Our woods are patch work row crops and small woods. Generally here you get permission on 50-maybe 200 acres and have 20-75 of that being woods. You go in and find 2-5 ladder stands or find that when the woods start getting good, the property line ends. Thats more or less how our private land is set up. Its great because access is easy to get and people are nice, but on the other side of that coin, there are people with access everywhere and tresspassing just isn't really something folks are concerned about. If even one person messes up a little woods, the deer just move to the next property that has the same small woods and row crops. Our biggenst bucks in the area tend to come from the very suburban areas of pittsburgh where homes and extreme limited access keep bucks alive. I could go there but got tired of hunting with the sound of a leaf blower, lawn mower, kids playing, or dogs barking in the background...plus hunting isn't very accepted in that area and you feel like you are sneaking around all the time and I find that uncomfortable. We have some ok large blocks of public land but it gets attacked pretty good during a very popular rifle season every year. We also have a high amish population and they can be pretty tough on a deer population. Do big deer get killed around here every year? Sure they do!! But most are by more or less accident or chance rather than a well set up and deployed beast program!!
I think the key might be to go where everybody says the hunting sucks, cause those areas tend to get less hunting pressure. I've walked the nastiest crap I could find down in southern Mi public and there just isn't the sign. I could walk a transition line for days and not find anything that says hang a stand here. Also every time I find something that says well there might be some potential for a nice buck to be here, even though I don't see sign, there's a dang tree stand hanging there(left out all year, illegal). Lets face it, on these small public lands close to high population they get pounded and "WE" are not the only ones who will truck through the brush to try to find a secluded area. You get back as far as you can and oh look somebody is coming in from the other road. Back to the theory of crappy area = good area. I'm real tempted to go north to the famous TB zone of MI. They had a killing spree and people now complain there are no deer and many hunters have stopped hunting the area due to that and restrictions. Sounds like a good place for a deer to get older. The problem with that is I can drive 3.5hrs north to hunt MI, or 3.5hrs south and be in Oh or IN, so why bother with MI?
