Top_Heavy's World

OK, I admit it, I started this series a little disorganized. I was so into the plot Jody and I put in that I mislabeled it, got ahead of the first several steps, stepped on my own feet and probably got some people confused. I will bring this back together before planting season is over!

The first step in getting into the management concept is being involved in the political side of the equation. Some people buy duck stamps and don't hunt, some take others hunting and don't carry a weapon themselves, some just stay active in fund raising and in gathering votes or notice for good outdoor related causes. To any and all of these people I say thank you, your efforts help me and yet you are never praised. Thank you again. This is going to be geared towards the people that take a little more aggressive action towards management. The CONSUMPTIVE outdoorsman, the individual who is going to buy a tag, even occasionally, and attempt to harvest animals.
Educating yourself and those around you with hunter's safety classes and possibly more, is a good step. Some of you will be involved by passing a known button buck, a yearling buck or by not taking a questionable shot at an unknown deer. Those steps are all good too.
The goal to managing for deer is just that, managing FOR deer. I know some people that think they can manage THE deer, they are driving themselves crazy. We need to determine our desires, turn them into goals and strive to achieve them. This is nature, it is God's design and Devine Intervention when we succeed on any level in the Fairchase world. I am not talking here about high fence farm animals. They are fun to hunt and great sport but they are the animals that can be managed as animlas go. The precise breeding pedigree is established and the natural side of things is reduced. I am talking about the ways of Nature.
We must determine our involvement level. Monetarily, time availability, personal goals... the WHY of it all. If you are the guy who just wants to have a better chance at killing a "good" buck, better than you have in the past perhaps, this can help. If you want to get very serious and attempt to create an environment where the next world record is grown, I might have something to help there too.
You must get permission on a property. That might be to buy the ground, lease the ground or just ask and get daily or "open" permission from the landowner. I have very little ground that I own, I lease very little ground anymore, almost all of my hunting is done by permission. We could go on about getting on the ground, keeping it, landowner relations etc. but you need to figure that out for yourself. I will give this advice: Be genuinely concerned with the landowners well being, his property and lively hood, and you will go and stay much farther. I make it a point to be what the landowner wants, and then a tiny bit better.

You are on a plot of ground and you want to make it better for the deer, you are just dabbling and want something easy. You could merely spring seed a mowed area with clover and alfalfa. These plants will easily germinate and grow, require very little help and if allowed to stay in the 4 to 10" size, will provide a quality food supply in an area that there wasn't before. I turned a plot of grass, a back yard actually into a food plot by doing just what I am suggesting. I don't hunt right on the spot, but the deer come to it everynight. You might be a little more serious or adventurous than this, and you want to clear ground and plant something to be able to hunt over. A Kill Plot, as we defined before. This will require you to look for a niche in your area. What is missing at the time you can hunt? If you are in an urban area, the odds are that anything you plant will be devoured and you will have to shoot lots of deer just to protect the planting. If you are in rural Iowa and there is lots of standard ag practices around you, much more thought will be needed.
I personally believe security is the most overlooked, under talked about and most limiting factor of any site to be hunted. Big deer are old deer, old deer have seen many hunts, variables, mistakes and normal life occurances. Deer can be conditioned, but I also believe they can be educated. Both of these will be involved in a deer's feelings of security.
Conditioned deer are the ones that run out of a timber in the same manner each time you enter it, they follow the same trails, they are predictable for a certain stimulus... your movements. Educated deer are the ones who learned a lesson, who saw a specific activity by a human and know to look for it. The best example I could give you is the big doe that caught you moving one time and now everytime you see her, she is head up, eyes wide, looking at your stand or scent checking your location. That educated deer must be killed immediately if you want to continue hunting that area. That deer will educate the other deer and soon you will have no deer in shooting range... ever! Set a new stand about 20 yards down wind of where it always shows up (it is now becoming conditioned as well, which is easy to kill!), put a normal coat in your original stand to give off odor, and wait. That deer will show up, scent trail you to the normal comfort zone limits and you will have a simple shot. I have decoyed several does this way and it has saved many a good tree stand location. The goal of plantings is to educate the deer to the location and then condition them to patternable levels. Security at a slightly better than average location will almost always be better than a great food supply or source and open view to everyone and everything in the area. Big deer, as a rule, are not very showy. They are not snobby movie stars who want attention. It is just the opposite, the biggest deer I have seen are loners, masters of seclusion and survival. That big deer needs to be comfortable in your area and that requires attention to details. You must stay out of the area as much as possible. That might be keeping your dog from running in that timber on weekends when you are cutting wood, or it might mean you don't set foot on the area except for shed hunting and planting... PERIOD! Always think about what the deer is going to see or smell the next time it enters your area. Do you want to educate it to a particular tree that you want to hunt from by letting your kids climb into your ladder stand every weekend? NO. Do you want to condition that deer to moving at 9:20am everyday as that is when you leave the property most days to go to work? That deer will become educated the first time it cuts your smell and it will pattern you after the second time, and then it will be conditioned. That might mean it leaves your property permanently due to the intrusion. I know I am sounding like you need 2 properties, one for deer hunting and one for normal life enjoyment... I am not saying that, but the really top end guys are doing just what I suggest. Keep your intrusion to a minimum and provide security for you deer.
Security is more than just no human intervention. It is a control on the factors that limit a deers life. Predators, travel distances between food, water and seasonal shelter requirements, stress due to herd size or population density, Seasonal changes that affect the limited specific available food sources ex. dry year so mast trees don't produce and most of your deer move to less affected areas. Security will keep the deer in an area when most other things fail. Want proof of this? Where are the deer coming from when they enter the cornfield, alfalfa, beans or forbes at days end? Security, their safety zone or loafing area. I went long here as I want to show how important I believe this factor is.
In my next entry, I will get into my second most important idea... identifying limiting factors.