The hills there are generally moderately steep but you can walk up them almost everywhere. Drop from ridge top to bottom of draw probably averages over 200 feet, so a few trips tend to give us older hunters about all the exercise we wanted, but it's milder than Eastern Tennessee, and MUCH easier than the Rockies in CO.
Wheeled vehicle traffic is prohibited, even including bicycles and deer carts. I've walked in many times from Hickory Ridge, and have also hunted and camped by canoe in there. That's my favorite way to access it as I have gotten older. The canoe is a lot easier than carrying camp in and dragging deer out a couple miles.
Plenty of room to get away from other hunters, at least during bow or late gun, and on weekdays. Some non-hunting traffic on pretty fall weekends, but even then you can find solitude by getting away from the marked trails a few hundred yards.
I've never found the deer to be thick in the big woods like they are around cropfields, but there always seem to be some in there.
If you want to camp in there, be sure to check the reg's for the area. There are some different (and IMO completely left-handed and backwards) rules regarding equipment. When accessing it by canoe, I usually just camp across the creek that forms the northern border, so I can use my regular gear and containers.
IMO, the area is more of an enjoyable place to get away from the crowds than it is a real hotspot for deer. But there's something good about being alone in a big woods and not seeing anyone for a couple days.
In that case, you'll be driving past about a hundred miles of good hunting to get to the Deam Wilderness.
It's at pretty much the northernmost end of our public land opportunities, and most of the best territory is south, all the way from the Deam down through the Hoosier National to the Ohio River.
Unless you had other reasons to come that far north, I'd say your better bet would be to hang a left onto I-64 at Louisville and go west about forty miles to Hwy 37. Then you'll be running through or very near some great deer hunting areas all the way up to the area of the Deam. Less pressure down that way than at the area closer to the population centers of Bloomington and Columbus.
My picks would be the area upstream of Patoka Lake in Orange County, and the SE corner of Martin County up past French Lick off Hwy 150.
More nice bucks running around in daylight during that time frame in areas with more does, and that generally means areas where they have crops to feed in and where the local boys have plenty of private land nearby and don't need to come over to the pubic land to hunt.
The stats on kills per county don't reflect it, unless you read between the lines. That whole area is spread between several counties, so the numbers are diluted by the numbers of counties, but there are lots of bucks in that area and fewer hunters, and much of it is public.
Some good maps that show more detailed land ownership in the areas in the HNF are always very useful in exploring those areas. And some of our better hunting is also found on the more remote state forest land that doesn't show up as state owned on the road maps.
Good luck on your scouting.
