Trad Gang

Three friends of mine(two of whom are members here, Ky Double Lung and Two Wolves) and I are planning a short stay at LBL WMA in western KY right after Christmas. We will be bowhunting for whitetail deer. We all live in central KY and I for one am the only one of us that hasn't ever hunted there before(I think). I am getting very excited about the trip. We are only gonna be staying for two nights so I'm gonna have to get after it once we get there. We're all taking climbing stands but I intend to try some ground hunting from natural "blinds" if I can find some good concealment close to a likely looking area.

Anyone else here ever hunted LBL before?

I have Doug, but it was in the early season. Don't let me get you down but gonna be tough this time of year brother. With that said there are some good deer there. I'll email you some picts of a couple bucks that were killed there this season with wheelies. Get online on maps.google.com or the like and find the nut flats in your chosen area. They will be the big clusters of darker green trees.

Thanks for the heads-up, Tom. Yes, we're planning to hunt the food areas mostly. At least at this time of year maybe we'll have the place mostly to ourselves, I hope.

I've hunted there a bunch in past years. Like TJ said it's kinda tough late season. We always concentrated around cornfields even though they've long ben picked. Don't be afraid to walk in away from the roads. Good Luck!

QuoteOriginally posted by Biggie Hoffman:
.....Don't be afraid to walk in away from the roads. Good Luck!

Yes, I plan on walking my legs off! But, hey, that's public land hunting. And one reason I may leave the climbing stand behind, at least sometimes.

I second what TJ said. Tough hunting after rifle season quota hunts. However, I had good luck on the North End around the Hillman Ferry Campground this time of year. The campground is closed for the season I believe but backcountry camping will be allowed. Deer move into there later in the year as there are some great Oak flats. Also check area near Energy Lake. There are some restricted areas there but some areas you can hunt too.

Now that information is old 'cause it has been 10 years since I have been there hunting. I did my undergrad work at Murray State near there and nearly flunked out trying to hunt that place and fish all the rivers/lakes around  :knothead:  I went back for years because it is just a cool place. Check out the elk and bison prarie they have. It is a neat santuary. Good luck!!!

Thanks guys. Keep it coming.

We are gonna be hunting the south end, but still in KY.

At least you won't have to worry about ticks with this weather....lol..I went & hunted it for a couple of days back earlier..."I have a GPS with all the good spots marked in area's 2,6 & 10 if ya wanna borrow it"..  :bigsmyl:  It's tuff hunting but a load of fun...take plenty of pictures....

Huge bucks in there.

Doug, the south end gets quit a bit of horse traffic, and maybe even a few horseback squirrel hunters (not sure when the "gun" squirrel season opens).  Regardless, a great place to spend a weekend. I plan on getting down there in Jan. this year.

I was down there in Nov, and there was plenty of acorns.  Take a turkey call, you should see a few.

had a buddy to pull a 158inch ten point out of there in nov!! i dont know if true but i heard they make you use your state wide tag now! so i guess that means you cant get a extra tag for lbl no more?

LBL is still a bonus buck.  It's federal land.  State owned WMA's do not have bonus bucks this year.  Still have bonus bucks on LBL and Military Reservations.  I've not bow hunted LBL much but would also recommend the area around Hillman's Ferry.  It opens to deer hunting only during the late bow season.  Good luck

QuoteOriginally posted by bluegrassbowhunter:
[qb] At least you won't have to worry about ticks with this weather....lol.

:biglaugh:    LOL Marks glass is half full. I like it.

Last time I was there late was two years ago.  We hunted the very north and down around the KY/TN line.

Saw quite a few deer but I was hunting horns so passed on three that might have well made someone else real happy. I like the place alot.  The diversity is huge from the creeks down in the bottoms to the oaks and in between.

What TJ said is exactly right.  Biggie's corn field thing is right also.  The biggest deer I had close to me was just off of a corn field.  He was about a 150".  Just out of range.

You will need to walk a good bit and the terrain can be pretty rough. At least to this ole man.

Its a great place.  Good luck and enjoy yourself.  Let us know how your hunt goes.

Yep, I've hunted jenny ridge ( area 7) and area 8 & 10 south of U.S. 68 highway.

Good luck on your hunt.

That is some really nice country. I only had a brief visit this past spring. My son Jason who is stationed at Fort Campbell wants to get out and hunt it but deployments and training schedules keep getting in the way. Maybe next year. Meanwhile we'll sit back and enjoy all your stories.

