Question for Nebraskans

[richhodg66]

I'll be retiring from Uncle Sam's service this summer and am looking at a pretty good job prospect in Omaha.

I've homesteaded on Fort Riley most of my career and love the region so Nebraska won't be that big a switch other than getting used to a bigger town, but all the deer hunting I have come to know and love will change.

The fact is, though it always seemed to me that Kansas has complicated regs, you can get quite a few tags to deer hunt pretty much just for the trouble of going to a vendor and buying them, the only real restriction is you can only get one antlered tag. They did away with the mail in applications a long time ago. We also have a pretty good length season for firearms in December and they've established a special early season in a big area from KC to Topeka in attempt to reduce deer/car collisons. Best of all, we have an early muzzle loader season in September.

How does Nebraska measure up? Is it complicated/expensive to hunt there? What kind of public land is available? Because of the Corps of Engineers reservoirs and Fort Riley itself, I actually have access to quite a bit of public land where I am, and it's going to take some getting used to if I have to find private land to hunt on.

It's only a little over three hours from where I currently live and I'll have a Kansas lifetime hunting license before I move, if I move, so I guess I can come back to my regular haunts if need be assuming I can get time off.

[btroj]

Nebraska has a bit of public land but it also gets hunted pretty hard.
I find NE permit buying to e easy, you the tag online and print it out yourself.
If you can find private land in the right areas there are a fair number of antlerlessonly areas where you shoot a few deer cheap.
Take a look at NE Game and Parks and you can see the deer hunting zones and regs.

I do my deer hunting in northern MO these days as I have private land I hunt there.

[280Ackley]

As btroj stated public land hunting in Nebraska is pretty crowded. (It's also full of idiots that only have a gun in their hand once a year) However, if you know someone with private ground or are willing to lease you can kill as many deer as you are willing to buy tags for. Limit is 2 antlered a year and as many does as you want. Recently there has been an early doe season in Oct ( 2 weeks), rifle deer for both sexes in Nov (10 to 14 days) the entire month of Dec is muzzleloader for either sex and late doe in Jan (10days to 3 weeks). Good lease ground is $4 to $10 per acre depending on, first distance from Omaha and second herd size and trophy potential. Omaha is a great place to live.

Jeff

[richhodg66]

I really like my early muzzle loader season as I am cold averse, LOL, but December has it's share of nice days and a rifle season in November is good.

The public land here is bad the first weekend of the general firearms season so I try to stay home those days, but generally I've had decent luck on it most other times. During muzzle loader, I usually have the whole place to myself, not many guys do it.

Guess I need to research the the Game and Parks site. I'm glad to hear that you don't have to compete hard for tags, I know some states you do. I had planned on living in Kansas til I die, but this may be a good opportunity and Omaha has always seemed like a decent town when I've been there. I Generally avoid cities of any size and have enjoyed rural living now for quite a while, so it'll take some getting used to.

[10 ga]

I'll be retiring from Uncle Sam's service this summer............ I can come back to my regular haunts if need be assuming I can get time off.

First, Thank you for your service to our nation! Next, speaking from 3 years experience I can say, impoverished retirement is way better than work at any pay scale! Perhaps you have family and kids and college to pay for and that is certainly a foremost responsibility.

Well my bro lives in CO but hunts in NE and hunts mostly private land. If ya put out the effort to locate some landowners and get some permissions hunting is pretty good. He hunts mostly within 20 mi. of North Platte where he has a hunt/fish cabin. Pretty country, but except for the Elk and Lion hunting in CO I'd just as well stay in VA, I hate long cold winters.

Well kinda a rambling $.02 worth but, best to ya, 10 ga

[starmac]

As btroj stated public land hunting in Nebraska is pretty crowded. (It's also full of idiots that only have a gun in their hand once a year) However, if you know someone with private ground or are willing to lease you can kill as many deer as you are willing to buy tags for. Limit is 2 antlered a year and as many does as you want. Recently there has been an early doe season in Oct ( 2 weeks), rifle deer for both sexes in Nov (10 to 14 days) the entire month of Dec is muzzleloader for either sex and late doe in Jan (10days to 3 weeks). Good lease ground is $4 to $10 per acre depending on, first distance from Omaha and second herd size and trophy potential. Omaha is a great place to live.

Jeff

4 to 10 bucks an acre to lease hunting rights, do they process the meat for you????

