I have 68 acres North of Tyler with a creek as a boundary that has 460 acres of jungle on the other side of the creek. My neighbor on my side of the creek has 240 acres. He only shoots hogs, he's never deer hunted on his place. In the last 17 years that I've own the land, I've been clearing timber, creating pastures and dug a pond. My neighbor has done the same, but on a bigger scale. His pastures are really nice, while mine are still struggling.
When Covid hit, and we where under lockdown, a buddy asked about shooting a few hogs on my place. I've been trying to get their numbers under control, but really never put any serious time into it. My best year I think I shot a dozen, maybe. My friend put out a feeder, set up some game cameras and started coming out at night to hunt with thermals. He shot 107 hogs last year with 14 in one night being his best.
By the time deer season opened, I saw more deer on my game cameras then I have at any other time on my land. There was at least 5 legal bucks in the group, and more bucks then does. It's hard to tell for sure, but I'm thinking that there are around 10 bucks that are not legal, but some of the small 8 points kind of look alike to me in the pictures, so I'm not positive. Last year there where 2 legal bucks in the pictures and maybe 4 others that where too small, a long with maybe 4 to 6 does all season. Getting rid of so many hogs has been huge in my deer numbers. I'm hopeful that he continues to put pressure on them so the deer stick around.
I know two different groups of guys that have had the lease on the land across the creek from me, and they have not done very well at all. It's too thick to see very far, and the roads that they hunt off of only gives them a small window to shoot through when they do see something. One group had the lease for several years on only shot one buck and a couple of hogs in that time. The guys that hunt it now have not seen any deer at all, or so that's what one of them told me.
I have one friend that is on a lease on the Sabine River, which is further north of me, and he couldn't hunt this year due to health reasons, but last year he shot a buck that scored 164, which was his best every. He always gets a nice buck off of that lease, but usually they are 130 to 140 class 8 points. Another friend about a mile from me, farther East show a very nice, clean 10 point that scored 155 a few years ago on their family cattle farm. I think the potential for decent bucks exists, but for some reason, they rarely live long enough to get big. It could be poaching, but where I'm at, there really isn't anybody doing that. I have cameras out year round, my neighbor is crazy about patrolling his place, and we've never seen a trespasser.
If you put corn out, be sure to keep the hogs away. Once they find the corn, they will take over and drive the deer away. I tried fencing and they outsmarted me, so it was a battle that I would be winning, until the day I saw the hogs inside the fence. Eventually I put a single hot wire around my food plat, that was a foot off of the ground. The deer walk right over it, but the hogs hit it and go the other direction. the first couple of months I would have to fix the wire because they would hit it and tear it apart trying to get away, but now they don't even test it. I watch their tracks and in the last couple of years, I haven't even seen a hog track close to the wire. That helped a lot, and it's a big reason how my wife shot her first buck on our land.