Kevin from Iowa asks,
What would be your approach to a property that gets shotgun hunted twice a year and has neighbors that are kind of into bowhunting but not real serious. Imagine the property being shaped like a 90 degree angle up and bending right. The bend would be the neighbors and I can hunt on each side of it. The property border on top is divided by a river so only have one neighbor to worry about. There is tons of ag fields on my own property and neighbors. I’ve implemented 3 food sources for this year on different areas to try and pull them off the neighbors if possible.
Bill responds,
Topic: How to Hunt Pressured Properties:
The biggest issue you run into on farms that get gun hunted is the challenges related to late season hunting. If you are the only bowhunter, you can afford to hunt it carefully and not feel the need to pressure the deer.
Kevin,
Since you are the only bowhunter, I would approach it the same way I would approach a property that I have exclusive rights to hunt. I would not worry too much about what goes on with the neighboring properties other than to keep your food plots off the property line where someone else could “hunt” over them on the other side of the fence.
My goal is always to figure out where the best bucks are living using trail cameras and then hunt the ones that seem most killable. I would not hunt hunt during October unless one of two things occurs: 1. You have a buck on a daylight pattern (pretty rare) or 2. A cold front is coming through. October cold fronts can be very good so hunt those, but otherwise play it kind of cool until around October 25 (roughly) when you can start to assume the bucks will be naturally traveling more in daylight as the rut approaches.
If you want to hunt a lot in October, find other areas where your pressure won’t educate those bucks you are most excited about hunting later in the season.
With the two rounds of gun hunting pressure, I would assume that it will be January before the bucks are moving in daylight again, so don’t pressure them too soon in the late season so they have time to relax and fall back into daylight feeding patterns. Good luck. (8/17/21)
