connecticut hunting land for next year?
11-29-2008, 08:48 AM
#1
Fork Horn
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Connecticut, Central NY
Posts: 492
connecticut hunting land for next year?
My brother, my father and I are looking for hunting land in Ct for next year..... Right now we hunt at the Johnnycake airportin Burlington who recently put in a 50 acre development right through the center of the property, and for the last 2 years we havent seen more then 2 deer. We are looking for private property to hunt (not state land) because we would like to keep our stands up and not worry about them being stolen. So If you have any property that you wouldnt mind us hunting on we would really appreciate it. Im hoping for property specifically in the north west corner IE: Litchfield, Harwinton, Burlington, New Hartford, Barkhamstead etc.... But might be able to travel a little farther then that. Let me know whats out there please!
Thanks guys,
Mike
Thanks guys,
Mike
11-30-2008, 08:03 AM
#3
Spike
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 98
RE: connecticut hunting land for next year?
Good luck. I have no suggestions for you. Like you I have looked for private land for years. At this point I have access for a few years (relative of a friend whose son does not want to hunt). But, next year or the year after, it will end. So I am always on the lookout for more.
The days of giving permission to a stranger are long past. In part it is due to a changing culture where hunters are fewer and fewer in number. In part it is also due to our bad apples. A guy who once hunted the land I now I hunt who thought permission granted to him allowed him to bring in his family and friends. Now I heard of a clown who this week shot a golden retriever while poaching (all he and his buddies will get is slap on the hands - if I were the land owner I would seek a protective order against them and end their access to firearms - a fair punishment given their abuse of firearms). Before we quickly call this an isolated event we need to clean up our act. I ran into a similar jerk a couple of years who told me that if he saw me and my dog hunting pheasant (legally) on state land again while he was deer hunting he would shoot my dog. I walked away. I called the police and they could not be bothered. Enough venting.
The days of giving permission to a stranger are long past. In part it is due to a changing culture where hunters are fewer and fewer in number. In part it is also due to our bad apples. A guy who once hunted the land I now I hunt who thought permission granted to him allowed him to bring in his family and friends. Now I heard of a clown who this week shot a golden retriever while poaching (all he and his buddies will get is slap on the hands - if I were the land owner I would seek a protective order against them and end their access to firearms - a fair punishment given their abuse of firearms). Before we quickly call this an isolated event we need to clean up our act. I ran into a similar jerk a couple of years who told me that if he saw me and my dog hunting pheasant (legally) on state land again while he was deer hunting he would shoot my dog. I walked away. I called the police and they could not be bothered. Enough venting.
11-30-2008, 09:41 AM
#4
Typical Buck
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location:
Posts: 819
RE: connecticut hunting land for next year?
If I was looking for land to hunt I would get a topo map and a county map. First I would locate good deer habitat and then I would go to the PLATT books in those towns and find out who owns the properties. There are actually people that will let you hunt due to the fact that they are losing their landscaping to deer, plants eaten, trees rubbed etc. Secondly who doesn't know someone that has had lime disease, babezia or ehrliciosis? They are all carried by ticks and the most prevalent host is the whitetail deer. I would also look for private land adjacent to public land for the increased access to wildlife. Often times the deer move off the state land to private when the guns start barking and arrows start flying.
It's difficult walking up to someone as a stranger and asking them to hunt on their land. They have legal fears and are protective of their family, pets etc. Try to introduce yourself first and get to know them before asking permission. When you do feel comfortable make sure they know you are not a slob hunter and obey game rules, gun laws and wouldn't think of bringing anyone else there with out their permission. It is often easier to secure bow hunting permissin first and then try gun access later afteryou have gained their trust and respect.
(In CT you must have a signed permission slip for each hunter anyway)
Yes it is work and may take a while. They may not let you hunt. However they may have a neighbor with acreage also and knowing them may make it easier for you with the next guy. Be gracious and understanding if they say no, and don't forget to get them some venison, a bottle of wine or other small token of thanks during the holidays.
It's difficult walking up to someone as a stranger and asking them to hunt on their land. They have legal fears and are protective of their family, pets etc. Try to introduce yourself first and get to know them before asking permission. When you do feel comfortable make sure they know you are not a slob hunter and obey game rules, gun laws and wouldn't think of bringing anyone else there with out their permission. It is often easier to secure bow hunting permissin first and then try gun access later afteryou have gained their trust and respect.
