In Texas, because we were once a nation, we have very little public lands to hunt. Most of our hunting is on yearly 'leases' or paying a daily fee plus a fee for the animal killed. Prices can vary tremendously. Leases start around $1000-1500,with a good chance of killing several does and some kind of buck. The sky is the limit. I can usually get a couple of days hunting and a couple of does for $500-$600. This includes a couple of nights in a ranch house and supper It also includes one free pig. The price is the same for pig hunting in the off season. One place charges $1800 for a 3day hunt a 120 B&C buck including room and board.
Most of our hunting is done from stands, often called outhouse blinds. These can go from basic to elaborate. Most stands offer a two inch window still for a rest. Some offer an elbow rest. We generally hunt over corn feeders or spread corn. Some are shot from trucks, often called 'safari' style. In East Texas and The Hill Country, most feeders are around 100yds from the blind. Shots vary but are seldom over 200yds. In west and south Texas the distances are a little farther. Deer are shot farther, but most are under 300yds. My farthest shot to date is around 300yds. Most of my shots have been under 200yds. As I am now mainly a meet hunter, I try to keep my shots to 100yds or less.
This got a little more elaborate than I intended. I Would enjoy hearing how you hunt.

My deer hunting is quite different. I hunt a desert mulie called the Burro Deer ( O.H.eremicus !) in Kalifornia's SE deserts. This is all public land and there is alot of it, about 6600 sq. miles of it.
This is a low density population. The orignial population estimates were for some 2000-3000 deer. That means lots of country for the bucks to hide in. Today, many of us feel their numbers are significantly higher, but still quite low by most standards.
So why bother ? Because tradionally 50% of the kill are four year old animals. My odds of getting a tag, as long as I make this zone my first choice are very good. All the other throphy hunts I can apply for have much longer odds than that.
The key is to hunt tracks, not just the deer. Find the deer tacks, then find fresh tracks from a nice buck. Then you track down that buck. Anybody who thinks that is easy, ought to try tracking one after he leaves the wash bootom and crosses a malapais flat covered with rocks or some of the rock covered ridges found there.
I love the place. Probably because I really enjoy unspoiled desert country. I've probably been in 75% of the wilderness areas in northen and central Kalifornia. They are nothing like what they were before Kalifornia was settled in the 1840's. But the deserts are very much the way they were.
I guess I'm something of an odd ball, but I gave up the idea that a hunt is a success if I make a kill. To me, if I can find tacks of one of these old bucks, and track him, win or loose, that's a success. I've had years were I've seen a number of them. And years where I saw only some good tracks. Only to come back in the years that followed and finally put a tag on him. I've hunted alot of stuff in different places. But this is the best of the best. Not just the hunting, but the country, the climate and the quality of the animals.
I'm closing in on 73 yrs. old. I don't know how much longer I can do this. But I've decided this is what I'm going to do with the time I have left. E

I hunt both desert mule deer and Coues whitetail. It's all spot and stalk, whether on public land or private. Having lived and worked with ranchers in our small community for 25 years, I do have some options that allow me to hunt both public and private. I do spend a lot more time on pubic land because there is a lot more of it in this part of the world.

I'm fortunate in that I can roam for miles if need be. I spend in the neighborhood of 90% of my time still hunting or tracking. The remainder stand hunting. My furthest shot on a deer is 125 yards. Most are 50 yards or less. Certainly terrain varies but I absolutely love the green edge between a thick swamp and a ridge or an old cut.

This is often the junk I'm in.

Idaho is one of those states with a lot more public land than private. For elk, it's almost all spot and stalk. For deer, it depends. The north half of the state has mostly whitetails and the south half has mostly mulies. There's a lot crossover. Our forest land is almost all conifers so there's no mast crop. Deer feed on browse almost exclusively where they can't get onto farmland.

I hunt private land in NE and CO.

