doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Not hunting anymore you say?

Wow! That caught my attention! Can you provide more details? I have not been aware of any Nature Conservancy purchases which subsequently required a fee for hunting!

I find access here to be pretty good... See next post.

Being from a State on this list, I can generally believe that access is a key (also culture, youth participation, and CERTAINLY, too many people). Here, in Wisconsin, about 1/6 of the land is in public ownership and something more than a third more than that in private ownership with public access. While this is not evenly distributed across the state, there is lot's of public access for hunting.

In addition to public lands, much commercial/industrial forest land in the Northern part of the State receives favorable tax treatment but must permit access for hunting and fishing although vehicles can be prohibited (thankfully).

In the southern areas where pheasants dominate, private farms land is nominally leased for hunting access with some restrictions related to harvest times. All my pheasant hunting is done on such properties which tend to have less pressure than true 'public hunting grounds". Other states have similar "walk in' programs adminstered by the state.

Hunting access is not as free and easy as it was when I was a kid in the North and you just walked outside and went hunting almost anywhere, but the opportunities are still plentiful.

Public perception has certainly changed! When I was going to college here in Wisconsin, we would climb on a City bus with a shotgun, take the bus to the outskirts and then hitch-hike to a hunting ares. I hate to think of what would happen if anyone tried that NOW.

Chuck, I know why its hard to get access these days.
In returning a favor, I took a couple of guys squirrel hunting.
Well, they had such fun that the following week they decided to go without me. Not only did they not get permission to hunt my land, they got caught on my neighbor's property.
Nobody but family these days.

Wonder how far you'd get hitch hiking with a shotgun today....

Lowell is right....it's hard to gain access because of stories like he just wrote.
To hold all hunters acountable for a couple of slobs actions is not right....but that's how it goes.

Did you develop this mentality Lowell or did it just come natural to you ?

Roy;
Back in the 60s I took my J C Higgins 16ga bolt action to high school shop class to make a new stock for it...I lived in Milwaukee and took the gun on the city bus, cross town, and walked 3 more blocks to the school and stored it in my locker until shop class...when I took it to class the first thing I did was remove the action from the stock and the teacher stored it in a locked bin unless I needed it for fitting...when finished I reassembled the gun and took it home the same way....dont think it would work that way today?

Just kind of came by it j0e!
When I first bought the place I did have some problems with trespassing and poaching - but not so much lately
Atv/dirtbike riders, horseback riders and beer parties - so not just hunters.
You learn very early on to keep an eye out, and to get tough with these guys when you find them.
If not, they'll be back with their friends for more fun 'n games on your place.

I've had problems, too. About half my acreage is posted due to proximity to house and animals, and so that I have a private area to take my 11 year old. On the other areas this past year we were treated to empty beer bottles, ruts in fields running not 50 feet parallel to a perfectly good gravel road that somehow didn't suit. We had people stopping in front of the house to poach deer across the street from vehicles - my wife ran out and disrupted the activity. I have no great wish to involve law enforcement; I usually just verbally ream out a new orifice on those I find where they should not be. My wife has about had it, and is pressuring me to post everything.

Lowell has a valid point.

Sam

One of the many reasons why Texas is at the top of the list:

OUTDOORS: MIKE LEGGETT
http://www.statesman.com/
Sunday, September 02, 2007

Advocate Says Hunting Traditions are in Jeopardy - Ignorance About Landowners' Liability is Keeping Some from Opening Their Land to Others

Legal liability, dead nubbin bucks, trash on the trail, hippies dancing naked in the tank. Those are just a few of the reasons we hear, and have always heard, that private landowners are reluctant to allow more public access to hunting and wildlife-related activities on their ranches.

Liability, in fact, was the major obstacle Texas Parks and Wildlife commissioners cited recently when they discussed department plans to further develop a Web page to aid hikers, birders, hunters and others in finding outlets for their activities. Expanded public hunting is one of the major goals, commissioners said.

David Langford served for years as executive director of the Texas Wildlife Association http://www.texas-wildlife.org/
He lobbied for and helped achieve liability protection for private landowners and the state. Langford's family owns land in South Texas, so he knows the importance of hunting and of protecting landowners, and he believes that protection's already in place.

"We're supposed to be preserving hunting," Langford said by phone from his South Texas ranch. "The first step is this misconception about liability."

Langford said he was involved in helping pass legislation that capped a landowners' liability at $1 million, as long as they weren't charging more than $5,000 for a hunt.

Public hunters wouldn't be paying anywhere near that amount, Langford said, so that argument against more public access just doesn't hold up.

"It's about $400 a year for (insurance to cover a $1 million payout). If you've got 40 deer to kill, that's just $10 a deer. Everybody can afford that," he said. "There's just not knowledge about liability. There's ignorance, and that's hurting us in terms of hunting and nature tourism, too."

Langford said TWA, which touts itself as the organization speaking for thousands of landowners who control 35 million acres of Texas hunting land, has to take the initiative in trying to match public hunters, hikers and birders with willing landowners. Many of those same ranches already are dealing with an overabundance of deer, too, which means there should be some reasonable way to make an expanded public hunting and public access program work for Texas.

It would be naive, of course, to expect that all ranches in the state will ever take part in any kind of public hunting exercise. A landowner has a right to choose, and that's as it should be. But it's just as naive to believe that landowners, all Texans really, don't have a responsibility to history and to making that history available and important to future generations.

"There are people right now who were born after I went to work for TWA, and a trip to the outdoors for them is going to the zoo," Langford said. "And those people are going to vote. We need to a way to make sure they know about our hunting traditions and how important they are to all of us."

Langford said he believes that hunting itself is in danger if Texans who don't hunt aren't allowed access to the outdoors to absorb some of the hunting tradition and to pursue their own nature tourism activities.

"That tradition is in jeopardy," Langford said.

Lowell!
In reference to what you said earlier,you've GOT to be more careful when comparing to Hilary. I'll betcha anyone on this forum has better gams than " Ol'Piano Legs", and it's just not fair!!(to them).
With Utmost Sincerity
Rick

I don't see one answer to all the problems with gaining access these days. I understand the landowners being skeptical at best and flat out pissed in some cases. And, I can tell you from experience that it's darn hard to find private landowners that will allow a stranger on it these days.

Too many people IMO. With more people you have more likelyhood of encountering dweebs. Didn't happen very often when we had half the people. Less stircrazy people I suppose.