Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting will you ever pay to kill a whitetail?.

I hunted the Mark Twain National Forest until I was 30. I tired of seeing more hunters than deer. I leased a farm in North Missouri that sees no hunting until I hunt it......I hope to be able to "pay" to hunt this way till I die. There is thousands of acres of public land just 3 miles from my front door but I would much rather drive 400 miles north to my "pay" farm

Heck, we all even pay a portion of our internet access fee to just talk about hunting, let alone actually doing any.

The actual "hunting" in hunting is the low cost part of the equation.

Like Shaman a Bud bought some land. Then he built a cabin, cleared some of the land, bought a tractor, built a pole barn, bought seed and fertilizer, made a deal with a local farmer to help him out in return for the farmers knowledge, suffered the wims of nature when it comes to crops, etc.

Damned expensive Deer meat comes off his land. I can hunt there free of charge, but it sure as hell isn't free hunting.

I have, and will continue to pay trespass/lease fees to hunt private land whitetails and mule deer in Texas. Helps keep the idiots out of the way.

My tags are not free, to technically I do pay. Not a lot though.

I would pay for an elk hunt or something where I could not, due to geography, put in my own scouting etc, but I would have a hard time paying a guide for a white-tailed deer hunt. I'm just not that into antlers, and I doubt it would compare to a few big, public land deer that I have harvested through hard work and a large investment of time.

Here in Pa rifle is two weeks. If one really loves hunting Whitetails it probably isn't enough. Then you get into going, and even if you think your home State borders on free, going isn't.

In going, there are many public land opportunits to hunt. Much depends on how good you are. I'm only a little above average when it comes to being good at the game. So perhaps a good outfitter is akin to a good education and the full benefit comes to bloom later down the road.

Addition: Since paying for a guide seems to be the contention with some, you could perhaps see him as a good professor that taught you more than what was in the book. Things you could use when you where on your own.

Professors like the Benoits and Hal Blood would be money well spent for a dedicated student of Whitetail hunting. Starting over I would have went to their college.

Deer? Probably not. Although I am well aware that the venison on my table is some pretty pricey meat.

Moose maybe, I want to eat some moose, and I don't really want to go all in for the gear it will take to haul one out of a nasty place.

I quit looking for horns many years ago, and just shoot for my table now, so buying a hunt for that purpose is out. A big enough rack might tempt me, but, I have never seen one that big and don't for sure know there's even a chance of seeing one. With the deer population in Minnesota being what it is, I just don't see it being worthwhile to chase down someone to help me.

I do know this though, I will kill deer and eat them until it's no longer possible. That might well mean that I may hire someone to get it from where I drop it to where I can haul it home when I don't have the ability to do it myself. I think it likely that when I can no longer butcher my own deer, that will mark the day I am done. Last month a couple of the locals I shot came home on one of my kid's sleds and other than getting them onto it, they dragged home on the sled almost as easy as walking.

Never...again. I did it once. Some guys from B-more had a 4500 acre lease by Deep Creek Lake in western MD and was looking for 4 guys to go early muzzle loader years back. Think it cost me $500 for the week. Not bad, considering they put you in a stand and feed ya cheap bologna and peanut butter sandwiches for lunch..lol. But anyhow...got there and the stands were all wrong. Like a soccer mom went out in the woods and scattered stands. It was pathetic, and the sandwiches sucked ass Made up my mind never again. Though it was cheap, lesson learned.

I'd pay money to find a good club in Virginia!

I haven't paid to hunt whitetails and don't plan on it, though thats not saying it will never happen. I pay to hunt lots of other stuff....its just that Ive been fortunate in the whitetail dept. and can't see to pay for anything that ubiquitous.
I can never say never Though.
Ive never killed any deer from any kind of stand either, but as I age...it starting to sound like a pretty good idea.

When Whitetails were more numerous in Pa just about anyone could find a Buck if they spent the time. This year at least 7 were taken from my area in archery before the rifle hunters had their chance, and a couple were pretty nice.

