I wasn’t thinking about the public relations potential as I centered the crosshairs of my scope on the scruffy feral tomcat slipping under the fence at the edge of the CRP field bordering a gravel road. He was about 200 yards from where I sat parked crossways in the ditch, and my .222 Sako was solidly nestled across a shooting bag.

The landowner, a past president of the local Rod & Gun Club who lived a half mile down the road, was out in the yard, so I stopped to say hello. He’d heard me shoot and I figured I might catch some static when I saw all the cats roaming around the farmyard. But when I told him what had happened and drove him over to the cat and chick carcasses, he got plumb upset. He said he’d been inundated with feral cats, and it was little wonder his pheasant and rabbit populations were taking a beating.

Since his wife was out of town, he asked if I’d help him do some serious cat control. An hour later, we’d eliminated more than a dozen cats, leaving only his wife’s black-and-white Angora house cat. Even better, I now had year-round hunting and trapping permission on both of his wildlife sanctuary farms.

One of the best PR moves I ever made came during my freshman year of college when a hunting buddy and I drove to a farm west of Brookings after hunting season with a half-dozen packages of frozen ducks, geese and pheasants, along with a couple of tanned fox and coon hides for the farm kids. It was our way of thanking the landowner for giving me and three buddies exclusive hunting permission on a choice property with a duck- and goose-attracting slough and several acres of pheasant-filled CRP where we could hunt and trap.

Several miles from this property was one of the best hunting spots in the area, consisting of several huge CRP fields and a half-mile-by-quarter-mile slough that was a waterfowl magnet. The property was only a mile from Whitewood Lake, a key stopover for the thousands of ducks and geese migrating through eastern South Dakota. Several buddies and I had all asked the landowner for hunting permission and had been turned down flat because he said hunters caused too many problems.

On our way back from delivering our gifts to the more affable landowner, we came upon the less sociable farmer after he’d pulled out of a hay field with a wagonload of bales. Apparently, he’d dropped a wheel into a deep washout, rolling the wagon and spilling the bales. My first instinct was to wave and drive on, but instead we stopped and offered to help. With two handyman jacks and two pickups, we managed to get the wagon back upright, and a couple of hours later had it reloaded. We followed him home to make sure he made it with the badly bent hitch.

Over a piece of his wife’s delicious pie, he mentioned he was having trouble with foxes and coons getting into his wife’s ducks and chickens, so naturally I volunteered to remedy the problem. The next afternoon I called in a pair of foxes from a brushy gully, and over the next week I trapped four coons and called three more foxes, putting an end to the depredation on his wife’s birds.

The four of us ended up with hunting and trapping permission on a fabulous piece of ground for the next four years of college. By helping with farm chores now and then with my three football-playing buddies and keeping the farmer and his wife supplied with pheasants, waterfowl and, on occasion, venison, we built a lasting friendship that continued long after we graduated.

Spending the off-season working on good public relations — whether it’s putting an ad in the paper offering to eliminate nuisance critters, helping control predators, offering to haul away dead livestock or wildlife, taking a landowner or youngsters in the family hunting or trapping, or giving away a tanned pelt or two — is rarely wasted effort. More often than not, it pays dividends that can last for years. Put the same effort into your hunting public relations, and you’ll find there’s no such thing as an off-season!