How to keep deer on a small property?

Would really love to do something to improve the home property for hunting! We have probally about 12-15 acres of hunting land behind the house! There are plenty of deer but for the most part they just move through! All my cameras are on this property so you can look at some of my trail camera pictures and kind of see how the land looks! Its a odd peice of land ! I will try and take some actuall pictures to show you all how it looks but for now here are a few trail cam pictures that show off some areas of the property! Its not heavily wooded but there is about 120 acres of woods right up against our property but we cant hunt it!

This is looking up twoards the most wooded area on the property! and at the edge is a Corn field!



This is the view behind the above picture!  and behind it is a pond and further to the left is a Hay field!



Another picture looking twoards the corn field and the most woods  on the property!



You can see the fence line in the picture that is the property line! In the top right you can see the edge of the woods ! Thats where the corn field is !



And this is the corn field most of the pictures were looking at! The corn isnt in the picture but this is the field!



And this is the Hay field to the left of the pond that you seen in one of the above pictures !  And straight ahead is a small strip of woods and on the other side is another corn field not ours but we can hunt the edges! the small strip is about 30 yrds wide !  





And this is in that small strip that you all seen you can see our buildings up ahead! This small strip hold some deer when the corn is up!



This path that the turkey is on leads out to the hay field



Thats not the whole property but it will hopefully give you a small idea on what type of terrain I have to deal with! Not allot of cover for the deer during the fall but in the summer the Grass that you see in the last picture holds allot of deer!


I know its all very confusing untill you see it!



Would you guys use food plots , hinge cutting, mineral sights , I would like to know what you guys would do to keep deer on the property or even just get deer to use the property more often!

On a property that small, you aren't going to hold deer on your property. To keep deer on your property, you are looking at needing several hundred acres to keep any individual deer on your property all the time. This will be especially true during the rut. Your bucks will wander off and new ones will show up. That is the way it goes. You aren't going to hurt anything by making small clear cuts or planting food plots. One thing to consider on the food plots is that you are surrounded by crop fields, aka, big food plots that you didn't pay to plant or fertilize.

Do you have any water on the property? Is it year round?

You won't be able to hold bucks, but you can have 1 or 2 doe stay on your place. I have 2 doe that have spent their entire lives on my small property. My oldest doe is 12yrs old and spent most of her life on my property, but she no longer stays full time. To hold deer on small properties they CAN'T be disturbed. I would feed half a can of corn daily, salt/mineral lick, put in a 1/4 acre clover plot, and water using a trough. I've been using water troughs for the past 10yrs and found deer prefer them to the ponds. They can however require hauling water daily in the summer. My brother lives on 20 acres that's solid white oaks, honeysuckle and briarr undeneath, 2 small ponds (but deer still prefer the trough), and a 1/2 acre clover plot. Have yet to hold doe's on this property, but always have a couple good bucks that summer there. The previous owner poached 150 turkey and had a garage full of small racks from 10 years of living there. On small properties always think edges. There is a reason why my cams are ran on plots and not in the woods. If they have food, water, cover, and don't get get disturbed you can have good luck with small properties. Hold a few doe and wait on the bucks to cruise through in the fall.

Also if you plan on having the land long term, then I would plant a few apple and pear trees.

Ok I guess I should have worded the tittle a little differant! My goal would be to have more action on this small property! I would love to be able to come home from work and just head out back and have a better chance at a deer! Usually I could figure on seeing a few deer while the crops were still on! But once the crops got cut things really slowed down! It went from seeing about 4-5 deer every night to about 1-2 deer in a week of evening hunts. But during the rut there was always action! for some reason it seems the deer cruise through there allot ! On the question of water we have two differant water sources ! Theres a small creek and two ponds one is small and the other one is a good sized one ! From trail camera pictures they use the big pond during the night for drinking purpose. Like I said I dont need to keep deer on the property I have another property that I lease for deer hunting ! Its almost 800 acres and that still doesnt hold the deer it could !

How long would it take for an apple tree to start producing fruit? I always love getting the chance to hunt over an apple tree!

Semi-dwarf fruit trees produce the fastest, it will take 10 years for a standard tree to produce. Pear tree's will produce sooner than apple. We have 2 pear and if we had it to do over we would plant more pear than apple. We planted 2 red delicous last spring that came from Lowes and each one ended up having 4-6 apples on them by the end of summer. The pears we planted started producing the next year and in the begining the pears will yield more fruit than the apples. Fruit trees need polinators, so buy more than one variety. Granny Smith is a solid all around polinator that drops apples later, gets very little if any cedar rust, and the insects and birds tend to leave the thick skinned fruit alone. Kiefer pear is a late dropping thick skinned pear that will last lying around on the ground. Fruit trees must have a fence around them or the deer and rabbits will destroy them. Fruit trees can't be planted near walnuts, if you have any on your place. Red Delicous and Granny Smith are my favorite apple trees for deer, we have other varieties, but those are the ones that are most reliable. Moonglow and Bartlet are our 2 pear and they are sweet as sugar.

Thanks for all that great information on the trees! I will check into them ! Anything to get the deer to come onto our property would be great!

In the meantime, you can establish a mineral site, it won't have the draw that a pile of corn will have but it will be better for the deer and they will swing by and check it out often. I mix my own mineral. I buy trace mineral, rock salt, and dicalcium phosphate and mix it evenly 1/3 part of each. Stir it up good and pout it around an old stump or just rake the leaves out of a spot in a deer trail. I do stir it in to the dirt the first couple times but after a while they dig it out like a pond and I just pour it around the edges.

Do you add water to that mix or just pour that on the ground like it is ?

Thanks

Just pour it on the ground and mix it in with some dirt. Once they start hitting them good, I don't even mix dirt in. I just pour it in every few months when I think about it.

Sounds good !! Thanks for the great ideas guys !!