Around here it puts the hunt back in hunting and I'm not as good at it as I once thought.

The deer population is WAY down her in my neck of the woods (Jackson Co. W.Va).There are to many hunter from outside the area coming here to hunt,and many don't need to be in the woods.I hear 4,and five continious shots all day .I know it's these YaHoos shooting across a holler at glimpses of deer running thru the brush.I bet folks like that wound more deer than they actually get..My neighbor sold off a few acres to some folks from Logan Co.,where they don't even have deer gun season cause the people killed them all off ,and were bad to hunt them with dogs,and it sounds like a war zone over there. I bet the folks from logan Co would throw a fit if people came from all over to archery hunt their old aged monster bucks .When they do get gun season back down there you will see some monsters for the first few years.

For what I pay in taxes on my 110 acres, food plot expenses, and general maintenance on my cabin, I could go on a pretty good Kansas/Nebraska private ranch hunt.

So, yes, I pay deerlyeach year.

Yep, and sonetimes it just makes good "business" sense to buy a hooker instead of dating

when i ask would you ever pay to kill a whitetail i was talking about big time whitetail hunting. that can cost thousands for a chance to kill one deer. that i will never do,fence or no fence. i also will never hunt where they spread bait to kill deer.to me thats not hunting . they have trained the deer to answer the dinner bell.i do pay 300.00 a year for a membership to 2500acre hunting club in va.that give me chance to kill many deer.our club does not limit antler size but most members will not kill small bucks.we run dogs on some property and still hunt some.

I've never shot a steer so I can't make the comparison. If you want to hunt WT's in Texas, you pay. Unless you own your own land.

I have paid for a whitetail hunt and only saw a couple of button bucks in a week. All in our party of 4 got zip and the outfitter did nicely, thank you very much.

I am a hunter so don't care if I fail but I like to at least see animals. As for whitetails themselves, I don't care much for them. They are the American equivalent of 'roo's. Too many, very little in the way or quality animals and they are a damn pest on the roads.

Now mulie's.......they are special. Those, I really like and would give up a dozen white tails to one any day.

John

You can personally think what you want re Whitetails in not caring much for them.

The vast majority here definitely have a higher regard for them, which is evidenced by this forum alone.

Boone and Crockett have a Roo scoring criteria?

What exactly does that mean? I've hunted on my own in areas that a guided hunter pays $3K-$5K to hunt deer. Same goes for Mule Deer. I've never paid more than a little of my time during planting/harvest, calving/round-up or a few packages of filleted walleyes to hunt any parcel of ground

I paid $6500 door-to-door (travel, lodging, fuel, licenses, etc.) for an AB moose hunt because as a non-resident alien of AB/Canada, that's my only option to hunt in AB. I didn't want to wait to draw my home state's once in a lifetime no-preference point bull moose tag, I wanted to hunt a moose.

I paid $7K door-to-door (Flights, lodging, licenses, air-freight return of antlers/capes, etc) for a 2 Caribou drop camp hunt in AK.

For that $300 you pay for a lease I can hunt my home state and a neighboring state annually. 2500ac would feel very constricting.

screw a "ROO" whitetails are the big game animal to hunt in my book.no 2 alike. i live for deer season.

3k-5k to hunt anything will never happen with me.i hunt private land in va. i have a few small tracts that the land owners let me hunt. i also have the hunt club 2500 acres and 1000acre hunt club that i hunt a few times a year.deer populations here are up in one place and down in another. the 1000acres i hunt last season they killed 131 deer. va is producing some great whitetail these days,i do not feel the need to go anywhere else to hunt.i can see guys that don't get time off from work to hunt much paying an outfitter. our season opens oct first and runs thru the first week in jan. i hunt the whole season. i'm a remodeling contractor and i rarely work during this time. i think i've worked a total of 6 days so far this hunting season.