For me, a typical day of deer hunting in Nebraska consists of sitting in a tree stand or ground blind from before sunrise until around 10AM. From 10AM to 2PM I still hunt creek-bottom cover. From 2PM to 3PM I break for lunch. And from 3PM to 1/2 hour after legal sunset I'm back in the stand or blind. Eastern Nebraska is a patchwork of small grain farms, mostly corn and soybeans, with few farms larger than 1,000 contiguous acres and with most cover linear in nature and adjacent to creeks and Osage Orange fence rows that divide properties. Most farmers will let you hunt for free if you ask them in advance, but they may reserve the weekends for family and friends. For several years, Nebraska has had an antlerless whitetail season from late December thru mid-January. I have about a 98% success rate when asking for permission to trespass in the late season and have only been turned down when the landowner didn't allow any hunting or didn't allow the use of firearms.

My MIL doesn't allow hunting on her farms and I have become, not out of choice, the game warden for those farms. I usually don't get to hunt much on the weekends, as I find myself dealing with trespassing hunters.

In Colorado I only hunt on private land owned by my Wife's family and that is all spot and stalk in semi-arid broken canyon and short grass prairie country in southeastern Colorado near the New Mexico border.

So, shooting fenced deer over bait from an occupied structure is hunting?
Never knew.
I have no problem with that, but I would call it shooting.

Wow, I feel rather fortunate to live where I do after reading some of these posts! I live in Southeastern Alaska. This area of the world is thick with trees/vegetation (Tongass National Forest) and the terrain definitely favors the animal being hunted rather than the hunter in most cases. Tree stand hunting is virtually non-existent here. Deer hunting (Sitka blacktails) mostly consists of walking through/canvassing muskegs/marshes or hiking up into the alpine, glassing, blowing a call, and waiting. These deer are much smaller than whitetail/mule deer, but their meat is very mild and extremely good eating.

Since this area of the world consists of mostly islands, you have to to travel by boat to reach most of the good hunting areas. I tend to stay out of brown bear territory, but that is another factor you have to plan for if you want to hunt on certain islands. The terrain is so thick that you can sometimes have a lot of difficulty tracking and finding the animal you shot, and you pretty much never get a second shot. It is constantly rainy and wet up here, so you need to put a lot of thought into your gear and prepare accordingly. The weather up here can be quite harsh and extremely unforgiving if you bring the wrong gear.

Black bear hunting is a very different affair of course and mostly consists of tracking/shooting them off the beaches during the spring. This area of the world also offers very excellent waterfowl hunting and there are many wetlands/marshes that a wide variety of birds inhabit. I have never hunted brown bear, moose, or mountain goat, but you can do that up here as well. Further up in the interior offers caribou, dall sheep, and muskox hunting as well.

One hunts where one can. I assume you mean high fences. Yes, two of the places are under high fences. Both are over 3500 acres. That's five square miles. I don't think they think they are fenced in. The rest of the places I hunt are low fenced. Land owners require one to stay in the blind due to liability issues. Again one hunts where one can and, in most places in Texas, this is it. Captdavid

Here in British Columbia, and similarly when I lived in Washington State, I hunt coastal blacktails, inland whitetails and mule deer. Still hunting, that is walking slowly and quietly through forest and looking for a buck, are a staple for all three, though less so for whitetails. A key part is selecting which patch of woods, at what time of Fall to still hunt. I like to time such hunts to coincide with migration and rut.

Spot and stalk is the main way we hunt at or above timberline and a major way in big clear cuts. Glassing may be from a vehicle or from a backpack ridge. Our bear hunting is almost all spot and stalk with some calling.

As I age and learn, a majority of my deer hunting for all three species is now by calling.

Stand hunting is effective, but I have done very little of it.

My son hunts big bull elk by tracking them, sometimes for days, in rain forest with no snow. I ain't that good.

I hunt eastern WV and mainly western VA with an occasional trip to private land in eastern Va. Some friends and I have a camp in Randolph County WV. That spot is some private land with some large tracts ( by eastern standards) of National Forest. I hunt with crossbow, muzzle loader, rifle, handgun and occasionally where required with a shotgun. I have taken deer from a few feet to 620 yds. No baiting, we go out and scout before season looking for food sources. The eastern Va areas are either with dogs and buckshot or stand hunting with muzzle loader or slug gun.

trout, that sounds cool.. One thing I always thought would be a kick is dogs and buckshot.. I am not a bow hunter, don't own one.. But I have always read of the southern dog and buckshot hunts and thought it would be a special hunt..

