Trade Secrets for Successful Hunting on Small Properties

Let's hear the secrets to a successful recipe of hunting small properties, less than 100 acres in size. For baseline sake, let's say good deer genetics in the vicinity, moderate surrounding hunting pressure, larger ranches in proximity, deep tank onsite holding water year round, good cover, mix of mesquites, cactus and pasture, moderate road noise and moderate nocturnal deer activity at penned feeders. Let's hear your trade secrets!!!

Sounds like you are describing my place. Not sure it is a secret, but in my opinion the key is patience. Hunt as often as possible, but be selective in shots - this takes patience. Don't expect a trophy buck every year, or even every other year - patience. And make friends with your neighbors and hopefully pass along the patience bug to them.

#1 secret...

Be fair. Don't give the bigger ranches reason to high fence you off.

That's a given, one shot let off on last 3 seasons on a hog though I've seen legal deer in those seasons.

I'm the same way.

Being the largest ranch of those that adjoin me, I find it frustrating that I'm the only one that really practices any deer management, or even keeps supplemental feed and protein out year round.

The rest only corn their feeders 2 weeks before the season, and let them empty out after it's over.

Make your presence as small as possible have a way in/out without disturbing the place, feed feed and feed.

Same as public, find(in this case limit) pressure, the pinch points to food are the better bet, big bucks may be nocturnal in the feed pen but not in their staging areas.

I used to think that was the case. Had a friend/client buy 200 acres that he fixed up for resale. He was out there every single day on his dozer, cutting brush with a chainsaw and burning cedar. Had feeders going but wildlife was a distant 2nd to fixing up the place.

He killed some nice deer out of there. Animal numbers sure didn’t seem to decrease like I thought they would.


I agree that be selective and don’t make enemies of your neighbors. Also bite the bullet and feed. I’m in a similar situation and I feed the crap outta the deer. It gets expensive but I never lack seeing deer so far

I agree, if you are out there all the time its fine too, but im only guessing many do not go to their small honey hole property all the time. Deer get accustomed to constants. Like a deer blind always being there or deer grazing on the side of IH 37 with trucks and cars flying by them at 90 mph and they dont even pick their head up. But dont fill the feeders once a month and then head out there opening weekend run your 4 wheeler over all of it the night before and drive your pickup to the blind and wonder why you dont see anything.

Our rule is only shoot old bucks. Period. I have 130 acres in Mills County and we have killed some really nice deer. But deer have to be mature. No exceptions. We have killed 5 bucks in last 10 years.

I lease an additional 50 acres 2 miles up the road from my place to give us another stand and we have only killed one buck there over the last 6 years.

We love and eat lots of deer meat. We love to "fill the freezer". But do it with does. Never a buck that is less than 5 and a half years old.

We have passed up some nice young deer that we never saw again but that is just part of it.

Get in the dead center and make a 5 acre food plot.
Learn to bow hunt,
If not, hunt the crap out of the first 2 weeks and the last.

Great stuff, keep those learned secrets coming!!!!

100%.

We are similar sized and rule is no bucks less than 5 1/2, Unless it’s a straight junk cull but that is your buck. No 3 1/2 year old 8’s or 10’s. Really don’t want 4 year olds getting shot either.

Neighbors seem to be on the same page, one neighbor had a nice collection of hill country bucks from over the years

My little place is in an AR county. The only bucks we have that meet AR's are older than Methuselah, i guess it is doing its job!

Feed something different than the other ranches around you — roasted soy, cotton seed, peanuts etc. This is what I did for my 50 acre place in flower mound and it would hold the deer on my place or at least draw them in regularly

My biggest secret is that I got very good with a bow. Bow hunt hard until I shoot a good deer then once rifle starts I just keep feeders full and give the deer a reason to be safe on my property. I also feed year round to set up consistent feed areas for the deer. Don't give them a reason to go very far.

Yep, the deer will get used to human activity if you're doing stuff all the time. Can't tell you how many times I've had deer walk by while I was shooting or running a chainsaw and burning brush. Had a couple come up to within 30 yards of a big burn pile just the other evening. They were grazing and didn't have a care in the world that there were 2 guys and a big fire right there in front of them. Oh, and this place is 80 acres.

Great idea and suggestion...

