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Neighbor pressure and switchgrass ?

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StucknAz

Active Member
My cameras went lights out about 2 days before I arrived for my hunt. All doe traffic was at dark or just before, where it was a party daily leading up to the last week of October. The buck traffic became non existent and three of my regulars I had all fall are now gone.

I have a sloppy neighbor/& his sister. They have been hammering the woods per him. Not to get into it, when I picked his brain he explained wind directions to me and all of his setups were wrong. He accesses thru the gut of hit property using the bedding ridge as his access, which overlooks me. Has 18 stands on 65 acres which he brags about.

I planted corn this year thinking I'd bed deer on me, it isn't going as planned. My green plots are not getting hit, its depressing.

I'm wondering if anyone has this issue with neighbors pushing deer nocturnal on smaller pieces. Primary bedding is on him, I have a couple locations I can cut but they would be too close to my property line for comfort. For SE Ohio, this property has held big deer, 170 and a 190 close by. It's my retirement property and I'm trying to get it set up now so it's rocking when I finish in 6 years.

Question on switch, I have 6 to 7 acres I'm able to plant in one large field. With what I've described, would a 4 to5 acre switch planting assist in my goals of providing cover? My plan was to do beans and corn rotate along with dbtree mixes.

1st Pic below, white is my section, yellow is his section. Second pic was my very rough idea for switch, the white section. Just looking for some help and never planted switch before. I'm open to any suggestions!
Thanks!
 

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Switchgrass can be a big help in holding deer. So can TSI / hinge cutting in the timber between you and your neighbor. Jake Ehlinger and Randy VanDerVeen have some great videos on timber management. Dbltree has some threads here on tsi and hinge cutting. It may take bother to make a huge difference.
 
Yes you are not the only one that has pressure problems, I have a neighboring property(to my farm) that most deer that move get shot, the good news about it is, they are well educated they hear the banging and know the pressure is tremendous. The best thing you can do is add as much cover to your property as possible, Switchgrass, and talk to a professional first( I used a state forester) to talk about improving your property. I Picked a few areas, and started in with a saw, I want to make my property very thick. As it was park city before, I'm still working on it. But it is a lot better than it was.
 
Yes you are not the only one that has pressure problems, I have a neighboring property(to my farm) that most deer that move get shot, the good news about it is, they are well educated they hear the banging and know the pressure is tremendous. The best thing you can do is add as much cover to your property as possible, Switchgrass, and talk to a professional first( I used a state forester) to talk about improving your property. I Picked a few areas, and started in with a saw, I want to make my property very thick. As it was park city before, I'm still working on it. But it is a lot better than it was.
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Sounds about identical to my situation. I feel the farm doesn't hold the deer like it should. Met with a forester, drew up a plan, and got approved for a cost share on timber stand improvement. Cutting will take place this winter. Same boat here some existing timber is a park. I made major improvements on the existing 15 acres of CRP and over the course of 2 years I can already see a difference. Goal now is to add more CRP and create even more holding capacity. (if and when the farm bill allows)
 
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Hawk32 said:
Sounds about identical to my situation. I feel the farm doesn't hold the deer like it should. Met with a forester, drew up a plan, and got approved for a cost share on timber stand improvement. Cutting will take place this winter. Same boat here some existing timber is a park. I made major improvements on the existing 15 acres of CRP and over the course of 2 years I can already see a difference. Goal now is to add more CRP and create even more holding capacity. (if and when the farm bill allows)
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What state are you in?
 
Is there any "separation" you can provide, where deer know when they are on your property vs the neighbors property?

Natural terrain features - creeks, etc could be an example. Fences (barbed wire, etc), may help provide some separation to your "sanctuary" vs his wild west..
 
Bassattackr said:
Is there any "separation" you can provide, where deer know when they are on your property vs the neighbors property?

Natural terrain features - creeks, etc could be an example. Fences (barbed wire, etc), may help provide some separation to your "sanctuary" vs his wild west..
Click to expand...
Like the idea but would need to locate the property line pins to be exact.
 
Based on aerial I like yours better!
I 100% think if you improve your bedding closest to your food you will get the deer to bed on you and not on him. I'm not sure how many acres everything is, but my initial reaction is to make most, if not all of your open areas food. All the timber bedding/sanctuary. And never go in there. ever.
 
IowaBowHunter1983 said:
Based on aerial I like yours better!
I 100% think if you improve your bedding closest to your food you will get the deer to bed on you and not on him. I'm not sure how many acres everything is, but my initial reaction is to make most, if not all of your open areas food. All the timber bedding/sanctuary. And never go in there. ever.
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In the pic, the white was the proposed SG, if I am able to do a minor cut/girdle project in wooded section above, would you still go with proposed SG?
 
My reasoning for SG is that I cannot conduct tsi, if I can it's going to be bedroom sized pockets, nothing big
 
StucknAz said:
Family property, I won't get the green light. It's likely I can do a couple micro locations, say against the plot edges but it will be very minimal. Family likes the pretty open canopy.
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10-4. Def uphill battle to get deer to bed in switchgrass when they have the option of timber in same area. They will tend to bed on the edge of it more than anything.
 
StucknAz said:
Like the idea but would need to locate the property line pins to be exact.
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I had to find pins last winter. There wasn't snow and I used a property line app to get me close and I was going to use a metal detector to find them. No need, both of the pins I needed to find were sticking 6” out of the ground.

May be easier than it sounds.

My neighbor executed a timber plan- deep, dark timber was harvested and clear cut 4 years ago. It was initially a real eyesore, but dang does it hold deer now. Its thick, inaccessible and the wildlife love it.
 
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Update my plan to combat the neighbor pressure. In the pic, the blue section is going to be 3.5 acres of SG/rc bigrock. The lower section will be 3.5 to 4 acres of beans fenced with a late july broadcast of brassica blend in it. The upper small red rectangle section will be a west wind setup, enclosed box blind, 30 yards wide of clover/ww mix. The field already has 25 fruit trees planted on the outer perimeter of the beans. Likely will add a couple pear in that red rectangle plot on each side of the yellow access screen with a scrape tree.
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The yellow arrow is pointing to a knob that overlooks the field, I suspect deer will bed on this knob overlooking the farmhouse/ponds within the SG when established.
 

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The ponds will have heavy EW screen and Sg on the interior of it. Also yellow will be strip of sg/ew to compartmentalized sections of beans to break up sight lines
 
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