What are small improvements that you guys believe help make big differences on properties? Example: trails, new food plots, hinge cutting, funneling etc.

Good roads. Even if it's something as simple as using a shovel to help drain standing water in mud holes to help dry them out. I have Marengo Co. Prairie soil and once you bust through the surface and it turns to gray sludge, your screwed.

A 50 to 60 hp tractor and a heavy duty bush hog go a LONG way to improving planted pine property. Deer, turkey, everything seems to love when I go in and clear out weedy BS like sweet gum, privet, etc. At the very least you are initiating fresh growth on those plants wildlife can snack on, and often times they will use these areas to travel.

Combine some strip discing (ie run your disc over the areas that are fresh mowed) with this bush hogging and you are basically creating mini food plots for wildlife by encouraging natural weeds to sprout, many of which deer and turkey use as a vital food source. Right now when everything is starting to green up and sprout is the perfect time to mow and strip disc.

If you own the property and have money to spare then hiring a dozer to put in fire lanes and burning is also great, but that's not a "small" improvement.

I'm in the process of hinge cutting. I don't know if I would consider it a small improvement. That chainsaw work will wear you out.

Moving shooting houses off the fields has made a difference for us.

I have quite a few white oaks on the ridge at the back of my place. Thought about doing some hack and squirt to there competition hoping they'll spread out and produce more. Not sure how much difference it will make, but it would be cheap and pretty easy if you could do something like that.

I’m going to do that around persimmons this year.

If there is any way you can make a few small kill plots either by hiring a dozer for a couple days or old school with chainsaw and manual labor, to me that's one of the best things you can do to a property. It makes hunting with kids a little easier. It gives the local does something to eat on and keep them nearby and therefore the bucks will be there too. Turkeys will hang around.

Trails or roads are also huge. It allows you to more easily access parts of your property, they can be planted, deer will use the roads also. My favorite places to hunt on our place when the kids are not with me is sitting on some of the smaller 4 wheeler roads on the back side of my property. Deer make scrapes all down the roads.

I am opening up a small food plot on 30 acres of land. Then I am opening some small areas on the east side of it to let sunlight hit the ground hoping some native vegetation grows making for browse and potentially some doe beds. Then on the west side of the food plot further away I am doing some hinge cutting and placing logs on the side of a slope. I am connecting and blocking off trails deer already use coming from the west to east letting the trail circle downwind of the food plot and potential doe beds. My stand is about 25 yards downwind of the trail with brush in front of it so the deer won't turn toward the stand.

Roads, lime, expanding the patches you can, and moving shooting stands/houses off fields if your fields are not large. Probably in that order.

Spring is not a good time to hack and squirt btw. Sap is traveling up the leaves and don't get a good kill. Also some entangled root systems could kill good trees you are keeping. Great idea, but heads up about some of the trouble.

I guess I glossed over his details. I planned on good old fashioned chainsawing the competition trees. I figure that’s effective any time of year!

Thanks for the info. I wouldn't get back up there till June probably anyway. Also, thanks for the caution about it killing other nearby trees.

Docks will play if its a largemouth deal cause even if it's cloudy you still want to be able to plant your peanuts....Docks is the deal ...

Opening up plots and desirable forage to sunlight as much as possible. I try to expand mine at least some every year.

Fertilizing and protecting preferred native browse. Greenbrier is eaten back to nubs around my place in the winter. I stack limbs and brush on top of it to help keep the deer off of it some and hit it with fertilizer.

Hinge cutting, thinning poplar stands, planting 50 pear trees and chestnut trees, dicalcuim mineral
licks, addtional acreage of tenant farmed soy beans, mulching shooting lanes.

I don't normally feed, but this year I am mixing co-op protein pellets with corn and roasted soy beans. This is on top of the other stuff I mentioned earlier.

Predator control kill all the coyote you can.

I like to bush hog trails off of the green fields back into the thick stuff. Deer will start using them. Ive had cams on old logging roads that got very little travel down them. Bush hog it and almost the first day will get some deer using it.

Yep. I've seen the same. They'll often bed right off of these little trails in the thick stuff, too. Gives them a combo escape route/cover for rest. I've probably done more "improvements" to my property by slowly going in reverse with my bush hog into the "thick stuff" than anything else I've done.