Deer get use to repetition. One of our deer blinds had a tin roof coming off this season. In a steady wind that tin roof would bang around loud enough you thought you needed ear plugs, but the deer didnt even look. On our old lease the land lady had a 70's model gray chevy pickup she checked stock/windmills/etc. in twice a day. I rode with her on several occasions to do so. This truck had almost never left the property was loud as hell with a rusted off exhaust etc. but the deer acted like it was not there. Drive any of our pickups through the pasture and all you would see is white tails running away.

I hunt a 100acre property. I have found a few very important things.

1. Provide enough feed, and diversity in feed, that the deer do not need to leave the property. They will always roam much more than 100acres, but the less they need to leave the property, the better.

2. Minimize your footprint from labor day throughout the season.

3. any major changes to the property, new stands, tree cutting, etc, should be done as early in the year as possible so the animals have time to become used to their new surroundings.

4. control of competition for food. Pigs, etc... and predators.

Go sit, be quiet and do not fall asleep.

for me the key to be very success on small property is location, while i usually dont like hunting small properties. some small properties can be amazing just by location itself. one of the coolest small properties i have ever hunted was 60 acres that butted up next to sugar tree golf course. Would see/encounter several good deer (130-150) class deer yearly and always saw had 6-20 deer a sit. we only bow hunted it and harvested mature bucks only back we had access to it

My tale would be to make that 100 acres as nice a deer haven as possible, habitat management, food sources both in food plots, feeders, and native forbs, and minimize movement on at least a decent section of the property to make deer feel comfortable there. Not saying that the deer wont get “used” to see people if you lived there, but for weekend warrior types, the deer sanctuary is a must. Deer will never get used to people being there just on the weekends, and will learn to adjust their living patterns and just go away when they know you are there. That’s the start.

As others have said, shoot only mature bucks. Doe may be shot based on numbers seen. Try to eliminate habitat predation as quickly as you can, meaning hogs will take over a habitat so when you see them they need to go. I am not a hige fan of shooting coyotes and bobcats right away, they can have a very good place inna well maintained habitat with lots of good small game which you will have with proper habitat management. I consider coyote and bobcat control a quaternary concern. But hogs i consider a primary to secondary concern.

I have 400 acres lf in southern OK, surrounded by decent sized tracts around most of the my property which is lightly hunted. I am now into year four of management on my place. I could have easily shot off 8-10 doe and not felt a dent in the deer herd this past year, wanted to take more than we did (3) but got busy hunting after a specific double main beam deer that was playing coy with us. We made the rule this year no bucks under 4, which really meant it had to be a nice mature buck to shoot and we passed a bunch of quite nice bucks this year. Next year i will add that you need to shoot two doe before you can shoot a buck. That way we will take more doe. With better habitat, better food, the dawn crop was good this year and i will probably need to take at least 6-7 doe just to keep up. Managing mouths is a better issue to deal with than dealing with deer sightings. It is a rare occurrence for someone to hunt at my place and not see a deer or four. We are primarily bow hunters, and we try to hunt the stands that allow for good scent control too. Always reassessing and not being stuck in one path or idea is helpful.

Some great secrets revealed, let's dig really deep and bring out some of those "hard to know out of the box ideas" that have really worked such as employing decoys, rattling success, etc..

Hunt smarter than your neighbors. Provide more than they do and keep the thicker part of your land as a bedding area...do not set foot in it. I also recommend using a road feeder year round so the deer/game is associating your movement with a feeding routine. That will keep them from leaving your property and instead will be moving to your property each time you are out on it.

I forgot to mention something else. Treat it like public duck hunting. Be the first one in, last one out. And walk. I walk everywhere on my place. And as boring as it sounds, I normally beat the sun to the blind by a good 90 minutes most times. This way if you bump deer on the way out you give them time to settle down.

Good stuff right here....

Agree, makes a lot of sense.

Feed 'em and shoot does on at least a 3:1 ratio.

I've also been on leases when other lease members would drive ATV's all over the place and wonder where all the critters went. I didn't have an ATV, so I had to walk and I never has a problem seeing critters.

That's pretty much the same approach that I've followed with my 80-acre lease, minus feeders which the landowner doesn't allow due to issues with feral hogs. Locate the existing travel routes and minimize your time on the property throughout the year so the deer keep using them. It took me two seasons to learn the routes on may lease and it has paid off with stand sites where I know I'm going to see deer without having to use a feeder. I park near the gate and always walk to my stand sites. The only time the ATV gets used is when there is meat on the ground. Simply put, make it deer safe zone with minimal human activity and you'll be surprised at the results.

