Last day of grouse in Ontario

[eco]

Spent 5 hours with my father-in-law today in the Copeland forest north of Barrie. Figured try my new Stevens555. Nice light gun..

We saw 3 squirrels and couple of coyote tracks. That's it. Not a single bird of any sort anywhere. No rabbit tracks either. Bit disappointing.
At least the weather was mild... but it did cause the ice to soften up.. got stuck in the swamp knee deep few times.
Fun either way.

Anyone know of any good areas near by for rabbits?

 

[Biologist]

I used to live in Barrie, so I experienced the difficulty in finding a place to hunt and shoot, and I can empathize. Unless you can get permission to hunt private land (which can be quite productive in game), the hunt-able Crown Land requires a drive north. The Ontario Crown Land Use Policy Atlas is a good first step to find some "general use" crown land where hunting is an "acceptable use".

This is the link to the interactive map and policy reports on individual land parcels:
https://www.lioapplications.lrc.gov.on.ca/CLUPA/index.html?viewer=CLUPA.CLUPA&locale=en-CA

If that link does not work, here is the home link, and scroll down to click on "Use the Crown Land Use Policy Atlas".
https://www.ontario.ca/page/crown-land-use-policy-atlas

If you find a crown land general use parcel of interest, click the toolbar "Find Information". There are several ways to get the "Policy Report" to load for that parcel. e.g. enter the alpha-numeric code of the parcel under "Policy Reports", or click the "Get Land Use Information" which has a click-able marker which will load the policy report. The policy report lists the permitted uses, one of which will be hunting yes/no.

It is not user-friendly, takes some practice, and sometimes crashes. But its all we have in Ontario for finding the crown land parcels in amongst a sea of private land.

Best of luck.

 

[eco]

I used to live in Barrie, so I experienced the difficulty in finding a place to hunt and shoot, and I can empathize. Unless you can get permission to hunt private land (which can be quite productive in game), the hunt-able Crown Land requires a drive north. The Ontario Crown Land Use Policy Atlas is a good first step to find some "general use" crown land where hunting is an "acceptable use".

This is the link to the interactive map and policy reports on individual land parcels:
https://www.lioapplications.lrc.gov.on.ca/CLUPA/index.html?viewer=CLUPA.CLUPA&locale=en-CA

If that link does not work, here is the home link, and scroll down to click on "Use the Crown Land Use Policy Atlas".
https://www.ontario.ca/page/crown-land-use-policy-atlas

If you find a crown land general use parcel of interest, click the toolbar "Find Information". There are several ways to get the "Policy Report" to load for that parcel. e.g. enter the alpha-numeric code of the parcel under "Policy Reports", or click the "Get Land Use Information" which has a click-able marker which will load the policy report. The policy report lists the permitted uses, one of which will be hunting yes/no.

It is not user-friendly, takes some practice, and sometimes crashes. But its all we have in Ontario for finding the crown land parcels in amongst a sea of private land.

Best of luck.

Thank you for the info. Just spent an hour looking stuff up. What a user unfriendly map. Typical government garbage.

Found a bunch of small few acre crownland lots all over the place. Pretty small, but close. And looks like for anything decent size, I have to go north of Gravenhurst.

Ironic, just went to check on the chickens this evening and got startled by a rabbit that ran past in front of me. Meanwhile was looking all over for rabbit tracks in the bush today.