Met with the Ranger today

[Buckfever]

I have to say that to this day, when it comes to finding remote unpressured public land, I still retain the heart of a child. After successfully moving to an unpressured portion of the late season property, I went back to the aerial photos and the overlayed the topos provided for the late season park and I realized that I had misread the map. On the most remote portion of the property, really a land locked area, there was a tremendous amount of woods on state land that I had overlooked. So I reconstructed the boundary and could not believe how much wooded land there was over there, I had thought that was all private property. So I called over there and the lady put me in touch with the Ranger who suggested that I come in and he'd go over what I had. We arranged a time and he walked me through the boundary and described the areas, high land, steep and hilly, areas of hardwoods, thickets with Willow trees interspersed. Some areas so thick as to be almost impenetrable. Then he sits me down and says don't go anywhere and he pulls out his plot of survey and shows me how the property actually jets even further into the woods and spends even more time with me going over terrain features. He explains that there have only been 2 guys that have hunted only one portion when the marsh is frozen and but doesn't know if they're even hunting the property presently. Showed me a couple of other ways in that require walking through private property, which is what he does. I shared this info with my hunting partner, his response was, "What are you doing Sunday?". This will be the first time that I've had to use a bike as part of my hunting but it is 1.25 miles to where we go in so we'll leave the gear there and bike over to the gear. From there the length of the property is .75miles so that won't be near as bad. I'm so pumped!!!

Sunday we're going in.

[freedomrules3]

sounds very interesting. while most folks seem to steer clear of the rangers, i find them to be very knowledgable most of the time to where some of the better areas are. i do find it rare for them to actually walk the boundaries with ya though , that was a nice bonus.
you hear all these so called horror stories about rangers, but i find most very happy to help out. most of the times a friendship is born to some extent in the process. sounds like a good place . good luck

[davep]

Time talking to rangers,biologists,wardens,etc,is time WELL spent,especially if you are heading out of state,onto unfamiliar ground.Sometimes,they're just itchin' to tell you what they know!