My public land

Monday a friend of mine said he had three spots on his lease open. He showed me pics of some big bucks to temp me. Told me how my money would be spent. He has feeders,summer and fall plots, stands all taken care of. But you could only hunt those areas,so not to disturb the deer,I can understand that to a point. But for one I do not hunt over bait,never have and hope I never will,and i never realy hunt edges. So i told him I would think about it,didnt want to be rude and just say no. I have worked hard to get privite land to hunt,and now have some, 400 acers 10 min from home,180 1 mile from home. The public I hunt is 20 min from me, the 400 is on the way as is the 180. The 400 has about 6 hunters on it, so its not to private. The public land took me 4 years to learn to hunt and take a deer. Ive killed open day three years in a row, killed three deer in one weekend.This year ,thanks to my wife I hunted all, but one weekend,seen deer all but four times I was out. Tonight on my way home I drove by looking for sheds and seen about 27 deer,two shooter bucks Iguess still early for sheds. Any way thats why I call it MY PUBLIC LAND! ILOVE IT. Also I want to thank the ODW

Awesome and you are absolutely correct, its your public land and at the same time, everybody's public land! I have 14 acres of private land to hunt on plus permission from a neighbor for another lets say 80 acres. However, I am also not the only one there so its not so private.

Now, this year was my first putting in so much time into Public land. Thousands of acres. I feel so good and comfortable there, because it is my public land. I have the right to be there. The neighbors private property is year to year, and I haven't much rights.

Public land is just awesome!

I know how you feel. We have private options, and I do enjoy hunting there, and killing there. It's great to have a place where I can go and hunt with the family, have them close by, without a great deal of exertion required.

But I still find myself drawn to the more wild places. The large areas of public land. Even if I am from time to time disturbed by others. The game is much more cunning and challenging,and when success comes, it truly has been earned.

I have a couple small pieces of private ground that I can hunt.but so can several other people so I don't very often.However I have over 1700 acres of public ground literally right out my front door and over 4000 acres of public ground within a 30 min. drive. Taking a mature whitetail on public ground is very rewarding and hard earned.I spend countless hours fishing,hunting,scouting and mushrooming my public ground.I enjoy the labors it requires to be successful on public ground.Some guys dont want to work that hard.

I have private land but have not hunted them in 6 or 8 years. Public land is were its at for me.

I have a very small track of private that I have hunted for years. There was a population of white deer developing and now that it has become legal to shoot them I share this small 40 acres (20 of it is tillable field) with 4 other people. I have sat there 3 times in the last 2 years and not seen anything. I used to see 10+ deer per hunt. I have also always hunted public and love it. I am blessed to have nearly 10,000 acres within 20 min of my house 3,300 starts at my back yard. Most of what I hunt is wet or access is wet so I utilize a canoe to get where most others will not travel.

I prefer to hunt big tracks of public land..presently Shawnee National Forest, Il. Got over 1000 acres of private land I can hunt any time across the road and have never hunted it.Instead I walk behind my house and hunt Shawnee. Been hunting public only for over 30yrs.