[btroj]

Nope. Some of you guys are from states with huge tracts of public lands. Nebraska doesn't have those. We have a couple of National Forests but they are in the 60,000 acre range and have hundreds of deer hunters each year.
Top deer huntin land in NE for whitetails is along the river bottoms and that I all private land.

Sometimes you have to decide how bad you want to hunt. In many states that means either having a friend where you can hunt their land or you pay up.

[KCSO]

Here where I live in NE Nebraska we are innundated with city folks who are leasing up the whole county. It's getting darn hard to find a place to hnt if you don't lease. Last year 44,000 acres here was leased for hunting. But there are public hunting groounds here that a lot of folks don't hunt much as it's walk in hunting. Best advise is find a farmer and treat him good!

[richhodg66]

Kansas is generally the same way, but where I live happens to have quite a bit of public land, there's Fort Riley itself, which I have access to being military, but Milford and Tuttle Creek Lakes both have considerable tracts of Corps of Engineers land around them too and that's how I do most of it.

Kansas also has that walk in hunting area program, which isn't bad either, I've done some hunting that way too. Does Nebraska have a program like that?

[Rex]

Rich, Nebraska has "walkin hunting" but it differes some from Kansas in what can be put into walk-in hunting. I personally like Kansas' program a lot better.
If you move to Omaha you will be about 5 hours east of me on I-80. The north and south Platte river bottoms are mostly leased up or owned by out of county recurational money people. Out away from the rivers there are a good number of mule deer and a few white tail. Of course if you move to Nebraska you will need to bring a bird gun along also. Lots of turkey, pheasants have been spotty the last few years and the quail numbers have been tough around our area anyway.
If you make it out this far west, I'll buy a tall cool at Ole's Big Game Bar, and he serves a nice steak.

Rex

[richhodg66]

Thanks, Rex. One day I'll have to get serious about hunting birds, it is fun, just never felt compelled to do it like deer. And I'll definitely take you up on the tall cool one someday.

[Farmall]

Rich / Rex....

Don't I know you guys from somwhere? Come join us up here in the great state of Nebraska!

[bowfin]

I live in Columbus, Nebraska and it is amazing how "uncrowded" public land gets once a person gets out of range of Omaha and Lincoln.

Around our area, there is a lot of public land with a lot of deer on them. Skip opening weekend, or better yet, just skip the regular deer season altogether, and you will have plenty of elbow room here.

Even better is around the Ainsworth/Long Pine area. Lots of land, very few people. That would be about 275 miles away from Omaha.

Tons of public land next to the Platte River from Grand Island to North Platte.

Antlerless Only permits are always available in several areas. The seasons are incredibly long for a "season choice" permit, which is lets one use a bow, muzzleloader, high powered rifle to take a doe from September to the middle of January.

[richhodg66]

I live in Columbus, Nebraska and it is amazing how "uncrowded" public land gets once a person gets out of range of Omaha and Lincoln.

Around our area, there is a lot of public land with a lot of deer on them. Skip opening weekend, or better yet, just skip the regular deer season altogether, and you will have plenty of elbow room here.

Even better is around the Ainsworth/Long Pine area. Lots of land, very few people. That would be about 275 miles away from Omaha.

Tons of public land next to the Platte River from Grand Island to North Platte.

Antlerless Only permits are always available in several areas. The seasons are incredibly long for a "season choice" permit, which is lets one use a bow, muzzleloader, high powered rifle to take a doe from September to the middle of January.

That sounds pretty much like the situation in Kansas. It's kind of funny, for the past two years, I've been stationed on Fort Leavenworth, just outside of Kansas City. When I couldn't get home during deer season, I did a little hunting on a very large tract of WIHA land north of Achison. Great country, saw a lot of deer, and except for the friend I went up there with, never had to share any of it while I was there. I would have figured as close as it was to a major city, it would have been crawling with other hunters. I guess if a guy is willing to drive a little, things get better.

[bowfin]

I guess if a guy is willing to drive a little, things get better.

Absolutely!

There are free copies of the Nebraska Public Huntling Land Atlas available at a lot of places that sell sporting goods, bait, or gas stations. Do a bit of exploring and find a couple of places to check out.

[richhodg66]

Not to make hasty deceisions, but I have planned for a long time that they are going to bury my carcass in Milford, Kansas, so though I may work for another 18-20 years (I'm 46 now), I will eventually return here, so I will therefore have a lifetime license before leaving. That being the case, I'll have a place to hunt worst case scenario within three and a half hours or so of Omaha.

