Land management is a significant part of establishing a good piece of hunting land with optimal biodiversity. Specific land conservation practices, property design mentalities, and other tips and tactics, should be deployed when creating a wildlife haven on your property. Here’s how to ensure your hunting land is the best it can be.
Understand Mature Buck Movements
Before making changes to a hunting property, it’s crucial to understand how mature bucks move about the landscape. Doing so enhances the odds of seeing a mature buck during the hunt.
“There’s a study I just listened to,” said Neil Hauger, a Whitetail Properties Land Specialist in northwest Wisconsin. “As bucks age, the core area of mature bucks gets smaller. If you want to attract a mature buck as they age, and make them feel your property is a sanctuary, you must have cover.”
Of course, the big challenge of designing a hunting property is setting up so that mature deer want to live there. Being able to hunt it matters, too. There are two sides to this coin.
First, set up the landscape in a way that provides them with survival advantages by satisfying basic needs (food, water, cover), offering security benefits (advantageous bedding sanctuary), and providing enough quality habitat to prevent overcrowding.
Second, it must be laid out in a way that provides patternable deer use, proper stand locations, good entry routes, and optimal exit routes, that do not allow deer to detect hunters coming and going. Without these elements, the quality of the area erodes over time.
“I’m creating a desirable line of travel,” Hauger said. “They’re moving from their bedding to food sources and I’m hunting them in the middle."
Analyze Access (Entry and Exit) Routes
Before building bedding cover or providing food sources, think entry and exit routes. It’s important to always address access before anything else. If you have decent access, you can get where you need to on the property, depending on the wind direction. Then, everything else plays off of that.
“The first thing I look at is access,” said Dave Skinner, a Whitetail Properties Land Specialist in central Kentucky. “That’s more important than anything else. If you can’t get in and/or out, nothing else matters. That might be as simple as a dozer trail around the perimeter of the property.
“There are some things about a property that you just can’t change, though,” Skinner continued. “It might be best to avoid a farm that only has access from the West. I’m not saying that’s always the case, but if the only access is coming in from the West, the prevailing wind is almost always blowing right into your property.”
When designing a property from scratch, it’s important to locate bedding areas, food sources, and more, based on the access into the property and to potential hunting areas.
Create Bedding Cover
With access planned in relation to bedding areas and food sources, it’s time to find or create bedding cover. Deer use different bedding areas throughout the year. Various seasons translate to different needs among deer.
For example, summer bedding finds them needing to be in cooler areas, such as nearer to water and on North-facing slopes. Winter with harsh climates require solar bedding (South-facing slopes) and thermal bedding (densely packed conifers, such as cedars, spruces, and pines).
Of course, you can’t change topography. However, you can find properties that have good blank canvases to start with. Then, you can create and change the landscape as needed.
Certain types of bedding aside, it’s crucial to add food and water within the bedding area. “With bedding areas, the Land and Legacy guys have taught me so much,” Skinner said. “Locating the best, prime bedding areas nearer to food sources is important.”
“Time the food source with the time of year you’re going to be hunting that area,” Skinner said. “For example, everyone talks about south-facing hillsides being prime bedding. Well, yeah it is in December, January, and February. So, why would I put an early season food source near a late season bedding area?”
In essence, plan out bedding areas based in such a manner based on the time(s) of year you expect to hold deer there. Then, do the same with food sources by syncing the food plot species’ peak attractiveness with the peak attractiveness of the bedding area.
Topography plays a significant role in this, too. As noted, deer might prefer solar bedding (South-facing slopes) in winter. In contrast, they might prefer a North-facing slope in late summer and early fall. And they might just seek the thickest available bedding cover throughout the pre-rut and early portion of the late season. Without question, they’re sticking closer to doe bedding during the rut.
Hauger compares his Kansas and Wisconsin hunting areas. He says that, in the Upper Midwest, it depends more on time of year. There, he’s done a lot of hinge-cutting, as he wanted to create a lot of thick bedding cover.
Additionally, he promotes woody browse to provide food sources within the bedding area. That provides browse to carry them through fall, winter, and early spring.
Plus, having a water source inside that bedding area is another important factor. This provides them with watering options without having to leave the security of cover.
“I also found that I need to separate the bucks and does,” Hauger said. “When I’d cut one area, I’d try to find another area downwind regarding the prevailing wind during the hunting season. I tried to place those bucks downwind of where the does were. So, if they were scent-checking those does during the rut, the prevailing wind would bring that scent out of the bedding areas, and I could set up appropriately with my ingress and egress.”
In that way, he had a better idea of where the buck and does were located. Armed with that information, it’s easier to choose a hunting location, as well as associated entry and exit routes.