Since most of the land around here is small parcels of private and very thick pine plantations, we hunt from stands/blinds on established shooting lanes/ROWs or from the ground or climbers over deer trails in very thick areas. As nice as it is to hunt from the blinds with long shooting lanes, most bucks are killed in the thick stuff at close range. I have my best luck scouting for rub lines and ground hunting the trails in the appropriate weather as well as wind. My two bucks here at home this year were killed from the ground near rub lines.

I am very lucky to belong to a large (>1000 acres) hunting club in upstate NY. We mostly hunt the ledges either by still hunting or drives. The first couple days of the season most guys sit. I'm not patient enough for sitting so I spend a lot of time sneaking along the ledges. I go for a ways and then sit for maybe 1/2 hour or so, then repeat. You can usually see ahead of you a ways as well as the ledge below you.
We also have a lot of state land and NYCDEP land in our area for the guys and gals who don't belong to a private club.

I grew up hunting in Texas. First hunts were on a friend's ranch of some 14,000 acres divided into 12 pastures. High fences weren't the thing back then. Most of our hunting was either from the bed of a pick-up or still hunting, very little was taking a stand and we never used/had feeders or box blinds.
Later in life, we leased the hunting rights (hence the term 'deer lease') to 1060 acres. The country was covered in boulders and most of the plant life would stick, sting, stab, bite or gore you.
Thuring ere, we hunted mostly off of the boulders and a few tri-pods and a couple of box blinds. ost all had feeders on them. We also worked a few drives as well as some guys would still-hunt (including myself). After 22 years on the same lease I took a job that moved me out of Texas and into the mid-west.
In the mid-west, none of the states that I lived in allowed feeders and you seldom saw any box blinds when I first got there. In fact, one of my dealers was the first to see the benefit of selling box blinds and started carrying them. Most of the hunting was either from the ground or from ladder stands overlooking known trails or fields where the deer traveled and/or fed. You played the wind and all of the stages of the rut.
During all of that time I also took a number of hunting trips 'out west'. Mostly to New Mexico and Idaho. New Mexico hunting was down in the SE part of the state in the sand hill country and around the caprock. This was for mule deer (not the writer, the game animal ). Here we'd hunt by glassing from the higher dunes, spot and stalk, making 'pushes ' (drives) and by just driving the oil field roads.
The Idaho hunts (as well as those in Wyoming, Utah, Oregon, Montana and Colorado)were 'typical' mountain hunts - lots of hiking and glassing with about 10% being on a 'stand' or location game might cross.

I've hunted high fenced areas but nothing smaller than 500 acres of heavy brush and trees as well as low fence and quite a bit of public land full of stunning views and dust storms. No matter the method, a kill isn't guaranteed. The only 'guaranteed' hunts that I know of is the 20 acre high fence where a pen-raised animal is placed for someone to shoot (either the 'hunter' or the 'guide') or the grocery store where you're hunting for the choicest cut of meat.

Tens of thousands of acres of National Forest here to roam. We also have 100-1200 acre tracts of timber company land all over that is open to the public. It's still fairly easy to get permission for private lands also. Lots more posted signs every year though.

Scouting, scouting, scouting. Proper stand placement. Started teaching my boys still hunting last year. Man is that fun!

Many complain about PA.. I feel we are blessed. I know of many decent bucks 85-110" that made it through hunting season, and with a relativley mild winter and a bumper mast crop the deer will get through the winter healthy.

We have 200 acres in SW Bracken County KY. 40 acres is mown pasture. The rest is a combination of cedar thickets and Oak/Hickory savanah. Deer outnumber the humans by a considerable margin. It's a Zone 1 county, so that means 1 buck and an unlimited number of doe.

We put no more than 4 of us out. we have a combination of treestands, ground blinds and shooting houses. After 16 seasons, schlepping around the woods is kind of pointless. You know where the deer are and they know where you are. In fact, I had a doe for several years that would find me every time I came out. She learned to drag pesky bucks past my stand.

I was making a description of this the other day over Big Game Hunting, and I realized how alien this may be to some. I'm out there scouting and watching and interacting with the deer and turkeys every chance I get. We hold off actually hunting the deer until Mid-November, and then it's strictly business. In two weeks we fill the freezers and then it's over.

