What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

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MrT
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby MrT » Sun Jul 14, 2019 4:16 pm

vtbuck wrote:On the private I hunt it’s keeping the landowner from searching for all my stuff. He runs all over the property on foot and four wheeler looking for my cams or prehung sets. It’s irritating but it’s also his land. I do a lot of stuff for him like cutting wood as payment.
A couple years ago my bro shot a good buck. We drug it out to the truck, got lunch and while we were gone he set a ground blind directly under the tree my bro shot the buck out of.
On public it’s a lack of scouting which is my own fault.


This always amazed me about some hunters. Once upon a time I was in a hunting club and if you ever shot a nice buck the other members would bug the out of you to find out exactly where you shot it (like it matters, the deer is already dead). If they ever found out where, they would carve a path using chainsaws and machetes so they could ride their four-wheelers in there and hunt it.

As for a NC hunter, my biggest challenge is like many throughout the Southeast, and thats finding mature bucks. Not many bucks around here make it past 2-2.5+ years. NC is capable of creating some monsters if given the chance.


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Ishi Spirit
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby Ishi Spirit » Mon Jul 15, 2019 12:20 am

The wacko legislators in the capital that think they are deer biologists.
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backstraps
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby backstraps » Mon Jul 15, 2019 12:41 am

Ishi Spirit wrote:The wacko legislators in the capital that think they are deer biologists.



Isnt that the truth!! Not just speaking for your state, I think that is going on all around.
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ThePreBanMan
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby ThePreBanMan » Mon Jul 15, 2019 1:25 am

Thick thick woods.
ticks
Deer density is uneven across the state and not well managed. Even within the same district density can vary wildly between accessible and unaccessible lands.
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Rich M
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby Rich M » Mon Jul 15, 2019 2:00 am

I'm in Central Florida. Couple of "hardest parts":

1 - Finding a place to hunt more than just a 3-5 day quota hunt
2 - Heat, humidity, bugs
3 - Thickness of vegetation
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thwack16
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby thwack16 » Mon Jul 15, 2019 2:18 am

In Mississippi, long gun seasons and baiting.

Regular gun opens the Saturday before thanksgiving with youth opening two saturdays before that. Gun now runs all the way until January 31. Opening that early puts it running Atleast a month before the majority of the state ruts and even two months before some parts.

Think we’re working on the third season of baiting now. Have had supplemental feed laws in for about a decade before that without being able to hunt over it. What we’ve seen is that it localizes the deer herds around it as well as gives the deer a free place to eat all night. It also can seemingly really hurt you if you don’t do it on your own place(we choose not to on either).

Both reasons are why I’ve gravitated toward more and more public. Big chunks can reduce the impact of baiting on private. Also, most really limit the gun seasons.
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby Dpierce72 » Mon Jul 15, 2019 3:03 am

The thing that frustrates me the most is the unpredictable flooding in the river bottoms...

I do think our gun seasons are too long, and I'd like to see tougher antler restrictions. We instituted a 3 point (one side) rule years back, and it's helped immensely. I'd like to see us take another step (inside spread, 4 pt, main beam length etc), as some of the specific WMAs have done.
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby Twenty Up » Tue Jul 16, 2019 8:34 am

The endless dense foliage.

Glassing, stalking.. hunting our deer is completely based off of reading the sign or trail cameras. If you’re lucky enough to get all of that right, try finessing an arrow through that wall of briars, saplings and poison ivy.

Our public lands aren’t leased out to farmers, so they’re generally all woods or various age structures of clear cuts.

“Shining” down here is illegal, but often involves Busch Light & AR’s :doh:
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby Cchez » Tue Jul 16, 2019 9:51 am

Northeast Minnesota.
Low deer density, high wolf density. Vast wilderness makes it challenging to find an area holding big bucks. Wolves. The elements arent too bad to deal with since we're used to it up here. More wolves. As far as competition goes, thats not really an issue for me, most bow hunters hunt the city hunts and dont hunt the public woods. Did I mention theres a lot wolves up here?
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby Edcyclopedia » Tue Jul 16, 2019 10:19 am

I don't have enough time to say... :whistle:
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby elk yinzer » Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:05 pm

In PA the hardest aspect very generally is access. We do have vast public land but in more rural areas of the state. Closer to the cities and people, of which we have a crap ton, it's anywhere from bad to an absolute zoo. We still can't hunt Sundays, that's part of access that 50% of the weekend you can't hunt. And our bow season is only 6 weeks long and goes out early in November, most years a week before my favorite part of the rut. For the working bowhunter, most of us have 5-6 Saturdays and whatever vacation the workboss and homeboss allow. That's really tough to consistently kill good bucks under tough conditions.

Most unique is our rifle season, specifically the first day. We still have some 750,000 hunters, down from the heyday of 1 million plus. You'd swear half of them hunt just that one day a year. It's interesting, unique, fun, captivating, frustrating, dangerous, a little of all that all rolled into one day. People get all psyched up for it though. The traditional aspect of it has died down somewhat even since I started in the late 90's, but it's still quite the experience to behold.
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby Scratchman » Tue Jul 16, 2019 4:23 pm

In Vermont, it's tough to just get on a decent 3+ buck. In the farmlands they all die at 1.5 or 2.5. In the big woods there are very few. Beside that though the access and opportunity are great.
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby Brian1986 » Tue Jul 16, 2019 11:53 pm

I don't see much downside hunting here. There isn't as much hunting land available as there was before Mead leased/sold their timber lands that were once open to public hunting. And I think the state parks and wildlife areas could step up their game in how they take care of the properties they manage (invasive species, no tsi, etc.). But other than that I am happy with the hunting here. It's hard to find big old bucks, but it should be. If a person puts the work in, you can find some and be in the game. Hard to ask for much more.
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby Bonehead » Wed Jul 17, 2019 2:25 am

Hogs are really a problem in some of the Oklahoma bottom lands I hunt. Sometimes the hogs seem to claim a area as there own and run all the deer out.
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Re: What is the most challenging part of hunting your home state

Unread postby seazofcheeze » Wed Jul 17, 2019 5:05 am

Deciding if I want to chase elk, bear, mule deer, or whitetail. Problems will only get worse next year with antelope thrown in.


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