Advice on where to start?

[scrape]

For those of you folks who did not get a chance to read my introduction, I am an avid whitetail bowhunter from South Carolina. I used to live in Pittsburgh, PA many, many moons ago, but now after all these years I could be classified as a good ole boy from the south.

My wife, my best buddy and my self all have pretty much exclusively hunted deer with archery equipment for the past half dozen years. We have been on quite a few guided hunts to many of the midwestern states. And up until a few years ago made an annual trip to PA for the rifle opener, that was until PA determined it was in everyone's best interest to decimate the deer population on public land.

With all that said we have started to become disenchanted with the "fully guided" hunting experience. Don't get me wrong, we all love hunting the giant midwest whitetails. It is just the concept of us paying someone else to scout, prepare the stand and pretty much do everything except make the shot that we have become less than enthusiastic about. I am not knocking guided hunts for those that truly enjoy them; it is an excellent option for those that our pressed for time and want to enjoy the best the midwest has to offer. It is just not for us anymore.

So that leaves us at the stage of the game where we would like to take more ownership of the whole hunting experience from scouting to hanging stands to retrieving the animal, as well as the failure that comes with learning to hunt new land. We would like to try our hand at hunting some public land in Ohio. We are initially targeting the southeastern part of OH, I guess what is referred to as District 4. We are looking at this area for two main reasons. First being that from our limited research the potential is there for some pretty good public land hunting and second it will be approximately a 10 hour drive or less from where we live in Myrtle Beach, SC allowing us to make two or three trips a season realistic.

I would appreciate greatly any suggestions concerning counties to look more thoroughly at or even specific areas of public land that may afford some blend of deer density, bucks with some age structure and won't be overun with hunters during bow season.

Thanks in advance!:)

[gavennn]

Hi Scrape, Your correct in your looking at the area. It does indeed have the potential for good action. A couple key areas of note include Wayne National
Forrest. Definitely take a look at the AEP public hunting lands and there is some public hunting around Dillon Dam near Zanesville. That is decent hunting there.

Like most public hunting it tends to get hit a good bit. The key to Ohio's public land is putting your walking shoes on and going to the areas other wont walk back to.

[jackalope]

I'll Second Wayne National Forrest. Big property with plenty of deer.

[scrape]

Thanks for the info. I have been doing a bit of reading about this and Wayne NF and AEP land both were mentioned. What can you tell me about the terrain? From the older atlas I was looking at it did not seem to be of too high an elevation and the area around the NF did not seem to be very densely populated. Is there much agriculture in that part of the state and if so what percentage of the land is forested compared to ag land in your opinion? On a separate not are there many hunting clubs in southeastern OH?

[gavennn]

It all country. Around the Wayne your going to find small towns that exist because of agriculture. Inside the Wayne your going to find the gambit of terrain. PM Coonskinner he runs a deer camp out of Wayne every year and he would be a very good source of information for you.

[scrape]

Thanks for the info about Coonskinner, as well as the info about the variety of terrain. I just found out last evening that my very good hunting buddy has a connection for some private land that is in a small pocket of privately held land within the Wayne NF. The land is in the southwest corner of Monroe county right where Monroe, Noble and Washington counties come together. My buddy hunted the land back in 2002. He said it is a farm that is about a 50-50 mix of ag and timber. All total it is about 1500 acres. There is some very steep terrain on the property; looking at the topo he faxed me it looks like the elevation goes from about 600' to 1100'. The map indicates quite a few strip mine areas and gas wells. Of course my buddy said he remembers the majority of the deer activity being down in the bottoms of some very steep areas, as is to be expected. Looks like a good place to start my OH hunting experience.

[redcloud102]

Scrape,

I remembered from a few years ago about being able to call the district offices and ask them for a list of land owners. When i did this years ago I had to send in money for the list but now the list is free. Hope this helps.

Each of the district offices hold a list for people whom you can contact to ask permission to hunt on their property. Here is a list of our district offices and their contact information.

District One
1500 Dublin Rd
Columbus, OH 43215
614/644/3925

District Two
952 Lima Ave
Findlay, OH 45840
419/424/5000

District Three
912 Portage Lakes Dr.
Akron, OH 44319
330/644/2293

District Four
360 E. State St
Athens, OH 45701
740/589/9930

District Five
1076 Old Springfield Pike
Xenia, OH 45385
937/372/9261