Who is lucky enough to hunt on their own land

[.308 Norma]

Me, as a PUBLIC LAND OWNER.

Exactly! With over 32,000,000 acres of accessible public land to hunt on in Idaho, I never have been able to figure out why any Idaho hunters would restrict themselves to only hunting on land they could afford to own all by themselves. Besides, as I stated in another thread, my wife's and my rancher friends own several thousand acres that we're allowed to hunt on. In fact, they actually ask my wife and me to come over and shoot ground squirrels on their ranch in the spring. And we do - hundreds of them.

 

[crestoncowboy]

Obviously I don’t know you or your situation at all. But I do know plenty of people who are fortunate to have more property than they know what to do with and it’s not because they earned it or deserve it. Just sayin.

Still not luck. Someone along the way didn't luck into it. My grandpa on my mom's side was a stingy tightwad who bought all the neighbors land and farmed it until he worked himself into a grave. He didn't have the mansion or fancy cars ( he bought a new truck every 5 years though) and he worked daylight to dark. My land wasn't luck. He earned it and my dad kept farming it when my grandpa died. He worked all day and raised crops all weekend and I "got" to do it once I turned 8 or so. Beans, tobacco, pine roping, chair bottoms, wreaths, ginseng, cattle...... He bought parcels from the other People who inherited bits of it . And ive done the same. I don't lack much of having my grandpaws entire old estate. His wife ran through all the money he left but he was smart enough to leave the farm in his 2 kids names and she couldn't run through it. Meanwhile my dads parents died with nothing. They had an outhouse to the day they died (2010s) because they spent ignorantly. They did outlive my other grandparents by about 40 years though....so there is that. Lol. Hard work is ...well, hard on you.

As others stated, when "lucky" people inherit land they sell it. Those of us who kept it and paid the taxes and added to it.... aren't lucky. You can't luck into keeping the taxes paid. Same for guns. Ive seen many cases where a kid inherits a nice gun or car or whole collection and instantly sells every bit. And those don't even take up room or cost thousands a year in taxes like land.

 

[Show Me]

This has turned into a therapy session for those kind of people.

 

[earlthegoat2]

To start, I hunt on my own land. 29.98 acres. A nice amount by an average person’s perspective a minimum amount for hunting by others. It is barely arable land only good for growing pine trees. Crops and food plots are difficult and yield little. Deer are small but thankfully abundant. The Timber will yield a nice sum of money in a decade or so. It is also 2 hrs away from where I live so that is inconvenient. Oh well.

I was not lucky but rather made a strict budget and worked 3 jobs to afford it. However, I have some insight into this concept of luck that keeps getting thrown around here.

…………………….

Just because someone sells off inherited things of value may make them lucky but it doesn’t always make them stupid.

Folks who inherit land and hang onto it are only lucky to the point they were born into having enough generational wealth to have inherited said land.

Other situations also are pertinent. I am self aware enough and have learned a few things since moving out of my parents house to know I came from a small amount of wealth accumulated by my grandparents and nurtured by my own parents. I grew up on 60 acres of mostly farm land with a 10 acre wood lot. The crop land was rented to a local farmer and the woods were select cut every 8 years or so. Most know you don’t make a ton of money doing this with only 60 acres.

The important thing though was that my parents communicated to their kids what they were doing with the land and why. They taught us about assets and how assets can produce wealth long term. This is universal advice. My parents happened to have land as an asset (among many many others I would later find out).

So I was lucky. I was lucky I grew up in a culture of fiscal responsibility. I was lucky I had mentors from a young age who taught me about money and how to manage it. Later on I was lucky to learn about investing, capital gains, taxes, and leverage. People who don’t know about money don’t know about these other things either. These are not just for the Uber-rich. Little people like us can use these things to build wealth also.

I have received very little financially from my parents since moving out. I’m sure they steered my siblings and I in a direction of “figuring things out for yourself”.

Want to talk about luck? When I graduated college it was early 2008. I didn’t get proper full time employment until 6 years later and it was in a job that did not even require graduation from high school to get. I still work in that field. I got a full ride scholarship that paid for college which I admit, was a little lucky but it also too a lot of hard work and I never used my degree which could be called very bad luck.

I lost a hunting lease one year and that is when I went on the quest to buy my own.

I STOPPED saying “I will never be able to afford this” and I started saying “How will I be able to afford this?” I made a plan, leveraged some resources, decided more debt would not be irresponsible, for another part time job until I could afford a down payment, and pulled the trigger.

There are tax advantages to having land if you know what you are doing. Technically I own agricultural land since there are planted pines growing on it. There are a few tax deductions you can take in certain circumstances. It is under a conservation use agreement so I only pay 40% of the property taxes on it.

