Anti-first post

[RyGuy]

Okay all, instead of the classic “what’s everyone’s favorite unit? Not looking for honey holes or anything, BUT…”
What’s your LEAST favorite place to hunt?
Maybe it’s a glory tag that turned out to be not so glorious? Maybe it’s an easy to draw tag, that you quickly realized why it’s so easy to draw.
I wanna hear the horror stories.

I’ll go first:
Unit 19 elk (pre-burn). Unit absolutely covered in a thick carpet of dark timber. Very little glassing ability. Low elk densities. Too close to the front range, so often overcrowded. I know a guy that has a lot of success there, but I’ll never go back!
Unit 92 deer. Very limited public land. Tons of hunters! Private land with much better habitat, so it holds all of the deer. The tags are leftover for a reason…

 

[TOGIE]

my curiosity is still very piqued at the alpine elk hunting in 19. i've got pretty intimate familiarity with the alpine in there. i'm aware of some other elk pockets down lower too. but admittedly, i'm still hesitant to burn my A tag opportunity in there. not to mention an outfitter has some of the primo alpine locales on good lockdown. 19 is an interesting unit, definitely not crossed off my list just yet.

i dunno, i think 12 tops my list of places i've no interest in returning to for elk. i never want to to return to 231 either, but damn there are some honey holes in there, they're just super hard to access, not to mention some particularly stubborn and heckling landowners over there.

 

[Bambistew]

Alaska. All of it. It's over-rated, expensive, wet, the ground is squishy, it rains a lot and there is little game to be found.

I would save your money and stick to places like MT, WY or ID.

 

[Doublecluck]

380,410,700 all of em suck, I know hundreds of people who drawn them and never killed anything over a dink. Archery ,spike and cow hunters everywhere. Don’t put in there.

But really I know two guys who regularly kill bulls north of 330 in general units who drew two of those tags and hunted hard and couldn’t turn up a bull over 330. I guess knowing a “bad” area good is better than not knowing a “good” area.

 

[manitou1]

WY general elk, 36.
WY region 20, 21, and 22 for antelope.
WY mule deer general: East half of state.

Elk 36 wins the top spot for bad though.

 

[Pagosa]

380,410,700 all of em suck, I know hundreds of people who drawn them and never killed anything over a dink. Archery ,spike and cow hunters everywhere. Don’t put in there.

But really I know two guys who regularly kill bulls north of 330 in general units who drew two of those tags and hunted hard and couldn’t turn up a bull over 330. I guess knowing a “bad” area good is better than not knowing a “good” area.

I know a guy that drew a Custer tag 799-20 3 times in 15 years and never fired a shot, it wasn’t for the lack of trying.

My least favorite place to hunt is NW Montana. Specially anywhere within an hour of Kalispell. Knowing an area really increases success even in poor units.

 

[seeth07]

The only trip that my wife and I have gone on that we for sure will never put in for and never go on again would be the KY Cow Elk tag that I received. Will go back there in a heartbeat for whitetail though...

 

[Dougfirtree]

I can't say that I've found that unit yet. Many people would probably feel that way about the area I do most of my deer hunting here in NY. There's really no good way to calculate success rates here, but they are loooooww.. Glassing is impossible. If you're not standing on the top of a mountain, the wind is probably blowing all 4 directions every 3 minutes, deer densities are very low, tons of brush and rough terrain/weather. It can be brutal (and I love it).

 

[Luke_with_a_lab]

Hunted some national forest service adjacent to a windfarm this last season. It was unbearably windy every day... it was miserable. In retrospect I should have expected this.

 

[JDH]

The only trip that my wife and I have gone on that we for sure will never put in for and never go on again would be the KY Cow Elk tag that I received. Will go back there in a heartbeat for whitetail though...

Is that because they mainly hang out on private or something else? I stopped applying years ago.

 

[AlaskaHunter]

Alaska. All of it. It's over-rated, expensive, wet, the ground is squishy, it rains a lot and there is little game to be found.

I would save your money and stick to places like MT, WY or ID.

I would never hunt the Steese Highway 40-mile Caribou Hunt...a zoo of RVs and 4-wheelers.

