As far as license cost, bag limits, quality of deer, weapon choices,etc

South Carolina.

Sure as heck ain't Washington....I'd pick Montana, but that's just me.

boy that aint no chit... just put in for Buffalo and Moose in Montana figuring I'm not going to live forever

I do like the idea of shooting a few pigs as well

whats the max # of deer you can harvest each season?

Texas.

I can't tell you the best, but can tell you it sure isn't Pennsylvania.

South Dakota

Whichever state you live in.

Its for sure not California

Virginia

The deer hunting in Montana right now is not at it's peak-

Yep. There is a bill going thru the legislative process now that will limit deer to (I think) 4 bucks and 4 does.

From the mountains to the coast you have deer, bear, pigs, turkey, ducks, upland birds. Just about antsy thing you could want to hunt

Rifle season for deer opens in the low country on August 15

Georgia isn't too shabby either

Virginia

$64.00 will purchase a resident license that allows all small game, three (3) turkeys, up to six (6) deer according to where you hunt, and one (1) bear. Bonus tags are available for additional deer at a modest fee. If you are a bowhunter an additional $18.00 is need for that license.

Virginia has 1,700,000 + of public land, mountains in the west (where most of the public land is) and flatland on the eastern side.

Bird hunting, Quail and Grouse sucks!

You can hunt big game every day of the year here in TX if you have access. Resident super combo hunting/fishing is $65.

Getting access is the problem in Texas. There's not a whole lot of public land either. What's the public land situation in South Carolina.

The hunting and license fees in California are so high that many senior citizens can't afford them. Another example, if you are a father and have two kids 17 years or older, to get all of you the hunting license and tags and fishing license your looking at over $450. It really sucks here and you don't get anything for your money.

Postoak:

What you say is true. But the question was what state is it best to OWN land. If you own it in Texas, you certainly have access.

Don't know that it's "the best", but Alabama is pretty good. Since this is in the deer hunting forum, I'm assuming that's what you're interested in. AL has a long season, mid October to end of January for bow, mid November to end of January for rifle. It even runs into Feb in some areas. If you're willing to travel the state, you can hunt the rut a large part of that time as different areas have different rut dates. Cheap license at about $25 for all game. Limit of 3 bucks, essentially unlimited doe harvest with much of the season allowing 2 does a day. Many WMA's across the state (do require an annual $16 WMA license).

If you own the land you're hunting you don't need a license.

Idaho, far north in my case. Own a dozen acres with a "cabin" and back into many, many thousands of public land acres. Whitetail, elk, moose and black bear in the yard let alone the public land. Mule deer bit tough but they are there. Short of moose and goat tags are easy. Ph, and the fishing ain't too bad either.

For a Cajun, it's Louisiana. And, who said anything about owning land...

Here, the Cajun season for most anything runs from July 1st thru June 30th. And if asked what he's shooting, a Cajun will start talking candlepower, not caliber. Everyone know the gun is gonna be a .22 Mag. And for a scatter gun, a 3" 12ga. with buckshot. It's an art form, having your light shine about as far as yo buckshot will carry.

That's deer hunting. For ducks/grosbec/edible water foul in gnereal, you gotta line'em up jus right so one shell will get several. Now, that's an art form all in itself...

If you guys was a Cajun, just for a trial run, learned to hunt Cajun style, ate that good cooking, danced the two step with those bayou fillies, you'd never want to leave Louisiana...

Cajuns rarely leave home and when they do, it's not for long...

DF

If I left where I am now it would be to the 5 corners area. Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. I'd be in elk, bear, moose, whitetail, mule deer, hogs, pheasants, quail, duck, geese, sand hill cranes, coyotes, Mountain lion, and some of the best mixed fishing in America. From where I live it takes me 5 1/2 hours to get to the Golden Triangle of south Texas. A MAN CAN GET TO ALOT OF PLACES IN 5 1/2hrs from the 5 corners. All a man could want. powdr

There's plenty to bitch about in California, hunting and fishing opportunities aren't what I bitch about though.














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Missouri?

Great deer in Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska, the catch being that it is often difficult to get access to good hunting ground unless you know somebody or are related.

Tennessee is great, you don't need a license if hunting on your property.

Rhode Island

Salmonella,
You must live in Mendicino county? Only place I've seen blacktail like that.

I live in North Eastern Napa County.
All of those blacktails but the last one were taken near home.

Southeast Alaska, If only obviously...


