A few families bought into some land and I now have the task of coming up with rules for the club. This is going to be a "family friendly" place where the main goal is to have fun taking your kids out. This is northeast Texas, so we are not going to be taking state records every year. However, rules do need to be in place.

Background: The prior owners left 5 stands that we are going to consider "club stands". Meaning anyone can hunt them, first come first serve. If we put feeders out and plant food plots, it will be a mutual club expense. I think at this point, we are going to follow the any other stand you put up is yours, unless you allow someone else to hunt it. The land also has a few areas to duck hunt on and a few ponds to fish.

So what are some rules that you like/don't like about your current leases. Here is where I could see where we are needing some:

-Must check in/out at the "clubhouse". We will have an aerial of the land with magnets to allow everyone to know who is hunting where.
-Time allowed on roads. The roads run by some stands, so having times that are "down times" may be needed.
-Any future stand will also need to be approved by the group. Thinking this may help dissolve any future tension about "he is hunting right on top of me".
-Visitor Policy. No clue how to word this, but I figure something needs to be in place for both deer and duck.

Good luck.

I would call myself a pessimist looking at the beginning of your plan. You should start over in my opinion. 5 club stands, checking in, etc. is asking for a failure, and more likely to fail the larger the group. Like I said, it is just my opinion, but I would definitely have each stand totally controlled by an individual hunter. That hunter can offer the use of his stand to someone else if he wants.

As far a guests, it should be identified if you can bring "friends". Each individual hunter should still harvest only the number alloted to him, which includes whatever he allows his guests to harvest.

Just trying to help...I have been through this before.

NETAG, I am the lease manager for our deer lease, 13 members 2950 acres. I would be happy to share any and all our rules, forms and whatever you need. PM me your e-mail and I will e-mail you Friday a bunch of stuff you can work off.

I've hunted on leases with communal stands and personal stands. Here are my thoughts.

Checking in is a must. It is for everyone's safety and ensures everyone has an opportunity to have a successful hunt. First come, first served. Another rule was you couldn't drive by someone else's stand once they were in it. This required car pooling or leaving earlier to get further away than those closer to the cabin. It wasn't rocket science and worked well. There is nothing worse than sitting in your stand and watching someone else drive right by you.

Considering multiple people own the property and liability will be a cluster, it would be in everyone's best interest to know if people are on the property and where. I've fallen out of a deer stand. It was early morning, dark, cold and the ladder was iced over. I was lucky and only ruined the scope on my rifle and walked away with bruising. If I had broken my legs I would at least have known someone would have checked on my when I didn't show up for breakfast.

I don't think you can have both types of stands. Me personally, I do not like the individual stand ownership.
Growing up, my dads brothers and a couple close friends all leased together. When a stand needed to be built, it was just alternated on who's turn it was. It worked out fine. Everyone was in agreement on feed times and corn was split at the beginning of the year. If you wanted to throw more corn out, it was on your own dime.
On the night before opening morning, we had a deck of cards and everyone picked a card. The high number picked their stand to hunt opening morning and had first call on that stand all year if they were there. Otherwise, anyone could hunt it. I really enjoyed that because we had 15 stands and you didn't get burned out sitting at the same stand all the time like I have to now.

I have never been on a place before with club stands before. I only saw really two options. Allow anyone to hunt any of them, or at the beginning of the year draw for the stands. I can really see the benefits and negatives of both options. The only reason I was leaning towards the first option was that some stands are more accommodating to two people and younger hunters than others are. I do like the idea of the no drive-by rule.

I can also see where if we go this route, not having personal stands would be the way to go. When I originally wrote that, I was thinking of climbing stands and pop-up blinds for bow hunters.

[This message has been edited by NETAG (edited 6/14/2013 10:14a).]

You can have times of day allowed for driving by another blind. Most hunters don't hunt over the noon hour, or at least very seldom do.

No driving between 6:00 and 10:00 am and between 4:30 and dark. That's ours.

