Hunting for Hunting Answers III - Accessing Private Property

This is a popular query I receive: How can I gain permission to hunt private land in the South?

In a word – money. But, there are other ways, too.

A buddy of mine from Maine was aghast to discover I lease property. He wasn’t unsettled at the concept of me trying to buy deer like the Yankees buy ballplayers or that the money I have spent on such things treads in irresponsible waters. It was more that I exist in this situation. To hear him tell it, in Maine you can drive out to the Boonies, park your truck on the side of the road and march out into the Wilderness, provided the land wasn’t posted, which little of it in his area was. He hunted moose and whitetail before moving to Florida and found land access restrictive, not to mention our moose population largely a figment of Jack Daniel's imagination.

Heck, I couldn’t believe to learn in Montana last year you could do just about the same thing on un-posted land. With the proper license in your pocket and a desire for bleeding feet and burning lungs, one can just traipse off into the mountains for a wide variety of big game. It’s still amazing to me stories I read about approaching farmers in the Midwest and elsewhere about hunting the Back Forty. Knock on the door of the Ol’ Family Farm with an offer to help with the harvest seemed to be the ticket for wonderful whitetails.

It’s a sweeping generalization, but not without its truths, that the culture of private property is different in the South. Whether it's xenophobia or an intense protective nature of privacy, it's downright difficult for Willy off the Turnpike to go door-to-door seeking hunting rights here.

Florida is particularly difficult. Add the once-rapid suburbanization and associated property values with the commodity of Osceolas and the fact large tracts of private land are held by huge corporations, and chances at free land are scarce. Because of the demand, leases here cost more than equivalent lands in Georgia and South Carolina. By far. Things ease up as you move up that way which is why – not from a perceived lack of game non-resident hunters assume about the Sunshine State – Florida hunters travel in droves up I-75 and I-95 each year to chase deer. And by the time you get there, the value of QDM managed land increases to the point that a lease is about inevitable. There are fewer whitetail dummies these days. If a dollar can be made, assure yourself it will.

Before we go too much further, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say Florida, Georgia and other Southern states offer a lot of public land. If I desired, I could leave my house now – and I do - and choose from several hundred thousands of acres to hunt in a shorter time than it’d take to get to the Peach State. But, a lot of it is heavily pressured. The hunting is difficult in the swamps and palmettos, and quota hunts, while they are great resources, are one-shot deals, none too conducive to planning a hunting season around. Without question, bagging game is easier on private lands.

Now, I don’t want to go spiraling away from the subject of this post. If you are counting on hunting private land, search and find a lease (read my post about that here). The ones I’ve been on were ultimately enjoyable, and I’ve met some great hunters along the way. And that networking has opened doors for me.

But I digress. It’s not totally hopeless to locate a few open gates that'll lead to fine hunting without draining the bank. Knowing where to start and how to approach folks about hunting their property are the biggest keys. In Florida, though they sit on a gazillion acres of game-rich property, phosphate giant Mosaic and anything with Ben Hill Griffin’s name on it probably won’t get you far. The former doesn’t care much for hunting and potential lawsuits, while the latter limits their property to only family, friends, and guests. The thing to do is search small and work from there.

My boy PJ has the right idea. He checks with real estate agents for hunting lands. Back during the housing boom, these companies locked up land with the idea of development. Now that that has pooped the bed, they are still sitting on this land. Many probably have cattle or other agricultural ventures for Greenbelt exemptions, but this doesn’t mean they won’t consider offers on such things. To date, he’s not gotten any free access, but he’s built relationships and good leads on properties to lease. One day, he’s gonna bring in a big buck that he paid little to nothing to bag.

Other options to try are small agricultural holdings. I’m thinking orange groves here in Florida, but any soybean or peanut farmer with 100 acres who doesn’t have the time to control hogs and does may lend an open ear. You’ll face stiff competition from other erstwhile hunters to find these properties, but the key is to network and create contacts.

And I keep using the word free, which isn’t exactly true. As Mattie Ross says in True Grit, “There is nothing free, except the grace of God.”

You’re going to have to put something in, be it help mowing pastures or irrigation work or branding cows or some other chore. If you assume otherwise, you’re sunk before you’ve left port. At least offer help. I’m leaving Saturday for North Carolina for a week of deer hunting “free” land. I’m hosted by lifelong friends, but much of the property we’ll hunt has been obtained through courteous contact. I don’t miss the chance to help out with whatever menial job may be proposed, even if it means skipping an afternoon on the stand. We also make sure to toss in cash for the cost of corn and hospitality. I like hunting there.

