Question:
Does anyone have any information on deer hunting opportunitites in the
Southern Indiana area?
Answer:
My dad was from around Brookville and I now hunt his place down around
Pierceton (that's where Bob Plump came from; I must be the only guy on
Michigan's UP who goes South during deer season!). And I went to school
in Bloomington for six years (grad school). However, I've only hunted
my dad's place since about '84 so myinfo may be a little out of date.
Southern Indiana is a pretty big area and if you couldbe more specific I
might be of more help. One general comment is that the further west you
get the more government land open to hunting you are likely to find. A
lot of the land in the east is privately held and, like most places,
owners are getting more and more reluctant to let people hunt. On the
other hand, my dad tells me that fewer and fewer of the locals are deer
hunting as the novelty of shooting 3 or 4 deer per year has worn off and
they have realized that cleaning, dragging and butchering deer is work.
Anyway, here is what I would look into :
SouthEAST: I would try the area around the Brookville Reservoir (I
think this may now be a state park--open to hunting--at least in part).
They used to take some big bucks out of there ('70s and '80s), and it's
woods and wild meadows surrounded by cornfields. When they were
building the dam the place was crawling with deer.
You may also be able to get into the Jefferson Proving / testing
gounds. But this may require preregistration or something. This is a,
I believe, military testing ground for bombs, etc. and they used to let
people hunt in 'safe' areas. (This is down towards Madison.)
SouthCentral / Southwest: The Hoosier National Forest always held a lot
of deer when I went backpacking in there. There is a wilderness area
somewhere just East of Bloomington where we used to go camping a lot.
We used to see a lot of hunters during archery / small game season
close to the roads, but hardly anyone once we got off the road a mile or
so. I have never been in it but I THINK the land around the Patoka
reservoir is open to hunting.
SouthWEST You might check on available corporate land down here. It
seems to me that when I was in grad school one of the guys had worked
for American Electric Power and said that they had a lot of land around
reclaimed strip mines open to hunting and fishing. But again, never
been there or done that - just heard about it.
