SANCTUARY – a critical piece of the QDM puzzle
BY
CHARLES J. ALSHEIMER
If you’ve read the popular press for any length of time you might think
that the key to a QDM program is food plots, food plots and more food plots.
While food is the centerpiece for a quality deer management program there are
many other things that must be working in concert for the program to shine. One
of the critical pieces to the QDM puzzle is having a sanctuary.
Hunters and land managers, who strive for better habitat and deer, often
overlook the sanctuary’s role in the QDM mix.
Though food brings deer to a property, it’s the quality of sleeping
accommodations and security that keeps them from wandering off to another
property.
One of the things I constantly preach to my audiences is that you don’t
want to just build a restaurant for your deer. You want to build a resort
center, a place where they can eat, sleep, play and feel secure. In short, you
need to offer them the total package. Anything less will keep you from reaching your goals.
The Basics
When I first embarked on my quality deer management journey more than 10
years ago, I concentrated on building food plots and restricting the harvesting
of yearling bucks as a way to have better deer. This was a good start but I
quickly realized that other things were needed. One of my problems was not being
able to hold the deer that roamed our 200-acre farm. In an attempt to raise the
bar, I decided to make a sanctuary on the property, a place where deer would
feel more secure. At first I placed part of a ravine on the farm off-limits to
gun hunting. It was a prime bedding area, which totaled about 15-acres.
This helped, but not to the degree I thought it would. Part of the problem
was that I still had a choice gun-hunting stand located in the sanctuary; and
though I didn’t hunt it often, I hunted it enough during firearms season to
have a negative effect on the deer. During
my travels I encountered others who were practicing deer management and through
conversations realized that I needed to raise the bar even more. While in
Georgia I heard a QDM consultant say, “the number of quality deer you have on
your property will be in direct proportion to the size of your sanctuary.”
That caused me to think even more.
In the late 1990s I took a radical approach to our QDM program by setting aside more land for sanctuaries. Instead of having just one big sanctuary, I added smaller ones as well. I also instituted new guidelines for how our farm would be hunted. I quickly realized that the number of sanctuaries, their size and how they were utilized, greatly affected how deer used our property.
Sanctuary Size
No two deer managers agree on exactly what a sanctuary’s size should be. A
rule of thumb that I use is that a minimum of one-third of the property should
be set aside for a sanctuary or sanctuaries. This is the bare minimum. By
example, our farm is a little more than 200 acres in size. Nearly 140 acres are
in sanctuary. Other highly successful deer managers operate in a similar
fashion.
Mark Rutledge of Pennsylvania has been practicing quality deer management on
his lands in the Keystone State and New York for seven years. He and his wife
have harvested some outstanding whitetails with bow and arrow. Throughout this
time he’s come to realize how important a sanctuary is to a program’s
success.
“When we began our program I knew I had to have some way to hold deer on
our property. The 340 acres we have in Pennsylvania was mostly forested when we
began, so to feed the deer properly I had to clear forest to make openings for
food plots. It was a daunting task,” he said.
“At the same time I knew that I had to provide the deer with a secure
area, so that the small bucks didn’t get killed. Consequently, I placed over
160 acres in the area near the food plots into a sanctuary.
“In the last few years we’ve secured over 600 acres in New York State and
have roughly 400 acres on this property classified as a sanctuary.
One of the keys as I see it is that the sanctuary or sanctuaries be
centrally located and adjacent or very near the food plots.”
Mike Wheeler is a millwright from Missouri who aggressively manages three
properties for quality deer. He’s also an outstanding whitetail hunter who
harvested a 180+ Pope and Young buck on his property last fall. Whether it’s
food plots, habitat management or deer hunting, he knows his stuff. He also
knows what a sanctuary brings to a QDM table.
“Without a good sanctuary a quality deer management program can’t work,” he said. “Oh, you might see a little improvement without a designated sanctuary, but if you want to see truly top-end deer, a sanctuary is a must.”