(In CT you must have a signed permission slip for each hunter anyway)
Yes it is work and may take a while. They may not let you hunt. However they may have a neighbor with acreage also and knowing them may make it easier for you with the next guy. Be gracious and understanding if they say no, and don't forget to get them some venison, a bottle of wine or other small token of thanks during the holidays.
11-30-2008, 11:34 AM
#5
Spike
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 98
RE: connecticut hunting land for next year?
Renard,
Been there and done most of that - and yes I do extend various courtesies to the land owner gracious enough to grant me access. But gaining access is a lot more complicated than asking someone, especially today when open land is measured in tens and not hundreds of acres. Quite often the obstacle is not the land owner, but his / her neighbors. It is easier for a land owner to say no to a hunter than to risk antagonizing neighbor who is there all year. It is not helped by the idiots who shot the dog in Watertown a few days ago. But it is not just the isolated jerks. There is a whole lot of neuroses and just plain misinformation out there. Look at what is happening to Blue Trails where people almost 2 miles away claim their houses are being hit by gunfire (not ballistically likely). My club has had to curtail some activities because a people in a development adjacent to the club's land (people moved there because the club land was undeveloped) complained of shooting (they did not know that people could hunt there), etc.
Access with bow is a bit easier than with a rifle / shotgun. It is quieter, does not require as much land, etc. I have several places where I have been offered access for bow hunting - but that is because of local ties cultivated over the years. But again it is not easy. It is a lot more than knocking on doors.
Been there and done most of that - and yes I do extend various courtesies to the land owner gracious enough to grant me access. But gaining access is a lot more complicated than asking someone, especially today when open land is measured in tens and not hundreds of acres. Quite often the obstacle is not the land owner, but his / her neighbors. It is easier for a land owner to say no to a hunter than to risk antagonizing neighbor who is there all year. It is not helped by the idiots who shot the dog in Watertown a few days ago. But it is not just the isolated jerks. There is a whole lot of neuroses and just plain misinformation out there. Look at what is happening to Blue Trails where people almost 2 miles away claim their houses are being hit by gunfire (not ballistically likely). My club has had to curtail some activities because a people in a development adjacent to the club's land (people moved there because the club land was undeveloped) complained of shooting (they did not know that people could hunt there), etc.
Access with bow is a bit easier than with a rifle / shotgun. It is quieter, does not require as much land, etc. I have several places where I have been offered access for bow hunting - but that is because of local ties cultivated over the years. But again it is not easy. It is a lot more than knocking on doors.
11-30-2008, 01:48 PM
#6
Fork Horn
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Connecticut, Central NY
Posts: 492
RE: connecticut hunting land for next year?
Ya..... Iwish I knew more people around here that owned some land. Will see what happens. Im thinking about asking an apple farm up the street to hunt there but Im almost positive that there are already hunters there. Thanks for the help
11-30-2008, 02:08 PM
#7
Join Date: Nov 2008
Posts: 39
RE: connecticut hunting land for next year?
i have a place 10 minutes form me and they said they would let me hunt bow only. only problem is i don't have a bow yet. next year i will get one and take the course. i am going to try a few more farms this week. i have a few places i can hunt in NY but none in CT.
11-30-2008, 04:19 PM
#8
Fork Horn
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Connecticut, Central NY
Posts: 492
RE: connecticut hunting land for next year?
ORIGINAL: hunter_kid20
i have a place 10 minutes form me and they said they would let me hunt bow only. only problem is i don't have a bow yet. next year i will get one and take the course. i am going to try a few more farms this week. i have a few places i can hunt in NY but none in CT.
i have a place 10 minutes form me and they said they would let me hunt bow only. only problem is i don't have a bow yet. next year i will get one and take the course. i am going to try a few more farms this week. i have a few places i can hunt in NY but none in CT.
11-30-2008, 06:10 PM
#9
Typical Buck
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location:
Posts: 819
RE: connecticut hunting land for next year?
I just received this email a little while ago this afternoon. It is a great starting point for a conversation on permission.
Deer overpopulation helps spread Lyme
[/align]Updated:11/24/2008 03:10:35 PM EST
After years of hearing about Lyme disease, the public and the news media have become lulled into a measure of complacency. The truth is, we have dropped our guard and allowed the Lyme epidemic to grow and spread.
In the latest Centers for Disease Control data (for 2006-07), Lyme disease had increased 71 percent in Connecticut and 39 percent across the United States.
It now can be found in all 50 states (but is most prevalent here in the Northeast). It is the fastest growing vector-borne disease in the country.
Some of our area towns are taking genuine steps to deal with the threat, while others are still waking up to the full extent of it.
