Do they typically consist of one property, or several smaller ones? How many acres would you say your hunt ranges over during the course of a day’s hunt?
Speaking as a current hunting orphan…back east, country I hunted was ‘smaller’ properties, from 5 acres to say 2,000. Out west, much hunting occurs on public lands. Arapahoe leases their country and kennels, 20,000 acres, I believe, but I’ve been at meets elsewhere where you could pretty much go as far as you want in all directions. How many acres covered, lots of variables. Back east, on a red or gray fox, you can have a barnburner on a few hundred acres. Out west, I’ve gone 35 miles in a day so I would say lots more acreage covered! Hunted a fixture once in Colorado that was privately owned, 1,000 acres, and we pretty well covered that in a couple of hours.
I hunt in Vermont. We presently hunt eight or nine locations and they range from 300 acres to 2000 each. The smaller properties are only suitable for cubbing but sometimes we will incorporate a hack to the property from a near-by members’ home to extend the ride time or take a hack afterwards to an interesting spot like a beautiful gorge to stretch their use. We are a drag pack so we can direct our two legged foxes to use every inch of the acreage we have available. Live packs need a bit more space then we require!
I think most of our fixtures are a couple thousand acres. Our newest fixture is either 1, 2 or 4 or maybe 10 thousand acres (seemed to get larger as the member whose friend is the landowner consumed more of his beer!). Our largest is 16,000 acres (a deer hunting club). A few weeks ago, the hunt went 17 miles (going in some circles for a while on a grey) and only used about 1/4 of one of our most often hunted fixtures. I think that fixture is 2-3 thousand acres. We are a live hunt and hunt mostly coyotes.
We have 17 distinct fixtures that range in size from 800 acres to a couple of thousand. For mileage we typically cover 14-15 miles on a weekend and 10 or so on a weekday.
we have some gray foxes that will run a circle inside of stand of trees that is no more than 200 acres.
So typically, you don’t cross property boundaries as is common in the U.K.?
I went down to PA, and watched my first hunt and a regular told me that one hunt was going to hunt three properties that day! So as space gets small, they run then pack up and go to the next one.
Where I’ve hunted in Virginia and other eastern states, one would routinely cross a number of different properties in a day. Which is why good landowner relations are critical to hunting. You need to know where you can, and can’t go, and on each property, you might have been asked to stay out of a pasture where calving or lambing is going on, for example, or stay off a newly seeded field.
We have three primary fixtures, one no more than 600 acres and the other two around 2000. Two of them involve multiple land-owners, and every attempt is made to keep them happy. There are a couple “we can’t go over there” fields that really can shut down a good run, though.
just lucky I guess [or 80+ years of hard work]
Our hunt owns its own 1375 acre farm, has permission from a few neighbors, and we are building good relations with a few more despite being the new kids on the block.
Our home farm has become our primary fixture since 2006 when the area around our former, smaller farm became subdivided and too difficult/dangerous to hunt.
Additionally we hunt a 7,000 acre public wild life area, and the farms of 2 members along with their cooperating neighbors.
Besides our old farm there are 3 other regular fixtures I remember that are no longer in use.
