Is our current hunting practice sustainable?

[GSRetrievers]

Things like this are "point of view" not based on facts that cover a wide area of territory or thought.

Where i live there are too many deer. Vehicle strikes are higher when population is up. There are bow hunts in city limits because there are vehicle strikes in neighborhoods.

Hunters are not taking enough to slow it down.

Same here. Most counties in my area are dog counties and it still doesn't put a dent in the population.

 

[coldboremiracle]

Things like this are "point of view" not based on facts that cover a wide area of territory or thought.

Where i live there are too many deer. Vehicle strikes are higher when population is up. There are bow hunts in city limits because there are vehicle strikes in neighborhoods.

Hunters are not taking enough to slow it down.

Same here. Most counties in my area are dog counties and it still doesn't put a dent in the population.

Thats fair, like I mentioned earlier in the thread I think this is more a western problem. The urban and flat portions of the country seem to be much less effected and perhaps just the opposite situation.

 

[nksmfamjp]

Well, in Ohio, I gave up hunting. The land is so divided, especially wooded areas that you need 4 permission slips to hunt a 20 acre woods. Not always, but farmers typically own as little unfarmable land as possible. Non-farmers own land for its beauty and have a hundred reasons you cannot be on their land or they love the little pet deers. Seriously,

I also hunt Montana. The weakness there is also an access issue. There is big money buying up that land. In general, recent buyers seem like they could care less about the value of hunting. If they allow hunting, it is to sell off high dollar leases to guides or just as hunting leases. Most just seem like they bought their slice of beauty and it is theirs, not yours….period. The remaining land is over-run if access is easy. If it takes a hard hike, there is still a bunch of huntable land. All that said, Montana is still way more huntable than OH.

 

[Troutslayer2]

I already can't believe some of the old duffers who still make their annual trip to Montana just because it's tradition. They shoot the scrubbiest little bucks when they used to get good ones. They get tricked into paying trespass fees thinking it will give them some taste of a decades bygone quality of hunting. Loss of habitat, loss of access, less animals on shrinking public land with more pressure… I think we're way past the tipping point with all of it. Anyone showing up now on the social media wave has missed the party by at least 10 years.

 

[coldboremiracle]

Well, in Ohio, I gave up hunting. The land is so divided, especially wooded areas that you need 4 permission slips to hunt a 20 acre woods. Not always, but farmers typically own as little unfarmable land as possible. Non-farmers own land for its beauty and have a hundred reasons you cannot be on their land or they love the little pet deers. Seriously,

I also hunt Montana. The weakness there is also an access issue. There is big money buying up that land. In general, recent buyers seem like they could care less about the value of hunting. If they allow hunting, it is to sell off high dollar leases to guides or just as hunting leases. Most just seem like they bought their slice of beauty and it is theirs, not yours….period. The remaining land is over-run if access is easy. If it takes a hard hike, there is still a bunch of huntable land. All that said, Montana is still way more huntable than OH.

I already can't believe some of the old duffers who still make their annual trip to Montana just because it's tradition. They shoot the scrubbiest little bucks when they used to get good ones. They get tricked into paying trespass fees thinking it will give them some taste of a decades bygone quality of hunting. Loss of habitat, loss of access, less animals on shrinking public land with more pressure… I think we're way past the tipping point with all of it. Anyone showing up now on the social media wave has missed the party by at least 10 years.

^this is what I'm talking about, its a challenge we need to get ahead of.

 

[FireFlyFishing]

Imagine if folks are successful selling off OUR public land…

 

[bluedog69]

I'd appreciate data showing that growing hunter numbers are a broadly supported trend. Even with a great number more deer than when I was a young hunter, shots heard in the opening days of deer season are a fraction. You used to see orange on every property, now it's a fraction. Hunter numbers are both down everywhere I hunt, as is access to land to hunt. People just won't take the liability of letting folks they don't know hunt their land so much goes unhunted. Couple that with the trend to demand high trespass or lease payments instead of the old practice of simply giving permission.

Hunting and game challenges are highly regional. Where I'm at in Indiana now, at my home place the problem is the change in farming practices leading to maximizing arable land at the expense of any woodlots and fencerows, leaving VERY little deer habitat. So numbers are very low. Conversely 80 miles away at my hunting property we really have no issues to speak of, except blue tongue going through every 5-7 years. Where I grew up in Michigan the deer are out of control, partially because trends have changed (see first paragraph) couples with a 2 buck limit meaning nobody shoots does. 100-150 deer grazing a single 80 acre soybean field in the spring, leaving 20 acres completely ruined. We had 10 crop damage permits this year and filled them in 3 hours of hunting, deer were walking all around us while we were trying to recover them.

Missouri is not to far from IN. Habitat being bulldozed is a concern for sure. I am not sure I believe the studies that claim hunting is going down.

Now that people know that bucks need to grow to not have a tiny rack most people do not shoot anything opening weekend unless it is a big buck. Hence lack of shots. Most people in MO wait until the end of regular Nov season or they wait until the 11 day doe season in Dec. or they wait until the 11 day alternative season in late Dec. and Jan.

