So i will give a brief run down of the situation. We have a lease in Southern Live oak county with cattle on the property. I have done some trail camera surveys and from what i can see my numbers are a little over CC but not by much and my ratio is roughly 2:1. The lease is 420 acres for myself the CFO of the company i work for and the owner of the company. Owner doesnt shoot deer he just goes for pigs and turkeys and the CFO may shoot 1 deer a year for the freezer typically a doe. Last year was our first year on the property and there is roughly 30-35 head of cattle on the property ( all 1 year old and younger) Heifers i am assuming. Last year wasnt a bad year for us down there. Property owner told us before the season started that immediately following hunting season they were going to high fence the west side of the propert as well as half of the county road frontage on the west southwest side of the property. The entire north side of the property is high fenced for a large game ranch that was already in place when my land owner purchased the property. The property had sat dormant for right at about 7 years due to previous land owner death and out of state children inheriting the property and doint nothing with it. When we were notified of the fence he told us that after this upcoming deer season they were going to high fence the other remaining half of the property. Which is fine by us and we had no problem signing a five year lease this past summer. The fence they do by themselves and the half they already completed was the larger half and it took them roughly 2 weeks start to finish. SO they knocked it our pretty quick for a 3 man crew. Last year my focus was getting as much of the lower quality deer off this place as will be my intent this year as well. SO i brought friends and family down several times last year and we ended up take 9 does and 5 spikes and 2 missing brow tine 7's. This year granted we had alot of rain but i feel the resident deer are looking real good. But here is my question so when they get ready to high fence the rest of the property i want to figure out away to draw deer to the west side since they will be working on the east side so i dont loose some of the nicer 3.5 year old bucks i have that seem to stick to the middle to east side of the property. So when they are about to start on the fnce i was thinking of taking 500 pounds or so of roasted soybeans and getting her to put the landowner to putting the cattle in the middle inside a crossfence and taking the roasted soybean and just going to town on the west side with it to try to pull the deer to that side so i dont loose all of those bucks. Is this unrealistic or could this work? Also will i pull other deer from across the remaining low fence while they are working to the soybean causing there to be some that could be lower quality bucks getting into the high fence and slowing down what i have already been working on.
Sorry this is so long just wanted to give as much detail as possible.

I know you weren't asking me, but I would also create a few good size food plots on the west side, then once completed the land owners cattle can graze some of them as well. I also wouldn't hunt the west side this year, let them feel safe there

I am looking for advice and tips from anyone. Thats a good idea i didnt think about that. Probably should have mentioned there are 3 large and by large i mean probably 10-14 foot diameter and 24-36 inches deep pump feed water round troughs with one being in the middle of the property and the other 2 not far way from each other maybe 200 feet apart on the west side of the property as well. IF that helps.

Majority of my animals are on the east side so the hunting pressure on the west side anyways is not much typically i bow hunt on that side because the biggest bucks that i have seen on camera were on the west side however like i said my numbers appear to be on the east side. Also to typically the catlle is cross fenced into the west side of the property for the most part. Only time they leave there is when they rotate pastures. Thats kinda what i contribute the deer numbers to on the east side.

I feel this is a good oppurtunity to strengthen my herd and once the fence is complete i will have a guaranteed 4 years minimum to be able to kind get the deer herd and the bucks looking how i want. (I think) and i know just because it is high fenced that it will not keep everything in or out but it does slow it down.

I owned a 600 acre ranch in Central Texas a few years ago - all native deer - I high fenced it. Your main problem will be keeping your herd numbers in check on a small HF place. Do the math - estimate how many deer per acre your place has - then assume each doe on average kicks out 1.5 fawns and out of those half are bucks and half are does. In year two again assume each doe kicks off 1.5 fawns. Within a very short period of time you will find you have more deer than your property can handle. SO it becomes a job to take the proper amount of deer off each and every year but it has to be done. The good news is managing a place like this is a blast and you will start seeing your efforts pay off

In my opinion I would focus on keeping the deer on the 400 acre place this year, and not even hunt it,( unless u just can't pass one up). Because next year when it is high fenced you will be able to get a lot better count of what actually lives on your place and what would have just been passing through. I would definitely be going for numbers on a place this year and work on quality next year. But just my opinion.

Tlk- I agree with you one hundred percent. I am up for the challenge and I got buddies and family always looking for meat for the freezer with liscenses so keeping the numbers in check I do t believe will be to difficult. I am really excited and looking forward to seeing my crop of 3.5 year old bucks I have now in 2 years or 3 with the management practices I am implementing.. Should be a lot of fun.
Noland I hear you. This year has already been established as a bow only year strictly because I would like to keep the herd as calm as possible while I work on taking some more does out this year and any possible spikes or inferior 3 year olds that need to be taken out of the gene pool.

My family owns 670 acres. We fenced off 2 sides bc of neighbors shooting anything and everything. We tried that for 5 years. Never saw a huge increase in age structure. We fenced the whole place in 1994-5. The biggest hurdle for us was genetics. The deer in the area (eastland cty) aren't known for large antlers. A large buck in our area is a 140 class type buck. To date, we have killed a 169, 3-4 in the 150s several in the 140s and culls. It takes a lot of time. You won't be able to change the genetics in 3-4 years. In 20 years, we still have junk bucks and spikes. Most, if not all, of the spikes are bc of late fawning dates. We have had poor fawn crops over the last 5-6 years which hurts buck recruitment.

No matter what you put out to help keep the deer around, they will come and go especially when the rut hits. I wouldn't worry about "culling" the herd until the fence is finished. Don't expect to see monster deer in 1-2 years. You will want to keep the better bucks to breed. We have left some to die of old age to give them every chance to breed. I would be hesitant to shooting ANY bucks until you know what your buck to doe ratio is and what the overall numbers are on the ranch when fence is done.
Just my 2 cents worth with 20 years experience of managing a "smaller" HF place with native deer.

Have you done any surveys at all? Do you do stand or incidental counts through out the season/year? I would use a road feeder on the west part every time I am on the place. I would limit hunting on that side or not hunt it at all. IME you end up with way more deer than expected most of time on a place. Work on culling and ratios later on. Just hunt this year. Decisions can be made next year when the fence is in place.

ranchman i have only done a game camera survey from the pics i collected in october. I did it exactly as TPWD says to on their website however i did it on current feeders since they have been hitting them regularly. Only counted the day pictures. so on and so forth. used 4 cameras only since TPWD suggests 1 camera for every 100 acres and used the four cameras that cover each different quadrant of the property. from what the TWPD website suggested to do and from the cameras granted its probably a little skewed but my count showed 38 deer (per their formula).