I think it's cool how you can have land to manage your own game, how big is your land? Is it expensive to buy a lot of land to manage deer and gamebirds? I wish to do it someday, thanks.

Hello buck85,
I have 320 acres and it can get expensive. It's better to lease the land from a landowner and then it's much cheaper than buying. Sometimes you might have hunting friends who all can divide the costs of the improvements. All animals including game birds live best when there's lots of cover with plenty of open "edges" so they can move from one point to another point of cover and feel protected from predators. It's all about choosing the level of quality of your hunting experience. Sometimes don't overlook the public lottery drawings for state land hunts. Some of those lands are highly favored for quality animals and are already protected year around except for a limited drawing for permits. These are hard to get but every few years you should get lucky. That would be the cheapest way to go.

Also you could make a career of this and become a public land employee either state of federal. This way you could manage land that belongs to everyone and get paid for it too! It could lead to better paying private ranch stewardship and animal biology.

I do alot of things for a living, but one of them includes managing wildlife. I get paid to manage whitetail deer and quail. Its a fun job, always new and the pay aint bad, especailly considering that I do it on a part time basis, but I get paid the same amount that you would expect from a full time job.

I work on my ranch and on other private ranches. I never wanted to work on public lands, working on private land is alot better for many different reasons.

My job is actually pretty easy. The overall goal is to make the land produce big bucks year after year. If we take off a couple of 160"+ bucks off the ranches each year, then that means I've done a good job. But down here in s. Texas it all depends on rain, you can be the best wildlife biolgist/manager in the world but if the ranch that you work on dosent receive much rain, then its going to look like you didnt do your job.

I farm, ranch, own an oilfield bussiness, 2 other bussiness, and I'm the wildlife manager on a couple of ranches down here, and even though I make more money at my other jobs, I enjoy being a wildlife manager more then anything else I do.