Self Guided Deer Hunts
Self Guided Deer Hunts Mean Just That
Hunt and harvest the deer of chouice. We regonize all want to be trophy whitetail deer hunters, we also recognize that not every hunter will harest a trrophy whitetail every year. Those that think they will, should not apply for a Mid-America Hutning Association membership.
Self guided hunts and in particular deer hunts have been part of Mid-America Hunting Association for a long time. This length of service to the hunter capable of making his own hunts is our singular purpose giving us much experience at making those hunts as productive as possible.
Deer hunters being largely the self supportive type in most aspects of life know there is not any free walk even after paying to access our lease land he still must make his own hunt. Making that deer hunt successful is the purpose of this article.
The basis for our self guided hunter organization is private lease land access without competition from other deer hunter. All of that is easily definable and we will expand at this point on the competition aspect of our hunts.
We long ago adapted our rules with the singular objective of enhancing hunt quality to the fullest of our capability. two approaches were tried. The first was a narrow focus and the second, a method by which options were always available. The narrow focus approach quickly lost due to failure to renew memberships citing low success at eyes on quality deer. The options approach most found far more desirable, especially by those that had success at trophy deer hunting.
The narrow focus approach was that every member had a dedicated lease to hunt the entire season and all members paid a membership that was average of all lease land costs regardless of any one lease contracted price. This was an all or nothing program that while the hunter was limited to one set amount of acreage in one spot the deer were not.
The options approach allowed all members whose still paid the same membership fees access to deer hunt all leases thereby giving choices to the deer hunter where to deer hunt. No competition from others was sustained through a reservation system that prohibited anyone from hunting a lease reserved by another for a set number of days. This system allowed all flexibility to adapt to changing rut conditions and that of weather to favored farms. It has continued to work since.
There are other evaluative models to assess the feasibility of our self guided hunter approach to deer hunts. Simple math of comparing acreage available to season length to hunters/members shows that few times will anyone bump heads with another. When that happens it is a matter of bad luck rather than organizational design.
When bad luck happens that two deer hunters conduct similar scouting, both find a cherry little 40 acre wood patch and both decide to hunt the same day, it is a matter of who calls in first for that reservation.
Getting beyond the negative onto the more positive aspects of how to make a self guided deer hunt successful is once the new member receives his membership material and can access the online map library. The next step is to call either Jon Nee or John Wenzel and get their right to the lease number recommendation of where to deer hunt/scout.
The deer hunter then goes to his own favorite aerial website and using the Association lease maps draws down his own aerial photos of the recommended leases. Of all the photos he develops a priority list from first to last lease that he wants to spend boots on the ground time with. At that point, a check of the calendar and making travel plans to scout, and scout some more, are made.
The deer hunter then makes a telephone scouting reservation, travels out and spends all daylight hours walking the leases. From that first weekend scouting effort easily three deer spots should be found with more than one stand location for each.
The next scouting, hunting or spring turkey season trip the deer hunter picks up where he left off and builds outwards to different farms. Soon that hunter will find more farms that meet is deer hunt preferences than before and grow to the level of having more knowledge of leases in that locality than time to deer hunt. It is at this point the deer hunter then expands to a different part of that state or breaks into another of our three states and resumes his scouting and deer hunt preparations.
There should be nothing surprising in this description of how to make a self guided deer hunt possible. The two aspects the MAHA membership brings, the lease land and jump start staff recommendations, will simply speed the hunter's knowledge of where to hunt.
One Self Guded Deer Hunetr, One Hunt, One Season
We delete names and locations to protect those spots found by deer hunter. We assist the new member with were to hunt and our recommendations are valued as we have the goal of getting that hunter to return for future seasons. We also reply to all letters and pictures sent in by members with the latest entries from our log book of observations. Our lease land observations are over the entire year and we cover far more ground than any other. There are more than a handful of members that can partially credit their personal best harvest due to our recommendations and logbook feedback.