Like dogghr, our first improvement was a clover plot and it being about the first good food plot in the area it drew deer AND surpassed our highest expectations. In hindsight though our best first step would have been to develop an overall plan. We should have defined where we were at. Items such as the following list could have been included in this first step of where we were at. Are the boundary property lines clearly defined, marked and agreed to by others, strong and weak points about the property including but not limited to its' diversity, types, locations and amount of invasive plants, degree of trespassing or permitted use of the property by ourselves and others,stands on the property owned by others, general state of plant and tree succession for different areas of the property, locations of fruit trees, nut trees, favored browse trees/shrubs, brooks, ponds, seasonal wet spots, high spots, low spots, natural funnels, all edges including timber species edges as well as field and other habitat edges, amount and locations of tillable, amount and types of predators living on/using the property, location and condition of ATV/UTV accessible access roads, current deer population on the property, buck to doe ratio, fawn recruitment rate, age breakdown of bucks, sizes of doe family groups, harvest history and use history of the property, how do deer use the property including bedding, feeding and travel areas, amount of day activity versus night, preferred browse survey results of at least one year, wind conditions and directions most common during hunting season including wind currents unique to the property, etc, etc, etc, and on and on.
Defining the neighborhood would also have helped in creating a plan. Some examples are what is the norm for ages of bucks shot in the neighborhood, type of deer management practiced by others, is the neighborhood a bunch of hoodlums or do they generally follow game laws, which neighbors are which, the current succession stage of neighboring properties, known strong points and weak points about each neighboring property such as but not limited to Ag fields, food plots, natural or planted fruit and nut trees, deer travel ways between your property and the neighbors, amount of deer shot on each neighboring property, seasons hunted by neighbors, current relationship with each neighbor, are there any particular laws where it is seemingly socially acceptable to ignore for the area, sizes of neighboring parcels and number of hunters on each, and are there any particular problem or disruptive neighboring activities.
About twice this amount of info would have been a great first step for us to begin in creating a habitat and deer management plan for a property. This borders on work but creating a great plan would have been the quickest and surest way to realize your planned goals and defining where you are at is the first step in creating a plan and right up there in defining your goals for your property. Once everything about where were a defined recreating a deer woods and habitat improvement plan is an easy trail from there. And of course like any plan it would continue to change as property and area conditions changed but without a plan making all the best habitat improvements are just a bunch of improvements that may or may not enjoy the multiplication factor of each complementing and working in unison with the other.
Since I have written so long on this one activity I will stop at this being the top activity for me versus the ten top activities.