Changing North Dakota

[KurtR]

Dang I’m glad I live where I do. Never get told no for waterfowl no one hunts them around here. After the first couple weeks hunt pheasants all over and usually deer after the first week. I see hardly anyone on the public land after first 2 weeks of pheasant. Moved to this part of the state in 02 put a lot of time in helping around farm or ranch and it pays off. Went with some buddies to nodak last year and didnt get told no once . Talking to my dad and compared to the 70’s/80’s when you could shoot one goose a year and lucky to see deer it’s pretty damn good right now.

 

[deerhunt1988]

Sounds very similar to what's happened to turkey hunting in recent years....except social media is majorly to blame for making travel turkey hunting the "cool thing" to do.

 

[NDGuy]

Went with some buddies to nodak last year and didnt get told no once .

I think lately it's less people not letting guys on but the fact that 15 guys will be calling ahead of you. Public or non-posted land get's pummeled and birds move to private.

Then my experience usually is when you call the landowner they say:

-"Have buddies coming next week"
-"My son hunts"
-"I have leasee's coming next month"

All this coupled with the huge amount of CRP and habitat loss we have experienced the last decade really hampers the ability for people to spread out and have less pressured areas. Anywhere within 2 hours of Fargo gets hammered. Once you reach out by Medina there is a lot less birds until you get to Bismarck where there's even more private that you can't dream of getting on. There used to be a lot of birds between Jamestown and Bis but in my ancedotal experience having a family lake place between there the migration has shifted and others agree. More birds east and west but not in the middle of that area.

To be clear it obviously still can be done but it's getting harder as more and more people are hunting and there is less and less huntable areas to put them. NRs will start having a tough time as the trespass laws get tighter and tighter.

 

[NDGuy]

Sounds very similar to what's happened to turkey hunting in recent years....except social media is majorly to blame for making travel turkey hunting the "cool thing" to do.

******Social media making hunting the cool thing to do. Tons of new interest and not enough huntable areas to make it feasible long term.

 

[william schmaltz]

I grew up not far from where Kurt is, just on the ND side and I could probably count the numbers of times I've been turned down to field hunt waterfowl in my lifetime on one hand. That includes 5 years of living in Fargo asking complete strangers. By the end of October no one is hunting pheasants and by the second week of deer season, waterfowl hunting is just getting good and the deer hunters are mostly done.

From my observations growing up there and still knowing tons of people, the big reasons haven't been addressed yet. One is that from 2000 to 2009 it was drought city in central ND. Most of the sloughs were dried up and lakes that now have boat ramps on them could hardly hold a few pike. When I was in high school/college, no one waterfowl hunted because you had to work at it. It was hard/expensive to get into with spotty hunting at best. Everyone pheasant hunted back then, it was the glory days of ditch parrots! For the last decade, everything has been filled in and its turned into a duck factory. Pheasant hunting is substantially worse and it seems like every local I know now hunts waterfowl. They will always get priority to hunt.

Second is that all them old farmers who used to give permission never left the farm. All their buddies were local old farmers who didn't hunt and their family members all had their own farm. It was easy to get permission when the farmer never hunted and really didn't know anyone else who did. Now its guys in their 30-40's that run the farm. Several of them hunt and most of them went to college and have numerous friends from high school/college that have basically exclusive rights. I could get on the phone right now and have exclusive hunting rights on tens of thousands of acres tomorrow just with guys I grew up with and family. Its just the reality of things, lifelong friends will always get priority.

I could list off probably close to 100 land owners I know and I can think of one that leases his land to hunt. I don't see leasing as an issue in ND at all. It's a change in who owns the land, how the locals hunt, and how many locals hunt. You would also have a hard time finding a land owner that hasn't had a bad experience with a nonresident doing something sketchy on their land. Not a jab at anyone, I have no doubts the people posting here are not in that group, just an unfortunate reality. The residents do it too, it's just always the guys that have a different color license plate that gets remembered.

 

[NDGuy]

I could list off probably close to 100 land owners I know and I can think of one that leases his land to hunt.

Don't officially "lease" they take cash payments from people.

But you have great points for sure and end of day all our perspectives are just anecdotal.

Hunting everywhere can be good still, but it is getting harder and harder breaking into new territory because of the reasons you suggested. People reserve for friends and family, sell/lease it out, and shrinking habitat & public opportunities.

 

[WRM]

Sounds very similar to what's happened to turkey hunting in recent years....except social media is majorly to blame for making travel turkey hunting the "cool thing" to do.

