New member intro and ? on farm layout

I have reached out to two neighboring owners who I have found contacts for to get a feel for how they use their property. I live 5 hours away so I will focus my time mostly on hunting during the rut. I know the current owner is doing a crop share with farmer and I would want to keep farming it but take out some for permanent plots and switchgrass
 
I have reached out to two neighboring owners who I have found contacts for to get a feel for how they use their property. I live 5 hours away so I will focus my time mostly on hunting during the rut. I know the current owner is doing a crop share with farmer and I would want to keep farming it but take out some for permanent plots and switchgrass

Don't know if this will help:
https://www.kansasgis.org/orka/intro.cfm?countyName=Chautauqua
 
Good plan to hunt year 1 and see what happens. That said, even if you have a great hunting ground today things could change dramatically since the bucks you want to kill likely aren't bedding on your property. That's not good. I would plan for the worst and assume that your neighbors will sit the property line or do something else to mess up the bedding area on the adjacent properties (if you were killing giants and word got out an outfitter could come in and lease up adjacent properties and potentially kill the bucks before they reach your land).

Assuming you access by that road on the north, I would want the deer to bed in the south. I would plant the southern 1/3 of that field into thick cedars, shrubs, etc.. I'd make sure the edge of that bedding thicket corresponds with a good treestand tree on both the west woods edge and the east woods edge. Those are your 2 treestands and you could likely hunt one or the other on nearly any wind direction. I would have the middle 1/3 of the field into a crp type program. This will give them a little extra potential bedding area and some marginal food, but not the best of either on your property. The northern 1/3 of the field would be the main destination food source.

If you put a little food plot adjacent to the treestands on the west and east sides of the fields where the bedding and CRP meet, you get most of the deer to stop and hit one of those food plots on their way to or from the main food source.

Create an entrance and exit route inside the woods so you can get in and out of the stand without the deer in the destination field seeing you. I'd also add a few layers of evergreens on the north side of the destination field so the deer can't see you enter or leave the parking area when they are feeding.
 
Spoke with neighbor to north and he filled me in. He said neighbors to east hunt the field hard. Lots of pressure and he has not had what I would consider a shooter of camera in 5 years so I am out. Realtor said owner doesn't let anyone hunt property and I found out that is a lie. The search continues
 
Well bummer. Looked like a great place.
 
Chautauqua County used to have on of the highest rates of poaching in the the state. It is the poorest county in the state and a lot of folks used to poach deer to put food on their plate. Don’t know if it is still the cased. Also gets a lot of Okies jumping the line during the Oklahoma rifle season.
 
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