Hunting pressure is intense in our neighborhood. There's probably 3000 hunters within earshot of our guns. Opening Weekend can sound like a war zone. The best way to deal with that is to put as little hunting pressure beforehand, keep the doe groups happy, and make our 200 acres a haven for deer. Big bucks roam a lot. There may be only one mature buck on the property at any given time. The trick is to let the surrounding hunting pressure drive these big fellows onto the property. I have to say that the Orange Army does a pretty good job of it for us. For a first time, we had 3 mature bucks on the pole in the first two days.

I've never hunted out west, and never been in a position where I "had" to join a club to access good hunting. I hunt from my camp in Pennsylvania. We are very fortunate to have a huge tract of State Forest literally right out the door of our cabin. The scenery is spectacular, and the hunting's very good.

Here in Minnesota, we hunt a mix of State Forest, paper company land that's open to the public, and County owned land in the northern third of the state. Minnesota's got a very diverse set of hunting opportunities. From farm land and prairie land to river bluffs along the Mississippi River basin, to the mid-state transition zone, to the big woods and swamps of northern Minnesota. If you can't find a way to scratch your hunting itch up here, I'd say go west.

The only downside is, with public land, comes other hunters. We don't have exclusive access to these areas, and you will see other hunters.

Not always.

I mostly wonder around until the Deer and I stumble into each other.

Shhhhh!!!!! But let's not BS the boys. It's 100's of thousands and then some. Best thing to do is run down the whole Pa Deer hunting experience. I'd post a wink, but no need to arouse any unnecessary curiosity.

With thousands of square miles of public land, I spot and stalk. Binos and spotting scopes to find and asses, and then put on a stalk if it's deemed worthwhile.

I mostly hunt from stands on private land. Haven't hunted public land in 20 years at least. The stands consist of climbing tree stands, shooting boxes/houses, ladder stands and tripod stands.

I mostly stick to two separate tracks of private land. The smaller track is about 200 acres that's just my dad and myself hunting. We hunt it very little, so there is almost no hunting pressure. The other track is a 1200 acre family farm of a close friend. It's usually just me hunting, but he and a few other friends and/or family members hunt it occassionally.

My typical hunting day consists of being in a stand an hour before daylight for a 3 or 4 hour sit. Then I usually either come out or get down and stalk/scout for an hour or 3. Then lunch. Then back in a stand around 3 until dark.

I'm blessed with great hunting numbers wise and rarely go an entire day without seeing deer, usually multiple deer. I usually take enough that my family and I can enjoy venison year around.

Trophy bucks are few and far between though. My best buck this year was an 8 point with a 15" inside spread and I got him on my first hunt, 15 minutes into it. He was the best one I saw all season. The weather was crazy here this year (abnormally warm) and the bigger bucks moved almost exclusively at night. I have several good bucks on camera at night, but only had 1 picture of good buck, out of 10s of 1000s of pictures from 8 different cameras, during shooting hours. But that's ok, the freezer is full and they'll be there next year!

Ha, been there, still doing that.
Spot and stalk, then walk and spot.
Then snack and watch.
Repeat.
All Nat Forest.

This is an awesome thread to hear about all the nice hunting areas people have. My hunting is similar to yours JDK. We have our own 12 acres within the 3 million 9 hundred thousand acre Superior National Forest.

I have a ladder stand on my 12 along a beaver pond for a quick sit, or the occasional longer sit if I don't see a deer I want to shoot. Our son shot his first deer from our land. Last year prior to his deployment to the middle east he shot his first big woods buck in the middle of nowhere. It was the absolute best hunting day of my life so far to find him dragging his 18" inside spread, high tined 8.

Most of my hunting is roaming a 10 square mile area out the backdoor of our camp using still hunting, and longer sits in previously productive areas. I move several hang-on stands, and always have at least two set up prior to season in proven areas such as natural funnels between ridges or along waterways.

In my 30 years of hunting this area I have never seen another hunter in the woods, other than a handful of time I have run into my buddy, son or cousin.

