The Future of Hunting in Ohio

[giles]

Without a doubt hunting is way more about the "trophy" nowadays. Earlier this year a neighboring kid killed a very respectable 8 point. He happens to be good friends with my son. He told my son the buck wasn't big enough to be worth taking pictures. I never told my kid I had already seen it. That is disgusting to me 110% make you stop and think about the future of this.

It used to be rare that people would give me a deer. Now I seem to get multiple offered to me every year.

 

[Sgt Fury]

If you want to improve the hunting in Ohio in my opinion you have to limit non residents ability to get buck tags. It would eliminate a bunch of leasing if non residents were only able to harvest a buck from gun season till the end of bow season. All top quality states limits non residents either through limited tags or through a drawing. In my opinion there are too many outfitters focusing on leasing land to profit off of the unlimited non residents,if you could stop the ability for them hunting early bow season if could reduce leasing

You’re forgetting about a lot of the non resident hunters used to be residents. I guess people like Joe and “J” will have to wait until gun season to come back to ohio and hunt with family and friends….Strouds will have to be pushed back to December.

 

["J"]

You’re forgetting about a lot of the non resident hunters used to be residents. I guess people like Joe and “J” will have to wait until gun season to come back to ohio and hunt with family and friends….Strouds will have to be pushed back to December.

What about nonresidents (former residents) who have a multi year or lifetime residents license?

 

[OO2]

…I'm more pissed that pheasants are gone than deer….

Amen…among the top pheasant state and top grouse state not less than a few decades ago…

Iowa ditches compared to Ohio ditches

I believe the average Ohio deer hunters head would spin with the amount of deer we see using the CRP we hunt

 

[Sgt Fury]

How many guys got into deer hunting because you can use a rifle now? Talk about easy. The deer population and big buck numbers in this part of northern wood county is the best it's been since I've started hunting. But go south ten miles and it's not what it use to be. I had a swing and a miss at what would have been my biggest buck with my easy crossbow. Didn't tell the story on here and I'm not going to other than it was a clean miss. I'm more pissed that pheasants are gone than deer but I don't deer hunt down south. Hopefully something will happen to get the population back for the southern counties.

Would be interesting if they banned slug guns and rifles and only allowed buck shot. That would drastically reduce the range that someone could take a deer And allow more bucks to reach old age. Not suggesting they do it, just throwing a thought out there that popped into my head.

 

[GoetsTalon]

It got crazy with muzzle loaders. Went from flintlocks to inlines that burn smokeless powder. Never used bait or cameras. We do it the old fashioned way. Drive around and glass from the truck.

 

[Sgt Fury]

What about nonresidents (former residents) who have a multi year or lifetime residents license?

 

[triple_duece]

Everyone wants to blame something or someone. The most contributing factor here is social media, bar none! I’m guilty of it also as I have posted some kills.

I don’t know how many members are just on this site, but I can bet you hundreds of thousands read everything on here.

Stopping non residents is laughable. Look within your own state who is responsible for 99% of what’s killed, and they didn’t bring a dime in to support the outdoors. As for baiting, I’ve done it but have been more successful without it. The times of hunting camps where meat was killed and fellowship and memories was made is long gone. It’s about scores now and not the hunt. As for cameras, that’s laughable to the notion of outlawing them. Big bucks have been beating us since man started hunting. Vehicles kill more than all the oos people do. You want a state with giants, suck it up cause you’re gonna get attention just like any other Midwest state.

 

[Bigcountry40]

You’re forgetting about a lot of the non resident hunters used to be residents. I guess people like Joe and “J” will have to wait until gun season to come back to ohio and hunt with family and friends….Strouds will have to be pushed back to December.

I’ll FaceTime both of them if I start to miss them to much

 

[offthegroud]

Mike and the guys did bring up leasing and how it’s hurt access tremendously - which is one of the largest hurdles to hunter retention.

Basically it was chalked up to “you can’t stop it in a capitalist society”.

Never hunted this year because the farm I had hunted since a kid. Was leased to out of state guys!

 

[Jackalope]

Let’s look at Alabama - why is leasing so big there? Same seasons? What about the DNR do they want all the deer gone (doe a day and 3 bucks a season - I believe)? Or is it a cultural difference? Yet they still have deer and continue to produce some great SE deer - despite these ridiculous restrictions. Because guys lease and set clubs up to control their own destiny with rules at the club - to grow big deer.

Ohio is the same. leasing had grown because of a few reasons
1. Big buck craze
2. Guys like Adam Hayes and Mike Rex shooting 200+ inch deer in Ohio. A state guys use to fly over to hunt Iowa or IL
3. Younger hunter demographic is more focused on archery - which tends to be more antler driven. What grows big antlers - getting deer age on them. What increased odds of getting age on them? Controlling more ground.

