Could you put up an aerial map of your hunting ground and the near by area surrounding your place for us. Show us where your stands are and where the food sources are. If the deer are just passing through, food plots will help but the deer will probably use them more at night. The only way to get the deer to stay is to develop a bedding/sanctuary area that they want to bed in. Hinge cutting an area or planting something that grows tall in low areas. Would really need to be 20 - 40 acres in size. That may not be possible or feasible for you, but the only thing I can think of to improve your ground. Otherwise... you know your area after hunting for 6 years. There isn't much you can do but hunt it the way you are thinking now to get the most enjoyment out of it. Tim
If you are getting trail cam picks of slobs, then you have the potential to have a huntable piece of trophy land. The number one factor for trophy hunting is to have trophies present. I have no idea of how your big block of timber is set up, but my assumption is that it is big mature hardwoods. The first thing I would do is change a good portion of the land. I would thin the canopy in a fairly large portion, maybe 5-10 acres by selective harvest of some the the large hardwoods. I would then hinge cut and leave a bunch of debris from the selective harvest in that area. This will allow a bunch of light to hit the forest floor and cause a bunch of new regrowth. Within a couple years, you will have the most attractive bedding area around. It needs to be as thick and nasty as possible and it will attract deer. The thicker the better when it comes to mature bucks. The other thing to take into consideration is travel routes in and out. Are you blowing the smart deer out of the area when you walk in or out. You need to try and find travel routes that can get you to your stand locations with the least amount of impact possible. If you are getting big bucks on your trail cams consistently but never see them, there's a good chance they are getting blown out of the area.
What is "trophy land"??.......Green Bay. Do I have it?.........no but I know a bunch of people that do! /Thread
To me, trophy is hunting that top 25% or higher of the bucks in your given area. That changes from place to place...some places that is 3.5s and up...other places 4.5 and up. If you feel you're doing that I say it is...otherwise yes is still my answer, you just aren't hunting it a way that would make it trophy land.
Sounds like you are seeing "Slammers", "Beast" and "Slobs" on your land what else could you ask for In my opinion if you want to see trophy class deer on your property you need to pass on some of the younger class deer. Target 4 and 5 year old deer for a number of years and you should see a difference. Yes you will shoot less deer but if you are looking for trophy's that what you have to do. You are also in NY so the genetics may not allow for huge deer like we have in the Mid-West. Maybe a 130" - 140" is all you can expect out of your herd.
It doesn't sound like you have killed anything big. I would have a hard time hunting with someone who shoots that many small bucks.
I hunt 7K acres of prime private land here in southeast Va. I pay 1500$ a year to hunt in this club along with about 25 others. With a gun I have killed 1 over 130". With the bow I have killed 0 over 120" . As a club during gun season, ( we hunt with dogs in this part of the state) we kill at least 3 or 4 over 130" and 1-2 150-160 ". I have seen 3 over 140" with a bow in my hand in 7 years. My point? We have trophies, and quite a few of them. Are they hard to kill? You bet. Do I suck at hunting them and killing them? You bet I do. With that said, IF I ever learn how to hunt them, I will kill them ocassionaly. When it is your time, and the Lord above sees fit, even you/me won't be able to screw it up, and you will kill them. But they HAVE to reach the age.... Never scored either of these but I don't believe they are P&Y deer, had I let em walk, I believe they would have been the next year. But I screwed that up...
What is "trophy land"??........and do I have it?? Your coming to the logical conclusion that what you see is what you have, and through your observations you determined you had higher then realistic expectations. I totally agree with your assessment. For discussion let's concede that your in the top 5% of ground in NY, but having bowhunted NY since 1989, Eastern, western, bow only areas, and limited northern zone. I would argue that the top 5% of deer hunting land wouldn't make the top 50 % compared to other states I hunted. NY deer hunting has just too many negatives unless you able to control a huge area of the prime ground....and by huge I mean several times the avg home range of a mature buck. You don't have that ....not even close. Almost no one does in NY. Factors that play against NY having true quality deer hunting are: 1) some of the highest hunter density in the country, upward of 17 hunters per square mile. This is even worse then it appears on the surface since much of the the northern zone sees little sustained pressure so the average is skewed and even worse in the southern zone. 2) obscenely long firearm seasons, ..what 28 days? Couple that with breaking the season into two zones northern and. Southern and you increase pressure in area 3) two buck limits...WTF? With greater then 70% of the state being below the buck take objective why would you have a two buck limit? 4) transferable DMP....dont get me started on this. They get drawn from areas and basically used anywhere in the state without oversite, 5) weather....you'd be hard pressed to find a place in the lower 48 with higher snowfall accumulations then the western and northern sections of NY. Couple this with generally piss poor soil conditions throughout most of the state except for the glacial basins of the Great Lake. 6) the hunting culture in NY, it's pretty much the worst I seen. NY has the most narcissistic population in general and it carries over to hunting. NY hunters and the down state non residences treat NY deer hunting like a put and take stocked trout stream. 7) I am stopping ...because I can go and on. My rant is over. If you want real quality deer hunting then your forced to travel, I plan on spending three weeks or more every year bow hunting in other locations and been doing that for last 15 years or so. Best move I ever made.