I used to worry about this but don’t anymore. I had an old junky tripod feeder and a ground blind setup that had been there for years. One day I took them down, cleared a ton of brush with a bulldozer for the feeder, blind and shooting lane and set up a new ground load feeder and a 8’ tall box blind. Finished up the work and three hours later had deer at the feeder (notification from cellular game camera). The biggest buck we saw all season was at this feeder two days after the setup.

I hunt on a small property of 165 acres, and 3/4 of it is heavy brush with a creek running down the middle.
It's a game funnel if there ever was one, but lot of pressure on one adjoining ranch.
We don't hunt the middle of the property and seldom walk into it unless retrieving a deer.
Most people on small acreage make the mistake of hunting the entire property and thus leaving their scent everywhere and chasing the deer out where they feel much safer away from human contact, and preferably they end up on our place.
We let the neighbors do all the feeding since they do quite vigorously, and it doesn't make any difference how much you feed on your place to try and keep them there, they will still venture over to the neighbors since you are basically feeding and hunting the same deer anyway.
I road feed, and have plenty of deer show up every hunt.
You can call me cheap, but I've probably fed only 300# of corn all season, both archery and gun, and the majority of that was hand feeding the roads. (coffee can out the window of my truck)

Keep feed out year round, I did this with food plots (summer and winter), feeders and mineral/salt licks. I limited my foot traffic during season to going to the stands and back out, any scouting was done from the tractor as they were used to it. As for getting along with the neighbors, do your best to know all of them and have their phone numbers and them yours. Being I was an onsite land owner and the biggest property around me was lease hunters. I let them know I had a tractor to help them when they got stuck, needed a culvert or road fixed or moving a downed tree off of their roads. It worked very well for many years till be moved to be closer to our jobs.

I have always hunted very large properties so I have no first hand experience to offer. However I will offer some insight. I friend of mine is a biologist and manages a very large and very well run Ranch. They keep detailed records of protein consumption on a weekly basis. He told me that anytime they are disturbing an area for whatever reason, like bulldozing or chainsawing etc that the protein consumption would go way down. I am certain that whether or not disturbing an area will alter deer patterns or not could be debated all day but I just thought I would offer that insight.

Ours is get out of the heated box blinds and go mobile. Get the climbing stand out of the barn and move around.

I own 133 acres South of Bowie. Bought it 40 years ago. I don’t shoot unless it’s a trophy buck or an off season hog. I stop using my shooting range in September. Trap all the hogs you can. I don’t shoot does.

Some years hunting is good, others we seldom see a deer.

Acorn drops are trade offs. Lots of acorns, I see very few deer. No acorns, you can be selective. But I like healthy deer more than I do easy hunting.

We hunt 120 acres with 4 different properties join it on the perimeters. At least 2 different hunters on each of those properties. Lots of deer and hunting pressure . From what I have seen the 3 years we have hunted it is that it only take one of those properties to hurt the age structure around you. I retired this year and sat in a blind 2-3 times more than any other season I have ever hunted and never shot a buck or saw a mature buck. I saw a couple of 3 year old 8 points that never saw Thanksgiving.

My plan of attack next season is to get the jump on all of the other properties surrounding us next year and get back to bow hunting. I will have more hunting time and a better opportunity at a mature buck while they are still in a bachelor group.

Food plots work nicely (as expected) to draw in deer from other properties. Also great way to feed your local deer with something more nutritious than corn.

My father and I acquired a small hunting property several years ago and have been putting in food plots since then. Pretty sure the neighbors have noticed a change in deer traffic - between the feeders and 10 acres of food plots - I imagine the neighbors are seeing much less deer than before.

The first season, we heard a number of shots from their property. Second season not so much. This season we didn't hear anything. Could be a coincidence or simply timing - though we often see 10+ deer each time we sit out that are traveling between feeders and food plots on our property during regular hunting hours. Can't imagine those deer would be in the area as much if there wasn't anything to munch on.

Be careful with scent control, especially when walking to and from the stand. Shifting stand locations and ingress routes so we almost never crossed deer trails improved the hunting considerably. Leaving too much scent made the deer nocturnal.

