I am curious who all hunts private land and who all hunts public land? How many acres do you hunt on? Do you do hunt both, stay on private land, or stay on public land, or possibly a combination of the both when your property backs up to public land?
Big Game Hunting
Public Land Vs Private Land
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Public hunting land . The rich man's rags and the poor mans paradise.
I have rarely been happy with my hunts on public land, but I continue to hunt there. I dont think deer are worth the price of land, taxes and other problems .
As for outlawing baiting, that is a non stop argument on L.L. I with they would get rid of it and make everyone hunt again. That sounds like an insult to baiters, however, a deer that walks to a pile, puts its head down , with a log in front of the bait is shooting and waiting. It sure would be a wake up call . Many never hunted that was not over bait and are missing the freedom of hunting . Just my thoughts.
Baiting is still legal where I hunt but CWD is getting closer to out in the western part of the state. I wouldn't mind if they banned it state wide and just let the deer find their own food. We do plant a couple small areas with clover but other than that we do not bait the deer. Ten years ago the landowner put in a well and a small pond and that has helped keep the deer around. Even in the winter when the pond freezes the deer still use the same tracks year-round.
Almost every public hunting area I've spent a few days in has had old salting/baiting spots in them. Most of them haven't been used in years but all of them were basically buckets nailed to trees with sometimes a piece of wood to guide the stuff when it rained.
So I guess that people have been baiting deer for years and years.
Every year we throw out a couple of mineral blocks you can buy at cabelas out in the woods on the way into our hunting area and I've yet to see any deer tracks near them even a month after I put them out. Plenty of other animal tracks though.
We used to put salt out for our sheep that was in powder form not blocks. We had a little "shed" that they could stick theit heads in to get at it. A zillion deer we would see going to that little shed. Unfortunately our farm was in the city limits and we couldn't hunt there.
Lucky and thankful I have a cool brother in law with a number of stands/blinds close by. Farmland, so plenty of deer and a number of REALLY nice bucks. Even better is I'll be able to stay out there this year again after having to commute last year due to Covid. Only 30 minutes drive time, but a far cry from the two it takes me to get to a stand when I stay there lol.
Where's everyone hunting this year? I'm back on private land this year but will give some public land a try or two as well. I got 3 doe tags for Monroe County (private) and 5 for Dane County (public). One or two deer is all I need, not 10 (1 buck for bow one buck for gun)!
Private = I hunt, harvest and enjoy time with fam and friends.
Public = I don’t hunt anymore and sell all hunting rifles and equipment to buy nicer boat.
I am very fortunate to have close family that owns well over 500 acres of hunting land. If it weren’t for that, I’d quit hunting. I have deer hunted public land 3 times. Every time was a complete clusterfart and I will never do it again. Getting too old for that shat!
ya know Dandigger, all my life I heard " it isnt about the kill, it's about the hunt". These are the same people that will spend a life savings hunting for the biggest buck. When yo hunt public , it REALLY is about the hunt, and not the kill .. Many private land owners dont really grasp that. As for me, I shot a doe on public land in Dodge co. Wis. It was my first gun kill. It really was nice to get a deer that late in the season, the day after Thanksgiving. That is a tough hunt . Most private land hunters would have quit long ago if they had to hunt that long just for a gun doe. I have 1 buck and 3 does on public down here . Im not doing good, but I am hunting some of the most pressured deer there are and I am getting a few here and there. Took me 10 yrs to get 4 deer. Three with a bow and 1 with a gun.
I was forced out of 400+ private Shawano Co hunting land several years ago and now hunt 847 public acres of Tar Dam Pines State Natural Area in Crooked Lake. It's a complete culture shock and I don't see near the deer I did in Shawano but I'm starting to find it more purposeful and am enjoying the actual hunt more than anything. It's a challenge and you need to put in the effort, but I already know when I do harvest my first public land deer it will be all more worth it.
yamatroller - Agreed completely. When I was younger we baited for archery, that's just what we were taught. We'd see deer the first week and then it would slow down. Despite slowing down, we'd still jump deer out of the fields when we walked out. They were up and moving just fine before dark yet, but they were nocturnal to the bait sites. If you think about it, just the act of baiting is putting scent out every time you go to it. Its no different than the guy who checks his cameras all the time and wonders why he has mostly nocturnal pictures.
Even in the northwoods, I talk to guys who say they have all nocturnal pictures. But then you'll see deer along the firelanes during the day moving around. They know where they need to avoid during daylight. They pattern people. I remember one gun season where we saw a few deer opening weekend and then nothing. I decided to hunt from the ground and went where we hadn't been yet. Saw 2 deer right away. I then walked back to our truck a little early and had a deer walk 20 yards past the truck while I leaned against it. Both places we didn't hunt, had little to no human scent. They basically walked right around our spots.
I disagree with the opinion that baiting makes deer nocturnal. Its human activity that makes deer nocturnal not baiting. When baiting was legal and there were lots of deer in Northern Wisconsin we had deer all day long at the bait piles. Yes there were a lot of smaller bucks but the wallhangers got hungry too!! Get the does coming in and the bucks will follow. The trick was to get away from the other hunters. How do you think most of the big bucks are shot in Canada??? A big round bail of hay and the hunter is sitting in a nice heated blind!!
Agreed welder guy pressure has gone way down in the area I hunt and the deer are starting to go back to their normal activities there's lots of cedar swamp where I hunt and now they actually come out of the swamp during daylight hours cuz they feel comfortable back when I first started hunting there if you even saw a deer it was running between dense cover
b-nob the DNR said they did a flyover and they saw it in the plane. It had been there for 20 years already, same spot all those years, so they could've easily busted them years ago I'm sure. It was a big hole like a firepit you make bonfires in, or something like that, if I remember what my coworker told me. He never hunted that spot and never needed to, so I wonder how much good the salt lick was even doing. His father made it years ago on the land, long before CWD had even been discovered in our state, that's how long it had been there. The DNR made them destroy it by burning a bunch of brush on top of it, or something similar to that.
I’m with you Bowhunting Guy.
Screaming drags, I’d probably say your deer sightings are going up due to less hunting pressure. But deer aren’t dumb, they start to associate bait piles with humans and stay away so less people = less baiting = more relaxed deer.
My dad is a die hard meat hunter and that’s how I was introduced to hunting. We got into relying on bait when I was in my teens but by the time I hit my 20’s I realized a few things. Yeah u would see deer but mostly does, I’ve never seen a decent buck come in to a bait pile. A lot of times you wouldn’t see deer but the bait was eaten during the night. It got expensive baiting multiple spots once a day for a week or more at a time. Relying on bait is just not my style anymore but I’m not against it. I did bait for my wife her very first year of hunting about 15 years ago just to get deer in a good position for her. After that first year she found she would rather set up in a random spot on the ground by a trail or other sign versus sitting over a bait pile and she’s done that ever since.
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