The Hunting Beast

kind of loaded question. ive seen giant mature neighborhood bucks who Im sure never leave there 10 acre slice of heaven. Most places a deer just has to get OLD to get big, not the other way around. If they buck lives, he will sport a nice rack 9/10 times. Of course, we ALL want the biggest slice of the pie... like someone said, more land more opportunities.

Brandon wrote:kind of loaded question. ive seen giant mature neighborhood bucks who Im sure never leave there 10 acre slice of heaven. Most places a deer just has to get OLD to get big, not the other way around. If they buck lives, he will sport a nice rack 9/10 times. Of course, we ALL want the biggest slice of the pie... like someone said, more land more opportunities.

Yep.

Stanley wrote:

headgear wrote:
Well said Zap, that is how I see it as a public land hunter. I might park my truck and have 1000 acres in front of me but I have to be on the right 5 or 10 acres to have any chance at a mature buck that hunt. Some of these small pockets have the potential to produce every year. I just have to keep the pressure to a minimum and only hunt these areas 2-3 times a season, some spots I only get to once a year.

You'd be hunting a 1000 acres parcel not 5 or 10 acres though.

This is true but on public land you can't consistantly kill a mature bucks hunting the other 990 acres, you need to be inside the right 10 acres. In some places I can walk for 5-10 miles without touching private ground so property lines and acres are kind of meaningless in a way. What I do know is I need to be in the right location and I need to keep the pressure to a minimum, that should hold true on 5 or 5000 acres.

like the old saying goes, its better to have the right 40 than the wrong 400, or 10/100 if you will. I do believe you can effectively hunt for trophy caliber or mature animals in about any setting, largely depending on the surrounding properties and how they are managed. It also depends on how the does favor that piece... if it attracts and holds the ladies, the boys will show up... I do not believe you can adequately MANAGE 10 acres as opposed to 100, or 400, or whatever. It all depends on how your neighbors hunt/manage their grounds. I know of a guy who has two treestands in 9 acres and manages to kill a dandy 150 + in it every year. Granted he doesn't see a buck until November, but he understands how the traveling deer use the terrain and he takes advantage.

Trophy caliber and mature bucks can be consistently take out of any small piece as long as the surrounding properties have larger deer on them. JMO

This does'nt neccesarily answer all of your question, but here it is. When I was about 15 I kept seeing this huge buck by my Dads farm. I figured he was living in a small dried out slough behind our farm ( 10 acres max.). At the time I only gun hunted. So whe gun season finally came around I kept begging my Dad to have our hunting party check it out. To shut me up he asked our group to check it. Of course they all ,laughed,and raised their eyebrows. We only needed 1 guy besides me and dad to do it. Finally on the last day 1 guy says well let,s go check it out. My dad let me post ,and there he came. A 140 inch 10 point. Of course I missed. The next year our neigbor got him crossing the fenceline,after my Dad told them about the big buck.
The next year another nice buck took over that area. And then the rains came. And now its all under water. But I believe that spot would've kept producing a good buck.
Just an overlooked hard to access area,that nobody but a dumb kid would ever hunt.

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Small parcels to me are better and easier to hunt If you've got the bucks around. My brother has done It on 15 acres. When this woods Is hot It's unbelievable. When It cold It's quite boring. Mature buck numbers are the culprit In any woods.

I can think of a certain 5 acres I hunted by knocking on doors in S.W. Iowa that I would pick over most any other property I ever hunted during the rut.
Really though, regardless of the property size, I am always hunting a small 5 acre or so piece... I can think of a certain buck bedding area that used to produce a P&Y buck almost every time I sat it as long as I kept that to 2 or 3 times a year. That spot is only about an acre, the property is about 3300 acres, but what does that matter, you are hunting that exact pattern that is on that spot. It wouldn't matter if the border was 25 feet away, 25,000 acres away. What really matters is how much pressure it has and if the area can support mature bucks.

dan wrote:I can think of a certain 5 acres I hunted by knocking on doors in S.W. Iowa that I would pick over most any other property I ever hunted during the rut.
Really though, regardless of the property size, I am always hunting a small 5 acre or so piece... I can think of a certain buck bedding area that used to produce a P&Y buck almost every time I sat it as long as I kept that to 2 or 3 times a year. That spot is only about an acre, the property is about 3300 acres, but what does that matter, you are hunting that exact pattern that is on that spot. It wouldn't matter if the border was 25 feet away, 25,000 acres away. What really matters is how much pressure it has and if the area can support mature bucks.

I agree most of us hunt small areas of bigger parcels. The fact is the one acre you are hunting is good because the surrounding structure/cover/trees/brush/water/fence lines makes it good. I can think of more than one parcel I have hunted that changed drastically because the farmer bulldozed not the piece I was hunting but surrounding structure that made the area I was hunting less secluded. Bucks bedded in corn field grassy pockets/waterways for example, when that standing corn is gone so are the bucks bedding there in most cases.