Wish I could offer some advice on your upcoming trip but never hunted it, just fished the lakes. Had a biologist 20yrs.ago swear he spotted a brown panther there so maybe it'll give you something else to arrow. Good luck....Phil

Hey Doug,

LBL is a great place to enjoy, I echo what others have said in previous posts. I live fairly close to LBL (about 45 min.) find their food source and you'll find the deer, and as someone said, you may find a turkey as well. Also, a buddie of mine just called and said they are starting to catch sauger off the dam at Ky. Lake.

Doug, we hunt there every year, at least twice. I've been twice this year allready, and plan a Jan hunt. It can be tough, but there is soooo much of it ! 107,000 acres in KY alone. The acorns are plentifull this year, which makes it even tougher. My experience with a heavy mast crop is forget the corn, they want the nuts instead. Geen field will yeild, (wheat,food plot plantings) or hunt saddles of oak ridges. Hunt the terrain..., when mast is plentifull they have food everywhere, so hunt pinch points of easy travel on those steep ridges, low ridges,2-3 ridges coming together, and lots of times back in deep, where most guys won't bother to walk to. The food plots by major roads get hammered with hunting pressure, and usually get nocturnal visits only. Think limited access, and strap on some comfortable walking shoes. Good luck!

Hi Doug,

I used to hunt there every year until 20 years after the Fallows became off limits.

Also had a run in with a big kittie down there 20+ years ago. The critter was less than 10 yards away. I guessed her at 70# and buckskin colored. She was not near as large as one would have thought. I won't turn one of those sitings in again. The game department ran me from 8:00 to 3:00, back and forth between Ky & Tenn. After seven hours of being told there were no big kitties on LBL, they finally told that I she had been sited in that specific area for the previous 10 years and that they did not want it publicized. They also told me she was an eastern cougar and much smaller than her western cousins.

Good luck hunting a LBL.

I took my first deer with a bow on an LBL bow quota hunt in zone 17 nearly 40 years ago.  In the early 80s I tagged the oldest deer on record ever taken at LBL, a 12 1/2 year old doe north of Hematite Lake.  One of the TVA biologists had her tooth microscopically examined at UK.  Guess she had 12 rings:^)  I tell everyone that I shot the smartest deer in lBL, although my "buddies" at the time argued that she was senile and ready for the happy hunting ground, IOW, she comitted suicide:^) I graduated from Murray State (20 miles west of LBL)and have hunted there annually for decades.  Randy is spot on with his suggestions.  I like to locate small green fields that are isolated from foot traffic.  These are few and far between but can be hotspots.  Most LBL hunters don't venture too far from the roads, which are seemingly everywhere, however there are "dead" zones where deer like to congregate.  If you don't mind climbing, there are areas south of Golden Pond which hold good bucks simply because the terrain is steep.  Find a saddle in one of those areas near good "food trees" and you may be surprised what you see.  I filmed a 6X6 that would score a solid 180+ in zone 8 three years ago. I like to solo hunt in the harder to get into areas.  I buy a backcountry camping permit, throw a pack on, and bivy back off well off the main drag. You can find a lot of solitude there this time of year.

One more thing, LBL has some interesting hunting history.  I was visiting with Fred Bear one summer when I mentioned LBL, which he knew before it was renamed under TVA, as "Kentucky Woodlands".  Fred got a wide grin on his face, rose from his workshop chair and said "I want to show you something."  It was a tanned rug of a fallow buck that he shot in the mid-1950s at LBL.  I believe he took the first legal fallow with a bow there.  Anyway, he thought it was funny because he shot that fallow in "Barnes Hollow", the same place where I arrowed my first whitetail 15 or so years later.

Great info here guys. I appreciate it!

I was told by a game official to be very careful with equipment left in your truck while hunting. There was a rash of parked trucks and camps robbed in the area. That was several years back and this was on the Tn side.

Gary, neat story ! What area is Barnes hollow in?
By south of Golden Pond I assume u r talking about Pryor Hollow?

