Take a Whitetail Hunting Road Trip
Ever have a hankering to see new country and hunt deer where the big ones live? Heed this advice to fill your thirst for a DIY public land adventure. By Bernie Barringer Imagine it’s the 1990’s and you’re sitting in front of your TV in North Carolina, Michigan or Pennsylvania, watching a young Michael Waddell shoot a huge buck in the Midwest. You’re thinking, I could never hope to shoot a buck like that where I live. Many wide-eyed people had no idea mature bucks were available in good numbers, but these sights kindled a desire in hunters to experience it for themselves. The growth of outdoor TV and online videos created an interest in hunting whitetails in the destination states that has snowballed into a massive empire of outfitters and high-priced nonresident tags over the past couple decades. And the reason comes down to this: the grass actually is greener over there. According to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, more than 3 million nonresident hunting tags are sold each year. That’s triple the number of traveling hunters since the advent of outdoor TV and YouTube. There’s a tidal wave of people traveling to hunt. Some people would rather hire an outfitter to experience excellent hunting, but others aren’t willing to pay the high price or prefer the satisfaction that comes with going it alone. I’ve done 25 DIY public land bow-hunting trips in eight states since 2006 and I’ve learned a thing or two about being successful in what I have termed, “Freelance Bowhunting.” If you’re interested in the challenge and thrill that comes with public land hunting in a state where you may bag a buck bigger than you’d ever shoot where you live, listen up, I have some advice that will help you make the decisions necessary to have a trip to remember. But before loading the truck, you must first ask yourself a few questions, the most important of which is, “What do I want to get out of this?” Your ultimate goal may be to shoot a buck bigger than you’ll shoot at home. Or it may be to simply experience something new, see new scenery and try new things. Your goal may be to just enjoy some time away from home with friends or it may be to learn a new style of hunting that you can employ to make you a better hunter where you live. Maybe you would like to go hunt where the weather is a lot different than you’re accustomed to. These are all possibilities and no one can answer these questions for you. Pick a State The first choice you must make has to do with how much money you’re willing to put into this adventure. The second has to do with how long you’re willing to wait for a tag. Some states offer over-the-counter (OTC) nonresident whitetail deer tags, but others require an application process and a wait. Most hunting zones in Kansas can be drawn every other year, for example. Same for Montana and Wyoming. Iowa is the most extreme case; more than 20,000 nonresident hunters apply for the 6,000 tags each year. To draw an archery tag in the most desirable zones will take 3-5 years off applying and accumulating preference points. Your final costs to be fully licensed will run upwards of $750. Iowa has the goods and hunters continue to pay up. Generally, states that have the most desirable whitetail hunting offer limited entry for nonresidents and higher license fees. And let’s face it, most people don’t go to the trouble and cost of an out-of-state hunt for a yearling buck or a fat doe. Antlers are the draw, like it or not. States that produce the most B&C and P&Y bucks have the most to offer the nonresident hunter. I spent a lot of hours going through Pope & Young statistics by county in the 16 states I consider to be “destination” states. I mapped those counties within each state and published the results in my book The Freelance Bowhunter. What I found was there are areas of each state that produce the most big bucks. These were also the areas where the buck tags are most desirable and difficult to draw. But there are some interesting pockets of great deer hunting that are not common knowledge and don’t get the press. And some of them are in states with OTC tags. Doing your research is worth the time. Elbow Room Missouri is an example of a state with abundant public deer hunting land, and with an OTC tag at a bargain price of $225, it allows the hunter to take two deer (one antlered) and two turkeys. Because of this, the public hunting areas get a lot of nonresident pressure, particularly those near the Iowa border. I’ve pulled into a parking lot of a public hunting area in the Show-Me state and counted a dozen trucks with license plates from half a dozen different states. Ohio would be another state that falls into a similar category. There is lots of public land, good numbers of mature bucks and high numbers of hunters. States like North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Nebraska offer good hunting with reasonable OTC tags, and enough land to find some elbow room if you work at it. The ratio of public hunting land in comparison to the number of hunters is in the favor of the traveling hunter. On the other extreme is Illinois, where public land is crowded and tags are expensive. Want a sleeper? Indiana. Cheap deer tags, good numbers of mature bucks and decent amount of public land which is mostly broken up into small state and county management areas, plus some large federal areas along rivers and reservoirs. It’s not in the top ten of most traveling hunters’ lists but it deserves another look. Here’s another tip: Some states have programs into which private landowners can enroll their land as public