The Hunting Public

Anyone keep up with the Hunting Public guys? Wondering where in Bama they are at.

They're on the boycott list for promoting Chamberlains BS propaganda

I’d rather run a drill bit into my big toe than watch that group again.

Y'all fill me in. What did I miss?

I’ve watched 3 public land hunting YouTubers this evening. All three bumped more birds than I care to watch, that makes it seem like it’s not a big deal… I’m out on caring where they are, unless the drive a black 4 door dodge with a camper shell…

They, Catman, and Dave Owens are the primary reasons I will likely never again set foot on so many Alabama and TN public land places I used to love to hunt a turkey on. Hence, I can’t friggin stand em and refuse to watch and/or support anything they do. I have no idea which WMA or forest they are pimping out for personal profit now. And don’t care to know.

Screw every last YouTuber for what they are doing and have done to turkey hunting.
I’m still convinced there’s a touch of gay in a couple of THP guys.

Yep

I believe they have done way more damage than good to turkey hunting. Hence, I don't watch.

Dang, yall mad ? I dont watch them anymore cause they annoy me, but I think they are pretty good killers and dang smart to figure out how to hunt for a living with few expenses and no dues or land loans.

I know all the popularity of hunting public land seems like a bad thing currently but it wont suprise me if that publicity wont benefit public land in a ton of ways in the future, at least thats my hope.

It ain’t hard to live with few expenses when you sacrifice a family and career to do so.
Turkey hunting is my passion. But I’m not giving up my two boys and the land I’ve bought to raise them on, to get to hunt more in the spring.
I guess I could travel around with a couple other career-less dudes, sleeping in a van down by the river to do so….I’d hate to get down the road, too old to have a family, only to realize the life I traded to spend the spring sleeping butt to nut with some long haired yankee accent weird Al Yankovic.

I remember when they first came down and hunted Murphy. Everybody was excited about it and were quick to say they were seeing what real hunting was like with hard turkeys. Then the next two years they come back, killed several and exposed that maybe they aren’t as hard as we like to tell people they are.

I hate that it’s brought the pressure and exposure here as bad as anybody, and it’s most definitely affected places, it’s just ironic how it all flipped script.

If you ever get bored, search back for the early YouTube posts. The first Pinhoti season, and The Hunting Public is in Bama thread from 2018 are quite entertaining to read now with the narratives out there on them now.

A quick google search says that with 563K subscribers, their YouTube channel is worth over $900K so they ain’t doing too bad. It looks like they make about $350K per year just off YouTube.

In comparison, Pinhoti only has 41K subscribers and Catman has about 85K.

👆🏿 He’s right ya know. Every one listed are ruining Alabama public lands just like TN public. I do not support any of them and hope to run into one of them specifically up here one day! Lol

Would it be over-reaching to prohibit for-profit filming on WMAs?

It doesn’t seem like a stretch to argue that they are running a commercial business on public land. No different than harvesting and selling plants from state lands, as an example.

I think this is already law on some western wilderness areas, but I could be wrong.

That’s exactly what needs to happen. Mine, yours, and everyone else’s money from license sales goes to keeping up lands these jokers are filming and making 350K per year on. Where’s the states cut of the pie? As money hungry the DCNR is, I can’t believe they haven’t created a 20,000K per year tag to film or something like that.

I vividly remember starting a Pinhoti Project thread that went for tons of pages. I ran across Dave’s stuff one night bored to tears and waiting on turkey season to arrive. I deeply admired and identified with the way he pursued a turkey and his calling abilities. And I still do. But he effed up. BAD. He is an attention whore and has long since thrown precious pearls before an American generation of arsehole, also attention whores, swine with ZERO interest in doing it the way he, I, and many others do. All they want is the hero shot to put on the internet and nothing more. And for that, he can kiss my whole, hairy, white arse. Same for all for all the rest of the social media and Youtube heroes and attention whores. I swear if turkey kill videos and pictures were banned from the internet, 95% of people hunting em today would quit.