Hey ishoot4thrills, LBL is my regular hunting grounds. Like others have already said, this time of the year is tough hunting. BUT as was also said, there are some whoppers still roaming around in there. With all the ice storm damage from a few years ago, there are lots of hiding spots with the fallen treetops and limbs (some areas are worse than others) for them to pass their time in. Lots of acorns this year too which makes it harder to pin them down.
In round numbers I was told that the quota gun hunt that was held just before Thanksgiving accounted for around 200 deer in the Kentucky portion, about 75% of which were bucks. I didn't hear the total for the youth quota gun hunt that was earlier in the season, but the totals usually aren't too high during that one.
Most of my hunting takes place in the north end -area 1. As was also said, there's a wide range of habitat. I am really just getting re-started trad hunting, ground hunting only,  using natural blind materials, and learning to still hunt (I should say- TRYING to learn to still hunt). I feel really blessed to have such an AWESOME hunting area so close to home.
Good Luck!
         Dave.

Beautiful place!! I hunted Turkey there in the 70's and we cought a lot of slab croppy.The Trac drive was a joy at night with all the deer!!

I'm with ya on the ground hunting, David. Not saying I won't hunt from my climber down there but I plan on trying to maybe hunt from the ice storm cover. I figure it will be easier to hike back in there farther without a heavy stand on my back, quieter too. I think a lot of hunters pass up good looking spots because of the lack of a good tree to get in. At least one good thing about ground hunting is that you can set up just about anywhere there's some cover or you can sometimes move a little cover where you want it.   ;)

Randy, are you trying to locate my hot spot below Golden Pond??:^) Barnes Hollow is in zone 17 and lies East-West between Hematite Lake and the Trace.  They haven't allowed bowhunting in there for several years, only very limited quota youth. My time there was during the days when LBL only allowed quota bow hunts in zone 17.  It was a hot zone for whitetails and huge numbers of fallow deer, which were legal back then. A TVA biologist friend of mine used to hide a key for me so I could drop the cables and drive my high school bowhunting club into the "Trail of These Hills" area.  From there I could easily access Barnes Hollow and show the students a lot of game.  This was in the late 70s and early 80s.  LBL doesn't have the deer it had back then, numbers are way down.  In the late 70s you could drive 10-15 miles along the trace and count see as many as 100 deer along the road. Try that now, no way.

My Dad was born in Golden Pond, and most of my relatives lived between the lakes before they were forced to move out.   A very trying time, I'm told.  There are family cemetary plots there still with grandparents of mine buried there.  I took my wife there on our honeymoon, and she found one of my grandmas old coffee cups in what was the old homesite, now a mature oak forest.  It's been a dream of mine to go down and hunt LBL sometime.   Fun to hear you guys talking about it.  Thanks.

ps...Gary, you huntin' my grandpas land?!!!!

One of my fondest memories there was when my college sweatheart and I were scouting out a new place from the river. One of our first dates really. I could take a Johnboat from my place on Blood River and be hunting in 15 minutes...she and I walked a spell, her taking in the sights and me looking for a place to hunt. We came upon an old homestead with a plum orchard with the sweetest plums! I killed a nice fat doe near there a month later, married the girl a few years later, and never forgot that day and that place as one of those sacred to my heart.

That place has mojo...and I often wondered about the folks that got moved from that old homestead. I thanked them for the plum orchard and said a little prayer of thanks for such a wonderful place. That was 18 years ago this past fall, and my wife and I still talk about that day we found the plums  :)

With all the memories everyone has of the place,sounds like we need to plan a hunt there next season..Me & my family have been hunting it off & on for 30 years & have several memories of the place myself...not trying to highjack your thread Doug....

I have a friend that lives in Benton and hunts the LBL all the time...He loves it!  He keeps wanting me to come down and hunt it.  I have no need to pay for out of state hunting since I live in IL but I do see a lot of deer while i fish KY lake.  I have never seen what I thought was a buck, but there are plenty of does moving around...Using the lake to access the LBL is one thing my friend does.  He drives his boat to the area he wants to hunt and leaves the boat on the shore line while he hunts  Plus with a West wind a lot parking on the KY lbl shoreline means you are down wind of where you want to hunt!

Sorry Gary, wasn't trying to sniff out you're "honeyhole". I've got alot of spots I like to hunt, in Areas 1,2 8,10, and explore for new ones everytime I go. Thats whats fun about LBL, you will never cover it all. I wished I lived 20 minutes from there instead of 3 1/2 hours!

Hey Doug, I am so looking forward to the trip myself. Ky Double Lung calls it "Hallowed Ground". Going to be a great trip (even if you are going! LOL). Great hunting in a great place with great people. Thanks to the freedom given and sustained by the greatest warriors both past and present... The United States Armed Forces! See ya in the woods (but you won't see me for I will be wearing ASAT!)

