It's people like you that made me quit the libertarian party.

Cool, so if you want to hunt or shoot you just need to come up with the money for a piece of land.

Oh, but that will only last until people buy the land around you and start complaining about the gunfire.

They don't have to be turned into HOA, they just have to be made unavailable to use without paying a fee.

You are fucking ignorant.

What you are talking about is the southern Immigrant routes, not eh majority of land.

This is what most of AZ looks like.

No, but it is pretty damn important.

I like real Hunting and I have no interest in that bullshit you people call hunting wich is basically just harvesting of a domestic animal with a gun.

That's gonna leave a mark.

People plan hunting trips of a lifetime to come out west and actually "Hunt" for trophy animals.

Nobody plans those trips for NC.

Fuck this...............
The only land open to the public in the NW is federal land. There's some small pockets of state owned land but everything else is private with no access. Well...........there is access to some private timberland but you have to pay $300-400/year to access it (per person)

Weyerhauser started this practice and the way people had trashed their land I can't say as I blame them. They ended selling the land off to another timber company, who recently sold it to a local native american tribe. 43,000 acres of beautiful land that won't be accessible any longer.

our state is billions in the red, they get a hold of all of the central cascade mountain range and it will be private soon as well............

Yeah. But they're "free" in Texas without welfare land.

Gr

I assume this has already been pointed out?

BLM and its lands

And................

Table 1-3
Texas
168.22 million aces


BLM Lands

Tell me about your trophy hunting opportunities in TX.

And no, hunting for african  critters in a high fence preserve doesn't count.

I concur.

Not really. I've pointed it out before but these idiots have generations of ignorance teaching them that what they do is actually hunting. They have no idea what hunting is actually like.

Well, some of them do, and they pay big money and make big plans to come out west and actually "HUNT" for a trophy elk or deer instead of spawn camping on their hunting lease.

You should read the rest of the chart and the next several charts.

There is essentially no public land in TX.  BLM is apparently involved in managing what amounts to a tiny plot of 11k acres, which is a small ranch in TX.  Interestingly enough, I've never heard of this land, so I suspect it's somewhere so remote and desolate it's impossible to get to, or perhaps it's access roads to the minerals they manage (the first link you post is about mineral rights, not land).

The 168 million acre number is how many acres is in the state of Texas.

The 11K acres is a ranch in Amarillo IIRC..........I think I was there when working and travelling a lot.

The BLM administers a lot of oil an gas public land for Texas is what I get out of the chart and a lot of money is made just like it would be if the State administered it.

ETA:  Yup, it's in the Amarillo area but goes into New Mexico a bit I think.

BLM Amarillo Field Office

BLM Cross Bar Ranch

Out west we don't have that, we have vast tracts of timberland that if the state were to own it they'd sell it off to private companies. I can think of one small tree farm outside Wilkeson, WA that still allows the public on it. Every other private tree farm in WA has gates on all the roads and the only way to get access is to pay $300-400/year.

Not if the voters in that state prohibited it.

Now THATS freedom and free market!


Gr

The voters in this state  voted down a $500million baseball stadium...........they built it anyways.......politicians in this state could give a rats ass what the voters want or they'll limit it to a region of the state that will vote the way they want it to result.

Although that is a fair point I would advise you to NOT put more trust in Federal politicians.

well it's "worked" so far.............if the Feds are in charge of all Federal lands there's only a few crooked people to keep an eye on.............hand that land over to the state level and good luck trying to keep up with all the back room deals going on late at night............

I would counter that there  is every bit as much backroom dealing going on in the Federal political arena as anywhere else............probably MUCH more IMHO.

Now think how much prettier it would be under private ownership with tract housing all over it or bulldozed up and sold for profit to appease the anti government land folks!

Gr

So in your opinion where should people be allowed to build residences?

Most of our cities were built on land every bit as beautiful as those areas pictured.

Please try and give a non emotional answer.

You guys wanting to play wild man and *really* hunt or be able to shoot 1000yds(but without having to pay for it) isn't nearly enough justification to keep so much land under federal control. I'm not even going to address the ethics of using the government to prevent local people from developing property just so you can keep your vacation spot.

The fact that in order to enjoy land a person generally has to own it or pay a fee isn't some sort of injustice, I don't know where that notion came from.

You do realize the notion of property ownership in this country isn't much more than two hundred years old, right?  The ability to have land available for use by everyone far predates your modern ideas.

The states have never owned this land.  Ever.  The land has been under federal control since the feds in many cases purchased or took the land.  Why should it go to you?  What gives you the right to say it ought to be removed from federal control?

We have some land that is set aside by Congress for a variety of reasons.  Some of those reasons actually pay out money to the states where the land exists -- in some cases states that are completely bankrupt and incapable of managing their own finances.

You don't make much of an argument

Bring back the Articles of Confederation.

Same here.

Gr

On land they own


Gr

Just like what California has turned into.  Californians may seem crazy, but its because they have seen the beautiful natural resources of their state get sold away to the highest bidders and either made private or paved over.

But the flavor I got from your response was no one should ever own that land because you said:  "Now think how much prettier it would be under private ownership with tract housing all over it or bulldozed up and sold for profit to appease the anti government land folks!"

So where can people own land?

I mean if you are going to build residences you have to bull doze.

It could be worse...

