2025 Deer Season Preparations

[HenryFan]

I do minimal property maintenance on my pine plantation/hunt property after the deer season ends until the following late summer when I begin preparations for the coming season. In the interim, the property gets mostly a bush-hogging to keep unwanted vegetation down in roads and food plot borders and an occasional property check.

In my Game Zone in South Carolina, rifle season comes in on October 11 (October 12? Not certain but I seldom hunt the first day in any event) so I will get serious starting tomorrow. In the coming week, it will be bush-hogging roads and food plot borders again, ripping the food plots with a chisel plow and running a disc harrow. I will take soil samples and get Clemson Extension service to give me an analysis. I will give it a couple of weeks and if much vegetation arises, I will hit the food plots with glyphosate. Then, the third week of September, I will plant, most often with oats and fertilizer. I will apply lime at the same time, based on the Extension Service recommendations. Then, I hope for rain.

Does anyone else do similar things for their food plot? I know timing will be different for different areas of the Country but I am curious how others do it.

[The Happy Kaboomer]

I did all that in July.........Been hunting since Aug. 15th......Saw lots of deer but no big bucks yet..........I don't do soil samples.....Just plant my plots.
On one paticular poor field we do use lime and fertilizer......I live in and hunt the SC low country.

[rickhem]

I'm in central-eastern New York, and my neighbor has been working on the stands he has on our property for a few weeks now. I've gone down and helped him with that a couple times, and he's been down trimming his shooting lanes a few other times. I have changed the chips in my cameras in areas where I hunt, and I need to move one camera to a spot where I have a nice stand, but no camera right now.
My fields are currently being hayed, and that's going to leave them cut from here out, not much growing will happen now so much better visibility. That also means I need to put a couple ground blinds out on the edges in a few areas.
I'm seeing a lot of bucks, both in-person and on camera, but nothing that looks real impressive yet. I'm sure they're out there, and the cut fields are going to help with seeing them. Everything is only going to get better now.

[HenryFan]

I live in and hunt the SC low country.

I lived in Beaufort for about 13 years and I too hunted the early season on a lease in Colleton County. Hot and humid. I actually bought a Ruger M77MKII stainless rifle since I sweat like a hooker in church.

When I retired, my wife said we were going to move above "the gnat line". That is why we are in Newberry County since 2002.

[cee_Kamp]

I am a new Member here on the Forum and live in upstate NY, about an hour southeast from Syracuse, NY.
More than 20 years ago now, I purchased a piece of nearby rural wooded property for hunting/recreation. About 69 acres.
Back then when I was still working, if you got cold when deer hunting, you warmed up in the vehicle you arrived in.

Now I am retired, and moved from the "city" life, out into the country. My new home is about 20 miles/30 minutes driving time away from the hunting/recreational property.
My home is on a one acre lot, but I have cornfields and woods as neighbors.

After retiring, I decided to make something of the rural hunting/recreational property. I bought several Kubota tractors, and a large double axle steel trailer for hauling the tractors.
Shortly after acquiring the new home, my Girlfriend and I found a local contractor who built sheds. They also do a two story cabin, build the first floor remotely, bring it to the cabin site on a big hydraulic trailer.
With a five man crew, they assemble the second story and roof on top of what arrived on the big trailer in only one day. Two days total, bring, setup 1st floor, add second story and they are done.

So with only a six week lead time, we had a new cabin on the 69 acre parcel. It was an empty shell other than a staircase.
We hired an electrician for dealing with the power company, installing the circuit breaker panel, and coordinating several electrical inspections.
We dug the buried in conduit electrical entrance cable run from the transformer/power pole to the cabin with our Kubota backhoe as an additional cost savings measure.
Everything else, we did ourselves. The cabin has a 200 amp electrical service, and we have added many other luxury items. (luxuries as pertaining to a deer hunting cabin)

Big wood stove for heat, electric baseboard heat for making the insurance company happy, electric range, refrigerator, microwave, king size bed, custom kitchen table, wheeled, bowling alley table top.
Sometime later, we added fiber optic into the home broadband internet, and running water into the cabin during seasonable temperatures.
The cabin still is uninsulated, as the big wood stove forces the door/windows to be open, even when down near zero F.
We do not heat the cabin when it is vacant, so the water system is drained/shut off in winter.

After getting the internet installed, I got a Verizon network extender from their customer service. It hooks up to the broadband internet with a LAN cable, and the network extender creates a 200' radius cell tower signal from the black plastic box. The cabin is so rural, no native "over the air" cell signal from one of the normal big steel cell towers is available.
We figured, people out hunting, operating machinery, the ability for making an emergency 911 call might be nice.

