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timberjack86 said:
You lose opportunity when you cannot find a place to park on public land. They have pimped out our wildlife and limited public land to the point of no return. The only solution is more access to more land. I hope with this large License price increase it equals more funds for aquireing more public land. But I'm not holding my breath.
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I know two increases to public land hunting in the next couple years. One new addition and one will be almost doubling in size. As of now, I don't know how the hunting will be administered. One could be overseen by TWRA but the addition will continue to follow state seasons. I can't add anymore at this time.
 
I assume the new addition is Wolf River State Forest. Almost guaranteed to be draw, especially since two other state forests in the vicinity recently went draw.

Tennessee Department of Agriculture Division of Forestry Announces New State Forest

The Tennessee Department of Agriculture Division of Forestry (TDF) is proud to announce that 5,477 acres in Fayette County will become the state’s 16th state forest. The property, which will be named Wolf River State Forest, will open to visitors in 2025.
www.tn.gov www.tn.gov
 
My favorite is when the hunting influencers donate a few bucks to a conservation organization to try and make folks think they are helping. I know for a fact THP was approaching state agencies and offering to donate money. It'd benefit THP WAY MORE than the state agency.

What is a state agency gonna do with $5,000 - $10,000. Buy two more acres of public land to throw all the newly influenced turkey hunters on? Whereas THP can make multiple posts and videos about their GREAT donation.

You can't even put a price on the lost opportunities. Its pretty f'd up.
 
IMO the bigger issue is land development in Tennessee. Public land is eat up here because there's hardly any private land to hunt. At least in Middle TN the culture is different than anywhere else I've been in the south as far as the amount of folks who own land or have a farm that don't hunt themselves and don't want anyone hunting it... So there's less private land than any time before, most of it has been subdivided into lots too small to do any hunting on even outside of neighborhoods, and of the few folks who do own more than say 40 acres, they don't want anyone hunting it. Now add how much Middle TN has grown in population and folks don't have any choice but to hunt public. In the surrounding states public isn't near as bad because they actually have access to large tracts of private land. In TN to find a hunting club you're gone have to play $4,000 a year to hunt somewhere 2 hours away minimum and if that place don't work out you're SOL. In Alabama there's 40 clubs within an hour in any direction. If that don't work then you probably know another 30 folks who have a minimum 80 acres that got no problem with you hunting a couple times. Blame THP all you want for the public land being eat up but let me know where else folks should hunt in this state.
 
BamaHudson said:
IMO the bigger issue is land development in Tennessee. Public land is eat up here because there's hardly any private land to hunt. At least in Middle TN the culture is different than anywhere else I've been in the south as far as the amount of folks who own land or have a farm that don't hunt themselves and don't want anyone hunting it... So there's less private land than any time before, most of it has been subdivided into lots too small to do any hunting on even outside of neighborhoods, and of the few folks who do own more than say 40 acres, they don't want anyone hunting it. Now add how much Middle TN has grown in population and folks don't have any choice but to hunt public. In the surrounding states public isn't near as bad because they actually have access to large tracts of private land. In TN to find a hunting club you're gone have to play $4,000 a year to hunt somewhere 2 hours away minimum and if that place don't work out you're SOL. In Alabama there's 40 clubs within an hour in any direction. If that don't work then you probably know another 30 folks who have a minimum 80 acres that got no problem with you hunting a couple times. Blame THP all you want for the public land being eat up but let me know where else folks should hunt in this state.
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We blame THP for making the public land continually more crowded by whoring out our resources for their profit. Sure, some of that is a result of once hunted private land being turned into subdivisions but there is no doubt that THP, and people like them, aggressively recruit new hunters and have made public land the cool way to hunt for social media addicted folks.

Plus, TWRA was already very well aware of the turkey decline, had removed one bird from the bag limit, and were discussing how to fix things. So during all this, they thought it was a good idea to shell out $10k to an influencer to bring even more hunting pressure to a bird rapidly declining in population??

The popularity of hunting clubs in Alabama is likely tied to them legalizing bait on private land for deer. It's ridiculous, but what could be easier than killing a deer over a 200# pile of corn?

Here in SC the public land isn't quite as badly pressured for deer as other states, but come turkey season it looks like Walmart on a Saturday afternoon. And you can 100% guarantee it's going to be worse this season since last year those THP dorks came here and made videos hunting in the mountains. They didn't kill a turkey and I hope they never return here. Our public land hunting is bottom of the barrel compared to other Southern states. The last thing we need is them creating even more pressure.
 
MidTennFisher said:
We blame THP for making the public land continually more crowded by whoring out our resources for their profit. Sure, some of that is a result of once hunted private land being turned into subdivisions but there is no doubt that THP, and people like them, aggressively recruit new hunters and have made public land the cool way to hunt for social media addicted folks.

Plus, TWRA was already very well aware of the turkey decline, had removed one bird from the bag limit, and were discussing how to fix things. So during all this, they thought it was a good idea to shell out $10k to an influencer to bring even more hunting pressure to a bird rapidly declining in population??

The popularity of hunting clubs in Alabama is likely tied to them legalizing bait on private land for deer. It's ridiculous, but what could be easier than killing a deer over a 200# pile of corn?

Here in SC the public land isn't quite as badly pressured for deer as other states, but come turkey season it looks like Walmart on a Saturday afternoon. And you can 100% guarantee it's going to be worse this season since last year those THP dorks came here and made videos hunting in the mountains. They didn't kill a turkey and I hope they never return here. Our public land hunting is bottom of the barrel compared to other Southern states. The last thing we need is them creating even more pressure.
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I can understand hunting shows drawing more pressure to areas but I'd bet that will ebb and flow with time. Non residents may head to whatever state THP most recently posted that year but may not have success and may not come back every year as they'll likely plan their next season travel around a different state.

