Kyle from Pennsylvania asks,
Hey Bill, I have a small property of 15 acres, 85 Percent of it is wooded, 50 percent of the wooded area is pine trees and is where most of the deer bed on my property. The rest is hardwoods mostly hickory, maple. I have a large doe herd that I see very regularly, but only seem to see bucks show up once the rut begins. What would cause this? What can i do to try to draw bucks to my property, not just during the rut? Thanks for taking the time to read this and for your many years on producing Midwest whitetail, i have enjoyed every episode and learned a lot over the years. Thanks Again!
Bill responds,
Topic: How to Get More Bucks on Your Land:
Kyle,
The very best thing you can do, by far, on small properties is to focus on providing more food to attract deer (including bucks) to your property at all times of the season.
Our home now sits on a 14 acre piece of ground in a more or less rural area. I know there are bucks in the area, but I never see them. I am not specifically looking for them each day nor am I running trail cameras, but all I see when I look out the window at the field below our house is does and fawns. I have not seen a buck since November of 2020!
That is to say that what you are experiencing is normal, unfortunately. In areas with limited management and lots of smaller tracts, not many people shoot does. They just focus on bucks. The result is an area with a very out of whack buck to doe ratio and generally young bucks.
If I was going to improve the buck hunting on my farm, I would probably shoot a few does but more importantly, I would supply a massive amount of food so that I was pulling more deer (and more bucks) throughout the year. They are going to be where the food is.
Our home tract doesn’t have much food, and since I am not trying to hunt here I am not pushing hard to improve things. I have been hunting in the area where I grew up – a two hour drive away – so I can spend more time near my family.
If I was trying to hunt here more, my number one goal would be lots of food, number two would be thick habitat and number three would be to shoot a few does just to keep things a bit more in check. I would not expect my little place to ever be great hunting, nothing like larger properties where I can manage the variables more completely. I would just be happy to take what I could get and keep my expectations realistic.
So, looking at your place, the deer are likely feeding elsewhere and that is where you will find the bucks until they come hunting does during the rut. Pines don’t offer much in the way of food, so those 6 1/2 acres of pine trees are kind of wasted (as I see it). Deer will also bed in other habitat so it is not like the pines are really doing you a ton of good. In addition, other habitat types tend to have more food – more browse.
Granted, I am sure you don’t want to cut down your pine trees (as they tend to be a unique and often valued land feature), but maybe you can thin them a bit and for sure you need to do everything you can to make the other 6 1/2 acres of hardwoods as browse-dense as possible. Even the hardwoods you do have (hickory and maple) are not good for feeding deer. In an aggressive deer habitat program, most of them would get the ax (or the saw).
Be careful not to make drastic changes thinking that suddenly the place will be a lot better. Short of creating really good food plots, nothing will magically increase your buck number. Again, be realistic regarding your potential upside.
With that disclaimer in mind, to improve your property in general, you need to open up the canopy so sunlight can reach the forest floor to establish something better that what is there right now. Start by cutting down just a few (half dozen) hickory and maple trees in one small pocket just to see what grows in their place. You can do that each year until you have these pockets all throughout your property.
Realistically, short of cutting down most of the pines and creating a couple of large food plots, you aren’t going to make that property significantly better. (And be sure to understand I am not advocating that you wipe out the pines). You are kind of stuck with what you have because your options on a property that small are very limited.
Maybe you can open up an acre in the timber for a small food plot here and there. That would be an upgrade. These plots will make the property a bit more attractive during the early and late season when the deer are almost entirely focused on food and give you some great spots to sit with a bow.
Just be realistic, no matter what you do (short of massive food plots) you aren’t going to improve this property much. Good luck. (3/2/22)
