Newish Hunter looking for advice

Squiggles

New Member
Hey All, I am getting back into hunting after a few long yrs. I was just given access to 78 acres and when I went to scout & set up some cams, I seen there was activity but the vegetation is really grown up (almost as tall as the deer on cam).

My question is, with the season just getting started this past weekend is it to late to clean up the area where the activity is (weed eat and make a clearing)? I would also like to throw down some no till seed for a plot to get more deer activity if it is not to late.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot 2024-09-30 at 7.19.48 AM.png
    Screenshot 2024-09-30 at 7.19.48 AM.png
    218.4 KB · Views: 9
  • Screenshot 2024-09-30 at 7.21.15 AM.png
    Screenshot 2024-09-30 at 7.21.15 AM.png
    136.8 KB · Views: 9
Honestly, I would not touch anything! I know all of us, once we get a property, want to jump in with both feet. I would do NOTHING but hunt it for the next few years. "Clean" is what humans like, not deer. It is very easy to really screw-up something in the name of improvement. Over the next few years, hunt from stands in multiple locations. Keep using game cameras. Learn how deer are currently relating to your property.

The next step is assessment of the general area. Folks don't like to hear this because it doesn't deer dirt under their fingernails. 78 acres is a small tract in terms of deer. Other surrounding properties and what is going on there will have a significant impact on deer that use your land. I like to draw 2 concentric circles on a map centered in the middle of your property. The first circle encompasses about 1,000 acres, a typical home range in average habitat. This is the area that will impact you most. The second circle is about 3 miles.

Try to learn this area in general and figure out what resources it has and how deer use them. Are there things missing? Make sure you understand your objectives for the property as part of this process. Do you want to kill big bucks? Do you want to harvest deer for food? Do you want to use it to introduce kids or other new hunters to hunting? Do you want to do QDM? Are neighbors cooperating with your objectives? Are there other recreational activities you plan to do on this tract? Very few folks have a single objective. Most of us have some combination of objectives and most of us will need to compromise some of them. Be sure to ask yourself if your objectives are reasonable. For example, if you plan to improve overall heard health (QDM) and you only have 78 acres and no cooperating neighbors, it is not going to happen. On the other hand, even very small properties and be managed to maximize hunting objectives, but the smaller the property, the more critical each step.

Once you have a handle on how deer are using your property and and assessment with objectives, you'll be ready to develop a plan to move forward.

I've known guys who leased some "honey hole" tiny properties where they killed mature bucks year after year. The property was sold, they lost access, and the new owner came in to "improve" it for deer hunting. Few if any mature bucks used the property after the "improvement". If shooting mature bucks was not the objective of the owner, then perhaps from their perspective the improvements were a success. Especially since they didn't know what they lost.

The best advice I can give is to slow down! :) I do know no one wants to hear that.
 
Yeah, that’s all crap !

Just kidding Jack !😝 I agree with hunting it at least the first year. Looking back, I wish I had put more thought into that on my home place (80 acres), as well as another place I owned for ten years (217 acres). Prior planning prevents piss poor performance ! As it is, “my” deer at home have more or less adapted to my one 3/4 acre food plot near the middle of my place, but as it’s laid out a N or NW wind is necessary to access the stand and hunt it. We have plenty of winds during the fall with an S component and on those days I have to hunt somewhere else.

The neighboring area cannot be overlooked either. And it can change radically. A yearly look at Google Earth is a good reminder of that. OTOH, if the neighbors have no crops or food plots, you need one, just not this year. I am in that situation here at home. No food plots around me, and any deer I see probably bed on the neighbors places. That’s ok, as long as they come here to eat. 😁
 
78 acres isn't big enough for real deer management. But, you can have a lot of fun growing deer for your neighbors until you find out what they are doing. As already mentioned, hunt it and enjoy it and dream about what you want to do with it. And, get to know your neighbors. They may already be feeding your deer!
 
Good notes thus far. Just hunt it for this season, then do a good walk of the property to see where the trails are, where the beds are, and try to understand how the deer use it. Then I'd get your spots for next year set up right away before winter. Move stands, and get a start on shooting lanes.

How much habitat work are you allowed to do out there?
 
Hey All, I am getting back into hunting after a few long yrs. I was just given access to 78 acres and when I went to scout & set up some cams, I seen there was activity but the vegetation is really grown up (almost as tall as the deer on cam).

My question is, with the season just getting started this past weekend is it to late to clean up the area where the activity is (weed eat and make a clearing)? I would also like to throw down some no till seed for a plot to get more deer activity if it is not to late.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Leave the vegetation up this season and see how it goes!. That growth is excellent for bedding areas, travel corridors to food and overall concealment that deer want! Cutting it now will disrupt the deer that use it. Personal opinion: Ride out this season and see what you have for numbers on deer that use the spot. Maybe when season goes out start trimming some and prepping for the following season.
 
In opinion hunting is about doing what you want to do and having fun.

Personally if I have a big-un running around I don't leave sign that I'm hunting him. Don't even clear shooting lane.

But I have to be honest and admit that I can't fire the chainsaw up in the winter without deer being there snooping around within a couple of hours. Activity doesn't seem to bother them (unless it's obvious you are hunting them, then they tend to go nocturnal).

