Public or Private

Do yall have a position on deer hunting WMA land or private land? I am hunting in South Carolina in a few weeks and, as a non-resident, buying licenses for both private and public would be around $300. As a first-timer I'm understanding some of the pros and cons to be:

Public:
+No charge for using land
+Freedom to go whenever
+There seems to be quite a bit of it in South Carolina
-Deer possibly smaller from less nutrition?
-More occasions of areas being hunted out?

Private:
+Possibly larger deer if the land owner provides some type of nutrition for the deer?
+Less hunters overusing the land as much
-Having to arrange for days to use the land
-Probably having to pay to use the land (unless the people I'm going with know land owners)

I'd imagine there are more pros and cons for each than this, but what do yall think?

 

Won't hunt public land anymore, been shot at by drunks too many times.

 

I thought about that kind of thing but didn't think it wasn't such a high risk. That's happened to you multiple times?

 

I live here in SC. WMA land around here is ok to hunt now...especially since
Season ends in end of December. In my area...WMA is closed for hunting on Sundays. Look for some private land to hunt tho......possibilities of seeing more deer are better....round here anyway.

 

hey OP where are you going to be going in SC?

 

All the private leases I have ever been on in the last 20 years we have full hunting/fishing/camping rights. We can come and go as we please any time of the day, whenever we want.

Yes, it does cost money to "lease" the property. We use to pay around 3 dollars an acre. Now days its anywhere from 4-9 dollars an acre.
The lease we have now is about 120 acres and have 2 people on it. I dont remember exactly how much it costs but it was around 900 per person per season.

We had one lease years ago that was about 2,000 acres and we had probably 9 or 10 hunters on it. Thats the only way we could afford such a big place. But everyone has their designated spots where they hunt. No sitting in other peoples deer blinds/stands.

 

My family lives in Greenville (where I'm going to be staying) and I'll probably be hunting in the Pickens area or another neighboring county. Do you hunt in Aiken?

For yall that hunt private, can you lease land for less than a full season? I'm coming into this late season so will that affect availability or land leasing options? How do you go about finding private land options, is it just by knowing owners beforehand or can you find them somehow?

 

My 2c, if you got the money, go private. If you got the time and able to put up with idiots, drunken assholes, and feel lucky, go public, much cheaper.
Take care
vbibi

 

Three times to be exact. Another time, which also happened to be the last time I ever hunted public land, I took a monster buck and had a drunk fellow threaten to shoot me if I didn't let him have it. I spent thirty minutes in the back of a sherrifs cruiser for breaking his head open while my buddy tried to convince the deputy to watch the quick video he made of the encounter on his smart phone. I was released upon review of the video and when the drunk woke up from his hospital visit he was met with an all inclusive vacation invitation from the local district attorney.

These days hunting is about gadgets and bragging rights. I hunt without the B.S. and for the meat. Absolutely sick of trohpy hunting mental midgets who should have just bought the video game.

 

Here it depends on what your gonna hunt, for goats and hogs we have public land that you can hunt. For deer (Axis deer is all we have) there is no public land that's open to hunting that holds deer, strictly private land.

 

If you are running into "drunken assholes" who are hunting you should call the local law enforcement and let them take care of it - no matter what type of land you are on. Hunters in general get a bad rap from idiots like that- when you see behavior like that don't tolerate it as "public land hunters". The same goes for road hunting- whether on private or public land. If it's illegal to do don't stand by and let a few morons ruin it for the 99% of hunters who are ethical, law-abiding hunters; call the local law enforcement or Game Warden and get those idiots out of the woods.

I hunt about 50/50 between private and public land. To be honest the only assholes I ever come across are on private land, I actually see fewer people on public land and every hunter I have talked to on public land has always been very nice. When I hunt public land I go in very deep - you can avoid 90% of all public land hunters if you just get more than 1/4 mile off of the nearest road/trail.

The over-all numbers of hunters in VA has been steadily dropping over the last decade- it's not hard to find lots of acreage to yourself if you head to the either the George Washington or Jefferson National Forests and put in some "leg work".

 

I'm happy to put in the leg work, I'm a young guy and I'm really excited to go. I'd be happy to hike deeper in than the majority of other hunters if it has those kinds of advantages.

I'll be hunting just for meat as well, this time. From what I read about buck to doe ratio it seems to be more ethical to take a doe before a buck as a first-timer anyway. I don't have the money to get a shoulder mount either.

It looks like I'm going to need to try public land then if the leases are only for long-term deals. I'll only have a few weeks to hunt. But I took a hunter education course last time I was in SC and the assortment of people in there with me made me very uncomfortable that I might get my head shot off even if I wore all orange and was 20 feet up in a tree. The good news was that when asked if we would be hunting private or public, 90% of the class raised their hand for private.

 

i almost always hunt public. only ever had one problem with a person and thats because i "set up camp to close to his favorite deer trail and now they would not come through there all season". he cussed me for a few minutes then stormed off to cry about it. that evening i shot a doe less than 50 yards from my tent.

 

there's a cool program in my state to help out people needing a place to hunt and for farmers looking to reduce deer damges to their crops. i don't know if any other states are currently implimenting anything like this, but i think it's an awesome idea. i don't really need anywhere to hunt as my family has just over 200 acres and i also have access to a 30 acre spot owned by a friend. check out your sates farm bureau or natural resource office to see if they have anything like this...if not, suggest it!

http://huntohiofarms.com/index.php

also please remember guys...don't trespass. as a landowner myself, i can tell you that many times when you ask for permission the correct way...you will get it. a form like this will go a long way when soliciting hunting permission : http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Portals/9/pdf/DNR 8924.pdf

gun season is in full swing here, but i've only been able to go out once due to a persistant back injury. saw a doe, a yearling, and a small 8 point...i let them all walk. still looking for "big poppa"!