Editor’s Note: Most sportsmen think they must manipulate habitat and provide more food for more deer to manage the wildlife on their lands. But you can have inexpensive deer herd management by applying the tactics of Dr. Grant Woods of Reedsville, Missouri, a well-known wildlife biologist, and other avid outdoorsmen who love developing their lands and deerherds. 

To improve the size and the number of deer you have to hunt and for your property to home more and bigger bucks than your neighbor’s does, you must have more food available for deer than your neighbor does and provide sanctuary for those deer. Then, more than likely you’ll pull in the older-age-class bucks that your neighbors have run off their properties.

“I plan my hunts so that my hunters have the best chances for taking the biggest bucks when they hunt with me,” a longtime lodge director says. “I don’t allow anyone to hunt my land the last week of deer season, so that the big bucks on the surrounding properties that are subjected to heavy hunting pressure will have a place to hide out at the end of hunting season. Too, I make sure that I have plenty of food on my property. Then when the bucks move in at the end of the season, they’ll have no reason to drift off my land.

“Also, I don’t start hunting my land until the first of December, although gun deer season opens in mid-November where I live. All the properties around me will have heavy hunting pressure. I not only keep the bucks on my property from the season before, but other deer from neighboring lands will move in at the beginning of hunting season to dodge hunting pressure. By not hunting the first weeks of deer season and not hunting the last week of deer season, I know I’ll have the most big bucks on my property to hunt in the middle of deer season when most other hunters can’t find big bucks.”

If you choose to try inexpensive deer management, you can use the hunting pressure around your lease to your advantage, practice trigger-finger management and spend a small amount of money to buy gasoline, bullets and fertilizer to have numbers of bucks to hunt.

You’ll learn more deer-hunting information and tips from hunters in John E. Phillips’ Kindle, CreateSpace and Audible books. Go to https://johninthewild.com/books/#deer to purchase and download to your Kindle, and/or download a Kindle app for your iPad, SmartPhone or computer. You also can go to Nook Books at www.barnesandnoble.com to buy.

Also you can download free books by going to https://johninthewild.com/free-books.