Like Rutledge and Wheeler, Pennsylvanian Kerry Bender knows the value of having a sanctuary. “Hunting pressure is so great in this state that we couldn’t have quality deer if we didn’t work hard to provide our deer with the best possible cover,” he said. “Our hunting club is made up of ten members and we manage 500 acres. We have about 20 percent of the property designated as a sanctuary. Food plot maintenance is at the core of what we do, but how we treat and utilize our sanctuaries is a close second.”
Location
The location of the sanctuary is crucial to a program’s success. If thought
doesn’t go into where it is located, success will be hard to come by. In
general terms the sanctuary’s location should be in the center of the property
if possible, and far away from neighbors who do not practice quality deer
management.
Because of hunting pressure and the lay of his property, Kerry Bender has had
a lot of experience laying out sanctuary locations.
“The last thing you want to have happen is that you feed and sleep the deer
and opportunistic neighbors kill them,” he said. “If possible, the sanctuary
should be in traditional bedding areas. These are normally the thickest, nastiest places on a
property.”
I concur wholeheartedly with Bender. If your property doesn’t have thick
cover, create it. It’s easy to do
with a chainsaw. Selectively harvesting mature and cull trees can create or
enhance a sanctuary. It’s always best to hire a professional forester and have
him mark the trees to be cut. However, make sure you advise him as to what you
want to accomplish, i.e., to create better habitat and an attractive bedding
area for deer. Whenever a cut is made, be sure to leave the tops where they
fell. Treetops provide structure and allow regeneration to take place more
rapidly.
Utilization
Sanctuary utilization can be a controversial topic among hunting groups. When
“committee rules” on a quality deer management property everyone has his
idea as to how the sanctuary should be utilized. Some think there is no problem
hunting it, driving ATV vehicles through it, or coming and going as they see
fit.
If you think you want to hunt it, drive ATV’s in and around it, think
again. The purpose of a sanctuary is to provide whitetails with a place where
they feel secure can bed and feel comfortable moving around its edges during
daylight hours so they can be hunted. In a nutshell that is the purpose of a
sanctuary.
If you want to make noise, leave scent and generally scare your deer then
don’t waste your time even thinking about a sanctuary. Whitetails may not have
the intellect of a black lab but they are ultimate survivors. Consequently, if
you do anything to make them wary ¾
and I do mean anything ¾
they will shut down their daytime activity in a heartbeat.
If some members of your hunting group want to still-hunt, drive deer, and
jockey 4-wheelers around, you might want to ask them to hunt elsewhere.
Remember, to a whitetail any form of human activity is enemy action, whether
it’s in the form of birders wandering about, hikers traipsing through the
woods, picnic goers, ATV riders, or hunters. All scare deer to death and cause
them to become nocturnal.
For the last seven years I’ve been involved with Vermont researcher Wayne
Laroche in a very aggressive research project dealing with how the sun and moon
time the whitetail’s rut. We utilize several devices to acquire
computer-friendly data. One tool we use is a Model 500 Trail Timer, which
records the month, day, hour and minute a deer passes by. Several of the timers
are located on intensely managed QDM properties where human activity is kept to
a minimum, while others are on lands that receive heavy hunting pressure.
Interestingly, what we’ve found is that 56 percent of all deer activity on the
QDM lands occurs during daylight while less than 30 percent of the deer activity
on heavily hunted land takes place during the day. This speaks volumes about the
importance of low-impact use of hunting land and why a sanctuary is critical for
anyone interested in having better deer to hunt.
Mike Wheeler credits the harvest of his incredible 182 P&Y buck to the
fact that he has the ultimate sanctuary. “I
harvested the buck as he was going to an Imperial Clover food plot, which is on
the edge of a 40-acre sanctuary. Over the years we’ve learned that deer will
come to food in daylight, providing we stay out of the area.
For this reason our sanctuaries are off-limits 365 days of the year. The
only time we will ever go into one is to track a wounded deer.
“I had hunted this buck for the last three years and I doubt I’d have had
a chance to harvest him had I not kept this sanctuary off-limits. Under normal
circumstances bucks of this caliber are totally nocturnal. Having the Imperial
Clover food plot for him to feed and the security of the sanctuary were what
made him vulnerable and the shot possible. For this reason I work hard to provide our deer with the best
possible food and sanctuary. They
go hand-in-hand.”
