Managing your deer on properties can be a daunting effort.  I recently joined an 800 acre lease north of Kirksville, MO., and the previous leasors have tried to improve habitat quality with food plots and have taken several bucks with undesirable antler characteristics.  One buck taken was a 140"+  taken about 5 years ago.  Many sub 120" bucks have been removed over the years.  Hopefully, I can help to improve the habitats further and show them how to pass on smaller bucks.

I started in October of 2005 using the Buckspy program to track observation of deer while hunting.  Asking the fellow hunters to keep track of what they see during the hunt.  After two weekends of gathering sighting information, I showed them the reports from the program and I gained the immediate attention of my fellow leasors.  Questions were varied...is this accurate, what can we do with these numbers, why do we have to track our sightings....Although my answers were not the most scientific, I feel that they were catching on to management techniques and how they can help their hunting.

A couple of pics to show you the property and plots:

The ground is primarily used for CRP.  The landowner has allowed us to establish food plots in various locations throughout the property.  We were able to apply two coats glyphosate, once in April and another in July.  One of our hunters was able to get a 100 gallon poly tank, he was able to engineer a pump and boom attachment with the tank.  We put it in a truck and off we went over the plots.  Our glypho mix was about 1-2 quarts per acre.   

We had a real nice kill of the grasses and weeds and the food plots were planted in late August.  Winter wheat, oats, austrian cowpeas, and brassicas were the ingredients of our plots. 

Here is one of our plots where the brassicas were put on a bit too thick...they did not do very well. 

Our hunting season went rather well....overall, we were able to harvest 4 bucks ranging from 80" up to 120", 1-9 point, 2-8points and 1-7 point their ages were from 2.5 to 3.5..  I harvested what some would call a quality buck at 4.5 years old.  He was a 10 pointer that grossed close to 150".  

Three does and one button buck were taken during gun season and one was an alpha doe, we have aged her at 6.5 years old. 

Two twelve pointers were seen by hunters that had already used their buck tag...hence, let em go--they will grow.  I could not have made the point any clearer than what they saw.  I am hoping for an even greater year next year for the club.

We spent a good weekend in March of 2006, applying 1240lbs of pelletized lime.  The local coop had it for $90.00/ton.  We saved a bundle buying in bulk.  We have about 6 acres in food plots and we applied about 200lbs/acre of lime and we overseeded all the plots with alfalfa.  I tried to keep the alfalfa at 15lbs/acre.  The following Monday produced a wonderful rain that we hope drove the alfalfa seeds into the ground for great seed to soil contact.

We were able to walk almost the entire 800 acres.  We saw many encouraging signs of deer usage throughout the property.  Our mineral licks had been hammered, so we refreshed our existing licks and started a new one in a high deer traffic area.

We also walked the fences to see where problems had occured last year and cattle had gotten out and into our food plots...very discouraging to see cow pies in your plots!  What we did find was a very nice set of rubs in an area that did not get hunted too much.

We were hoping to find a bunch of sheds while we were out, all of our efforts produced a nice 5 point shed that scored a 48 1/4".

We are trying to develop a very deer friendly habitat and we hope that our plots will be a draw to the deer come hunting season when all the farmers crops are taken in.  Good luck to you and your efforts!

We went up to the property for turkey season.  The second weekend looked to be a better weekend weatherwise so we waited to hunt the property then.  Our hunting efforts need a bit of fine tuning, as the birds will live to gobble another day.  We did see lots of birds and hopefully I will be able to bag a bird someday.  What we did find was that the alfalfa has taken root and looks to be producing some very nice plants in our plots:

Here is a pic from one of the plots we limed in March, this one has been limed last year with 200lbs of pellitized lime:

The wheat is very healthy in this plot and no fertilizer was ever used....good ole NE MO soil.  We also did very well on morel hunting.  Here is my daughter holding a bowl of morels, soaking before we cooked them:

MMM Goooood!

Dad and I spent a good portion of the Father’s Day weekend up at the property.  We were able to erect his elevated blind, check out the alfalfa plots, and spray an area that was becoming overgrown with grasses and weeds.