What are YOU doing about it.... besides Bitching like an entitled little snowflake?
How do you figure I'm like and entitled snowflake ? I'm not much affected by loss of open land to hunt myself. I have hundreds of thousands of acres of public land to hunt within a short drive in any direction from my house. The majority of my hunting is done there. If I want to hunt private, I've got access to several tracts in each of six counties. I'm far from hurting for places to hunt personally. Still, I hate to see so much land posted up that was formerly open to hunting and I hate to see hunter numbers plummeting because it gives us very little voice against the anti hunting/anti gun urban/liberal majority in this state.
It’s pretty entitled to complain about not having access to something that belongs to someone else.... period.
But... I appreciate your sincere reply.
I guess what I’m saying is..... you’re complaining about hunter numbers dropping... and your concern is valid. But again, I ask, what are YOU doing about it?
Are you taking kids hunting.... co-workers..... single-moms?
I agree that the apparent lack of access is a hurdle for many new hunters. But, I think it also has to do with the fact that people just don’t want to work hard to accomplish anything anymore. Whether that’s killing a bull elk, building a business, raising quality children, etc. I see the “Private Land” argument akin to that.... why should hunting be easy?
I get it.... you miss the good’ole days.... hell, I do too. But I’ve watched my children kindly walk up to a landowner’s home and ask permission to hunt antelope on their land.... in exchange for a few light chores and some sausage from the animal they kill. They’ve never.... NEVER.... been told no.
Anybody asking for permission to deer hunt private land land here will be told no 95% of the time. Mostly the reason if any given will be "we hunt it" or we "lease it out". You're right that if people want to hunt badly enough they'll either hunt public land or find a way to pay to hunt private but waaay too many simply won't or can't for one reason or another. Public land isn't evenly distributed across the state here so can be a long drive for some folks depending on where they live. Obviously that is a big hurdle to a kid with no parent willing to take them. Ther are also plenty of adults who just don't want to deal with hunting public land for one reason or another. Some of those reasons were given by other posters in this thread. Some are scared of the unknown whereabouts of other hunters. Some don't care to deal with the vast forests with low numbers of deer spread out over a wide area. Others simply can't deal with getting into and packing out their game long distances from our larger wilderness areas. And some don't want to deal with the crowds on our more easily accessable smaller tracts of state forest. Those are the ones who will just give up on hunting altogether without access to private land close to home.
