Any of you guys successfully changed a property that may have once had mediocre or terrible hunting?
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.
