I guess we could start a thread about the haves and have nots as well. Two miles from my property, there is a hunt club that grows 250 acres of corn each year, then floods it just before duck season. If you have $5000.00 expendable cash, you can be hauled in, sit in a pit blind and shoot ducks. My pityful little pot hole, with a dozen decoys can not contend with the 500 or so put out by the club, but should they not be able to do that, because I sit and watch nearly every flight pitch in to their spread?
Hound hunters cross my property at night running coons, and any one who will wade that swamp is not being lazy, that is a for sure thing. It is just a different type of hunting. It is a time honored tradition here in West TN.
Some would take umbridge to the fact that I deer hunt from trees stands positioned on travel routes to feed plots, not sporting, akin to baiting. However, I am pretty sure that I know my place better than most folks know where they hunt. I have walked those 150 acres my whole life, bought it from my grandfather. Took my first squirrel, deer, and duck on this same piece of ground. I have planted 200 Sawtooth oaks, 50 chestnut trees, every fence row is seeded to honeysuckle, and I have four different food plot areas. I have numerous mineral licks that I keep freshened. I have tons of time and money buried in that ground, and I do not want any one telling me how or what to hunt there. The state opened a refuge just down the road, and as the throngs drive by, they see the deer standing in the pea patches during the fall, and I spend more time running them off my place than I do hunting any more.
Outside trespass problems, (and this is not religated purely to hound hunters, as evidenced by the number of deer hunters that I have to escort of my property each year) I have no beef with the hound men. Personally, all the coon hunters around home know that they can hunt my place, keep the gates shut, do not rut up my fields with 4 wheel drives. I see the evidence of who is in and out, and if it gets to be a problem the guys will help me keep the trash out, as it would limit their ability to use my place. As hunters, we had better watch each others back instead of bitching and fighting about different methods, or all our grandkids will see is faded pictures of our way of life.
