Official 2024-2025 Somerville Public Hunting Thread

[TN_boy]

I have a huge pregnant doe on cam all through may. Looks like she dropped her fawn on June 6th. Itty bitty little thing

[Trumpkin]

Backdate her to when she was in heat and be in the area!

[TN_boy]

Backdate her to when she was in heat and be in the area!

Not as late bred as I thought. 200 day gestation gives her the hammer on November 19th.

[TN_boy]

Better take a boat or swim suit this weekend. Creeks are at full bank and flowing.

[SwampBuck]

Appreciate the heads up.

[SwampBuck]

I might be able to slip away and come poke around a bit in the area this coming Sunday. Just to confirm a few things because I’m pretty new to strictly public hunting.

How are they in this area about parking on the road side and accessing public areas? I know they have designated parking areas but don’t see anything against parking along the public road and walking in.

OSR- it looks like they have eOSR for here. Is this just for hunting or do they want you registering even if you’re there scouting.

Lastly, I’m new to the area but I’ve followed/lurked several of the public land threads on here over the past few years. The last thing I want to do is infringe on anyone’s “spot” , one is out of respect but two, I just don’t have a desire to hunt right next to anyone or sit in your setup. Do any of you have a good suggestion as to how to determine if people are in the area or how to tell if someone has “claimed” an area other than the obvious stand placement.

[TN_boy]

Download the My Texas Hunt Harvest app. Click on eOSR and save your license plate # and name. Service is spotty out here. You can park anywhere, just don't block the road or park on private.

Make sure you have an APH permit while scouting and if hunting, license, bow stamp, hunter Ed, and orange hat/vest. Take a photo of each and have in your phone as proof. Again, service is spotty.

Most other hunters are lazy and easy to spot. Pop up blinds, ladder stands, and stands left in trees are prevalent. Lazy hunters. Bad spots. Most of them don't put in the effort for good places. Or they are hunting hogs and don't want to carry bait long distances. Just mark each location on OnX as Dumbo and keep looking. You'll see the pattern.

I've seen 2 people in the woods in 3 years. Both have been on a main path and they were "stalking"...

Don't worry about other people "spots". I've hunted all over. Once I could see the truck when setup and took a doe while guys were talking in parking lot. My buddy shot a doe in a parking area while walking back to his truck. Used it as cover to sneak around another car and shot her.

Duck hunters are crazy. Avoid the ponds or open water slows during duck season. Most of them camp Friday and Saturday nights at those areas so they can be 1st in = illegal but warden doesn't care.

Spray your clothes with permithrin, head to toe. Tie your pant legs closed with velcro or rope. Wear long sleeves and use tick spray on all exposed skin. Skeeters are big enough to carry you away. With all this rain they'll be worse. Rubber boots or boots and gaiters. Water is everywhere right now.

85oz of water only lasts about 3 hours. It's hot.
Move slow and look for sign. Weeds are waist to head high. Know the difference between hog and deer tracks.

[SwampBuck]

Good stuff. Thats a great help.
Thank you

[rem788]

Good stuff. Thats a great help.
Thank you

Yep! Everything he said. Keep an eye out for cameras as well. You can usually tell which ones are running and which ones have just been left out there from years past. I dont see too many stands while scouting in the summer but when I do I try to see if things were possibly trimmed recently for that setup or not. Like stated above though, I try to stay away from any area that has things trimmed recently, paths that are beat down by people walking through, cameras and stands. Anywhere you see palmettos, water or low areas there are going to be millions of mosquitoes up unitl it actually gets cold out so you'll need a thermacell and to play the wind if you decide to hunt there.

[SwampBuck]

Yep! Everything he said. Keep an eye out for cameras as well. You can usually tell which ones are running and which ones have just been left out there from years past. I dont see too many stands while scouting in the summer but when I do I try to see if things were possibly trimmed recently for that setup or not. Like stated above though, I try to stay away from any area that has things trimmed recently, paths that are beat down by people walking through, cameras and stands. Anywhere you see palmettos, water or low areas there are going to be millions of mosquitoes up unitl it actually gets cold out so you'll need a thermacell and to play the wind if you decide to hunt there.

