The Real Reasons Why Public Land Whitetails are the Ultimate Deer Hunting Trophy

What happens when you write hunting articles, even benign hunting articles you assume won’t piss people off, is that you end up pissing people off anyway. So, you start to think about how to say something you want to say, but also add in a qualifier or two to head off the rage.

For example, I might want to say something about the October Lull, like I don’t really believe it’s a good enough excuse to not hunt. A lot of hunters would disagree, so I’d follow it up with a statement about how it also might be prudent to sit out mid-October to wait for the pre-rut in certain situations, for certain hunters.

This default communication style exists all over the hunting space, and really all spaces where opinions are offered to the masses, but there is one category I’m sick of glossing over—the one involving how difficult hunting for whitetails is.

Now, I know that it’s generally regarded that public land whitetails are more difficult to kill than private land deer, but no one really dives into why (beyond the increased deer hunting pressure aspect). The truth is, killing a deer where anyone can hunt is as difficult as it will get for any of us, but maybe not for the most obvious reasons.

When I set up a stand on some of my private parcels, I go through a pretty standard process. I’ll hang the set, screw in a bow hanger, cut an access trail and maybe some shooting lanes, and then leave it alone to settle down before I return. In a lot of cases, I’ll leave a cell camera to feed me real-time deer data.

Almost everything I did there, which is totally legal on most private land in most states, could be illegal on public. You want to use a screw-in bow hanger? Probably not. Cut a few shooting lanes? Nope. In many cases, leaving that cell camera is a no-no, too. Now, this all depends on your chosen state, and then the type of land you’re on, but there is no doubt that public land hunting is far more restrictive in general than private land hunts.

This is what I think about a lot when people argue that some of the biggest names in deer hunting would do just as well leaving their managed properties for a public land hunt. I doubt that very much, and it wouldn’t just be because they can’t curate a spot to bring the deer to them. It would be all of the little details that they never think about when setting up their stands or blinds that come into play. Going from private land to public is often a real shock to hunters, and it goes way beyond the limitations on stand and blind setups.

Several years ago I had a conversation with one of the biggest names in deer hunting, and he mentioned that the bucks on his farm actually start to daylight more as they get older. He admitted he didn’t know why. He just knew that it was true.

I don’t know why either, because I can’t read a deer’s mind, but my guess is that the deer on his place have no negative interactions moving in daylight for most of their lives. If they stay where the herd is being managed to produce big deer, no one is going to shoot at them when they are under at least 4.5 years old. Prey animals that feel safe, act like prey animals that feel safe.

Now, look at this a different way. What if instead of walking past hunters who don’t shoot at them, ever, they walk past hunters who almost always shoot at them (or try to shoot at them, anyway). And instead of a couple of neutral hunter encounters per season, the deer have dozens of negative encounters.

This isn’t universally true, and it is anecdotal, but almost every older deer (bucks and does) I’ve killed on public and pressured private, has shown evidence of wounds. A lot of them have had some type of arrow or bullet wound, to the point where it doesn’t surprise me much to find them. That doesn’t really prove anything, but I’m going to use it to illustrate my point about public land deer being more difficult to kill than private land deer, anyway.

A few years ago, I walked into a cattail slough with my muzzleloader in western Minnesota. My goal was to find any buck, and the day before, I’d glassed a couple of them heading into the slough to bed for the day.

As I crested a small rise over the slough, the first thing I saw was a doe. She stood still for a second, and then bolted through the cattails and scattered willows, but not away from me. A minute or two later, I saw the blaze orange vest of a pheasant hunter slowly moving through the cover.

I let him hunt his way through and then settled in with lower hopes than I had when I left the truck. The bucks, predictably, didn’t show up. If I had walked in a few minutes later, I might not have known why. This is the thing about public land: you aren’t just working against other deer hunters.

Anyone can come in and hunt small game, or fall turkeys, or do whatever. The presence of a pheasant hunter in a slough might not affect deer like a deer hunter would, but it doesn’t help. The impact will be negative, most likely. If you doubt that, go knock on the door of a devout trophy deer hunter and ask for permission to squirrel hunt his woods in October.

All of this activity is a deer-pattern killer. You think you found something worth hunting, but the pattern dies before you even spend an hour in the stand. It might be from you, or from a new crossbow hunter determined to walk one down who passed through an hour before you showed up. The randomness of it all, and the generally negative aspects of human presence, make public land so much more difficult than private.

These are just some of the reasons I feel like public land bucks are the ultimate deer hunting trophy. I know a lot of folks will disagree, but most of them won’t go prove me wrong on dirt that anyone can hunt. I think that says something…