People who like to hunt in Minnesota should be aware that they could buy land or hunt on public land.
There are pros and cons to everything in life. This is why owning your own land is a good option, depending on your financial situation. Some of the benefits I will discuss if you own the land include deer management, installing permanent stands or leaving stands in place, and creating walking/hunting trails. Some cons of owning land are that it’s expensive, finding the right spot, and dealing with trespassers. Some advantages of not owning land are no payments on it and the ability to hunt in multiple areas if one spot is unfavorable. Some cons are dealing with other hunters, can’t leave stands, and people stealing trail cameras.
Pros of owning your own land
Some pros of owning your own hunting land are numerous. You can kind of control what you attract as far as wildlife. It could be either by the food plots you plant. If you plant beans, you can get a lot of different animals like deer, raccoons, rabbits, and many more. If you plant corn, you can attract deer, bears, and squirrels. Deer also like acorns, so if you have oak trees, they will eat them when they drop from the tree. Even though farmers plant crops that the deer can eat, they take them away before winter, so if it snows a lot, then the deer can starve. If the mom of the fawn dies, the fawn will likely die as well. But if you planted corn for the deer and left it all winter, then they will eat it, and when they lose their antlers, then you can find them. When looking for the antlers, it’s called shed hunting. They lose their antlers usually in the middle of January, but it is different for every deer. They are harder to find in the winter if there is a ton of snow because the snow is white, and the antlers, for the most part, are white. You can also get places you couldn’t get to in the summer months.
You can also make bridges so you can access different parts of your property easily. If you make a metal grated one like the grates off of some docks, it will let water go right through. But there is a con for them because usually deer don’t like to walk on metal. But if you do wood, deer will travel on it. The wood just stays wet for a bit, but the sun usually dries it out. If you build the bridges strong, you will be able to take a four-wheeler or even a tractor across. So that means you can plant stuff across the river or put stands across.
You can also make trails through the woods. I have used a tractor with a wood chipper and a chainsaw. Then you can haul the wood out and use it for campfires or you could sell it. The trails we make really help us because it’s easier to walk and quieter, so less of a chance for the deer to hear you. We can also fit a small truck down our trails. This makes it so we can show older people like my grandpa, who can’t walk.
For hunting stands, if you own the land, you can put any stand out there. Additionally, a significant benefit is that you can leave them out there. Some stands we use are Banks Stump 4 Phantom, ladder stands, and saddles. A saddle stand is one that you stand on a platform, but you can hunt almost any tree because you don’t have to delimb them. You can also put up ground blinds or build wooden stands in trees. For the Stump 4’s, you can weld a metal base together to make it stand up in the air. You can also purchase one from Banks Outdoors: a 4-foot Steel Tower System for $549.99 or an 8-foot one for $999.99. The other option that I have seen people use for a base is wood.
Pros of hunting on public land
It is way cheaper than buying land. Minnesota is 55,638,602 acres, and 13,805,552 acres are public/open to hunters. That is 25% public acres in Minnesota. In Minnesota, for most public land, you can just show up and hunt.
You can move around more. Like if you sit in one spot and don’t see anything that morning, you can take your set and move to a different spot or even move to a different public land. You can also access areas that others avoid if you’re willing to put in more effort. Like for example, if you bring waders so you could cross bodies of water. Or say there isn’t a parking spot at the land, if you can find a parking lot that you can park in, while you hunt, you could just walk to the land.
You can make new friends. Say you have no friends who hunt, you could either do it or try to get them to like it. Other wise you can always meet new people at public land and maybe become friends. You can also not even hunt together, just keep in touch, so you don’t go to the same spot.
Cons of hunting public land
Some cons for public land are that in some places, you can’t have anything that penetrates the tree. Dealing with other hunters could be difficult.
For example, if you can’t have anything going into the tree, that means you have to use straps that go around the tree. You can screw a bow holder into it, so you might have to hold your bow. You also might not be able to leave anything out there. That means you would have to pack in and out of your stand every sit. Whether that is a ground blind or a tree stand, it’s a lot of work to do every time. If you also get an animal, that means you either have to try to get it all at once, or you have to do 2-3 trips back to the truck and back to put it away.
Dealing with people is always tough, but hunters are sometimes worse because they put a lot of time setting up and scouting the animals they are hunting. So if you catch them in the middle of their hunt, they will not be the friendliest.
Cons of owning your own land
Some cons for owning land is its expensive, you might have people trespassing, so you have to deal with that.
The reason why it’s expensive is that you have to pay for it or take out a loan, and then you also have to pay taxes on it. The maintenance on it, like making sure everything is ready for you to hunt, costs a little bit of money, but it costs time.
If you don’t check on your land regularly, then people might start trespassing, and they might even start hunting on it. They might start small, but if you don’t stop them right away, then they might get bolder and go farther into your land and treat it as theirs. One thing to help it is putting up no trespassing signs.