I routinely go days on end without seeing a deer, but when I do it is just as likely to be a mature buck as a doe, or smaller buck. Some severe winters we can lose as many of almost half of our deer herd.

Calling works well where I hunt, both grunting and doe bleat. My biggest buck came within 30 feet of me on the ground after a grunt sequence. I have called in a timber wolf to a can call, and have been in an area where I could hear a pack of wolves at a fresh kill with 100 yards of me. The wildlife viewing is incredible some days with chance to see moose, wolves, pine martin, fisher, fox, bobcats, lynx, hares, grouse, owls, hawks, waterfowl, ravens, eagles, osprey, and all types of other birds.

One year we had a pack of timber wolves take down a fawn in the yard one night.

I have never imagined wanting to hunt whitetail anywhere else, but I know there are other great areas in the USA with similar conditions. I am glad I don't have to travel very far to get my own slice of hunting heaven.

Yeah, Tom-your area sure doesn't get over hunted, that's for sure.

HAHAHA! No Sunday Hunting and No Deer. Gary Alt ruined it!

Now I usually sit in a tree stand or a box stand and wait for the deer I want to shoot to walk out where I can see him. I have in the past hunted with dogs which was the most fun and exciting. I have done lots of moving slowly through the woods looking for deer and used to sit on the ground against a tree where I thought one would cross. I have also done drives where we would take turns walking and blocking narrow strips of woods. All of them work I always kill a couple every year.

no its not,its havesting farm animals

Opinions differ. You're more than welcome to come to Texas and hunt any way you want. I wish you luck! captdavid

myself, wife and my oldest son we hunt our 300 acre lease in the southern tier of ny. the land consists of 130 acres of woods and the rest is corn or soy bean fields depending on what the farmer plants, the back side runs up to a river and we have a stream in the middle. we hunt travel routes between bedding and feeding and field corners. we use ladder stands 90% of the time and some ground blinds and climbers the rest. we bow hunt it every chance we get and come fire arms season wife and I hunt with our revolvers and the boy uses a 30-30. its not uncommon for any of us to see 2-3 or more deer a sit.

I hunt both high fence over corn and sit in the brush in low fence refuges where baiting isn't allowed. I have no preference, but I will say that when hunting high fenced private ranches I become much more selective in what I kill. This year I didn't kill anything. I passed on a good many deer. I usually look for mature does, culls bucks and pigs.

Or over populated with deer.

Captdavid. That's a shame that it costs so much to hunt down there. Here in Wisconsin, we have thousands of acres of public land. National Forest, State and county. Our Deer population is on a comeback mode right now after a slight over harvest and some Wolf kills, but next year and after that we should be back on track. The Northern half of the state is Bucks only right now, but the Central and Southern counties are allowed a doe with a small extra fee. Look us up and maybe plan a trip. hunter friendly state. License for out-of-state hunters are reasonable and lodging is cheap. PLUS, you won't have to go far to find a watering hole after the hunt.

This past season, I began hunting on a small farm in Clarke County, VA. There aren't a lot of woods, so we hunt from stands or chairs overlooking feeding areas. Stillhunting isn't an option, due to the limited size of the property and cover. It doesn't take much poking around to run the deer clear off the property. I took a buck and two does there, and my son got a buck and a doe. Three or four other hunters that hunted there either missed their chances or in one case, killed a nice ten-point, but failed to track it to where it finally fell. I found that one a week or so later.

For four years prior to that, I hunted a WMA totaling about two square miles. That area was heavily hunted during the rifle season, but I managed to get something every year; just does and one spike. There are some decent bucks in the area, but I've yet to see one during the rifle season. To bag a decent buck there, the best bet would be bowhunting, before pressure runs the deer off onto the surrounding private land. These are some nice woods, with lots of other wildlife to hunt and observe and spectacular views of the Shenandoah River, but if you want venison, you'd best shoot the first deer you see.

For approximately 30 years, up,through 2011, I hunted a couple of tracts in PA and WV belonging to a good friend who passed away last December. My family had almost exclusive access to this gentleman's land and though neither tract was much over 100 acres, during the later part of the season, it was possible to stillhunt or stump sit rather than just numb my butt in a stand. We killed a lot of deer on those properties, and pheasants, doves and rabbits on the PA tract as well.