DQ, that actually sounds like a pretty dang nice little place to set up and hunt.

My advice would be:

set up your stand/stands so that you have the wind advantage both while in the stand and going to and from if possible and if you cannot set it up that way don't booger it up if the wind is not right to hunt....especially if you know you have a smart old mature deer you are hunting.

Keep it quiet, especially close to and during the season with minimal pasture traffic with vehicles. Also, keep it quiet with minimal shooting. Hell, nobody HATES hogs worse than I do but if I'm hunting a specific buck I will not shoot a hog, coyote, bobcat, etc unless it is well after prime time in the morning or well before prime time in the evening. I usually will not shoot it at all unless I have my .22lr to keep it as quiet as I can.
I sneak in and out as quietly as I can and will not leave the stand until it is pitch dark when I have deer out. I'm talking an hour or more after sundown.

Try and pattern a big deer with game cams. If you have a decent idea of when he is coming and going you can plan accordingly a little better and set up on him. If he only shows up right at dark or super early in the morning and only stays until it is barely legal shooting light, get in that stand an hour before daybreak (1.5 hour before sunup)!

Last...............….Feed, feed, feed, and then feed some more.

Some great secrets and strategies shared so far, let's keep them coming even those really unusual and archaic ones such as creating rubs and scrapes with own urine, etc....Worked with a guy that swore by keeping a gallon urine jug of his own piss...Said it kept the big boyz coming in all season...

We limit foot traffic to the 1 acre campsite. When we drive we use a tailgate feeder. We have an off limits, no fly zone free choice protein feeder. Corn feeders are kept full year round. My old neighbors are gone and my new neighbors are great. I only mow the shooting lanes and trails to the blinds, Will plant food plots if conditions are right. Talk to your neighbors and educate them. Let them know what you are seeing and explain the class of deer that can be expected. I have been in the area the longest so when I heard my neighbors saying they haven't seen a mature deer I tell them they haven't set long enough. The rut changes everything in my woods. Post rut is often best and all year things are changing but you have to watch for the changes. Time your animals watch the conditions you see the most activity on your game cams and hope you are blessed to see the one you want when you get out to hunt.

I have a question. I hunt a 30 acre property in NE Texas. I am very small limited budget, I do not have any food plots, I do not feed protein but I do try to keep 2 feeders full of regular corn year round. Do you think just regular ol corn will help hold some deer?

Yes and No...........you are not going to "hold" deer on 30 acres, but you can get them in a habit of eating at your feeder.
Also, I would throw out a block of plain old white salt. Some say the deer in east texas do use them. Mine do and at about
$5 at tractor supply, why not try one.
If you want more deer, pen your feeders so that hogs cannot run them away and eat all the corn themselves. But, you said you
were on a budget, so next best thing in my opinion is to feed more in the morning than evening. Example 8 seconds in morning
4 seconds in evening. Morning feeding will be mostly deer, afternoon into the night is mostly coons, hogs then deer.

agree with Mr. T but I would use the yellow sulfur salt blocks. I have one at each feeder location and certain times of the year, the deer just wear those out. Might be an old wives tail, but also cut back on ticks on the animals that use them (old rancher told me that probably 50 years ago).

Thank you. I will get a couple of those salt blocks (either color) and put one at each feeder.

Great secrets so far, keep them coming......

No doubt, there are exceptions to everything. I just cleared a bunch of cedar from under oak trees in my hunting area a few weeks ago.Headed down to do more this weekend. Spent all day and cleared out under 5 oaks.It made a major difference in a small area. Deer came in that evening to eat at the food plot and walked right thru the cleared out stuff to get to the protein feeders just up the hill, but I could tell they were much more nervous than the previous evening. In my experience, their weariness to changes in their landscape become more acute once those horns loose velvet.

have your feeders and blinds close to the center of the property. If you live close enough spend more time at the place starting late summer, a sack of corn thrown out along the road while walking gets them used to people, like at the state parks, If you have to have 4 wheelers during hunting season, you need them to be used year around so the deer are used to people riding around the place. A change in the pickup will spook them, go from a gasser to a diesel and the sound change will alert them.

If you are going to have a fire every time you are out there during the season, you need to also have a fire in the off season. Change will alert them to be on the watch. Same with BBQing, if the smell is new, they are on the watch.

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?