Hunting License you regretted buying?

[JimP]

In my younger years I was a meat hunter. However if a large buck or bull showed up in shooting distance I would shoot.

Now that I don't eat as much red meat and a deer will last me over a year and a elk 3-4 years I am a trophy hunter and will go after the antlers unless the freezer is showing its bottom. Then I am a meat hunter again.

I have gone home with more bowls of tag soup than most will in a lifetime but I usually have more fun when I am out hunting that a lot of other hunters. I now judge my hunt a success if I have a chance at a animal now and not if I bring it home.

 

[Colorado Cowboy]

Ranching for Wildlife was mentioned and I got a tag for elk on a RFW hunt. As mentioned, lots of rules to follow. The thing that I didn't realize was that RFW hunting was after all the other hunting was done. The elk were scattered everywhere and my buddy and I were assigned to an area that had really been hunted hard by the outfitter. I got a small bull and my buddy got a cow and that was all the elk taken during the RFW season. The bull I shot had been shot earlier and had a broken front leg. I almost didn't take him, but I knew he wouldn't make it thru winter and it was the first elk I had seen in 4 days hunting.

Never have considered an RFW tag after that trip 15 years ago.

 

[87TT]

I regret putting in for the tule elk tags when I lived in Ca. I also regret when I had a friend talk me into going Mulie hunting in NM. Right after I bought the tag he and is resident buddy told me to, I read the regs and found that it was he worst unit in the state. I hunted hard for a week and saw exactly one buck and 4 does. When I started to work up close to them, a bunch of road hunters started blasting in my direction and I did the low crawl out of there.

 

[Blackdawg]

Iowa deer gun last year. My good ol buddies didn?t follow through on the private land invitation after encouraging me to apply for the unit. I went anyway and tried public. Iowa public, thats a joke,, huge groups of guys pushing every patch of public in the whole zone. Hordes of road hunters everywhere. Easy to really understand quickly why people don?t like hunters when you see that behavior going on,,representing hunting and hunters.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Prerylyon]

Iowa deer gun last year. My good ol buddies didn?t follow through on the private land invitation after encouraging me to apply for the unit. I went anyway and tried public. Iowa public, thats a joke,, huge groups of guys pushing every patch of public in the whole zone. Hordes of road hunters everywhere. Easy to really understand quickly why people don?t like hunters when you see that behavior going on,,representing hunting and hunters.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I've lived here in Iowa 16 yrs; PA/MD transplant myself: this is why I've given up gun hunting deer in Iowa, and only hunt the early (residents only) or late muzzle loader season for deer. I just had a hard time adjusting to it,for the reasons you stated. The party hunting here makes the deer drives in western PA look tame. Randy Newberg even got skunked in Iowa on when they did a show on hunting public land here during the gun season. Honestly, archery is what most of the serious trophy hunters do in Iowa, unless they have access to a well controlled, large, private lease during the gun seasons (which you guys had planned for-sorry it didn't work out). For DIY public land trophy whitetail hunting in Iowa, I would only recommend archery or late muzzleloader seasons to someone coming from out of state without a private lease. The season structure is also very generous to archery hunters.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337Z using Tapatalk

 

[mallardsx2]

I used to be involved in some of those large deer drives in Western PA.
Sometimes I miss those days but with all of the posted land and neighbors hating neighbors they are pretty much a thing of the past now.

Back in the day, thats how we hunted. Everyone from the area got together and we pushed those deer right out into the open.

 

[taskswap]

Oh, so many regrets. How to pick. I suppose my two were:

1. The Cabela's turkey pack on sale from $399 to $299. I could never resist a sale. This came with all the bells and whistles: integrated seat pad, two wrap-around camo blind stakes, detachable "day pack", built in rifle rest, etc. I've literally never used it. It's big and bulky and totally unsuited to my style of turkey hunting. (Anybody want a really nice turkey pack?)

2. A few years ago a buddy and I decided to try for antelope in Colorado. Since we had no points our options were limited, but we noticed that GMU 123 was a high probability draw. We also saw there was an STL there, Chico Ranch Basin. OnX maps listed it at the time as a hunting STL (when I complained to them later about this they said they use public records for this).

Guess we should have researched further, because Chico Ranch is definitely not open to the public (at least members of the public without a few grand burning a hole in their pockets). Total waste of time and money. I returned my tag but because of the restock fee this was mostly just a gesture. My buddy didn't even bother.

To be honest, the stories about the regrets are almost as good as the stories about successful hunts. I love it.

 

[Rich M]

Don't like hunting antlerless animals.. against"trophy" hunting.. What do you do, fish? Lol

You-all like getting sassy. Truth be known, I had a lousy hunt with a lousy partner, shot 2 yearlings and regretted not having a buck tag cause they were all over the place but the does weren't. Said I'd never go without a buck tag again. Makes me a bad guy. LOL!



Hunting is something I've done for 45+ seasons, been hunting big game for 40+ seasons. Nothing against folks who hold out for big animals, just don't require everyone to do it.

 

[LCH]

You-all like getting sassy. Truth be known, I had a lousy hunt with a lousy partner, shot 2 yearlings and regretted not having a buck tag cause they were all over the place but the does weren't. Said I'd never go without a buck tag again. Makes me a bad guy. LOL!



Hunting is something I've done for 45+ seasons, been hunting big game for 40+ seasons. Nothing against folks who hold out for big animals, just don't require everyone to do it.

So kinda like Goldilocks, not too big but not too small.. haha I'm joking with ya.

 

[hutty]

Maine Moose was a waste of money. Learned I would rather hunt more often than worry about a few inches of antler.

Regret not having enough money when on Safari in Zimbabwe for a bull elephant. Was over there hunting a tuskless cow and saw in excess of 200 bulls, with a few sporting ivory in the 60-80 pd range. Had several walk by me at 15 yards. PH had quota available, price was well out of my range.

 

[DanPickar]

I was buying Oregon points as a NR. That's a waste of money so I stopped!