Hunting Forum

I live in the state of Maryland and have hunted everything from state ground to private ground and I am surprised that I do not see many other small game hunters in any of these places. I have hunted in two local states also and have noticed a lack of other hunters in the woods. What happened to the old days of teaching your kids about hunting begining with small game. Seems like the days of dove hunting in my state are gone you never hear any guys in the diner talking about how many doves they saw in a morning of hunting or how many squirrel or rabbits they bagged in a day of hunting. Seems like all the hunters now are just hunting deer or bear and most just for the antlers hanging off their heads. Guess I shouldn't really complain leaves the woods clear of people so that I can collect my bag limit was just wondering why most people do not hunt small game.

I'm not sure either but it's the same thing here in Indiana.Maybe everyone's so busy now days that they don't want to "waste there time" on something as small as a squirrel or rabbit,don't know for sure.The last time I saw any squirrel or rabbit hunters was about 10-15 years ago.It's the same thing with trapping,you just don't hear of anyone doing it anymore.

When I moved to Maryland about 7 years ago I researched as much as I could and took my dog out to western Maryland looking for grouse, quail, etc on the public lands listed in on the DNR website. We tromped all over the place and the dog never so much as got interested in anything. (He is a GSP and back then, we had just come from California where we hunted wild California quail, chucker and pheasants). He is (was, he is very old now) an excellent bird dog. In addition, we kept tripping over deer hunters in the woods. I felt bad tromping thru with my dog while they were trying to hunt deer with the sharp stick. Private land seems to be all tied up in leases or off limits and frankly, I have never seen a grouse in Maryland (we camp and I fly fish all around the state of Maryland). Once I found duck hunting, I started spending all my small game season hunting them. In February I hunt squirrels on the same piece of private property that I found that lets me hunt deer. As far as dove hunting, I never got into that sport even in California where the dove hunting was excellent, I like standing behind my GSPs more than anything else.

To sum up, I think access to land with decent game to hunt is all but gone in Maryland except for deer, which are everywhere. For those of us that are willing to work for it and put in the research, duck hunting without a special lease is very doable in Maryland, so I think that is what the people you are opining for are doing albeit I agree they are clearly in reduced numbers from the olden days.

my 2 cents

jack

I don't know if it is a bad thing or not, but what I am seeing is a lot of very young kids are now being taught how to hunt by being put in a blind over a food plot and out comes a deer and kaboom. And then turkey hunting also. Parents and kids watch all these deer hunting videos and learn to hunt that way thinking they have to have all the newest, fastest and greatest equipment, and anything less than a 150 is not a trophy. Just my rant on this.

Ditto from here.

I grew up when killing a rabbit or squirel meant failure was no meat on table---Quail too....nowadays, only "BIG" game mean anything to anybody including G&F !

ok, I'm being dense Tom.... G*F?

Many times growing up dinner was, frog leg, tree rats, pheasant, or maybe even bluegill or crappie... All in season of course.... ;-)

Many times I was told to "go get something for dinner". Hunting deer was definitely the highlight of the year but certainly not the mainstay.

Things have changed a lot in the last 50 or so years. Ask a youngster what still-hunting is and how to properly do it and see how many can
answer. Let alone how to track, read weather sign, how to use an analog watch to determine north if your compass breaks, h*77, how to USE a compass.
Etc.... I fear a LOT of good solid information and techniques are soon to be lost for good. Really rather sad.

I think the media may have a lot to do with it. A lot of people down here in SE Georgia own land, but don't live around here. We used to could ALL hunt on their land, as they weren't very interested in hunting. Now, EVERYONE gets and watches the outdoor channel and we can all see how easy it really is to kill a big buck and call in a big gobbler. Since they see how easy it is to do all that, they want to keep the land for themselves and keep all the rest of us off of it. Point in case, they hunt deer and turkey a couple times a year because they see it on TV and realize they can do it. You don't ever see a small game program on tv promoting any kind of small game hunting.
I shy away from it a little because the only place I can go, is in my deer woods. But when deer season goes, I have almost 2 months to hunt squirrels and rabbits. Don't see many rabbits, but I'm eat up with squirrels, so I usually try to get what I can of them. Also, dove hunting is a VERY big thing down here. As a matter of fact, I was at a dove shoot back in September with my cousin and he said to me "I wouldn't give a nickel for all the deer in the world. But I'll take every one of these birds I can get my hands on!"
So to answer your question, I think there are lots of people who pursue small game, just not like they did 20 or 30 years ago. And you won't hear much about it because like you said, big game is the ticket. Bottom line, It's what's "selling" these days.

You have answered your own question. In the not too distant past most of the hunting was done for small game. This is because deer were fairly scarce in many places. It wasn't like it is now. Fathers took their children hunting for rabbit, squirrel etc... to put meat on the table. Deer hunting wasn't nearly as productive as it is now.

Deer are the new rabbits when it comes to hunting these days. Heck, in some places you can actually kill as many deer in a day as you can rabbits.

Same here a lot of people are missing out on the basics of hunting IMHO.