Why Public Land Makes Us the Luckiest Hunters on Earth

Take a minute and think about this: you grab your boots, your bow or rifle, and your dog if she’s earned the ride—no lease, no club, no permission slip required. Just wide-open woods, ready for you to walk in and disappear for a while. That’s public land. That’s ours. And no other country in the world has what we do.

From the piney hills of southern Illinois to the towering oaks of the Ozarks, we’ve got a birthright most hunters on Earth can only dream of. Europe? Africa? Asia? You don’t just waltz into government land and hunt. In most places, if you don’t own land or know someone who does, you’re out of luck. But here? You were born lucky.

And we’ve got a rough-riding son of a gun named Theodore Roosevelt to thank for a whole lot of it. That mustachioed legend was more than just a President—he was a hunter, a conservationist, and the godfather of the American public lands system. Under his watch, over 230 million acres were set aside for the people. Not for the elite. Not for the corporations. For us—the bowhunters, the weekend warriors, the kids tagging along with their dads, the girls learning how to glass a ridge, and the squirrel dogs with more drive than sense.

This land—whether it’s a slice of Shawnee National Forest, a corner of Mark Twain, or a honey hole at Crab Orchard—isn't just dirt and trees. It's freedom. It's opportunity. It's solitude. It's challenge. It’s where we learn the land, learn the animals, and maybe even learn a little about ourselves.

Is it always easy? Hell no. You’ll eat mud. You’ll get lost. You’ll burn out your legs climbing hills that’d make a billy goat wheeze. And guess what? No one’s holding your hand. That’s the whole point.

Public land makes you earn it, and that’s why it means more.

So next time you park at a dusty pull-off and step into a patch of state or federal ground, take a breath. You’re standing on something that billions of people around the world will never know: a piece of wild land, owned by no one—and by everyone. A place where you don’t need money, status, or a name. You just need grit and time.

Thank Teddy. Thank the generations of conservationists, lawmakers, biologists, and hard-nosed outdoorsmen and women who fought like hell to keep it from being bought, sold, or bulldozed.

We are the only nation on this Earth where you can roam free and hunt wild on land that belongs to all of us. And that, my friends, makes us damn lucky.

So get out there and act like it. Respect it. Work for it. And pass it on.