This is not my advice but what happens or at least used to happen around here. On small places. You feed as much corn as you can. You shoot every buck you see but don't shoot any does. That way the neighbors bucks will be drawn to your place to breed your does because there are no longer any bucks there to do it.

I'm not sure what is considered a small place...but if you are hunting 30 acres or less than 30 acres and everyone else around you are hunting 30 acres ....the whole area is probably over hunted and shot out of does and bucks. If you start with a good density of 10 acres per deer then each place will have 3 deer..if my math is right.lol Now if you and another hunter harvested a doe each and one buck....game over..and if everyone else does this then you don't have any deer to hunt. So I would consider having a meeting and decide how to protect the herd...whatever that would mean to all of you.Good Luck

84 acres in SE Kansas ..... MINIMAL PRESSURE

food, feeders and other means to keep them coming, and stay out as much as you can

^^^ this....and we have large gravity feeders so they can eat anytime. For the record, I've never shot a deer in a feed pen so them coming at night is fine...but they're making their way to and from during legal shooting hours...find those trails and set up. I also keep the pressure to a minimum. Oh and hunt mid-day every now and then. You'll be surprised what's up and moving at noon.

I once hunted a somewhat long and narrow tract that was no more than 500 yards across with a mixture of pasture and hardwoods. I focused by attention on the hardwoods for two reasons - It had some decent acorn flats and deer used the area for cover when passing through. It became a no brainer when I found a washout under the fence that deer had apparently been using for years. I killed a spike and doe near that washout the first season without ever seeing the need to bother with a feeder since the landowner kept cows on the property.

Footnote: I'll never forget the time I watched a nice buck go running through that washout chasing a lesser buck despite having a nice rack. I would have thought the size of his rack would slow him down while ducking under the fence. It didn't in the least.

Food and all the other BS is nothing more than Tom foolery and everybody around you is doing/trying the exact same thing you are, if your place is small and the areas around you are being hunted hard as well the absolute best thing you can do is completely change when you hunt. Deer are most definitely not stupid and pattern hunters as much as they pattern the deer. Hunt from 10- 2 or skip the morning and hunt from noon till dark. I’ve killed 80% or more of my big deer after 10am and before 3pm and their is most definitely a reason for this so stop and think about what I just said and let that sink in a minute. All we has hunters can do is try to trip up the big bucks and think outside the box, when everyone else is heading in for breakfast they push bedded deer out they never seen, plus big mature deer move a lot more than most people realize during the middle of the day, if you stop sitting all your cameras up in the obvious well traveled spots and grid search areas with only a track here and thr you will be shocked what you find. I sit up dozens of cameras in out of the way places, I don’t get a lot of pics on most of them but I find big bucks that have never been seen and will absolutely not go any where near the rest of the deer travel routes other than the rut.

Some may agree or disagree with this but if their are mature bucks around your property they can be killed this way, I have the antlers to prove it..


If you own the property that’s another thing entirely,, I would be hing cutting trees and making bedding areas and not put a feeder up at all. They draw in the pigs regardless of any pens and the pigs push deer out period. Hing cut trees are the best tool I’ve ever used period,,, bedding areas are the absolute most overlooked tool hunters can use for drawing In deer.

You're preaching to the choir. Still, I would suggest getting there early so that you don't get busted by deer that have already bedded after having been chased off by hunter activity on neighboring properties. Just stay at least until noon so that you catch deer starting to move once they realize (after hearing them) the hunters next door have left.

I took the buck below in the Davy Crockett NF one Opening Day morning in an area that was at the edge of listening distance from a road that other hunters were using to access their lease. The road was one the FS had given their landowner to use to reach a separate piece of his property. It was about 10:30 or about 45 minutes after the returning ATV traffic had stopped that he came slipping by my ladder stand. A little Browning A-bolt .243 that I would later give to one of my daughters was enough to drop him in his tracks.

Owning 80 acres has been one of the best decisions I have ever made, and after reading some lease threads confirms it.

Blind faces south towards the feeder, in the valley:


Our bedroom window, which faces South, and is a 100 yards north of the blind. I never saw this guy and the wife did not text or call!

Beautiful setup you have there.

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I hunt out of pop-up blinds. How can I pen the feeders and still shoot inside the pen from the ground? How do troughs work for protein?