. You go by the boat ramp and claim a token off the board that corresponds to a specifically numbered blind. If all the tokens are gone, all the blinds are full.
So that no one thinks I am being hypocritical I guess I should state that I do hunt both private and public lands. I also put in for draw hunts to areas that can only be accessed (at least during deer season) through the lottery system.
Here in Oklahoma most of the highly contested public hunting is adjacent to urban areas. Very handy but also very coveted. I have found that the way to be successful on public land is to scout heavily, look for that "special" spot that may not be obvious or easy to get to and be very mobile. I almost exclusively use my lightweight hunting stool and ghillie suit in these areas. Its basically a "wearable" blind and I can be on the move in an instant. It is a light weight set-up that allows me to move fast and often as well as play the wind to my advantage.
Honestly, I don't really need to hunt public land. I have plenty of opportunities to hunt private but its there for my use and I want to take advantage of it. It's a tough challenge but that makes the success on it more rewarding.
OkKeith
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- No stands or blinds left overnight
I wouldn't want to leave a couple hundred dollars worth of gear overnight on property I don't control anyway. Agency staff would be spending all their time trying to run down missing gear. Besides, what recourse do you have if when you get to your stand, someone else is in it? It's public land after all. SOLUTION... hunt on the ground, it can be just as effective. Especially where most folks hunt from stands.
This is the route I've gone, Keith. My stool slides over my shoulder with a carrying strap and I walk in/out with it each time. I believe I'm the only hunter in that particular area not using a stand...and hunting with a trad bow as well.
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Here in Mo. there is very little bow hunting pressure on any of the public land that I hunt.Gun season is a totally different thing.The only regs that I can think of is no screw in steps and no permanent stands. There are 2 areas within 20 miles of my house that are between two and three thousand acres each and they get very little bowhunting pressure,especially after the gun season.
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Mississippi is blessed with more than 50 WMAs and many Federal refuges. I live within 20 minutes of two WMAs. My bike and canoe afford opportunities to escape nimrods and since I’ve decided to go the extra mile I hunt in solitude and it’s blissful 😃
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Closest PHL to me is 2 1/2 drive; door to gate. Doesn't make it very convenient. Plus, for deer you have to get drawn. Pigs are year round but drive makes that a challenge.
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Closest PHL to me is 2 1/2 drive door to gate. Doesn't make it very convenient. Plus for deer you have to get drawn. Pigs are year round but drive makes that a challenge.
So where do you hunt? Do you have to make the drive or do you have private land closer?
Pretty soon public hunting is gonna be no less convenient than an African safari.
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Closest PHL to me is 2 1/2 drive door to gate. Doesn't make it very convenient. Plus for deer you have to get drawn. Pigs are year round but drive makes that a challenge.
So where do you hunt? Do you have to make the drive or do you have private land closer?
Pretty soon public hunting is gonna be no less convenient than an African safari.
This....
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Public land everywhere has its challenges. Just like hunting, it's a puzzle you have to figure out but when you do bvb the rewards are great.
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Public land everywhere has its challenges. Just like hunting, it's a puzzle you have to figure out but when you do bvb the rewards are great.
"Figuring out the puzzle" is chasing new hunters away, and discouraging old hunters like me. We shouldn't have to work so hard just to get boots on the ground. Some states are worse than others; my home state (Illinois) is one of the least PHL-friendly states around. My hat is off to any Illinois hunter who takes a deer on PHL because I know he had to work hard for it.
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It has been a long, long time since I depended on public access land. I always hunted from the ground in those days, so the limitations on hunting stands wasn't a problem. Overcrowding sometimes was, though. This thread really makes me thankful that I now own a small hunting tract, on which I am the only hunter.
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It also reminds me that in the future hunting here will be like it is in Europe. Only for the well off.
We keep putting more people in but less ground and animals are available.
I'll die knowing the land I've worked hard to purchase for hunting will be sold to the next one in line for them to enjoy for a few brief years before time consumes them as well.
Keep preaching about getting more folks into hunting and see how that helps the over crowding and game availability.
