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upstate's - Check out my New York Property

Check out and Discuss my upstate's hunting property! Hit the link above to view.

What town is your property in?

Good Luck!

What county and township ?

Sorry, I didn't know this thread went through the fire wall at work. I'm retiring in a couple of months and will be building a house in that field on the north end of the property. I already had a forest mulcher put a one acre food plot in as well as a "deer trail " for a couple hundred yards. winding down to a thicker area. My goal is to do TSI and have this retirement project. I threw a hundred lbs. of rye in the mulch late last fall and deer were there a little bit, so it worked. The spot is not the best place to hunt in New York by a long shot, area 5S on the Vermont border, southern Washington county, white creek; but deer are there so I'll see what I can do. I didn't know you needed preference points any where in NY to shoot a doe but you do in 5S.

Lots of bears on the property and I had my first encounter with a bear last fall. 15 yards, big bear. He was tracking me and I guess my scent on a bush was to fresh for him and he turned away, To thick to shoot.

When I get to my home computer I'll add some nice pics and will update the progress on the TSI I have planned as it occurs. Oh, it's only 45 acres and that woods in the pic is 250-300 acres not including everything to the east of the dotted line which is Vermont, so probably 6-7 hundred acres of woods. The big woods of the green mountains of Vermont and the Taconic range of NY is close by which explains the bears. I have cool video of a bear trail that turned into a deer trail later in the season. Very interesting

here is a big I captured on trail cam, The only one but one's enough

This is half the food plot with the mulcher in the background the day he did it. I still have a lot of feathering tree work to do as well as removing the big trees like that white pine in the center. I couldn't believe rye grain grew on that mulch a few months later

That tree in center might make a good stand tree

Sbc is right on …. Some good potential there. Not huge numbers but good potential given time etc

Ma-Pa deerslayer I'm not far from Massachusetts, only a few miles from Bennington. Many of those edge trees are going away or knocked into the woods hinge cut style. That big one is going away for sure. There are a bunch of big ones the mulcher could not deal with. The problem is I just had complete shoulder replacement 3 months ago and the chainsaw is still off limits. I'm dying to get going on this property. here is a cool picture of some crazy bear sign

Upstate, Iike what you're starting to do with the site. Better a muncher than a wildfire. Does it gravel you that you'll have to wait to get enough points to hunt your own property? I've looked at some properties but waiting for several years to hunt is a deal breaker as far as I'm concerned. How much acreage does NY make you own to hunt one (or more) deer every year?

No I can hunt right away. Actually New York is a 2 buck a year state, one bow and one gun (which I wish wasn't the case). My point earlier was that in the southern zone of NY we have liberal anterless tags so you usually go afield with the ability to kill 4 deer a year. Where this property is you need a preference point to get an anterless tag so that tells me numbers are low here, much like the Northern zone which is a big woods dessert for wildlife but great for hiking, also they get deep snow pack some years. I'm near these big mountains but in lowland with agriculture so I believe if I can create some good browse and food I can have a deer or 2 to hunt each year. Of course 45 acres is not a lot of land to have high hopes but I'll leave the does alone and the bucks should come visit. My goal is to carry a couple of doe groups that stay in my bedding areas and visit my food plots. To answer your question hypothetically yes it would drive me nuts if I owned land in Iowa and could not hunt because I was nonresident and needed years of preference points to hunt it.

For your viewing pleasure I'll include a pic of the stream that runs through the property

Upstate, I have to disagree with your assessment of big woods/Adirondack Mountains /northern zone, deer hunting as being a wildlife desert . Each year there are many mature trophy bucks killed there. Many who think the hunting is poor there is because they do not know how to hunt the big woods.

Each year I attend the Adirondack Trackers, (Massey, Dinitto, Grabowski ) deer party. Showcasing bucks that were taken in the Adirondacks and Tug Hill Plateau ,big woods. This past January, there were plenty of big racks there and 2 that scored over 160” all killed in the big woods.

I will agree that since all state land inside the ADK Park is forest preserve/forever wild, much of it is poor habitat. But, there is still good habitat in many places, especially on the hundreds of thousands of acres of private land inside the park.

When I owned land in NYS if you had 50 acres or more it was automatic for a landowner Antlerless tag. Maybe it’s changed?

Your correct Squash and I agree with you, but deer per square miles is certainly lower than the farmland around the finger lakes where I hunted in my hayday. Also I definitely agree with you that I do not know how to hunt big woods. Not really much to hunting private agriculture next to thickets and swampland with a hardwood ridge here and there which is what I did. To bad I was to stupid and impatient and always shot the first deer that walked by at 7:15 am or just before dark. Self professed meat hunter. I'm embarrassed by the numbers of forkies and does I shot and the farmer telling me about the big racks he was seeing when he harvested. My "trophy room" is unimpressive.

