Like many middle-aged folks, I grew up hunting on public land. And if it wasn’t state-owned in some fashion, whether state game lands or state forest, the farmer or family who owned it typically let everyone hunt on it, so it may as well have been public land anyway.
During rifle season, I often counted more hunters than deer over the course of the day, but although success came hard, it was always sweet. Years later, I got access to hunt private land in my home state as well as joined a hunting lease in a neighboring state and got to experience the joys and challenges of private land hunting, too.
So which was the better experience, public or private? The answer to that question isn’t as clear-cut as one might expect. Each has pros and cons, and each provides a unique reward for hunters willing to put in the effort.
The Pros of Public Land Hunting
Let’s start with public land hunting, which I feel has been glorified a bit in recent years on various hunting shows. There’s no doubt that public land provides the most challenges for bowhunters, and that can be appealing, especially to those who have already had plenty of success on private land. There’s a greater sense of accomplishment, in my opinion, knowing that you harvested a mature buck on land where every other hunter also has access.
Public land forces you to hunt harder and smarter. You have no choice but to scout more and truly learn what local bucks are doing and why. In a way, you become more of a student of nature.
It’s also freeing to know you have access to thousands of acres of hunting property. In Pennsylvania, where I live and hunt, we have 1.2 million acres of public land right out my back door. It’s awesome to know I’m not confined to one stand location, one patch of woods, or even one county! If I want a change of scenery, no big deal; I simply drive to a new section of state forest land and start exploring, and I don’t have to pay a dime for access.
There are some great, overlooked public lands available, too. With the mapping technology available to hunters today, it’s fairly easy to locate potential hot spots that others might have missed. In the past 10 years or so, this is exactly how I’ve come to harvest some of my best bucks, including my biggest, a 7.5 year old, 150-inch 10-point, last fall.
And I can tell you from experience hunting public lands in four states – Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and West Virginia – there are plenty of bucks just like that living in areas overlooked by thousands of hunters every year. Your odds of success, of course, are slim. Those bucks didn’t get big and old by being stupid. But if you’re willing to hunt harder than ever before and put in the time, the reward and feeling of accomplishment are unparalleled.
Cons of Public Land Hunting
One of the reasons I started bowhunting 30 years ago was to get away from others who also hunted exclusively public land. That worked. For a few years, at least.
By my late teens, bowhunting’s popularity caught on, and soon I was jockeying for position in prime travel corridors during the rut, dealing with other hunters sabotaging stands, and sometimes having folks set up within eyeshot of me. It’s humorous now to think of the times I sat in my treestand after school staring at another hunter up in his treestand only 50 yards away!
Despite many years passing, nothing has changed about public land hunting. The main difference now is that I’m often alerted to the presence of other hunters ahead of time when I find their trail cameras. I find a lot of trail cameras on public land, and in the most surprising places. I can be miles from the road, discover a great little funnel, and no sooner set up a trail camera and turn around, and there’s someone else’s trail camera pointing right at me.
I’ve come to accept that I’ll never be able to hunt some of the best stands on public land. Most, if not all, of the obvious funnels and food sources get saturated with hunters. In turn, the influx of pressure often pushes deer off their normal patterns, and mature bucks either relocate or become more nocturnal.
As a solo hunter pursuing highly-pressured whitetails on vast tracts of public land, it’s also frustrating to know I can’t do anything to improve my stand locations. I can’t manipulate the land in any way with food plots, mineral sites, or even trimming of shooting lanes.
I’m at the mercy of rules and regulations set forth by the state, which sometimes even limits the types of stands I can use, how far ahead of the season I can set them up, and when they have to be taken down.
I’ve also come to accept that my best stands are typically “one and done.” I hunt them hard for one season, kill a nice buck, and then don’t get a chance to hunt there again next season because so many other hunters found out about it and moved in.
As far as tactics go, sometimes it’s the Wild West, too, with many hunters implementing strategies learned from popular shows and podcasts. Indeed, the actions of other hunters are out of my control on public land.
If a group of 22 guys (no exaggeration!) wants to surround a clearcut and push out the big buck I’ve been hunting all season, then there’s nothing I can do about it. And when one of their watchers kills that buck, all I can do is congratulate them and be happy for them for figuring it out.
