Hunting Club Rules....

I am about to start a small club for the 2015-2016 season. There will be 4-5 members on 1,000 acres. I have never been in a club before and I am preparing to write the rules and regs of the club. Would anybody be willing to email me a copy of your rules documents? Thanks a lot!

Scottfraser0528@gmail.com

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4 or 5 guys on 1000 acres sounds like will be a good place to hunt.

Don't get carried away with the rules, it's suppose to be a place to get away and enjoy yourself.

I'm with them on the rules,more than likely the people that join will wanna shoot big mature deer. If you go making a bunch of rules you might be left with 1000 acres by yourself. I got away from the club scene a few yrs ago and got a small lease that two or three people hunt together. You can have alot more fun and probably kill bigger deer. I know we have,bit good luck to ya

I agree. I want to minimize rules too. I do think that rules regarding guests, when money is paid, and a couple other things like that should be established so that everybody is on the same page.

Yes. And like I always say, if you have too many rules, you have the wrong members.

We didn't have enough rules in our club. Now it is an off road, cross country dirt track for the side by side vehicles.

X2...As few rules as possible.

Make sure you put in rules about pressuring the deer. No ATVs on the property from Oct 1st until the end of the season except to recover deer. No game cameras from Oct 1st until the end of the season. If you allow cameras they can only check the camera when they hunt that section. The worse thing for pressuring deer is to have someone take off during the week and ride around the property checking cameras and you show up on Saturday and all the sections have ATV tracks on them. You can have the best management plan you want with summer crop, winter food plots and feeding stations but if you pressure the deer you will never have a trophy club.
Here is something you can’t write into the rules. The members have to give you feedback on the number of deer they are seeing. You need this info to help with your managing the property, what works and what doesn’t. This is also the hard part about managing the property, you can’t use this info to slip in on someone else and kill a deer they are hunting. If you do you will have no trust from your members. You can use your sign in book to see a pattern on where the deer are. Look at the first 3 weeks and the last 3 weeks of the season to see where everyone hunts. They may move around in the middle of the season but they will hunt the best spots early and at the end of the season.
Running a club can be very rewarding and very frustrating at the same time. Remember you are in charge not the members, that when most clubs have problem when the members make their own rules. You know what our 800 acres produces every year and you can the same thing with some hard work.
Let me know if I can help or if you just want to ride around and look at some of the thing we are doing.

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Rule number 1 should say that "Randy74 can come turkey hunting whenever he wants and his ol buddy ol pal JUGHEAD can tag along too."

Thanks man! I appreciate the email.

Rule #1.... There are no rules. Everyone hunts and kills what they want inside state regs and if you don't like it then you don't join or get asked back the next year. All the rules everyone has is ridiculous.

My rule book says nobody except for me can turkey hunt....

Yepper!

Just remember for every rule you make, its one more to have to enforce.

Keep it simple x100!

You have to have some rules or chaos will insue. You need rules for guest visits and fee's. Work days. What to shoot. Everyone needs to understand it is a hunting club, not atv club. You'll need a pin out/in board. Most of it is common sense. If all of you are friends, maybe it will be easy, but i doubt it, there's always somebody who knows the rules, but doesn't follow them. I had one guy who liked to walk out an area. Who wants to go to an area after someone has walked it out? I'm not saying you wont see anything, but i would prefer to keep human scent down if possible. Do your scouting, before the season, after that scout to and from your stand. There will always be that guy who can never make work days, but is there every weekend to hunt. Good luck, you'll need it. If your plan is to shoot whatever, then you probably dont need any rules.

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emailed u

I hunt a small lease with 4 people and we don't have a rule period but we are all on the same page wanting to kill 4 yr olds or better. we try not to slip up and rarely do but if we do its not the end of the world.

And I hunt in Possum Creek with 5500 acres and 26 members. We have to have rules. And we have never had any drama worth mentioning. You and your board or how ever you are governed make the rules and folks can take them and go by them or find a club that fits them. We have rules and we rarely have to enforce anything. Folks just follow them. If they don't politely ask them to leave.

Welcome to the world of the unappreciated club operator who does a ton of work all year long and never gets a penny for all of their time!!!:-)

There is no one right way. But there is your way. The clubs way. its that simple.