how much land?
 

In your opinion do you need to develop an effectiveQDM program?

RE: how much land?
 

More than most will be willing to admit.

Assuming your neighbors do not participate, I think you need up to a 1,000 acres to really make a difference. I hunt 500 acres now, and we have a tremendous amount of deer that go back in forth between our land and other's land. Now, we do practice QDM, but not b/c we think it will truly help the herd. We simply only shoot mature bucks and we kill as many does as we think necessary to keep the herd balanced.

RE: how much land?
 

As far as planting plots and thinning does it dosen't take a lot of land. What takes a lot of land is if you want a "scantuary" to hunt or if you want to be certain the deer are not crossing property lines. A mature deer may have a home range of 10 sq miles. figure about 200 acre to a sq miles (aprox) and you can see without a high fence just how much land is really needed to produce world class animals.

Now figure you have 10sq miles (2000 ac), what keeps the deer on your land? His 10sq mile home range may only partially overlap your land. I believe with habitat imporvment that a good qdm plan can be worked on 1000 ac or less but you must be prepared to loose animals to neighbors who don't see eye to eye with you.


Charles Alsheimer had a good article in the whitetail news just this month.
http://www.whitetailinstitute.com/in.../sept04/2.html

He brings up some interesting points. For those who might not be familiar with charlie, he's got a high fence research facility inside about a 200ac ranch that he practices QDM on. He's written other good atricles on this subject but I'm hard pressed to find the other one I had in mind.

RE: how much land?
 

A square mile is 640 acres.

If you are thinking only of shooting older bucks, any young buck that you don't shoot is one that may make it into next year. If it don't make it, you may have allow a different young buck to live.

To be effective you need several thousands acre for a good QDM property. The more land you control, the more intensive management and harvest criteria can occur.

You can do deer habitat enhancement on any size property. If you have more then 50 acres or there abouts with limited hunting on it and on your neighbors, the right habitat and sanctuaries, you may be able to make a difference into getting a good number of young bucks into the 2.5 year old or older age categories.

RE: how much land?
 

It depends on where you want to implement it. In northern forests where good cropland is scarce you may be able to attract and hold deer with a couple hundred acres if managed properly.

Where cropland is abundant it may prove to be a more daunting project requiring large tracts of land.
1000ac plus

RE: how much land?
 

greg-dude,

That's for correcting me. I've been roaming this earth with 200 stuck in my head, as the number of acres in a square mile forever. Boy do I feel silly:(:D. This number helps to quantify my theory but on a much larger scale.

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