There was a guy at the range last week whose wife paid for him to go on a buffalo hunt.  He showed up, they opened the gate of the pen, and when a buffalo walked out, he shot it.

I really don't see the point.  

Awesome--thanks for the titles.  I am actually pretty interested in learning about this stuff. I'm used to living in a region where you can set up wherever you want and be virtually guaranteed the necessities.  Things like "water rights" are alien to me.

That's not how it is here.  If you live out in the country, it's pretty common to hear gunfire after work and on the weekends.  For example, I live between one and three miles of several very developed areas and the sound of gunfire is kind of like crickets in that it's just part of the soundtrack.

And yeah, you can either come up with a piece of land on your own or you might stumble across the idea that you could *partner* with other shooters and buy a ton of acreage.  Then, you can make whatever range with whatever rules you and your buddies want.

If you can't afford to partner up on some land, that's OK, too.  You can pay others who have already done so.  For example, $100 per year gets me membership in a private gun club which, BTW, happens to be adjacent to some land that's owned by a private hunting club.  So, if I go shooting a little over once per month, I'm shooting for the $7 that someone bragged about at a UT public range.  Since I go more, and since I bring guests who are not members, I am paying on average far less than $7 per day of shooting.  That includes rifle ranges from 25 to 300 yards, a training range, many "action bays" where you're allowed to set up whatever you want and shoot in every direction except backwards, plus ranges for the various shotgun sports. Down in the coastal plain things are a little different in that it's flat, but it's also lots of swamp.  Another gun club to which I belong manages something like 16,000 acres (which is a lot for this part of the country), and they have plans to expand their rifle ranges to beyond the current 300 yards.  But again, what are you going to shoot at 1k yards in a swamp?

Do I get to shoot at 1,000 yards?  Nope.  That sure would be nice, but that's pretty hard to do here because of the rolling (and downright mountainous) terrain. Unless you have hilltops that are about the same elevation and 1,000 yards apart, you have to move lots of dirt and rock to get to 1,000 yards.  While I would love to shoot at 1k, I don't really miss it as there's nothing I would shoot around here that's 1k yards away.  You just don't get clear line of site at those ranges thanks to veg and hills.  Different terrain altogether.

By the way, the Forestry Service manages a few national forests in SC, and three or four of them feature shooting ranges. However, the government-run ranges are all 100 yards.  That's really easy to equal on your own, private lot even if you're not a bazillionaire.  So around here, private landowners have built far nicer and far longer ranges than the federal government has.

And exceedingly condescending.

Txl

Best to keep it in the feds hands, they are far more trustworthy...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Staircase-Escalante_National_Monument

I am not talking about ranges. You are sure caught up on ranges.



 

then he beat you. He's a troll, not a libertarian.

Txl

A bunch of FSA members showed up in this thread.

As a Virginian (unless you are a transplant) you should know full well what would happen if even the limited amount of federal land in Virginia was turned over to Richmond.

The ridge tops of the Shenandoah National Park and the George Washington National Forest would be studded with homes within a decade. So much for hunting/fishing in the GWN Forrest.

There could be one hell of a Mall built on the Manassas, Fredericksburg, and other Battlefield Parks. Throw in a couple dozen gated communities and golf courses while we are about it and your "justice" will be complete.

I guess it's a damn good thing you don't run anything. I think you would be better off in Texas.

Ever try to hunt on public land in Utah?  It used to be you had to drive hundreds of miles to find a place that wasn't overrun with hunters, and then you had to spend the afternoon hiking around to try and find a side canyon that didn't have any hunters in it.  Ironically, the best places to hunt in Utah have always been private lands that are posted "no trespassing".



Nowadays, it's a little better -- but only because the Utah DWR significantly cut the number of permits they issue and made the entire state limited entry.  Even then, the best places to hunt on public land are the Cooperative Wildlife Management Units, which cost extra and are available only through a drawing which, thanks to demand, ensures it might take years before you get a permit.



In effect, it's public land managed as if it were private.  Ironic, that.



 

That's a  very leftist thought process: private and local ownership is evil and corrupt and private owners (land owners, business owners, famers) will never do the right thing and will always destroy and only the federal government is good enough to take care of us and give us what we want.

Yes, burn down all the national forests and build shopping malls derp.  Please, never leave VA, you deserve to stay there.

So your entertainment is justification for the federal government to own the vast majority of a state?  As long as socialism gives you what you want to do for fun, it's okay?

For the umpteenth time- no one is talking about privatizing national parks.  BLM land out west is not the same as national park lands out east.

Arguments like these are actually tempting me to go there.  If the federalists have decayed into this kind of stupidity then let's crash the whole thing via merely passing a budget and get it on because I like my chances against an idiocracy.

I've lived out west for many years  and hunted throughout  the west as well.  There are these things known as "cars" and "airplanes" that people use to move quite easily from region to region and not many people never leave the county of their birth anymore. Surprising, I know. Imagine a guy who lives in NC now, but has lived more time in CA, NV, WA too and has hunted and traveled, CO, WY, and Idaho.  Amazing new world we live in.

Meh, but the world is only 6,000 years old so what does it matter?

I've seen too many 'state trust land no trespassing' in my life to be honest. Still the Feds need to be slapped down quite a bit.

I've lived in az for 31 years and there plenty of no trespassing signs here. Your point is what?