@Nutterbuster - Okay, I just finished reading Dr. Sheppard’s book “Whitetails” for the first time thanks to your thoughtful posts advocating his approach. (For folks who haven’t read it, it’s definitely worth the $10 cost of the book and the time investment to read it.)
I learned a lot. The lessons I learned from the book will greatly influence what I focus on (and don’t focus on) when selecting and using deer hunting spots in the future.
The part I’m struggling with, Nutter, is that without *exclusive* hunting rights to some quality whitetail habitat, I can’t even try to limit use by others ... which means I’m vulnerable to having a perfectly planned & prepped ambush spot ruined by other people before I choose to hunt it in a given season. Without exclusive hunting rights, other folks can:
1. Hunt it when I’m not there
2. Prep trees or trail cams in the same area too close to (or within) deer season
3. Blunder through it throughout the season
4. Etc.
Other than trying to choose places most other hunters aren’t willing to get to, do you have any practical strategies to avoid this frustration?
Is the only effective solution to hunt property on which you have exclusive hunting rights? Even if it means paying for those exclusive rights?
Just curious about what serious strategies others have used to deal with this concern.
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Alright. Coffee's brewed, inbox is clear, work seems slow. Let's get crackin.
The short answer is, if you have two hunters with equal abilities (deer knowledge, determination, woodsmanship, marksmanship, etc) and varying degrees of income, the one with more money will kill more deer in his lifetime. More money = easier access to quality whitetail habitat and lots of other things. Owning land comes with the obvious benefit of (barring trespassers) getting to control who hunts it and how they do so. Money helps with that. Leasing land comes with the benefit of POTENTIALLY reduced hunting pressure. The more money you have, the easier it is to get into a good piece of lease land. Even when it comes to public land, money helps buy plane tickets and free time to hunt good public during good times to hunt.
As warped as this might sound, I really didn't give two thoughts about money until I thought of how useful it was to deer hunting. It's what inspired me to take a personal finance class as an elective in college. It's why I hammer retirement savings. It's why I was chomping at the bit to own a home (and more importantly the dirt it sits on) as young as possible. It's why I want to own more land. It's why I budget and why I like to make money on interest and not lose it. We've talked about the value of resources to deer. Every organism needs resources to hit its full potential. Money is just the concept of "resource" made handy. Knowledge and experience have made me a better hunter, but so has MONEY and TIME. My current job provides acceptable money, and an abundance of time.
I think those that have the money to own land should do so, regardless of whether they hunt. They don't make land anymore, everybody needs some of it, and unless you live near a fault line or the ocean it's not prone to theft or depreciation. I've met people who regretted owning a structure, but nobody I've met has regretted owning land. And if you deer hunt, owning land offers huge benefits.
But land is pricey. Right now land in Alabama seems to be around $5,000 an acre, and you need quite a bit of acreage to effectively hunt and manage and not be at the mercy of your neighbors. So what's a resource-deficient hunting organism to do?
The first option people come to is public land. On public land, it's been my experience that you're paying in time instead of money to find the good property. You basically find the lowest-pressure spots on the best pieces of land, and accept that you're probably not going to have the success Dr. Sheppard has, but you'll impress the heck out of most of the other guys who are hunting public. This whole thread has mostly been about finding the best place to hunt on public. Once you find the best parcel, you find the lowest pressure spots, and then within those spots you find the right terrain/resource features, you figure out when they're being utilized the hardest, and then you hunt them at that time and hope nobody else is playing your game there. The more spots you devote time to finding, the better your chances of being successful. Some spots will go cold. I actually had a funny talk with a fella this morning that makes me believe another fella's spot is soon to go cold. So always keep looking for spots to replace them! This seems to be 99% of what gets talked about, the 1% of time we're not talking about gear.
The other thing to do is to realize that humans have never been impressive as an organism, but we excel as a species. 1 lion vs 1 human is a gore-fest. 10 lions vs 10 humans...the odds start to tip. 1,000 lions vs 100 humans, and the lions don't have a prayer. We are social species. Leverage that. Hone your social skills. I am NOT an extroverted, talkative person by nature. My wife jokes that she had to hit on me for years before the lightbulb went off. I would rather cut my leg off than spend a night at a bar. But my dad is a very social guy who is good at reading a room and walking out of it with everybody from the janitor to the CEO liking him. I was blessed to learn the importance of literacy from my quiet mother and social skills from my outgoing father. The first came easily, the second...not so much. I deliberately got a marketing degree and a took a salesman job in college to make myself learn how to listen to people, understand them, and effectively communicate what value I could provide them with. I'm not a natural at it, and I screw it up sometimes. But the little bit of proficiency I've been able to gain has been invaluable.
If you can talk to people, make them appreciate you, and most importantly make yourself appreciate them and be able to express it, doors will open. If that sounds a little Machiavellian, just learn to make friends! Sit in the breakroom at lunch. Accept the invite to dinner. Start small talk with the folks at the checkout line. Whoever started the notion of the ideal masculine male being aloof and reserved probably didn't have any friends. Friends sack cities, settle continents, start empires, and kill deer. Loners rarely make history unless they are incredibly talented AND lucky enough to have a friend who is great at making friends. Or, ya know, stick a bomb in a mailbox. I kid...I kid.
Most really successful hunters I've met, big and small, are socially capable. They're fun to be in a duck blind or pickup truck with. They're the kinda guy
you'd want to invite to your place to hunt. Learning to be a desired partner, somebody that the rest of the group wants to pool resources with, is an incredible boost to your hunting success. The largest buck on my wall is there because my dad is a cool guy to hang out with, and he raised me to be a polite and cool kid. Honestly, MOST of my dad's bucks are on the wall because people want to put him on deer. He killed 2 nice deer last year and never put in a single step towards scouting or paid a dime other than gas to drive there. I've had many opportunities to hunt with other people, and usually those trips hold an increased chance of success over hunts on the local public.
Of course, it goes without saying that just having social skills is only half the battle. A great salesman with a bad or nonexistent product will starve. Ask yourself, "Am I valuable?" God may love you unconditionally just because you're you, but the rest of the world wants to know what you can do. Everybody has value because they provide value. The more value you provide to others, the more value they will be willing to provide you. (And now we've come full circle back to money and resources!) I do not have a lot of financial value. I'm a good conversationalist, I know more about the outdoors than the average joe, I'm happy to share that knowledge, I'm fairly good at it, and I'm young enough that I don't mind doing the gruntwork. You invite me to do something, and I won't show up empty-handed. It may just be buying your lunch or dragging your deer, but you won't have to powder my butt and carry my weight. And if you put me on a critter, I'm happy to return the favor if I can. I try to continually improve my ability to provide value.
Knocking on doors to gain access to hunting property is, in my mind, for the birds. I sometimes wonder if Eberhart's advice on it isn't akin to my grandfather telling me I wasn't catching fish because I wasn't holding my mouth right, or telling me I could catch a bird if I put salt on its tail. Door-to-door is cold calling, and cold-call sales average a 1-3% success rate in the telemarketer world. People say they got turned down when they knocked on doors. No kidding! Did you knock on 33-100? Getting permission to hunt an area is easier when you're not going in cold. Have a social circle. Go to the family reunion. Go to church. Join a volunteer organization. Heck, go to one of the local saddle hunter getups! Cold calling has a 1-3% success rate, but a call after a referral or after the prospective customer sees and ad and requests a call has a 40% success rate. You tell me.
So, tldr, you need to either put in time, money, or societal value into one side of the equation before you can expect deer to pop out the other side. Figure out what you have the most of, and operate on that.