“In contrast, in the Midwest, the summer and winter thermal cover protection seem equally important,” Hauger said. “It’s so hot and dry that creating good cover for your bucks out there is really important in summer. I don’t think a lot of guys talk about that.”
“There are a lot of invasive red cedars out there,” Hauger continued. “They can start to take over an area. But they provide a really good sunshade. So, I’ve been going up under those cedars with a handsaw, and I’m hollowing out spots in areas where I think the bucks might want to be. That gets them out of the sun. Then, I try to locate some food and water nearby.”
Provide Food Sources
When planting or otherwise providing food sources, it should be done in a manner that helps hold and centralize deer on your property.
Hauger is a big proponent of providing a variety of food sources. For example, he’ll plant brassicas, clovers, various types of beans, and more. Of course, he’ll plant spring- and fall-based plant species that peak when he needs them to.
Additionally, planting food sources closer to bedding areas, or in nearby transition areas, creates staging areas that deer enter and use during daylight. Then, they might move on out into a larger food plot or even agricultural fields. But this design keeps deer traveling along a desirable line of movement. Furthermore, it establishes opportunities for hunting spots.
“Some people like Snickers and some like Hershey bars,” Hauger said. “Deer like different things, too. Provide a blend of options, as deer like to choose different things. Sometimes, deer have preferences. Other times, one is more palatable than the other. It creates a longer period of time that I can pull them through that line of travel and get them coming back and forth.”
Don’t necessarily put food plots in spots that are already convenient, though. “I look at my best areas to put bedding areas and food plots,” Skinner said. “And just because you have a field, doesn’t mean that’s the best place for a food plot. It might be best to abandon that field altogether.”
Maybe the soils are poor. Access to that spot could be bad. Perhaps it’s in the absolute wrong location for quality lines of movement. It might even be terribly wrong for prevailing wind directions. Whatever the case, don’t just assume an existing open field is the best option for food plots.
“That said, I want bedding and food that’s used throughout our entire season,” Skinner said. “In Kentucky, we have a 4 ½-month-long deer season. That’s a long season. I need to make sure I have food sources for the early season, middle of the year, and late season as well.”
Setting properties up in this manner and providing all-season options for bedding cover and food sources helps hold deer throughout the year, boosts their nutritional health, and can even provide increased hunting opportunities.
Of course, John Deere equipment, and Quick Attach attachments, are great for making necessary changes on the landscape. Examples include shaping bedding areas, clearing for food plots, installing water sources, and more.
Minimize Human Intrusion and Hunting Pressure
Once the property is designed, minimize human intrusion and hunting pressure. Fail to do that, and deer won’t use the area for long. Mature bucks and does alike catch on quickly.
“My bedding areas are sanctuaries,” Skinner said. “I’m going to make sure that my human odor does not drift into those bedding areas at any time. I don’t want to be in there, either, unless it’s to track a wounded deer, or to look for shed antlers during the postseason. I’m not driving through or by these bedding areas.”
That said, for Skinner, the bedding areas are the only “sanctuaries” on the property. He says, when you set the bedding areas up properly, you’ll house a good portion of your deer in these designated areas.
However, in regard to sectioning off a 40-acre area (or some other arbitrary acreage) as sanctuary never to be invaded, Skinner is not an advocate of that like he once was. To him, that can be counterproductive to the overall cause of harvesting big deer.
“That’s especially true if it turns out to be the best rutting ground on the entire property,” Skinner said. “If that’s the best cover, a big buck is using the area, and you never step foot in it, that might not be the best thing.
“Even with my bedding areas, I won’t say I’ll never hunt those,” Skinner continued. “But I will hunt those in a smart way. Am I going to push into every area of my property? No. I look at my entire property as a sanctuary. I should never hunt on a day when the wind is wrong. Or hunt on a day when the conditions aren’t right. So, while I’m not designating a certain portion of my property as a sanctuary, the whole thing is a sanctuary.”
Of course, it’s also counterproductive to drive into a property and hunt the middle of it. Instead, hunt the fringes, and work into the property.
“I leave bedding areas alone as much as I can,” Hauger agreed. “If they sense that I’m not in the area, it becomes a hub of activity.”
Add the Extras and Hunt
With the major components complete, it doesn’t hurt to add some of the extras. Doing so can jumpstart the area. For example, consider planting scrape trees, and if legal, jumpstarting these with mock scrapes. Or, hang some scrape ropes, post horizontal rubs, and add other things to sweeten the area. If regulations allow, maybe even use long-term feeding stations.
Finally, rather than hunting deer on the endpoints (bedding areas and food sources), it applies less pressure to target deer along known travel routes. Deer pass through these areas with regularity, but they don’t congregate there. This allows hunters to get in and out of stands or blinds with less odds of alerting deer to their presence.
