Hunting Land Access

[Richard Lathrop]

Being former NJ resident that sounds iffy as well. Sounds like NJ wanted the land and found a way to get it. It took NJ 25 years to notice the illegal conversion? Usually the cranberry bogs were inland around Batsto/Chatswoth area.

Rick

 

[Bob Reitmeyer]

Being former NJ resident that sounds iffy as well. Sounds like NJ wanted the land and found a way to get it. It took NJ 25 years to notice the illegal conversion? Usually the cranberry bogs were inland around Batsto/Chatswoth area.

Rick

Your right on - these bogs were just north of Chatsworth on RT 563 and are now known as the Franklin Parker Preserve. I chose this example because I'm more familiar with it, but I think the Annual Report was 2005. The NJDEP and Pinelands Commission will review aerial imagery to detect unpermitted activities. My issue is that the State partners with a Non-Government Organization using donated Public funds to preserve property that the NGO then administers. These NGOs then set the conditions for access and use.

 

[Richard Lathrop]

Bob,

Understand that. I think Virginia Nature Conservancy manages a couple of the barrier islands south of Chicoteague.

NJ was after some shacks in Salem County saying they were illegal despite being there for years.

https://www.nj.com/news/2018/03/save_the_cabins_legislation_might_just_spare_threa.html

I don't know what was the outcome on those.

Rick

 

[Rick Pierce]

Arkansas has some premier public duck hunting grounds, but they have been mismanaged and have been at the mercy of the neighboring farms and landowners. We have issues with many of the "green timber" areas turning into stands of dead and dying timber - much of it caused by flooding in the spring and summer "hot" months, and it standing stagnant during the growing season. The people who were talking about crown dieback and dead trees 10-15 years ago were pooh-poohed and dismissed with the, "they been doin it this way since these WMA's were made, and those trees will be there after we are all dead..." Now suddenly everyone is lambasting the AGFC for all the dead trees...

Lease prices are still steadily rising, and land prices for the purchase of ground are as well. The sloughs and little floodout areas that weren't even considered secondary areas - the ones that owners didn't bother to try and lease or kept for, "well...my son comes home at Christmas and he and his buddies like to go hunt there for a few days" where ducks rested the rest of the time are now leased. If a duck flew near it in the last decade, someone will lease it. There has been a continuous influx of out of state hunters leasing and buying ground for decades, and money talks. I think every resident duck hunter has a story where the lease they had for years was lost to a group who offered the farmer anywhere from 3 to 10 or more times what they were paying. Guides also got in on that game when they were banned from the management areas, paying more because they were taking clients and not hunting recreationally with a few friends.

30 years ago, there were places that I could go and get access because nobody bothered to hunt ducks on some creeks and other areas that flooded out, and through the "network" had free reign. They were outside the classic duck hunting areas. As the population increased, and the old landowners sold out or divided up their ground, those places went away pretty steadily. Lots more purple paint (posted) than there used to be.

The largest change has been to agriculture. Rice is now harvested in late August for the most part when it used to be cut in October, unless the rains and weather made it too wet. By the time duck season is here, the spillage has either resprouted or rotted for the most part, if the farmer doesn't burn and till everything under and prep it for the next spring. The past three years I have seen more brown dirt in the best duck areas of the State during the season than I ever have before; a good rain would create tens of thousands of acres of sheet water in rice and soybean fields for the ducks to feed and rest. The only places like that now are getting hunted; chances are if you see a rice field with standing stubble, it's got a pit or blind on it, or it's a rest area for a larger club.

Our duck kill is lower, but we are killing way more white-fronted geese; the fact that we have guide services advertising for goose hunts, where geese used to just be an extra "if they got close enough" shows the dramatic change. Many clubs wanting members are advertising the geese first, and ducks when conditions are right.

Everything changes, and Arkansas duck hunting was much better 10 years ago and longer than it is now. In 2017 the average duck kill per hunter was 19 birds per season; last year it was 15-16. We will see what happens.

 

[Eric Patterson]

Rick

You don't paint a very rosy picture for the future of Arkansas. Thomas has been freelancing the White and Cache Rivers for several years and I've been coming with him on some of those hunts. We hunt the NWRs because the non-resident restricted/shortened WMA season doesn't apply on these NRWs. Last year at the ramp a resident came up and started complaining about the crowding. I didn't get into a deep conversation but did tell him we were there because our own Alabama WMAs closed weekday hunting and Arkansas wouldn't let us hunt their WMAs either. I hope he wasn't so thick as to see crowding happens when you restrict areas. Naturally hunters move to the open ones and of course there are more hunting in one area as a result. If you want fewer hunters the solution is simple, either create more places to hunt, or get people to leave the sport. All these new restrictions are doing is forcing more folks into less places and you know this won't lead to anything but frustration and exiting the sport.

What is going on with the rice farming in the NE part of the state? Most of the fields last hunting season were dry. I mean and miles of what used to be flooded fields were dirt. It was weird not seeing flooded rice fields like always before. Some new farming practice has drastically changed the landscape that time of year. I can't imagine it being good for wintering waterfowl and wonder if this new practice is going to be statewide.

Eric

 

[Rick Pierce]

Well first...let me know if you come over here! Especially if you bring that SuperFox...I'll drag mine out, along with the wooden decoys, and we'll make a hunt of it. I also have Worth Mathewson's old LC Smith that I've never hunted...it's a Grade 3 made in 1898 with steel barrels, not Damascus, choked XF/XF. Straight grip, beautiful gun.

