OH / IL public land

[Fordguy]

Where I hunt in Michigan I can buy a lot of antlerless permits, but the 2 does and 1 buck I shot this year filled my freezer and topped off my parent's freezer. I thought about buying a second freezer (just like I do every year) just haven't convinced myself to do it yet.

 

[RDO34]

I lived and hunted in Illinois for most of my life. There is the lesser known "silver triangle" that gets less traffic, albeit still highly pressured like a lot of Midwest public land.

 

[trekker9]

Ohio isn't putting out the big Public Land bucks it used to. Still a few, but nothing like 15 years ago. Way too many you tube wannabes looking for "content". Punch Ohio Public land buck in the search bar and you get a bunch of videos with titles like "OHIO BBD on Public Land" and they are all 120" deer. It's almost weird.

 

[trekker9]

Everything like this goes full circle. Ohio Public Land will be empty in 5-10 years. The You tubers and their fanboys will keep shooting 2 year old 8 points and people will eventually realize there are better places to hunt big deer on Public Land.

 

[trekker9]

Did a little research today. Ohio has 16 acres of Public land for every non resident tag sold this year.

Shit show.

 

[gjs4]

I hunt all over including in wNY and southern OH.

The only disagreement is that there isnt much for public in Ohio. Thats not true. What is true is whether you see hunters or not, things have really regressed quality wise. SE OH had an ass kicker of an EHD outbreak in 22. Tying that in with the above- lots of young deer got smoked due to folks being impatient and not seeing much. Locals and OOS guys. The culture is slipping fast there.

NY also has tons of public with 85% being mountainous garbage for hunting. The culture is horrid with cheats and lawlessness being rampant.

IL public most OOS can access is mobbed. Its the same group of folks youll see in OH + cajuns.

Its ironic how hunter numbers are continually sated to be decreasing...yet hunting quality bucks is falling faster.

Best advice is master your early season game, timing bow hunts with popular gun hunt state openers.

 

[Ry_Harr_81]

well I wasn’t comparing Ohio to Michigan and I’m not saying that one state has more property than the other. But to make a statement that “Ohio has very small amounts of public land” is a very inaccurate statement. I believe Wayne national forest alone is 240,000 acres.

Lol you guys should try hunting Delaware then talk to me about which state has low amounts of public land haha. I will say tho I'm starting to do my research on Ohio. 88 counties and some don't have more than 500 acres of public which is crazy. Wayne has hundreds of thousands, quite a few others have tens of thousands. I think there are plenty of options especially if you don't go barreling towards the areas in the top 10 counties...cause everyone probably goes to those.

 

[rw79]

, You’re joking right? Wayne national forest covers like hundreds of thousand acres. There’s lots of public land in Ohio.

The percentage of public lands in Ohio is approximately 5%. While Wayne NF offers a lot of land to hunt, the state overall has little public land accessibility.