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Let's put it a different way... Have you hunted on private land that is part of the Access and Habitat Program?
Just wondering if this is a popular thing and if you've heard if landowners are still okay with it.
 
Yes a long ago when ODFW cared about hunters and before the fee hunting clubs started capitalizing on private hunting land.

Back in the day there were "welcome to hunt" signs every where you could access private land. Then the fee hunt clubs saw $$ and came in and leased most of it up for fee hunting so you rarely see it anymore if ever. I don't think odfw is working very hard at it.

I think that message note it said "message to hunters" is just to tell people when they do get access to private land not to go in and be a moron .

Thing is most hunters are good respectful people who respect the land and land owner. but there are some morons who go in and screw things up for the rest of us and opens the door for greedy fee hunt clubs to go in and and lease the land up and close it off to the rest of us.

So ODFW puts a message up asking people to respect the land and land owner. Problem is the same morons who go in a trash the land probably never took the time to read that.
 
Thanks for the reply, eldbillbo. That puts it into an appropriate perspective.

I can see why landowners would be more interested in private leasing to hunt clubs because of the cash and the assurance of one group being responsible for the care and clean up.

I haven't had that opportunity of hunting on any A & H program lands, (WA calls it "Free to Hunt", "Register to Hunt" and "Hunt by Reservation"), but I'm going to check into it more.

I wonder what it would take to get more property owners to participate. It seems the two biggest issues are cash and trash. No cash, you get trash. Get cash, and there's no trash. That's a tough one to overcome!

Bill
 
I can't see ODFW spending too much time promoting it. Maybe they do and we just don't see it anymore .
ODFW actually in my opinion started encouraging it with the LOP tags this gives the landowner extra preference points for tags that they can sale to fee hunters which fueled the demand to hunt fee hunting land. Naturally this helped put a end to welcome to hunt areas.

I grew up hunting the Hepner Unit because there was so much welcome to hunt areas. Most of this was cattle land . Then a certain so called Ranch came and leased most of it up. Our last year of hunting Hepner they leased up 10,000 acres just a couple months before hunting season ODFW offered to save the points for the next season and people could exchange for western tags but guess what not too many people went for that just so happened this was the area we hunted there were still pockets of welcome to hunt signs by the road but once you climbed to the top of the first rolling hill you would run into a fence .

That was the worst year of hunting due to overcrowding and the only time i have been shot at. And one of my friends got shot at too, he quite hunting after that and decided civilians should not own guns

So I crossed the fence at the top because there was no signs at all in no time some morons came driving up in a white jeep and said their customers did not like non paying hunters on the land and to get off the land.
 
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