Obtaining access will take work and expect disappointment if you start from scratch. That’s how it goes. As I said, the culture is different here and the demand for land is high.

I can tell you how NOT to go about things. One, clean yourself and your truck up. If I were to have land and Homeboy showed up in his 4X4 with dog boxes and a bumper sticker that read “Hog Hunters Do It In The Brush” I’ll probably call the cops. Think about that, seriously. The South is known for its rednecks, but that sorta thing won’t garner positive attention.

Next, don’t just hear that someone has land and offer to throw up stands, corn feeders, and food plots and profess yourself Boss Buck Slayer. If that land is not hunted already, odds are the owner couldn’t care less about your hunting acumen or dreams thereof.

Which brings me - since we’re running long today - to one last thought. I was at a hunting program during the summer in full Mossy Oak regalia. This dude sat down and asked where I was from. When I told him I’m born and bred Florida, he immediately inquired how one finds access to private land in these parts. Before I had a chance to answer, he launched into his tirade. He said in his home state of New York (!) he had no trouble finding hunting land. He used to hunt somebody’s farm, killed lots of deer, blah, blah, blah. He vociferously lectured me – in the stereotypical New York smug and arrogant way of speaking to others – of how much better it is up there, what he’d do different, and basically how things are stupid here. His buddy was even rolling his eyes and clearly embarrassed. It’s not that he didn’t possibly have a point, but after listening to him rant without getting a word in edgewise, I'm confident in the knowledge this guy won’t be setting foot on any private lands here for free any time soon. Not unless he’s pushed out of an airplane and plummets onto it.

I can’t give advice on how an individual manages their interpersonal relationships. But this is what it takes to develop trust. Consider what you’re proposing when you step up to a person’s doorstep. You’re asking a stranger to allow you on their lands with a firearm or weapon to shoot animals. Be well-composed and polite. In a litigious society in this reserved part of the country, it requires stones to do this. Southern Hospitality extends only so far.

But, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and there’s excellent hunting opportunity throughout the South that'll make it worth the effort.

Part I - Introduction
Part II - Do Deer Move More in Cold Weather?

The Tuesday Morning Jake

“*%$#!, I missed!”

I can work a pumpgun like an evil man when I have to.

I had set up on the edge of a cypress swamp bottom flooded by the recent heavy rains. To the east was a cow pasture broken by pines and palmettos. To the north, another deep swamp of state land where hunting is forbidden. God knows where they’d be roosting.

Dawn brought no help. For the second straight outing, there were no gobbles. And on a perfect, cool morning, too. When you have a fine ambush, though, there’s no real reason to get antsy and stomp around. Plus, the lease is only 100 acres, not much land to run and gun on.

PJ had found this lease in Polk County a month ago. We scouted it for deer and turkey without much success. The hogs are thick – you’ll be reading about the hogs soon enough. Six of us bought in to have a place close to home. If we could snag a few swine and a predator or two, it’d be worth it. Available hunting land – wait, affordable, available hunting land - in Central Florida is scarce. We hung feeders and stands and expected little other than a cool escape, camping trips, maybe a dove field, and aforementioned hogs.

The cowboy had told us turkeys were in the area, but we never could find any tracks in the sandy roads. It sure looked turkey-ish – tall pines, swamp bottoms, plenty of clearings for strutting - but I kinda put turkey hunting here out of my mind.

All that changed with circumstance. My Opening Weekend plans to hunt in Nassau County was cancelled at the 11th hour. As clinically hopeless turkey addicts, Cole and I decided to give the lease a try. Everything changed that first Saturday morning with a gobble. And a few more.

I won’t go too much into those details here, but our concept of the property changed in a hurry. Of course, you do realize the realities and difficulties of six people with varying turkey hunting experience navigating such a small piece of property. The other guys spotted a couple birds and heard a few more gobbles, but nothing came of it. There were birds here, just not many of them.

My problem was timing. Every other weekend during the season had been booked, limiting my outings for a gobbler close to home. Luckily, my new job is a mixture of office and field work. When I didn't need to be in the office early, I could run down to the property with a change of clothes and get where I needed to go after a morning hunt. It had worked last week, though I had zero luck. I stared at my desk calendar, looking for another available moment.

Today was the day. My fortunes started off poor again. The mosquitoes, held at bay by the uncommonly cold weather over the last several months, returned with a vengeance. My Therma-Cell broke on the fourth "click." The skeeters took full advantage, leaving a line of pimply bite marks along the borders of my facemask until my skin now resembles that of a 9th grader.