We're going to lease the VA farm this year, and hopefully for years to come. Now that I'm getting old and creaky, stand sitting is the best option for me, and with no other hunters involved, we'll be able to practice some management to allow the bucks to grow up a bit, while keeping the freezers full of venison from mostly does. Even on a small property, it doesn't take long to see some real improvement in antler quality if you leave the small ones go. My neighbor takes some boomers off a small farm a couple of miles from here where he's been doing just that.

I too hunt TX. There is quite a bit of public land out there for free or a public permit, 50ish bucks IIRC. Have hunted it quite a bit, and missed one chance at a 150ish buck( don't shoot moving animals). The longets public shot I've had though was probably just under 100 yards. Never saw another hunter while on public, but we choose to not hunt just off the roads too...

We hunt at home too, generally watching food plots though there are a few feeders around. Have one out the back door at 181 yards to watch deer, but not specifically hunt except I'll shoot trash bucks there. Don't even have a stand at all at home, but hunt many places sitting here and there or walking around. Longest shot at home is couple hundred yards typically, 300 about max.

Hunt a lease, feeders because thats what everyone else is doing, but ours are placed strategically to cover big acorn years. When other folks are not there, we hunt sitting by trees on trails and such. Enjoy that much more actually.
Feeders there use to be 200 plus but I scooted them up when we started with suppressed subsonics.... 125 to 150 yards now.
But Carolyn and I often shoot to 350 to cover the main trails. And have shot a few out around 500 or a bit over as our place has a lot of wide open spaces. This is TX Hill Country.

If you only knew..... but then again most folks are ignorant to what happens here.

I could take you to some places, fenced yes, but over 25K acres.... and in some years I can show you stands and feeders where You'd be lucky to see a deer. Other years they are hungry.

But they are not farm animals by any means.

Of course I could take you to small fenced tracts that are basically farm animals and shooting too. Probably every state these days has that.

You can't paint fences and blinds with a broad brush. Well you can, but you would be wrong.

I've said it many times I prefer not to have stands and feeders, and often times if the place is big enough we don't. But if its low fence and smaller tracts you do what otehrs do or you dont' have as many opportunities.

That said, when others are not around at the lease, we don't see the stand, Carolyn, Tiger and I go walking and find a good place to prop up under a tree and see whats around. Can often see bucks no one else sees.....

I hunt in central Kansas. No tree-stands, or blinds(Though I suppose you could). I'm always on the move, glassing cover and stalking- occasionally I may sit in a spot and glass for an hour or so.
The ultimate adrenaline rush for me is to glass up a buck, and use the terrain to put a stalk on it- climaxing with shooting it in it's bed.
Though I hear people say KS has no public land, we do have over a million private acres enrolled in CRP and "walk-in-hunting" which is open to hunting. Some of the ranches I hunt have thousands of contiguous acres.


Here's a buck I shot that never left it's bed.

He;ll, I'm just hunting for a thread that wasn't started by captdavid..

Oops, I just started another. I thought it was a campfire where we sit around and 'chew the fat' will you forgive me if I tell you the 7x57 is the greatest cartridge ever. (: captdavid

Western WA is extremely dense, often steep, and always wet. Still hunting and ambush style hunting seem to work.

Easter WA is typically high mountain desert, wheat field, and mountains with Doug fir, hemlock and cedars. Spot and stalk typifies the hunting on that side.

Lots of opportunities for different tactics on both sides like float hunting or calling.

And that's okay.

We can't (and wouldn't) bait here, but sitting over crops or natural food is the same thing to a lesser degree. It's all good, while maybe not quite the challenge of still hunting in big woods. The meat tastes just fine, and sitting in a stand, rifle in hand watching the world go by ain't a bad way to spend one's time. Even Daniel Boone sat over a salt lick when he wanted to make meat.

Any luck?

Just for that, I'm going to start another. Check it out. Captdavid

I'm a dog hunter. I hunt Public land in Florida. The WMA I hunt is 58,000 acres. It is mostly surrounded by another 120,000 acres of still hunt WMAs.