After getting operational cell signal at the cabin, I looked around to see what was available on the market for Cellular trail cameras, that didn't break the bank with operational expenses.
After some research, I zeroed in on Cuddeback/Cuddelink cellular trail cameras.
Most, if not all other cellular trail cameras require a cell data plan for each deployed trail camera. The dollars add up quickly! Ten cameras, ten cell data plans, OUCH!

Cuddeback/Cuddelink is totally different. When you purchase their equipment, you need two items.
1.) A "Home" unit, it serves as a picture collection device from all the deployed cameras in the woods. The cell data plan you buy, is for this unit only.
The deployed woods cameras send the pictures they take up the "daisy chain" of deployed woods cameras, until they reach the "Home" unit. Using a secure "mesh" Wi-Fi connection for interconnecting the deployed woods cameras.
2.) Trail cameras. You can run one woods camera, or up to 23 woods cameras. With only one "Home" unit and one cell data plan. My setup? More than one, less than twenty three.

Trail camera pictures can be viewed from anyplace in the world that you have a cellular or internet connection. In my case, I have pictures arrive from 20 miles away, with absolutely no need for pulling SD cards out of cameras.
It's MAGIC!
I also have one camera deployed for surveillance of the cabin, property gate, and road frontage viewing. Surveillance (camera setting) pictures arrive within several minutes of when taken.
Deer/game pictures arrive in "blocks" four times per day. You can also configure the system for taking daily "verify" pictures, low resolution/small bandwidth for receiving daily "proof" that the system and each camera, is operational.

That new-to-me Henry Big Boy brass rifle in .44 Magnum that I recently acquired? Some time after opening day when the weather is decent, it will get some woods time!

IMG_20190730_123332714_HDR by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

IMG_20200126_113921157 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

IMG_20200126_113901675 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

IMG_20201003_142239323 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

IMG_1922986349 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

IMG_1922986350 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

PXL_20251028_212938484~3 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

PXL_20251028_212607440 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

[CT_Shooter]

That is a great story, ceeKamp. And, wow! What a great hunting/getting away cabin you folks built. I envy you. Thanks for sharing it with us. I look forward to reading about your adventures there.

[markiver54]

That is a great story, ceeKamp. And, wow! What a great hunting/getting away cabin you folks built. I envy you. Thanks for sharing it with us. I look forward to reading about your adventures there.

Ditto!
Awesome set-up you have there cee_Kamp!

[daytime dave]

I wish you well on opening day sir. Great cabin and property. May the deer gods be kind to you on opening day.

[cee_Kamp]

Thank You all for the kind words!
While up there at the cabin/deer woods doing projects and sweating in the hot summer sun, it seems like work.
Today, and just a few days before opening day of rifle season, it seems more like a plan that was well executed.

It keeps me out of the bars & taverns and away from most of the women!

daytime dave, shoot a big buck!

[rickhem]

What a great set up! It looks like you have a nice big aerial view of your property in that one pic, something I'd like to do for mine too.
I can see that being used for a lot more than just hunting seasons.
Nice buck too, I hope he shows up wherever you are during the season.

[HenryFan]

cee-Kamp -

One could not ask for a better hunting g camp! Congratulations on a job well done.

HenryFan

[daytime dave]

I'll be out with a new gun in my pasture. Batteries are charged for the electric socks and gloves.

[cee_Kamp]

Sometimes preparing for opening day of deer hunting season isn't about the land, ladder stands, shooting shacks, and trail cameras.
At times, it is preparing a new-to-you firearm for deer season usage. Or perhaps just swapping scopes around.
I've owned a Smith & Wesson Performance Center revolver chambered in .500 S & W Magnum for more than 20 years. Actually several. One which I sold several years ago, the short barrel model.
The last five or six deer seasons, the long 10.5" barrel Performance Center model, it sat in the safe, and didn't get out in the woods.
There are several reasons why. One is my age. I am not as "tough" as I was ten years ago. It's fairly "punishing" recoil when loaded fast for a flat trajectory.

Second, here in upstate NY, and for many decades, it was smoothbore shotguns and lead pumpkin ball slugs only for big game hunting. Unless you rifle hunted in the VERY rural Adirondack or Catskill Mountains.
This isn't the time or place for discussing the reasoning behind those obsolete regulations.
Those obsolete regulations are now gone, and centerfire rifles with bottleneck cartridges are in use now, virtually across most of New York State.
The big .500 scoped revolver was a "then legal" means for dodging around the old shotguns/slugs regulations. (and still is legal today for taking big game in NY)
The practical effective range of the scoped .500 revolver was about double of the smoothbore shotguns/slugs. This was the reason for buying it long ago.