In Newtown, where I live, for instance, there has been little sense of urgency from town officials, but I have regularly been seeing double-takes when I mention just two facts to random townspeople:
In a survey of Newtowners released early this year, 48 percent of our households reported they have had a family member treated for Lyme disease. By census figures, there are at least 8,325 households in Newtown, and thus, there have been at least 4,000 Newtowners treated for Lyme.
In recent testing, 70 percent of the deer ticks collected at the Newtown Middle School tested positive for Lyme bacteria (compared to around 30 percent of ticks from statewide collections).
As bad as Lyme disease is, there are other potentially fatal diseases, such as ehrlichiosis and babesiosis, that infest the same ticks. And therefore, one tick can cause, in a single bite, two or even three diseases.
For this reason, the Newtown Lyme Disease Task Force urgently supports renewed efforts on education about tick-borne diseases and measures that we can take to keep people from being bitten.
Every parent, and child of age, should be able to recognize the deer tick, know how to safely remove it (there are wrong ways that can increase the hazard) and recognize the symptoms of the diseases.
Unfortunately, while education and prevention are very important, it has been shown that these measures cannot give us full relief from tick-borne diseases.
There is a deer overpopulation problem in our region, and it is interlocked with the Lyme disease problem because of the deer tick.
The deer tick has a two-year life cycle. In the second year, the adult female tick gets to lay 2,000 to 3,000 eggs only if it feeds on a large mammal present in dense herds. The only mammal in this region that serves this task well is the white-tailed deer.
It is a matter of a threshold density. If the deer population remains at about 10 or 12 deer per square mile, the tick life cycle cannot be sustained, and you break the cycle of Lyme disease. The problem is, the deer density in Fairfield County is at 40 to 60 per square mile, and there are pockets of 80 or above.
When the deer problem is properly addressed, the incidence of Lyme disease drops within a few years to a dramatically smaller rate.
In one Connecticut community, getting the deer down to approximately 10 per square mile reduced the Lyme cases from 30 per year to only two per year.
Setting aside Lyme, deer overpopulation has many other bad effects. For instance, about a third of deer deaths reported every year come by collisions with motor vehicles. Besides the extensive vehicle damage, there are human injuries and even fatalities in these crashes.
The deer feed on our yards. Many communities, when they tally up the cost, discover that millions of dollars of flowers and shrubs are destroyed each year by deer. This would merely be an economic annoyance, perhaps, if the deer were not bringing infected ticks to our doorsteps.
There is serious damage being done to our woods. Deer overbrowsing is killing the forest understory, which erases the habitat of many animals and plants.
By destroying shrubs and ground covers, deer cause erosion of soils and alter the water runoff characteristics of the land, threatening any aquifer that might lie beneath it.
Further, the deer themselves suffer. In mild winters, they increase in number; in severe winters, they retreat to the conifer woods to die of starvation, out of sight of man.
When municipalities appoint study groups, they do diligent research and find there are multiple scientific studies defining the problems. Initially, they try to find non-lethal alternatives to culling the deer. But it soon becomes clear that a program of controlled hunting is the only effective approach that will reduce the herd to the sustainable capacity of the area.
Towns in our area that are using controlled hunting include Brookfield, Darien, Greenwich, Weston, Wilton, Ridgefield, Redding and others, including Audubon and Nature Conservancy properties.
When Brookfield addressed the problem, it got action in about seven months, most likely because a committed selectman headed the committee and was aware of all the other existing studies through the town's membership in the regional deer study group, the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance.
The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection also serves as a ready and able resource for deer management and has published a definitive booklet, "Managing Urban Deer in Connecticut." It is available free at http://www.ct.gov/dep/lib/dep/wildlife/pdf_files/game/urbandeer07.pdf.
If your town is reducing its deer population, you are addressing the threat of Lyme disease.
If not, you may expect more Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, not to mention more collisions with deer on the highway, more damage to your yard and more destruction of the woodlands.
David Shugarts of Newtown is a member of the Newtown Lyme Disease Task Force and Newtown liaison to the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance.
http://www.newstimes.com/ci_11063429....newstimes.com
No one mentions the fact that we are putting quality food on our families tables, free of hormones and anitbiotics!
[/align][/align]
Deer overpopulation helps spread Lyme
[/align]Updated:11/24/2008 03:10:35 PM EST
After years of hearing about Lyme disease, the public and the news media have become lulled into a measure of complacency. The truth is, we have dropped our guard and allowed the Lyme epidemic to grow and spread.
