How many acres? Are you the only property in your vicinity that does so? Or are you part of an agreed up system with your neighbors? Do you hunt a state managed area? (Meaning that specific property is managed beyond the normal game laws of your state or unit) What’s the basic game plan? Lastly, have you seen improvements in your hunting and/or deer herd?
The land I hunt consists of my farm, my parents' farm, and my grandparents' farm which make up one continuous chunk of land. We have managed it from the standpoint of not shooting young bucks for 15 years, but that was about it. The last couple of years I have really gotten into managing the land for habitat, and it is very rewarding. The new neighbors to the north manage for big bucks and the neighbors to the north of them do not hunt but spend a lot of effort developing habitat b/c they just love wildlife. The last few years things have really gotten better here. To actually get to watch good bucks in velvet was a dream 5 years ago, and now I get to watch them relatively regularly. My lease is 600 acres with 6 people on the lease. It is not managed. Most of the other guys are tag fillers, but they like to fill them with little bucks more than does We are changing the rules a bit this year though to help the situation. No guests will be allowed to shoot a buck. It kind of sucks to have to do that, but one guy had 6 guests shoot bucks last year so we have to do something.
How many acres? Roughly 600 Are you the only property in your vicinity that does so? Or are you part of an agreed up system with your neighbors? Neighbors do it but there is no agreement between us. Do you hunt a state managed area? (Meaning that specific property is managed beyond the normal game laws of your state or unit) no What’s the basic game plan? To shoot deer over 120" Lastly, have you seen improvements in your hunting and/or deer herd? Yes but it does take time
This will be the first year of our QDM co-op, so I really don't know what the effect of it will be. How many acres? roughly 3,000 with 75% being ag fields Are you the only property in your vicinity that does so? Or are you part of an agreed up system with your neighbors? At this point, we have 9 properties and 43 hunters. Do you hunt a state managed area? (Meaning that specific property is managed beyond the normal game laws of your state or unit) All private. What’s the basic game plan? Our area has roughly 25 deer/square mile and the biologist recommends getting that number down to 15. So we are going to try and take as many does as possible. As far as bucks, the goal is to shoot 2.5 or older. Most hunters were killing yearling bucks. Lastly, have you seen improvements in your hunting and/or deer herd? We hope we will!
How many acres? ~250ish Are you the only property in your vicinity that does so? Or are you part of an agreed up system with your neighbors? yes, no agreements with the neighbors but not much hunting in the immediate area so for all intents and purposes we are the only ones hunting those deer Do you hunt a state managed area? NO What’s the basic game plan? generally smaller bucks in AL, so our rough rule of thumb is 8pts and rack must extend beyond the ears, max of two bucks per season per hunter (only family), take as many does as you like... we are considering doing a self imposed "Earn a Buck" to encourage does to be taken as we have a metric buttload of them on the property... Lastly, have you seen improvements in your hunting and/or deer herd? yes, though it has taken a lot of time and patience (about 7-8yrs since we began active mgmt), we are taking mgmt bucks out at first site to rid the herd of bad genetics, we also spend time on the property taking out coyote and bobcat as well to help with the turkey populations (we've got a pretty nice flock of bird there now which we'll start hunting in another season or two)
We have 120 acres and a couple of neighbors that we have an agreed system with. The properties combine for a total of roughly 450 acres. We basically put a 130 point restriction in place with a few exceptions for deer with bad genetics. I really wanted to say mature bucks only, but that didn't go over real well. Some of the guys have a hard time judging body size and aging deer. Guys seems to want to go by antler size as opposed to maturity. Hopefully, we can encourage them to change their minds as I hate to see 2.5 or 3.5 year old deer that gross over 130 shot before they mature.(There aren't alot of 2.5's over 130 but it happens) We also require if you shoot a buck you shoot a doe also, we may be changing this to an "earn a buck" system. We also restrict button bucks, does are easy enough to shoot so we agree to take our time to ensure that it is a doe. The last two years I have been putting in food plots on our side to try to hold the deer on our 120 as much as possible. I plant stuff like purple top turnips and winter wheat that sweetens as the temps start dropping and this times well with the hunting season. The deer go crazy on the winter wheat/turnip combo. We also plant whitetail institute chicory and clover which are hammered by the deer also. The deer sightings have been through the roof since putting in the plots, the does stay tighter and the bucks come in to hook up.
