Preparing for Another Great Deer Season
It’s now early October and we are just about set for another great deer season. We have been busy the last two months with the many tasks necessary to prepare for the season and the arrival of our first hunters.
We began in August by setting out mineral blocks. These provide the nutrients needed for lactating does and help the bucks to develop larger and stronger racks. We placed these both in areas where we know of large concentrations of deer and in other areas where we wish to better gauge the population with the aid of trail cameras. We have placed other cameras throughout the property to continue the scouting. We have already seen large numbers of animals including some very nice bucks.
With the aid of our partner, Corey Smith with CS Outdoors, LLC, we identified several new sites for food plots bringing our total number of plots this year to 12. We are also using several new seed blends to provide more variety. The process of putting in the plots started in late August by first disking the areas (in 105 degree heat as I recall). Fortunately we received some nice showers after we got the seed down. Now a month later they have greened up nicely and will be providing good browsing soon.
This past weekend we worked to get all of the stands in order. This involves checking them for safety to ensure the straps are tight and the stands are well secured and structurally sound. We then trim trees to provide shooting lanes, replace the cushions and re-mark the paths to the stands so our hunters can locate them on those pre-dawn mornings. We have relocated two stands and added two new stands bringing our total to 44. We will wait to place our other new stands or relocate any others while we continue to scout new areas that show the most early season activity.
Getting all of the food plots in, all of the stands in shape and continuing our scouting can be a lot of work. It does provide us with the opportunity to see most of the property and in so doing we saw large numbers of deer and turkey. We anticipate another outstanding deer season and look forward to greeting several new hunters this year as well as welcoming back two groups of returning hunters.
Good hunting.
