Percent of your land you actually hunt

[BSK]

Ever wondered how much of your hunting property you actually hunt? That question came up among the hunters in my family. We have a 500-acre property, but how much of that acreage are we taking advantage of? Now I completely agree every managed property needs "no-go" sanctuaries. But beyond those designated areas, are hunters spreading themselves out or just hunting the same places over and over?

In fact, this idea is how my thread on road maintenance came about. One of my brothers and I were talking about how currently, all of our access roads on our property are on ridge-tops (old logging roads we converted to all-vehicle access). And as we get older, we tend to set up stands and hunt fairly close to these ridge-line access roads. Hunting near the bottoms of the valleys is just too much of a chore. Climbing 20-30 stories down very steep slopes, carrying all of our gear, and then back up, half the time in total darkness, is not appealing to 60 and 70-year-olds! So, I got to wondering, how much of our property are we actually hunting? To test this, I plotted every stand we've used for the last 10 years on a map and drew a 75-yard buffer around each one (approximately the average maximum visual range from a stand on our place). Then I measured all of the property outside of those 75-yard circles. Turns out, over the last 10 years, we've only hunted 54% of our property (46% unhunted). That blew me away considering how many hunters we often have on the place, especially during MZ season. And the vast majority of the unhunted property is unhunted simply because there is no easy access into those parts of the property. Hence the need to build new roads - so we will actual use all of the acreage we have available.

Do you know how much of your property you are actually using?

 

[backyardtndeer]

Do you know how much of your property you are actually using?

The majority of our hunting is done on about maybe 12 acres out of 55. Most of our property is rolling hill cow pasture in front of and to the side of the house, we don't hunt where our cows are with the exception of the bottom. I usually close that off about the time I start feeding hay, or when it starts getting too wet. I kill more coyotes in the bottom than anything else, but my wife has killed a couple pretty decent bucks down there.

 

[Antler Daddy]

I estimate about 15-20% on land we own.

 

[Ski]

I've got 100 acres and hunt just a few spots. While I don't have any designated "sanctuaries" i do have areas in rarely go into and almost never hunt. My property is purposely set up so bucks move through "nothing" zones of mature hardwoods in order to get to "hot zones" like plots and bedding cuts where does congregate. I hunt inside those nothing zones and avoid the hot zones. So really of 100 acres I'm probably only hunting single digit acreage, less than 10% of the property.

 

[Andy S.]

Very little, likely less than 5% (me actually hunting). I've oftentimes thought of this, as I typically can only see couple of acres in my hardwoods setups with leaf on, little more with leaf off. For hardwoods/cutover, which I much prefer, most hunters do not "utilize/hunt" near as much as the hunters who can see/hunt/shoot in open areas (ag/pasture/CRP). When thinking off the odds I have of seeing the mature buck I am after, I oftentimes think "you can only see 2 acres of the 200 acre block of woods, you better have guessed right today". Which is oftentimes not the case. I log a good many hours on stand for each mature buck seen in the hardwoods, and even more hours for each mature buck killed.

 

[BSK]

I log a good many hours on stand for each mature buck seen in the hardwoods, and even more hours for each mature buck killed.

If I combined all our hunting hours for all hunters, the average time on stand to see a mature buck is crazy high. Probably in the neighborhood of 150 hours. The time to kill one is even higher.

 

[deerhunter10]

I haven't thought about it. Probably 20 to 25 percent.