By: John Eberhart. Public Land Strategies Something that receives very little print or TV and video footage for the amount of hunters that do it, is hunting on public land. Hunters with private land options rarely gravitate to hunting open to hunting public lands simply because no matter how much hunting pressure private parcels in a given area receive, nearby public lands will typically receive much more and be far more difficult to hunt successfully. In Michigan however and even in our heaviest populated areas, there are public land gems that can provide somewhat consistent … Read More
Michigan elk hunting today – winning the draw represents the ultimate adventure
By: Tom Lounsbury. This year marks the 102nd anniversary of elk returning to Michigan. This all began with 7 Rocky Mountain elk (from Yellowstone National Park) being released in 1918 near Wolverine in northern Michigan. Elk are native to Michigan, but they had become extinct around 1875 due to unregulated hunting and a major loss of habitat. The subspecies found here was known as the eastern elk and was once abundantly found from the East Coast all the way to the Mississippi River. It was also bigger than its Rocky Mountain cousin, with mature bulls … Read More
Freelance Scouting
By: John Eberhart. Grabbing my bow, backpack and freelance pack I set off through the public land timber to a patch of white oaks I’d hunted the previous season. To my disappointment none of the oaks had acorns, the two scrapes from the previous season were inactive, there were no nearby rubs and the heavily used runways from the previous season were barely noticeable. It was late October and the mature bucks were beginning to break their nocturnal habits in search of early estrus does which I term as the pre-rut and because of that … Read More