Sad times for hunting

[longbowman]

I just finished off another deer season and was pondering things.  Probably one of the saddest things in this day and age is what's happened to hunting properties.  When I first started bowhunting you hunted your property and any of your neighbors adjoining property and they did the same.  It was just the way hunters did things.  This year as I was getting out of my car at my farm I couldn't help but notice the "No Trespassing" signs on my final neighbors property.  

What happened that suddenly you don't get to hunt unless you pay?  I miss the old days and when approached by the local "Hunting Lease" people that have all the other farmers land I just said I believe we need to be neighbors and treat each other that way so my property is open to all my neighbors and anybody else who ask and they responded with "Well we're not your neighbor so stay off".  

As much as the good old stick & string takes each of us back to a better time greed still seems to rule the woods.

[Trout man]

Wow,isn't that the truth.It is really lousy when you can't be neighbors with your neighbors.Lease,lease lease,guess its the new age we live in. I think I know my neighbors when it snows 12 inches and I'm plowing them all out,just because we're so called neighbors...Ha,got a love it.

[Terry Lightle]

Had between 5 and 6000 acres to hunt growing up,now cannot set foot on even 1 acre.Sad
Terry

[Captain*Kirk]

Yep. I've been reduced to public hunting, and playing by their ridiculous rules. I had to sit this season out. Sad, really sad.

[Chain2]

I'm with you. People see deer as a real money maker. We used to hunt all over. Everyone did. I hunt my 30 and state ground. Happy to have my 30 though.

[BlacktailBowhunter]

Human Population dynamics.

[Michael Arnette]

Think about the value of land in the last 20 years though! Take the last 50 years into account and it's ridiculous, land values have skyrocketed and I think this has a large part in the pay to play situation.
For right now I just won't do it, and it's going to have to get pretty bad before I do, I'll even go to another state if I need to

[Kopper1013]

All the farms around me are more worried about being sued...they turn down leases cause as I'm told..."good lawyers can get by a piece of paper if you get hurt on my property" Money rules on the propertys who are willing to let you hunt and if someone offers more see ya goodbye. I've been hunting state land now for 16 years now, almost been shot a few times it's a scary place. Truly hope before my kids are old enough to come with me I find a safe place to take them...even if I gotta pay to do it.

[Orion]

Sad, but true, and now the Republicans want to sell off our federal lands or give them to the states, who aren't financially equipped to manage them, and will in turn sell them off to balance their budgets.

Yep, hunting will be sold out of existence for all but a few. We're a dying breed.

[reddogge]

I started hunting as an adult in 1965. Before that as a teenager. We use to hunt what we called "abandoned farms", farms not longer occupied and abandoned, usually with falling down houses and barns with overgrown fields, and never posted. There were tons of them. No more.

[stevem]

Kopper hit it on the head, I believe.  When one country has 90%+ of the world's lawyers,each looking for money, being nice to your neighbor doesn't look quite as good as it once did.

[T Lail]

We used to let people hunt....until they left gates open, cut a fence,went where they were asked not to go and stole one of my stands.....now we post and enforce it.....simple answer is....not many will respect someone elses land like we used too ....it is sad , but with every one as sue happy as they seem now.....all gates closed and locked.....  

[Alexander Traditional]

People here in Texas talk about hogs messing up their pastures,but if you ask them to go and get a hog or two it's out of the question,unless you fork over a little money.

Kopper is right about the lawyers thing. I had been pestering by buddy about talking to his dad to let me use their property for a lease. He finally got back to me and said I could hunt there for free,so if I messed up in anyway we didn't have a contract per say,and they could kick me right off. I haven't done anything to make them mad,and take better care of it than I would my own place. He said they had people leasing from in the past and it was a nightmare. That may be one reason also people are leery of letting people hunt their property.

I hurt my back pretty bad in a Mc Donald's parking lot one time,and it was their fault. They had people contacting me,and I never did anything about it,and will have back problems from time to time because of it. My buddy said that was the main reason that I was allowed on the place to hunt. They have a lot of land and oil,and are paranoid maybe with good reason about being sued.

I think even with all this other being said that it is mainly greed.

[longbowman]

I understand that when you own land you own the only asset that will never be made again...what there is, is all there is and that makes it very valuable.  I have literally hundreds of acres open to me to hunt for free if I want to because I asked and proved that I would take care of it so not EVERYBODY is out to get ya but I still miss the days of neighbors being neighbors.  My farm is always open for the asking but so far the only people that asked immediately asked where they could drive their 4 wheelers and when I said you are welcome to WALK anywhere and hunt they turned it down like I was a jerk.  It's still open to anybody who asks however.

So I guess I'll go home tonight and slap the snowshoes on a go for a walk where I own and continue being grateful for what I have.

