Looking for some advice from the Pro's

[smbrickner]

I hunt private land in Wisconsin but I want to take a trip to Ohio to hunt public land and test my gear for a hopeful eventual public land Elk Hunt.

Do you guys usually tent it when you go do your hunts or stay in motels? Or do you sleep in the truck?

How much would you say the average hunting trip costs you in terms of fuel, etc?

[Whitetail Adrenaline]

Smbrickner -

Thanks for your support in Whitetail Adrenaline! We almost always stay in a motel, usually we're not sure where we'll end up at the end of the first day so we never pre-book a motel unless we're restricted to a unit size and there's a motel in the center of that unit. Sometimes we do crash in the truck if we can't find a motel or it's closed or sometimes we just need to rest for a few hours. Fuel is usually the most expensive portion of the trip because we spend many hours driving from piece to piece checking it out from the road and a lot of times we decide to keep driving because we don't have a good feeling about it. If I were to go to Ohio I would probably put on 2,000 or more miles in a 4 day period, that's including the travel miles there and back. Sometimes it works out very quick and we stumble onto something good right away. Because of the price of fuel we'll probably use a car on many out of state trips in the future, I know this is out of the norm but we have to butcher them a lot of times anyway because of the weather and the car saves us a bunch of money and a couple coolers fits fine. I do like the added experience a tent offers, the only problem with a tent on a do-it-yourself whitetail hunt is that if you've never been there the tent may keep you tied to a piece that isn't that great. Even if we've been to a place that's been great in the past we always expect it to not be good again, that way we're ready to move on if it is in fact poor. Hope that helps! Good luck on your hunts!

- Jared Scheffler