Leasing has long been a thing here in MS and Al. Long before the invent of cams and the big buck craze. While there are clubs setup around growing "mature deer", those clubs are very few and far between. Most exist purely for recreational access or "the ability to hunt". Growing up my uncles would be at deer camp every weekend during season. Deer camps are usually 15-20 trailers and or RVs or whatever you can drag over there, and a camp pavilion or clubhouse. A lot of times entire families go. They sometimes have events for families like trick or treat etc. Some really ass expensive ones over in the delta have swimming pools and tennis courts for the family. They touched on it some, most of the leases here are very very large tracts of land, owned by timber / paper companies, old plantations, and farms. A timber company north of me a little bit just purchased 67,000 acres. To put that in perspective the AEP recreation lands were 60,000 acres.

Most of these clubs are over hunted and over subscribed for memberships. the reason being is they're not all about growing big deer but rather, hunting how hunting was meant to be enjoyed. And they're still fucking expensive if you ask me. There was a club north of me looking for members last summer, 1,000 acres, $1,500 a year and 45 members. Now it's easy to see why two guys from Ms may get together and decide they would rather spend their 3k a year leasing 100 acres in Ohio at $30 an acre. or even 75 acres at $40 and acre. But I'm not talking about those guys. The buck craze absolutely helped leasing explode in ohio. However around 2008 there just weren't a ton of resident guys leasing private parcels. As the deer numbers dropped I saw more and more residents decide to lease in an attempt to control or save deer to hunt.


I was on a timber lease with a bunch of guys at that time. I left it because they kept shooting everything and burning up those $15 tags as fast as they could buy them and they destroyed it. I left and found a private landowner to lease from myself. Another landowner who got accustomed to getting a yearly check was born. I'm sure his neighbors found out. I bet today much of the land around there is leased. It quickly became a thing and if you talk to guys who started leasing "big bucks" were not their primary driving factor. Most of the time it was to have some semblance of control, management, ability to do what they like, all of that really meaning "I got tired of shitheads and wanted to have more deer" Managing for "Big bucks" is a simple evolution of management, if you're going to manage you might as well have a goal. But I guarantee it was not "THE" goal when they first started looking for a place to lease. From 2008 to 2012 saw a huge explosion in residents looking for a lease, from there leasing and capitalism did what it did.

 

[Bigcountry40]

Everyone wants to blame something or someone. The most contributing factor here is social media, bar none! I’m guilty of it also as I have posted some kills.

I don’t know how many members are just on this site, but I can bet you hundreds of thousands read everything on here.

Stopping non residents is laughable. Look within your own state who is responsible for 99% of what’s killed, and they didn’t bring a dime in to support the outdoors. As for baiting, I’ve done it but have been more successful without it. The times of hunting camps where meat was killed and fellowship and memories was made is long gone. It’s about scores now and not the hunt. As for cameras, that’s laughable to the notion of outlawing them. Big bucks have been beating us since man started hunting. Vehicles kill more than all the oos people do. You want a state with giants, suck it up cause you’re gonna get attention just like any other Midwest state.

I don’t blame anyone in particular but hate what it has become. I hate that I feel like I can’t invite more people to hunt with me, that people can’t share where they killed a deer or lie to a friend about a lease. But this where we are at as a collective society. When I kicked the tresspaser of a property that I have exclusive access to I hated it. I hated the argument and the potential of physical harm. Last year when my buddy killed a public land deer that died in front of a dudes camera, shows up and confronts us while dragging the deer, it sucked, but how do we fix it. Western states like Wyoming and Montana are privatizing their herds for the rich, what are middle class hunters supposed to do?

 

[Jackalope]

What about nonresidents (former residents) who have a multi year or lifetime residents license?

In most state those of us with lifetime resident licenses still draw from the resident tag pool, but pay a NR tag fee. AZ elk for example. 90% of tags in the drawing are for residents, 10% for nonresidents. Nonresidents with a lifetime license are drawn from the resident pool.

 

[jagermeister]

I listened to the podcast today. Overall pretty good.

Here are some of my thoughts.

First off, I don’t agree with the “high grading” theory at all. Claiming that targeting 4+ year old bucks is going to lead to a degradation in quality… I just don’t see it. Those 5 and 6 year old deer were the most active breeding/rutting deer at 2-4 years old. If we kill them at 5, they still spread their genetics for 3+ seasons.