Back in the good old days you shot every time an opportunity presented itself, because the 9 day November season was it for firearms....no doe season, no alternative season. Crossbows in archery for 4 months also lets a lot of people kill deer they wouldn't have been able to. In other words lack of opening weekend shots doesn't mean that hunter numbers are down.

There are studies that say hunting is going down hill. There are others that say hunting is increasing. Be wary that many pro predator people are pushing every thing they can to get wolves back in all lower 48 states. No hunters to control deer... well we must bring in wolves and cougars to do it for us.

MI is a sportsman's paradise...except in the UP where deer numbers are getting really really low due to wolves. Back in the 90's there was a dead deer every 100 yards on I-94. Probably still the same. I know a guy up there who said his neighbor filled 200 depredation tags one summer and that was back in the 90s. Still saw deer everywhere on this farm.

I will say this. I know of no ground where I could go hunt because there is virtually no ground that isn't being hunted already. When I was a kid there were lots of places that didn't get hunted and the farmers didn't care if you asked. What I see now is that most guys who hunted a farm back in the 80s and 90s now has multiple kids and grand kids hunting the same ground. One or two hunters turned into a half dozen or even two dozen hunters. Ground is the one thing they aren't making any more of.

If hunter numbers are going down why are most places from MO and on out westward looking at needing to limit out of state hunters?

 

[FireFlyFishing]

If hunter numbers are going down why are most places from MO and on out westward looking at needing to limit out of state hunters?

There's just way less land to hunt nationally. So if you live in one of the states as described in this thread, one of the few options you have is to apply for tags out west, or do the OTC CO tags. Additionally, there are many hunters that apply to every draw tag from every state every year.

 

[MuzzleBreak]

Fortunately Texas animal populations are solid. Basically because 98% of Texas is privately owned.
I have been fortunate enough in ,the past, to have hunted on some great ranches and have friends in the right places

Like many have said. Sustainably is a regional problem. Bad thing for me is the game Is plentiful, but expensive.

Do plan on heading to Junction in the spring for an axis hunt.

 

[coldboremiracle]

Basically because 98% of Texas is privately owned.

Exactly, I expect the price will only go up

 

[Hand Skills]

I can only speak to BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan, but up here in Upper Canuckistan hunting pressure is not the problem.

The problem is more and more road access to less and less habitat.

Roads make it easier for human and canine predators to get around. Less habitiat means there are fewer places for prey to hide.

There is still some great hunting, but it generally means going places nobody wants to go. .

I believe Habitiat to be the driving factor, and I have seen first hand how road access compounds it.

Today Hunting is a management tool. The real question involves Land Use practices and Natural Resource Management.

That's my take on it after hunting both sides of the Rockies up here for the last 30 or so years.

Fires and lack of moisture in general have been a bit of a problem these last couple of years too.

 

[Greatgrandad]

Here in CO, I see more and more hunters for elk and deer, and part of that reason is our DWP is funded buy license sales. Back East, I see, hear and read about hunter declines in several areas, and some studies reveal young people are not as interested in hunting as the older generations were. Part of that reason is habitat loss related to massive timber cutting, draining of wetlands, urbanization, social/cultural pressures against firearms and hunting, more lands being posted or under limited private club membership, computer gaming vs outdoor activities, etc, etc.

 

[Turpentine21]

Things like this are "point of view" not based on facts that cover a wide area of territory or thought.

Where i live there are too many deer. Vehicle strikes are higher when population is up. There are bow hunts in city limits because there are vehicle strikes in neighborhoods.

Hunters are not taking enough to slow it down.

Same thing where I am. We have a major deer problem. When you drive into a 15 acre bean field in the afternoon and see between 75 to 100 deer, that's a problem. Hunters are being asked to take out more does by the landowner/farmer yet they simply will not shoot them for whatever reason. We don't have a deer processor close to us any more and I firmly believe a lot of these hunters don't know how to skin and butcher a deer. Another issue is that in the past a group of people 10-15 would lease a piece of land. Now only one or two people lease and hunt it. They kill a lot less than the old club used to. Anyway the consequences are that farmers are losing 10s of thousands of dollars in crop damage. The farmer I shoot for lost around $70,000.00 to deer damage this past year. Which is far more than what the hunters are paying to lease the hunting rights. Consequently the farmer asks me to come in and take care of the problem. Then the hunters pitch a fit because "I'm killing all the deer". I'm not about keeping the hunters happy. My concern is keeping the farmer happy. He knows I'll get the job done and that I only shoot what I am supposed to shoot. The interesting thing is that in the places that I've had to kill a lot of does in the last few years the farmer is now actually able to make a crop and the hunters are killing larger bucks.

At our current rate I think our hunting is fairly sustainable. Yet for many folks it's becoming prohibitively expensive. The quality of hunting on any of our public land is fair to poor and a lot of folks find it a little bit to dangerous because you never know where the other hunters might be.

 

[fseaman]

When you drive into a 15 acre bean field in the afternoon and see between 75 to 100 deer, that's a problem. Hunters are being asked to take out more does by the landowner/farmer

I'll be right over