Fed up with hunting and sportsman clubs?

Well unfortunately in many states in the lower 48 its getting hard to find places for such recreation. In Montana for example tens of thousands of miles of forest service roads have been gated off and closed to motorized traffic. Other places are so regulated its ridiculous. In others you have to pay for permits for about every darn thing. But here in Alaska there are still VAST areas open to the public. When I say vast I mean areas larger than many states. And you can still gather plants, berries, mushrooms etc for personal use all over the state. Say you need some salmon for the winter. Well in rural areas you can gill net well over a hundred salmon. You can long line for halibut, catch all the shrimp, crabs and shell fish you can eat and end up with freezers full of food. There are countless places to go hunting, fishing, camping that have no fees to visit or use. However some want to change this here as they have in other states. Its all about $$$. Those gated off roads in Montana I mentioned? Well the forest service rents out keys to those gates to hunting guide services for big bucks. And they allow timber companies access also because again of the cash involved. Local and state agencies want to cash in on permits for everything from cutting a x-mass tree to picking mushrooms. Camp grounds that were free are now charging $$. This goes for boat ramps and other recreational access areas; they want $$$!!

Some felt the answer was to secure areas by sportsmans clubs buying or leasing property so there are areas for hunters. Sometimes this helped and sometimes it just shut out more land depending of the club and local regulations.

So whats a person to do?! Well I moved to Alaska to get away from all that. But whats needed is for sportsmen and women to get organized and fight this movement to close off land to public use and some are doing that. If it weren’t for originations like Ducks Unlimited there would be far less areas for hunting waterfowl. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is another who is securing land for hunting and there are others. So while some sports clubs may hinder public use of land others help provide that.

What I see is public land being restricted so much for public use its almost like they want to keep everyone out and just close it off.

If you want true freedom to enjoy public land I suggest Alaska. Early this month I spent a week in a river bottom salmon fishing, duck and goose hunting and I didn’t have to pay a dime to camp and not a single fish and game personnel or forest ranger was to be seen. We had miles of wilderness to enjoy and not a single gated off road! We ate fresh cooked salmon, trout and duck and picked blueberries for blue berry pancakes in the morning. Live is grand here!

in kansas this has been a problem for years. not just with hunting clubs, but with guides from other states. deer, turkey, waterfowl, and upland are all stressed by this pressure. the state responded with Walk-in Hunting areas. privately owned, public access during certain times of the year. the response was incredible and now the state doesnt have enough money for everyone who wants to enroll their land. they accept donations to the program. Its perfect for cerain types of landowners who may only own the land for mineral rights, or lease it to farmers, or have crp. i guess thats probably not possible in west virginia, but it helps around here.

That's one of the few benefits of the Federal government owning ("managing" they call it) 98% of Nevada. Very little private land outside of cities and towns, and most of it, with large exceptions for the Test Site (Area 51) and military installations, open for hunting.

No, I don't have this problem in my state. Maybe because a lot of people just assume that we don't have hunting here in California. More for us then~