bighorns35

my question is! am i an unethical hunter?? here's the situation. last year i gave a deer to a friend of mine. in return his father asked why i didnt hunt behind his house.and this spot produces some real nice bucks. some 150"es have come from there. so this year i put a stand in there and hunted it a little. prob 15 times or so. its a bow only spot.now the father doesn't own the whole area,but it gaines me access. the person who does own it lives an hour or so away and doesnt hunt as far as i can tell. now another guy and his 36 year old boy hunt there. they have hunted it for years. the father owns a small diner in town. and i guess he is bad mouthing me and a friend of mine because we hunted the spot. says we are unethical hunters and a bunch of other b.s. now my stand is prob somewhere in the area of 300 or more yards from theres. i never hunted there if i seen they were.and as far as i know they didnt to me either.[but there saying i did] so is it unethical to hunt there just because i know they do???

NY Bowhunter

I would say it's unethical and maybe slightly illegal to hunt the land without permission from the landowner. If I got this right, you got permission to hunt land from someone that doesn't even own it but lives close by? I wouldn't hunt land that I didn't have verbal or written permission from the landowner himself. And how do you know the other guys don't have such permission? If they do then I'd be pretty dang PO'd if I were them too. Also, even if you both have equal rights to be there...........300 yards is not very far away from another hunters stand IMO.

Windwalker7

Look at it this way. What if you and your buddy had permission to hunt a good piece of property. What if you two were the only hunters on this property for years. It had alot of nice big racked bucks and everything, a honey hole. Then all of a sudden there were two new guys that didn't have permission, and they started hunting there anyway. How would you feel?

DoctorDeath

Chances are if you have to ask if its unethical ..its unethical ..with that being said ... ethics is defined in a lot of ways ..but at the very least its VERYinconsiderate IMHO ...

dd

James B

I would ask permission then try to contact the other hunters to make arrangment to share the place and time. If you can't work it out, I guess I would look for a different spot.

Kybuckhunter

Yep...you should get out unless you have permission to hunt.

timbercruiser

"the father doesn't own the whole area, but it gains me access"? Sounds like you are tresspassing if you don't have permission.

rybohunter

Lots of conclusion jumping here. Maybe his "access" is only the small part which the father does own? In such case he is legal and 300 yds isa HUGE buffer to anyone's stand. Maybe he can explain further, but there seems like it all could be legit. I hunt a very similar situation. there's a woodlot behind the house, I only own (and hunt) a slice of it. Sometimes there are 2-3 other hunters back there and there sure isn't anywhere close to 300 yds between us, but we all get along and try not to hunt when someone else is there.

Spiffy

Provided he has permission I think he has every right to go and hunt it. 300 yards is a big space between stands if it is in a good area and it is in the bush.

I went through a similar situation this year when we started bow hunting a new farm about 3 hours from my house. This is the nicest farm I have ever seen and it holds tonnes of deer. One of the rifle hunters that hunts the property lives just a few hundred yards down the road. He is not pleased we are there but we don't plan on leaving. The land owner wants us to stay more than him so we are in good shape. we don't hunt there with gun when he is just in bow season.

With that said I'd keep hunting it.

kevin1

It sounds like you do have permission to hunt the friend's Dad's part of the property , don't worry about what those other guys think , it isn't their property to begin with . If they can't handle a silent , and probably scentless hunter 300 yards away then it sounds like they're the unethical ones . I hate whiners like that , may they all be forced to hunt crowded publics the rest of their lives .