# Landowner apathy kills state hunting website



## flounder (May 15, 2004)

Now we know what happened with HuntOhiofarms.com. Not really a suprise. Most farmers have no problems finding hunters anyway.


http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/12/09/landowner-apathy-kills-website.html



By Dylan Tussel 
The Columbus Dispatch Friday December 9, 2011 4:46 AM 


A program to match hunters with Ohio farmers willing to provide access to their land proved extremely popular with hunters. The only problem: the farmers werent that interested.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources shut down its HuntOhioFarms.com website this week. The program, started in August 2009, attracted about 14,000 hunters, but only about 120 landowners.

The idea was to connect hunters with farmers looking to limit crop damage by deer. But because so many more hunters than landowners registered, hunters had virtually no chance  less than 1 percent  of being selected.

The problem is that what we found ourselves doing was artificially raising expectations of our hunters, and thats no good, ODNR spokesman Mike Tonkovich said. We didnt expect that kind of an interest on the side of hunters.

Hunters applying for the program wrote lengthy essays detailing why they should be allowed to hunt on someone elses farm, he said, and then they got upset and complained when they were not selected.

And the farmers who did enroll werent cooperative, Tonkovich said. Practically none replied to ODNRs surveys about the service following the hunting seasons. He suspects that could have been because the program was conducted online.

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## ezbite (May 25, 2006)

flounder said:


> The Ohio Hunters applying for the program wrote lengthy essays detailing why they should be allowed to hunt on someone elses farm, he said, and then they got upset and complained when they were not selected.


 i applied and knew i might not get picked. why would a hunter get upset, there was no guarantee. im sure it happened, its just ridiclous that it did.


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## FISNFOOL (May 12, 2009)

Not surprised that the program failed. Anyone could write a great description to sell themselves to landowners but then why would a landowner not have reservations just because someone could talk a good sell.

My in to farmers has always been to go out it the spring and ask if I could hunt ground hogs. This gives then a service they need and a change to get to know the real you.


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## SmallieNut (May 27, 2007)

The trend I've noticed is land leasing. Farmers are less inclined to just give permission to hunt their property when they could be leasing the hunting rights and generating income.


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