Does anyone hunt the "land between the lakes" area or Daniel Boone forest? I'm from Ohio and looking for a better place to bow hunt and I'm starting to look around. We own property in Ohio but the population is so low I'd hate to shoot any deer on them. Any info would be appreciated!

Zebow, I used to hunt Land Between the Lakes when I worked for the state of Ohio. I loved it.

Also really good deer hunting in the state of Virginia. Especially Bath County and the big national forest properties.

I never hunted in the Danile Boone, but it sure looks like good country. It would at LEAST be worth a scouting trip.

Don't know where you are in Ohio, but there is some really good bow hunting in some of the state forest property as well.

Funny thing here. I went to LBL every year for well over 20 years and hunted opening week. I have had decent success there through the years but mostly at taking Doe. Then a few seasons ago they changed the rules and made us start using our State tags. I started going there FOR the extra tags, now that was gone. So what was our hunting group to do now? We bought our Ohio tags and came your way!! One of our hunting party had even bought land and built a house in that area, he recently sold that also. To answer your question, I do think there is some good hunting there. The population is down, which is why they changed the rules, but I still love the area, I miss going there. May even go again next season.

Thanks. We own land in west central Ohio, Miami county. It is really bad here so I'm laying off shooting does for a few years. I may take a crappie fishing/scouting trip down to Kentucky lake this spring and check it out.

Sent you a PM

Coleman, This is Mike in Sidney. The UP of Michigan on the west side is loaded with deer. It also has good fishing. I have map books for Michigan if you are interested. Mike in Sidney.

I have hunted LBL for probably 15 years, killed 4 deer. It is a vast place to hunt, mostly mature oak forest. That being said, it is not an ideal deer hunting place . Last I heard it was 10 deer per square mile, which is not that great. That was a few years ago, its less than that now. First they eleimnated it as two bonus tags, now its one deer and your done. Both signs of a plummetting population. DBNF is also mature, mountainous oak forest. I can just about promise you there are better populations in Ohio. Some of the central, and north central WMA's have the thicker populations, with high kill rates.

I have hunted LBL for probably 15 years, killed 4 deer. It is a vast place to hunt, mostly mature oak forest. That being said, it is not an ideal deer hunting place . Last I heard it was 10 deer per square mile, which is not that great. That was a few years ago, its less than that now. First they eleimnated it as two bonus tags, now its one deer and your done. Both signs of a plummetting population. DBNF is also mature, mountainous oak forest. I can just about promise you there are better populations in Ohio. Some of the central, and north central WMA's have the thicker populations, with high kill rates.

The Pioneer Weapons WMA in the DBNF (Bath & Rowan counties) used to be excellent hunting. "Big" bodied deer but, hard to pattern. Two other excellent options are "The Clay Farm WMA" in Nicholas county and "Kleber WMA" in Owen and Franklin counties.

The DBNF is located mostly in the Eastern counties and some of those counties had a 50 to 80 percent die off this past year due to bluetongue or EHD viruses while nearly all had some die off. That virus went through the area my farm is in about 10 years ago and I did not have a pic or see a deer on my farm for almost a year. As posted above, there are some good wma's that have good deer numbers. Check out the KDFWR website and find some zone 1 and 2 counties that have wma"s. Those are the counties with the highest deer numbers in the state. Zone 1 is unlimited in how many does you can take as long as you keep buying the bonus antlerless tags at 15 dollars per 2 deer.

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