Bill, aka "Two Wolves", "Going to be a great trip (even if you are going! LOL)."    :biglaugh: .  

I can't wait. I didn't know you had ASAT too. Gonna have to someday get me some of that stuff......

I hope we get a foot of snow a day or two before we head out!

Just a little story:

Years ago I had the pleasure of talking with a gentelman who was a dozer operator during the building of the lakes.  I am sure some of you know the Golden Pond area was (is) well known for it high quality "Home Made Spirits".

Well this guy said each day when they would come to work they would look south and see "small smokes" (still fires).  They would work all day and end up several hundred yards from the smoke (smokes).  When they came back the next day to work.. the "smokes" were now about another days work ahead of them....

Just kinda cool....

This should be an awesome trip guys, can't wait to get there! Although my buck tag is used up, I am looking to "double lung" a turkey as well as a big old hammer head doe! I plan on checking out some new areas as well. One spot I haven't been in for 15 years. It was my old honey hole but was logged very hard back in the late 90's. It was a very secluded ridge not easily accessable due to low maintenance road. My cousin and I use to slam them every year there but left it after they logged. The great thing about LBL is ya never know what lurks over the next ridge! Counting down the days and hoping the cool weather holds in there!

awesome place to hunt

LBL is tough hunting but remains a very special place for a lot us.  Memories of past hunts plus making new ones is what keeps hunters coming back.  Nothing like 100,000+ acres to roam around in! When I first started bowhunting,and rarely saw a deer much less got a shot at one, my buddies and I would stop by a place near the north entrance of LBL where a sportsmans store had a walk-in cooler.  We were always checking in to see if ANYONE had actually killed a deer with a bow and hung it there. I guess we didn't believe that it could actually be done, HA!  The first time we saw a bow shot deer in there we partically did an autopsy on it to prove that an arrow had indeed killed it!

QuoteOriginally posted by bluegrassbowhunter:
With all the memories everyone has of the place,sounds like we need to plan a hunt there next season..Me & my family have been hunting it off & on for 30 years & have several memories of the place myself...not trying to highjack your thread Doug....

Sounds like a great idea!

Let's organize this thing for next year!

I've always been intrigued by the LBL property, been thru there on several trips, but have had no occasion to hunt it. Weren't elk stocked there some years ago?

Also, since Trad Archers usually have a reverence for history, it's worth noting that at the south end of the property is Fort Donnelson, site of one of the first major clashes in the west during the Civil War. The site is well preserved, has a great visitor center, and is right on the way for anyone traveling into Tennessee from the property. Definately worth the time to stop there.

There is a captive elk herd on the property.  I is not a stocking...  just for viewing..  Its High Fenced

QuoteOriginally posted by Benha:
Let's organize this thing for next year!

Sounds good to me...I haven't missed hunting down there may 2 years outta the last 30...be great to get a bunch together for a hunt..plus it's in a good location with plenty of ground to roam....


Doug,are yall camping or hoteling it?

QuoteOriginally posted by bluegrassbowhunter:
 

QuoteOriginally posted by Benha:
Let's organize this thing for next year!

Doug,are yall camping or hoteling it? [/b]

We're staying in a cabin for 4 people at 85 bucks a night total for all of us.

If your staying at the cabins in Wranglers Camp they are real nice,plus they have hot showers available....

Mark, we're staying at Dixie Land Cabins in Dover, TN.

Oh, and thanks for the coordinates!

Your welcome Doug...I seen Ky double Lungs LBL buck he rattled up  :thumbsup:  (seen it on the State site).Just follow him around & you should be in some deer & turkeys...

Hey BGbowhunter, Doug will have to follow me, his legs are to short to keep up!!!!! Sorry Doug I couldn't resist!  :laughing:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ky Double Lung:
Hey BGbowhunter, Doug will have to follow me, his legs are to short to keep up!!!!! Sorry Doug I couldn't resist!   :smileystooges:    :p ...........but it is true!

So that's why I never can keep up!   :knothead:  Whew, I'm glad I'll have my GPS in case I fall behind and get lost!

Seriously, I'm glad Joe does know his way around. I wouldn't be going if it weren't for him inviting me. I know nothing about the place at all, but I can't wait to start learning.