Maximize Your Small Acreage
Shrink Their World: Four Steps to Creating a Whitetail Paradise on Small Acreage
By Scott Bestul 

He was no magazine-cover whitetail, but he was about as good a buck as we’d grown in our neighborhood. The “Flyer Buck” was 4-1/2 years old, and he’d grown up before our eyes. My neighbors and I had watched him grow from an impressive 2-1/2-year-old into a better mature buck and finally morph into the kind of deer we’d dreamed of growing. When my neighbor’s boy, Tanner, dropped the hammer on the Flyer Buck during a mid-November hunt, it was cause for celebration.

The Flyer Buck did not grow up in a manicured whitetail sanctuary. Although my neighbors and I improve habitat and grow food on about 200 acres, we are surrounded by state-managed wildlife management areas where anyone can hunt and any buck is fair game. We don’t control a buck’s world.

But we’re getting better at the things we can control; the places where a buck beds and feels safe, the spots where he feeds and the areas where he finds mineral. In fact, we’ve found that even on relatively small tracts, you can shrink a buck’s world by creating or enhancing the elements he wants and needs most. Of course, bucks don’t limit their lives to the small farms we manage, but our improvements make the property attractive enough that it becomes one of the places a buck visit more frequently. And in turn, those places can also become where bucks are most vulnerable to harvest. With that in mind, here’s a look at four things you can do to make a small property the focal point of a buck’s life.

Create a Safe Haven
After years of pondering bedding areas, I’ve modified my definition. When people talk about whitetail bedding areas, their mind leaps to the concept of a specific place to which deer return night after night. So when folks say it’s important to create bedding areas, it’s understandable when you imagine a cozy but highly specific little spot where a buck can tuck in, pull the covers over his head and snore like a sailor.

Of course, deer rarely bed like that. I’ve seen a few bucks that seemed to have fairly specific bedding spots, but they’ve been the exception. What they have are general areas where they feel safe enough to rest with consistency. Within that area, they’ll have specifics spots they choose to sleep depending on food sources, wind direction, temperature, hunting pressure and other factors. They’ll have a couple of these within their core area (the place where they spend most of their time) and several more within their home range (the area that encompasses most of their movement).

So, when we talk about creating bedding cover, we must look at altering habitat in several spots within a buck’s core area, and most of this work is done with a chainsaw. I’ve written about the benefits of hinge-cutting and logging before, and our management efforts include almost-yearly timber management to create or enhance the thick cover whitetails use for bedding. People get excited about food plots — and they should — but in my opinion, timber management is equally — sometimes more — important in making a property attractive to deer.

Perhaps the biggest key to keeping bedding areas effective is a commitment to minimizing human disturbance. I don’t believe mature deer are necessarily smart, but they are very good at repeating successful behaviors. Bump an old buck or mature doe from a bed once and it’s usually no big deal. Do the same two or three times, and that deer will find a place where they aren’t disturbed so often. I’m aware how difficult it can be to circle a few spots on a property — especially a small one — and say, “We’re not going in there,” but doing so can make a huge difference. In the past seven years, my neighbors and I have tagged four mature bucks that spent most of their time on 40-acre tracts, and I’m convinced they did so because we gave them the cover and space to feel safe living there.

Spread the Banquet Table
It’s no secret that whitetails are slaves to their stomachs. They are on a constant hunt for food and are more likely to hang out where that search is easiest. This makes food plots an integral part of attracting and holding deer to a small property. Of course, establishing and maintaining food plots is more complex than simply scattering seeds on the ground, and there are few better resources for doing it right than this magazine and whitetailinstitute.com. After planting dozens of food plots each year for the past decade, here are a few basic guidelines I like to share with folks getting into the fun.

First, don’t ignore the basics of soil testing and using the results and recommendations of those tests to apply the proper lime and fertilizer. It’s such an easy step to skip, especially because most of us have limited time and are often in a hurry to get seeds in the dirt. But with some extra planning and a few more minutes out of your schedule, you can complete these fundamental steps, and that results in healthier plants that taste better to deer and better hunting for you.

I vividly remember one of the first brassica food plots I planted. I hurried the process by skipping the first steps and was pretty pleased when the seeds germinated in a fresh rain and popped out of the ground within days. But several weeks later, the once-green seedlings were turning an interesting shade of purple that looked nothing like the brassica pictures I’d seen. One of my food-plotting buddies took a look at them a week later, laughed and said, “You didn’t lime and fertilize, did you?” I was busted, and I’d learned that laziness only gains you time on the front end.

