That's why I pretty much quit hunting public land.Way to many people,It never fails someone always walks up on me. One time I had a guy set up 100 yard behind me smoking cigs.I use bright eyes to mark trails and always remove them. I also put ribbon on blood trails. I hunted Lochloosa several years ago and will never step foot there again,people were driving trucks right thru the woods. After over 30 years of hunting in Fl. I'm over it,I'll pay my dues and hunt clubs. I've seen it all,had stands stolen,had people sitting in my climber when I went to it,several times had people set right up on top of me.Even had to chase a guy down who had my dogs in his dog box in Green Swamp West once. I guess he didn't know what tracking collars are. I seen a boy get shot in Aucilla when I was a kid. Luckily it went thru his jacket and missed his skin. I will admit though,I have some of my best memories and hunting experiences on public land,they just ain't the same anymore.Way to many jugheads in the woods.
The only way I would use tape is to mark the trail head or mark a blood trail. But then remove it after I was done with it.
That's pretty much the way I feel about it. The only time I've ever flagged anything was back in my native Colorado. It isn't too uncommon to drop elk and mulies more than 5 miles from a trailhead. Flagging makes getting back to the kill site easy. But I always remove it while packing out the last load.
I usually hunt Perdidio River WMA and if I find ribbon tape hanging after the season is over, it gets pulled off and sent out with the weekly trash. Frankly, if you let it stay up, it makes the place look trashy. I've never seen the need to flag my way to a stand. I scout it out good and go in at least once right at either dawn or dusk to be sure I can find it when the light is poor. And, nobody knows I'm there if I don't advertise where I'm hunting. I have never had anyone walk up on me when I'm hunting in there, but I tend to head to the nastiest and thickest place I can find and last year it paid off with 2 bucks. People too lazy to remove the tape don't tend to hunt where I end up.
im guilty of that.. last year i was hunting with martinarcher and we were on two different parts of the wma.. so i told him id put out a ribbon trail so he can find where i was at. I looked and there was ribbon everywhere.. i was like ok dam.. wtf.. hows he gonna know which one is mine? So i put like 5 foot long pieces up and told him that mine are the longest ones.. lol. it looked like a overgrown orange peel tree.. LOL.. i took them down as we walked out tho.
I was told to stay away from a hunters spot before cause he had tagged it as his already"he said"!Another time I found flagging all the way to my own stand I had put up but I did not flag it.Whomever did it had flagged it every 25 foot with these wide 2 foot long strips of blaze orange flagging.This same person even marked the whole area with red, yellow and blue tape as yardage markers.......!
The fun part is to redo a ribbon trail and make it lead to nowhere!Small little strips would be bypassed but if I see those 2 foot strips hanging or the ones wrapped around trees every 25 foot those get moved around so they will be walking an extra mile or so right back to nothing.