We were in South Texas and no driving times didn't make sense on 2000+ acres. We were far enough apart that as long as you didn't drive near other hunters it wasn't a problem. Driving 6.5 hours to the lease to only arrive after no driving times would have sucked. There were always stands available that didn't affect those already out hunting. Then again the only way to determine how not to affect the other hunters was to check in and see where they were hunting. The ranch hands would check before working the property as well and would leave notes of their plans.

We always felt it helped build relationships of lease members to require checking in before hunting. You got to talk with everyone and saw them more. We purposely instituted this rule to avoid hunters that just drove over to hunt and left without anyone knowing they were there. We had some like that at our first lease and it created tension.

The problem with checking in is, like I posted earlier, you are asking for failure. I have seen two different lease groups, leasing my own land, have this idea with a box, map, pens, paper, etc at the front gate. They forget or just don't give a damn and it fails almost from the beginning.

NETAG e-mail sent

If that was a problem they shouldn't have been invited back the following year. We had a arial map in the camp house with stand locations and everyone had a push pin with their name attached. Even had a couple marked guest. Only had issues with one person and he didn't have the option to sign a lease the following year.

We looked at it as the guys on the lease were a second family. We required someone to recommend you to get on. We went to the lease to hunt, work, or get away from things so we wanted the people there to be people that got along with everyone and could be trusted. We wanted everyone to enjoy themselves since they were spending good money and it worked.

A couple of items came up over the years in our "family friendly" hunting club which caused the roster to shift in positive directions:
1) Alcohol Consumption- Went from "Your hunting day ends once your first alcoholic beverage is poured" to "Absolutely no alcoholic beverages poured before 5 p.m." This eliminated members who wanted to start any party earlier in the day, even with kids around to see their antics.

2) Rules involving members-only hunting vs. family-friendly camping weekends- Our club established "serious" hunt weekends ( Opening Weekend, height of the rut) and scheduled camp-outs so hard-core members could anticipate estimated camp noise levels before they came out. Our goal was to get our kids introduced to hunting, so certain weekends just required more patience in the woods.

3) Strict sign-in/ sign-out policy- We had a magnetic grid map of the entire property. Side notes on the board indicated estimated length of hunt or stalk. If you were over 45 minutes late to camp, a noisy recon party ensued. After a couple of members not taking it seriously, everyone got on the same page to avoid the embarrassment. Sent a strong safety message to the kids (and the moms at home).

By no means did our camp become completely neutered; we still had adult beverages around the campfire and some smoked cigars. We just dropped the raucous factor on designated weekends and made it an experience that our kids could share and remember.

1. Ain't no rules
2. Ain't never been no rules
3. Ain't never gonna be no rules

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If you were over 45 minutes late to camp, a noisy recon party ensued.

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Wow. I'd wait at least 3-4 hours if you're going to have a rule about looking for people. I'd be really ticked if I was watching active wildlife and a bunch of guys decided to come get me for breakfast. I've frequently been known to stay out all day, so an expected time back sheet would just inspire me to write dark 30 every day, regardless of my plans, to avoid the noisy search.

Depending on the place and roads, drive times on specific roads could be critical. Lack of them could render a stand unusable.

I'm not sure how I feel about separate community vs private stands. In theory I like the idea, but if you're splitting the cost of protein or corn on those stands it could get sticky.

Ringo's place sounds like a blast. Mandatory bible study at 6:30 pm...punch and graham crackers willbe served.

Edit for: just ****ing with you

[This message has been edited by Queso1 (edited 6/15/2013 3:05p).]

quote:

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1) Alcohol Consumption- Went from "Your hunting day ends once your first alcoholic beverage is poured" to "Absolutely no alcoholic beverages poured before 5 p.m." This eliminated members who wanted to start any party earlier in the day, even with kids around to see their antics.

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This blows my mind. We expected everyone to respect the rest of the group and ensure every one was safe, but this sounds like a rule you got from the First Baptist Day Camp rule book.

I can't fathom dictating consumption of grown men paying large sums of money or even needing to.