Getting does thinned to a healthy population and letting young bucks walk.

I took over a lease 5 years ago that had been given up for the previous 3 years, each year. Folks gave it up because they weren’t seeing any deer. The first year was rough but I at least saw deer. The second year my buddy shot a decent 7 point off of it. Last year I shot a good 8 off of it. There’s nothing magical we did, we just reduced pressure by entering the property. The property is setup awful and without doing some big time clearing you are stuck. We just hunted the edges. There was also a lot of trespassing on it because it has a lot of road frontage. It took some time and a willing game warden but that’s just about been stopped. By stopping the trespassing it just further decreased the pressure. Now it’s good for a shooter every year and we have multiple on camera.

Culling inferior deer

Done it successfully twice on two typical Alabama, shot to crap, but good dirt, pieces of land. Tried on two others that never worked to my satisfaction and I consider failures due to property configuration, layout, and most importantly neighbors. Both of those were smaller pieces and right around 1000 acres. Both successes were on big properties. One property, the same group had held the lease for 30 years and they'd shot every forked horn deer they had seen for all 30 yrs, and virtually no does. They kept harvest records and were killing 35-40 bucks a year off it, every year for 30 yrs. It was and still is the only property I've seen in AL where it was actually overpopulated and had too many deer. Visible browse lines, all preferred browse plants completely consumed. Ratio was at best guess 1:10 or maybe even higher. Shot does only for 3 yrs and let any buck under 4 yrs that wasnt getting mounted go. By year 5, we had protected a ton of young bucks, the ratio was about where we wanted it and we were able to back way off on the doe harvest. Things were getting pretty dang good which caused other problems. Biggest problem there was we had too many members that felt they had to hunt every possible day of the season. Especially so, once things started to get right. While we did good and killed some great bucks, cutting the membership and pressure in half, would've done worlds of good from a mgmt perspective and there's no telling what we could've accomplished, had that happened. Other thing hurting me on that property was that this was well before the baiting law changed and while it was illegal and I strictly prohibited on ours, all the adjoining resident landowners around us were bringing it in by the dump truck loads. We lost a ton of up and coming 2 and 3 yr old bucks that couldnt resist walking across the lines to the yellow acorns and those adjoining resident owners hunted a ton and unfortunately, never saw a buck or deer that they felt didnt need a bullet.

The second property was similar but slightly different. It had previously had a big club on it. Large membership, low acreage/member ratio and it was full of locals that hunted it 7 days a week and pretty much every deer seen on it (buck or doe) was shot, for 25+ years too. Found out later that they actually ran it with dogs 3-4 weekends each year "to get the deer up and moving". Ratio on it was actually pretty good, since every deer being seen was being blasted. It was just shot out and did not have many deer on it. I set it up much differently. Super low membership, super low pressure, zero doe harvest and dont pull the trigger or let an arrow go, unless it is going on someone's wall. Numbers have greatly increased and probably tripled or quadrupled. The unpressured deer on it now are calm, dont really pay much attention to stands or people for that matter. It's gotten to the point now where we probably need to start taking a few does off it each year. Still lose some bucks that we pass, to the neighbors, but they are all big privately owned properties 500 acres and up, or big acreage clubs and there are zero adjoining small property owners. While I'd love for everyone to be on our exact same program, it's probably about as good of a neighbor situation as you can hope for in AL. Either way, and in both cases, IMO it's a full 5 yr commitment to turn one around. One other thing. It has to be the right property, in the right area, with the right genetics to start with, if your intent is to grow big racked bucks. I knew before I got them, that even with the poor harvest strategies and years of high pressure on both properties, that both were in historically really good areas for big deer and they'd both given up some real studs in the past. Same was true for the two properties that it didn't work out on. You can have the right dirt, right genetics, and right area, but without the right neighbors or enough land to insulate you from the impact your neighbors have on what youre trying to do and accomplish, you're just pissing in the wind.

Yes but it was agreeing with all the neighbors in a square mile to not shoot any bucks with racks inside the ears. Took three years but the difference has been amazing. This area used to be brown is down and last year in the square mile 4 big 8 points were taken. All 3yr. old or older. Mostly small properties of 15 to 40 acres too, so letting em walk works, just gotta let em grow up.

The biggest difference that has affected my land was that all of the tracts around me now are being hunted (even the little 2-10 acres tracts), obviously this has not been an improvement.

The biggest improvement I have made is trapping and better travel paths into/out of stands to limit pressure.

Clorox stumps

So you built a fence around your place….How tall of a fence does he recommend anyways?

Trigger Control!

What made the most difference for me was outlawing dog hunting. Now I can hunt in peace and dont have to come down out of the stand every time a pack of dogs runs the does off the field. I still send thanks to the CAB and ask them to keep it away

Hunting improved by: Reducing pressure, which involved reducing people, creating intelligent access .

Deer quality improved by: thinning timber and burning.

Fire, trapping and killing does.

What size trap you running for those does?

The dog running club beside me that ran wide open every day of the season finally shut down and was bought out by private landowners / farmers.

You betcha!

I think liming helping more than i ever thought it would. Always over looked it and thought it was bunch of hoowey. That was an ignorant view point by me amd glad i limed this year

I hav made 2 ehos at very last lite n my career - but trying to graduate to 5 and older i think gone b awesome

Beat me to it. I am gonna lime my plots this year so we’ll see how they do next year.

Always hunting with the correct wind never hunting a stand with a bad wind period

^^^
Amen!!!!!!!!!!!!