Hint

South Carolina, most and damn near all the land is owned by the farmers. They want you to lease the hunting rights at a healthy sum. There are way too many deer in that state even with the current laws, which are very liberal as to bag limit. The white tail there are on the small side.

You Obviously are not hunting public land. Private property is the only good choice in CA. Nice Bucks.

SE Alaska or eastern NC.

Here in Ohio, it isn't to bad. Timbered land isn't that expensive, if you are hunting on your own land you don't need a license or tags. We do grow some rather whitetails, have good duck and upland hunting. Small game too.

Give all that, if there are not elk then it isn't the "best" in my opinion.

My vote is Florida. But if you weren't born here, stay the fugg out

If you would have said elk i'd say Colorado. Deer.......not so much.

Thanks for the chuckle.

I vote Wisconsin!!! .! Now Skane , there is another chuckle.

I would tend to agree.

I have 20 acres that borders a National Forest on two sides and BLM land on a third.

I used to be able to shoot rifles and pistols on that property. That's been illegal since 1984 but I didn't know that until 1996. I had to seek a "historical use" exemption from the county in order to shoot PELLET GUNS there in addition to shotguns. Not being able to shoot firearms other than shotguns on that property kind of limits its value.

The deer zone it is in has always had a 7% hunter success rate, but that didn't stop me from filling a tag every virtually every year. The property was close enough to where I lived in the workaday world to spend nearly every weekend there, roaming around the public land adjacent to it, which helped me be successful.

Quail hunting was almost always outstanding there, even when the state was going through a general sucky period. Rabbits were plentiful, too.

I still own the property and even though I've lived in Oklahoma since 2007, I continued to use it up through last fall. I'm done with it, though. California's license fee structure, California's ban on lead ammo for hunting, and their unfriendly attitude toward my standard capacity 9mm pistol and my AR-15 have me wanting to sell up and seek a similar property in a more hunting / shooting friendly state.

It was fun while it lasted, but hunting and shooting in California today ain't what it was for much of my life and the Golden State of today is far removed from the place that I was born in that it used to be.

My new mantra is that I don't want to go anywhere or especially pay any kind of tax in a place where my 9mm pistol and AR-15 aren't welcome to visit, too.

Kinda like asking what shoes a fella should buy- need lots more info to even make a stab at an answer

Can't fathom living in a place where you may or may not draw a tag, nor a place with a 9 day deer season or a 1 deer limit.

Did anyone mention Texas yet?

That's one of the things that sucks about Oklahoma. Our modern gun season is just 9 to 14 consecutive days long. It's marvelous if you're a bow hunter, though, because the archery season basically runs from October through January. Modern gun season is just too short for my liking.

I don't have to worry about whether or not I'll draw a deer tag for the area I want to hunt, though. So that's a plus. And I can shoot more than one, which is another plus, since I like to eat venison and so does everyone else in my household.

Deer seasons in California were much longer -about five weeks long for the zone my hunting camp out there is in. There were plenty of pigs to shoot at if I was willing to drive up the coast a bit. There are huntable populations of quail in every one of California's counties except the City and County of San Francisco and the only reason you can't hunt quail in that one is because it's entirely urban and not because it doesn't have quail -I used to see them in parks there when I was a kid.

Anyhow, the big bummer about deer hunting here in Oklahoma is how short the modern gun season is -9 to 14 days for the general season, then another 7 days or so for what's called the "holiday antlerless" hunt.

The other bummer is that Oklahoma is a lot like "Baja Oklahoma" (some people call it "Texas") in that most of the land in this state is owned by somebody and that somebody isn't you or anyone else you know. What public land there is seems mostly concentrated in the eastern thrid of the state that I live in. The biggest tracts of public hunting land are on the eastern side -places like the Ouchita National Forest, and the Honobia and Three Rivers Wildlife Management Areas. Those latter two are actually owned by private companies but open to the public through a lease arrangement with our Wildlife Department.
They charge a $40.00 annual access fee for using those two WMA's.

The modern gun season is short out here but deer are pretty plentiful. Since 2007, I've whacked 17 of them with vehicles.

If I ever do buy land out here, instead of putting in a food plot, I've going to run a strip of two-lane blacktop across it. They seem mysteriously attracted to it here -finding a two-lane more attractive than any salt lick or food plot .

The plus side is that undeveloped land out there -especially land that's all stunted hardwood trees- is cheap compared to rural land in other states.

9 days isn't enough to kill one deer? Then you have 9 days to kill an elk. 30 days to kill a bear etc etc.

