As in years past guys, this is the place for info and discussion concerning the upcoming Ohio Whitetail Rut
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I’d start by talking to the owners of the 1500 acres bordering your property. Ask if they’ve put in food plots or, outside of the select cutting, did any drastic overhauling of their property.Happy 2022 fellas.
I apologize for the long post in advance but thought I’d try to get some feedback from you guys since I don’t participate in any other threads. Backstory: I live in Columbus and I own 230 acres in Athens County which is surrounded by roughly 1500 acres owned by a family out of Cincinnati. Their land does get hunted but doesn’t get a lot of pressure. I’ve owned it since 2015 and hunted it since 2010. Always had good to great deer. I hunt 30+ days, my young teen kids hunt the property along with my 2-3 friends who each spend 5-6 days per season hunting – Not a lot of pressure considering the size of the property. The property is mostly wooded with deep creeks, high cliffs and many white and red oaks. Several years ago put in about 3 acres of food plots, banned quads after October 1st unless pulling a deer out and run 16 cameras on the property.
During 2019, the property surrounding mine was select cut for timber. In 2020 we had a deer herd that was borderline unbelievable – a couple legit booners and 6-7 130+ up and comers. We killed a 171 and 154 in 2020. We had a gorgeous symmetrical double drop 12 that was last seen in late January 2021. Summer of 2021 all bucks except for a couple of basket racks disappeared. No bucks over 100 inches were seen on camera during the entire 2021 season. I did see a couple 130 ish in person last week of October but that was the total sightings for the year. In late January last year, I put out feeders along the timbered property line to see what I could pull out. Nothing.
Spring of 2022 I expected to find a bunch of dead bucks around the creek bottoms or on the property but didn’t find a single dead deer and I have two professionally trained shed and tracking dogs. We did find a few under 100 inch sheds. This late spring and mid-summer we again had no buck traffic at the minerals so I put out a few gravity feeders to see what we could find. As of August 19, again not a single shooter on camera. I’m at a total loss. We have good food, good shelter, low pressure, water, etc. We do have about 40 resident does and clearly they are being bred but it’s hard to imagine even during the rut last year the cameras wouldn’t see a neighboring buck cruising through.
The property does have a road that runs ¾ mile down the side but access to the property is through steep cliffs/hills. We could have a poaching problem but even if someone wanted to, they couldn’t kill all the big deer we had on the property just two years ago.
I guess there could be three answers: We have a poaching problem, the bucks moved to the neighboring property to get more cover as the undergrowth develops post logging or, there are too many does on the property. I’m just at a total loss. We are heading into the second year with nothing to get excited about or even anything up and coming. I don’t feel I know enough about herd management to be killing does just for the sake of reducing the herd size in the hopes of making space for bucks. Just not sure what to do here.
I have no answers so thought I’d mention it here to see if anyone has experienced this or if anyone has any insight.