While you’re out mowing grass or working your land with a tractor or ATV, try this. Mow or bush-hog a strip of grass or a lane through a thicket right up to one or two of your favorite tree stands you’ve hunted for years. Keep those lanes trimmed all summer. Deer will find them and use them. One day this fall, an 8-pointer might walk smack down the strip to your stand. The trimmed lanes are great places to plant mini-plots.

Scour old farm/weed fields and clear-cuts for hidden fruit trees, like apple or persimmon. Open up the trees by clearing away brush; prune a few limbs and pour some fertilizer over the roots. A tree should make some soft mast just in time for bow season, and you’ll have yet another honey-hole for a stand.

One of the best land improvements doesn’t take a drop of sweat. Pinpoint some of the thickest, roughest cover and terrain on your land, and designate it a deer sanctuary. No walking or hunting in there! A good sanctuary is so thick that a buck feels safe and hidden if you walk or drive an ATV by at 50 yards. Best case, 20 to 30 percent of your land is in sanctuary; the closer to the center of the property the better. The combination of large feeding plots, the sanctuary and the small green strips and patches you’ll sow make for a bowhunting paradise.