 

[slicksleeve]

I live on 38 acres and kill a deer or two every year. Also have another 58 down the road that I hunt. But now that we have gotten out of cattle, the wife and I are thinking about selling it and adding it to retirement savings.

 

[JFrank]

I’m on 18 acres and game walks right up to the cutting shed or stands in the driveway, we also border thousands of acres of state land.

 

[Gordon]

A view where I hunt Turkeys and Deer and see but don't shoot the bear , but do the coyotes . It is a small old Pear , apple and nut orchard with about 20 trees with a meadow about 150 yards long and two hundred fifty feet wide with the unseen creek on the right of picture . The fir trees along the edge of the meadow pictured are at the bottom of a 200 foot cliff so a real safe back stop with nobody around for half a mile in opposite direction . This shot was at 700 am on a usual rainy day here in mountains above Roseburg Oregon . There is a stream on the right of this photo taken from the big sliding window in a little snug shack at the end of this old family orchard . I have a game camera and feed box in it's center . My grandson got his first deer , a four point Blacktail on my Tag asmy mentored Jr. Hunter program on 11/03/23

 

[PapaG]

Bought 45 acres of timber at the edge of Illinois Golden Triangle for deer in 2005. Boys and I did a lot of work but now have a heated cabin, towers, ladders and food plots. The first deer cost me $100K. (amortized).
After 18 years the per deer cost is minimal once you consider the place is well worth over twice what I paid and is available any time we want. Doves, turkey, squirrel, deer. Annual cost isn't bad. Probably around $2K for utilities, insurance, and taxes. Goes to the two boys immediately on my demise.
This year, though my mobility is limited, I hope to get my first legal rifle killed deer. My son got one in January with a H&R 44 mag.
I have only 45 acres but it is wooly. Creek through the middle, mature oaks and walnut trees. 85' of elevation change. Decent neighbors and only two halfway close.

 

[Condor]

I’m very fortunate to have 25 acres. I had wanted to own something about that size for as long as I could remember. My wife’s parents had built their retirement home on a beautiful piece of land. We were having a Labor Day picnic with them and my father-in-law mentioned that the neighboring piece of property was going to be sold (the deed gave him the right of first refusal, so the owner had called him; he refused). I asked him if he had the contact details for the owner and made an offer. I had no immediate plans for it, but it seemed like a good use of the paychecks from my first post-graduation job. I asked the owner if they would be willing to hold the mortgage on it; they agreed.

A few years later our son was born and my wife wanted to move closer to her family. I was able to get a job about an hour away. We looked at houses near the new job, but didn’t feel like any of them were “right”. I said to her “we’ve got the land; we’re moving to be close to your parents, so let’s build* on the piece we bought. The commute will suck, but it’s temporary.”

We staked out the house on Halloween of that year, had the foundation poured in November, framed in December. The excavation contractor (who is now a good friend of mine) said that he could imagine a house full of grandchildren running back and forth between our house and the grandparents next door. Our daughter was born in June of the following year, and in the following years the contractor gave me a rock bottom price to build a connecting driveway between the two houses.

My wife loves the house; I’ve since gotten the better job with a shorter commute so I have the extra time at the house every day. I’ve built a shooting range, taught them to shoot and hunt, and we’ve harvested a fair number of deer. My youngest son has gotten into small game hunting as well. He went traipsing into the woods with my grandfather’s old pack basket recently. I have no idea if he loves the outdoors because we live here, or if it is just who he is, and we did the right thing by raising him here.

There was a really old hunting shack in the woods when we bought the place; it collapsed some years ago. I have been slowly cleaning it up. I’m going to replace it with a small cabin as a pre-retirement project (once I get the kids through school…).

Opening day is Saturday; we’ll be out there…

*full disclosure…we financed the building of the new house with the proceeds of the sale of our previous house. We bought a fixer upper (all we could afford) in suburban Philadelphia in 2002 and fully renovated it and sold it in 2005. It was a lot of work, but our particular timing was really helped by the real estate boom at that time. Any work we did and wise choices we made had an element of luck with timing. We finished the renovation the day before the house was listed for sale, so I literally only got to enjoy the finished house / sit on the new patio once.

 

[crestoncowboy]

To start, I hunt on my own land. 29.98 acres. A nice amount by an average person’s perspective a minimum amount for hunting by others. It is barely arable land only good for growing pine trees. Crops and food plots are difficult and yield little.

