The Journey….Part 2
My client, Dave, was really enjoying putting in food plots and managing the resident deer herd. This property had quite a few apple trees on the farm and they had been neglected for many years, so in February of 2013, he started trimming and pruning apple trees. He was able to get almost 30 trees pruned before the weather warmed up to the point that he could not prune anymore. We were hoping that these trees would really take off and provide a lot of food for the deer late in the Fall of 2013 and beyond.
Sunlight was starting to get down to the forest floor and vegetation was starting to take off in those areas that were logged. I had suggested also creating corridors linking a forested area with food plots. This was done by planting some pine trees and planting strips of our SHIELD AND BEDDING PLUS seed mix. There were two distinct areas that deer were using as bedding areas but had to cross an old pasture of about 100 yards to get to newly established food plots. To encourage deer to get to those plots during shooting light, I wanted to provide cover for them so they would feel comfortable crossing that previous “open pasture area” and getting to the food plots with shooting light left to increase chances of harvesting deer.
Dave had invested a lot of time in the winter of 2012/2013 scouting the farm and flagging trees for future bow and gun stands. The early Summer of 2013 was spent hanging stands and getting ready for the Fall. Videos and still pictures from his trail cameras revealed some nice 3-year-old bucks and many other nice, younger bucks roaming the property. One of Dave’s neighbors remarked that he had never seen so many big bucks before. He inquired as to what Dave was doing and Dave shared with him the plan and his vision for the property. The neighbor seemed to be interested in the management program Dave was implementing and things seemed to be turning the corner in a positive way.
Opening day of the bow season started with minimal sightings of deer and that trend seemed to continue until the pre-rut period. During the same time period, the “neighbor to the North” that had allowed his livestock to eat Dave’s crops called three times asking for permission to track wounded deer on his property. The neighbor to the West called about tracking a wounded doe that had also entered Dave’s farm. Dave agreed and no sooner did he get that out of his mouth when the neighbor said he wasn’t planning on spending too much time trailing the deer as it was only a doe. Dave told him that he needed to be responsible for trailing any animal that he wounded. This neighbor also commented that he had not seen as many deer around since Dave purchased his farm and Dave mentioned that he and his family would not be shooting any does for at least 1 or 2 years as the population had been depleted prior to him buying the property.
The pre-rut and rut came around and nearly every sit produced sightings of deer and more often than not there were more bucks seen than does. This was also the case with trail camera pictures that year. It appeared there were actually more bucks on this farm than does. No arrows were released that Fall, due to lack of opportunity and busy schedules limiting overall family hunting time.
The gun season rolled around with a fair amount of optimism and everyone in Dave’s family decided they would sit until about 10 am and then come back to the house, have brunch and head back out to the stands sometime after lunch (and maybe a nap) then sit until dark that opening day. No shooters were seen opening morning, but everyone in the family had seen at least one buck. Fast forward several hours and at 3 pm, a 140-inch buck walked out into a SLAM DUNK plot and was harvested by one of Dave’s kids. Side note…I call all of his children kids even though they are all somewhere between 20-30 years old. This was the first buck killed on the farm and certainly went a long way towards encouraging everyone to stay the course on managing the property.
I was really excited to get the phone call from Dave that evening explaining their group success and was really pumped that this 140-inch buck felt extreme comfort coming into a plot nearly 2 full hours before it would get dark! That buck happened to be the only deer harvested on the farm that gun deer season. Dave also mentioned it seemed that fewer shots were heard that Fall and that one neighbor had said that he told his group of hunters things were changing and that they could only harvest one buck and one doe that fall. Several of his neighbor’s group decided to quit hunting on this neighbor’s land and look elsewhere to hunt that would allow them to shoot more deer.
The winter of 2013-204 was spent pruning more apple trees and creating more distinct bedding areas by hinge cutting trees. Dave and I met again and updated his long term goal. He shared with me that his new goal would be to have 10 “shooters” on the farm every year. He wanted to know if I felt that was possible. I told him that it was certainly possible BUT that was still a couple of years down the road. I designated 14 different bedding areas where he would hinge cut trees. If we were going to have 10 or more shooters on this property I wanted to try to establish a bedding area each could call home….stay tuned for Part 3 of Dave’s Journey in the coming weeks!
Have a great weekend,
Todd Stittleburg – Antler King