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My little project this year. 500 acre farm with zero deer

Droptine1844

Droptine1844

Member
Just thought I would share my project from this year. Its been a super interesting process. My family bought a high fence hunting farm that is 500 acres, 4 miles of 10 foot fence. We intended to open it back up to be free range. To make a long complex story short after a few months of trigger pulling and working closely with the DNR we emptied the whole farm of ungulate life, including deer and elk, this was for fear of disease that can be common in captive deer, mainly CWD. After it had been confirmed empty by the DNR and all deer taken off tested for CWD, we got the go ahead to open the fence. We started opening the fence in early April and started on a whole years worth of projects, including 20 acres of food plots, burning, and lots of fence pulling. It has been an amazing experience watching the local deer move in and make it home. Over the summer I would estimate that there was probably less than 50 deer consistently on the property. As we got to fall we started seeing more deer more though and a couple mature bucks as well! This bow season had some great encounters with deer but we aren't itching too shoot anything as deer move in unless it is clearly mature. My friend and assistant that helped me with the whole project this year was able to tag a great buck! It has been super rewarding and looking forward to late season as there are some mature deer living in the food plots now! some pics attached from the process and the buck my buddy shot on the farm this year!




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Well that's a new twist...starting at flat footed zero and building it up. Good luck, it should be an interesting adventure. Here's a thought...keep some of your high fence to use to encircle food plots seasonally. We added three areas this year that we can enclose so as to be able to grow corn and beans and then take down the "ends" once the crops are established and handle deer browse.

Now then, we did this because of high deer numbers...then EHD hit and we don't have that "problem" right now. Harrumph. But we will again and we will be ready for them. :) Are you in Iowa?
 
Daver said:
Well that's a new twist...starting at flat footed zero and building it up. Good luck, it should be an interesting adventure. Here's a thought...keep some of your high fence to use to encircle food plots seasonally. We added three areas this year that we can enclose so as to be able to grow corn and beans and then take down the "ends" once the crops are established and handle deer browse.

Now then, we did this because of high deer numbers...then EHD hit and we don't have that "problem" right now. Harrumph. But we will again and we will be ready for them. :) Are you in Iowa?
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It’s been such a cool process so far. And yup I’m SE Iowa
 
This is amazing!!!! Keep posting updates!!!!
BTW- I’d love to buy some of that fence for making some orchards.
We had a farm near me do what u did - few years later it was chalked full of deer & great hunting.
man that’s cool. Following.
 
Droptine1844 said:
We got lucky near me not too bad but 20 miles away from me I heard people saying 80% of their herd
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Another anecdote...I was watching a HS BB game in a gym Friday evening and I overheard some dudes behind me talking about their recent deer season (gun) experience and while I don't know exactly where they were hunting, it was a near wash out for them. Very few deer seen, almost none shot by their group and many found dead. FWIW. I don't know what the "percentages" would be for them, but it sure sounded like A LOT of "their" deer succumbed to EHD...well north of 50% would be my guess.
 
Daver said:
Another anecdote...I was watching a HS BB game in a gym Friday evening and I overheard some dudes behind me talking about their recent deer season (gun) experience and while I don't know exactly where they were hunting, it was a near wash out for them. Very few deer seen, almost none shot by their group and many found dead. FWIW. I don't know what the "percentages" would be for them, but it sure sounded like A LOT of "their" deer succumbed to EHD...well north of 50% would be my guess.
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Yeah some people definitely got hammered this year. I have a feeling I got saved because all the creeks on my 2 farms are very sandy bottoms and were completely dry so no mud just sand. Only guess why I didn’t find more myself. But I consider myself very lucky this year
 
Little update on the project farm. I didn't have any luck on a mature buck late season, but did see plenty of deer in. After the snow came in on the last day of the season I counted 72 deer in the 10 acre food plot, along with just about every 3-4 year old deer that I knew about from the neighborhood. The buck I was after finally showed back up last night digging through the snow for beans. Excited to see what these deer turn into and hopefully they spend most of their year on the farm now. We are going to be adding some CRP to help with he habitat diversity on the farm along with habitat cohesion. Our big ag fields ( about 120 acres) basically cut the farm in half when they are harvested so hoping to make it a little more inviting to move back and forth between sides of the farm. Things are looking great for the future of this farm and it is improving faster than I would have guessed. Can't wait for a year full of more projects and improvements. We are going experiment this year with supplemental feeding year round on this farm and my smaller 67 acre farm, see of we can't keep the deer closer to the farm all year. READY FOR SHED SEASON NOW
 

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Great story to follow! Thanks for sharing.

I do need to warn you though. The last harvest pic is NOT a whitetail! Not sure of the legalities in Iowa but I won't tell anyone if you don't. ;)
 
2-bucks said:
Great story to follow! Thanks for sharing.

I do need to warn you though. The last harvest pic is NOT a whitetail! Not sure of the legalities in Iowa but I won't tell anyone if you don't. ;)
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If you read the original post, this was a high fence hunting farm. Sounds like the DNR required all ungulates be killed before the fence could come down.
 
What a project!

As close to a blank slate as anyone can get today.

Planting any shrubs/trees on the farm?
 
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That's really cool, I'm pretty surprised that many "untrained " deer found your plots in late season.
I love seeing the high fence come down.
 
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