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Hunters are there own worst enemies when it comes to protecting public land . Go to any meeting and it’s 2-3 hunters and 10 times that opposing hunting .
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Hunters are there own worst enemies when it comes to protecting public land . Go to any meeting and it’s 2-3 hunters and 10 times that opposing hunting .
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That's not due to lacking numbers of hunters but due to apathy on our part. Btw color me guilty on that.
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Wow. There is NO way I could deal with that.
We are lucky here with very few special restrictions. We have WMA,,s all over the state and a couple million acres of national forest that include several wilderness areas.. if you can’t get away from people your not trying.
Several WMA,s have very limited gun hunts of just a few days and the states 5 months of bowseason . But the public national forests have the regular gun season
But as a state, we have a lot of bowhunters
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Unfortunately, by providing public hunting with retarded rules like the one I mentioned, it allows the DNR to wash their hands of not providing access...while making it increasingly difficult and undesirable for the bowhunter. I mean, who really wants to go through all that nonsense and jump through the hoops to sit up a tree or next to one, for a day?
Not to mention the fact that game wardens are not shy about handing out violations...intended or not...if you get something wrong. I personally know someone who bowhunted a PHL downstate with a friend...they slept in their truck overnight and left the tree stand up overnight. In the am they found the stand had been confiscated and the hunter that was assigned to the spot was written a violation and fined several hundred dollars. When he did not show up for his hearing a month later, a warrant was issued for his arrest. It took a lot of backpedaling, time off from work and money to get out of that one, but he finally managed to get the charges dropped. Really? Just to go deer hunting?
A coworker I used to know told the story of bowhunting in another state on PHL with his brother in law. They had quite a long walk in to stands, and by law were allowed to hunt 30 minutes after sunset. They walked out empty handed (no deer seen) to the lot to find a DNR guy sitting on the tailgate of the truck. Since the were both carrying strung recurves with broadheads in the bow quivers, he proceeded to write them each a $300.00 ticket, incorrectly interpreting a law of the state that required bows to be cased after legal hunting hours...he had seen their bow cases in the back of the truck and knew if he waited he'd get them either for that, or for busting the half hour mark (he wrote that violation also). Was this entrapment? I would say so. But they both paid the fines in order not to lose their hunting privileges.
We have enough anti/tree-hugger enemies already without government infringement though over-regulation. Some of our more highbrow local communities have taken to hiring sharpshooters to keep the deer out of their gardens, yet get all up in arms at the average Joe that just wants to go bow hunting. :dunno:
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Just be glad you have public land, to hunt. Nearest PHL to me is 2 1/2 hour drive, door to gate. Then if I haven't put in for the drawing on deer, its hogs only. Don't get me wrong I like pork. But the drive requires camping and time away. Enjoy that too, but it cuts down on kitchen passes. Also, got drawn for government land this year; Archery season, Friday - Sunday hunting only. Carry out whatever you carry in, daily. Haven't made it out yet! Rules there have changed drastically from last year as well. So be glad with what you have, adapt and overcome.
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Just be glad you have public land, to hunt. Nearest PHL to me is 2 1/2 hour drive, door to gate. Then if I haven't put in for the drawing on deer, its hogs only. Don't get me wrong I like pork. But the drive requires camping and time away. Enjoy that too, but it cuts down on kitchen passes. Also, got drawn for government land this year; Archery season, Friday - Sunday hunting only. Carry out whatever you carry in, daily. Haven't made it out yet! Rules there have changed drastically from last year as well. So be glad with what you have, adapt and overcome.
Yes indeed...if it sounds like I was dissing the DNR, I wasn't...it's changed, is all, and we have to adapt to it. But that means really thorough reading of the regs and rules, early pre-season scouting, applying for permits, and as I mentioned, for me that meant adapting from stand hunter to mobile ground hunter. But it's no longer something you can just take for granted, grab your bow, and go hunting any longer. I suspect it may take less densely populated states longer for these changes to take affect, but they will...eventually.