Lost Lease

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HOSS

HOSS

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 1, 2005
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4,348
City & State/Province
Middle Tennessee
I found out today that after 10 years of leasing property in Illinois for bow hunting the farmer is giving us the boot. No issues ever, no complaints ever and the relationship was great until this past fall. The farmer's son fancies himself as the whitetail guru and is focused on killing big whitetail bucks. He has free run on the other 4,300 acres that the farmer owns. We leased 700 acres of the 5,000 acre farm. This past fall one of our lease members killed a 197" non-typical on our lease. After that the atmosphere changed. The son quit stopping in at camp every night like normal and started ignoring us when we started a conversation with him. Before the 197 was killed he has been very friendly for the last 10 years. We all considered him a friend and we all kept in phone contact with him during the off-season. The farmer told us that they have decided that they need the 700 acres to hunt on (like 4,300 is not enough for him and his son). Anyway he also owns, and hunts, all of the property around our lease so they are hunting the same bucks we are. Anyway it is obvious that the big buck kill is the reason for the change of attitude. The farmer had the "record" until this year with a 189" buck. After a friend of the farmer, who is an official scorer for the P&Y club, green scored my buddy's buck and told the farmer of the score he got angry that his "record" of some 20 years had been broken. The son had bragged several times that nobody knew the deer in the area like he did and his personal archery best of 182" would never be broken by anybody else. A big deer is like gold fever................it does crazy stuff to people and can break up friendships. It is a crying shame. I guess I am back to square one on my deer hunting :mad:
 
Hoss, I am sorry to hear of that situation. If I had more than my 40 acres for my two son ln laws and one daughter and my wife and I to hunt, would create access for you. Isn't it a shame that they don't realize the genetics are there and the quest for the next great one begins now? Like money and fame, it does weird things to folks. Here we have people that have photos of deer on trail cams and they have the sense that it is their deer. It is going to become a bigger problem I fear in the future. Fair chase and hunting ethics are considered out dated by many now.
 
That's a shame Hoss, people just don't make any sense sometimes. Jealousy is the worst trait-emotion human's have. We don't have them monster bucks here, but if you need a place to hunt your more than welcome here.
 
tsmaxx47":31u9s8lw said:
don't have a picture of that 197 do ya, hoss?
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Ts, go to the second page of this hunting forum and about halfway down is a post I started called Hunting Lease Pics . I called it a 195 in the post because there was debate on how to score a sticker point or two so I was conservative.
 
highgrit":30y44ym5 said:
That's a shame Hoss, people just don't make any sense sometimes. Jealousy is the worst trait-emotion human's have. We don't have them monster bucks here, but if you need a place to hunt your more than welcome here.
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That is mighty generous of you highgrit. I have hunted down there with jogeephus and had a blast.

After 10 years of being on the lease I considered the farmer a friend. I even A.I'd his show heifers for him. For free. To charge him never crossed my mind. We heard this morning that they think that all the big bucks are on the 700 acre piece. For some wild reason they don't understand that bucks will cover 5 square miles in a nsight during the rut. 700 acres is just a short jaunt through the park. They have actually been hunting better areas with planted food plots. They would never accept that it is their lack of hunting ability. We are fanatical about scent control. They would set around and smoke in their hunting clothes and laugh at us for taking two showers a day and bagging our hunting clothes. They probably kept the big boys ran out of their areas.
 
Same thing happened to me when I was about 14, back before we had a large deer population. A man my family had done a lot for allowed me to hunt his land. He had hunted for five years and had never killed a buck and in a good year you might see three deer while hunting. He too was an expert and told me there was no need to sit in the stand after 9 am so he would work me all day till 4 pm then I'd climb back in the stand. I was alright with this but one day I was tired and didn't want to work so I just stayed in the tree stand. About 2 pm I looked across a field and there stood the largest buck I'd ever seen (only one at that point). He was a ten pointer and I took the shot at 200+ yards and the bullet went right through his chest. It ran across the field and I unloaded my Marlin 35 cal on him as it ran missing every shot but making quite a ruckas so much so the landowner came to the field to see what the fuss was about. You could have heard a pin drop when he saw the buck. You could see he was very upset. I didn't understand. He made me go across the field and bury every drop of blood since this would ruin the hunting - according to him. I never was allowed to hunt there anymore and when our paths would cross he would rarely speak to me. I guess we would be best buddy's today had I missed with all seven shots.
 
That's rough. Your right about "deer fever" being as bad as "gold fever". I stopped rifle hunting several years back because everyone and their dog was in the woods and their is always a problem with someone hunting to close to someone else's stand (even though neither are paying for a lease or own the land). I had some fool leave me a nasty note on my stand on my side of the fence over looking OUR wheat field.

I started hunting with a bow exclusively and found it so much more enjoyable. I saw a lot more deer and I never said a cross word to myself about how close my stand was to my other stand or how I spooked the deer walking into my stand.
 
Is that lease in Pike county by any chance? there are a lot of people in that area that will stir the pot to free up a lease :frowns:

Over the last 15 years or so deer hunting in this state has changed from a sport to A high revenue venture! Even the locals get squeezed out when it comes to deer hunting. In my humble opinion the internet and hunting shows on tv have been the very worst thing to happen to hunting in my lifetime.
 
mwj":21dmch81 said:
Is that lease in Pike county by any chance? there are a lot of people in that area that will stir the pot to free up a lease :frowns:

Over the last 15 years or so deer hunting in this state has changed from a sport to A high revenue venture! Even the locals get squeezed out when it comes to deer hunting. In my humble opinion the internet and hunting shows on tv have been the very worst thing to happen to hunting in my lifetime.
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mwj,

It was in Schyuler County. While higher than most places the lease rate was not ever a point of contention between us and the land owner. Matter of fact over the years there was never even a squabble or cross word between us and the landowner. The relationship had been very positive. We never damaged and property, left gates open or anything like that. None of our group even drank alcohol. We even put new linouleum and a kitchen sink in the old farm house that we rented from him at our cost and labor. Everything was great until we started killing bigger deer. As long as we shot 125 to 135" bucks there was not a speck of trouble. At the farmers request we bumped our minimum up to 140". When we did that we started passing on smaller bucks and while getting fewer opportunities we started harvesting 150's to 160" deer. Some slight rumblings started then (3 years ago) from the son but we thought it was just off-hand humorous comments that we just played along with. The realization of the "festering" didn't hit us until this year after the 197" was killed. Then the less subtle comments were made. The son actually made a comment that was somewhat a veiled accusation that the buck may have been shot on the neighboring property. The neighboring property is owned by an outfitter and heavily patrolled for tresspassers but we have no need to tresspass as we hunt the same deer...........it is just a narrow gravel road that separates the property that we had from theirs. He made the comment even after his younger brother went to help drag the deer out and knew exactly where it was killed. We just marked it down as temporary jealousy and thought no more about it after the farmer said bye to us saying "see ya'll next year" and "ya'll coming down to turkey hunt". We believe that the son's influence is what is driving the farmers decision. If I get into another lease I am going to make sure that I do not get close enough to the land owner to know any family members.
 

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