And no gobbling. That’s the excitement of turkey hunting to me. I tend to write-off mornings when the toms aren’t cooperating. Maybe the weather had them screwed up, or perhaps the gold strike-like rush to hunt the property after the first morning had silenced them. Who knows? All I knew was, I didn’t bust a bird last year, and the desire to hammer an incoming gobbler and frying turkey bites one weekend was too powerful to give up this go-round.

Also, while I am not a super-competitive guy, especially when it comes to hunting, I did like the thought of being the first to harvest a tom on this piece of property. Sort of a “Kilroy was here” thing. So, the challenge had been settled.

When the gobblers aren’t working and I strike up the patience, I tend to ease back myself. It can be rather boring, but I always remind myself that the best turkey hunters I know don’t cluck and cackle like they are in a competition. They stay still, call softly and sporadically. I pulled my cellphone out to track the time between my sessions of turkey-like noises, slipped a slate out of the vest and settled into the long wait. If I could discipline myself to only call every 15-20 minutes, this may just work.

After my third cadence of soft purrs and clucks, accentuated with a few louder yelps at the end, a red and white head popped up a 100 yards back into the private property swamp. The excitement of such a moment can't be adequately explained with words. Chilling, maybe. Attaining the clarity of what you must do next - keeping your calm and fighting back your nerves - is a skill I still have not mastered, but this time I prevailed over these life ruiners. Again, I had faith in my efforts. My decoys, set in the trim of the cattle pasture 20 yards from my haunt, would be in clear view once the tom emerged from the dark and through the broom sedge. As soon as he strolled behind a large oak and out of sight, I slipped the safety off and leaned into a solid rest.

He sure did take his time. The tom - a healthy jake - slowly maneuvered around pines and water oaks, and lifted his head occasionally to survey his surroundings. I refrained from calling any further as my philosophy is to just let ‘em come without betraying my mediocre calling skills.

The urgent need to breed certainly wasn’t on this fellow’s mind. He fed, picking through the grass, until he reached the wire gap separating the properties. All he had to do was slide under the fence, mosey 15 more yards, and it’d be all over.

Unfortunately, he hung up. Surely, he saw the decoys but paid little attention. The tom slowly started walking parallel to the fenceline; enough was enough with my not-calling-anymore decision. I putted and clucked a few times on the mouth call, and he swapped ends and charged under the fence into my spread.

Now, listen, children. Always pattern your shotgun. At twenty yards, there is no excuse for missing. Actually, this is a TWL exclusive since I didn’t tell any of my friends I'd missed - let's see how many of them read this - but it's only noble to fess up. That long, warty neck is too inviting of a target, and I was rock-solid. After last year's hunts and a few coyote jaunts, I hadn’t put that gun on paper, and those flimsy fiber optic sights on my Mossberg require more diligence than that.

The tom didn’t take two steps before Round 2 got him. I raced up to the bird, as is my custom, fist-pumping along the way. Trophy-wise, he won’t garner much attention from the record books. As you can see in the photo, his fan hadn’t quite matured, and the beard was maybe four inches long.

Some may look down on shooting a jake, but I’m not going to rationalize my decision-making any further on this point. Save the missed shot, my strategy was executed like the pick-and-roll, and I have turkey breast to fry this Easter weekend. That, to me, is the essence of a great hunt, and I am thankful for the moment.

Your Lease Options

Six years ago, responding to an ad in the Lakeland Ledger, I hit pay-dirt. Hunt club in SW Georgia needed new members. 2500 acres, lots of deer and turkey. I called the guys, asked a few questions and sent them the money, sight unseen. I got extremely lucky.

The hunt club folded the next year as the timber property that owned the land sold it. But, some of the guys I met proved to be excellent hunters, and better, easy people to get along with. They invited me onto another lease that I hunted another four seasons, collecting my best two bucks and a smattering of other game. Better still, I learned a ton about deer hunting from these guys.

Year 3 was tough, though. A couple of the originals moved on, and we needed some warm bodies in order to afford the lease. The newbies were nice enough, but there were some serious personality conflicts, to say nothing of a gap in hunting experience and methods.

Case in point, Georgia law says you can run corn feeders on your property, but must hunt 200 yards away and without a view of the feeder. Of course, we did use corn to attract deer to the lease. These guys did not want feeders at all, in the off chance they might happen to wander within 200 yards of corn at the same time a game officer would be in the area – the odds of this occurring was miniscule, especially when the gates were locked and one lawman was spread throughout four counties. They were rock-steady in their objections, and one meeting with them turned hostile. We eventually conceded – well, some of us did – and went about the season.

