trapperDave

They should change the name of this forum to Food Plot Management

psandhu

or the "Habitat Forum" or the "Stuff to do with seeds, fertilizer, lime, tractors and soil forum".

BrutalAttack

yeah im kind of disappointed. I was expecting a more well rounded forum with questions about managing for more than just monster bucks. Oh well.

Hawgnman

BA, what are your management goals? What management techniques do you use to achive those goals?

PopGunWill

Don't be disappointed. Obviously food plots etc are what people are most interested in these days. Post a question or comment about other management concepts that you have questions on and start the discussion. If there is interest it will show up in the replies.

BrutalAttack

It's my job to manage for the publics best interests. Which usually means elk. However, personally I am more interested in managing private land for multiple species benefit, farmland in particular. The point I try to get across in my posts is that you (as a landowner) can manage for deer without planting food plots.

I guess most people on here are from the east so that is why there is so much interest in food plots. Which is cool with me I'm just here to hopefully add some insight regarding the current research on some topics.

Hawgnman

If you are not a landowner there isn't much you can do but plant food plots. I lease 546 acres that is a pine plantation. Fortunately there are some oaks & beeches on the property also. There are poplar but they are no more useful than the pines. There is a thriving population of wild turkeys. They use the food plots more than the deer. The food plots are very small because there are no fields on the property. The food plots are just wide places in the roads.

To get deer on the property we feed them corn or we have no deer to hunt. If it weren't for the turkeys, I would not lease the property. I'm trying to lease another property that has more deer.

I wish the landowner would cut about 40-100 acres in the middle of the property. That would draw a lot of deer to the property.

I'm open to suggestions for a non-landowner management ideas.

BrutalAttack

Well your options are limited to what the landowner and/or your lease allow you to do. Generating forage, and hence attracting deer is basically a habitat issue. Which means unless he is going to let you burn, log or introduce some kind of disturbance, your options are limited to outright baiting and minerals. Supplemental feeding has a whole host of disadvantages by itself.

My suggestion would be to talk to the landowner about his goals for the land and see if he is open to enhancing wildlife habitat. If he is, then put him in contact with the local NRCS (Natural Resource Conservation Service), there is supposed to be an office in every county and they can provide him with information and possibly funds/equipment/labor to complete habitat enhancement projects. If your willing to volunteer labor and/or $$$ that would be even better.

There may be specific things that he will allow you to do. If you PM me specific information about the land I can sure try to suggest some things (I'm not extremely familiar with the East).

BrutalAttack

By the way I understand what your saying. I don't have a problem with food plots per se, I was just assuming that the plot planting mainly occurs in the East since there is much less public land.

greg-dude

Food plots are probably the easiest thing that many can do to see instantanous results in deer management. Food plots concentrate deer.

Native habitat improvement is generally more subtle, many are more labor intensive and results may not be visible for many years. Positive results may be hard to see because these types of improvement tend to scatter the deer.

If you have any suggestions on native habitat improvement, let us know.

Many of us have done some native habitat enhancement, but it does not catch the spotlight like the newest foodplot blends with the big deer pictures on it.