Property management for small game

[BryanH]

Trying to buy my first home, offer accepted, already daydreaming about hunting prospects. About 5 acres, mostly wooded, down in a holler. A few neighboring homes, probably 3 or 4 in about 160 acres wooded surrounding us, and farmland for miles outside this little holler.

Lots of little critters, lots of deer, not a lot of cottontails but cottontails are what i want.

How would you manage for cottontails? Lots of predators and hawks around, i know they need thick cover, surely somebody here knows how to manage for better cottontails.

Thanks.

 

[Wily423]

I live in wisconsin where we have a lot of predators that wreaked havoc on our small game. I trap and hunt both which helps but giving them places to hide helped the most. For the rabbits we took large pallets the predators couldn't get under and then piled off cut brush on top of it to make a brush pile. In 2 years of this we have plenty of rabbits back.

 

[dizzums]

lol .. plant a garden, youll be at war instantly, it will likely get downright personal and youll want to get him with a big bore just for the satisfaction lol ..

 

[BryanH]

I will be at war with possums and coons. Cottontails? Around here i doubt it. Cottontails struggle in my area. In fact i have seen more raccoons.

The raccoons and possums here are numerous and very healthy lol. I promise you have never seen possums this fat.

 

[IMADMAN]

Trying to buy my first home, offer accepted, already daydreaming about hunting prospects. About 5 acres, mostly wooded, down in a holler. A few neighboring homes, probably 3 or 4 in about 160 acres wooded surrounding us, and farmland for miles outside this little holler.

Lots of little critters, lots of deer, not a lot of cottontails but cottontails are what i want.

How would you manage for cottontails? Lots of predators and hawks around, i know they need thick cover, surely somebody here knows how to manage for better cottontails.

Thanks.

Congrats!

 

[SteveV]

Trying to buy my first home, offer accepted, already daydreaming about hunting prospects. About 5 acres, mostly wooded, down in a holler. A few neighboring homes, probably 3 or 4 in about 160 acres wooded surrounding us, and farmland for miles outside this little holler.

Lots of little critters, lots of deer, not a lot of cottontails but cottontails are what i want.

How would you manage for cottontails? Lots of predators and hawks around, i know they need thick cover, surely somebody here knows how to manage for better cottontails.

Thanks.

Sounds like a dream come true! I would suspect you are the envy of many airgunners - congrats!

 

[GeneT]

Any kind of scrub brush. Here it's mostly creosote bushes, but any low-lying bushes should do. Treed areas aren't as good, because the shade drives out the low-lying brush that lagomorphs depend upon. I am over-run with cottontail (and quail). I feed them and don't hunt them. I can satisfy my hunting urge with ground squirrels and doves, and I rather enjoy having a mob of bunnies to watch come to eat when the wife and I have coffee out back in the mornings.

GsT

 

[Doc C.]

Congratulations on your new home.

All animals especially prey animals need 3 things. Food. Water. Safety\cover.

The idea with the pallets is a really good one. A lot of factories and
warehouses will give you pallets for free by the truckload.
Adding the brush is great.

Good hunting

Doc

 

[BryanH]

Its not mine yet. Still gotta go through inspections, etc. Never bought a home before.

 

[karl_h]

Its not mine yet. Still gotta go through inspections, etc. Never bought a home before.

Correction, you never bought a home for yourself, but pitched in buying tens of thousands of homes for other people, including me. The housing crash of 2008 and all that entailed let me buy my place from the federal government for just a hair over 28% of the mortgage note they were holding, so everyone else payed off the other 72% of the note, damn near 250k citizens paid for me to own my home. There were lots of deals like that in 2011-12. Rural properties that had enough land to be a significant portion of the value, banks would not loan a penny to anyone no matter how good their credit or what kind of down payment they would make. Banks had lost a disproportionate amount of money on those properties and it was a long time before they would loan money on them again. That left the feds with a huge inventory that was un-sellable, except to investors/business. It was the fed policy not to sell to them no matter what. The Feds just started selling them off for cash offers by people who signed a legal form stating they were going to be an owner/occupier. No rental, no investors, no companies allowed to bid, only people buying a home to live in. My first home, paid cash for it, no mortgage.