I’ve gotten permission to hunt private property from relatives & friends of the family in the past but have never asked someone I don’t know very well. I’m getting ready to talk to one of our neighbors & I think I have a pretty good case to present but I thought I’d ask for any other tips that might be helpful. I’ll try to keep this short but here’s a little background info.

For the past two years I have lived & work part-time on a 150 acre Sod Farm. The 2 guys that work there full time just got permission to hunt there 2 years ago but they aren’t out hunting very often and last year I was able to hunt there as well. Last fall after we seeded the fields, we noticed a lot of damage to the fields from the large number of deer in the area. We had a DNR officer come out to observe & inspect the damage & he told us that we really needed to reduce the population of the local deer herd. He gave us a few extra doe permits to use last season.

However, as you can probably imagine, there’s not a lot of cover to hunt on a sod farm. We are surrounded by wooded home sites (~10 acres each) on one side, a farm on the other side with a pretty large (~50 acres) section of woods between his fields and ours, and we are all bordered by a WMA on the back side. The wood line on the side with the homes is the property line, so there’s no real good place to hunt there. There are some really good hunting areas on the WMA but it doesn’t take long for the deer to get real skittish and sparse over there once the season starts (they all tend to go the the neighbors place). We do have a few fingers of woods that extend out from the neighboring farm into our fields. These areas tend to act as funnels and are great places to hunt. However, with 3 of us hunting out there it doesn’t take long to over hunt those areas. Unfortunately we weren’t very effective in reducing the herd last fall.

The guys have been telling me that the old farmer next door doesn’t let anyone hunt on his property. I’m 99% positive that no one has hunted there at least during the 2 years I’ve lived there. However, I just found out the other day that these guys have never actually asked to hunt over there. So I’m planning to go talk to him soon to find out. I’m going to tell him about the damage to our fields and the visit from the DNR officer last fall & how he told us we should reduce the number of does. And I’m going to explain that there aren’t many places to hunt on our property. He seems like a pretty nice guy. I wave to him when I’m out on the tractor & he always waves back. I stopped & talked to him once last summer & he was pretty friendly, just not very talkative. I always try to mow along his driveway when I’m out mowing the fields just to be nice.

So how would you approach this situation? I would like for all 3 of us to be able to hunt over there, but I don’t want to push my luck when I ask him for permission. I think I would feel funny asking for myself & 2 other people. But at the same time I don’t want to go over there with all 3 of us and overwhelm him. I think I may just go over with our farm manager since he’s the one that actually met with the DNR officer & may have more to add to that part of the story.