OPINION
In 2024, I was lucky enough to be selected for a press tour of Croatia.
Along with a group of other writers and photographers, I spent 10 days tracing the coastlines of the Adriatic Sea, peering into the crystal blue waters, chowing down on any number of seafood dishes and touring buildings that pre-date America by a few thousand years.
Despite all of the incredible sights and sounds, the moment that plays on repeat in my head is relatively mundane.
On a short drive to the small village of Brela, I struck up a conversation with our driver, who turned out to be a fellow angler and eventually the conversation turned to hunting.
I told him about whitetail hunting the public lands around North Texas and Southern Oklahoma, and all of the successes and failures that come with it.
Then, he interrupted me mid-sentence.
With an incredulous look on his face, he asked, “So, with these public lands, you can just go hunting on them? No one owns them?”
“There are rules and regulations but, yeah, that’s about it,” I replied.
The driver paused for a moment. After a few moments, a distant smile crept across his face, the kind well known to anyone who’s spent an afternoon daydreaming.
He muttered to himself no louder than a whisper, “Paradise.”
Ever since our conversation, that one word has been burned into my brain.
Paradise.
I came home with all sorts of memories, and I also came home with a different perspective on what it means to be a hunter in the United States.
Our country may not get everything right, but we’ve sure gotten one thing right— public lands.
Ever since good ol’ Teddy Roosevelt went on a tear and started reserving land across the country, we’ve set a precedent for public spaces from the east coast all the way to the west coast.
Today, Americans enjoy more than 640 million acres of public hunting land.
Can you guess how much public hunting land Croatians get to enjoy?
Zilch. That’s true across most of Europe, in fact, which means hunting is generally reserved for those with the means to afford guides and hunt clubs.
With the onset of hunting season, I tend to hear the same comments and complaints pop up from year to year, many of which surround the state of public land in North Texas and its surrounding areas, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to address a few.
1: “There’s no public land in Texas.” Because I’m a little strange and hunting-obsessed, I spent some time over my morning coffee to tally up the public hunting land within 2.5 hours of my house in Aubrey. The verdict? Somewhere between 220,000 and 240,000 acres, and that’s a conservative number.
2: “Public land is too crowded.”
Is hunting pressure a factor? Sure.
That being said, I’ve hunted on public land for about seven years now and can count on one hand how many times my hunt has been impacted by other hunters.
Generally, no one messes up my hunt more than yours truly.
3: “Hunting public land is too hard.”
Heck yeah it is.
That’s why it’s awesome. But if I can put doubledigit deer in the freezer with my bow on public land, I promise you can too.
Plus, you get to carry that imaginary “public land badge of honor” with you everywhere you go.
4: “There are no big deer on public land.”
False. In fact, I’ve seen bigger bucks on public land than I ever have on private leases.
I’ve got the game camera photos to prove it.
5: “Steve won’t tell me where his spots are.”
This one is true. Public land doesn’t only apply to whitetail hunters.
You can go chase down doves, ducks, wild pigs, squirrels, rabbits, geese, quail and even woodcock within just a few hours of DFW—that’s enough fun to keep you busy year-round, and we’re not even talking about fishing, bird watching, or simply smelling the fresh air (there’s no license necessary for that one).
How? Well, to love something, you need to know it. To know it, you need to get out and see it.
So, get out there and start exploring.
It may sound cliché at this point, but they really are your public lands, and my challenge to fellow hunters is to take ownership of the land.
Use it. Protect it. Maintain it. Explore it.
If you don’t, it may just end up as another subdivision or parking lot.
If you do, I’m going to guess you’ll start to see our public lands as what they truly are.
Paradise.
Steve Schwartz is an outdoors writer, photographer and filmmaker. He can be reached at steve@schwartzcreative. co.
