Mid-Summer Habitat Work: Small Changes That Make a Big Impact in Fall

Summer is the perfect time to make small changes to your deer habitats. You can do a lot of little things now that will improve your odds of having the deer herd visit your habitat in the fall. Check out our tips for how to slowly but consistently build your deer habitat before fall.

Plant Soybeans

Soybeans can be planted anywhere between spring and summer. As long as the seeds are planted a few months before the first frost, you should yield a modest crop, even if you plant them in July. Deer eat soybeans all year long, so planting them now will draw the herd to your property now and continue to draw them back throughout the fall hunting season as the crops mature.

Set Up Your Deer Feeders

If the soil on your property isn’t conducive to planting a live food plot, consider putting up a Feedbank Gravity Deer Feeder. You can place the feeder anywhere on your property and fill it with whatever kind of feed you want. Our deer feeders come in various size options that hold anywhere from 40 to 600 pounds of feed. The Gravity Feeders are mounted onto a single wooden post, so you can easily move them around the property throughout the year to see which area generates the most deer traffic. Our Timber feeders are circular feeders that are placed directly on the ground. Like our Stump blinds, the Timber feeders are designed to look like tree stumps so that they blend into the landscape and appear as a natural part of the property to the deer. You can use our Trail Runner 62 sleds or trailers to move the feeders around your property.

Set Up Your Water Systems

You can also use this time to set up your water sources. If you don’t have a naturally occurring pond or water source on your property, you can add one of our Wild Water Systems. They come in various options that hold anywhere between 50 and 300 gallons of water. The systems come with 3-foot-long troughs that are refilled with water every time the valve inside the tank senses that the troughs are empty. The long trough allows for multiple members of the deer herd to drink from the system at the same time.

Cut Down Trees

Clear your shooting lanes now so that you aren’t causing a bunch of commotion or disturbing potential bedding areas during the active deer season. Take your branch scraps and build an area of cover for the deer. Don’t hunt directly over this spot during the hunting season. Make sure to leave some areas of your property as “hunting free zones” so that you’re concentrating the pressure on certain areas rather than designating your entire property as a danger zone because the deer will take notice if nowhere on the property is safe.

Make any changes to your property now so that the deer can get used to anything you add to your property before the hunting season begins. The herd needs time to adjust to any new feed before they go into survival mode for winter and any major activity on the property, like cutting down trees or setting up accessories, would disrupt your hunting spots if you do it during the active deer season.

What little things do you do for your summer habitats that make a big impact in the fall? Let us know in the comments below.