81% of harvested deer is from private land in the Northeast

[fab]

Been hunting ny 40 years.  Ny Does not collect  that data.  
 

I can’t see Public land harvest any higher than 20 percent.   If I had to guess 10 is probably more accurate.  
 

 

 

[hooks91]

Texas does not have much public land. So the numbers are going to favor  private land there

[fab]

Just did a Google search.  A little more than 16 percent of total land in pa is public. So again. Can’t see more than the 20 percent of the take on public. Probably closer to 10. 

[trapoholic]

On 3/24/2023 at 11:02 PM, hunterbob1 said:

I miss those days, 5:00 a.m. only vehicles on the highway everybody was wearing a orange hat the diners were full too, and at the end of the day after the hunt going home you'd see the successful hunters openly displaying their quarry without getting honked at and the middle finger

Yes, to some extent. I do not miss the crowds. And worrying if someone else got there before you and has that area under surveillance.

[JerseyJaysTaxidermy]

The 7:3 ratio for nj seems on par being nj is only about 19% public land.

(Sure some public and some private is not huntsble) 

But if there's more private land then there is definitely going to be more private land deer harvests..

[Bucndoe]

4 hours ago, trapoholic said:

Yes, to some extent. I do not miss the crowds. And worrying if someone else got there before you and has that area under surveillance.

Just a little "friendly competition" 

[Buck154]

Jersey has a good number from public land

[DJ0808]

5 hours ago, JerseyJaysTaxidermy said:

The 7:3 ratio for nj seems on par being nj is only about 19% public land.

(Sure some public and some private is not huntsble) 

But if there's more private land then there is definitely going to be more private land deer harvests..

It would've been interesting to see this overlayed with the percentage of hunters using private or public.

If 90% of the hunters are using public and getting 30% of total harvest it's pretty decent public land. If only 60% of hunters are using public, but are getting 30% of total harvest it's really great public land.

Either way it's still a pretty good chance at getting a deer on public in NJ.

[JFC1]

A lot of NJ public land is municipal and county parks whose managers require minimum harvest numbers for the right to hunt spots that are increasingly suburban. I would imagine that those sorts of parcels and the rules for hunting them do a lot to elevate NJ harvest numbers, as opposed to say the Water Gap or Stokes. States like MI or WI or Ohio don't face the same phenomenon anywhere near as intensely. So while I celebrate and contribute to NJ's public land numbers, they are elevated by a specific type of hunting that some might call culling. But unfortunately, and as I watch McMansions go up, "suburban" hunting increasingly seems like the future of deer hunting in NJ.