I now almost exclusively hunt for older, bigger bucks because it is a worthy challenge that is difficult to accomplish.
What defines our hunting success, what defines a "trophy" buck, all have certainly changed over the past many years.
But I have to weigh that against the myriad of other hunters who are not in the same position as I currently am - all of those hunters who struggle to find a place to hunt or are limited to public lands.
Both agree & disagree.
IMO, being "limited" to public lands is more a case of "different",
than being "bad" or "limited".
While you & I may be in a better position than most regarding "where" we can hunt, I have to think back to my earlier deer hunting days, where most private & public land in TN didn't even have a deer season.
THAT was a time of real "struggle" for a TN deer hunter. The county I grew up in, didn't even have a deer season until about the time I went off to college. No turkey season either.
But there were then more hunters afield than are today!
Opening of Squirrel Season then was a bigger deal than is deer season today.
All woodlands were then crowded with squirrel hunters.
All fields and brushy areas were then crowded with rabbit & "bird" hunters.
Finding a place to hunt was easy, but it was easy for everybody,
and everybody was there!
Despite all the complaints, most public land deer hunting is relatively good, much higher quality deer herds, than only a couple decades ago. Younger deer hunters today really have no idea just how much more deer-hunting "opportunity" they have today than did most only a couple decades ago, much less a couple generations ago.
For those who hunt public lands and see other hunters, all I can say is you should have been deer hunting in TN during the 1970's & 80's. It typically didn't matter whether you were hunting public or private lands, as more other hunters were sharing the woods with you or near you. In fact, opening day of deer season sounded like the beginning of war, there was so much shooting, like hearing hundreds of shots in a day, instead of only a handful or none at all.
Seems the grass is always greener on the other side of some issue?
Until you experience both sides?
Despite having some of the better private property "trophy" places to hunt in TN, despite being on one of the larger-acreage deer leases in TN,
I still find myself now progressively doing more & more deer hunting on public lands each year.
Why? Because leases are often made up of a membership of very avid & accomplished deer hunters, who actually high-grade the potential best-antlered bucks to a much higher degree than many public lands. Growing older bucks with above average antlers is very difficult when those with above average antlers are nearly all hunter-killed at the age of either 2 1/2 or 3 1/2.
Believe it or not, there seems to much less hunter antler high-grading on many public lands than most private deer leases.
If your goal is to kill a mature buck in TN with a 150-class rack, ironically, you may have better odds of that on many TN public lands vs. many expensive TN hunting leases. If you want to step it up above 150, you generally need to go to a state like KY, or some Midwest State, for any realistic odds with any year-to-year consistency.
One of the best managed, large acreage "trophy buck" deer leases in TN has long been the Ames Hunting Club (18,000-plus contiguous acres). And I generally have nothing but good things to say about them. But in the past few decades, how many bucks over 150 inches of antler have been killed there? Very, very few. Or how about even one that would make the B&C record book?
For those younger hunters who really want to understand more how most TN deer hunting once was, wilderness hunting (not suburban deer shooting), I suggest you spend a week hunting in the Cherokee National Forest. You probably will not kill a deer, may not even see one, but you might find the aesthetics, the adventure, and the challenge of more value to you than just shooting another deer over a corn pile.