Charie, I believe that antlerless option is still open for landowners but my doe shooting days are over unless by some miracle my new land get over populated and it is a necessity. Honestly I'd rather shoot a fawn than a doe. I'd need to check my records to see when the last doe I shot was. I'll let her walk and take the fawn every time, hopefully there were twins, and be careful of the buttons. Still my practice even to today. Fawns and at least 2 year old bucks. Maybe my new land will let me wait for more advanced age class, but honestly antlers aren't really a priority, just really nice when it happens. Now that I'm in my 60's I can honestly say I can let yearling bucks walk. Restraint was never a great quality of mine :)

Anyway, good luck on your new property.

I have never hunted that area, but I own land in the northern zone. So long as you are patient, and have realistic expectations, you will enjoy your property. It looks great. Not too many people put in plots and ag land is scarce in a lot of areas. So with a little work and expense, you will be attracting a good bit of the bucks in your area. Good luck.

I received my soil test results and the PH came in at 6.6, hurray! I got really lucky soil wise on this property, nice looking black soil 10% organic material according to the soil test. Very low potassium but we love to fertilize, right. Very happy with white tail institute's program (thanks Pat)

Congrats on your property, Upstate! Hopefully your shoulder is healing nicely and you will soon be able to really begin to get some dirt under your fingernails. Enjoy!

Thank you Troy, I've been running my chainsaw to get more sun on the food plot and the shoulder is coming along. I'm retiring in 2 days and should be on the property by fall as a residence so I'm very excited. I actually got lost in the block of woods connected to my 45 acres (~500 acres)last weekend, and ran into some great bedding area; I just need to figure out where I was, HA HA

Hey Congrats!!! Sounds like a ton of fun coming your way. Is that an ag field on the west side of your place?

Yes. It's been corn the last 2 years. There is also alfalfa on the south west and further west. That corn field is 100 acres and someone said 20 acres was destroyed by bears last year, stories get exaggerated, but they did issue the farmer a permit to kill bears in the summer. I guess they got one but it killed a dog in the process. Quite a story and I don't know what really happened. I did have a big bear 15 yards from me last fall on thanksgiving morning while in a treestand, pretty crazy

Well if you've got 100 acres of corn on your border and alfalfa as well at least it's easy to establish what direction they go to feed! Hope you're putting some small green plots just inside your property that make a natural entrance to those large fields to kind of funnel deer through your plots on their way to the big fields.

I totally agree. The job is getting the natural east west movement across my land to a north south movement and keep a doe group or two. My issue right now is the thick layer of wood chips on the plot. Rye grows on it but a summer plot or even a fall brassica planting may be a challenge for a year or two more.

put the fertilizer right to the wood chips to speed up the decay, until the wood chips decay you will be shit out of luck getting much to grow

I put 50 lbs. of 10-10-10 on it last fall and will do it again ASAP per your recommendation, thank you. Seeing lots of mushrooms and could not believe the rye grew on it. certainly not very well in some areas of thick mulch. I totally agree with you, I wish I could speed up the rotting process of the wood chips. I know turning the soil or adding a top dressing would help.

Then good thing is if you are retiring and moving there you have the most important resource of all at your disposal..........time.

If the deer want to move east/west why are you hell bent on getting them to move N/S? Just curious. Seems like swimming upstream to counteract hundreds of acres of food with whatever you're going to do.

I'm not sure of the orientation of this pic. On my phone it's correct but om my work computer it's off by 90 degrees. The field with my house icon in due north. The width is only a bit over 100 yards then it widens to a bit over twice that. I'm sure people will disagree with my plan so this is a great discussion. The whole thing is only 45 acres. My plan is to have deer food in my back yard, roughly 2 acres. I already put in 3 rows of white pine in the field between me and my neighbor to the east, He is 10 acres. East of him is the vermont border. On the the west you can see a little of the corn field and other agriculture. The dotted blue are mulched areas, about 30 yards from my "back yard"; that lines twists so you can't see the food plot but the deer should come into my back yard at night after feeding in the one acre food plot which is shaped like a figure 8. Next I have a mulched deer trail wandering south to some thick wet cover. I plan to put a smaller kill plot near the end of that. So I am trying to create a north/south flow. Access is tricky. That is why I put the food plot so close in the narrow area. In deep seems better but how do you get in there? I plan to put in a box blind in the north end of the food plot for evenings but other than that I feel like I'm running deer out of there if I stay on my property. Those treestand sites are arbitrary as things progress. Point is most of the trails run east/west from vermont to the big agriculture and I've set you some mock scrapes on them on my mulched deer trail. Deer are using my habitat changes, so it is working, and this is just the beginning

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