Don't even get started on this one! Some years I see about as many people last day as first day. Often have to drop down to third, fourth, or fifth spot for first few days, seemingly no matter how early you get there, or just give up areas completely. Thirty years ago you might see somebody opening weekend.

 

[KurtR]

No one says no turkey hunting here. They want you to shoot more and get them off the hay piles. Have a place where you eat breakfast drink coffee walk out on the deck wax your turkey and home for lunch.

 

[WRM]

No one says no turkey hunting here. They want you to shoot more and get them off the hay piles. Have a place where you eat breakfast drink coffee walk out on the deck wax your turkey and home for lunch.

You best keep that quiet, or SD'll be the next turkey tourist destination.

 

[KurtR]

You best keep that quiet, or SD'll be the next turkey tourist destination.

Black hills get a bunch but not enough license sold on the prairie to even notice

 

[WRM]

I've seen a few out there where I mule deer hunt, but sure wouldn't make that drive to shoot a turkey.

 

[wind gypsy]

Don't officially "lease" they take cash payments from people.

But you have great points for sure and end of day all our perspectives are just anecdotal.

Hunting everywhere can be good still, but it is getting harder and harder breaking into new territory because of the reasons you suggested. People reserve for friends and family, sell/lease it out, and shrinking habitat & public opportunities.

It'd be interesting to see how many farmers were getting contacted to shoot waterfowl from a field/slough in late 90s/early 2000s compared to after 2010 when everyone had long learned on the internet that landowners in ND were prone to letting people hunt their land for free and you can find landowner/contact info immediately.

 

[wind gypsy]

One is that from 2000 to 2009 it was drought city in central ND.

I was ready to call BS on "to 2009" because i remembered getting an extra week or two of spring break to hunt snow geese two years in a row while NDSU was closed for red river flood fighting but it turns out that was '09 and '10. Seems longer ago

 

[SteepNDeep*]

I grew up in northern ND so I wanted to chime in here as I still hunt there extensively every year. Waterfowl hunting isn't the same as it used to be. I think it's a combination of flight patterns changing, farmers growing more oil crops, and like someone else said, farmers are draining all of the small pot holes.

With how dry it is this year, I expect it to be even worse. I'll still be out there to shoot a few greenheads though.

 

[bosands]

I have lived here for 10 years and hunted for just over 20. Its not just waterfowl but upland as well, lots of factors have been thrown out here is my list.

20+ plus years of non resident hunters, many are now "friends of the family" with farmers and land gets saved for them. 20 years of jerks and ^&*^ doing things that pissed off farmers and locals. Changes in Ag, much of this land used to be almost worthless, now land has value, crops have more value and farmers are running bigger and bigger operations and don't want to hassle with people set up in their fields when they want to go work it. and the last one is the probably most controversial, the tresspass law. If hunters had to always ask, the sheer volume of nonres would have come every year, farmers wouldnt have gotten upset that jerks where doing this or that. All this adds up and this degradation is actually how I ended up on this site. I am starting to get into big game hunting to do something else in the fall.

 

[wind gypsy]

All this adds up and this degradation is actually how I ended up on this site. I am starting to get into big game hunting to do something else in the fall.

In my waterfowlin hay days i used to laugh at people who spent weeks after one animal with big antlers when we could stack a pile of ducks/geese a dozen times over the same period. Now days it's nice to just be in the hunt whenever you want and not chasing the hot field.

 

[spur60]

Been watching the hunting decline in ND for 15 years. I started hunting ND as a student in the fall of 2000. It was so easy. Made plenty of return trips to hunt with college buddies in the years since. Some of those buddies now own and farm thousands of acres. I could pontificate for hours on the reasons that it's gotten to this point, most of the major issues have been mentioned. It's still a great state to hunt, and with some hard work, flexibility, and a little luck, you can have some banger hunts yet. But, the days of going to an unposted field and getting 2 or 3 shoots in a row off it are long gone. Any good feed is going to get found and there will be two A-frames, 20 dozen divebombs, and 8 spinners in that field at sunrise.

Everybody loves to pile on SD for limiting non resident waterfowl licenses, but during weather patterns such as this, it sure keeps pressure manageable. Even on a wet year when the birds are spread out, I know of land owners that get 15 vehicles in their yard and 25-30 calls by 10pm when there is a decent sized mallard feed on one of their fields. We've got some youth and new ideas in our GFP leadership, and from what I've seen so far, land owner/hunter relationships are at the forefront of their management goals. I actually feel that there will be more private land opened up for waterfowl hunting in the coming years due to that.