But that big scoped .500 revolver was painful to shoot and still required yearly checking for being sighted in every season. That's not even counting regular range time practice.
As I have aged, it became less fun every year that passed.
This year, I decided the smart move was sell off the .500 revolver and recoup the invested cash. My new top-tier handgun caliber for revolvers is .44 Magnum.

I stopped it at my local sporting goods store, and in the used rifle rack, there was a very gently used Henry Big Boy brass rifle in .44 Magnum.
Brass/bronze receiver, 20" octagonal barrel, brass butt plate.
I had been looking online for a new Ruger manufactured Marlin SBL in .44 Magnum as a companion rifle for the .44 revolvers, but those are somewhat difficult to locate, and very expensive!

I looked the used Henry over closely, and decided to do the trade deal, and dump the big .500 revolver. I was extremely pleased with the big .500 revolver trade-in appraisal.
My first range outing with the Henry, it shot very nice tight groups, but shot quite high, even with the rear buckhorn sight elevator fully down.
No big deal, it wasn't my first rodeo where a new-to-me used firearm didn't shoot where the iron sights looked.
Dawson Precision (online iron sights seller/maker) has a neat feature on their website for calculating sight heights, and my prior usage there with the SIGHT MATH calculator worked perfectly.
I did my math, ordered a taller Skinner Sights front iron sight (brass bead style) and swapped out the front sight. My second time using the Dawson Precision SIGHT MATH calculator successfully.

Just because I like to prepare early, I tried on my winter hunting gloves and handled the Henry rifle, my winter hunting gloved fingers would not fit inside the factory equipped small loop lever. (2XL sized gloves)
I looked online at the Henry Rifles/Firearms website and quickly found Henry Outfitters, and within minutes ordered a new large loop lever.
I decided to GO BIG, and ordered the color case hardened large loop lever! I DO like the brass/blued steel/color case hardened visual appearance!

The new-to-me Henry Big Boy brass rifle in .44 Magnum made a second range trip. It's now dead on at 50 yards, and you can hit a 9" x 9" diamond shaped steel plate target at the 100 yard berm with every single shot fired.
Iron sighted rifle, chambered in a revolver cartridge, buckhorn rear sight, and hitting modest sized steel plates at 100 yards with every single shot sounds like good enough! (Benchrest & sandbags)
I also now have available rear buckhorn sight elevator travel, it is now one "click" from being centered.
My reload for .44 Magnums, both rifle and revolvers, is: .44 Magnum cases, 200 grain Hornady XTP projectiles, and a maximum charge of Hodgdon CFE pistol powder, Large Pistol Primer.
The result is HOT .44 Special performance, and just barely into entry level bottom tier .44 Magnum performance. Whitetail deer just aren't that hard to kill IF you hit what you are aiming for.
I use the same projectile in my .50 caliber muzzleloading rifles & handguns, it's just inside a green plastic sabot.

I have it completed now, new Skinner Sights front brass bead sight 0.130" taller, cleaned and lubricated, new factory Henry color case hardened big loop lever, and sling attachment points installed.
It is ready for hunting season now with just a few days to spare!
Being gently used, it has just enough "character marks" on it that I won't feel bad taking it out in the woods for deer hunting usage.
I'm a BIG fan of stainless steel rifles and handguns for serious outdoors purposes, as it is significantly easier with aftercare when outdoors in the rain, sleet, and snow.
I likely won't take the new-to-me Henry rifle out hunting until there is a weather forecast/day with no rain, sleet, or snow, it's too attractive of a rifle to abuse it.

When I walked out of the sporting goods store with the used Henry, I also had a store gift card with six hundred Hornady .44 caliber 200 grain XTP projectiles on it. The store needed to order them.
I may never need any more .44 jacketed projectiles ever again, my reloading projectiles order has arrived.
I also pulled the Leupold variable scope off the big .500 revolver before trading it in, and transferred it over to one of my Ruger .44 caliber hunting revolvers.

If I ever feel the need for abusive recoil, and all the .500 revolvers are now gone, I still have a T/C Encore single shot pistol chambered in 30-06 Springfield which scratches that itch.
It also reaches out pretty good, even better than the big .500 revolver!

