Understanding the Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Small Property
When it comes to maximizing the potential of your small property, even if it is just a few acres, it all starts with a thorough understanding of its unique characteristics.
Every piece of land has its own strengths and weaknesses, and your success during hunting season depends on how well you can identify and leverage these factors.
Assessing Your Whitetail Property
When it comes to attracting deer to your small hunting property, consider the following aspects:
Size and Layout: Small hunting properties often mean limited space for a variety of habitat projects. Familiarize yourself with the dimensions, boundaries, and layout of your property. This knowledge will help you make the most of your available acreage.
Terrain and Topography: Pay close attention to the hunting land features. Hills, valleys, ridges, and water sources can naturally influence movement and behavior. Working with the land on your small parcel is a great way to stack the odds in your favor.
Food Sources: Identify the natural food available on the entire property. This might include browse, acorns, apple trees, or other vegetation that deer rely on throughout the year.
Bedding Areas: Optimal bedding on a small property is difficult. Locate the thicker areas of your small property to see if there is doe bedding or potential buck beds.
Travel Routes: Observe travel patterns and trails. Recognize where deer tend to move between feeding and a certain bedding area. If your small acreage can't sustain both, the travel between the two may make for a great stand location.
Neighboring Properties: Take note of neighboring properties and their impact on the deer herd. Knowing if the neighbors shoot all deer or practice management efforts can have a big impact on the consistent success of your small property.
Design Hunter Access Around Food
When it comes to hunting mature bucks on small hunting properties, strategic access routes can make all the difference.
Whitetails are incredibly wary animals, and they'll quickly adapt to avoid areas with frequent human presence. To maximize your chances of success, it's crucial to design your access with food in mind whether that be a small food plot on your land or nearby agriculture.
Strategic Access to Food Plots
If you've planted food plots on your property to attract deer, you'll want to ensure that your access doesn't disrupt their feeding patterns. Here's how to do it:
Perpendicular Entry: Plan your access to enter the stand from as close to a 90 degree angle as possible. This minimizes your impact on the food plot and can allow multiple good sits on the same stand.
Wind Considerations: Pay close attention to prevailing wind directions. Design access that allows you to approach your stands without alerting deer downwind.
Early Season Access: For early-season hunts when the deer herd is still using food plots heavily, use stealthy entry points with plenty of daylight hours left to reduce the risk of bumping deer off the plot.
Late-Season Adjustments: As the season progresses and food preference changes, be prepared to possibly adjust your access. Whitetails often shift their travel patterns in response to changing food availability. If not planted with late season food, the primary food source may have changed all together.
By carefully planning your hunter access around a food source, you increase the likelihood of encountering a mature buck when you're in your stand. Now, let's explore another crucial aspect of hunting small properties: focusing on thick cover.
Focus on Thick Cover to Attract Mature Bucks
One of the key strategies for maximizing your success on a small acreage property is to focus on providing thick cover for deer. Although you can't guarantee to have deer bed on your property consistently throughout the year, providing thick cover can provide bedding for one deer which can turn into more deer, and potentially even more fawns in the spring.
Whitetails crave security and areas where they can feel safe from predators and human intrusion. By strategically enhancing thick cover on your property, you can create an attractive habitat that not only attracts deer but also keeps them around.
Overgrown Fields: If your property has overgrown fields or grassy areas, consider selectively leaving them untouched to create dense cover for deer.
Thickets and Brush: Encourage the growth of natural thickets and brushy areas by minimizing disturbance. These areas can serve as bedding cover for large bucks.
Edge Feathering: Edge feathering involves selectively hinge cutting and encouraging new growth along forest edges. It creates a transition zone that provide deer both cover and feeding.
Planting Native Shrubs and Grasses: Introduce native shrubs and grasses to your property to enhance cover.
Creating Water Edge Cover: If your property has water features such as a water hole, focus on creating cover near the water's edge. Deer are drawn to water, and having nearby cover provides additional appeal.
Thick cover serves multiple purposes for whitetails:
Bedding: Thick cover offer deer bedding areas during the day. They feel safe in these areas and are more likely to remain on your property.
Travel Corridors: Deer will use thick cover as travel routes, moving between feeding and bedding areas while staying concealed.
Security: Dense cover provides a sense of security for deer, reducing their stress levels and making them more likely to frequent your property, potentially making it apart of their home range.
Breeding and Fawning: During the breeding season and fawning period, deer seek out secluded and secure areas. Thick cover can serve as critical breeding and fawning habitat.
By strategically focusing on thick cover, you can enhance the attractiveness of your small parcels and increase your chances of successful hunting.
Quality Over Quantity Deer Hunting
In the world of hunting, it's easy to get caught up in the numbers game like the average hunter, but when you're dealing with a small tract of land, quality should always take precedence over quantity. Here's why prioritizing quality hunts can be such a big deal:
Low Hunting Pressure: On a small property, it's crucial to keep hunting pressure low. This means limiting the number of hunters and their time in the field to reduce disturbance throughout the entire season.
Strategic Stand Locations: Identify strategic stand locations that minimize disturbance to deer. Focus on areas with high deer activity, such as feeding and bedding zones. Keep wind direction in mind whether you are on private land or public land.
Waiting for the Right Opportunity: Quality hunts often require patience. Wait for the right wind conditions, the right time of day, and the mature buck to present itself. Young bucks will often have more consistent patterns if you are more interested in just filling your tag.
Remember, a single high-quality hunt on your small acreage property can be far more rewarding than numerous lower-quality outings throughout deer season.
By prioritizing quality over quantity in your deer hunting, you'll increase your chances of having memorable and successful hunts while preserving the health of your deer population.