Pros of Private Land Hunting
All of the cons of public land hunting are why many hunters seek out private land to hunt on. In fact, private land ownership and leasing has become the basis for a very simple formula for consistently killing mature bucks. Purchase or lease a piece of property, improve that property with food and water sources, keep hunting pressure low, and let the deer grow.
Do these things and you’ll inevitably have mature bucks to hunt.
The sense of ownership is hard to deny, too. That’s one of the things I enjoyed about leasing and even getting permission to hunt private property. In a way, I felt responsible for the deer herd, planting plots and providing supplemental feed through the harsh winter months, and doing predator control to boost fawn survival. The reward was a healthy, balanced deer herd that produced bucks that had reached their physical potential.
In some cases, I was able to watch certain bucks grow over multiple seasons. I developed history with them, knew where they bedded and where they were likely to be at any given time. And more importantly, I knew that if I or someone in our group didn’t harvest that buck, then he’d likely be bigger next year.
As someone who has hunted public land most of his life, I’ve appreciated the opportunities I’ve had over the years to hunt private land. I can hunt at my own pace, choose the stands I want to hunt based on wind and weather conditions rather than other hunters, and have a high-quality experience observing whitetails in a less pressured environment.
Cons of Private Land Hunting
Perhaps the main “con” to private land hunting is the barrier to entry. It can be expensive, not only in terms of the cost of the property or the lease, but also the cost of maintaining it and performing the habitat work needed to make it a whitetail haven. And if you’re an avid deer hunter and own some property, then there’s no way in heck you’re NOT going to want to improve it for big bucks.
Private land hunting gets knocked for not being “real” hunting, and for good reason; sometimes it truly is easy. Sure, it’s your land and you worked hard to make it a deer haven, but I’ve seen a lot of mediocre hunters become experts by simply posting their land and planting food plots. In truth, they’re not experts, and doing this doesn’t force them to improve their skills, but they do become better land managers, which ultimately results in more and bigger bucks available to hunt.
Some hunters will always place a stigma on big bucks killed on private land, too. I had a string of four years or so hunting on private land where I killed some of the nicest bucks I’d killed up to that point in my hunting career. When people asked where I got those bucks, and I told them, the reply was usually a negative comment about how I hunted private land, or fed them supplements, or whatever reason.
Some of it was jealousy, but that doesn’t discount their point. When you’ve improved the land with ideal bedding habitat and food sources so that deer never have to leave your property, and you’ve eliminated outside competition from other hunters, then you’ve certainly stacked the deck in your favor.
Something that often gets overlooked about private land hunting, though, is that the lack of hunting pressure can also be a con. When there’s nobody around to get deer moving, you can spend a long time on stand waiting for that buck to move on its own volition. I’ve spent countless hours watching food plots with no deer in them. And when you have limited stand options, and you’re forced to hunt the same ones over and over, it can get tedious and unenjoyable.
All of this leads to the biggest cons of private land hunting: unrealistic expectations and an unrealistic view of the hunting industry. Many folks who exclusively hunt private, well-managed properties tend to forget that the majority of hunters don’t have the same opportunity. The standards for what constitutes a trophy on private land may be drastically different than what is considered a trophy on public land, and I meet just as many lease-owners who frown upon anyone who kills what they deem a “small” buck on public land.
Conclusion
There’s no one-size-fits-all option for hunters when it comes to public land versus private land. In the end, it probably all comes down to preference and what you find most satisfying. For some, it’s the challenge of public land. Win or lose, they know they’re hunting property that’s open to everyone, the deer are cagier, and so the potential reward is greater. For other hunters, private land is the only option. They enjoy playing a role in managing the land and seeing the potential of the deer herd come to fruition.
There are pros and cons to both types of hunting. I’ve been fortunate to have had quality experiences while hunting both public and private land, and I’ve found that it’s not necessarily where I’m hunting that makes it a great day or makes it successful. Often, a successful day is determined by my attitude, and the joy I get from doing what I love.
Check out the video below as Matt Millard takes on Illinois bucks on public land.
