Anyone with experience bowhunting in Morgan Run?

Moved 4 miles away from Morgan Run Natural Area, I'm interested in any advice from people who have hunted the area before. Or if you have another location you recommend that is greatly appreciated too. Just want to know if its worth the $35 to buy the Manage Hunt Permit.

Planning day trip on a weekend after scouting area during weekdays after work. Family with 2 kids still in diapers mean any full day trip must be plan weeks in advance.

Plan is compound bow with hang-on tree stand pack/gear setup. So planning to carry around 60lbs.

Area flat enough not to bother with scent control or it is a must have?

Thank you again.

Flat terrain, negative. Carrying 60 lbs, definitely negative. Much of the area (Ben Rose Lane area 10) at the parking lot is a huge overgrown old field that, you’ll have about a minimum average walk of about 1/2 mile up & down hills just to get to some substantial woods to hang a stand. A climbing stand, as lightweight as you can find, would be your best bet. Many of the best areas and ridges are between 1 & 2 miles out from parking lot. One difficult hill on the way out, big easy downhills heading out. Coming back to truck from 1-1/2 to 2 miles out sucks bad, those hills coming back are simply awful (especially for an out of shape 51 year old). You’ll need a good game cart and plenty of time to bring one out. Oh, and don’t get me started on the horse people.....

Scent control, ALWAYS! Terrain has little to nothing to do with that really. The hills and valleys do have thermals of course, but the overall wind seems more important. By the way, a friend of mine and I always joke about this, it is always pretty windy out there, even when it isn’t anywhere else in MD. It’s truly weird.

Used to be a great place to hunt, and was my favorite place to hunt, now it’s just okay IMHO. When they used to cut/mow the fields the deer had to spend more time in the woods and seeing deer all day was not unheard of, now the fields are thick tangled messes of trees and briars that hold deer like crazy and they don’t roam the woods as much. Used to see 50-100 deer in a sitting (1994-2007 ish), now after many years of overhunting and the fields being “designated wildlands” since then, it’s not unusual to get skunked completely to having only one or two sightings per day. It’s still a really nice piece of property to spend time in the woods, and you can be decently successful, but Patapsco SP has other and better areas to hunt as far as deer concentrations and success probability goes. After you do your initial walk thru, let me know and I can tell you what areas have been pretty successful over the past years (my descriptions will only make sense to you after you see the property first).

The Managed Hunt permit gives you access to lots of great public lands in addition to Morgan Run. The areas over in and around the Marriottsville area have been rocking pretty good the last few years, for instance.

Best of luck.