I've been hunting on 400acres for the past 6yrs. 2yrs ago the owners decided to sell 350+ of it to the Nature conservancy. The Conservancy was nice enough to honor the last 2yrs on our lease & We were hoping to work out a new deal with them. Unfortunately they have a hunter program in place that they are going to apply to this piece of ground so we are out of a prime piece of Illinois land to hunt. I still have permission to hunt the 45 acres that the owners kept but it doesn't get the buck activity like the other section. It's still better than nothing & better than hunting the over hunted public land around here. It really stinks to lose a good property!! If any one knows of any land for lease within 1 1/2hrs of Chicago please send me a message.
The last thing i would be doing is complaining about my honey hole turning public along with the new owner on the internet.
I definitely agree with this. Wait for the hunters pushing bucks off the other acreage on to your 45 acres. Give them food, water, and cover and keep the pressure low. Hang your sets early, monitor with trail cams to do inventory and wait to hunt it until the conditions are perfect. Our acreage borders some public ground and it's amazing how many good bucks show up on our place once the hunting pressure increases on the public ground. I would look at this as a positive thing, and just adapt to the new conditions.
Thats what I hope to do, I'm talking with a guy now that owns 40 close by and he has done that with his property. He's taken several big bucks off his property & passes bucks every year that would beat my biggest buck. "The last thing i would be doing is complaining about my honey hole turning public along with the new owner on the internet." It didn't turn public, the Conservancy is a private group that owns several thousand acres in the area & they have a hunter program in place & only a select few are in the program. They buy property & take out anything that is not native to the area & grow the natural prairie grasses. I never complained about anything other than losing a great property. The Conservancy (new owners) have been nothing but nice, they didn't have to honor our lease that we had with the previous owners. The owners of the 45 acres are great to work with, they needed to sell the 350 acres & did what they had to do, no complaints from me. I don't own it & I'm not complaining about anything other than losing access to 350 acres where it was not uncommon to see 15-20 doe every time out.
