The Daily News

If you hunt in North Dakota, particularly for birds of any kind, you really need a PLOTS Guide. In it you will find the location of about 1 million acres of land across the state, open to your walking access this hunting season. This is private land that has been secured for your recreation through the Private Land Open to Sportsmen (PLOTS) program.

The PLOTS Guide includes maps of the entire state showing roads, towns, rivers, lakes, sloughs, all state Wildlife Management Areas and all federal public land - as well as the PLOTS acres. Also in the guide are pages of other tips and information you’ll need as you hunt North Dakota such as sunrise/sunset tables and general hunting season information. With the PLOTS Guide in your possession, you should always know where you are and hopefully where you’re headed for your next hunt.

Because the PLOTS Program is a fluid entity, there will be some variations between the guide and reality. The guide is printed in August so some PLOTS tracts may have been removed or added to the program, or the habitat may have been altered. This is a common misconception among hunters who come across PLOTS acres, designated by a triangular yellow sign, and it’s plowed up or there are cattle grazing. They tend to think the PLOTS contract is being abused by the landowner.

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In some cases, PLOTS acres have been recently signed up and the landowner hasn’t yet changed his use of those acres. He may not be required to remove the cattle until winter, for example. Or he may have agreed to plant cover grasses in the spring.

In other cases, the Game and Fish Department signs up a specific acreage for the PLOTS but there are odd-shaped edges or corners of the property that were added into the program to assist with access to the huntable habitat. For example, you may need to walk across some plowing to get to a duck slough. If you see some PLOTS acres trampled by cows or plowed into black dirt there’s probably a reason for it.

The good news is the entire PLOTS Guide is also available online at gf.nd.gov. That allows the department to update each map as changes occur in the status of specific acres. You can also go to the map index, locate your hunting areas and print out just those pages you plan to utilize. It’s very convenient and up-to-date.

The printed guides are free and available at all license vendors, county auditors or Game and Fish Department district offices. They are not available by mail.

The important thing is these acres are paid for with your license dollars. They are also possible only because of the cooperation of willing landowners. Just because these parcels are open to public hunting doesn’t mean they’re open to public abuse. Hunters should treat PLOTS acres as if they were they were owned by their favorite grandfather. Respect the land and the landowner and it’ll be far more likely that landowner will continue to enroll his land in PLOTS.

Disrespect him and he’ll drop out of the program. If that happens, we all lose a place to hunt and none of us can afford that in this day and age.

DOE HUNTERS

If you’re interested in filling your freezer with some North Dakota venison this fall, you shouldn’t have a problem finding a place to hunt. At least if the N.D. Game and Fish Department has its way.

Big game biologist Bill Jensen is compiling a list of landowners in more than 20 hunting units that are interested in hosting deer hunters with antlerless tags this fall. So far the list has 33 landowners on it and it’s growing.

“The current list of landowners has more than 400 openings for doe hunters,” Jensen said. “We will continue to add landowners and doe hunters over the next several months and by time the season is over with we could match more than 500 antlerless deer hunters with perhaps 40 landowners.”

What makes this program work is these landowners are only interested in allowing hunters to shoot does on their property. Understandably, they want to save the bucks for themselves or family members but the deer herd needs to be reduced. This is the only way hunters will have access to those deer.

“The program is designed to direct antlerless hunters to specific areas to reduce deer depredation problems in the future,” Jensen said. “It is not intended for buck hunters.”

Currently, cooperating landowners are located in hunting units 2C, 2D, 2G2, 2I, 2J2, 2K2, 3A2, 3A4, 3B3, 3D1, 3D2, 3E1, 3E2, 3F1, 3F2, 4A, 4B, 4D, 4E and 4F. This program started in 2006 and has been very successful for some landowners.

“In fact, several landowners have now dropped out of the program because they have either gotten on top of their depredation problems and/or developed solid relationships with hunters over the past few years that they now welcome them back every year,” Jensen added. “This is how we intended it to work.”

If you’re interested in participating you can get your name on the list by going to the Game and Fish Department’s website at gf.nd.gov/gnfapps/huntercontact/.

If you don’t have Internet access you can call 701-328-6300. You will be asked to provide your name, address and hunting units for which you hold valid licenses and whether you want to hunt with a bow, rifle or muzzleloader. The Game and Fish Department will select hunters based on the number requested by landowners and contact information will be exchanged so the two parties can correspond.

Of course, not everyone who signs up will be matched up with a landowner.

That will depend on the number of participants at both ends of the equation.

This is a good effort by the Game and Fish Department to provide recreation, venison and deer management all in one program. Nice work.

OPENERS

There’s only one hunting season opener coming up this weekend but they’ll be coming steady for the next month or so.

This coming Saturday, Sept. 11, is the opener for the small game season in North Dakota. Hunters will be out pursuing sharp-tailed grouse, ruffed grouse, Hungarian partridge and squirrels from that date all the way through Jan. 2.

If I count correctly, that’s 125 days of open season on small game! Regulations and daily bag limits are the same as last year.

DEADLINE

If you want to hold an either-sex deer license in Minnesota this fall you need get your application in by Thursday, Sept. 9. You can do that at any ELS licensing location.

Wells is a hunter and columnist for the Daily News. He can be reached at: curtawells@msn.com

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