That wasn’t the only issue that tested my patience. All of us who had hunted this land used tree stands, placed them early in the season, and they didn’t move until January. The deer in these parts were extremely spooky and the less movement and human interference, the better. The new guys came and placed their stands in the middle of the rut and moved them constantly. When they failed to see deer from the stand, they wandered throughout the property. The results were predictable. A couple of them shot yearling does and jumped deer and hogs without getting a shot. As a result, by early December the lease was a ghost town.

By season’s end, I was frustrated and angry. The Others moved along to a different lease and that was that. Again, they weren’t horrible people; it’s just important to see eye to eye, or at least compromise, with others when you invest in a lease.

Lease and hunt club memberships should become available in the coming months. Here are a few tips to help you if you decide to fork out the cash.

1. Game Selection – My biggest irritation with the lease in Georgia was not being allowed to hunt turkey, which was very disappointing. I stayed on the lease because I enjoyed the company of the other hunters in camp, plus there was a legitimate chance of a Boone & Crockett buck walking out any minute. Also, I had a great wood duck hole that I hunted close to the end of season, and if I felt spunky enough, I could hunt coyote year-round. Turkey notwithstanding, the hunting opportunity return on my dollar was pretty high. If all you care about is deer, fine. But if you like some variety, ask fellow lease-members if they do any other kinds of hunting on the property, and whether it would be a problem if you did.

2. Doe Management – Seemingly everyone is moving towards some version of Quality Deer Management (QDM), and doe harvest is a key component of this practice. Georgia allows a hunter to take 10 does a year, which would’ve been excessive on our property. My first year in the club, we tried to establish a reasonable limit per person on does, with weight requirements and fines for shooting button bucks. No one was happy. I wanted a higher limit – which in hindsight was dumb because I only took one anyhow. One guy popped a button buck and balked at having to pay a fine because it was almost dark, and everyone’s made this mistake before, excuse, excuse. Think about this when you sign up; you’re more likely to have a chance at capping a few does than a huge buck anyhow.

3. Antler Restrictions – Speaking of QDM, this could be the biggest sticking point with lease and club members. The whole point of our original club was to let young deer walk, and I let a couple really nice bucks slip on by - ones that’d been deader than fried chicken in Florida - to achieve this goal. But that’s what I wanted. One guy in camp shot a young 8 with a spread that was close to, but not quite, the 15-inch minimum, or whatever we had established. He hadn’t shot many deer, and I didn’t want to take away his joy by imposing a fine, but those were the rules; let one person break them and it’s all over. If you decide to join a lease these days, you better know for certain whether or not you can live under such guidelines. I fully realize it’s hard to plop down cold hard-earned cash, hunt days on end without seeing anything only to let a nice deer that is so close to meeting the qualifications just walk away. Trust me, I do.

4. Food Plots – I didn’t start deer hunting to become a farmer. I personally don’t deal much with food plots. Don’t plan on it. Some guys on our lease did. Some enjoy planting community plots, and I don’t mind pitching in a few dollars for this. I know some properties require members to visit the land during the summer to work on brush clearing, planting food plots, and other such chores. Personally, I’m not spending any more on gas than I must for trips to till the land. I know adding food plots provides the deer with supplemental nutrition, contributes to antler growth, and makes for an easy stand location, but financially, my choices have always boiled down to either spending the money raising peas or spending the money to hunt without them. Easy for me.

5. Other Hunters – As I opened with, I got extremely lucky just tossing money at someone I’d never met, to hunt land I’d never seen. But, I didn’t do it completely stupid. I spoke with a couple different members of the club, asked about the land and game and expectations. This painted a fairly clear picture of who I’d be dealing with. None the less, it had the potential to be the worst blind date of all time. (As it turned out, I was the rube - a majority of the people very experienced hunters.) Still, it’s tough to judge personalities over the phone, and in that original group of fifteen, a couple guys rubbed others wrong. I’m easygoing to a fault at times and get along with most everyone. But in a hunting camp, you often have the issue of “I’ve spent my money, I can do what I want,” or “you’re hunting too close to me or walking around too much,” and just other alpha male nonsense that ruins the levity. Running with the wrong crowd will kill your season in a hurry. My advice is, get to know the other hunters in advance of paying the money – this is probably more important than seeing the land.

My experience with leases and clubs has been roundly successful. Due to financial concerns, I’ve been off that Georgia property for over year, though I missed it like the dickens this past fall. I got everything out of it I could’ve possibly wanted: big deer, new friends, and an escape in the fall. Sleep is hard when I think of it.

If you decide to join a lease or hunt club this spring or summer, make sure you do your due diligence - I got lucky this once. Not banking on that happening again