Got a small tract? So what? Put some time and effort in this month, and you’ll increase your deer haul this year.
Last deer season, I learned that the thrill of the hunt for me is more in the preparation and the chase than the kill. Preparing food plots, selecting stand sites and positioning feeders in perfect places were the rising action that led to an anticlimactic ending when I finally pulled the trigger.
Yeah, I had some meat on the table, as did Louisiana Sportsman Editor Todd Masson and his son Joel. But I could hardly get the thought out of my mind that if I would only reposition my feeder about 20 yards to its left, I would maybe attract more bucks since it would then be in a secluded shooting lane rather than right out in the open.
Of course, then I would have to change the angle of my two-man ladder stand. Come to think of it, those Tink’s Scent Bombs would have to be readjusted, too. Oh well, I could give up a couple hunting days to tinker with my set up to get it “just right.”
Anal-retentive, you say? Hardly. I’m as easy going as they come, especially during football season. That’s why I didn’t even blink an eye when Masson and his son knocked on my door at the very moment Carolina Panthers running back DeAngelo Williams hauled in a Jake Delhomme pass to put the Panthers up 27-7 over the Saints.
Do I have time to put in the food plots this afternoon?
I have all the time in the world.
Seeing as how there aren’t very many white oak stands and river bottoms in New Orleans, Masson and his son started hunting my paltry property two years ago. Having any property in today’s world is a blessing, as Masson would later say in a post at www.lasmag.com: “Nobody would confuse these woods with anything in Tensas Parish.”
That’s why we had some work to do. The Massons were going to hunt their same spot, and I had even been thinking about getting back in the deer woods myself. Joel Masson’s doe that he had killed the season before intrigued my own 6-year-old son, and he wanted to put his new camouflaged boots to work.
If we were going to put them on some deer, Masson and I knew we had to make some improvements to the land, but it was getting late. It was Oct. 19, so thankfully I had already busted up the land with my dad’s rusting Massey Ferguson pulling a clattering disk. All we had to do was go toss out some seed and fertilizer, push it in with the ATV, then sit back, hope for rain and watch it grow.
Our plan was to play the two food plots off each other to see which one the deer preferred. The only differences between the two, other than their locations, was Masson’s was a little bit smaller at approximately 1/4 acre, whereas mine was maybe pushing 1/2 acre, and his had a section of Evolved Throw & Grow while mine had some BioLogic Winter Peas mixed into the entire plot. The main part of out plots was Evolved Buck’n Oats. Neither was much larger than a postage stamp, but we were hoping the deer would find them.
Oat sprouts sprang up just six days later, and the tracks in my plot were all the evidence I thought we needed that we were on the right track. Then the rains came. It rained extremely hard the night of Oct. 25, and much of the seed that hadn’t taken root washed into any little depression or trough it could find. My winter peas were essentially washed away.
My plot, a reclaimed section of an old logging road in a low, boggy area, held too much water after that rain, and it stayed so wet that the lower sections of the plot started to turn brown. On the other hand, Masson’s plot was on some high ground on the edge of a clear-cut, and his grew voraciously.
It didn’t take us very long to figure out which plot the deer favored. Whereas my plot was growing in ragged patches that began to get too tall and turn a rusty brown color, Masson’s plot consistently looked like somebody had been mowing it every week. The fact that the deer liked his plot better than mine was made clear on opening morning of gun season.
No sooner had I zipped up the blind around the top of my ladder stand than I heard a shot in the distance. It was way too close to be on my neighbor’s land, so I put technology to good use and sent Masson a text to see if it was them.
“followed us in,” he responded. “joel shot it. looking for it now.”
Joel Masson had already equaled his harvest from the season before after only 10 minutes on the stand. Rather than continue to sit and wait on one myself, I climbed down and crossed the property to find dad and son huffing and puffing as they drug the Cajun 11-point out of the woods.
The spike surely wouldn’t raise any eyebrows, even in Washington Parish where the deer typically run a little small, but the younger Masson couldn’t stop smiling as I started snapping pictures. He couldn’t have been any happier with a Tensas Parish 10-point, and the toil of tending the land all of a sudden seemed like a small price to pay. But this was just the beginning.
By the end of the season, the Masson team had killed three deer, all small bucks, and I killed one doe. Pictures from our Moultrie Game Spy D40 trail cams proved that we hardly put a dent in the deer population. Throughout the season, we discovered deer that we never saw during a hunt. Everything from the smallest doe to a swollen-necked 8-point paid our plots a visit.
However, there was something more interesting that our trail cams revealed. Although they were only about 1/2 mile away, no deer that showed up on Masson’s camera ever showed up on mine, and none that were on my cam showed up on his. Could it have been that we were hunting two entirely separate groups of deer?
Although the deer visiting both plots were probably from the same herd, there were apparently two separate groups as far as their daily movement patterns. The deer on my side bedded in a pine thicket from which they traveled back and forth near my stand to an established, neighboring food plot to the west.
The deer on Masson’s side bedded in a thick area of hardwoods that Hurricane Katrina made even thicker. They apparently moved through a clear-cut to the east and on to another established food plot farther to the east. Masson’s stand was right on the edge of the clear-cut, thus putting him in the ideal position to intercept traveling deer.
These were all things that we didn’t know the season before when we took the route of finding a good spot, hanging Masson’s stand and waiting. Our extra effort that most successful hunters put in before and during the season turned a one-deer season into a four-deer season, and we’re hoping an intensified and more educated approach makes us even more successful this season.
Neither of us are what you would consider experienced hunters. In fact, I joked with Masson early on in the season that we should call this story “A Rube and a Redneck’s Guide to Deer Hunting.”
Neither of us knew what we were doing from the beginning, but with the wealth of resources available through the Internet and magazines like Louisiana Sportsman, we were able to improve the quality of the hunting on a small tract of land.
If you have a small tract of land, and articles recommending improvements beyond your resources and equipment intimidate you, stop putting off your plans. As Masson and I proved, you can improve your property without taking out a second mortgage.
Although we had access to a tractor and disk, it was Masson’s Throw & Grow that attracted the most attention. And that stuff is easily planted with just a rake to clear the ground and cover the seeds. You may not think that improving your hunting is as easy as putting in a small plot, but it is.
To bastardize the famous line from Field of Dreams, “If you plant it, they will come.” Will you put deer on the wall? Probably not, but you’ll put sausage on the table, which for me is the second biggest thrill of the hunt.
