How would you manage this lease?

[12thman]

LEASE: 350 acres hill country, 25+ doe, 20+ bucks, only 1-3 4+ year old bucks, many 2-3 year old typical 8 points, two 9 points, two ten points; land owner allows 10 bucks and 5 doe a year; two adjacent properties have average hunting pressure. Basically 5 hunters with a 2 buck/1 doe harvest allotment or 4 hunters with a 2/2 allotment.

A: It's 350 acres in the Hill Country no way to manage it.
B. Shoot no mature deer for a year, just take culls and spikes
C. Try to shoot a few deer from each age range to keep balance regardless of size
D. Other ideas?

Obviously take more doe but this is not an option at this point.

[Bucknaked]

Leave the young spikes alone !

[Walker]

It's really hard for me to believe you have that many deer on 350 acres. Thats way too many.. If so I'd take 10 does and and 5 bucks. If the owner won't go for that I'd just shot what makes you happy.

[Muddy Bud]

Is this a high fence? How do you know exactly what you have?

[12thman]

it is not HF this is just an estimate of what we have on camera and what we see in the stand. for instance this am we saw 20 different doe at four feeders and there are seven feeders so we didn't see all the doe. Obviously these deer do leave the property but we have most of the cover in the area and are surrounded by some pretty open fields so most of these deer bed and live on the property. As for bucks, we have game cam photos of at least 20 different bucks that we can identify. The landowner is old school and his idea is the more doe you have the more bucks will show up. That's true to a point but not a great management strategy. Some of these deer will get harvested by neighbors but we always have an abundance of deer so they are not getting shot up.

[Muddy Bud]

I had 350 acre lease that bordered a larger 16,000 acre ranch that was not hunted. You could have shot every doe you saw and still not make a dent. It was crazy.

[jt400]

The landowner has is allotments reversed. Sounds like the type of guy that would only allow spikes as culls. If that's the case I wouldn't try to manage the place at all. Shoot what you like and fill your freezer.

[jt400]

Leave the young spikes alone !

No matter what do this for sure in my opinion. We've not shot a spike in 6 years on our place and NEVER seen one that's 2+. One of the biggest mistakes I've seen on leases is shooting ALL spikes. In the hill country (high deer population) there's too much competition for natural forage causing them to not fork their 1st year. Shoot all the yearlings off of your lease every year and you'll see it degrade fast. I promise.

[GarGuy]

Get with the neighbor and see if they would be open to a joint management plan. Age structure must improve if you want big bucks . If not, mbv ajevut a gun whack and stack lease.

[PondPopper]

The first thing I would do is decrease the hunters from 4 to 2.

Do not shoot ANY young bucks(less than 4 years old)..
350 acres will never produce 10 mature bucks in one season ever(maybe 2-3 at best) unless it is in some sort of freaky location and even then I would not take more than 4 bucks tops..

Kill 5 times as many doe as you do bucks and you might kill enough.. They will just keep coming on a low fenced property. Back filling..

And FEED FEED FEED!!!!

The land owners deer allotments are all out of whack..

[Hills of Texas]

Low fence in the hill country you have a huge population of deer that are moving around a whole lot more than 350 acres. There no way to know what you have. Set up your allotment for the number of hunters and start. If your in the hill country, shoot a lot of does!

[bbqfan5909]

Not sure what your goals are, but having 10 mature bucks each year on 350 acres would be difficult.

[Lynn21]

Go bow only.

[150class]

Get with the neighbor and see if they would be open to a joint management plan. Age structure must improve if you want big bucks . If not, mbv ajevut a gun whack and stack lease.

This ^^^^^

10 bucks off 350 acres (that's not extremely over populated due to being pumped with protein to keep it above normal carry capacity) is insane.

Work with the neighbors and see what the overall plan is. If they are similar size and doing the same then the place will be shot out pretty quick if everyone has the "I pay ***X amount of dollars per year so I am filling my tags every year" and/or " if I don't shoot it the neighbors will" mentalities.

Plus, can you still make the financials work with just 2 people? That would be a huge help.

[12thman]

Thanks fo all the feedback. Some things are not necessarily an option for us right now. We definitely don’t try to kill or expect ten mature bucks a year. That is why we are trying to figure out what bucks to harvest to keep the population in check because we have a ton of younger bucks. We are pretty much handcuffed on the doe harvest. We may take 6-7 but we can’t really just go crazy or we will be off the lease. I would like to get hunters down to 3 but won’t kick any one off because we are all good friends so that discussion can only happen if someone chooses to get off.