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learning to manage???

762hunter

762hunter

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me and a buddy have rights to 160 Acres in Fayette county. We have hunted it for the past 3 years and have trail cams of some nice bucks. They are not passing our camera now but they gotta be out there somewhere. The 2 of us are staying away from the smaller bucks and have passed on 2 4 points and 1 6 point so far this season. I did take 1 doe opening morning of ML, which brings me my question.

He thinks we only need to take 2 does a piece this year not to wipe out our number of does. From what we have seen just about all our does had little ones this past year. Thats makes me think we need to kill a few more than 4 does this year, after all its in Fayette county.

What would you say?

I think we don't hold very many deer but have quite a few that pass through, however we have seen the same 4 point 5 or 6 times and that 6 point twice (once for me, once for him).

We have limed, fertilized, tilled, and planted about an acre and a half with purple top turnips, buck forage oats, and OakHaven's Hunt Club Fall blend hopefully to attract and hold a few more.

I'm the guy that wants to sit and watch deer, I'll take a few does (3 maybe 4 per year), but really want some nice antlers for the wall. Just kinda looking for what I need to do in order to obtain those goals.

Sorry for the long post

Thanks in advance...

762Hunter
 
oh and by the way we both feel that this place gets over hunted since we have nowhere else to go, so we end up hunting this place all weekend and 2-3 times during the week.

That is why I'm thinking the big boys seem non-existant at this point of time.
 
I would shoot more does. The better sex ratio and herd dinamics will increase your buck sightings especially during the rut. There are a couple of really good books on this subject that are really insightful "Quality Deer Management" and "Deer Management 101". They are full of great "eye opening" information. Both are available at QDMA's website or on Amazon

kh
 
You can't kill enough does,.. so fire away. What ever you kill , there will be 5 more to come in from somewere else.

Food plots will not hold deer. They will atract deer,.. but not hold them on your property. Only proper habitat management will hold deer on a property.

NOTE,.. with proper habitat management, if you hunt smart and lay out some sancuaries,.. you still will not overhunt the place. Give the deer a place to feel safe on the property,. and you can hunt the place daily and not affect them.
 
What deerchaser007 said. For very small properties you need 1) Cover; and 2) Sanctuaries. Set the cover habitat aside as sanctuaries (areas you never enter). Personally, I like patches of cover to be in the 3-5 acre range, but anywhere from 1-20 acres each works well. And it is better to have multiple, small sections of cover than one big section of cover.
 
can you clarify the definition of "very small properties"?

I hunt an 85-acre tract in Hardeman county that has 1 sanctuary area of young hardwoods and thicket that's probably 10 years old and covers about 10 acres. The rest of the property that's accessible (i.e. not thickets) is considered open game.

Just wondering what your criteria are. For a piece of property with a variety of cover (small fields, hardwoods of varying age, bottoms, flowing water source, and thickets), what's the rule of thumb for calling a piece of land "big"?

Seems like a silly question, but I'm just wondering. I always thought anything over the 500-acre mark was pretty darn big, but to the deer maybe that's not true.
 
What deerchaser007 said. For me anything under 200 acres is very small and must be handled differently than larger properties.
 
I have 500 acres and i only hunt on the back side thats 200 of it thats mainly woods. Everything else is cows, but sometimes I will sit at the front at get one.
 
Personally, I like patches of cover to be in the 3-5 acre range, but anywhere from 1-20 acres each works well. And it is better to have multiple, small sections of cover than one big section of cover.
Click to expand...

BSK, i hunt a 500 acre square tract of riverbottom land. we have a 65 acre sanctuary centrally located between the east and west boundaries on the northern edge of the tract where the woods meets another 500 acres of open farm land we also control. just to clarify, this is the boundary AWAY from the river, which serves as the southern boundary. this may be too complicated already, but the eastern half of this tract is three year old cutover and the west is extremely mature hardwoods. the only other features here are sloughs/drains/roads. it gets very little pressure from two of us, but extreme pressure to the east and west. also, the tract floods annually for weeks at a time. access is limited to two roads on each side of the sanctuary and from the north only. tricky to hunt. we have no food plots, only the crop fields north of the woods, and tons of mast. any thoughts about the sanctuary and what we could do to protect more bucks and increase sightings? thanks.
 
deerlawyer,

With that set-up, I believe you're propetecting plenty of bucks. However, sightings may be limited by the size of the sanctuary and the amount of cover provided by the cut-over area.

Do you control the habitat on this property?
 
we don't have the authority to make logging decisions. we could do something with some old log dumps, etc., and some minor manipulation would be ok as well. i do control the open crop fields to the north and usually have a destination feed field there, but that rarely results in really mature buck sightings.
 

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