 

[Beignet]

White Sulphur Springs area antelope was one of my absolute worst hunting experiences. All the critters on public pass through the Smith River WMA and it sounds like Beirut in the early 80's with all the shots ringing out. Dudes are either sitting next to their truck in lawn chairs and sniping them from outlandish distances as soon as they step on public or they're rapidly unloading magazines from a semi-auto if they catch one deeper in. Seemed like a good number of them that caught lead on public just hobbled back over to private to suffer. A person should only venture into that WMA wearing a full suit of armor. Had an errant round hit the dirt not 10 yards from where I was standing in the open, clearly visible with a shitload of orange on, and the numbnuts behind the trigger just kept shooting. The whole hunt was terrifying and a disgusting display of ethics.

I tried again a few weeks later after the early season dust settled and the antelope had all wised up by then.

 

[Doublecluck]

White Sulphur Springs area antelope was one of my absolute worst hunting experiences. All the critters on public pass through the Smith River WMA and it sounds like Beirut in the early 80's with all the shots ringing out. Dudes are either sitting next to their truck in lawn chairs and sniping them from outlandish distances as soon as they step on public or they're rapidly unloading magazines from a semi-auto if they catch one deeper in. Seemed like a good number of them that caught lead on public just hobbled back over to private to suffer. A person should only venture into that WMA wearing a full suit of armor. Had an errant round hit the dirt not 10 yards from where I was standing in the open, clearly visible with a shitload of orange on, and the numbnuts behind the trigger just kept shooting. The whole hunt was terrifying and a disgusting display of ethics.

I tried again a few weeks later after the early season dust settled and the antelope had all wised up by then.

I once saw a herd of 50-100 get decimated on that bma just south East of Harlowtown. Surrounded on 4 sides on a 1x1 section by no less than 50 groups of shooters. Folks were lining em up like geese for pile picks. I hunt that unit sometimes but not there. Scary.

 

[TOGIE]

i dunno actually. i've been perusing 231 on onx again and am getting all hot and bothered about backpacking into some new spots i've never been to

 

[OntarioHunter]

Any place and any game opening weekend. Last time I hunted opening weekend up here I almost had to shoot it out with some junkie. To this day I have no idea what his problem was about. Totally berserk. And the slobs who pitch their camp in the middle of the road to block off cutting units. Wait till the snow flies and most of the idiots are gone. I haven't hunted opening weekend waterfowl for maybe fifty years. That always brings out the crazies. Fighting over ducks? Really?

 

[Beignet]

I once saw a herd of 50-100 get decimated on that bma just south East of Harlowtown. Surrounded on 4 sides on a 1x1 section by no less than 50 groups of shooters. Folks were lining em up like geese for pile picks. I hunt that unit sometimes but not there. Scary.

Was that the infamous elk incident where a few guys dropped dead from heart attacks during the melee and the landowners pulled out of Block Management after?

Or, just a typical Wednesday in the unit?

 

[GrantK]

Gunnison Basin late season deer might be the most overrated tag in the west, I went into it fully knowing that and was still not impressed, definitely a glory tag, and definitely incredibly frustrating to hunt, so many bucks, so few that are better than you can find every day in 0-1 point units...

 

[seeth07]

Is that because they mainly hang out on private or something else? I stopped applying years ago.

The season dates align with the rifle deer hunt. Instead of having all kinds of places to hunt by yourself (as there are so few people with an elk tag) it is overloaded with slobs on SxS that ride every forest road looking for a deer right off it. And those roads are closed to driving on...so when you are following the rules and walking them, you just get ran over by the slobs that ignore the rule. The population density is also extremely low compared to what it used to be as most of the elk have learned that after rut, you head to the bottoms and hang out in peoples yards.

 

[appaloosa]

South Dakota West River deer in Bennet County. I have never seen more hunters descend on a limited amount of public land in my life. Opening morning I watched a guy erect an elevated, tripod chair thingy right in the middle of the draw I was hunting. He sat up there rattling antlers together for God and everyone to see. Believe it or not, not a single buck came over to check him out. I hunted that tag for 3 hours and called it good, seemed almost criminal to allow that many hunters on public land.

 

[brian flatlander]

South Dakota West River deer in Bennet County. I have never seen more hunters descend on a limited amount of public land in my life. Opening morning I watched a guy erect an elevated, tripod chair thingy right in the middle of the draw I was hunting. He sat up there rattling antlers together for God and everyone to see. Believe it or not, not a single buck came over to check him out. I hunted that tag for 3 hours and called it good, seemed almost criminal to allow that many hunters on public land.

South Dakota Jones county also very bad, walk-in areas terrible habitat, Ted Turner owns the rest.