Editor’s Note: “A 60-acre lease can provide all the land you and your friends need to bowhunt or gun hunt successfully – if the lease is the right 60 acres,” says Jim Crumley of Buchanan, Virginia, founder of Trebark camouflage. “If plenty of deer are passing through the property, and if you can shoot accurately for at least 20 yards in every direction, then all the land you need to take white-tailed deer consistently is about 40-square yards.” The rest of the week we’ll learn tactics to use to micro-manage deer successfully.

People often ask Dr. Grant Woods, one of the nation’s leading deer nutritionists and wildlife researchers, “How do you manage and harvest big bucks and plenty of does on small properties without increasing hunting pressure?”

Woods offers three solutions:

• “Manage the pressure on your green fields by alternating hunting options. For example, if you have 20 green fields on the property you hunt, permit hunting in only 10 of those green fields during one weekend. Hunt the other 10 green fields on the following weekend.
• “Hunt one side of a road that runs through the center of your hunting-camp property one week and the opposite side of the road the next week.
• “Take only the does in the woods, and never hunt does in the green fields. By using this system, the green fields will become sanctuaries, and you’ll be more likely to take a quality buck.”

Adopt A Benevolent Dictator Type of Government

For success when micro-managing deer on small acreages, you must use the benevolent-dictator form of government to manage your lease. This person will make all the rules, settle the disputes and initiate the deer-management program – for all the hunting that occurs on the lease.

For consistency in lease management, hunting regulations and deer production, one person in charge can establish the hunting philosophy of the lease and the management systems by which the lease will harvest and produce game. Then everyone will experience less bickering and more-enjoyable hunts.

If you decide to micro-manage a small acreage for your sole use, then appoint yourself the benevolent dictator. However, if three or more hunters lease property together, they need to designate one person as the benevolent dictator.

You don’t need 10,000 acres to have quality deer hunting. You can have great success hunting intensively-managed small acreages. Spend the time required to find land with the potential for you to micro-manage that property successfully. Then develop that land to help it produce deer for you and some of your friends each season. You can have the finest quality hunting for deer available anywhere by carefully managing a deer herd.

Deer Hunting Equipment You’ll Love: onX Hunting App

Get maps for all 50 states, with detailed public and private boundaries, landowner names, hunting districts, curated layers, customizable map tools and more!

onX covers more than 985 million acres of public land, nearly 10,000 unique hunting units and includes 421 map overlays. More than 2,000 game wardens around the country approve of onX Hunt as an accurate tool in the field.

onX can be used on your phone or tablet when connected to service and when you are outside of cell service (easily save maps to your device in advance). onX’s computer-based Web Map is included in your membership, designed for easy e-scouting and research from the comfort of a larger computer screen.

Get the onXmaps HUNT Elite Membership here.

Advice from Pros You Know: More Deer Hunting Resources

You can learn more about hunting deer in John E. Phillip’s book, “Whitetail Deer and the Hunters Who Take Big Bucks”, available in Kindle, print and Audible versions.

Since deer hunting and deer hunters are drastically changing each year, John interviewed some top deer hunters like Mark Drury, Dr. Larry Marchinton, Dr. Bob Sheppard, Pat Reeve, Gene Wensel, Cody Robbins, Ernie Calandrelli, Brian Murphy and Luke Brewster, who took the world’s largest whitetail, to learn their up-to-date techniques for successfully hunting deer and having more places to hunt.

Too, check out John’s book, “Bowhunting Deer: the Secrets of the PSE Pros,” available now in Kindle, print, and Audible versions.

To see all of John E. Phillips’ books on hunting and fishing, visit www.amazon.com/author/johnephillips.