I have a bit more than that but sounds like about the same quality. Lol. I have big deer. Big rocks. Big hills.... pine trees grow great on hills. The entire county is actually the number one in the world for Frasier fir. For my acreage I have shockingly low creek/streams. And realistically 4x4 would be required to drive on 95% of mine even in the best dry weather. And yeah farm insurance and tax credits help but you still pay 50% of its value. So much land at all and your paying a few k every year. I think last time I did any paperwork a parcel only had to be 11 acre and not in city limits to be approved as farm. So long as you have other farm approved you don't have to show further proof of livestock on THAT particular land. Same for farm tags. 11 or 15 acres and you can have as many farm tags as you want so long as each driver in the house has one "pleasure" vehicle. Farm tags are about half of normal tags. My 14k lb farm tag is the same price as a 7k lb normal one.

In the 90s we did grow around 10 acres of tobacco (just dad and i) but vast majority of our land is just too steep to make it worthwhile. Great for cattle and deer. And rock lol

Every time id buy land some old timer would drag himself up it and tell me how they used to raise beans on it in the 50s-60s. I'm winching a 450 dozer up with the skidder to build road because it's too steep to drive on wondering just how the hell they even forced a jackass to plow such sorry land. But the random rock piles up against some old trees do lend credence to their claims. Lol

 

[crestoncowboy]

good for growing pine trees

Yep.

And that's a "flat" spot.

 

[AK Hunter]

I have leased private land before & only had one small buck run through the whole time I was in the woods.
So now I hunt about 2000 acres of public land that I have to share with about 60 to 70 other hunters, the only problem I have to deal with the public land rules.

 

[crestoncowboy]

I have leased private land before & only had one small buck run through the whole time I was in the woods.
So now I hunt about 2000 acres of public land that I have to share with about 60 to 70 other hunters, the only problem I have to deal with the public land rules.

We used to lease some for hay (because again our land is steep lol) We had a temp electric fence on it and the deer broke it down every single night. On my way home from school id have to stop and fix it..... every day. I did hunt it a couple times and shot at the first coyote i ever seen on it. Was about 400-500 yards and I had a 22..... I didn't seem to hit him. Lol

 

[jmorris]

With over 32,000,000 acres of accessible public land to hunt on in Idaho, I never have been able to figure out why any Idaho hunters would restrict themselves to only hunting on land they could afford to own all by themselves.

Oh, that’s easy, we don’t have to deal with other people.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Oh, that’s easy, we don’t have to deal with other people.

They only allowed me to hit the LIKE button once.

Except for poachers, you tend to be at much less risk of getting shot by other hunters not in your party when you are on private land and poachers don't seem to be shooting a lot of people. You are much less risk for having another hunter walk through your intended field of fire. You get bothered by ecoterrorists less. You don't worry about people breaking into your vehicle to look for gear to steal. You don't worry about somebody beating you to your honey hole. If it is land you own, you are much less likely to have a game warden appear on it than public land.

You just don't have to deal with people!

 

[jmorris]

The trash people leave behind is what gets me. Zero appreciation or respect. Probably because they were just gifted a place to hunt.

It’s not all peaches and cream for land owners, it’s a hell of a lot of work. We don’t rely on taxpayers money to maintain our properties. It‘s work that never ends. The return on investment is we don’t have to put up with ”users”. I do invite others hunt our land but it’s not a free for all and if your not respectful, you don’t get invited back. A good place to start is to not leave anything behind that would indicate you were ever there and if you must, I prefer it to be whisky.

 

[Chuck R.]

They only allowed me to hit the LIKE button once.

Except for poachers, you tend to be at much less risk of getting shot by other hunters not in your party when you are on private land and poachers don't seem to be shooting a lot of people. You are much less risk for having another hunter walk through your intended field of fire. You get bothered by ecoterrorists less. You don't worry about people breaking into your vehicle to look for gear to steal. You don't worry about somebody beating you to your honey hole. If it is land you own, you are much less likely to have a game warden appear on it than public land.

You just don't have to deal with people!

Plus, you can modify and improve it as YOU see fit.

Part of the joy of having your own ground is the freedom (and responsibility) that comes with it. I own a small 80 acre spread, which is really a multi-use area between my range(s) and dog training area(s). Of the 80 about 11 acres are underwater (2 ponds), so there's free fishing involved also.

A great part of my enjoyment is building my deer engagement area; planting trees, doing food plots etc. to improve it over time and add value. It's nice to see the increased traffic due to the diversity in food sources that I've added. I know that someday my vision of chestnut flavored venison is going to become a reality and at the same time I will have cornered the market on bucks with a chestnut addiction. I'd be leery of doing the same for an area I have permission to hunt, like my neighbors 500 acres, or even a lease because both are temporary.

The only regret I have is not buying more when it was affordable. Now instead I'm going to put the money into some guided hunts where others will do the work, the animals will be larger, but honestly it's not the same as shooting them off of my place where I spent the effort to bring them in.

 

[crestoncowboy]

Oh, that’s easy, we don’t have to deal with other people.