Though Wheeler stays out of his sanctuaries the entire year, most land/deer
managers are a bit more lenient. Mark Rutledge goes into his sanctuary only to
look for sheds in late winter or to mow the food plots, which are within the
sanctuary. Kerry Bender follows a similar plan.
“For the most part we do not go into our sanctuary during the fall months.
In a couple of places we have to traverse them to get from point A to point B,
but we do so as quietly as possible,” he said. “During the non-hunting
months we will sometimes cut cull trees to make the sanctuary thicker. This is
usually a one-day job so we are in and out. I haven’t noticed that this
adversely affects deer. A sanctuary is like any other part of a management
program. It has to be managed so you have to go into it sometime to enhance the
habitat within it.”
To Track or Not To Track
Next to deciding how a sanctuary is utilized, deciding how to track wounded
deer that wander into it can be a topic for hot discussion. Certainly no one
wants to see an animal suffer, but much thought and preparation must go into
deciding when to and when not to track a deer that goes into a designated
sanctuary. For some this issue may seem to be a no-brainer for they will say,
“go after the deer as soon as you can, regardless of the consequences.”
However, if you have a successful program in place and your neighbors could care
less about any kind of QDM practices, you might want to think this one through.
I’ve found that when you jump a deer it normally travels (runs, trots or
walks) about 400-600 yards before stopping. On many lands this means the jumped
deer will be off the property and vulnerable to those who want to shoot any
legal deer. For this reason many successful deer managers owning less than 600
acres opt to track wounded deer under the cover of darkness, when animals go
into a sanctuary.
There are eight landowners that border our farm. Only four practice any form
of quality deer management. So, four of them shoot any legal deer they see.
Because of this and the fact that our farm is only a little more than 200 acres,
we only track wounded animals at night, when they go into our designated
sanctuary.
I don’t know how many deer this practice has saved over the years, but
it’s certainly been a bunch. I can honestly say that I’ve never lost a deer
due to night tracking, when the hunter made a good shot. Posting is the norm in
our country and with most parcels of land being less than 100 acres, it’s
impossible to track a deer very far without permission, day or night. So, I’ve
found that the best way to track a deer that enters a sanctuary is by waiting
for darkness and contacting adjacent landowners when it becomes necessary to do
so.
If a property is over 600 acres in size, then daytime tracking is quite
possible and should be the rule. The whole key to this issue is the size of the
property and the hunting philosophy of the surrounding landowners. If you’re
afraid of disrupting the sanctuary and chasing deer all over the place, track at
night. If not, take up the track as soon as possible.
Food Plots in Relation to the Sanctuary
For sanctuaries to shine, the placement of food plots is a key component.
By providing deer with a great, non-threatening bedding area and the best
food sources, a program will be well on its way to success. When sanctuaries and
food sources work in concert with each other, deer are able to thrive and
survive to maturity. It can be a win/win situation if the set-up is right.
Mike Wheeler works hard to place Imperial Clover food plots around the
perimeter of his sanctuaries. By doing so he’s able to hunt deer coming out of
the sanctuary, regardless of the direction the wind is blowing. Such set-ups are
what makes hunters like Wheeler the envy of deer hunters everywhere.
10 Tips For A Better Sanctuary
1. Place at least 1/3 of the property into a sanctuary.
2. The sanctuary should be in the center of the property.
3. The sanctuary should be in a traditional bedding area.
4. Mark the sanctuary boundary so that friends, etc. do not wander into it.
5. Keep the sanctuary as far away of non-cooperating landowners as possible.
6. Curtail all human activity within the sanctuary, especially during hunting season.
7. In most cases tracking wounded deer in a sanctuary should only be done at night during firearms season.
8. Selectively cull trees to thicken the sanctuary.
9. Place food plots in strategic locations next to the sanctuary to take advantage of wind patterns and shifts.
10. If possible, don’t hunt on a food plot that borders a sanctuary. Try to position yourself between the sanctuary and feeding area.