Another thing I’ve learned to appreciate is to offer a mix of annuals and perennials. One of the most frequent questions I get in seminars is, “What should I plant in my food plots?” That usually means the attendee wants me to name the red-hot secret plant that does it all for deer. And the red-hot answer (which is no secret) is there isn’t such a plant. Deer are notoriously fickle feeders, and they’re amazing in their ability to know what their bodies need at a given time. In my book, this makes planting a variety of offerings the best approach. Perennials such as Imperial Whitetail Clover (WINA clover blend) and Fusion (WINA clover and chicory blend) are excellent for meeting the nutritional needs of deer during most of the year, and annuals make sense in other periods. For this reason, I like to have multiple smaller plots instead of one or two large ones. I can offer deer more variety and also increase my hunting opportunities by having multiple setups that let me rotate pressure and adapt to varying winds and situations.

Mineral Rights
Mineral licks aren’t far behind food plots on the list of hotspots hunters hope to create on their properties. I’m somewhat torn on the importance of minerals to deer, at least the degree to which some hunters rely on them. For example, if you think that frequent visits to a mineral lick will catapult a 130-inch buck into the B&C stratosphere, I believe you’re delusional. But if you believe that a healthy dose of quality minerals which includes vitamins and supplements designed by qualified deer biologists will help an already-good buck further express his potential, I agree. I live among farmers who raise beef and dairy calves into productive members of their respective societies, and because they feed mineral to those baby cows, who am I to argue with the experts?

But in addition to helping a buck be all it can be, mineral licks serve a couple of other hugely important purposes. First, I have seen dozens of mature does adopt mineral licks as their own, revisiting them with a frequency that borders on the obsessive. Because those visits often occur when a doe is nursing her fawn(s), it makes sense that mineral licks fulfill a need those nursing does are trying to meet. Although I don’t get particularly excited about trail-cam pics of a doe at other times of the season, I celebrate when I get those photos at a mineral lick in late spring and early summer. I recognize that doe has a baby (or more) nearby and that my lick is helping her replenish her physical needs after birthing those fawns. And more fawns equal more deer, which equals more nice bucks.

Second, I believe mineral licks, which are typically located close to my perennial food plots, can help a good buck adopt that area as part of his world. Remember, late spring and early summer are when deer are moving a lot, dispersing into areas that will become important to them as summer morphs into fall. If a dispersing buck wanders into my mineral lick, he’s also not far from one of my clover food plots, which can turn into a central part of his world as he figures out where he wants to live for the next several months. I recognize I have zero control over where a dispersing buck chooses to live, but I know the better I make my property look, the better chance I have of making a potentially great buck declare, “This is home.”

The Water Draw
For the longest time, I bought into the conventional wisdom that deer met most of their water requirements via their food. That can be true at some times of year, but during other times, deer are thirsty critters that seek water sources, especially within their core areas.

The big mistake most hunters make is believing the crystal-clear water we drink is the stuff whitetails desire. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I know this because of the country I hunt. In the bluff country of southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa and western Wisconsin, the only clear-water sources available to deer are streams flowing in valley bottoms or conservation ponds established by farmers on field edges. Deer visit those spots occasionally, but they’re far more attracted to water sources close to their core areas. And experience has taught me that even a muddy puddle close to a bedding spot is more desirable to deer than a crystal-clear source they have to travel to find.

This is important to hunters, too, as we can focus on water sources near cover. And if those don’t exist, we can create them. My father, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday, has killed three mature bucks in consecutive seasons from the same stand. That stand overlooks a tiny pond we dug four years ago, and it has become a major attraction for every deer on that property. For the price of a few hours with a pick and shovel, we took a good stand setup and turned it into a killer spot. We’ve spiced up the water draw more by adding mock scrapes and a mineral lick, and I’m convinced that trifecta is responsible for prompting deer — bucks and does — to make consistent visits.

Conclusion
Like many hunters, I spent a long time believing it took large acreages to attract and hold mature bucks. After all, these big-ranging brutes typically had home ranges of a square mile, so what could I do to make 100, 80 or even 40 acres a critical part of a buck’s life? But I’ve learned, through hard work — and more than my share of dumb mistakes — that by giving a mature buck the things that are important to him, he can have a small acreage on his brain for much of his life. And when one of my hunting buddies or I tag a deer like the Flyer Buck, it makes for a gratifying experience.