John Myers: Where to hunt deer?

DULUTH, Minn. _ Maybe grandpa bought the farm, so your family sold it, and now you can't hunt there any more.

Maybe deer camp got too big, too many people on too little ground, and it's time to move on.

Maybe the paper company sold the land where your family has been hunting on since 1932 and the new owners don't want you around.

Maybe you're new to deer hunting and are looking for a place to start a tradition.

And maybe you don't have the money to buy your own land.

There are myriad reasons why there are some Northlanders still searching for a new place to hunt. While northern Minnesota is blessed with millions of acres of public land, it can still seem at times that every good spot has been taken by someone else in blaze orange.

Of course every hunter's dream is buck Nirvana, a place where no one else is hurting and the bucks are huge and plentiful, with thick necks and giant racks.

Not going to happen.

But lower those expectations a little _ either how many deer you need to see or how many people you don't mind seeing _ and use some available resources, do a little scouting, and there are opportunities.

"There is no perfect place with no hunters and lots of deer," said Tom Rusch, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources wildlife manager in the Tower area. "But there are pockets of places where there are fewer hunters and maybe decent numbers of deer. You have to scout around to find them."

Rusch said there are areas in his region where more hunters could be accommodated without stepping on toes of people already in the area. Of course, that includes the 1.1 million acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness where you might have to work a little harder but are unlikely to see many, if any other hunters.

In some busy areas of the state there are more than 15 hunters per square mile. In the BWCAW, there are only 0.2 hunters every square mile. But those 0.2 hunters in Permit Area 117 bagged only 0.1 deer per square mile in 2017. (There aren't enough deer shot up there for the DNR to accurately estimate the number of live deer per square mile.)

But there are still other areas of the Superior National Forest with relatively few hunters. Permit Area 130, for example, southeast of the Iron Range and North of Two Harbors, has only 2.9 hunters per square mile and a deer harvest last year of nearly 1 deer per square mile and a 2017 pre-fawn deer density of 5 deer per square mile. Enough to keep it interesting.

By contrast, near Grand Rapids, in Permit Area 179, hunters bagged 5.1 deer per square mile. The pre-fawn 2017 population estimate was 14 deer per square mile. But there were the 10.5 hunters per square mile _ on the high end for our part of the state.

The DNR makes considerable information available on deer harvest and estimated deer populations, along with lots more information, at dnr.sate.mn.us/hunting/deer/.

Mark Spoden, DNR wildlife manager in Grand Rapids, suggested spending time not hunting during this upcoming hunting season to find a better place to hunt next year.

"Sacrifice opening day, or opening weekend, and drive around some potential areas and see what's' going on. If you see it's crowded, move on. If you find some areas where there's fewer hunters or maybe nobody hunting, mark that spot on your map," Spoden said. "There are areas that are hunted hard all over. But, in between, there are gaps. You just have to work to find them."

Spoden also suggested, if your schedule allows, to hunt on weekdays instead of weekends. "By the Tuesday after opener, a lot of people already going home. ... It gets a lot less crowded after the first few days, especially on weekdays."

While it might seem like every other deer hunter has their own 80-acres of heaven and a shack in the woods, that's not the case. Craig Engwall, executive director of the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association, said a large number of the group's 20,000 members hunt public land. Engwall lives in the Chippewa National Forest, northwest of Grand Rapids and said there are still areas with few hunters.

"It's more than 600,000 acres of public land and, especially if you get farther in off the highways, you can find spots where you won't be imposing on other hunters," Engwall said. "If anything, we're seeing fewer people way back in the woods up there than we used to."

The DNR numbers seem to back that up. Permit Area 197 in the core of the Chippewa National Forest had a high pre-fawn deer population of 15 deer per square mile in 2017 along with 5.4 hunters per square mile and 1.6 deer harvested per square mile.

Engwall suggested scouting in late October and looking not just for hunters in the woods but signs of ATV use, trail cameras, deer stands or cleared campsites with piles of fresh-cut firewood where you can bet there will be a deer camp come Saturday morning.

"Most hunters will have been up there before the deer season to check things out so you should be able to tell where people are going to hunt," he said. "And if you show up on the Friday before season and someone else is there first, just move down the road. Be polite. There's plenty of room in Minnesota."

In addition to the Chippewa and Superior National forests are hundreds of thousands of acres of state forest, wildlife management areas and even state parks open to hunting. On top of that several northern counties have vast tracts of county forest land open to hunting, including St. Louis County with some 900,000 acres of public land.

"It's not like we're stumbling all over each other in Minnesota. We have plenty of public land," Engwall said. "And if you really want to get away from people, go hunt in the Boundary Waters."