New property!!

wisconsinteacher

5 year old buck +
My wife and I just purchased 80 acres. Up until now, we have bow hunted a local farm but are stepping into a new adventure. The land was clear cut 13 years ago except for the NW corner which is mature burr oaks and the swamp on the NE corner. We have road access on the north and east side. So far the farmer of the two ag fields said we could walk his land to access our land. He is the only one that hunts the fileds and that is during gun season. He sits in a big box blind on my SW corner and shoots out into the 2 fields. He says there is very little pressure and that he only shoots bucks. He said that he ususally sees 15-20 deer opening weekend and shoots a 13-15" 8 point most years. To his knowledge, we will be the only people bow hunting in the area.

On the map, I marked out the atv/logging road in red and the deer trails I have found so far in my walks on the land. I need to walk the SW corner more. The first time I walked the land was on December 3rd and we kicked deer out of the swamp and the oaks. The atv trail had a good number of rubs on it. Since, I have walked it 4 more times and still see beds and trails.

I marked potential stands in yellow based off my findings and trees in that area big enough for a stand.

In my scouting, I found beds in the SE corner, the oaks and between the swamp and atv trail.

My goal for the next year is to add a water source somewhere, a few mock scrapes, and maybe plant some kind of treees. (Red twig dogwoods in the swamp or soft mass somewhere.) I also hope to shoot a doe and get at least one decent buck on camera.

The land is located in NW WI a few miles from big timber to the east and more ag to the west.

I'm open to any ideas or thoughts.

Thanks
 

Attachments

  • 0177A5B0-A6EF-417D-824D-589281743921.JPG
    0177A5B0-A6EF-417D-824D-589281743921.JPG
    1 MB · Views: 47
Congrats on your new parcel!! Good luck
 
Congrats, this will be a very exciting couple of years for you. do not do much the first year. Watch and learn what the deer are doing and improve from there. That being said I give it a 0% chance you don’t jump right in. Don’t be afraid to try stuff. I have made a lot of mistakes but they are usually correctable. Enjoy.
 
Congrats on your new farm. You will love the whole aspect of habitat/wildlife/hunting management on your own land.. Keep it fun.
 
Awesome. Congrats! I’d be looking to add some small clover plots for bow hunting and some soft mast trees. They would both pay dividends over the years and trees take time to produce. Good luck!
 
Awesome! Congratulations.
 
Congratulations on your deer land purchase Wisconsinteacher. Like Chummer said, let the land and the deer show you the ropes before jumping in to everything too quickly. A great first step for new property is not to improve it so much but to identify its strong points and its weak points, map out all of the rubs, deer trails, staging areas and beds, high spots, low spots, wet spots, and creeks. Identify every bush/shrub and tree type, on your property. Learn how and where the area deer spend their daytime hours and where they enter and leave your property and why. Get your boundaries all identified and marked out. I don't know how many deer you can take but you have a lot of stands marked out, which translates into a lot of intrusion throughout the property. Your land will provide a lot of enjoyment to you and of course work. And don't worry you shouldn't run out of either. Land is always changing.
 
I would try and setup the area they already use for bedding as a sanctuary. Then find the trails they use to leave there in the evenings and set up some small clover kill plots in between that sanctuary and their nighttime feeding areas.

One problem with having no one in the area that bow hunts is you can't pressure them too much or they'll just stay on the land where no one hunts. Give them an area of your land that's totally unpressured.
 
Thanks for the info so far. I know I need to hunt/learn it for a year, but that is going to be very hard.

As far as stands located, those are just pins that I thought looked good as I was walking the land prior to buying it. As far as numbers of deer that I would like to shot, the awnser is 1 doe and 2 bucks max if the opportunity happens.

I'm looking forward to learning and trying to improve the land for hunting. I already wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the land. :)
 
Top