Hunting in the 1980s and 90s

I remember when I first started bow hunting in 1990 it sure seemed like I was the only one bow hunting. Never ran into another hunter. That was on a gated community also.
When I first started big game hunting the Utah proclamation was only 6 or seven pages. Now theirs two books one for applications and one for rules both about 26 pages long.
Also you could buy any general tag over the counter the day before the hunt.
When I turned 16 I went into the sporting goods store to by my 1st compound bow and remember seeing a sign. Life time deer permit 280.00 dollars that's exactly the amount I had worked a summer job for and bought a bow for 250.00 dollars, pse fast flight. I sure as heck wish I would of bought the life time deer permit instead.
It now takes me at least 3 yrs to draw a general deer rifle tag.
 
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I was mistaken it's actually 80 pages long this year. It's becoming that I need to hire a lawyer to understand it all 😔
 
Alaska in the 80s was magic! I used to caribou hunt along the Squirrel River north of Kiana - thousands of caribou.

As a resident, you got five caribou tags, five deer tags, a moose tag, and a sheep tag. Brown/grizzly tags were over the counter at $25.

In the 90s I hunted elk and deer and made my first African hunt. In 99 I went to Mongolia for ibex - IIRC the cost was $4,000.
 
LRNut said:
Alaska in the 80s was magic! I used to caribou hunt along the Squirrel River north of Kiana - thousands of caribou.

As a resident, you got five caribou tags, five deer tags, a moose tag, and a sheep tag. Brown/grizzly tags were over the counter at $25.

In the 90s I hunted elk and deer and made my first African hunt. In 99 I went to Mongolia for ibex - IIRC the cost was $4,000.
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That's the days that I remember also a mountain goat and three black bears on that tag.
 
Taco John said:
Uhm....you could get a tag back then.
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Not so much here in PA, Hunter numbers were in the 1.1 million range and while every license got a buck tag doe tags were slim. All that accomplished was killing off a sizable portion of the 1.5 year old buck population every year resulting in a bunch of baby spike bucks getting killed year after year. Back in the day any buck living to 2.5 and growing a 6 or 8 point rack was considered a monster at the time with spikes and forkies being the vast majority of the bucks killed.

Take for example my first buck in 2007 on the left and last years buck on the right. My first buck was considered a big one, it took my dad 20 years of hunting to get a buck that big. The one I killed last year was unthinkable for our area in the 80's and 90's.
IMG_1305.jpeg
 
Way more game .Lots of big bucks,200 inch mule deer usually see one pretty often.350 see every year.Wasnt much of a archery in those days, until I got my shooting in order.Then I was a whitetail specialist.But got into elk pretty early onward to kill as I was self taught and rugged and brushy wilderness.
 
Where I grew up, in the 80s and 90s you could still hunt every farm around. VERY few turned us down, and if they did it was because they had enough family that hunted to keep it busy.
When we hunted "up North" the timber companies all allowed hunting. Then Tim Pawlenty took away the tax incentive and they all went to leasing their land.

To me, THAT right there, is the biggest difference from then til now. There was MUCH MORE land available to hunt. Hunting pressure was much less because people were more spread out. That also meant that game reacted to human presence a little differently.

Don't get me wrong, there were still places that were crowded but it was much less common.
 
MtPockets said:
Where I grew up, in the 80s and 90s you could still hunt every farm around. VERY few turned us down, and if they did it was because they had enough family that hunted to keep it busy.
When we hunted "up North" the timber companies all allowed hunting. Then Tim Pawlenty took away the tax incentive and they all went to leasing their land.

To me, THAT right there, is the biggest difference from then til now. There was MUCH MORE land available to hunt. Hunting pressure was much less because people were more spread out. That also meant that game reacted to human presence a little differently.

Don't get me wrong, there were still places that were crowded but it was much less common.
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The same happened here with the Timber companies in the southeast part of the state, huge expanses of land that were open to the public. Schools were even closed during rifle season down there so the kids could hunt.
Another difference was the Lawyers, Doctors, Dentists ect weren't leasing up the big ranches yet.
 
As @CMP70306 said earlier here in Pa the deer herd was severely mismanaged in the 80's and 90's. If you hunted the mountains you would see upwards of 50 deer a day but it was only button bucks and does which weren't legal. Local farm areas deer sightings were slim, maybe 7 per season.
Barely anyone archery hunted until the later part of the 90's and like MtPockets said access to hunting property was darn near unlimited with just a knock and a handshake.
It was a great time to learn to be a hunter but game management is much better today, although not perfect by any means.
Here's a pic of my first archery bucks rack from the early 90's and the one I got in archery last year. (Last years was only a little over 130") We do have antler restrictions now in my unit.
 

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I didn't have a hunting mentor but started hunting very young (9) and on my own. Killed my first deer, a nice old 8 point, at 12. Started bow hunting at 15 (in 1990) and got my first kill that year. I still have that bow (Golden Eagle Talon) and used it for many years. Didn't realize how slow it was till I shot it side by side with a Bowtech General that was over 100 fps faster.😂
The number of deer and turkeys I see now has gone up exponentially. I "have to" take my dog on her evening ride around some back roads where I live and most evenings I have the opportunity to see deer numbered in the dozens.
I have been reminiscing about those younger days growing up a lot lately. There were miles of rolling forest and cattle farms scattered throughout and nobody cared where I went. Up till a hand full of years back I could ask and get permission on many places around here, but that has all but gone away.
 
Started hunting the west in the late 90s as a kid, before pay to play had made it out that way. Most expensive swap we ever did was us boys doing basic grunt farmyard work Sundays between church services for hunting the following Saturday.

My childhood isn't replecatable, kinda a bummer really.

Don't blame the ranchers, they weren't the ones pushing policy that foced mom and pop guys out and caused corporate farms running on razor thin margins who augment income by selling land access.
 
MtPockets said:
Where I grew up, in the 80s and 90s you could still hunt every farm around. VERY few turned us down, and if they did it was because they had enough family that hunted to keep it busy.
When we hunted "up North" the timber companies all allowed hunting. Then Tim Pawlenty took away the tax incentive and they all went to leasing their land.

To me, THAT right there, is the biggest difference from then til now. There was MUCH MORE land available to hunt. Hunting pressure was much less because people were more spread out. That also meant that game reacted to human presence a little differently.

Don't get me wrong, there were still places that were crowded but it was much less common.
Click to expand...
I have hunted northern MN since 1988; you can still hunt on timber company land. The land is no longer owned by pulp and paper companies, but the REITs that do own them let you hunt there. The biggest difference now is that once they cut the timber, they often sell the land. Back when Boise Cascade owned their land, they cut and waited 40 years for it to grow back.
 
I bow hunted Colorado in the 80s and 90s. Had access to a section of private property with cabins on it, surrounded by tens of thousands of acres of BLM land. It was awesome. I hunted free if I brought four other hunters with me. Charge of $400 each. I promised the other hunters to buy their dinner in Meeker Colo if they didn't see 100 deer a day. I never paid off.

When I got home bow season was starting in Alabama. We had a lease in Chambers county Alabama. It was covered up in deer. One sports writer for outdoor life, I believe it was. Stated chambers County had a deer behind every tree. But that was before the die off. Mother nature fixes mans screw ups. There were five of us that had the lease in Alabama, the second year the land owner ask us to kill as many as possible. The five of us killed seventy six deer. The limit was a Buck or doe each day or two does each day. Almost100 day season.
 
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