Thanks for the heads up on the bugs. I tend to forget they’re all over the state, I’ve lived and hunted on the coast so much and near standing water they’re just par for the course I guess.

It’s looking like I’ll get some boots on the ground come Sunday. Hoping to get there early and ride the roads out to get familiar there before I start looking at the few places I’ve whittled down to on ONx to see what they look like.

[SwampBuck]

So my hunting situation changed this season fairly late into the year. Really wish I had anticipated it better because I woulda loved to have been out here in January- March after the season ended.

Regardless, I made a trip Sunday to poke around a little so I could get some correlation as to where the access areas are and what’s the vegetation and stuff I’m seeing on the maps really looks like in the field. It had just rained so it was pretty easy to sneak around quietly, walked right up on three pigs and several doe. One pig stood still long enough I really wish I had had my bow on me.

Everything is super green and it was humid as heck.
Bugs weren’t bad at all surprisingly.
picked up a little trash that looked like it had been left recently
Didn’t see any cameras.

Only spotted one stand but took note of it and backed out quick. It was in a pretty obvious area so wasn’t much surprise there. I’m gonna try to get one or two more scouts in before the season but the way its looking I’ll likely end up just having to lay low and hope to hit the scouting hard once the seasons over. Looked back through several of the old threads here and I really don’t wanna be the new guy pissing anyone off.

[TN_boy]

. Looked back through several of the old threads here and I really don’t wanna be the new guy pissing anyone off.

Just pretend to be a duck hunter. They don't give a crap clanging and dragging wagons through the woods.

I wouldn't worry about it. Those stands probably only get hunted once per year.

[rem788]

[QUOTE=SwampBuck;n26858678]So my hunting situation changed this season fairly late into the year. Really wish I had anticipated it better because I woulda loved to have been out here in January- March after the season ended.

Regardless, I made a trip Sunday to poke around a little so I could get some correlation as to where the access areas are and what’s the vegetation and stuff I’m seeing on the maps really looks like in the field. It had just rained so it was pretty easy to sneak around quietly, walked right up on three pigs and several doe. One pig stood still long enough I really wish I had had my bow on me.

Everything is super green and it was humid as heck.
Bugs weren’t bad at all surprisingly.
picked up a little trash that looked like it had been left recently
Didn’t see any cameras.

Only spotted one stand but took note of it and backed out quick. It was in a pretty obvious area so wasn’t much surprise there. I’m gonna try to get one or two more scouts in before the season but the way its looking I’ll likely end up just having to lay low and hope to hit the scouting hard once the seasons over. Looked back through several of the old threads here and I really don’t wanna be the new guy pissing anyone off.[/QUOTE

Don't worry about it. Get out there and scout. Everybody else does. It's public land. I have had spots scouted before season that I thought were great but as soon as the season started all the deer were gone so I went to a new random spot in the dark climbed a tree and shot a deer within 15 minutes of daylight.

[bowmasterluke]

I did some scouting at nails creek today. Is the entire area between 125 and flag pond off limits? I’m new to hunting 711.

I found enough sign to drop a couple pins. But the most interesting find always a few abandoned turkey eggs.

[hoytassassin]

Just pretend to be a duck hunter. They don't give a crap clanging and dragging wagons through the woods.

I wouldn't worry about it. Those stands probably only get hunted once per year.

Funny thing about this is the ding dongs that hunt the main roads/trails down to the duck hunting spots. Last weekend of teal season(was also opening weekend of bow) about 5/6 years ago me and a buddy went out and shot our 2 man limit. Walking back to the truck around 8:45 we were laughing/goofing off when we rounded a corner and theres a guy about 10 ft up hunting... from that spot on every 60-100 yards we walked up on another. I bet we saw 6 or 7 guys in total.