Posted: 11/9/2024 9:27:02 PM EDT
[Last Edit: Ohio27][Edited]
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After a number of years, I have been selected to be one of the 200 hunters allowed to hunt a state park. Since the park is only 1200 acres (200 acres off limits (campgrounds, ponds, buildings, etc), I'm concerned about the number of hunters per acre. I was setting up my tree stand this afternoon and I was visited by 5 different hunters. I setup at a large dove plot that still has corn and grain on the ground. Any suggestions for scouting and hunting this property? DNR is not assigning zones or providing suggestions. Also, several large farms border this property and it appears that when there is a large amount of folks at the park the deer simple move to adjacent properties. |
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Originally Posted By FredMan: They really letting up to 200 hunters have access to the same 1000 acres? That’s a recipe for disaster. Pretty much. Here is how I think this is going to go. Elmer Fudd and Dudley Do-Right both enter their deer stand around sunrise. Dudley Do-Right gets bored due to not seeing any deer, walks toward Elmer Fudd and Elmer shoots Dudley thinking he is a deer. Meanwhile, the deer are on the next door farm eating all the cattle feed. |
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I have a management area near me where they issue way too many permits for the useable space for rifle hunts. I hunted it once, and would never go back for rifle. Other quota hunts are fine density-wise. If it seems too dense, skip it. It's not worth the risk, to me. Here's what put me off of that place. I was walking into an area I had scouted and left my stand at beforehand. I was going to sit over a food plot that had an obvious choke point through some heavy, but narrow, cover that the deer moved through onto the plot. The moon walking in was bright enough to not need any other light. Walking to my spot, I passed by two young men setting up a ground blind right on the game trail leading into the food plot and right in front of that narrow patch of cover, basically where I hoped to shoot a deer. They probably had their blind on top of 20 hoofprints. I walked on a couple hundred yards to my climber and went up my tree. It was too late to find a new spot. I could still focus on a different area from my tree. Around first light, a wildly dense ground fog rolled in. Not a thing could be seen anywhere, and it didn't lift. A while after sunup, I see another hunter coming down from a tree a couple hundred yards away from the opposite side of that narrow patch of cover. Basically, he was set up for deer going in, and I had hoped to set up for them coming out. He would not have been able to see the ground blind due to the cover, but he would have been shooting right into it if a deer came along that game trail. A little later, the ground blind boys pack it in due to the fog. I give up right after they did. I see them in the parking area. They were freaked out because they didn't see me walk within 20' of them on the way in or hear or see me walking away while they were setting up. They thought I didn't know they were there. They had no idea that the other hunter who couldn't see them was set up to shoot them. These two were completely oblivious to where they were setting up and what was happening around them. These are the people that shoot hunters by mistake and get shot by mistake. Just the idea of setting up a ground blind on tight public land is nuts to me, much less setting it up on what's clealry a travel lane for deer surrounded by obvious shooting positions. Had that fog not rolled in and if a deer came down this heavily trafficked trail, there's a good chance the other hunter in the tree stand would have hit one of the hunters in the blind. There would have been nothing he could have done to avoid it. He could not see them at all. |