Not frustrated with the land or deer...........more with myself for perhaps talking myself into unrealistic expectations. Just trying to honestly assess the land because we are out there to kill deer.......not watch them. We have a good thing and are blessed with the luxury of options. Sooner or later you have to decide what is a shooter for your area........doesn't matter what that is but the decision still must be made. I/we let a bunch of really nice bucks for this area walk for the last 3-4 years and it was a total waste of time. What I am struggling with now is what caliber of buck is a reasonable/realistic goal to cover our land. Are their trophy caliber bucks out there?? Oh yea, but every year that means we get 1-3 max random pics of a big boy on our land. Never tons of pics and never long term repeated sightings as I have said our land is transitional more then a destination. Come late summer early fall and those pics dry up and once guys start into the woods they all but disappear. We leave cams up all year. With the memory of those late summer pics in your head it's tempting to sit in the stand and figure sooner or later one will walk by................after 6 years though the true likelihood of that is starting to settle in. I really was just wondering what guys considered trophy quality land..".....not sure why no one has answered that yet.
There is a difference between trophy management and quality deer management. Check this article out QDM vs. Trophy and Traditional Deer Management | Quality Deer Management Association
atlas, the pic of that buck you shot with the rifle. How old do you assume he was? He looks to me to be 2.5. and he DOES have the head gear it would seem to grow bigger. I may be wrong, but If you are killing 100" bucks, it is important to know how old they are. If they are 2.5 and 100 " then i would say you have what it takes for them to get to P&Y caliber.
Sorry if I missed if you talked about this, but I didn't see it if you did.....I would put in a ton of bedding for the deer. If you don't want them just passing through from one place to another, give them a reason to stay. It is true that if you have does that eventually the bucks will show up, but would focus on creating bedding areas for bucks and limit the pressure that I put on the property. I would do my scouting through cameras and long range scouting only. My father has a farm that he lives on and the bucks used to consistently just pass through. Ever since we started limiting pressure and stayed out of the woods it's been a night and day difference for bucks consistently staying on the property.
I've been hunting all over NY for 30+ years, and in my fairly educated opinion, for NY you do have trophy quality land. The fact that you get a couple trail cam pics of a really big buck each year proves it. In most areas of NY, bucks over 3.5 years old virtually do not exist, and even a 3.5 year old is a rarity. I don't know where your land is and how much hunting pressure there is, but if I were you I'd do areas of hinge cut trees to create thick bedding cover, which IMO is way more productive than food plots. I'd also create a thick hinge cut deer sanctuary area of at least 100 acres, somewhere in the middle of the property, where no human shall go from early summer until after the hunting season. Having a place on the property where a big buck can feel safe is huge. Let your neighbors feed the deer, what you want is the place the deer go during the day. Widespread hinge cutting is a lot of work for sure, but a buddy of mine did it and improved his hunting land 10 fold. Finally, I'd talk to surrounding landowners to see if they'd get on board with some serious antler restrictions.
I was thinking the same thing regarding the need for more bedding/sanctuary area on the land if holding bucks is an issue.
Huge blocks of land=deer on the move. When they can eat and bed anywhere, they will eat and bed anywhere. My .02
What I consider "trophy quality land" is land that I study and see all the elements needed to create a property that will tend to produce and hold bucks that consistently score over 140 and well up into the 200" range. That's not necessarily meaning the property already does that but do I feel I can nurture it into that state of production. It takes cover, nutrition (often good brushy cover is also a good source of nutrition) and low hunting pressure on the property and/or cooperative neighbors to allow for mature age structure. Genetics are vastly over played, most area's deer populations have the genetic potential to reliably produce 140+ racks with good nutrition and age. By that definition I cannot answer if I feel your property meets those criteria because I have no idea what's around you or the lay of your land. My best guess, based off your description is that I would have to say it is trophy quality land...at least in so much as potential. If you're getting even occasional pics of "slobs" but they aren't staying there, then they are finding an area withing about ten miles that they are migrating to each fall to escape hunting pressure. Whatever that is, it will be thick and have low hunter numbers. If you want them to stick around you're going to have to do some timber management as has been suggested several times already in the thread. Food plots are doe attractants and are nutritional drivers but bucks don't eat much during the rut and the does will often go to the bucks and/or run at night. You're getting the satellite youngsters that are too stupid to know any better and who are going to get expelled from whatever sanctuary the big boys are inhabiting. You'll have to create some type of environment to match where ever they are going to get them to stick around. Likely that means a big honking, thick and gnurley sanctuary smack in the middle of your property and you'll have to hunt the edges of it or an occasional well placed deep stand with a very good entry exit and use the wind religiously for that stand.
