Yes, I do the same. 2x years ago when my father first moved to the property that I now hunt, we had the property surveyed and marked for logging. It has been in the family for 60+ years but my father had another farm previous that we hunted hard that ended up getting sold when he retired. The property we hunt now is partially owned by my Great Aunt, Grandparents, Parents, and me and is about 120 acres total.

Anyhow, on the new property we picked someone to manage the logging project that is a retired PA game biologist, and we talked with him at length about what we wanted with the project. We wanted a piece of property that would be ideal for a healthy deer herd, and didn't want the logging project to revolve around $$$. We could have taken a lot more oak and cherry off the property however we left some of the mast producing trees there, and opened up enough for the light to hit the ground good. We also paid to havemost of the tree tops moved to the one side hill that is in the middle of the property to create an ideal bedding area. He also talked with us at length about what we needed to do there for taking deer, and that is shoot the does.Our one neighbor will pass the small bucks and we have some good 2.5-4.5 year olds because of this but they don't shoot does and the population is way out of wack because of that. We will see 5-6 does of 1.5 years for every buck of 1.5 years during season. We try not to shoot bucks unless they are as wide as their ears for now but our real focus is on killing does. We only have about 120 acres total, so we will never have the ability to just grow monster bucks but I do think that if we can kill a good 6+ does off the property this upcoming fall it will help the herd tremendously. Hopefully Rob / PA can come up and help us a bit because between APAJaws, my dad, and myself we can't pull enough tags to get the job done. I need one more guy that I can trust and can get a doe tag or two for 3B in there to shoot one or two does.

We are only 2x years into hunting and working on making this property a better place for the deer but the results are already showing. You should see the deer activity on the tree tops from the logging project and how they are now focused on patches of the property that never before held consistent deer movement. The bedding area we built is used heavily and is a deer sanctuary that we don't disturb. They are more dispersed through the property now, and now we don't see skinny deer with ribs sticking out in the winter pictures, they all seem to be much heavier and healthier in the winter pictures we see. I don't feel they are all competing for the same food sources now. This upcoming year should really produce some good deer encounters for us, there are 3x bucks I know of that are still on the property that are just about 3 years old now and one that has got to be 5 years old right now that is very very sneaky.

Call me an antler farmer if you want but I love spending the time making the food plots and photographing the deer and to be honest I only hunted a food plot one time this year during late season when I had a tag that needed to be filled.The rest ofthe hunts that occurred on this property were all a long ways away from the food plots.