Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Poorly run national wildlife refuge hunt

Sorry to hear about that

I used to hunt public a lot some years ago, then
the area managers got the big buck trophy
smackdown mcnasty fever, and started managing
the units as if they were high fence hunting lodges
and the state started charging the fees for the draw
hunts that were previously low cost.
I used to go on a good many of the open feral hog
hunts and you could find places where they'd hired
paid trappers to come in with pen traps and trap
the hogs before the permit hunters were allowed in.
I asked one of the employees one time about why
there wasn't more leeway when it came to allowing
the people that paid the bills to help take care of
a known problem ( I was referring to not letting us
use firearms other than muzzleloaders that were
required on that unit at that time) and he was
saying that they felt that there would be too much
temptation to shoot a nice buck if we came
across one. I said that it was already illegal,
why handicap people that are trying to help solve
the problem? It's a shame because the public
land hunting used to be a great thing for the
working man that didn't have tens of thousands
of dollars to spend on a primo lease.
I used to be able to hunt a good many ranches
and shoot cull bucks and does for free, but these
days a "meat" deer hunt will set you back a
couple of grand for 1 or 2 small deer at most
the places I hunted for free some years ago.
We were doing them the favor of killing off
the deer the rich hunters wouldn't shoot because
they wanted a big buck head for their office and
to post online
Things have surely changed

Seems everyone but you knew about the helo hunts.


I'm not siding with anyone. I could not care less either way. You could have chosen the 2nd date if the moon concerned you. I also know that I previously read that helicopter hunts were conducted in prior years before the draw hunts and that the 2 draw hunts typically occur around the same dates each year. The aerial depredation hunt takes place in the winter prior to foliage started to grow on trees so that the hogs have less cover. If I was planning on doing this hunt, I would research it ahead of time to temper my expectations.

More reaction to your thread:


Excuse me, Dick?!? Wow, you're clearly the f'n dumbazz here. I don't know how to make this any clearer for your simple mind to comprehend- I don't give 2 [bleep] about shooting hogs. You're the baby on here bitching and moaning about a f'n pig hunt where you couldn't even muster a shot on a pig in 3 days. There are still thousands of pigs running around Hagerman. And you're questioning why nobody else on this forum gives a [bleep] either. Hell, you even joined 2coolfishing yesterday with the sole purpose of telling people over there with your lousy sob story....and nobody over there give [bleep] either.

Finally, don't go bad mouthing me with your BS political assumptions on someone you've never had a single interaction with.

Similar situation here: landowner next to some national grasslands would let a very few people shoot does for a small fee if you knew the landowner. I hunted there twice. Landowner stopped it when the duck hunters swooped in and threw money at him to get exclusive hunting privileges. Can't blame him, he said the duck hunters only came out on weekends and stuck to the waterholes and didn't even look at the deer.

Some people complain about everything. Hunts sometimes dont go as planned. 3 years ago I drew a TX public land hunt by Richland Chambers. River flooded it out when the hunt was. Nothing TX could do about that and nothing TX can do about the moon either.

The OP got to hunt and saw hogs. Whether they got a shot isnt relevant. I have been on many elk and deer hunts where I never got a shot. It is called hunting not shooting and killing

rickt, go to the LBJ National Grasslands and try there. Avoid the horse trails (no hunting in compartment 47) and hunt the compartments using one of their U.S. Forest Service maps. Archery/shotgun/muzzleloader only, though.

Any time .gov does a nice job it's a refreshing change. I have been on a couple of draw deer hunts here as well as a DNR managed dove shoot. All those were good experiences, well-managed operations. On the other hand, I got a laugh recently when the DNR was having what they billed as a "public input session" to make some determinations as to what to do about the declining deer numbers on the Francis Marion National Forest (Federal property managed by the state for fish and wildlife purposes.) In my long experience I have developed kind of a cynical attitude about "public input sessions." I tend to believe they are primarily designed, not for public input, so much as to make the case for doing what they've already decided to do. Most of us believe that coyotes and wild hogs are to of the preeminent vectors of fawn mortality. So what sense does it make to as much as protect those two species on the NF lands? Not that they're actually protected, but you can only hunt them with weapons legal for whatever seasons are open, which means deer season is the only time you can hunt them with CF rifles, you can't hunt them at night on the NF lands, and trapping for coyotes is prohibited on NF lands. Yeah, they do have a short week or two season you can hunt hogs or run them with dogs, but you know those restrictions are in place because they just don't trust the general public not to shoot deer at night or out of season. So the people who will do that are going to do that anyway, and meanwhile, the hogs and coyotes are safer on public hunting grounds than anywhere else in the state. Maybe I'm missing something here, or maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon who things .gov is fundamentally inept and incompetent.

Our gov't. is noted for fuggin up a wet dream!

Synopsis:

I paid money to shoot a pig at a place where all the dumb ones had all already been shot by somebody in a helicopter.

It rained and the moon was out. I had to walk through thorn bushes to look for pigs because all the pigs with enough sense not to get shot by somebody in a helicopter were in the thorn bushes.

If a man pays good money, he should be able to hunt the dumb hogs. Smart hogs are too hard to hunt.

,..and did I mention that it rained and the moon was out? I suspect helicopters cause that too.

True hunting is not a sure bet but if you had traveled from Texas to where you elk hunted and found dead elk everywhere killed by the game and fish department via helicopters a few days before the season opened how would you feel? Would that be different than a bunch of anti hunting protesters pushing all the elk into private property on opening day?

True hunting is not a sure bet but if you had traveled from Texas to where you elk hunted and found dead elk everywhere killed by the game and fish department via helicopters a few days before the season opened how would you feel? Would that be different than a bunch of anti hunting protesters pushing all the elk into private property on opening day? Funny that. So in no way did the killing of hundreds of hogs via helicopters, in your simple mind affect that hunt in any way? Do you even hunt? Have any idea what it takes to get through that kind of country?

I had that same experience on Richland Creek WMA.

Rick, send an email to the refuge manager or call them. Not all refuge managers are hunters or are really even familiar with hunting, as that's not a refuge's primary purpose. You comments/concerns are completely legitimate. You may find the refuge manager concerned and cooperative. You may find that the refuge manager wanted to do it one way, but was forced by another person to do it differently. The NWS is a bureaucracy and sometimes weird things happen. You may find that the manager is a tree-hugging anti-hunting a-hole who needs his boss or congress to tune him up.

My sole call to one of our local refuge managers was pleasant and productive.

So you went to the trouble of copy and pasting that idiots post? I see idiots stick together. GFY

The moon phase comment was made to reference the lack of planning, If I had a year to plan a hunt for paying hunters I would take it into consideration. Being used to find out how effective the aerial gunning our fee money paid for should annoy anyone.

That guy is an idiot, no one knew when they put their money in for the drawing that the place would be shot up by people contracted to do so . They were not "helo" hunters.

Hmmm..

That guy is an idiot, no one knew when they put their money in for the drawing that the place would be shot up by people contracted to do so . They were not "helo" hunters.

Who administered the hunt? Who authorized the ariel gunning? It's quite possible those people/entities are not the same.

And I would be very surprised if the dates of the aerial gunning on a NWS Refuge were not published way in advance.

Kinda funny Texans complaining about public land hunting.

Lol

Not the hunting, the use of aerial gunnery by the people setting up the hunt just before the hunt date . There is a good amount of public land, it is just tough hunting. Made even tougher by incompetent administrators.