GOING PUBLIC

Do-it-yourself public-land hunting is all the rage these days. I find that kind of amusing, since back well before the QDM private-land craze I was a young man with no spare change in his pocket with no landowner friends that had to explore vast tracts of public land out West if I wanted to hunt.

Along the way I’ve made all the mistakes. Two, however, stand out. The first is time. Public-land hunting demands a commitment of time that many cannot, or will not, give. Unless you have public hunting ground close to home, you’ll have to travel long distances, maybe to another state, which often requires camping out in a local motel, a tent, or, as I often do, in the bed of my truck. Putting in the time during hunting season is often compressed into a week’s vacation time, not the before and after work hunting local landowners enjoy.

The second, and most important, piece of the puzzle, is scouting. There is simply no substitution for knowing