I dunno where they are but the one video they've shown I saw more turkey tracks in it than I've seen all year in person. I'm jealous

Chad…you are my hero 😂 I literally couldn’t have summed it up better…tell em brother! It pisses me off deeply as I rarely ever post turkey kills or any kills. I have friends who literally imitate everything Dave does. Even talking like him. THP can kiss my tail as well. I didn’t care for them before but after sucking off Chamberlain and getting paid by TWRA, I’d love to run into them as others have said. Y’all done fired me up this am 😂

There’s several of us here that could teach them a thing or two!

Them boys got a death wish. I quit watching when the one was videoing and walking around with slugs flying every which way. They promote everything that goes wrong with public hunting.

I'm not sure public lands should be used for profit neither. We have a guide on the local lake who does trips for rockfish. Its a put and take fishery. His business is therefore unwillingly subsidized.

Get a real job.

I was at the old store around 4:30am on the phone in Hollytree 2 weeks ago. A guy pulled up ask if I was ?? He had a guide trip on skyline and was meeting there. I don’t remember who he was asking for. I wish I had better memory at times. Yep skyline is covered up with everybody.

And from the Aldeer pulpit, truth has been spoken.

Wherever they are I hope they gotta spare...

Dont get on youtube r want to know how - never done the book of faces and glad i aint

WMA been some of the bettr land i hav hunted - consistently worked birds there. Many like to tell there story when they kill and the right turkeys can make u feel like u are a bettr hunter than u really are - any of us can get our butt kicked on the right ones 😀

I sure lov fooling w them - glad i been able to sit down to some this year

I thought they always hunted Chocclocco.

I remember listening to an episode of the Meateater Podcast a while back....one of Rinella's brothers was on there. He lives in Alaska and I think they were sheep hunting. Anyway, I remember they were discussing how one of his biggest disagreements with Steven is on the need for "Hunter Recruitment". He admitted that it was a catch-22 because more people hunting means more protection for hunting rights, conservation, etc, but that he selfishly wanted LESS people hunting because more hunters = more competition, pressure, etc...and this from folks that almost exclusively hunt out west were there is a LOT more public land.

I'm in my 10th turkey season. Early on I loved Pinhoti, in particular. There's no denying Dave Owens knows what he's doing. I also watched a lot of the THP and Catman stuff. But as someone who almost exclusively does my turkey hunting on public land, it's obvious that it's had a major impact (largely negative) on public land hunting and now I just about can't stand to watch any of it.

Turkey hunting has become "cool" and "fashionable", much like what happened to duck hunting during the heyday of Duck Commander/Duck Dynasty. I'm not sure if that has calmed down or not recently but I definitely don't notice nearly as much stuff on social media about duck hunting as I did 8-10 yrs ago. Hopefully this turkey hunting "fad" will fall out popularity soon.

Someone needs to make it their mission to make hog hunting and predator hunting/trapping the next "cool thing"

I'll say this. I totally agree that filming for profit on public lands needs a stiff permit. What they are doing is using publicly funded land to name a for profit show, and it's not right.

I don't think THP and pinhoti caused the widespread turkey decline we are experiencing. We can argue all day on what has, but it wasn't them. I also don't think they shut down the country for a month and told people, "don't work!" a week before turkey season opened in the SE. Population at my local WMA has not recovered from the huntfest that was spring of 2020 where every day was the weekend.

Turkey hunting is not easy and you won't dumbass your way into a bird like you can a good deer by sitting in a box. I think they definitely created a wave of dumbass people hitting the woods in pursuit of a turkey, but it doesn't take long for people to get frustrated. You can see that at the end of the season on public, basically nobody is hunting anymore.

I think turkey hunting in Alabama sucks more than it used to because of the turkey decline and because of the covid year that compounded the decline moreso than the influence of a couple of YouTubers.

First part was on lauderdale, the other was freedom hills I believe.

Want to say it's Missouri that already has a ban on profiting from videos filmed on their "conservation areas". So there is a precedent.

I’ve never seen as many out of state hunters on Skyline as this year. That being said they aren’t killing anything. There was a group from Texas that spent first week camped out near one area I hunt and ran into them walking in and out. They hadn’t taken a bird between 4 of them in 8 days. I think it was shock the way those turkeys acted compared to Texas.

You believe them? I automatically assume everything anyone I don't know really well tells me regarding turkeys is a blatant lie...

If a law was passed that you can’t profit off public property what would fishing guides and commercial fishermen do? It’s the same concept.

