We just got a new place this year, 4800 acres. Is that enough property to justify a numbers survey? Would like to get an idea of what we are working with to help in the management. Also what does it cost?

If you have a good road system you can try spot light counts. Do several and advise the game wardens. You can also sit in stands and do the counts. You can have all the folks on the lease do the sits. Just log Buck, Doe, fawn. It will get you a rough count. If you are low fenced your buck count will go out the window during the rut.

Google is your friend on how to do surveys.

You can also do camera surveys. Rotating the cameras every 10 days with bait piles. Will also see how big of a hog problem you have.

Better decide what you are going to do with information from survey before you invest time and money into it. We had one done a few years back on 16,000 acres and landowner allowed us to implement very few of the recommendations that were presented to us. Most of the info is nice to know for knowings sake, but if you can't use it to improve, it is basically pretty worthless. The numbers were pretty well set for us---survey or no survey, we just didn't know it. Talk to your hunters and landowner before you go to the trouble of doing one. Find out what they want and ask the landowner if he is all in on the info and putting it to use before you go to the trouble and expense of having one done.

What BenBob said.

Hard to manage the herd properly when several surveys say to take 50 extra doe, but your land owner says no more than 1 apiece

You have 3 options for deer surveys:
1. Spotlight survey - these tend to provide less than stellar data, especially if the brush is thick or the grass is tall. Ideally these are conducted three nights in a row, under that same weather conditions, with the same spotters, driver, etc....to minimize data error.
2. Trail Camera survey: Protocol for this survey is one trail camera per 100-160 acres. Google "tpwd trail camera survey" the results will produce a step by step document...if you have the time to bait, filter the photos and have 30 trail cameras (guaranteed something will go wrong with half of them).
3. Helicopter survey: unless you are in the Pineywoods or some other timber area that would make flying a survey difficult, it is likely the best method. Cost can run from $450/hr and up. Depends if you hire an R22, R44 or want to go luxury with a jet ranger. You can fly about 2,500 acres/hour; depends on the terrain, brush density, leaves on the trees, etc.

Feel free to shoot me an email and i'll answer any questions you have, no charge. Justin Bryan jbryan@hallandhall.com

Line of sight issues are problems. You must have 250 yard line of sight.

Haha... well if its not enough then someone tell us. We do multiple annual populations surveys on 320 acres. Yes of course some deer come and go, but it gives an idea of what is using the land.

You will have edge deer that come and go as well, unless its HF. We do camera surveys, blind counts, and a walking line survey, you can get detailed instructions on any of those from texas department of wildlife or your county biologist.

We tried spotlight surveys, but brush/grass (waist to shoulder hi) makes it nearly impossible.