I own some property in North Alabama in an area that in the past has had a good number of deer and some real nice bucks. Now the numbers have dropped, and the racks have gotten a lot smaller, and I believe it is due to leased property surrounding me. As the lease cost gets higher it takes more hunters to group together so they can afford the lease, so with more hunters more deer taken each year. Now if you combined that with a very long gun season, a liberal bag limit, legal baiting and 0-10 scale of Game Warden contact being a -1 it has come to this point. The landowners place no restriction on the lease, so BID is in place and why not the hunters have nothing vested in the property, it falls on the landowner shoulders to manage the herd and they love the $$$ more. Now with all above said here is my point to the post, all of you hunters that are making a move to public land hunting, looks like it may be spot on for the future of hunting. It seems public land is better protected now.
-
The SH Membership has gone live. Only SH Members have access to post in the classifieds. All members can view the classifieds. Starting in 2020 only SH Members will be admitted to the annual hunting contest. Current members will need to follow these steps to upgrade: 1. Click on your username 2. Click on Account upgrades 3. Choose SH Member and purchase.
-
We've been working hard the past few weeks to come up with some big changes to our vendor policies to meet the changing needs of our community. Please see the new vendor rules here: Vendor Access Area Rules
Leased hunting property
- Thread starter gumby
- Start date
Sounds like the problem is one of stewardship or rather a lack thereof.
Hunter260
Well-Known Member
How much land do you own?
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2019
- Messages
- 1,043
Well if it's anything like Kansas the public is starting to get really hammered to. Not sure if it's the social media making public a fad or what. Way more pressure on all the public this year than I've ever seen.
Harleycharlie
Active Member
Few year back I decided to try a hunting club around my home town. I haven’t hunted around home in the last 15-20 years. Gees I’m old !!!! Any way I was excited to give the club a shot. They had 4000 acres to hunt but the catch is u could only hunt in ur area no scouting or anything else. They would let u put up a deer feeder and stand in ur area. The only thing u could do is hope the deer come into ur area. Just know every other member had a deer feeder running too. It didn’t take me long to figure out they had destroyed the deer population there. Years ago we had about 23 deer per sq mile if I remember right. That’s pretty good down south Louisiana. I hunted that club and only seen 2 deer the whole season. No bucks. The whole club that season harvest only 2 bucks. It was just a waste of money.....public land is free and have a lot more deer on it. I’m not knocking clubs or leases. I’m sure some of them is really good Just what I have seen , I would rather diy on public.
There's several ways to look at leases and as many results of leases.
Lot of landowners only look at leasing for the income. They really dont have an interest on what goes on on the property.
The second landowner looks at it as a way to shrink the deer herd on their property and get paid at the same rime.
The landowners that are concerned with hunt quality are generally not going to lease their land. They might sell hunts, which to me is the better way to go for a landowner because it gets rid of a lot of the access issues that goes on with leasing.
Clubs can be hit an miss depending on membership. People have to have disciple and the grounds have to be managed for food and predators
Seems like around here, leases get overrun with deer as the guys are only there to kill bucks so does run rampant so it's the opposite of the OP. Some areaa that are next to public land that isnt landlocked can be pretty slim as our public gets hit hard
Lot of landowners only look at leasing for the income. They really dont have an interest on what goes on on the property.
The second landowner looks at it as a way to shrink the deer herd on their property and get paid at the same rime.
The landowners that are concerned with hunt quality are generally not going to lease their land. They might sell hunts, which to me is the better way to go for a landowner because it gets rid of a lot of the access issues that goes on with leasing.
Clubs can be hit an miss depending on membership. People have to have disciple and the grounds have to be managed for food and predators
Seems like around here, leases get overrun with deer as the guys are only there to kill bucks so does run rampant so it's the opposite of the OP. Some areaa that are next to public land that isnt landlocked can be pretty slim as our public gets hit hard
It seems opposite here, the public has less pressure than private and leased. The lease land joining me gets gun hunted every day for about 2 1/2 months and one more note, before the lease we had a lot of turkeys and big one at that, I have seen 40 at one time on my place and would have turkeys under my tree many times during bow season, never shot one (out of season). We have only 4 days in April to turkey hunt in this area. Now I never see a turkey at all.
Aaronpaul14
Well-Known Member
Agreed!! I’ve barely stepped foot on public land here in KS this year. Every time I think about it there are so many people in the areas I used to hunt. Been mostly trying my luck at some private I can hunt but definitely haven’t spent as many days in the field as I normally would have.