[Doc Nock]

Complex issue, but legal ramifications would limit my allowing trespass if i had land.

Contracts mean nothing. Anyone can sue anyone...then you pay money to prove you weren't liable...only winners are attorneys!

Friend wanted to hunt WY years back...he's a preacher so he contacted churches in the area.  Some ranchers came back saying they ONLY let Easterners hunt cause they respected land and closed gates...locals didn't.

We can point fingers but the new age people with self interests seem to be at the crux of it and we've allowed it to happen... Greed, lack of personal accountability, inconsideration...they all have burgeoned in recent years in all areas... not just our beloved hunting...

They can't take our guns, but they sure can take away where we can go to use guns, bows or even fishing rods!

[Ryan Rothhaar]

In my area of Indiana it is directly related to how most "hunters" treat the ground and landowners.  It never ceases to amaze me how folks take for granted and take advantage of access to ground...never investing a dollar or a minute of work, then get bent out of shape with a landowner asking them to close a gate or something, or trashing the woods.  When I started hunting the main property I'm on near home it was open for the asking, and there were probably a dozen different trucks I'd see over the season..and of course nobody seems to hunt alone - never "me" always "us" hunting, so Lord knows how many people that was.

Now, 18 years later, I'm the only one with permission to hunt this ground.  Over the years the landowner and family got sick of what people were doing and kicked them off one after the other.  From shooting one of the landowners dogs (yep, true story...and a "bowhunter" no less that the landowner used to let set up a camper in one of the fields), to leaving pee bottles laying on the ground under trees to showing up with groups of people the landowner never met - one of which tried to kick the landowner's 50 year old son off the property, "hunters" can really be jackasses.

The difference - I actually became friends with the landowners over the years, and not to use them for hunting rights, but because they are good folks and a friendship developed.  I actually CARE about them, not just show up a week before season to get permission (WOW, NOVEL CONCEPT!).

The only things I went out of my way to do over the years was to comply with all their wishes about where to park etc, posted the land at their request out of my own pocket, and made it VERY clear that what the typical "hunter" was doing to their land and trust made me sicker than it made the landowner.

That said, I know it will eventually change as older members of the family pass away etc. so I bought my own place to hunt.  And sorry, but I too post my land and lock the gates to keep off the modern day "hunters".

Times have changed, and so have "hunters" - I frankly cannot blame landowners in general from locking the gates.

Sad, but true.

R

[TRAP]

I have always refused to post my land but had an experience this past fall which makes me wish I would have. I, like you grew up in a time when we shared the wood lots around our homes and helped neighbors in need.

My new neighbors bought 3 acres that butt up to my property on my NW corner. We share a strip of woods that is an excellent deer corridor for deer traveling East to West and visa-versa.

Instead of just hunting his side of the fence within this great corridor, he put up a ladder stand on our shared fence line and opened up a nice shooting lane into my CRP field and Clover food plot by cutting trees ( about 15 cedars and shingle oaks) and trimming overhead branches on my side of the fence. While investigating the damage I found a game camera aimed at a sugar beet and cracked corn pile with an additional ladder stand overlooking the bait and within the corridor.  

I chalk it up to stupidity, disrespect and laziness. He was given a ticket for hunting over bait on the 4th day of firearms season for hunting over bait. We did have a short conversation and he knows it's me that turned him in and in his opinion I'm the poor neighbor.  Yeah we aren't friends. And that's okay with me. We don't have much in common.

If I had posted my land his list of tickets would have also included trespassing and looking back at this guys attitude when confronted about the baiting and the property damage I wish it would have been posted.

[Kevin Dill]

I could tell you plenty of stories about neighbors and the levels of respect they showed me and other landowners back in the 1970s on up. You would have thought an unposted area of road or farm meant "free-for-all hunting property right here!" It was the continued disrespect for landowners which led Ohio to get tough and enact laws requiring hunters to show written proof of permission to hunt...or potentially face arrest and citation.

Hunters who hunted where they wanted and crossed fences at will. Hunters who drove up and parked 6 or more vehicles on a roadside to gang-drive a piece of land. Neighbors who told other people they could hunt the next guy's place and not worry. We had a neighbor bring a friend on our place without asking, and they shot a deer 125 yards from our house...a deer we were watching as we ate dinner. My wife was beyond upset.

"Good fences make good neighbors"....Robert Frost

[fnshtr]

I remember those old days here too. However, I am truly blessed with good neighbors that let me hunt. I was hoping to get permission for a trad gang friend, but they feared being sued. Sad times!

[myshootinstinks]

Yep, since the late '60s we've gone from free-for-the-asking on prime deer/elk property to $25 per hunter in the '70s-'80s to $3500 through an outfitter now.  Needless to say, we don't hunt there anymore.