I’m trying to understand why people are so mad at these folks. Is it because there’s more hunters in the woods now or is it because they’re doing something illegal? I honestly don’t know so I’m asking out of ignorance of the situation.

I would say that it seems people always want more hunters in the woods until it’s the woods they hunt. Then folks don’t seem as interested in getting others out there. That’s unfortunate I believe because if there’s not a large enough interest in hunting and fishing we will eventually lose those rights. Maybe not in any of our lifetimes but it will happen.

I can believe it. The only place I have seen crazier turkeys than Skyline is one particular tract of public land in Tennessee. Rios (from our experience in Texas last week) ain't in the same class of wary and crazy as Jackson County birds.

Make an exception for fishing guides and commercial fisherman ... heck, let's subsidize them if it will get more folks on the water and out of the woods during turkey season.

I just don't think there is any shortage of turkey hunters and turkeys seemed to be getting along just fine before the popularity of the 'let me post everything on YouTube/Instagram/Facebook/Ticktok so folks can see what a great hunter I am even if it draws unnecessary attention to public land that was already getting plenty of pressure from local hunters but now is getting hammered by folks from all over the country' trend started. But that is just my take as someone that has turkey hunted for over 40 years and seen lots of changes and not all (or even most) for the betterment of the turkeys.

For me, personally, it's a mix of

1. Jealousy (yeah, I'll admit it) that they get to hunt as much as they do and have the amount of success they do, when I've managed to kill a total of 3 birds in 10 years of hunting
2. Annoyance at how turkey hunting has become the latest trendy thing, much like I mentioned happening to duck hunting several years ago, which leads to...
2b. Noticeably more traffic/pressure on the public lands I typically hunt

Appreciate it wmd and Gomer. I’ve only dabbled with turkey hunting so I don’t know the history of all this. I do know 10 years ago hardly anyone turkey hunted and it was really easy to get permission. Now it does seem that it’s trendy.

Public in Alabama is like Missouri,Kansas,Kentucky,Iowa,Arkansas. Deer and duck hunters. More out of state tags than resident tags. Were just feeling it. Parts of Ohio was on spring break last week. Yep talked to a guy down here chasing birds on public. Knocking on doors seeing what he could find.

Primos, HS Strut, Realtree, all those guys have been putting out turkeys hunting videos for over 20 years. Maybe it’s the ease of the internet to post hunts that has more people watching vs having to buy a DVD. THP and the like aren’t helping, but the commercialization of turkey hunting is not a new thing.

That said, I wish everyone would quit and take up golf or go fishing.

There are extra fees for commercial fishing and in many instances guides, too. You have to buy a permit to forage mushrooms and plants on federal lands anywhere I know of. Firewood, yep. Christmas trees even. If public hunt filmers don't back up, they'll be targeted for increased taxes as well.


Aggressive tactics can be more effective at killing turkeys. Turkeys can be easy to kill if you don't care how you do it. You just have to travel around to find fresh birds and not care about getting shot or ruining hunts for others; or having any class, really.

And the fanboys trying to make YouTube videos following the Dave Owens persona of smoking cigars when they kill a bird. Makes me puke in my mouth. Then there are guys trying to make turkey hunting videos on YouTube that sound like pure shat with their calling. I have heard 5 year olds that run a call better than half those clowns. Then when they kill a bird they act a fool jumping up and down screaming I smoked him. Bunch of D Bags.

But they weren't pimping public land trying to show how cool they were doing it the "right way".

NAILED IT 💯

Yep primos and company don’t post obvious onX maps and gates on said public lands or boat ramps…

It’s not just YouTube though. Somebody said it above that folks are looking for that hero kill shot to post on social media.

I honestly believe if social media didn’t exist we wouldn’t just have less hunters but there’d be less people doing everything. A lot of folks aren’t chasing personal satisfaction but either the admiration of others or they want to appear better than others.

That’s why folks have found ways to score deer, score turkeys, weigh fish, etc. To Gomers point above someone needs to create a scoring system for hogs and predators, invent some fancy camo for it (it’ll need a flat bill hat) and an interesting back story to the “tradition” and we can start seeing some real progress around here.

Yep. Insert the Popgun Piddler.

Nailed it.

Do you know how many put of state licenses they have sold for each state? I bet its over $20,000