Yeah, you can shoot a PILE of ‘em down south there if you can get access to private land; on public land it’s a helluvalot harder, especially in areas where baiting is legal on the private land and all the deer have been drawn off.
Starting mid-November, the Shotgun season runs 4 weeks, split into two, two-week periods and tags are awarded by lottery for each hunting area, with the total number limited so as to keep the hunter density no higher than 1 hunter for every 20 ACRES in the unit. Success rate in the 1st half (on public land) runs a pretty typical 15-20%, I think; second half is around 5% and ML season (which follows 2nd half of shotgun) is usually around 4%.
No doubt there are a few guys who hunt very hard on the public land (generally PRIOR TO firearms) and they do pretty well with it. Wild Bill is something of a hunting machine, near as I can tell. I drive to NJ every day, so my time and opportunities are quite a bit more limited than for most of the guys who do any good…
So it ain’t easy, despite a season that runs 9/15 to the end of January on some parts of the state. Crossbows are now legal for the entire archery season as well, so the pressure won’t be easing any… which is just one more reason that private land access is so coveted around here…
If you have great networking skills, you may find yours elf up to your eyeballs in hunting opportunities and you may become one of the 1-2% of hunters who manage to take a dozen or two every year, or you could end up sitting in a stand somewhere glassing a herd of deer clustered ‘round a feeder on the next place over.
But at least you won’t miss any football, because we’re not allowed out of the house on Sundays.
So don’t move here for the hunting. A good job is a good job, and these days a good job is hard to find, so do what makes sense, and maybe figure out how you can continue to hunt with Old Friends for a week every year back where you came from…
Sorry to be so full of gloom and doom, but honestly, if I could bail outta here and live just about anywhere else… I’d be gone as fast as I could pack up the family…