In the latest Centers for Disease Control data (for 2006-07), Lyme disease had increased 71 percent in Connecticut and 39 percent across the United States.
It now can be found in all 50 states (but is most prevalent here in the Northeast). It is the fastest growing vector-borne disease in the country.
Some of our area towns are taking genuine steps to deal with the threat, while others are still waking up to the full extent of it.
In Newtown, where I live, for instance, there has been little sense of urgency from town officials, but I have regularly been seeing double-takes when I mention just two facts to random townspeople:
In a survey of Newtowners released early this year, 48 percent of our households reported they have had a family member treated for Lyme disease. By census figures, there are at least 8,325 households in Newtown, and thus, there have been at least 4,000 Newtowners treated for Lyme.
In recent testing, 70 percent of the deer ticks collected at the Newtown Middle School tested positive for Lyme bacteria (compared to around 30 percent of ticks from statewide collections).
As bad as Lyme disease is, there are other potentially fatal diseases, such as ehrlichiosis and babesiosis, that infest the same ticks. And therefore, one tick can cause, in a single bite, two or even three diseases.
For this reason, the Newtown Lyme Disease Task Force urgently supports renewed efforts on education about tick-borne diseases and measures that we can take to keep people from being bitten.
Every parent, and child of age, should be able to recognize the deer tick, know how to safely remove it (there are wrong ways that can increase the hazard) and recognize the symptoms of the diseases.
Unfortunately, while education and prevention are very important, it has been shown that these measures cannot give us full relief from tick-borne diseases.
There is a deer overpopulation problem in our region, and it is interlocked with the Lyme disease problem because of the deer tick.
The deer tick has a two-year life cycle. In the second year, the adult female tick gets to lay 2,000 to 3,000 eggs only if it feeds on a large mammal present in dense herds. The only mammal in this region that serves this task well is the white-tailed deer.
It is a matter of a threshold density. If the deer population remains at about 10 or 12 deer per square mile, the tick life cycle cannot be sustained, and you break the cycle of Lyme disease. The problem is, the deer density in Fairfield County is at 40 to 60 per square mile, and there are pockets of 80 or above.
When the deer problem is properly addressed, the incidence of Lyme disease drops within a few years to a dramatically smaller rate.
In one Connecticut community, getting the deer down to approximately 10 per square mile reduced the Lyme cases from 30 per year to only two per year.
Setting aside Lyme, deer overpopulation has many other bad effects. For instance, about a third of deer deaths reported every year come by collisions with motor vehicles. Besides the extensive vehicle damage, there are human injuries and even fatalities in these crashes.
The deer feed on our yards. Many communities, when they tally up the cost, discover that millions of dollars of flowers and shrubs are destroyed each year by deer. This would merely be an economic annoyance, perhaps, if the deer were not bringing infected ticks to our doorsteps.
There is serious damage being done to our woods. Deer overbrowsing is killing the forest understory, which erases the habitat of many animals and plants.
By destroying shrubs and ground covers, deer cause erosion of soils and alter the water runoff characteristics of the land, threatening any aquifer that might lie beneath it.
Further, the deer themselves suffer. In mild winters, they increase in number; in severe winters, they retreat to the conifer woods to die of starvation, out of sight of man.
When municipalities appoint study groups, they do diligent research and find there are multiple scientific studies defining the problems. Initially, they try to find non-lethal alternatives to culling the deer. But it soon becomes clear that a program of controlled hunting is the only effective approach that will reduce the herd to the sustainable capacity of the area.
Towns in our area that are using controlled hunting include Brookfield, Darien, Greenwich, Weston, Wilton, Ridgefield, Redding and others, including Audubon and Nature Conservancy properties.
When Brookfield addressed the problem, it got action in about seven months, most likely because a committed selectman headed the committee and was aware of all the other existing studies through the town's membership in the regional deer study group, the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance.
The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection also serves as a ready and able resource for deer management and has published a definitive booklet, "Managing Urban Deer in Connecticut." It is available free at http://www.ct.gov/dep/lib/dep/wildlife/pdf_files/game/urbandeer07.pdf.
If your town is reducing its deer population, you are addressing the threat of Lyme disease.
If not, you may expect more Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, not to mention more collisions with deer on the highway, more damage to your yard and more destruction of the woodlands.
David Shugarts of Newtown is a member of the Newtown Lyme Disease Task Force and Newtown liaison to the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance.
http://www.newstimes.com/ci_11063429....newstimes.com
No one mentions the fact that we are putting quality food on our families tables, free of hormones and anitbiotics!
[/align][/align]