And if I want to be lazy after I shoot a big buck I can take my atv or tractor and get it. My land and I'll spin it up if I see fit.

plus if I get bored and see nothing Ican shoot pine cones and not piss off the entire state

Plus, you can modify and improve it as YOU see fit.

Part of the joy of having your own ground is the freedom (and responsibility) that comes with it. I own a small 80 acre spread, which is really a multi-use area between my range(s) and dog training area(s). Of the 80 about 11 acres are underwater (2 ponds), so there's free fishing involved also.

A great part of my enjoyment is building my deer engagement area; planting trees, doing food plots etc. to improve it over time and add value. It's nice to see the increased traffic due to the diversity in food sources that I've added. I know that someday my vision of chestnut flavored venison is going to become a reality and at the same time I will have cornered the market on bucks with a chestnut addiction. I'd be leery of doing the same for an area I have permission to hunt, like my neighbors 500 acres, or even a lease because both are temporary.

The only regret I have is not buying more when it was affordable. Now instead I'm going to put the money into some guided hunts where others will do the work, the animals will be larger, but honestly it's not the same as shooting them off of my place where I spent the effort to bring them in.

Or in places like NC where baiting is legal, I could bow hunt over a bait pile that's been established for 10 years. Hard to do on public. Someone else be over your pile

 

[Chuck R.]

And if I want to be lazy after I shoot a big buck I can take my atv or tractor and get it. My land and I'll spin it up if I see fit.

The tractor is an underrated hunting tool IMHO:

 

[crestoncowboy]

The tractor is an underrated hunting tool IMHO:

Well we call that one a mower with a bucket but yep... the tractor is awesome. Ive pulled a hundred engine, sat a billion tobacco plants, buried a hundred beef, drug out thousands of cord of wood etc etc. Not the "right" tool for any of that.... but will do the job.

We had our 75 hp 4x4 massey down toward the coast and all the locals called it our mower. Lol. And compared to the 8 tire 300 hp beasts they used i suppose it was.

 

[.308 Norma]

Oh, that’s easy, we don’t have to deal with other people.

Yeah, you could be right about that. I guess my wife and I have the best of both worlds in that while we live in a state that has over 32,000,000 acres of accessible public land for us to hunt on, we also have access to a couple of thousand acres of our rancher friend's land in the next valley over - just 10 or 12 miles west of here.
The only things bad about hunting our rancher friend's ranch though is that we DO have to leave the gates we go through the way we found them (closed if they were closed, and open if they were open) and we have to be careful about not shooting in the direction where our friend's cattle are grazing. Besides those things, this year our friends even asked us to not shoot the two-point mule deer buck they'd seen feeding in one of their upper pastures. They said they wanted to save it for their daughter to shoot for her first deer. We never did see it though, so I guess it didn't make any difference.
At any rate, while my wife and I only own a few acres that we seldom see any deer on anyway, we have access to a lot of land, both public and private. You're right though - the only people we have to deal with when hunting the private land we have access to are our rancher friends.

 

[Choctaw]

We have a section in NW Texas. Deer, pigs (of course), turkey and very limited quail. We even had my oldest son's wedding on the place which was pretty cool.

 

[Chuck R.]

Well we call that one a mower with a bucket but yep... the tractor is awesome. Ive pulled a hundred engine, sat a billion tobacco plants, buried a hundred beef, drug out thousands of cord of wood etc etc. Not the "right" tool for any of that.... but will do the job.

We had our 75 hp 4x4 massey down toward the coast and all the locals called it our mower. Lol. And compared to the 8 tire 300 hp beasts they used i suppose it was.

Yup, a hobby tractor!

Don't tell the IRS, but I'm not a real farmer

Or as far as their concerned, not a real good farmer. It's used for mowing trails, dragging firewood and putting in food plots. Small enough that my wife likes using it. Whenever we have a "real" tractor requirement I call my neighbor or hire it out.

As far as luck goes, I do consider myself very lucky. Managed to be a part of the 17% that actually gets to retire from the service, did some deployments and didn't get a scratch, other than hearing, bad knee and an MRE phobia. Then landed a job back with the Army writing about other people deploying.

 

[crstrode]

You don't but you do?

It has been my observation, most of the time when people are handed something of value, they don't have it very long.

Yes indeed. Sadly, that is what is happening to liberty.

My land (bought and paid for by your's truly) is where I hunt.

So far I have had the good luck to not fill this year's hobo tag.

 

[.308 Norma]

So far I have had the good luck to not fill this year's hobo tag.

A hobo spider tag??? I didn't know you needed a tag for killing those ugly little monsters!
I hate hobo spiders, and I've found the best "ammunition" for them is called "Demon WP." I order it out of a place in Georgia, and it kills hobos dead, dead, dead.