HOW TO FIND BIG BUCKS IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD
Become
a Hunting Guide or Go To School
 Editor’s
Note: If you live in suburbia like I do, less than 15
minutes from metropolitan Birmingham, Alabama, and its
more than 1/2-million folks, you'll often hear reports
of big deer spotted within walking distance of your
house. But everyone knows you can't hunt bucks downtown
or in your own backyard, or can you? We often forget
that white-tailed bucks travel. Although you may see
them standing on asphalt or crashing across a creek,
they must come and go from somewhere. Sometimes those
backyard bucks have travel routes that will cross property
you can hunt, if you'll research your options. Often
you may find a trophy-buck hotspot less than 30 minutes
from your home where no one else hunts or has permission
to hunt.
Often large corporations own vast
wooded areas close to highly populated regions. However,
they don't allow hunting and post these areas because
of liability. But, most companies have some kind of
customer-entertainment programs, which may eat heavily
into corporate budgets. With downsizing
and belt tightening, many companies look for ways to
host their customers without spending large amounts
of money. Approach the marketing director and/or president
of a company, and offer your services as a hunting guide
on their
lands to hunt with their customers at low or no cost.
If you'll scout the land, set up the tree stands and
guide clients to spots where they can take big bucks,
a corporation may permit you to hunt the land when you're
not guiding its
clients. Show the company how you can save them thousands
of dollars. The company may return the favor by allowing
you to hunt the land at no cost.
I had a friend in Demopolis, Alabama,
who worked for a major timber company. Across the street
from the company's headquarters, 3,000 acres of land
went unused. Sportsmen couldn't hunt there because of
the land's proximity to the
plant. My friend went to the company president's office
and explained how he could plant greenfields, clear
the roads and provide productive hunting opportunities
at a low cost to entertain the timber company's clients.
Not only did the timber company grant him permission
to hunt that land any time he wanted with one or two
friends, but the company also gave him time off from
work to clear the roads, plant the greenfields and build
the shooting houses. A few times each
year, my friend takes the company's customers out on
the land, assists them in getting into the shooting
houses and then picks up the customers and their deer.
The rest of the year, he hunts this posted property
for free.
Many colleges and universities have
huge land holdings bequeathed to them when loyal alumni
die. These land holdings, often too small to lease or
utilize, sometimes lay in prime deer-hunting areas.
Learn where they own woods land,
the location of those lands and the requirements for
hunting that property. Consider offering these services
in exchange for hunting rights:
* organize a benefit hunt on the land with all tax-deductible
proceeds going to the college or university,
* teach a mini-course in outdoor skills or identifying
edible plants for the P.E. department, recreation department
and/or biology department,
* patrol the land, keep the roads open and pick up litter
and/or
* take important alumni, potential athletes or other
supporters of the school deer hunting on that property.
If you can learn what landowners want
or need, you'll find very few sanctuaries that you absolutely
cannot hunt. Even when you really can't hunt a sanctuary,
you may have the opportunity to bag its big bucks. Study
the property adjacent to the sanctuary, and get permission
to hunt it by leasing that property or providing a service
to that landowner.
The creation of most sanctuaries and the posting of
property usually has its beginnings in some problem
the landowner has experienced with hunters on his land.
If you develop an easy and equitable way to solve the
problem, you often can acquire permission to hunt a
trophy-buck hotspot. You even may find that trophy sanctuary
right at your own back door.
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