I hunt a privately managed are that is 800 acres. It is on its boarders is a golf course, state game lands and farmlands.
I own 195 acres. Lease and manage another 900. One friend and myself that hunt and he owns another 150. We take our kids and a few friends. Some neighbors manage, some do not, and others do not hunt. We try to limit ourselves to bucks that are 4 1/2 or older. We have seen an improvement in the age class of deer in the areas we hunt. Sadly, the number of older bucks in the area has actually been costly in that we have lost 3 different pairs of trophy class animals to fighting and getting locked up. I guess the concentration of older bucks causes a lot of competition during the rut. That is probably why we have such good luck with calling and rattling.
My cousin and I hunt on my family's farm. we have a couple "hot" spots that only family hunts. but we also allow family friends hunt some of our other property. bow season there is only two of us hunting usually but during rifle we have a pretty big party of family members come up from the cities.
1 piece is 750 acres and the other is 160 acres and it all is connected, It is managed but not for a specific size. There are 4 of us that have a 140 antler or 4 1/2 years old and then there are 4 amish boys that hunt it on wed/Thur. nights after work and three of them have set there goals at 130 or bigger and 1 has yet to shoot a buck so what ever he decides is ok and the same with my daughter who is going down for a week this year it is up to her. If any of the guys shot something smaller it still wouldn't matter I would be happy for them becuase it is not set in stone just what everyone does. The 160 is just ours and we do the 140 on it, and then an outfitter just got the land around us and I believe he is 140 or bigger also but not sure.. Yes we see alot of big boys running around there and even 1 200 inch that is hanging out on a little piece we are going to try and lease.. Walt
Federal laws apply on the Marine Base I hunt. Instead of being allowed to kill 3 bucks per year, a person can "only" kill two. Other than that, they allow us to kill unlimited amounts of does on the "bow only" spots on the base. The overall change due to the increased doe kill has been positive. Although there are less deer, there is a better buck to doe ratio, an improving strength of the rut, and the deer are averaging higher field dressed weights. All of those things are good.
I hunt some lightly managed areas and some public land. I've been a member of various clubs over the years, ranging from 300 acres up to 20,000 acres. The only time I noticed a measurable difference in quality of deer hunting was when thousands and thousands of continuous acres were managed. Trying to manage 200 acres here, and 150 there really has no effect in my experiences down south.
I hunt managed public land, I believe it's about 8,000 acres. It employes a biologist and has a 4pt. on one side or better rule. Every year there is a good number of P&Y bucks cosistently taken off this land. I have also seen a good number of P&Y deer over the years here though not fortunate enough to score on one yet. I believe this is one of the best places I have of accomplishing this even though it gets very heavy hunting pressure....gun and bow.
How many acres? My tract is 296 acres that I hunt Are you the only property in your vicinity that does so? Or are you part of an agreed up system with your neighbors? Basically the neighbors shoot what they want. All of the land surrounding is private with limited people that hunt it. Do you hunt a state managed area? (Meaning that specific property is managed beyond the normal game laws of your state or unit) No, it is all private land What’s the basic game plan? This year we will have a little of 4 acres of clover/chicory planted and will soon be planting another 2 acres of Shot Plot. Our goal is to harvest a minimum of 10 does and let bucks mature. At this point we want to see some improvement as we have WAY to many does. Watching the one field I had 23 deer, or which 8 were bucks, 1 good shooter and 2 that need another year. Lastly, have you seen improvements in your hunting and/or deer herd? This is our second year and after a severe winter it looks better than what I had anticipated.
