Sandhills, NE

[rhendrix]

In my quest to find a good OTC public land for mule deer next year I ran across several people who have hunted the early archery season here and had success. Have any roksliders ever ventured here before?

 

[rhendrix]

Anyone?

 

[J-Daddy]

I've hunted further west around the grasslands in the Crawford area a lot....Used to be good, sucks now days. Past 3 years the mule deer population seems like it really took a nose dive out there. In '07 I hunted it for a week and saw an absolute ton of mule deer...by 2010 they were damn near impossible to find around there.

 

[Lukem]

Very little public land in the Sandhills. All ranches. Little bit of public around Halsey and Valentine Refuge, but not a lot. Like J-Daddy said, mule deer pop in NW has taken a hit over the last 10 years with excess tags due to CWD. NGPC is making some changes in their doe tag strategies to try and turn that around, but it'll take a few years.

 

[Evan Williams]

Not to mention the bout of Blue tongue hitting the state right now their entire herd is being hammered as it is in MANY mid-Western states unfortunately.

 

[rhendrix]

Thanks, I knew the amount of public ground in the Sandhills wasn't much, but I think I'd have better luck hunting SD.

And I thought EHD was exclusive to whitetails?

 

[Jared Bloomgren]

EHD has only been hitting the whitetails that I know of. SD is in the same boat with both declined deer numbers and EHD.

 

[rhendrix]

The benefit to SD though is that there are much larger tracts of public land that are walk in only.

My other option is ID, but if I do that I'd want a hunting buddy, grizzlies and big cats are something this country boy has never dealt with. And I don't wanna learn any lessons the hard way.