I would like to explore some other places though, and have heard a lot of good things about the area you're talking about. Nebraska actually would give the opportunity to go after mule deer and pronghorns which Kansas does have, but are few and far away and in a part of the state where it is all private land. I'm still in the decision phase and haven't gone through an interview, but the particular job in Omaha is looking like a real good situation so I want to make an educated decision since my deer hunting is important to me.

[Rex]

Andy, funny I never noticed you on here!

Bowfin, do you bird hunt any of those areas along the platte? Come November my birthday cake will have 70 candles but I still enjoy a little walk with a gun.

[popper]

Most of those I know from Ne and TX go to Ks for deer. Most go to north of Ft. Riley, some to S.E. Ks

[bowfin]

Bowfin, do you bird hunt any of those areas along the platte?

There are plenty of turkeys.

Pheasants and quail have fallen prey to the center pivot here in Nebraska. It is far easier to shoot three deer in a day than to even see three rooster pheasants. South Dakotans keep telling us we should have two pheasants for every one of theirs because we have milder winters. I do think Nebraska is behind the curve in promoting nesting cover over everything else. The guys up North say winter cover is more important, and they have the birds to prove it.

[Rex]

Bowfin, I agree. My son-in-law farms 28 pivots with some dryland. The pivots he owns he doesn't farm the corners, instead puts in habitat. Those he leases, the landlords want the last inch farmed even if it doesn't pay. Aside from his own corners winter cover is hard to find. Sometimes we find birds, sometimes not.

[richhodg66]

Well, I just spent a good chunk of today touring the school in question and talking with people I'd be working with. They seem pretty eager to have me and their HR people are wanting an interview next week. I wish this other one I've got an application in for in NE Kansas would stop dragging their feet. I'd rather not relocate, but I gotta admit, Omaha sure seems like a nice town and that is one impressive high school up there.

A guy was telling me today that there is an area in Bellvue that has a special controlled season to reduce deer population, shotgun, muzzle loader and archery only (no problem for me with any of those). Anybody know about that? I'm sorry I can't remember the name of the area.

[btroj]

Gifford farm and Fontenelle forest have archery and muzzleloader seasons. Gifford won't be much good for quite a while, they had major flooding last year and were under many feet of water for months. So much silt that the undergrowth is buried. Many trees are dead.

I know that area well. Killed my first deer there. Love less than 5 miles from it. Those dang deer Also come thru my neighborhood. We see them daily.

[richhodg66]

Fontenelle Forest was the area he talked about. How big an area is it? Is it pretty over hunted?

[1Shirt]

There is a lot of good advice here, but all of it considered, wish I had never left Alaska!
1Shirt!

[richhodg66]

I lived in Alaska for a little over a year (Anchorage). Neat place, it really was. I was not as much of a hunter back then, had a relatively bad job that consumed me and a pregnant wife through about half of it so didn't get out much. I did spend a lot of range time as it stayed open til 2200 every day in the summer when it never gets dark.

I might like Alaska better now, but I fell in love with the midwest real fast when I moved here and don't think I'll ever get too far away from it again.

[NSP64]

richhodg66, thanks for your service.
Hope you find someplace worth going.What will your new career be?
I plan on heading to FL as soon as the last one is out of H.S.(4yrs,9days,14hours,16minutes,35seconds. but who is counting LOL)

[richhodg66]

Thanks. Looking to be a JROTC instructor. I did it for four years in high school and had a blast, had largely forgotten about it until #1 son got into it, now he's done four years of it and I got to thinking it would make a good second career.

I have ine more after #1 son, but he'll be done next year. I really like the area where I am, but the right offer may make a move doable for me.

[btroj]

Fontenelle Forest is about 2,000 acres. I don't think hunting is allowed in the entire forest.
It is walk in hunting only.
With only archers and muzzleloaders it isn't even close to oer hunted. They also allow only a limited number of permits each year.
Tis part of Bellevue has a huge over population of deer. They are a pest in the city, they have destroyd the forest by eating the entire under growth.
I don't know what the effect of the flooding will be on the hunting or the herd.

Brad

[richhodg66]

That would give me a good excuse to dust off the longbow and start at it again, and the old Hawken works well too.

By the way, does anyone know if Nebraska has a reciprocal agreement with Kansas regarding CCW permits? Oklahoma and Texas both do and they are the only states I have traveled to much in the past few years.

[Farmall]

I live in NE and work in KS, as far as I know, there is no reciprocity between these states. Not sure if you are closer to me now....or if you move to Omaha! I know you are definitely closer to me when I am at work!
Andy