Uh, no, in fact, it sometimes isn't. I've lived in Oklahoma now for 8 years and in that time, I've been screwed out of participating in the modern gun season twice because of work commitments. I'm not the only one in my home town that has had this happen, either.

In the town of 16,000 that I live in, the health care sector is the biggest employer. Our hospitals and clinics are perpetually under-staffed, so getting time off during the deer season isn't always easy when managers have to factor in weather related absences in their staffing. A lot of health care jobs that wouldn't have one on the hook to be on call on weekends in Tulsa or Oklahoma City do here in Tahlequah. So if you're on call on opening weekend, can't get time off during the weekdays of the season, and get called in even though not on call for some kind of all-hands-on deck emergency, then your nine-day deer season just became too friggin' short for you to participate in.

It's not just a job that can screw one out of participating in a short deer season. Here in Oklahoma, the weather can, too. I have a four-wheel drive truck but it's pretty useless when there are two inches of ice covering every road in town. I can't even drive out of my own residential neighborhood, let alone drive out of town to go deer hunting.

Now, if I could shoot a gun or bow inside of Tahlequah City Limits, a nine-day deer season would be more than long enough. I could shoot one in my back yard from my back porch. At least once a week, I wake up in the morning to see deer bedded down in my back yard. It'd be great if I could shoot them in the city parks, because I often see deer in the city parks in the gray light when I'm out running or cycling. They walk right down the middle of my residential street at night. The problem is that I have to leave town before I can legally shot one.

But, for a lot of Oklahomans, deer hunting is waking up a little earlier than normal on opening day, walking out on their back deck with a cup o' Joe and a loaded rifle, and sniping a deer or two or three from their back 40 acre pasture before the sun has risen on the first day of the modern gun season.

Since I am not one of those Oklahomans, a three week long modern gun season would be better for me than a 9 to 14 day long one.

I would say the Hill Country region of Texas. You get deer, hogs and a variety of free range exotics roaming around like Axis, Blackbuck, Aoudad, etc… Hogs & Exotics can be shot year round. I know someone with a lease there and you never know what will walk out.

Hill Country WT's can be pretty small. We have guys from TX driving hours to hunt our Delta Hardwood WT's because they like racks with mass.

DF

I understand your situation, but that wasn't what I had in mind when I made my post.

I had in mind that if you could hunt the whole 9 days it should be enough.

Hobbits really enjoy the trophy bucks offered there.

I've lived and/or hunted extensively in PA, NY, OH, TN, and CO. I've hunted more than a few times in WY, ID, AL, and FL. Each has its benefits/detractions. If you're looking for deer only, with an opportunity at pigs and turkeys, with good fishing as a bonus, I'd look middle/west Tennessee. TN has a 3 buck limit, almost unlimited does in west TN, a long season, and decent antler quality. If you need more, AL and MS are close enough for day trips. You could hunt deer 100+ days a year. If you can hunt, you'll have the opportunity to kill more deer than you, your family, and neighbors can eat in a year. Southern IL/western KY isn't far away for big bucks.

If you want elk, W TN puts you about 1.5 days from elk. Eastern bear hunting is a bit hit/miss with no clear spot/stalk opportunities. That can be cured with the same 1.5 day drive - or head to Canada for a bit of bait barrel watching.

All told, if E TN had more deer, I'd advise here because of the peripheral outdoor opportunities - hiking in Smoky's, Cumberlands, Cherokee NF, world class trout fishing, pretty decent bass fishing, plus a few unusual things thrown in - stripers in several places, native brookies (at least for the south), sandhill crane hunts. You can also see elk on a regular basis an hour north of Knoxville.

But the deer hunting sucks at least compared to what I'm used to in W PA. Despite all the moaning and groaning, W PA has alot of deer. I manage to see 30-50 in a week with a good number of legal and not so legal bucks.

I hate most everything about Virginia except the hunting.

No license required for landowners, small properties can still produce ample quality deer, some counties have 8 month deer seasons, tags are cheap, very liberal limits, enough public land and so on...

Double digit years are common if you put the time in.

lots of reasonably priced property in PA within short distances of 100's of thousands of acres of public ground. deer, turkey, bear, small game (some) and good fishing. the nice thing about PA is that it is not "diverse" as a lot of other areas. and other than the huge voting block in Pgh, philly and other scum areas, it is very conservative. taxes are on the high side but you can't have everything. the nice thing about most of PA public ground is that there is land for every ability. if you want to hike all day and not see another person, you can do it. if you want to walk 200 yards off the road and shoot a buck, you can do it.