Not a fan in its current format.
A. The drawing system is not equitable.
B. This state has very little public land in comparison to most others. There’s quite a few places (my house is one) where you can drive an hour in any direction and not reach any public hunting land. Sykes seems intent on furthering the SOA system. I’d much rather see him add small chunks of land for public use, scattered around the state. The DNR is brimming with money currently. Record license sales + corn permits. Yet our wmas are shrinking every year and SOAs are being added like crazy. It’s much more appealing to me, to have year round access vs. be drawn for a higher quality hunt once every 5-10 years.
C. Everyone acts like small acreage can’t support the pressure. That’s bullshit. It works pretty well in many states around us and I’ve often found the small parcels to be less pressured.
D. From information I’ve gathered, I believe certain SOAs are used by state bigwigs without going through the process we all have to. That pisses me off to no end.
Does anyone REALLY think that Sykes and his senator buddies don’t load up and go down to Portland landing every weekend he doesn’t decide to let us peasants have a go at it?
LMAOOO
When I was at Portland Landing, one of the state helpers told me that the game warden (Justin) chased/hunted a turkey 13 miles via GPS. Not sure if he was drawn or not, I didn't ask.
One thing I did notice was there was only 7 groups combined for the Portland Landing and Cedar Creek hunt. I did ask if more groups were selected and just didn't show up. The state helper told me that all groups that were selected did show up and all hunts are 50% capacity. The last time I looked Portland has 18 units and Cedar Creek has 18 units. So a total of 7 groups for 2 SOA's with a combined 36 units is far less than 50% capacity. With that amount of land, I certainly feel more people should be selected.
