Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Anyone here hunt in Missouri?

Anyone know anything about Reynolds County?

CWD.....like it or not is in states that won't admit it

Yep

I live in Butler and also have land in Wayne

Both border MTNF

Good hunting? Decent people? I read somewhere online that the area has a lot of poachers and people hunting deer with dogs. Any truth to that or just rare troublemakers like everywhere else? Thanks

Theeck, I live in MO. Grew up in Livingston Co., have lived or hunted a lot of places. Reynolds, Iron, Washington, and nearby counties are rough places for an absentee owner. You may well come to your cabin to find a meth lab inside, or the structure burnt to the ground. I hunted near Boss/Bunker some years ago, there were deer, but they were all at a dead run, due to the hillbillys running them with ATV’s and dogs, Watchers on the ridges with walkies, telling the Atv riders where to go. Pretty wild and wooly over there. Few jobs, low wages, and welfare and dope are widespread. The Ozarks used to have moonshiners. Now they have methamphetamine labs. Benton county is good. As others have stated, absentee ownership carries risk, and the poorer areas of the Ozarks are a poor bet for sure. All over the Ozarks, there are a lot of people who have grown up in the same house their family has lived in for generations, fished the same holes their great grandfathers did, and hunted the same land their family has hunted for over a hundred years. They are not going to quit based on a plat map. An outsider is viewed with suspicion and may be taken advantage of. I had one acquaintance who bought a farm near Dora. He hired local guys to do work on the place, and tried to get along there. Until one of the people he was paying to work on the place told him they would be just as happy if he just packed up and left, but he could leave his money. Public land is full ofmguys during hunting seasons. I do not hunt public land for deer, for safety reasons as much as anything. Being next to public land nearly guarantees people hunting your place unless you are there running them off,

As far as small holdings, hunting success will be very limited, unless it is the perfect piece, such as a funnel where animals leave or enter a feeding area. If it is, chances are nearly certain that the locals know this, and either already own it, or hunt it anyway. I have a thirty acre place, and can hunt deer and turkey here, but it is better elsewhere nearby, so I hunt a buddy’s farm for the bigger stuff. Squirrels are abundant, so are rabbits. I could kill coyotes on my place for the rest of my life, I think. Call them into the woods from the pastures around my place and shotgun them. Pretty cool hunting when a healthy dog comes into the call with killing on his mind. We shoot them with rifles in the pastures, as well. We have quail, and some doves. I don't usually bird hunt. Said all that to say this: you need a forty acre place in a good area if you want to hunt it and succeed regularly, and plantimg food plots wouldn’t hurt. I would go so far as to say you will want to be in the northern half of the state, and taxes and prices are higher up there. Pretty hefty investment for a sometimes place. Under no circumstances would I leave a cabin unattended anywhere in the Ozarks for a year or more. It is worth the cost to be north of I-70 if you want to have a getaway spot.

There are bad apples in every county

IMO there are so many deer around here.....poaching and running dogs seems silly

My father owns a 14 acre piece in northern MO in Putnam county. Near the Iowa border. I believe he paid about 1K an acre, and we don’t get out there every year to hunt, but he has taken a decent buck each year he has hunted it. I think six of them in the last 9 years. It seems a local or two hunt it also, but it hasn’t had an impact on us that we have noticed, and the locals may have stopped using it since there was a house put in just across the road.
The larger pieces of public land near there are a war zone during rifle opening weekend, lots of cars and campers, but we hit a smaller one later in the season last year and had the place to ourselves. Even managed to get a decent 11 pointer who stumbled into my path as we were scouting. Most all land for sale in this particular area is owned by the same guy, and he makes a killing leasing it out to hunters. It’s a fun area to hunt as long as you can be patient, as the smaller chunks are a bit slow even during the rut, at least in our experience. Hope this helps, and good luck!

Most of the deer hunters in Missouri are hunting on the weekends especially opening weekend. If you hunt on week days, you can pretty much have public land to yourself. A lot more peaceful and safe on public land during the week. I hunt my own private land in Missouri, but I enjoy deer hunting during the week more so than on weekends. Deer are probably moving more on weekends, but deer are more in their normal patterns during the week.

Wow, it sounds wild out there. I think I will wait and make a decision later. I may try a hunting trip out there and see whether I like it. Thanks for all of the info.

Missouri sells over 400,000 deer tags per year

We have no shortage of hunters but only a limited amount of public land