Page 12 - hunt tab 2013.indd

12 HUNTING & FISHING 2013 August 2013
then,” Jerry said.
Hunting meant spending time with his fa-
ther, who he proudly describes as a retired
home builder and member of the Oregon Hall
of Fame for licensed builders. His dad, at 78,
is a former president of the Portland Home
Builders Association.
Jerry learned the ropes from his dad and
members of the extended hunting party for a
number of years until circumstances
changed in the way Oregon issues hunting
tags. When the state introduced the lottery
system of tag applications, and limited the
size of party applications, it had the effect of
breaking up the family.
The once large party could no longer guar-
antee tags for every hunter each year.
As that happened, some drifted away, oth-
ers grew too old, others just put hunting be-
hind them. Some have even died.
But the bottom line for Jerry was that he
found himself an orphan, of sorts, hunting
alone for the first time on public ground.
It was then that he knew it was time to do
something different. It meant taking drastic
action.
Schilling is among that culture of hunters
who have grown disenchanted with the all-
to-familiar cycle of hunting on public land.
You know the drill: Buy a tag and license,
set up camp, chase does for a week, dodge
the crowds, and maybe if you’re lucky cross
paths with a spike or forked-horn buck, but
more than likely go home empty-handed.
If Jerry was going to continue the family
tradition of deer hunting, it would need to be
more productive; certainly more so than the
“armed camping” that others more wistfully
describe as “deer hunting.”
No. It was time to get serious, or stay
home.
Wanting to optimize his experience, Jerry
bit the bullet by investigating the possibility
of leasing hunting rights on private property.
He didn’t go from ranch-to-ranch asking
for trespass permission. He didn’t network in
the diners of small ranch communities. In-
stead, he struck gold in one of the most un-
likely of places.
“I was on Craigslist and was looking for
someone who might be advertising a land-
owner preference tag or a land lease,” he
said. “And there it was.”
He wound up speaking with a Corbett man
who had purchased the hunting rights to a
ranch in the Murderers Creek Unit in East-
ern Oregon. For a price, the man agreed to
sublease hunting rights to Jerry.
The agreement guarantees Jerry receives
one landowner preference tag a year. And he
also has approval to purchase access for a
small number of other hunters, who must ac-
quire their tags through the normal lottery
system.
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BIG BUCKS, HERE’S HOW
One of the misconceptions about
people who hold hunting leases on pri-
vate ground is that they must be
wealthy — right?
While it certainly doesn’t hurt, it’s a
stereotype that doesn’t fit every situa-
tion or every person.
Jerry Schilling of Gresham, for ex-
ample, subleases hunting rights on a
piece of property in the Murderers
Creek Unit in Eastern Oregon.
Schilling is an “Average Joe” kind of
guy: a 1979 graduate of Reynolds High
School who went on to attend Mt. Hood
Community College in the early 1980s,
taking courses in general studies. He
left school before finishing an associ-
ate degree.
He opted to enter the construction
trade, following in the footsteps of his
father, Cliff Schilling, who was some-
what famous in the network of Portland
builders. His dad was inducted into the
Oregon Hall of Fame for licensed build-
ers.
Jerry was 39
years old and
working construc-
tion when he
broke his neck.
“It pushed me
back into college,”
he said. “That’s
when I got my
building inspec-
tion certification.”
Meanwhile, in
1989, Jerry had
started buying
homes, remodeling them and flipping
them on the market.
Today he’s a licensed contractor who
splits time between working for custom-
ers and working on his own projects.
“It was like buying myself a job in a
poor economy,” Jerry said. “It has liter-
ally been a perfect thing for me to do. On
the days I can’t go and work on customer
houses, I go and work on one of my
houses.”
You don’t have to be wealthy
to lease hunting ground
“On the days I
can’t go and
work on
customer
houses, I go
and work on
one of my
houses.”
— Jerry Schilling
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO: JERRY SCHILLING
Jon Voight, 28, took this buck in 2012 while hunting with his father, Jerry Schilling of Gresham. It was
Voight’s first buck on his first hunting trip.
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