Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum what's made the biggest difference on your land?

You get it.

I'm with you on what pressure is. I can put people all over a place and if they arent killing deer yhe deer will soon figure that out and not even run away.

Goat is correct......Shooting a gun at them is the real pressure

Soil testing and adding lime and having year round food, primarily Whitetail clover. Then stopping doe killing off green fields. I did cut members down, which probably helped, but to be honest I saw alot of deer even when we had a lot of members.

Mature bucks back in the mountains or other remote areas that don't see farmer Brown every day don't care if you shoot or not . When deer season nears or opens and it's like Patton's army rolling in they tend to get mighty shy.

This!

Plus most folks don’t have the time or desire to “acclimate” their deer to daily human interaction.

Every time a person sees a deer they should be mandated to take a couple shots over their back just to acclimate them to firearms.

Trapping has made the biggest difference far as sightings of deer and turkeys go. I don't pressure mine much either and have more than enough planted for them. I would love to do more burning but it's hard to cut fire breaks on alot of our place due to rocks and steep mountain sides.

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this and access to my stands. I have most everything set up so you can slip in and out and be undetected

Some good answers here boys.

There are some who do , they're actually aiming to hit the deer though.

I think just being out there on the weekends is enough to get the deer comfortable with human presence... I'm not there during the week hardly ever. So... being out there all day is not the requirement.

It gets pretty busy on my place on the weekends. Do y'all figure the deer know that I only show up on Saturday? I don't think so. I think they know that every couple of days someone comes out there and starts raising hell beating on crap with hammers banging stuff around at the barn..... THEN they come out here and drive that big ass green thing all their living room. Working on gates, fence, cutting downed trees, radio going, etc.

When I show up during hunting season it's really no different less the driving the big green thing all over.

Seems like they don't pay me any attention. I have a video that would shock you I'm draggin a dead deer out of a food plot and 40 yards away a live deer is standing at the feeder not even looking at us. Head down eating. Not joking. Nothing between us but air deer is literally just across the field.

Don't mentally put yourself in a box before you ever actually try something. My deer aren't any different than the ones you've got.

I know the difference I have hunted plenty of places where a deer would see you at 400 yards or smell where you walked to your stand...go berserk and lose their mind and probably not stop running until they got to the next County. I've been there plenty.

How did you do #1 without creating pressure? Revolving door? Pressure, I think is defined different for each property.

I mean... taxidermy is expensive these days. If I'm not going to be proud enough of my deer to spend some money on it after I kill it..... I don't see the point in shooting it. I work hard, therefore I can go down to the grocery and buy food. Don't need to eat deer meat I try to focus on my job instead of hunting all season stacking meat in the freezer claiming I can't afford beef... you can complete that circle on your own.

Deer run from you because of the perception of danger. IMO they are taught by their momma to run and act like an asshat. You start there with the does and stop shooting at them. The bucks still do buck things they are different but much easier to kill when you have more around and the ratio is better. Your ratio will get a LOT better when you stop shooting and let Mother Nature do her thing. She'll get it right 100% of the time. You have to mentally understand that when you pull the trigger you are working against your goal, if that goal is a decent buck... just like if the deer ran across the highway and got killed. Same impact. 1 less deer. This is exactly like raising cows... you wouldn't go out in your pasture and blast all your heifers then wonder what happened to your cows. That's what many here appear to be doing. Shoot deer have less deer. Shoot does have less bucks. Facts.

All the corn i put out

An 8 foot tall fence around the perimeter.

Cover and food.

I feel like I have on my lease. We had to many members, and a culture of shoot every doe you see and the typical 6pt or better buck rule. Since its a timber co lease, and I can't manage for habitat, I managed for year round food instead. Soil tested and limed, and started doing lots of clover. The first year I was Prez, I told all the guys we needed to stop killing doe's off green fields. I didn't make it a rule that year, just a suggestion. Made it a rule the following year. Then last year, changed the buck rule to match the lease, which is 3.5 year old or older.

Bucks are tough, if they come out on a greenfield, then aging them is easier, when they are walking thru the woods during the rut, you have less time, so I have to make allowances there. My neighboring club is doing the same thing I am doing, which is letting the younger bucks walk. What is nice is we are seeing more rack bucks. Not just on camera, but I saw 9 last season. I can't recall ever seeing 9 rack bucks on any property I have hunted during a deer season. I am not convinced I have a big doe herd yet either.

I tinkered around alot, and learned alot with planting. I research and study alot about deer too. One of the things I believe in and have seen is the benefit of year round food. What I have seen is how much a deer will utilize a good whitetail clover plot. I don't expect the deer to get their daily food requirements met soley off a greenfield I have, rather, I just want them to get some. My thinking is a limed and fertilized plot with high quality forage is superior to the rest of the forage a deer consumes. Over time that leads to greated health for the deer. I want them to have that food right as deer season ends and to maintain it into fawning season. Clover offers me the best opportunity to do that, howver, the last 2 dry summers have hurt my production. Now I am going to work in some peas/beans and sunn hemp. Sunn hemp is also a good forage for the deer.

I wish I had a better way to access areas on my lease, the road goes right thru the middle of it. I think I am out there enough in my truck, or on my 4 wheeler that the deer are pretty accustomed to hearing me, especially as we get into fall and I am planting.

I think the biggest problem in clubs is pressure from the members that don't look at the wind direction. It's one thing to walk thru an area and the wind blow your scent down to deer, but its another to camp out there for 3 or 4 hours. I think a deer is used to the presence of human scent, but when it stays there for long periods, they change up their movement.

I saw this demonstrated in the last club I was in. I had a trail cam on a transition zone with a small creek on it, between 2 different age stands of pines. I had daily traffic on the camera all summer and into fall. I would simply ride by on my 4 wheeler, swap SD cards, and keep going, so I could monitor traffic. I sat on the spot and waited until later in the season to hunt it. Check my camera one day, had a guy go in there to hunt. After that, my daily traffic stopped. I had very few deer on the camera and pulled it after deer season. The last pic was the left side of a bucks rack. He went into the area far enough that I got his rack, and never went any further.