Kentucky

[sutton17]

A buddy and I are planning to bow hunt Kentucky public land this year and I am looking to get a little info mainly about pressure and general areas.

Obviously its public land and a lot of things change a lot but we were looking at coming down the first weekend of December and possibly a few times after that depending on success. Being that its a little later in the season does the pressure start winding down or is it pretty consistent throughout the year?

We haven't narrowed down a part of the state but and general info (places to avoid) stuff like that would be awesome. I'm not looking for specific spots just general useful information.

From what I've read east is more mountains and west is more farm land is that for the most part true? It looks like some of the WMAs have a quota hunt the first weekend in December. I haven't read about all of them yet but is that a weekend we should avoid to give ourselves a little more flexibility with places to hunt or is the quota hunt limited enough we will be fine.

I greatly appreciate any info that anyone can help me with.

Thanks

 

[van zan]

we are pretty stingy on buck harvests which is why we have so many big un's. this season you could harvest one buck and an unlimited number of doe in the extreme west and one buck but only one doe in the extreme east.

read up on land between the lakes. good mixture of crop land, open fields and woodlands. camp most anywhere you want. not alot of pressure from residents. i ran into a pack of feral hogs on the tn. side. not suppose to hunt them. i hike and camp there as much as possible. i don't deer hunt there. i have plenty of hunting on my family farm. i'm not sure if they have hunts in dec.

eastern kentucky has the D Boone national forest. mostly hilly woodland. if you can find an area with good mast production, december would be productive. I hiked 170 miles from morehead to east bernstadt at I75 on the sheltowee last month. saw some bear sign. ran into a few areas where the deer had concentrated. nothing like western ky. i hear the northern part of dboone has better populations but i can't swear to it.

ft campbell and ft knox produce some big deer. campbell isn't far from LBL. when i was stationed at campbell the rules were skewed toward active duty soldiers. things might have changed since then. i used to see some big deer down range at knox. there is a guy who gets a monster buck out of knox every year.


check the ky fish and wildlife webpage for seasons and harvest limits.

 

[Flogger]

Pressure will drop off considerably in December unless you are hunting the late muzzleloader season in December. There are some good wma’s in Ky. Some are bigger tracts and well known while others are much smaller but still very productive. If you do your due diligence there even exists some small public tracts that nobody even really knows about. I’ve lived in ky my entire life and just found out about a small, sub 100 acre piece of public that is less than 30 minutes away. I say that to say this... You don’t have to hunt the big, well known wma’s to have an opportunity at a nice buck. With that said, some of the bigger wma’s can be very productive if you do your part.
If bowhunting in December is your plan, you will have very little hunting pressure to deal with.