Secondly, I’m still a firm believer that the deer hunting in Ohio is really, really good. I would take hunting today over hunting in the 2000’s any day of the week. I realized I’m in the minority and perhaps I live in a bubble, but I see a lot of ground on a day to day basis and I know what my eyes tell me.

Lastly, leasing and baiting, and the craze over cellular cameras… We did this to ourselves, folks. We the hunters are infatuated with big deer. We obsess over them. We think about them every day during deer season, and even during the off-season for some hunters. TV shows, Social Media, all the marketing and the advertisements… all the gadgets and new equipment… it’s a product of US and our addiction to chasing big deer. Social media shows us everything everyone else has and we want it too! How do we do that? We exclude others because we want it all to ourselves, so we buy and we lease. We want every advantage in the book, so we bait and plant food plots and obsess over habitat manipulation. We need to know all the time, in real time, what deer frequent our properties and how often, so we spend 100’s and 100’s of dollars on cellular cameras and data plans. For what? ….To give OURSELVES the edge over others, over our neighbors, over our fellow hunters. We are selfish deer hunters - bottom line.

I think part of the reason behind our obsession over deer and the advantageous techniques and technology, is the fact that a lot of us rode the struggle bud early on in our hunting careers. We still remember what it’s like to wonder what’s out there, or wonder if we’re going to see any deer this week. We think we’re lucky to have gotten hooked on it the way we did, and we’re scared that our kids won’t be as resilient as we were, so we do everything we can to make it easy on them too.

One thing we can do is make damn sure that our kids and their friends get saturated in all aspects of the outdoors. Take ‘em fishing, take ‘em trapping, take ‘em frog gigging… immerse them in everything possible in the outdoors. Show them that there’s more to hunting and conservation than chasing deer. The lust for antlers and “status” among the hunting peers is what flies the plane into the ground. Our only hope is to change the paradigm.

 

["J"]

I’ll FaceTime both of them if I start to miss them to much

I’ll have to PM you the number…..

 

[Tipmoose]

I’ll have to PM you the number…..

Bullshit...everyone knows its 614-OLD-FART

 

["J"]

Bullshit...everyone knows its 614-OLD-FART

 

[Sgt Fury]

View attachment 188831

Chinese food?

 

["J"]

Chinese food?

Sure George, Chinese food…..

 

[giles]

I listened to the podcast today. Overall pretty good.

Here are some of my thoughts.

First off, I don’t agree with the “high grading” theory at all. Claiming that targeting 4+ year old bucks is going to lead to a degradation in quality… I just don’t see it. Those 5 and 6 year old deer were the most active breeding/rutting deer at 2-4 years old. If we kill them at 5, they still spread their genetics for 3+ seasons.

Secondly, I’m still a firm believer that the deer hunting in Ohio is really, really good. I would take hunting today over hunting in the 2000’s any day of the week. I realized I’m in the minority and perhaps I live in a bubble, but I see a lot of ground on a day to day basis and I know what my eyes tell me.

Lastly, leasing and baiting, and the craze over cellular cameras… We did this to ourselves, folks. We the hunters are infatuated with big deer. We obsess over them. We think about them every day during deer season, and even during the off-season for some hunters. TV shows, Social Media, all the marketing and the advertisements… all the gadgets and new equipment… it’s a product of US and our addiction to chasing big deer. Social media shows us everything everyone else has and we want it too! How do we do that? We exclude others because we want it all to ourselves, so we buy and we lease. We want every advantage in the book, so we bait and plant food plots and obsess over habitat manipulation. We need to know all the time, in real time, what deer frequent our properties and how often, so we spend 100’s and 100’s of dollars on cellular cameras and data plans. For what? ….To give OURSELVES the edge over others, over our neighbors, over our fellow hunters. We are selfish deer hunters - bottom line.

I think part of the reason behind our obsession over deer and the advantageous techniques and technology, is the fact that a lot of us rode the struggle bud early on in our hunting careers. We still remember what it’s like to wonder what’s out there, or wonder if we’re going to see any deer this week. We think we’re lucky to have gotten hooked on it the way we did, and we’re scared that our kids won’t be as resilient as we were, so we do everything we can to make it easy on them too.

One thing we can do is make damn sure that our kids and their friends get saturated in all aspects of the outdoors. Take ‘em fishing, take ‘em trapping, take ‘em frog gigging… immerse them in everything possible in the outdoors. Show them that there’s more to hunting and conservation than chasing deer. The lust for antlers and “status” among the hunting peers is what flies the plane into the ground. Our only hope is to change the paradigm.

Standing ovation! That trapping thing could be all kinds of fun and a way to curve the raccoon boom. Something else they talked about briefly.