A normal day starts with me getting up around 4:30 and looking for tracks and checking cameras. If I can find a good bucky looking track or get a picture of a buck I'm lucky (almost all of Fl public land is bucks only). I get to camp around 6:30 for breakfast and then load up the hounds. I'm feeding 8 right now and usually run 4 at a time. We start the dogs on the track and spread out in likely crossings and let the dogs do their thing. You can tell how hot the track is by the way they sound. If you know your dogs well, you can tell whats going on. When they jump him, you hope someone in your group is in the right spot. If not, you may have to adjust a little or a lot to get in front of the deer. If it's a legal buck, we try to kill it. If it's not, we catch the dogs and do it again. On a good day, we can get in 4 races or so. Some days, we don't jump a deer. For a houndsman, hearing a good race, especially if it's your dogs, is almost as exiting as killing the deer. As a group, we killed 4 bucks this year. We could have killed a lot more sitting in a tree stand, but where's the fun in that?

I Deer hunt in a Marsh on Maryland's Eastern Shore.. This is thick stuff.. I have killed deer at 10 yards.. If the temp is unusually warm we get killed with Mosquitos, eaten alive..

Years ago I hunted corn fields.. Longest shot was 247yd on a range finder..

I hunt public land. Generally speaking I stand hunt which for me means scouting an area that looks good, marking a few spots that seem good to sit, and making the call where to sit based upon wind direction and hunting pressure when the time comes.

I find spots by looking for the crap no one would want to hunt. Depending upon the area it could be due to distance from a parking lot, thick cover, tough topography, or (preferably) some combination thereof.

Sometimes my stand is me in a folding chair or stool. Sometimes it's as simple as standing next to a tree. Depends upon distance and difficulty and how much crap I want to carry with me.

Often times while gunhunting I'm hunting people more than deer. That is, I'm hunting based upon the way I anticipate deer moving in response to other hunters. That isn't the case with bow hunting, but by and large that's the situation during gun season.

I've spot and stalk hunted out west and LOVE that. The West is like a whole other world from big woods eastern hunting. See FAR more deer, cover a lot more distance.

I've stand hunted over bait too but don't like it. No problem whatsoever with it and if it was all I had I'd do it just not a favorite method. I can sit all day (and usually do) but like to be free to move or at least to pick my own spot. Being told where to sit isn't my thing.

Love to hunt wherever whenever...

That's what I do.

That is pretty much how I elk hunt, antelope hunting I use the truck, as it is about a 130 mile loop through the area I usually hunt ,hitting all the public land spots.....Hard to walk that in a day.

With my rifle!!

What kind of dogs do you run?? Sounds like a ball...

For WT I hunt ladder stands over green fields, hay fields or elevated box blinds over same. Shots can be out to 325 yds. For Montana MD it spot and stalk. Always been able to get to 200 yds or less.

Beautiful thing about being an American is you can get a tag anywhere allowed and hunt just like anybody else if want. Don't let the trolls get you down.

We mainly hunt the east side of the state for deer. The areas we hunt are mainly open farm lands with steep canyons and finger ridges. We have 10,000 acres of private access that we typically try to scout from a distance as to pattern the deer and not push them. If a likely candidate is spotted we will try to set up in front of their normal path and see what works our way. When doing this we are continually on the binoculars and spotting scopes to see what else is moving. If nothing trips our fancy we hunt the fringes of the property to see what gets pushed on to our land. There are only 11 of us in our group so we do exceedingly well and don't feel a need to push the area and thus the deer.

Walkers. We've been keeping up this line for a while. About 1/4 to 1/2 tree stock crossed with running walker. We don't have piles of room like running walkers require and like more nose than most of them have. Water gets too deep here at times for beagles. When everything goes right, it is a blast!

We used to hunt with Walker Hounds here in South Louisiana back in the 80's. I had 6 Walkers and puppies at times.

That was hard hunting. We hunted in the Atchafalaya basin, had to get to the camp by boat, so you loaded up the boat with food, gear, clothes and Dogs.

There were about 30 hunters and we would cast about 50 dogs. you would hunt deer in the morning and then hunt Dogs all afternoon... it was a job and everything smelled like a dog.