Rice farming has changed. They plant and harvest earlier. The farmers seem to have abandoned the idea of leaving stubble, letting it rot, then plowing in the spring in favor of doing all the prep in the fall; I don't know the ins and outs, but it's cheaper and easier on them to leave the fields in dirt over winter. Also, so many of the farmers have just quit leasing; the money they get versus the damage to field roads, cost of pumping the fields up, the liabilty of hunters, and irresponsible idiots have made many of them stop. I went to Ronnie Ladd's house last year to pick him up and drive to Kentucky to go layout gun with Steve McCullough; he is in the middle of duck country, and we had to drive from his house to Fair Oaks to finally see a rice field flooded with standing stubble. Between there and West Memphis on 64, we saw very few fields. Same thing with the stretch of I-40 between the White River bridge and Forrest City; that is usually my "barometer" area to see what birds are in the fields that have been there and flooded since the 1970's...and the last two years have had fewer flooded fields than I've ever seen.

I wish I could paint a better picture but the last three to five years have been some of the worst I've seen down here. Don't get me wrong...there are still a LOT of ducks killed here, but it is not what it was, in my opinion. I feel like our migration is considerably less than it used to be; states like Texas and Oklahoma are seeing more mallards while we see fewer. With the numbers of geese we are seeing, I'm wondering if we somehow "traded" snows and white-fronts for ducks...

Arkansas has always been crowded to a degree in the "known" spots...50-100 trucks or more in the parking lots (more when "the ducks are in") isn't uncommon. The issue is that restricting the OOS hunters just means the void will be filled with the locals. I liken it to having an empty 5-gallon bucket, a 10-gallon bucket with red water, and a 20-gallon bucket with blue water. Even if you only pour from the red bucket (residents), there isn't enough empty bucket (public ground) to hold the water.

 

[Eric Patterson]

Rick

I knew you appreciated Fox doubles but forgot you owned a Super. That makes at least three here on the site including you and me. Let's try and make something happen. A lot of our trips to Ark are last minute based on reports, so don't be surprised if I call you with little notice. Consider this your warning

Thomas and I talked about all of this Ark change last night. I guess I'm the pessimist of the two for he thinks in spite of the change it is still the best bet going for our out-of-state trips, over Mississippi, West Tennessee, and southeast Missouri. He's already planning to buy land for setting up a base camp and then maybe some more.

I think it's fair to say we are trying to sort things out for the next chapter. He's getting his career started and in a few more years I'll retire. I want to spend weeks at a time hunting, and he wants a place in a proven area close enough to drive for long weekends. We'll figure it out, but the solution is far less simple these days with competition and anti-non-resident policies and attitudes.

Eric

 

[Rick Pierce]

Eric,

I think his assessment may be correct, with the exception of Missouri, but for a freelance hunter I think he's right. Arkansas is still probably the best bet at this point within the region, even with all the "hair" around the OOS regs.

If it were closer, I would consider investing time into the Mississippi River in Wisconsin/Minnesota, particularly around Pool 9 (canvasbacks), or looking at Michigan. I believe the Michigan duck seasons have been on an upswing the past several years, and I was lucky enough to hunt Saginaw Bay a couple years...love that wide open bay and marsh gunning for truly mixed bag of anything from scoter and ruddy ducks to redheads, widgeon, teal, oldsquaw, cans, bluebill, geese, etc. Been hearing reports that they are killing more black ducks in Michigan, too, which makes me instinctively want to go.

I ran headlong into the OOS quandary when they started all of this. I had a place worked out that adjoined a WMA; had a place to stay and could be on the WMA almost literally walking out the door. There was one spot that I could walk to with no boat necessary. Was going to have my father come down so that he could stay a week and gun using my boat and decoys while I was at work during the week, then I would drive over and hunt with him a few days. AGFC changed the regs, and that went down in flames...we could still do it, but on the State schedule, not when it worked out well for both of us to be able to hunt.

I've made the point several times that guys are going to love these regs until their kids and grandkids want to come in and hunt from elsewhere, but it falls on deaf ears.

Duck hunters are like farmers...always something to complain about, I guess....too hot, too cold, not enough water, too much water, the government.....

 

[don novicki]

Well we have just lost another prime goose hunting field here in Girard Pa., with Erie County cancelling the farmers lease, to build another "shovel ready" industrial park of 240 acres. This field has been a go to field for over 40 year and I have hunted it with success more times than I can count. The farmer always gave permission and now this field is going to be gone for good.

The proposed industrial park is 1.2 miles from an existing industrial park that is less than half full. Additionaly, that industrial park wiped out another hunting spot years ago. Frankly when you can't attract business with an improved site, and 10 years tax free , I question why you would build an additional industrial park if no one is building at the first site. There is however a new business going into this park and they are just completing the building which happens to be a bank. Someone please tell me how in the hell a bank gets a 10 year tax deferment? They are not producing goods but making gobs of money, and now at the taxpayers expense.

All the waterfront property here in Erie Pa. is sold with a 10 year tax deferment. Do other cities sell prime waterfront property with a tax deferment? I'm guessing not.

About 10 years ago Mercyhurst University took possession of 400 acres of prime farm land with the idea that they would build a college out here in Girard. They were GIVEN the land, and did nothing with it until they decided that ultimately building out here wasn't for them. They sold the land for a little over 1 million and pocketed it all.

Farmland is at a premium here as it's disappearing at an alarming rate. I'm glad I'm on the downside of hunting because........it ain't what it used to be.

 

[Tom Johnson]

150 acres on Great Bay NH, with orchard, flooded timber, lost to hunting, hiking, bird watching, dog walking...owner passed, new owners built beautiful home, barn, wanted a "water view" though did not even know they had two small islands off the property with a duck shack ("that'll be torn down"). All posted, no trespassing for any reason...
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