NO! I would leave my land open to hunting unless there presented a serious enough problem that I had to close it and limit access.
We all know that eventually we will all be faced with this situation. I was reading where North Dakota has a program called PLOTS - Private Lands Open to Sportsmen. The state pays landowners to leave their land open to hunting.
There used to be virtually no private land available to hunt on in N. Dakota. It was all leased out to guide services and hunting clubs. To offer up more competition, PLOTS was begun and now they have around 855,000 acres of private land open to hunting.
A problem arose from this. This land was closed to out of state hunters because the money used to buy up leases (this is in essence what it is they are doing) was resident license fees and tax payer dollars.
A new program has evolved called Community Match Program. Community groups, like chamber of commerce, city councils, wildlife groups, can raise money and contribute to the coffers. This way communities can designate lands, through working with local landowners, open to hunting and if they choose, can open it to non-resident hunters.
The reason this happened was there were some towns complaining about all the hunting revenue they were losing by shutting out the out of state hunter.
These are all interesting and creative ways of keeping land open, which in some states is at a crisis level.
There's more on this story at this link
http://mainehuntingtoday.com/bbb/?p=356
We all know that eventually we will all be faced with this situation. I was reading where North Dakota has a program called PLOTS - Private Lands Open to Sportsmen. The state pays landowners to leave their land open to hunting.
There used to be virtually no private land available to hunt on in N. Dakota. It was all leased out to guide services and hunting clubs. To offer up more competition, PLOTS was begun and now they have around 855,000 acres of private land open to hunting.
A problem arose from this. This land was closed to out of state hunters because the money used to buy up leases (this is in essence what it is they are doing) was resident license fees and tax payer dollars.
A new program has evolved called Community Match Program. Community groups, like chamber of commerce, city councils, wildlife groups, can raise money and contribute to the coffers. This way communities can designate lands, through working with local landowners, open to hunting and if they choose, can open it to non-resident hunters.
The reason this happened was there were some towns complaining about all the hunting revenue they were losing by shutting out the out of state hunter.
These are all interesting and creative ways of keeping land open, which in some states is at a crisis level.
There's more on this story at this link
http://mainehuntingtoday.com/bbb/?p=356