My idea of a buffer zone is to let it grow up with thick brush as it would naturally do when getting sun from both sides. In my part of the world it doesn’t take long for the vines and brush to take over if it’s left alone. There were no fences on my 217 acre place, and I surely was not going to spend the money necessary to build them when I had nothing to keep in and knowing that they wouldn’t keep poachers out. In my mind, the best protection from poachers is vigilance and the willingness to prosecute them.
On my home place I fenced two sides with hog wire because we have someone who likes to ride his four wheeler all over other folks’ property and there’s an oilfield road that runs just outside my North line. The fence deters the hogs somewhat and keeps the amateur poachers out
It actually funnels the hogs to a few places where they are easier to shoot than if they could enter anywhere.
So.... the buffer (if I had left it) would keep eyeballs off my place, and the cleared area would let me scoot around it in my CanAm, my golf cart, or my pickup easily. I do have the road and it makes entering or leaving our stands with a favorable wind much easier too. I mow it once a year after the fawns are no longer bedded apart from their mothers just to keep the saplings killed out. I have interior roads too, but they only get used when I’m mowing or food plotting. I just wish I had left the buffer
