This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land

Ahhhhhh public land hunting, you gotta love it. Throw a hundred and fifty hunters on a 10,000 acres, all with high hopes of killing a whitetail with a set of horns that a moose would envy, and you better believe there’s going to be problems.

I’m a member of several large social media outdoor groups, and I would about bet the farm that on any given day there will be at least one post where someone is complaining about another hunter’s actions.

Sad thing is… most of the time… it’s the person doing the complaining that’s in the wrong.

I’m going to give my take on the two most common complaints I hear this time of year. Some of y’all won’t like it, and I’m ok with that.

“I cleaned an area out, got it ready to hunt, and when I went back in to hunt someone had hung their climber on my tree I planned on hunting.”

I’m sorry, but this makes about as much sense as me cleaning a spot off on the beach and expecting to come back tomorrow and claim it as mine from whoever beat me down there with a beach chair.

A WMA belongs to anyone and everyone who is legally hunting on it. Period.

Here’s my other favorite line… as a matter of fact I just saw a post like this a few days ago.

“This fellow came in at daylight and climbed a tree 50 yards from me.”

Then another commentator, I’ll call him Billy Bob, chimes on the post… “I’d just climb down and unload my rifle (as in fire off all your bullets) if I were you. If i can’t kill nothing, nobody else is either.”

No. No. No…

If I were to do this next time someone moves in on me at my favorite fishing hole, I’d do five to 10 years in a Georgia correctional facility.

On the flip side of all this, I do understand some of the frustration of dealing with hunters on public land, the hunters who flat out lack common courtesy and who do things differently than you would.

But there again, it’s public land. I don’t care how you spin it, if they aren’t breaking a law then they have just as much right to the property as you. If you don’t acknowledge that, then you have less common courtesy than the ones you’re accusing of being in the wrong. Plain and simple.

That’s not my opinion..it’s facts.

Satilla Feed & Outdoors