Fall Preparation for Your Hunting Property

By now, your fall food plots should be looking something like this example photo to the left. This photo was taken last week on one of our plots on an Allamakee County farm we manage for one of our clients. And your stands, for the most part, should be all set! When it comes to property preparation, there are some things you should keep in mind. Especially here in Iowa!

Many of you use trail cameras over corn to capture images, as do we at times on farms we have for sale. However, according to Iowa law, as it was written last time I checked, you may not hunt within 200 yards of a bait pile and all bait must be removed at least 30 days prior to your hunt. To be safe, we make sure that all farms we are hunting on each fall get zero bait placed to gather any photos and we suggest you do the same. So how, do you ask, do you capture quality images at this time of the year? The most reliable photos and information that you can gather revolves around natural habitat and key placement of your cameras. Right now is the perfect time to be sure that your cameras are placed on traditional rub lines. The reason for this is that capturing natural movement of a potential shooter deer is concrete data that you can use to actually draw up a complete hunting strategy. No, you won't get 1000 pictures in a day, but old rublines that are renewed from year to year are often created by the same deer that created them the year before. That simple fact will keep you focused on worrying only about the images of older age class deer as well as immature bucks that you'll be targeting in upcoming years.

In the coming weeks our team at LandAndGame.com will be moving or adding cameras to classic scrape areas as well. Again, it's very common for our team members to collect pictures of the same deer from year to year over the same old scrapes. Some precautions must be taken however when you're placing cameras in sensitive areas like this, even at this time of the year. Cameras should be handled wearing rubber or latex gloves, and that's also the way they should be checked on as well throughout the season. Scent-Lok gloves are also an acceptable alternative. And, of course, rubber boots are a must. Once we place those camearas though, we may only check them once or twice in a season prior to hunting. In fact, I like to only gather that intel when I'm going into or out of stand locations to hunt.

Your mowing should already be done as well that leads into and out of stand location and trail systems. If need be, in the timber, use a powerful leaf blower to clear debris leading into and out of your stand locations. This will be extremely helpful when moving into and out of early season stands. Of course, naturally new leaf cover and winds will blow back over these trails, but for the most part, it will keep heavy cover such as tree branches from snapping under your feet when sneaking in under the cover of darkness. You could also use a simple garden rake if you don't have access to a blower. The blower is just way more efficient.

Your clover plots are the one piece of housekeeping that you should wait on however. Regardless of where you live, I'm sure anyone that is reading this can agree that cut clover fields will attract bucks like burnt honey pot attracts bears to a bait pile in Alberta! For this reason, if any of our staff or clients plan on hunting the early season, we'll mow those fields literally the day they go into hunt. For the next 3 to 5 days, make sure your chin straps are tight, because it's going to be game time if you've done everything else right with your farm to this point!

This fall we are going to do our best to keep you abreast of seasonal changes here in the Midwest and weekly activities you should be working on throughout the season, as well as the progress for our team and clients in the field, especially as we near primetime in November. You can subscribe to our blog channels at Wordpress and Blogger by clicking on one or both of those two links. You can also keep tabs on us by clicking the "Like" button on Facebook at this link...LIke Us On Facebook!