I've done a variety over the years. Now I have a 25 acre spot close to town that I bow hunt on.
I have a camp on family land in Northeast Louisiana that we stopped farming and put into trees. Tripods and shoot houses are the setup there. We hunt roads and field edges. Shots can be long. My last three bucks on the place have been 300+ yards. I have a 300 WBY Accumark and I have sandbags at my stands. We are just now starting to hold good deer numbers.

With GPS tracking collars, It's a lot easier to get them caught up and keep them where they are supposed to be then it was back then. The money saved in gas alone has more than payed for the system.

Yeah back then there were no GPS collars. I enjoyed running in the fox pens during the off season. Love the sound of a good pack.

I go with my buddies running bear and Coon with hounds. Running walkers and plots. Good fun. He's going to breed his walker bitch with one of his top end plots for bear dogs. Love to hear hounds run.

Nothing like it!

I never deer hunted with dogs, but drove in a state owned place to quail some of the clear cuts. There was a man with a rifle behind every tree. We saw that, turned around and got the hell out of there. That was before they outlawed dog hunting.

Ain't like that where I hunt. Some holiday weekends get a little busy. During the week I hardly see anybody that's not hunting with us. Also we use shotguns and buckshot.

Spot and stalk or still hunt! Depending on what part of the state I'm hunting! I hunt Eastern Oregon where we have thousands of square miles of public land. Never stand hunt, but I do sit and watch different areas at times!

Here we go. Public land on the Idaho side of the Snake River and public on the other side in Oregon.

My area of eastern Iowa is a mix of timber and farmland and holds a lot of deer. However, very little public land and what is available is flooded with large parties during our relatively short seasons. I'm not a fan of deer drives. If you don't have a connection it can be very difficult to find land to hunt. I have access to a couple of small (less than 80 acres) timbered areas so I mostly sit in a stand if the weather is decent. If it is raining, very windy or we have a fresh powder snow I will still hunt, which I much prefer to sitting in a stand. I have found that if I stumble around in my smaller plot on dry leaves or crunchy snow I get to see a lot of the south end of a northbound deer. The thicker timber that I have access to means I usually can't get a clear shot unless I am almost right on top of the deer. All of the deer I have shot have been under 100 yards and most under 50.

If you mean how do I prefer to hunt it would be spot and stalk out west where you can see for miles. Glass, find an animal and put the move on it. But I play the cards I'm dealt.

I sure like a stand with a heater with glass windows when it's real cold or raining!

Stand hunt some, and still hunt some. Both public and private lands. My stand hunting consists of being up a portable or ladder stand or just sitting on the ground. Don't pay to hunt for deer and don't plan on ever starting. Goes against my independent nature. I suppose if that was my only option to kill a deer I'd give that up. Plenty of other things to hunt including some I haven't taken up yet.

I hunt both whitetail and mule deer in Saskatchewan. Our habitat varies from desert sandhills to open farm fields to aspen parkland to thick roadless northern forest. Wide open flat plain and steep river coulees and badlands. I hunt it all, but not all each season. Tactics vary with the situation, when I was young all we did was "push bush" with family and friends, group drives with 3-6 people. All shots were running deer. We seldom do that anymore, but still do on rare ocasions.
Mule deer are almost always spot and stalk, with some "drives" used to ease deer into another persons line of fire.
Whitetails are hunted by calling in the right season, or spot and stalk, or sometimes waiting in a tree stand or box blind. Mostly I just wander around with a rifle and shoot the one I like when I bump into it.
Allmost all our hunting is on private land in the south 1/3 of the province. The exception being community pastures. We do not pay for hunting access, ever. Mostly just knock on a farmers door and ask. Seldom get turned away.
In the North, all the land is public and almost no restrictions on where to go. I have a bush camp where we mostly hunt elk and moose and bear, but we hunt whitetails there too.
I mostly hunt with centerfire rifles, but sometimes muzzle loader and I dabble with bows.

Spot and stalk sounds like fun

If I'm forced to hunt deer, I find me a spot on the sendero or just off game trail with an nice view, set down against a big tree (if available) and wait for one to come along. Usually doesn't take too long.

Sitting from daylight till dark in a treestand for Whitetails.......Hb