Public Lands

Every public land unit in a state, and what roost activity each one has shown.

Public Lands in the top nav lists the public land in a state — wildlife refuges, state wildlife and conservation areas, national forests, Corps of Engineers ground and the rest — with the most recent roost reading FowlTracker has for each one. It is the quickest way to find public ground that birds have actually been using.

The Public Lands page for Missouri, sorted by roost activity, with each unit's most recent reading

Choosing a state

Pick a state from the State menu at the top. The number beside each state is how many units it has. The page opens on the state you looked at last, or, the first time, on the state where most of your saved spots are.

Reading a unit

Each row is one public land unit:

  • Name, then its type, who manages it and its size — for example State Conservation Area · 707 acres.
  • Public access — Open access, Restricted access (a permit, a season or a closure applies), Closed to public, or Access unknown.
  • The reading — for example Mostly Moderate, peak High. Mostly is the level at least half the unit reached or beat; peak is its hottest part. The colour dot is the Mostly level, in the same colours as the map key.
  • % Moderate or higher — how much of the unit showed a genuinely good roost night.
  • read and a date — the night that reading is from.

No reading yet means FowlTracker has no roost reading for that unit so far. It is not the same as no birds.

Searching, filtering and sorting

Search by name finds units in the state whose name contains what you type — bayou, white river, refuge.

The filters narrow the list. On a phone they are folded under Filters & sort, with a badge showing how many are on.

  • Type — one kind of unit, such as National Wildlife Refuge.
  • Roost reading — Has a reading or No reading yet.
  • Public access — tick any of Open, Restricted, Closed and Unknown.

Sort by:

  • Roost activity — the strongest readings first. Units read on the most recent night come first, then units whose latest reading is older, so an old hot reading never sits above last night's.
  • Name — alphabetical.
  • Size — largest first.
  • Most recently read — newest reading first.

Clear filters puts the list back to the whole state.

Filters and sort open on a phone, with Open and Restricted access selected

View on map

View on map opens the map centred on the unit, with the Public land layer on, the roost map showing the night of its reading, and the unit's card open in the Spots panel. The card shows the whole unit's reading as a bar of levels and how many map squares it covers. From there you can step through other dates or tap neighbouring units — see Other Map Layers.

The map centred on Capps Creek Conservation Area with its roost reading open in the Spots panel

Ducks

Ducks is the first tab and the one the page opens on: each unit's roost reading, as above. Above the list, a folded Duck season line holds the state's season dates, daily bag and species limits, free on every plan. Where the state publishes duck harvest by hunting area, each unit also gets a duck line under its reading and a Ducks per hunter-day sort (Premium). See Duck Seasons & Limits.

Spring turkey

Every state has a Spring turkey switch above the list. It swaps each unit's roost reading for what the state reports, and lists every unit, so a state that publishes nothing still shows its public land, with the habitat rank and a note that there are no state figures. It is a Premium feature; a free plan sees one sample unit per state in full. Right now the states with figures are Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Each state's page also shows its spring season dates, bag limit and, where the state runs one, its summer brood survey.

There are two kinds of figure, and the page says which one a unit has:

  • The state counted this area. North Carolina game lands, and the WMAs, forests and refuges of Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee. The figure is the count for the whole game land or WMA, shown as birds reported and ranked against the state's other counted areas. It is not divided by acres, because PAD-US often holds only part of a game land under its name.
  • The state only counts by county. Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and anything in the other states without an area of its own. A unit takes the figure for the county its centre is in, shown as turkeys reported per 1,000 acres of the whole county. Every unit in a county shares it, and it only appears on land a hunter could plausibly hunt, not on city parks.

Sort by Turkey figure (the default) or Birds reported. Units the state counted come first, then units that borrow a county's figure; the two are different measures and are never set against each other. The tier beside a figure (top fifth to bottom fifth) is a rank within the state for that kind of figure, shown once there are at least five to rank.

Reported harvest follows hunting pressure as much as birds. Florida only counts areas with a check station or sign-out sheet and says its totals should not be compared between areas. Treat the rank as a lead for where to scout, not a promise.

