ORIGINAL: Mason Nolan

I am fortunate enough to hunta farm in Southern Illinois, it is the same county where the Cambell Bro's set up shop. We have been hunting there going on 7 seasons. When we started hunting the land, there was Cambell's and that was it, now I believe there are 6 or maybe 7 outfitters in the county. Our good friend who farms the land has been offered substantial amounts of $$$ to lease his property for hunting and thankfully for us he always turns it down. A couple of things he dislikes about the outfitters is...
1. The outfitters drive up the cost of land. B/f the outfitter competition. he could find land around 1000 an acre, now in the area people are selling it for 3to4 times as much. Last year a big outfitter out bid him on a 150 by over 100,000 dollars!! After the outfitter outbid him at auction, he just raised the price and advertised it in the Evansville paper as Land for Hunters. Sure outfitters would say, well your land value is going up, why would you care? What about the farmer who can't compete and pay that price for more land?

2. Some outfitters and many of their clients have no regards for land boundaries. As the outfitter numbers began to increase, out little honey hole became tainted. One member of our group went to his stand on the first morning of firearm season in 05 only to find one of the new outfitter's had tore down his ladder stand. That same year I walked about a mile to my stand only to see a light climbing in the darkness. An outfitter had given him bad instructions and he had wondered onto my spot and ruined my morning. Needless to say our good friend and farmer was not happy.

He swears he would never sell out and refuses to give his land up to outfitters. He even had a guy call to tell him a guy in Florida would pay him almost 20, 000 dollars a year to lease his entire farm for the entire deer season and he told him NO.

In the offseason we take weekends and go to Illinois to visit with him and show him our appreciation,We did an "extreme makeover" to his house in Feb. and have built decks, lofts, and hauled logs out of the woods for him. We have become such good friends with him that he wants us up to hunt every year. Thank god for good ol fashioned people, who ain't all about the $$$$.