PXL_20251028_212938484~3 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

PXL_20251028_212607440 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

PXL_20251028_212746578~8 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

PXL_20251028_212816552 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

PXL_20251018_170108034 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

I pulled this scope off of this revolver when I traded it in for the Henry .44 rifle & the projectiles.

Destroyer 002 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

I installed the scope I removed, and put it on top of this .44 revolver. I had a fixed 4X on the Ruger before, and hated it. This is a 2.5 x 8 variable, which I greatly prefer. The swap required two steps up in scope rings height.

PXL_20251011_003505348 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

This photo is just a quick "glamour shot" view of the 30-06 Encore pistol!

Guns 003 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

[rickhem]

Those are some good looking toys CK. I like that your new, taller sight has a smaller bead, which doesn't cover your target as much.

A buddy of mine let me try his Contender in .375JDJ one time. He was an acquaintance of JD Jones from SSK, and hunted with him, and he had a couple handguns that SSK had worked over. That .357 had a 2.5x scope, and I was shooting it at 50 yards, it really didn't recoil all that badly. My buddy told me to look out to the berm in the distance, find some big rocks about the size of a bowling ball, and shoot those. It was amazing how easy it was to hit them. Your Encore has that same look.

[cee_Kamp]

The Encore 30-06 pistol is easily capable of a five shot group of less than one inch at 100 yards.
It likes Remington Core Lokt 150 grain spitzers, which in the past was one of the most affordable choices of factory ammo.
Obviously, benchrest and sandbags, and also during nice weather when your fingers aren't frozen.
A folded towel underneath your shooting hand elbow is a mandatory benchrest shooting accessory.
It tries to ram your elbow through the benchrest tabletop surface.

The Contender platform was limited on cartridge power level because once a certain cartridge case head rearward thrust force was reached, the standing breech deflected/deformed. Rearward case head thrust is calculated by the case head area multiplied by the cartridge chamber pressure.
With a high pressure cartridge, in the Contender, it needed to be a small case head diameter.
With a low pressure cartridge, in the Contender, you had much more leeway on case head diameter.
This is the ultimate reason for all the wildcat cartridges being created for the Contender platform. Including the .375 JDJ.

The Encore platform, having the "side of frame gussets" that help stiffen the standing breech against case head rearward thrust is
much more tolerant of large case head/high pressure cartridges. You can get an Encore rifle barrel in .300 Winchester Magnum, or even .375 H & H.
Which means technically, it is possible to "create" the same cartridge/configuration in an Encore pistol.
Not that you should, but you could! The 30-06 in an Encore pistol is just about my personal limit for recoil and muzzle blast.

Once in the past at my former location, I took the 30-06 Encore pistol to an outdoor range. Checking it for being sighted in for an upcoming deer hunting season. That evening after returning home, I got a phone call from the guy that did Mr. Fix-it tasks for the Gun Club/Range.
He asked/told me not to shoot the 30-06 Encore under the rifle range covered firing points ever again.
I asked why, and he replied that the muzzle blast/concussion from the 30-06 Encore pistol had lifted the steel roofing panels on the covered firing point roof, and the screws with the little rubber gaskets had pulled right through the steel roofing panels!

[rickhem]

After some research, I zeroed in on Cuddeback/Cuddelink cellular trail cameras.

I looked into this, as it sounds fantastic. Saving me the trip out to change over the chips would be great. That said, I find it's a good idea to get my boots in the woods regularly, and check to see the property in-person. Usually I'm just clearing fallen trees and/or branches from my trails, but sometimes it's to look into what is going on with some of my border neighbor's properties. I have a snowmobile trail that runs along the edge of our land in one area, and that seems to be a popular spot to stop for a break, cause I find beer cans all around there in the spring after the snow melts. That's not a big deal, but it may be if they decide to leave the trail and go bushwhacking.

One down side I see with the Cuddelink is that it is only pictures that can be transmitted, not video. I have all of my trailcams set to record 10 or 15 second video clips, so the video is my preference. That may be outweighed by convenience, still thinking about that part. They don't give those cameras away either, price for the black flash units are $150 each. I may wade in with one of those starter kits and see how I like them.

Anyway, thanks for posting about them, I wouldn't have known otherwise.

