Someone on here tell me this: how long would it take to completely ruin a couple prime properties, if the state was to acquire two 1500-2,500 acre tracts at Safford and Portland and then just put them into the general WMA pool with 7 day a week access and no shooting requirements other than state regs???

The truthful answer is that, even as prime as those two properties would be, with the pressure those two properties would receive, you wouldn’t be able to find a deer on them, much less kill one after the second week of gun season and that is the absolute truth. After a full deer season, they wouldn’t even be worth hunting the following year.

Unless it is massive tracts of land, People and access have to be controlled to some extent because when something is “free”, people are greedy by nature, and cannot control or limit themselves.

I used to regularly turkey hunt Boykin mgmt area, it was almost 18,000 acres and I cannot count the number of times I was working a bird and had multiple hunters rush in on me and the bird, even though they had to come right by my truck, and knew that someone was already in there. If access is not in some way limited by either quota draw or limited, first come first serve, limited number, daily issued permits, And closed days, the place is quickly ruined. I know what the deer hunting was like, and what was killed when it was in the WMA program and rest assured, the groups leasing that land, now that it is back in private hands, are killing bucks and seeing numbers of deer that were not ever seen or even there to be seen, when that land was open to public. It was shot to hell and back and any deer that was seen, was immediately put on the back of a truck or snuck out in a dog/tool box (does).