Having influencers bring in more Non res tags likely brought in a ton of money for conservation, more than enough to offset a bunch of unsuccessful hunters who might have gotten one bird tops. Basically the non res folks who think they can be like the influencer and hunt public land for 2 days and bag a bird end up getting fleeced by the state.

Regarding Alabama's hunting access, if hunting over corn is that easy you'd imagine Alabama would lead the pack in hunter success. Instead, it didn't make the top 10 in success % in the NDAs most recent study. Ironically, South Carolina (71%)was #1 followed by Tennessee (65%). For the top states shooting multiple deer per season, again South Carolina (45) and Tennessee (33) were 1 and 2. Alabama was 10th with 17%. ( https://deerassociation.com/top-10-states-for-deer-hunter-success-and-multiple-deer-tagged/ ) If killing deer over bait is the easy way, wouldn't that discourage people from joining a hunting club since they can just dump a bag of corn in the woods on their 6 acres and call it a day?

Part of my point with Alabama/MS/etc is that the public land isn't nearly as pressured as TN due to simply having so many other options to hunt whether it be private land or leases. Sure public land is still pressured, it has pressure everywhere because it is public land... It's just worse in states where public is the only possible option.

Some of it is a separate issue-
I think SC over killed the turkeys and are stuck playing a steep game of catch up and that's their own residents fault. Folks worry themselves to death about hunter pressure but then complane online when they aren't allowed to kill 4 Toms a year. Its like people shooting every deer with antlers on their property every season then blaming hunter pressure for there not being any big bucks.

Hopefully a bunch of idiots come out and try and hunt the SC public land this year and every one of them pay $350 to get skunked then never come back so the state can help you get some birds again. I can't stand public pressure either i just think there's more to the story than youtube hunters.
 
BamaHudson said:
I can understand hunting shows drawing more pressure to areas but I'd bet that will ebb and flow with time. Non residents may head to whatever state THP most recently posted that year but may not have success and may not come back every year as they'll likely plan their next season travel around a different state.

Having influencers bring in more Non res tags likely brought in a ton of money for conservation, more than enough to offset a bunch of unsuccessful hunters who might have gotten one bird tops. Basically the non res folks who think they can be like the influencer and hunt public land for 2 days and bag a bird end up getting fleeced by the state.

Regarding Alabama's hunting access, if hunting over corn is that easy you'd imagine Alabama would lead the pack in hunter success. Instead, it didn't make the top 10 in success % in the NDAs most recent study. Ironically, South Carolina (71%)was #1 followed by Tennessee (65%). For the top states shooting multiple deer per season, again South Carolina (45) and Tennessee (33) were 1 and 2. Alabama was 10th with 17%. ( https://deerassociation.com/top-10-states-for-deer-hunter-success-and-multiple-deer-tagged/ ) If killing deer over bait is the easy way, wouldn't that discourage people from joining a hunting club since they can just dump a bag of corn in the woods on their 6 acres and call it a day?

Part of my point with Alabama/MS/etc is that the public land isn't nearly as pressured as TN due to simply having so many other options to hunt whether it be private land or leases. Sure public land is still pressured, it has pressure everywhere because it is public land... It's just worse in states where public is the only possible option.

Some of it is a separate issue-
I think SC over killed the turkeys and are stuck playing a steep game of catch up and that's their own residents fault. Folks worry themselves to death about hunter pressure but then complane online when they aren't allowed to kill 4 Toms a year. Its like people shooting every deer with antlers on their property every season then blaming hunter pressure for there not being any big bucks.

Hopefully a bunch of idiots come out and try and hunt the SC public land this year and every one of them pay $350 to get skunked then never come back so the state can help you get some birds again. I can't stand public pressure either i just think there's more to the story than youtube hunters.
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I would argue that the reason SC's success percentage is so high, in addition to bait making it easier, is the extremely long rifle season. Starts in August for the coastal zones (private land only, the poors have to wait until October). For the rest of the state it starts Oct 1 for muzzy, Oct 11th for rifle and goes until Jan 1st.

With 3+ months of gun season, and piles of corn on the ground, it is pretty easy to kill deer on private land here that holds deer which is where about 98% of the deer are killed according to harvest data.

SC is having the same issue as TN in terms of development. We led the country in 2024 in growth, unfortunately. I wish our elected officials would stop issuing building permits but all they see is more tax revenue. Bob's 50 acres doesn't generate as much property tax as woods as it does if it gets flattened and turned into a crappy subdivision. They'd be happy if they killed every oak tree in this entire state and put a house or shopping center on it. And the hunt clubs here are getting sold off to be turned into subdivisions. So our public land is going to get more crowded.

But that's exactly why I hate hunting influencers and all this crap on social media. Hunting access is declining, rapidly. Why are they aggressively recruiting more hunters into a declining number of acres to hunt? Money, that's the reason. And they defend it with the old, "Hunter numbers are declining so we have to recruit more to save hunting" which is Covid-level propaganda.

Hunter numbers are not declining. They're also not aging out, that's another ridiculous one we're told by people who stand to make money off new hunters.

Shoot I'm 42 and I can't tell you the last time I ran into a hunter on public land that was older than me. Nor can I tell you the last time I thought to myself, "Man this public land used to be so much more crowded than it is these days." So I don't support anything that generates new hunters if it isn't also generating more hunting access.

THP and the likes are not only NOT generating more access, they're contributing to the increased leasing of land so knocking on doors no longer works, and people get priced out of what they can afford to lease. People want to pay more for access to private ground so they can have good hunting and keep that social media content coming.
 

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