[cee_Kamp]

All of my deployed Cuddeback/Cuddelink cameras have the black flash.
Deer will stand right in front of a camera tending a "licking branch" and aren't bothered in the slightest by the nighttime flash.
White light flash will generally spook them.
The setup instructions say that the black flash is invisible to the human eye.
They also say, use a smart phone (have the camera app open & ready to take a photo) and THEN you can see the black flash on the cell phone screen.
I simply don't understand the preference for video over still photos.
You're trying to identify an animal (or trespasser) and not make a motion picture for National Geographic!
For me, the convenience of not needing to pull SD cards routinely FAR outweighs the lack of video arriving on my cell phone or PC.
Here is Me: Is the picture a buck or a doe? If a buck, how many points. What else really matters?
Most of my cameras are running on the original set of Four D batteries. (4 "D" cells, alkaline in each camera)
This is after more than 94 days of the system being up and running. Over 1000 pictures sent.
If you get the Cuddeback/Cuddelink system, don't be afraid to PM me.
I'm a computer/cell phones/Wi-Fi/network person, and the Cuddeback/Cuddelink "learning curve" is steep when you first start out.
Read the directions!

IMG_1889817848 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

IMG_1889521281 by cee_Kamp 32ACP, on Flickr

[rickhem]

I have two "low glow" cameras, and while the deer seem curious about them, the coyotes and the fox get spooked and bolt.
The rest are all "no glow", and while they are invisible to my eyes, a lot of wildlife do seem to look straight at the camera at some point in the video, so that makes me wonder if they see something that we can't. They've been out or four years now, so I have a level of comfort with them too.

I have videos of the bucks and does hitting scrapes and licking branches, and the bucks are easier to identify when you can see them moving their head in the video, and forked or broken tines are easier to see. For some reason, I get a few seven pointers every year, they seem to not form a G1, or brow tine on one side or the other. I can tell which is which with video. I've also seen a buck with an arrow stub in his neck that I definitely wouldn't have been able to see for sure in a still frame. That buck's movement through the Queen Ann's Lace blocked most of it, but you can see the stub as he walked through it. A guy about a mile east of me shot that one last year on opening morning. All that said, powering those IR illuminators for 10 or 15 seconds for a video does eat up more battery power. I get almost a year from 8 AA batteries, but a windstorm that blows a branch in front of the detecting sensor, or that blows the weeds and such around creating movement in the target area at night, that will end up giving me dozens and dozens of nothing videos, and probably uses lots of juice from the batteries.

My no-glow cameras also record sound with the video, and I've recorded videos that included the conversation of two guys walking along the edge of a field where my camera was trained on a mock scrape I made. Actually got two videos worth of them standing there talking, every word audible and clear. I can't even count how many I get with bucks and does grunting.

Good luck tomorrow!

[HenryFan]

Speaking of hunting.....

Yesterday evening I sat the front field for about three hours until a short time after the sun set. I didn't see deer this trip but an hour or so after getting in the box blind, a high speed rabbit ran the full length of the field south to north about 30 feet or so from the edge of the woodline. I thought to myself that he is one lucky rabbit to make it from one end to the other, about 100 yards, when there are so many coyotes, bobcats and hawks on the property.

About 30 minutes or so later, I saw a bobcat (him/her?) emerge from the woodline. It sat still for a few minutes watching the field and then entered and behind it a second bobcat (her/him?) came out. They both walked slowly down the track taken earlier by the high speed rabbit but they went north to south. I enjoyed this because although I spend a good bit of time in the outdoors, bobcat sightings of me are just not that common but to see two at the same time was exceptionally enjoyable.

Both cats were stocky and appeared healthy so if I were a rabbit, high speed or otherwise, I would not trade speed for luck.

Trips like this are why I consider myself to be an outdoorsman.

[CT_Shooter]

Speaking of hunting.....

Yesterday evening I sat the front field for about three hours until a short time after the sun set. I didn't see deer this trip but an hour or so after getting in the box blind, a high speed rabbit ran the full length of the field south to north about 30 feet or so from the edge of the woodline. I thought to myself that he is one lucky rabbit to make it from one end to the other, about 100 yards, when there are so many coyotes, bobcats and hawks on the property.

About 30 minutes or so later, I saw a bobcat (him/her?) emerge from the woodline. It sat still for a few minutes watching the field and then entered and behind it a second bobcat (her/him?) came out. They both walked slowly down the track taken earlier by the high speed rabbit but they went north to south. I enjoyed this because although I spend a good bit of time in the outdoors, bobcat sightings of me are just not that common but to see two at the same time was exceptionally enjoyable.

Both cats were stocky and appeared healthy so if I were a rabbit, high speed or otherwise, I would not trade speed for luck.

Trips like this are why I consider myself to be an outdoorsman.