Deer

Every state has a Deer switch. The states that publish deer harvest by public area, and so have figures to show, are South Carolina, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia. It lists each unit with what the state reports. It is a Premium feature; a free plan sees one sample unit per state in full. What a figure means depends on what the state gives:

  • Deer per square mile where the state publishes the area's own size (South Carolina and Indiana). It uses the state's size for the property, not the acres PAD-US lists.
  • Deer per 100 hunter-days where the state publishes hunter effort (Florida).
  • Deer reported, a plain count, where it publishes only that (North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia).

Sort by Deer figure (the default) or Deer reported. Units are ranked, top fifth to bottom fifth, against the other areas in the same state with the same kind of figure. Rankings are never compared between states, because each state counts differently, and reported deer follow hunting pressure as much as deer numbers.

The page also marks units in counties where chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been found in wild deer, from the USGS National Wildlife Health Center's distribution data. Only states that report by county are included, so a county with no mark has not been reported as positive, which is not the same as free of the disease. Mast surveys and EHD outbreaks are not shown: no state publishes them as data.

Habitat

The state figures above say what hunters reported, often for a whole county or game land. The deer and turkey habitat layers say something about the ground itself, and they show up on public land in two places. Both are Premium, apart from each state's free sample unit.

A public land unit's card with its roost reading and, below it, deer and turkey habitat bars The map with the deer habitat layer on and public land units drawn as outlines over it
  • On a unit's card (tap a unit on the map, or open it with View on map): a Habitat · how this ground ranks section with one bar for deer and one for turkey, showing how much of the unit's rated ground falls in each band and what share ranks Higher or Highest. Water and developed ground are left out, and the card says how much of the unit that is.
  • In a Habitat column on the Deer and Spring turkey lists, beside the state's own figure, in every state whether or not it publishes harvest: the unit's rank for that animal and the share of its ground ranking Higher or Highest. A unit the ranking cannot rate (outside the eastern US, or mostly water or towns) says Not rated here, and a unit the state publishes no figure for says No figure for this unit. Sort by Habitat rank alongside the state's own figure.
The Deer list sorted by habitat rank, with a habitat column beside each unit's state figure

Read it alongside the state figure, not instead of it. A unit can rank well on habitat and still be hard hunted, or poorly and still produce, and the ranking is for the eastern US only. It is computed over the unit's whole boundary in squares of about 15 acres, so a long thin unit along a river is rated from squares that are partly the ground beside it.

Free sample

The Spring turkey and Deer lists, the state figures on a unit's card and the habitat bars are Premium. So that you can see what they are, a free plan gets one sample unit in each state in full: its card on the map, and its row on the Spring turkey and Deer tabs under the lock, marked Free sample. Nothing else in the list can be searched, sorted or paged into view.

The sample is a real place, chosen by rule rather than by hand: a unit of 5,000 to 150,000 acres that is mostly rated ground and, where the state publishes figures, has its own, favouring wildlife management areas, game lands and state forests. Giant national forests are left out (the habitat ranking tells ground apart least well in unbroken timber), as are trails, seashores and parks. It is deliberately not the state's best-ranked unit, which is what the Habitat rank sort is for. It changes only when we reload public land or change the rule. A state with no suitable unit has no sample, and its tabs show only the lock.

A free account's Deer tab: the Premium lock, and Iowa's one free sample unit in full beneath it, marked Free sample

Where the figures come from

Every turkey and deer figure is the state wildlife agency's own, and each list names the agency and links to its report. Some agencies call their figures preliminary or subject to change, and the page says so when they do. Florida's agency says its totals are not for comparing areas, so Florida's units show a count and are not ranked. Chronic wasting disease marks come from the USGS National Wildlife Health Center, boundaries from USGS PAD-US, and county boundaries from the Census Bureau; the page footer carries their acknowledgement.

What it is claiming

Every reading looks backward. It is modelled roost activity for a night that already happened, not a prediction that birds will be there when you go. Out of season the most recent readings can be months old, and the page says so above the list.

A reading covers the whole unit in map squares of about 15 acres, so a small unit takes on the reading of the ground around it, and one busy corner of a big refuge can sit behind a Mostly Light — check the peak.

Boundaries, managers and access come from the USGS Protected Areas Database (PAD-US). They are a guide, not a legal record, and public access isn't hunting access: confirm the regulations with the managing agency before you hunt. Some states' records are incomplete, and the list leaves out easements and units under 40 acres. Those still show on the map's Public land layer, where you can tap them for a reading.

The list is open to every plan. Roost readings, the Roost reading filter and the Roost activity and Most recently read sorts are Premium.