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Message: <blockquote data-quote="zoops" data-source="post: 147214" data-attributes="member: 790">I understand all of the pros and cons that have been mentioned throughout this thread.  As a hunter with no family land or any land that is exclusively mine to hunt, it would hurt to unposted land be automatically posted.  While it seems as though 80-90% of land in most (not all) areas I visit is posted anyways, I still seem to find a couple waterfowl hunts a year on unposted land.  The waterfowl thing could have pros and cons as the nature of having to scout and find where the birds are using would be complicated by always having to track down a landowner regardless of being posted or not.  But I guess this could also help in that if you have permission you probably won't have to worry about someone else beating you to the spot.  I haven't hardly shot a pheasant on unposted land in a couple years as the few areas I knew of that were decent unposted honeyholes either are now posted or got plowed up. But again that's my small sample size and I know there are opportunities out there.   I have no problem talking to landowners and actually prefer it as I get older as it eliminates possible conflicts.  If there's a farm within a mile of a spot I'd like to hunt I'll usually stop in.  I've never been scolded by a landowner for asking on unposted land - but I do know of people who have gotten royal chewings for going in on unposted land (usually seems to be for being too close to a house even if not within 440 yards) without asking.  About all I can ever remember a landowner saying when asking to hunt unposted land is "yep go ahead - thanks for asking."  Problem is as we all know is finding a landowner in the fall, especially in today's world where farmers are so spread out.  Not uncommon to have a farmer live 10-15 miles or more from a field they farm and most don't put their phone numbers on their signs and I guess my experience with trying to track down farmers by phone has been spotty.  I think they are much more likely to give the go ahead face to face.  Having hunted in MN, people there get permission on a certain number of spots and those are the ones they hunt - you don't really "freelance" like you do in ND where you can kind of just wander around and probably find a place to hunt anywhere.  You might hunt the same slough or two for ducks all year long.  I think plenty of people would still hunt, it would be different though and not for the better.  As for the CRP discussion, while that's been brought up in many threads, of course it doesn't provide much thermal cover in winters like these.  It does however provide nesting and rearing habitat for just about every game animal in ND.  Thermal cover helps animals survive winters but without good reproduction you're never going to have big populations.  And without thermal cover they won't survive the winter - so certainly both are very important to thriving populations.  No shocker that our highest pheasant and deer populations in the last century coincided with peaks of soilbank and CRP acreage.</blockquote>

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