I'd say do whatever you feel like and go from there. Make a clearing. If deer don't go to it then hunt the other corners of the place.
 
Agree with not disturbing anything now. I try to do any work in the woods early in the year as soon as it dries up enough to not get my equipment stuck. Gives the deer time to get used to the new look and then there's no scent to spook anything. Their have been some years where I was out and about working my property on a regular basis most of the summer and the deer did seem to get used to me being there and didn't run for the hills when the would see me. If they are not used to anything being there they won't tolerate seeing or smelling you. Wouldn't hurt to have a small hand saw in case you have something in your line of sight that you can cut down or trim easily when you get set up to hunt. Sucks when you have a couple of small branches in your way of a clear shot.
 
Agree with not disturbing anything now. I try to do any work in the woods early in the year as soon as it dries up enough to not get my equipment stuck. Gives the deer time to get used to the new look and then there's no scent to spook anything. Their have been some years where I was out and about working my property on a regular basis most of the summer and the deer did seem to get used to me being there and didn't run for the hills when the would see me. If they are not used to anything being there they won't tolerate seeing or smelling you. Wouldn't hurt to have a small hand saw in case you have something in your line of sight that you can cut down or trim easily when you get set up to hunt. Sucks when you have a couple of small branches in your way of a clear shot.

I agree with you are "deer" reacting to working on a property in the summer. Deer don't run for the hills at the sight or smell of humans. They coexist quite well in the suburbs in metro areas.

My original post was more aimed at the effects of the habitat changes. If you don't know how deer are currently relating to your property, a habitat change that most folks would consider an improvement in most situations, could have a significant negative impact on how they use your property. On top of that, are our objectives. Folks with the objective of harvesting mature bucks probably risk the most. I've found mature bucks using portions of the habitat that I can't easily explain. We can generalize deer behavior, or at a finer level, mature buck behavior, but deer are all unique creatures with different personalities.

The more we understand our properties and how deer use them before we start rearranging them, the better. Much depends on context as well. In the Big Woods where deer rarely encounter humans, they are much more sensitive to human activity. In the suburbs, they ignore people...until people show up where they are not supposed to be. I've told a couple example stories about this in the past. One about deer feeding in a buffer ignoring a guy on his riding lawn mower cutting the grass, less than 50 yards away. Ignoring until the guy took 3 steps into the wood lot to empty his bagger. The other was a story about unhunted deer that would eat ice cream cones out of human hands because food was so scarce and humans were not a threat on this large tract. When it changed hands and the new owners call us in to quietly bowhunt and get the population in check, we had a safety rule you had to hunt from a treestand. For two weeks, it was shooting fish in a barrel. After that, the deer learned that a human in a tree was a threat, but one on the ground was not. You could walk within 10 yards of a feeding deer but once you climbed a tree they were gone and walked around looking up.

Context and our objectives are important. A guy who wants freezer meat and a place where his kids can kill their first deer will take a very different approach to habitat management than a guy who has the sole objective of shooting a mature buck.
 
Honestly, I would not touch anything! I know all of us, once we get a property, want to jump in with both feet. I would do NOTHING but hunt it for the next few years. "Clean" is what humans like, not deer. It is very easy to really screw-up something in the name of improvement. Over the next few years, hunt from stands in multiple locations. Keep using game cameras. Learn how deer are currently relating to your property.

The next step is assessment of the general area. Folks don't like to hear this because it doesn't deer dirt under their fingernails. 78 acres is a small tract in terms of deer. Other surrounding properties and what is going on there will have a significant impact on deer that use your land. I like to draw 2 concentric circles on a map centered in the middle of your property. The first circle encompasses about 1,000 acres, a typical home range in average habitat. This is the area that will impact you most. The second circle is about 3 miles.

Try to learn this area in general and figure out what resources it has and how deer use them. Are there things missing? Make sure you understand your objectives for the property as part of this process. Do you want to kill big bucks? Do you want to harvest deer for food? Do you want to use it to introduce kids or other new hunters to hunting? Do you want to do QDM? Are neighbors cooperating with your objectives? Are there other recreational activities you plan to do on this tract? Very few folks have a single objective. Most of us have some combination of objectives and most of us will need to compromise some of them. Be sure to ask yourself if your objectives are reasonable. For example, if you plan to improve overall heard health (QDM) and you only have 78 acres and no cooperating neighbors, it is not going to happen. On the other hand, even very small properties and be managed to maximize hunting objectives, but the smaller the property, the more critical each step.

Once you have a handle on how deer are using your property and and assessment with objectives, you'll be ready to develop a plan to move forward.

I've known guys who leased some "honey hole" tiny properties where they killed mature bucks year after year. The property was sold, they lost access, and the new owner came in to "improve" it for deer hunting. Few if any mature bucks used the property after the "improvement". If shooting mature bucks was not the objective of the owner, then perhaps from their perspective the improvements were a success. Especially since they didn't know what they lost.

The best advice I can give is to slow down! :) I do know no one wants to hear that.
Be REAL CAREFUL about changing anything in the area - till you see what the deer are doing ?- bedding - feeding- or travel thru.
They don't like any change much.
 
Back
Top